The Most Astounding Fact About the Universe

Explaining the inner workings of the Universe so that all might understand them better is a noble endeavor. Doing so in a manner that excites us and urges us to participate in the process of scientific discovery is a necessity for any society that wishes to continue the march of scientific process. Towards that end, one could do far worse than Neil Degrasse Tyson, whose answer to the question "What is the most astounding fact about the Universe?" has been set to music and images of the cosmos by vimeo user Max Schlickenmeyer.



This is nearly identical to the notion which Miley Cyrus has recently been flamed for tweeting as a macro, save for the "forget Jesus" bit. Which was perhaps impolitic for a public figure, but considering the multitudes of exhortations from pulpit I've witnessed by those who hold that people like me who take no solace in the idea that an invisible man (and it is always a man) watching over them lead worthless lives, I offer a hearty fuck you to anyone who refers to the valuation of science over mysticism as "bigotry," while failing to speak up when your fellow Christians declare people like me to be valueless, even if I never said a bad word about their Lord (I would in fact give quite a lot to be able to break bread with the man, even though I'm convinced that he was just a man).

The problem is-- and I say this with a heavy heart-- there is a limit to the persuasive power of telling people to go fuck themselves.

So where do we go from there?

Everybody's concept of the universe is an imperfect model of the one we actually inhabit. Because the people who are most open about this fact are the ones who are trying to build better models for how the Universe works, their efforts are often lost on those who desire the certainty offered by theodicy.

Of course, if this was just about how people prefer to live their own lives, that would be one thing. We have known for quite some time now that separation of church and state is not a complete defense against the influence of the church.

I'm all for allowing people their comforts up to a point-- we do live in a supremely fucked-up world-- but this fictional asshole who torched a city because they were having too much buttsex, promises eternal punishment for his female creations who refuse to be enslaved by their biology, and demands that one particular method of sucking up to him be enshrined above all others has outgrown his usefulness. Actually, he's been past that mark for quite a while now.


Is there a way out?

Humanity is capable of witnessing and creating far more truth and beauty than this tyranny is allowing us. We need to find a way to loose this millstone from around our necks. I recognize that any attempt to get the majority of people around the world to eschew divinity is doomed to failure. I do wish, however, that we could find some of them a new God. There does not seem to be a sufficient firewall on offer against the excesses of their current one.

As I don't happen to have any gods on me, I would say this, as per the lesson given us by Dr. Tyson. We are the Universe. If you believe that love is the most powerful force in it-- which is, as I understand it, the central tenet of most faiths-- learn to seek and cherish and embolden the love of, by, and for your fellow human beings and you will bring about the realization of your desires. Even if I'm absolutely wrong about everything I hold to be true about the universe (a possibility accepted by every rational thinker), any God worth worshiping would appreciate the effort.

PAX East: A Modest Success

Editor's Note: There is much to say about the disaster in Japan, but as I'm still playing catch-up, I'll wait on that post and give an update on that thing I've been working on

I hope that next time [Team Respect] goes to a con, there are more of us to hit up the panels and hand out swag, because for as much fun as I had at PAX East, I do wish I'd gotten the chance to play some more videogames.

To that note, I did get the chance to demo the new Mortal Kombat, which was more fun than I've had playing a fighting game in a couple of years (and more fun than I've had playing a Mortal Kombat game since the franchise launched).

I also got to demo Twisted Pixel's The Gunstringer, which is truly fucking astounding. Using the Xbox Kinect, you control the story's hero, who just so happens to be a marionette! As you fight your way through the barren landscape, a narration plays that adapts to the action on screen. It is to puppet theater what Rez was to music.



None of this is to suggest that I regret the other purposes for which I attended PAX. As it stands, [TR] is garnering still more followers on Twitter, with a major spike since the con. We distributed pink wristbands with our twitter name and our URL, collected business cards from a fair number of developers. I was also approached by a teacher from my high school, who was interested in organizing an event there about ethics and hate speech and wanted to know if I'd be interested in giving a talk.

Considering that one of the long-term goals we had from the getgo was doing precisely that sort of thing, I'm pretty fucking psyched.

When we started out, we weren't quite sure what we could accomplish at PAX East with such little time to organize and so few resources. The bar we set for ourselves was thus: Make it absolutely fucking clear that at this con, in this city, the people who are interested in helping greatly outnumber the trolls.

The douchetrucks behind @teamrape managed to stage a "flashmob" consisting of between 15 and 18 people outside a nearby UNO's.  They also managed to get us to give them handfulls of bracelets before we knew who they were, and get themselves kicked out of the Gender in Games panel. They've been at this for a couple of months longer than we have, and are followed by 60 people on twitter.

As of this writing, we've distributed around 2000 wristbands, are followed by 192 twitter users-- including the great and powerful @Themiscyra, who on Sunday became the first woman to take the stage for the final round of the Omegathon, and did so proudly displaying a [Team Respect] wristband-- and have made significant content with the press, the industry, and activists in the community. We also met with the brilliant minds at MIT's Gambit Lab, who in addition to their great work in gaming, created the Hate Speech Project as a reaction to the hostility surrounding the dickwolves debacle. It was put on display at the back of their booth at the expo hall.



A full report will follow over at the Team Respect blog, but in short: [TR] is WINNING. This started as a response to a specific mishap in the gaming community, but it won't end there.

As gamers, we're sick of merely saying "games aren't bad for you." Games are GOOD for you. They keep soldiers deployed in combat zones from wanting to kill themselves-- in fact the only behavior more effective in decreasing risk of suicide is 5 hours of daily exercise.  They treat depression.  They improve confidence and self-esteem, and channel positive energy. If you don't overindulge, they make you a more productive, more considerate, more helpful member of society.  But the catch is, none of that shit works if you're an asshole, or are playing in a space that's dominated by assholes.

We can't sanitize the Internet or online gaming as a whole--nor do we want that power-- but from what we've learned at PAX, it's quite clear what our mission from here on out ought to be: To carve out a space where people can expect to be treated respectfully, and to encourage people to take that attitude out to the gaming community as a whole. To encourage others to lead by example and in so doing change the fucking world. The limits of what can be accomplished by our efforts have yet to be fully defined, but what we already know commands us to press forward.

A lighter note.

The great and wonderful Pia Savage has posted her second Psychology Today piece. In it, she describes her first panic attack, which took place during notebook inspection day in the second grade.

As someone to whom notes were superfluous and taking them was like trying to throw with my off hand, I personally appreciate her sharing her own experience.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that if anyone reading this doesn't already know what's going on in Egypt right now, they can damn well find out on their own and I don't need to speak on it with an unearned air of authority.

I will say this. During the day while I was taking a break from rather dusty housework, I was glued to twitter. among the tweets about the clashes between protesters and brownshirts, something hilarious happened.

The National Organization for Marriage linked this cartoon from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal  on their blog.

Naturally, they didn't get the joke. For thinking people, culture shock is a source of humor and/or discomfort. For Defenders of Marriage, it's evidence that something is well and truly wrong with the Universe.

SMBC is authored by Zach Weiner, who in addition to having a surname uncannily appropriate for the brand of humor that he has elevated near to the level of High Art, is about the last person who is going to let you get away with subverting his work to fit your message of hate. The thing about hotlinks is that you only control the name of the file that they display. Usually, that's enough.  However...

For me it was a welcome break from hearing about how Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric, Brian Williams, Richard Engel, Nicholas Kristoff, and all of the other reporters out there whose names I can't immediately bring to mind but who are no less worthy of mention are in real danger. Some have said that the attention they've gotten is a distraction, but I disagree.

I warrant that there's a danger of people from the West focusing their sympathies on the people who look like them who came late to the nightmare rather than the people who have lived their whole lives under the conditions that created this crisis, but that's not the only force at work These are the people we invite into our homes every day to get a better understanding of how the world is working. In the United States, their efforts are routine; expected. In Cairo, during this time of crisis, it gives some cause to threaten their lives. If we think only of the faces we know, then we indeed have missed the point.

I am infinitely grateful both for the reporters who shine a light on the darkest moments of human history, and the smart, funny people who make those dark moments easier to bear. Double points for each if they can manage to stand up for the powerless while doing so.

I swear, they aren't all like this.

Reading this made me sick to my stomach. Two young children in Boulder, CO have been unceremoniously expelled from Sacred Heart of Jesus, a Catholic primary school,upon the discovery that their parents were both women.

I know. It's the Catholic Church.

The same Catholic Church that had the audacity to judge Massachusetts for legalizing gay marriage at the same time it was making headlines for having aided and abetted child molestors in escaping responsibility for their actions. It's the same Catholic Church that in America has raised a shitstorm over a President's support of abortion rights when even the Pope, who thinks rock music is the devil, is willing to have a constructive dialogue on issues of social justice. The same church that threatened to withdraw its charitable organization if Washington DC allowed gay marriage. So why am I expecting anything from these fucking swine?

Because I am the product of a Catholic education. For four years I was both a beneficiary and a student of an educational philosophy that for hundreds of years has honed minds that have changed the world. Scott Janssen at HuffPost sees this through more or less the same lens.

Boston College High School is a remarkable institution. I was taught government and politics (out of a textbook intended for second year college students) by a man who ran for Congress after a stint as a state legislator. The director of the Dramatics Society worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company. His assistant, who designed set pieces and costumes and taught us how to craft them, worked in professional theater as well as architecture (which he also teaches) and so many other disciplines that an attempt to list them here would only do him a disservice by omission. Many in the faculty are published authors. One writes a weekly column on education in the Globe. Numerous others would have had resumes every bit as impressive had they not gone straight from college back to teach at their alma mater.

These are people who are passionate about education. And the institutional history of that passion and dedication dates back centuries.

Ignacio de Loyola, so named for the Spanish castle where he was born, could have had an easy life. His family's plan for him began and ended with his becoming a cleric at an early age. But Ignacio was his day's equivalent of a comic book nerd. He devoured tales of powerful knights, and like Don Quixote, wished to better them. Unlike Don Quixote, he lived at a time when such a thing were possible, and through some means not uncovered by history, he gave his duties as a cleric the slip, and from 1509 to 1521, he was a knight of the highest reputation, and it seemed no blade could harm him. But a French cannon did, in 1521, when he was leading the King's men in defense of the citadel at Pamplona. The shot went between his legs, taking a chunk out of one and breaking the other. As he fell, so did the Citadel.

The victorious French took him with them to the castle at Loyola, where he underwent a long and painful recovery, involving multiple botched surgeries on his broken leg, in an era with no anesthesia. He asked his caretakers for books of knighthood, but all that was available were books on the life of Christ and of the Saints. And he read them in the same way as he'd read about chivalry: yearning to out-fast, out-consecrate, and generally out-holy the Saints between the pages of the only books he could get his hands on.

Look, dude had issues.

After hanging up his sword and military vestments and giving away all his possessions, he took the name Ignatius and dedicated the next 11 years of his life to educating himself in order to be a better help to others. Then he founded the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits, each of whom to this day complete 11 to 13 years of college prior to being ordained. Their mission to bring about the Kingdom of God on Earth through public service, primarily--obsessively-- through education.

He's now known as St Ignatius of Loyola, patron saint of education. The prototypical Catholic educator. And although in his lifetime he did seek to convert the Protestants and the Jews and the Pagans, it was the schools founded in his name, mine in particular, that led the way in dismantling the notion that Catholic schools were for Catholics alone.

Which can only be seen as the logical extension of Ignatius' belief in the supreme importance of education. If the mission of the Church is to make the world a better place, and the way to make the world a better place is to educate the people and instill in them the desire to improve the lives of others, then it would be a sin to deny schooling to anyone for such petty reasons.

And yet here we are.

Archbishop Charles J Chaput wrote a rather pathetic and predictable defense of the policy. which as someone who is proud to have left the Church--but also to have learned quite a bit from it-- I feel obliged to refute.

The main purpose of Catholic schools is religious; in other words, to form students in Catholic faith, Catholic morality and Catholic social values.

See, and here I thought that the main purpose of any school was to educate. But no, he goes on to say that academic excellence is a matter of pride "as well." Good to know. I wonder if Catholic hospitals have the same kind of attitude.

Many of our schools also accept students of other faiths and no faith, and from single parent and divorced parent families. These students are always welcome so long as their parents support the Catholic mission of the school and do not offer a serious counter-witness to that mission in their actions.

In the Archbishop's world, it's apparently perfectly reasonable that non-Catholics would send their kids to a school whose primary purpose is to teach their kids how to be good Catholics. And you have to love the weasel words, which present no enlightenment whatsoever into what makes gay parenthood more of a breach of Catholic values than divorce.

We need to remember that Catholic families pay twice for a Catholic education: through their taxes, they fund public education; then they pay again to send their children to a Catholic school. The idea that Catholic schools should require support for Catholic teaching for admission, and a serious effort from school families to live their Catholic identity faithfully, is reasonable and just.

He'd just said that a Catholic identity wasn't necessary for attendance. He said it exactly one paragraph ago. It's becoming clear that while my Catholic educators taught me the virtues of critical thinking, Archbishop Chaput wasn't so lucky. I was taught that the formation of conscience is something we must do individually. Chaput says "If Catholics take their faith seriously, they naturally follow the teachings of the Church in matters of faith and morals; otherwise they take themselves outside the believing community. "

You heard him, divorced folks. You heard him, birth control users. You've removed yourselves from the believing community because you disagree with the Church on one or two of its teachings. And the Church never changes those, ever.

At the end, he puts on his "reasonable" face, and claims that ultimately, the children couldn't attend the school because teachers have a duty to teach the "authentic faith of the Church" without wounding the children's feelings. Apparently that duty curiously doesn't extend to calling divorced parents sinners.

I don't pretend that everyone else's experience with Catholic Schools are the same as mine. Or that the Jesuit model is universally emulated (even though it should be). But one thing is clear here. The Catholic Church has lost sight of its mission. I know. I've been there. I've studied the mission. In my own way, I've been a part of it, even though I'm now no longer with the Church, or indeed any religious organization.

I still believe in the mission of Ignatius. It helped form my political identity. My support for gay rights, and my self-identification as a Progressive do not come in spite of my Catholic background. They come because of it.