There are many problems with religion, but I wanted to highlight one based on this article.  It’s regarding some elementary school students in Florida who were sent home for wearing shirts that said

"Islam is of the Devil"

Now, I don’t blame the students, they are clearly too young to understand the ramifications of what they’re doing, but instead I blame their parents and religious leaders.  To begin teaching your child intolerance at this age is appalling.  And to basically use your child to make a statement like this is bordering on abuse.

It also sends the message that they think their religion is superior to any other.  And that’s one of the problems I see with religion.  All religions think they are the "true" way to salvation while every other religion is obviously misguided and in this case considered evil.  This is simply another form of tribalism which I would hope at some point we as a species can outgrow, but obviously not anytime soon.  In fact, it seems to be expanding.

Then within the article was this quote from the Senior Pastor of the church.

"Spreading the church’s message is more important that education."

Really?  I guess this goes with what religion wants.  An uneducated flock so they don’t know how to question their faith or to think rationally.  In this case, they got their wish as the students were sent home for violating the dress code of the school.

The ironic part of this is the church is called the Dove World Outreach Center.  What a great way to reach out to the world.  I’m sure this irony was missed by those in the church.

I don’t watch a lot of TV, and I don’t have Showtime, but I have been watching Dexter through Netflix and frankly, I’m hooked.  The first two seasons are available via their streaming service and the 3^rd season DVD’s just came out last Tuesday.  I’m busily working my way through them and so far I’ll say there’s been a small dip in quality compared to last season, but there’s still plenty of episodes left to hopefully make up the slack.

Yes, my lifestyle has it’s sacrifices, like having to wait nearly a year to see shows that others have already forgotten.  That’s ok, I’m patient.  But now, the 4^th season is getting ready to hit the screen on September 27^th.  Below is a quick trailer for it using the song "Under Pressure" by David Bowie and Queen along with some appropriate humor.  It certainly tells me some spoilers about how the 3^rd season will end, but then again, nothing in there was going to be that big of a surprise.

I’m not sure how much farther they can take the storyline but I guess we’ll get to see…some of us earlier than others.

I traveled to Tyler, TX this weekend for a tennis tournament for my daughter.  Driving along highway 31 back to Austin on Sunday, I couldn’t help but notice a very large billboard with the phrase:

"Where’s the birth certificate?"

Of course, this is in reference to the group known as the "birthers", who seem to think that our president isn’t a naturalized citizen even though the evidence is clearly there that he was born in Hawaii.  But then again, there’s no convincing some people.  What surprises me though, is the tenacity of this "movement".  It won’t go away.  I think the basic issue is, there are just some people who will always ignore the evidence if it contradicts their world view.  In this regard, the birthers are no different than the young earth creationists.  No amount of logic or evidence will assuage them from their opinion.  But the size of this group is surprising, numbering in the tens of thousands, maybe even the hundreds of thousands.  And they are a very vocal group.

In the old days, before the Internet, this would have been a small subculture of people and would have had little chance of growing into the movement it is today.  But in the world of the internet, there is a ready environment for any fringe idea to take root and grow, fed by a media that is in search of ratings over facts.  The internet provides a bully pulpit for any subversive or subcultural view to be seen by millions.  And with all the spectrum of opinions available among the billions of webpages, there is no need for anyone to view an alternative opinion to their own.

In fact, we all have our favorite websites, bookmarked in our browsers for easy access or fed to us in our feed readers.  And more than likely they consist of those sites that agree with our opinions or that feed our political leanings.  There’s no need to look at dissent or alternate opinions.  No need to try to see things from the other side of the fence.  In fact why should we?  Those alternate opinions were written by individuals who have a bias, right?  While the websites we like are written by those who are thoughtful and knowledgeable.  Why would I waste my time on those other silly opinions?  I already know they can’t be right.

And that’s the root of the problem.  There’s no longer any room for rational discussion or talking about the actual merits of any issue.  No concept of respecting the individual who might have a differing opinion.  There’s only room for opinion that is skewed either left or right for consumption by the faithful.  Our surfing habits only foster a reinforcement of our preconceived opinions.  And this leads to a wider polarization of our society.  Those on the left and those on the right, with no need for either side to try to understand the other, only the ability to despise what they stand for as we’re told how silly they must be to think like they do.

This narrowly focused view of the issues also allows for mis-information to be easily disseminated.  If the media outlets have a ready audience that is already agreeable to their philosophy, sowing the seeds of mis-information is easy.  They already know their audience is not very likely to fact check what they say.  So we end up with the idea of "death panels" in the health care reform bill, or calls of "socialism".

In this regard, if we’re not careful to understand where our information is coming from and to not get our information from a variety of sources, we could all become members of the lunatic fringe.

It took nearly 4 months, but finally, last week, my very own Galileoscope arrived in the mail.  Yup, I had placed my order back in March and well, they had a few production problems and delays, but now they’re finally shipping.  What is it you may be asking?  The Galileoscope is a project of the International Year of Astronomy.  The goal of this project was to create an inexpensive telescope that could be easily purchased by schools and individuals to help promote science and the hobby of astronomy.

So, now that I have mine, what do I think about it?  First let me say, you can’t beat the price, it was only $15 plus shipping.  They’ve recently raised the price to $20, but it’s still a bargain.  It does require some assembly and the instructions that come with the telescope leave a little to the imagination.  Luckily, they’ve provided more detailed instructions online that help clear up some of the misunderstandings.  The biggest issue for me was assembling the two eyepieces.  The optics are provided in 6 pieces and the purchaser is required to set them into the eyepieces in the correct order.  They are rather small and it’s somewhat difficult to see which of the optics are concave and which are convex.  The online instructions provide a much better idea of which way they should be placed in the eyepieces. The second issue is it was very difficult to not get fingerprints on the optics during the assembly process.  As small as they were, it was difficult to only touch them on the sides of the lenses.  I would have preferred if the eyepieces were pre-assembled to avoid the issues mentioned, however, I assume that would have raised the cost.

Once assembled, we took it for a spin.  It’s very difficult to hold steady with just your hands, so I would recommend a good tripod mount.  Also, the focusing is done by pushing a plastic tube in or out of one end making fine adjustments difficult, but overall, the telescope does a fine job of basic sky viewing.

In my view, the Galileoscope project met their goal of designing and manufacturing a low cost relatively high quality telescope that can be used to introduce students and adults alike to the wonders of astronomy and the night sky.