Little Cayman - July 21 - 28, 2012: Yeah, Another Goddamn Scuba Diving Trip

This year, the destination for our group's annual summer scuba diving trip was the Little Cayman Beach Resort on the island of, well, you probably guessed it, Little Cayman.

Unlike the previous two diving trips I went on, which were on liveaboard boats, this time we would be staying at a resort on the land, except of course when we went diving.  Also, this time I took the entire family with me.  I told my wife they had a spa and a hot tub, which was all she needed to hear.

One improvement over last year's trip was that our flight was out of JFK airport instead of Newark.  Since my wife and I both had monthly LIRR passes, we decided to use public transportation to get to JFK while the rest of the group either drove or paid to ride in a van.  Most of the gang from last year's trip was in attendance, Larry, Sue, Tara, Nina, Jeff, Ira, and Bruce.  Also joining us was Jeff's son David, George, who the rest of the group knew from the Honduras trip that I didn't go on in 2010, Dick, who I remembered from the Belize trip in 2009, and a newcomer named Chris, who was one of Larry's recent students.

The flight down to Grand Cayman went rather quick and smooth, about three hours.  We then had to wait the better part of the afternoon for our connecting flight to Little Cayman.  If I recall correctly, it was originally scheduled to depart around 2:30, but didn't end up leaving until 3:45.  The flight to Little Cayman was very short though, about 45 minuters, and we got to the resort around 5 p.m.

In the lobby, we each took turns getting our room keys and filling out the necessary paper work.  After the wife, kids and I got settled into our room, I went down to the resort's resident dive shop, Reef Divers, to complete their required forms.  When I returned to my room, as instructed, I left my dive gear in a gear bag outside by the front door.  We were in one of the Oceanfront rooms on the second floor, with a balcony facing towards the beach to the south.

Our first evening was rather uneventful.  We ate dinner and my two kids made the most of the resort's small pool.  The next morning, after breakfast was served, would be diving time.

A Couple of Random Observations

Some of my fellow atheists like to point out that if God is punishing America with tornadoes and hurricanes and so forth because he is angry with us for things like gay marriage, abortion and secularism, then why do these natural disasters frequently afflict parts of the country where so many Gawd fearin' types live.

After all, if God hates homosexuals, then why not cause gay men to spontaneously combust whenever they engage in acts of sodomy?  Why not strike down abortion providers with bolts of lightning whenever they are about to perform an abortion? 

Then I had that "Eureka!" moment.  There's a reason why God afflicts the good Christians of America with natural disasters.  And that is because he is just like the drill sergeant in the movie Full Metal Jacket.   When Private "Pyle" continues to mess up in spite of the drill sergeants constant badgering and cajoling, the drill sergeant tries a new tack, as shown in the scene in the Youtube clip above.  He announces to the platoon that he will no longer punish Pyle for his mistakes.  Instead he will punish the rest of the platoon, which causes them to beat poor Private Pyle with bars of soap wrapped in towels.  Consequently, Pyle becomes a better Marine, well, at least until he ends up shooting the drill sergeant and then himself.

So maybe that is why God punishes the Bible Belt states of America with wild fires, droughts and other natural disasters.  They are not doing their job to get the rest of us sinners right with Jesus.  He is just trying to motivate them to try harder to ban abortion, roll back same sex marriage and eliminate access to contraception.  If that is the case, I think God needs to give them some more motivation.

On a different note, I recently received the 25th anniversary edition of Condé Nast Traveller magazine.  The magazine has a fold out page with some travel related facts, including comparison of some statistics from 1987 and 2012.  For example, in 1987, there were 701 million rolls of camera film sold in the United States, whereas just 15 million rolls were sold in 2012.  While the number of rolls of film sold has obviously plummeted, the year 2012 still had 5 months left to it as the magazine went to press, so the total for the year could go up to maybe 25 million.

The foldout section also lists the five highest and lowest states by percentage of population with passports. 

The five highest states by percentage are:

New Jersey: 50%
Massachusetts: 46%
New York: 45.2%
Connecticut: 43.5%
New Hampshire: 43%

And the five lowest states by percentage of the population are:

Mississippi: 13.1%
West Virginia: 13.9%
Arkansas: 16.6%
Alabama: 17%
Kentucky: 17.2%

The top five states are all located in the northeast of the United States.  I was surprised that California didn't make the the top five, as I would imagine that states with a high percentage of foreign born U.S. citizens would be more likely to have a greater percentage of passport holders, as foreign born Americans and their families would travel frequently to their countries of origin. 

The bottom five states are mostly rural with less ethnic and religious diversity in their populations. Citizens of these states also travel abroad less, which also minimizes their exposure to peoples of other cultures.    Maybe that is what Sarah Palin meant when she spoke of those little pockets of what she called the "real America."

The Platform Preacher

When you walk the streets of Manhattan, it's not uncommon to see some street corner preacher type bellowing out Bible verses and exhorting people to accept Jesus.  While I find it slightly annoying, it's tolerable when you are just walking by and will soon be out of ear shot of windbag for Jesus.

This morning at the Hicksville train station was a different situation.  I had ascended the platform and made my way towards the middle to catch the 7:57 AM.  The 7:57 is a double decker train that is much shorter than the rest of the train, so you have to walk all the way to the middle of the platform just to be able to be in position to enter the rear car.

Anyway, seconds after finding a spot to stand and await the train, I hear not to far from me a man talking in a loud voice.  I looked to my left and saw a young Asian man holding a Bible in one hand and reading out loud to no one in particular.

I sighed and walked over to him.  I don't recall my exact words, but in general I tried to tell him that he was making a nuisance of himself because he wasn't taking into consideration whether or not the other people on the platform wanted to hear what he had to say and that most of the people within the range of the voice already knew what the Bible was anyway.  He stopped to listen to me and for a brief moment, I thought my entreaty had gotten through to him.  However, no sooner had I walked back to where I had previously been standing before he resumes his Bible bloviating.

I let out an even louder sigh, more of a groan actually, and after about a minute I walked back to him again.

I tried a different tack this time.  I explained to him that some of the people on the platform were Jews, Muslims and Hindus and that it was insensitive to their feelings that they should have to hear him when they were basically a captive audience.  Because they were waiting for their train, they had no escape until the train pulled in. Asian Preacher Man replied what he was doing was motivated by love.

"Maybe to you it might be," I replied, "but that is not how they perceive it."

I asked him how he would feel if a Muslim started preaching from the Koran outside of his church, though in retrospect, a better example would be if the Muslim bellowed his Koran verses at Asian Preacher Man and his friends at their church picnic at a public park.  He didn't really respond to that and I don't remember what else he said.

I continued by acknowledging that I understood how he felt, that he believed he was in possession of some wonderful truth that he felt he had to share with the rest of the world.  I pointed out to him that reading from the Bible in public didn't accomplish anything useful and that his time would be better put to helping to feed homeless people or picking up litter.  Unfortunately, at that moment, the train was pulling in to the station and the sound of it would have drowned out any further conversation.  I shook his hand and told him that I wasn't trying to put him down but just to try and make him understand that he should take other peoples feelings into consideration.

I stepped into the train car without looking to see if he was getting on too or if he was going to remain behind to continue with his Bible reading.

While I doubt I swayed him from conducting any repeat performances in the future, I can still hope that I had an impact.

Though it isn't exclusive to religious people, it can't be denied that quite a few individuals, pumped up by their zealous faith, seem to feel it gives them a license to make a public spectacle of themselves.  The atheist equivalent would be to stand outside of a church and accosting people on their way to and from mass, telling them that they're wasting their time and that the god they pray to does not exist.  That would be an incredibly dickheaded thing to do.

The vast majority of us just want to go about our daily business without being disturbed by others.  I don't think it is too much to ask for.

I Guess They Didn't Pray Hard Enough

From Bangladesh, more evidence that being a devoutly religious person doesn't result in your God enveloping you in some kind of magic shield to protect you from harm.

"At least 13 devotees have been killed by lightning outside a mosque in northeastern Bangladesh.

Local police chief Bayes Ahmed says 20 other people were injured by the lightning late Friday in Sylhet district. The victims were struck by the lightning as they were exiting the mosque following special prayers tied to the holy month of Ramadan."

How To Tell Your Religion Was Created By A Man

Here is Augustine on the creation of the human race:

"Therefore, God created one sole individual, not that he was meant to remain alone deprived of human companionship, but in order that the unity of society and the bond of harmony might mean more to man, since men were to be united not only by the likeness of nature but also by the affection of kinship.  God did not even wish to create the woman who was to be mated with man in the same way that He created man, but, rather, out of him, in order that the whole human race might be derived entirely from a single individual."*

* City of God, Book XII, Chapter 22.

Augustine and the Limits of Knowledge

About two and a half years ago, I wrote this post about Augustine and his famous work City Of God.  Unfortunately, at the time, I was reading a copy I had borrowed from the library and I never really got more than halfway through it before I had to return it.

Several months ago I purchased my own abridged version of City Of God and finished it.  To my annoyance, some of the parts that were cut out, based on the brief descriptions of their content, looked like they would be of interest to me and I shall have to see if I can find the full version online so I can read them.

At any rate, one of the things that provided me some amusement was reading what Augustine got so horribly wrong, particularly when he spoke with such authority and assurance about the Earth. 

Thus, in Book XVI, Chapter 17, Augustine declares that "Europe and Africa together take up one half of the world and Asia the other."

Augustine evidently did not know how vast Asia was, as he writes of an Assyrian ruler who "subdued the whole of Asia except India."  Evidently, the ancient Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and Indonesians erased their conquest by the Assyrians from their historical records!

Our learned Christian scholar, in Chapter 9, also dismissed "the nonsense about their being antipodae, that is to say, men living on the far side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets for us...that is utterly incredible."

He goes on to add "it does not follow that the other hemisphere of the earth must appear above the surface of the ocean; or if it does, there is no immediate necessity why it should be inhabited by men.  First of all, our Scriptures never deceive us, since we can test the truth of what they have told us by the fulfillment of predictions; second, it is utterly absurd to say that any men from this side of the world could sail across the immense tract of the ocean, reach the far side, and then people it with men sprung from the single father of all mankind."

So, by adhering to closely to his holy book, Augustine effectively rules out the existence of Australia and the Americas and the people who inhabited them, sprung from common human ancestors, though of course not a Biblical Adam.

I'll have more on Augustine's City Of God to add in the coming days.

Well, Isn't That Special?

One of my Facebook friends, presumably Catholic, posted this picture today.

From a Catholic point of view, this photo of a very young child kneeling in devotion likely elicits geysers of warmth and fuzziness.  Isn't it so inspirational!

I, on the other hand, being an atheist, have a totally different perspective.  Was she told to kneel like that solely for the purpose of taking the picture?  Was she just imitating what she saw other people in the church doing without knowing the reason for it?  Even if it was spontaneous, she is way too young to have developed an intellect capable of determining for herself whether what she has been taught to do in a church really causes some deity in the heavens to smile down upon her.

There Can Be Only One?

When my wife and I met with Nino and his wife Lily, one topic I raised was Taiwanese independence. 

I have long been of the opinion that the people of Taiwan should have the right to determine their own destiny, and if that means being a de jure rather than a de facto independent country, then so be it.

If only it were so simple.

The problem lies with the government of the Peoples Republic of China on the mainland across the Taiwan Strait.

From the website of the PRC's embassy:

"There is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is part of China."

Well, that doesn't leave much room for ambiguity!

"The lingering civil war which was imposed on the Chinese people in late 1940s and more importantly the intervention by foreign forces against the reunification of China led to a temporary state of separation between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits after the People's Republic of China was founded. But the status of Taiwan as part of China's territory has never changed, nor has the Government of the People's Republic China ever given up its jurisdiction over Taiwan."

While I don't claim to be an authority on Chinese history, I do know quite a bit.  When you look at maps of the territories controlled by the major Chinese dynasties for nearly two millennia, starting with the Han and up to the Ming, no Chinese ruling dynasty exercised any control over Taiwan.  The island would not factor at all in Chinese history until the Manchu invasion in the mid-17th century, when Ming loyalists expelled would be Dutch colonizers and established a government in exile that lasted roughly two decades.  The Manchu Qing invaded the island in 1683 to quash the Ming loyalists but did not take serious steps to integrate Taiwan into its empire until the latter part of the 19th century.  Alas, by that time, Japan had modernized and adopted an expansionist foreign policy.  After crushing China in the Sino-Japanese War, Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895.  The Qing dynasty that had ruled Taiwan largely as an absentee landlord for little more than two centuries would itself be toppled in 1911.  Taiwan would remain a Japanese colony until the end of World War Two in 1945, when it was taken over by the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-Shek.  After losing to the Communists, Chiang and the remnants of his government fled to Taiwan in 1949.

Therefore, it has been about sixty three years since a mainland based Chinese government exercised any authority over the island of Taiwan.

While the PRC government is adamant that the island should be reunified with the mainland, with every year that passes by, the number of people in both real and relative terms in Taiwan who never lived under a mainland based government grows ever larger.  During that time, martial law and one party rule in Taiwan has given way to democracy.  Why should the people of Taiwan want or be expected to reunify with an authoritarian one party dictatorship?   It's like telling an orphaned child that there is no choice except to go live with a drunken, belligerent uncle he or she has never met but who has a reputation for abusive behavior.

In a perfect world, the PRC government would announce that if the people of Taiwan voted in favor of being their own independent country, the PRC would respect their wishes.

Unfortunately, the mainland is a prisoner of its "one China" policy.  Even if some enlightened leaders of the Communist Party privately were willing to recognize an independent Taiwan, they could never advocate such a position publicly.  For six decades, the Communists have indoctrinated the people of mainland China in the unwavering position that Taiwan is an integral part of China.  Just about every major nation has what I call "the bullshit story it tells itself."  It's a national mythos that a government and its people tell themselves to make them feel special. For the PRC, a good deal of the Communist Party's legitimacy derives from its position on Taiwan and it has to make a constant show of actions and announcements to show that it is working towards the goal of reunification.

The other part of the problem was that for decades after fleeing the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek maintained that his was the sole legitimate government of China.  Chiang even harbored ambitions of retaking the mainland by force.   Perhaps, had Chiang offered to recognize the Communist government on the mainland in return for recognition of Taiwan independence, history might have turned out differently, though I recognize this is purely conjecture.  Then again, Chiang based his legitimacy on being the sole legal ruler of China, and just like the PRC, the Nationalists on Taiwan were a prisoner of their own "bullshit story."  In his pro-American independence tract, Common Sense, Thomas Paine rhetorically asked with regard to British rule of the American colonies, shall an island rule a continent?  By the early 1970's, Chiang's government faced this same dilemma as the United Nations gave the China seat to the Communist mainland.  Despite having all of the trappings of a state, Taiwan was no longer recognized as one except by a couple of dozen poor countries in the developing world whose recognition was purchased with large dollops of foreign aid.

The current position of Taiwan on its political position is best summed up as follows:

"The Republic of China was founded in 1912 on the Chinese mainland. At that time, Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule as a result of the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, by which the Qing court ceded Taiwan to Japan. The Nanjing-based ROC government began exercising jurisdiction over Taiwan in 1945 after Japan surrendered at the end of World War II.

The authorities in Beijing have never exercised sovereignty over Taiwan or other islands administered by the ROC government in Taipei. There are differences of opinion among ROC citizens over whether it is best to maintain this status quo indefinitely or work out a different relationship with the Chinese mainland. Regardless, they share the conviction that their future must be based on freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and that only they have the right to decide their own future."

It is, in my opinion, a reasonable position that ideally would be accepted if Taiwan were negotiating with a reasonable party.

Instead, the status quo resembles the Joker's line from The Dark Knight, with an unstoppable force, being mainland China, butting heads with an immovable object, which is the desire of the overwhelming majority of the people of Taiwan not to submit to mainland rule.

I don't claim to know what the future holds for Taiwan.  I suppose the independence minded people of Taiwan hope that the longer they avoid coming under mainland rule, the greater the chance that changes in the mainland will one day result in the mainland willing to recognize the island's independence.  On the other hand, the mainland likely anticipates that with each passing year, it's military and economic power compared to Taiwan grows larger and larger, until finally the people of Taiwan will have to bow to the inevitability of reunification with the mainland and accept a status along the lines of Hong Kong's One Country Two System's model.

My question would be "Why must there be only one China?" After all, there is no such thing as one German nation. For nearly half a century, there were two Germanies. While East and West Germany reunified in 1989, Austria is also a German country. No one today seriously maintains that Austria should become part of Germany. Prior to the German unification in the 1870's under the kaiser, the Germans were used to living under a multitude of separate dominions.  The idea of a single German reich did not even become a realizable goal until Adolf Hitler annexed the Sudetenland from Czechoslavakia and incorporated Austria into Germany in 1938.  As even the most casual student of history knows, this One Germany did not outlast the Second World War and the idea itself has been consigned to the ash heap of history. 

Only time will tell with Taiwan, though my gut tells me that the island will eventually move towards some kind of unification with the mainland, though it will likely take the form of some kind of economic integration, with political integration being contingent on the mainland adopting democratic reforms such as allowing multiple political parties and popular elections.  The mainland could also attempt to take the island by military force, though hopefully cooler heads will prevail on both sides.

The Philippines/Taiwan Trip - September 3-5, 2011 - There And Back Again

Saturday, September 3rd, was our last full day in Taipei.  The day's itinerary would take us to the northern party of the city. 

First stop, the Miramar Entertainment Park, which boasts the largest movie screen in Asia.  We rode the MRT line from the Technology Building station a couple of blocks west of our hotel north to the Jiannan Road station, which is just a short walk away from  the Miramar Entertainment Park  Its other main attraction is an insanely large ferris wheel, and below is a picture of the view you get from the Jiannan Road MRT station.   Unfortunately, the wife and kids are just silhouettes, but you get an idea of the size of the ferris wheel. 

And naturally, we rode the ferris wheel.

As you can see in the background, there's quite a view from the top of the ferris wheel.

After the ferris wheel was finished, the dilemma we faced was what to do next.  For a building called the Miramar Entertainment Park, there really wasn't much there that was particularly entertaining.  Turns out the movie theater there was showing Harry Potter The Deathly Hollows Part 2 in 3-D, so the kids said they wanted to see it, even though they had already seen it back home in the US in 2-D.  I relented, since there really wasn't anything else to do.  But first, we had to attend to our stomachs so we walked across the street to another building that had lots of restaurants in it.  We ate in an Italian restaurant, the name of which escapes me, though the food was satisfying.  Then we walked back to Miramar to see the Harry Potter movie.

For the evening, the next item on the agenda was to take the bus to the National Palace Museum, which houses a large collection of Chinese art and artifacts that the Guomingdang brought over with them to Taiwan when they fled the mainland.  On Saturday evenings, the museum is open free to the public after 6:30 p.m.

I had planned for us to take the bus there from the bus stop on Beian Road across from the Jiannan Road MRT station.  Based on my reading, it looked like the number of the bus that takes you to the museum was supposed to stop there.  So we waited, and we waited, and we waited, as bus after bus passed by or stopped that had a different number.  Finally, after about a half hour had passed, a small bus with the number stopped and we got on.  I told the driver we wanted to go to the National Palace Museum and away we went.

The route took us through the Ziqiang Tunnel and the ride lasted about 10 or 15 minutes.  By the time we got there, it was already dark and it was about 7:30 p.m.  I asked the bus driver what the fare was and for some reason he seemed confused and told us not to worry about, so the ride didn't cost us anything.

So in we went.  There were lots of intricate lacquer curio boxes on display.  Another exhibit that I remember was a recreation of what would have been a study room in a Qing official's home.  I also recall a series of paintings or drawings that told a story.  To my annoyance, my daughter kept complaining that she was bored.  I understood that the museum wasn't exactly her kind of place, but that since we had done things that she wanted earlier in the day, it was her turn to let her mom and I have some time to do things that we wanted to do. 

Before we knew it though, it was already approaching 8:30, and the museum was getting ready to close.  In our brief time there, we only managed to view the exhibits on the first floor.

I managed to get this shot of the outside of the museum at night before we made our way to board our bus.

When we got back to the stop near the Miramar Entertainment Park, we decided to have dinner before heading back to our hotel.  The Italian restaurant we ate at earlier for lunch was closing when we got back, so we ended up dining in a different restaurant in the same building called the Royal Host (amazingly, my daughter remembered the name!).  Both my wife and my son were quite tired and nodded off before our food was brought to our table.

We also took a couple of shots with the ferris wheel in the background at night.

And with that we took the MRT back to Xinyi and trudged back to our hotel.

The next morning we checked out and were driven back to Taoyuan Airport.  I snapped a photo of this building we passed that looked interesting, though I don't know what it was.

UPDATE: As Nino helpfully informed me in the comments section, this interesting building in neoclassical Chinese is the Grand Hotel.

Finally, back at the airport, I watched as our EVA Air plane was being made ready for the flight back to Hong Kong.

By the time we got back to Hong Kong and checked into our room at the Regal Airport Hotel, it was around 4 p.m.  I was hoping we could do something, like maybe do a dinner cruise while watching the Symphony of Lights presentation in the harbor.  I even called and made reservations for us.  But the wife and kids fell asleep.  I figured it was best to let them get their rest and by the time they woke up, it was already too late to ride the Air Train into Central to pick up our tickets and board the boat (luckily, I didn't have to give my credit card info when making the reservations!).  So we ended up walking over to the airport and eating dinner in an Italian restaurant that served pretty good food, though again I can't remember the name of it.

After that, we called it a night.  Before we checked out of our hotel the next morning, September 5, the kids were able to get some swimming time in the hotel's pool.  With that, we checked in for our flight back to New York.   We had a moment of brief aggravation when we were told that we could not bring in our carry on a snow globe with our picture in it from the Ngong Ping 360 cable car ride from two weeks earlier for security reasons.  The helpful staff of Cathay Pacific were able to box it for me and check it in as additional, albeit very small, luggage that we would need to pick up at the baggage claim back at JFK Airport in New York.

When we arrived back home in New York, it was still September 5.  While you lose a day when you fly from New York to Hong Kong, the benefit of flying back to New York is that it is still the same calendar day thanks to the time zone differences.  Having made the trip two times previously, I wisely had scheduled a day off from work for September 6 so that I would be able to get some extra sleep and readjust to the local time.  And thus ended our third Asian vacation.

The Philippines/Taiwan Trip - September 2, 2011 - Back To The Far Eastern Plaza Hotel

After we had our lunch at Modern Toilet, I was hoping we could visit the 2-28 Peace Park, which is located a few blocks east of the Ximen MRT station.  If memory serves though, the wife and kids were a bit tired and I think that was when one of my son's sneakers started to come apart.  So, we rode the MRT back to the Xinyi district and walked back to our hotel.

It was a hot afternoon, and it seemed the right time for the wife and kids to try out the Far Eastern Plaza's rooftop pool.

"We're swimmin' on top of the world, mama!"

For reasons I don't recall, I didn't end up swimming in the pool and wasn't there for most of the time.  I might have been checking my e-mails on one of the computers that were made available to hotel guests.  Actually, now that I think about it, I did check my e-mail to make sure that our plans were on for later in the evening with two very special guests (see below).

Of course, our trip wouldn't be complete without a picture of my wife in a swim suit with Taipei 101 in the background.

After the pool, we walked back to the Linjiang Night Market that we had visited the night before to buy new sneakers for my son to replace the ones he had worn out.  We also ate noodles from the same noodle stand and then headed back to our hotel so that the wife and I would have time to shower and get ready for a special meeting.

For those of you who have read through all of my posts on Taipei so far, you'll know that I often referenced Nino's blog My Kafkaesque Life for ideas on where to go in Taipei as well as other helpful information about the city.  I thought it would be a nice idea to invite him and his wife Lily to meet up with us at the Far Eastern Plaza's Marco Polo Lounge.   To my pleasant surprise, he accepted our offer.

While the bulk of my blogging is atheist related, for all the years I have been blogging, the only atheist bloggers I recall meeting in person were Adam Lee of Daylight Atheism and Shalini Sehkar (whatever happened to her anyway?) at a Center for Inquiry event in New York City a few years ago.  So, it was pretty cool to get to meet a blogger in Taipei whose blog was such a valuable resource for me.

My wife and I headed up to the Marco Polo Lounge around 9-ish local time to meet them.  I recall that the door to get into the lounge was a hidden door that the hostess outside pushed open for us, otherwise we might not have noticed it.  It sort of felt like walking into the lair of some James Bond villain.  The lounge was rather crowded and we couldn't get a table by the window for a view of Taipei at night like I had hoped, but you can't get everything you want, right?

A few minutes after my wife and I got settled in, I saw Nino and Lily come in.  I actually recognized her better, because I saw a few pictures of her on Nino's blog, whereas the few pictures of him on his blog generally show him from a distance or at an angle, probably because he is the one who takes most of the pictures. 

We had some rather pleasant conversation for about an hour and half or so.  Since Nino is from Slovenia, I told him about my grandmother who was Slovenian and came from a town on the Austro-Slovenian border and joked that we might be distantly related.  Nino and his wife talked a bit about their life and jobs in Taipei.  They seemed to get a kick out of my caricatures of ignorant American voters who believe that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim Kenyan commie atheist who wants to impose sharia law on the United States.

One of the lounge waiters was kind enough to take a group photo of us to memorialize the occasion.

I was glad they were able to meet up with us.  Besides having the opportunity to meet with a fellow blogger, it was also a nice little break from the kids for the wife and I and to hang out with some grown ups for a change!

And then it was off to bed with one more full day in Taipei ahead of us.  











The Philippines/Taiwan Trip - September 2, 2011 - Lunch In A Toilet Bowl

While going through Nino's blog looking for places to check out during our visit to Taipei, there was one that stood out for me above all the others, a theme restaurant called Modern Toilet.  I showed the pictures to my kids, and they were both excited to go, especially my daughter.  My wife though, wasn't particularly keen on the idea.

After planning our visit to Longshan Temple for that morning, I figured Modern Toilet would be ideal for lunch, as it was only one stop away on the MRT line.  The MRT is a lot like New York City's subway system, with different lines taking you to different parts of the city.  Our trip to Modern Toilet would be our first on Taipei's MRT. 

Nino's post on Modern Toilet contained a helpful map on how to get to the restaurant from the Ximen station.  Unfortunately, I didn't print it to take on the trip with me.  I remembered to go north west for a couple of blocks and then go left to head west at the Starbucks.  So far so good.  I figured that if I kept walking, I would see it eventually.  But I didn't.  So we trekked north a block and then west with no sign of Modern Toilet.

At a street corner, I spotted a group of four young Taipei guys sitting on their scooters chatting with one another.  I figured maybe they could tell me how to get to Modern Toilet.  I approached them and they could see that it was obvious I was a tourist.  I asked the one closest to me if he knew where Modern Toilet was.  He said he didn't know, so I thanked him and walked back over to my wife and kids to try and figure out what to do next.  While we were talking amongst ourselves, another one of the scooter guys walked over to us and told us to follow him.  He led us one block south and then we turned right to head west.  And then, there we were, in front of Modern Toilet.  For all I knew, we could have walked past it earlier, as it was not particularly conspicuous.  The restaurant is not actually at street level.  There's really just a door that leads you into a small room.  Inside is a stair that leads you up to the next level which is the first of several floors occupied by the restaurant.  We thanked the scooter guy profusely and headed in.

As you can see, it was already a big hit with the kids before we had even made it up the stairs.

Because of the passage of time, I don't remember what my wife and I ate.  We both had one of the hot pots.  Mine had seafood in it.  I don't remember what she had.  I believe the kids had the spaghetti.

As you can see, the novelty of Modern Toilet is that you sit on toilets instead of chairs, you eat your food out of miniature toilet bowls, and you sip your drinks out of plastic urinal cups.

Much to my delight, my wife really got into the spirit of things.

And then for some dessert!

The biggest surprise for me though turned out to be Modern Toilet's bathroom.

Yeah, sure, it wasn't a shock to me that the sink outside of the bathroom was a toilet bowl.

But then my daughter had to use the bathroom.  Shortly after going in, she came out to tell me that there was no toilet bowl.  I was like, "What do you mean there's no toilet?"  So I took a peak inside and this was what I saw.

Yep, that's right.  A toilet themed restaurant didn't even have a toilet bowl in its bathroom!  So, all I could do was tell my daughter that if she had to pee, then she was going to have to squat over the urinal thingy in the floor that you see in the picture above.

In conclusion, Modern Toilet was a fun restaurant to eat at and the food was good enough to make it worth the trip there, though I did have some difficulty communicating with the waitress whose English was little better than my Chinese.

If you are planning to visit Taipei and want to put some interesting pictures up on your Facebook page, then definitely have a lunch or dinner at Modern Toilet.  For all you ladies though, just remember, if you need to use the bathroom, you now know what is in store for you.

You Can Believe In Magic, Only So Long As It's Our Magic

Being a Long Islander, I suppose it is inevitable that some of my friends from high school on Facebook are big fans of the so-called Long Island Medium.  These Facebook friends also identify themselves as being Roman Catholic.

So it was with interest that this afternoon on my lunch break while looking for any articles on the Internet about attempts to debunk her that I came across this little gem from the Long Island Catholic.

The author of the column, whose name is unknown to me, laments the "the popularity of a new TV show called “Long Island Medium” that has been airing for a few weeks on TLC."

So, what's the problem, according to the nameless Catholic columnist?

"The woman purports to be able to speak to the dead. This is problematic on a few levels, the most important being that it is a mortal sin to try to contact the dead."

Oh, and "The other problem is that she is not really believable as a medium."

Seriously?  That's like telling someone at a restaurant, "The organic cheeseburger you've just been served contains enough e. coli bacteria to kill you in less than 24 hours.  And by the way, the cheese they used isn't really organic."

But our intrepid Catholic columnist doesn't want to stray too far off topic.

"My intention... is to try to alert some of the people who consider themselves practicing Catholics and let them know that to use the services of a psychic, an empath, Reiki master, medium, psychic healer, or any occultist is to put your soul in danger. It amazes me to see how popular it is now to have a “reading” with these people who are at best stealing your money and at worst communing with demons."

Yep, it's bad enough all you suckers who go to fortune tellers that you're getting ripped off.  Your tarot card reader might also be consorting with malevolent spirits!

In case you might not be giving this the consideration it's due:

"You might think that that is a serious exaggeration on my part but nothing could be further from the truth."

I suddenly thought of that scene from National Lampoon's Animal House where Donald Sutherland as the literature professor is telling his students that some of them still owe him a term paper as they bolt out of the class at the ring of the bell, causing him to blurt out "I'm serious!  This is my job, you know!"

Lest you think the Catholic columnist does not have the requisite authority for his or her position, he/she adds this Bible verse:

“Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord” (Deut. 18:10–12, NIV)

That's right.  Having a reading with the Long Island Medium is just as awful as burning one of your kids to death!  It says so right there in the Bible!  What more proof do you need?

So what's a Catholic who is feeling down in the dumps about the loss of a loved one supposed to do?  Oh, that's easy!  The Our Domestic Church columnist makes it plain and simple.

"If you are Catholic and need comfort and guidance your first stop should not be a TV medium or storefront psychic, it should be the Church."

I wonder how my Catholic Facebook fans of the Long Island Medium would react to this column.  I strongly suspect they would ignore the columnist's exhortations and continue as they have before with their cafeteria Catholicism.

The Philippines/Taiwan Trip - September 2, 2011 - A Hotbed of Pagan Idolatry

The second day of our stay in Taipei was going to take us to the southwest section of the city.

Our first stop, the famous Longshan Temple.  Given how far it was from our hotel, I decided to play it conservative and take a taxi.

While the Longshan Temple is one of the more well known tourist destinations in Taipei, the first thing one must be mindful of is that it is an actual functioning temple where people go to pray. 

According to my Rough Guide to Taiwan, the Longshan Temple is "principally a Buddhist temple dedicated to the boddhisatva Guanyin, but there are more than a hundred deities worshipped here, mostly from the Taoist pantheon."

That probably explains why there were clusters of people praying in different sections of the temple.

I neglected to take a picture of the outside entrance of the temple. 

After you go through the front entrance, you find yourself in an outer courtyard that separates you from the main action (if you can call prayer action) inside the temple.

The outer courtyard was a pretty, peaceful place itself.  In one end of the courtyard there was this small waterfall.

At the opposite end, behind us, was a fish pond.

One thing that one cannot help but notice about the architecture of the temple was that it contained lots of dragon motifs.

The temple was also filled with lots of local heathens who are surely destined to burn in hell in the afterlife because they don't worship the Baby Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

Inhale that incense, lady!

This last photo above is interesting, because it appears to be a convenient way of economizing on the placing of the various deities.  There's the big one in the backgroumd, and the three smaller ones encased in glass in the foreground.

In all seriousness though, the Longshan Temple was a nice, tranquil place to visit where for a little while you can almost forget you are in the heart of a bustling city filled with millions of people.

The Transit of Venus

Well, not here on Long Island.  It's cloudy and periodically raining, so I wasn't able to observe it.  I guess I will have to try and live another 115 years to see the next one.

Alternatively, you can watch it live on NASA TV here.

The Philippines/Taiwan Trip - September 1, 2011 - The Lin Jiang Night Market

Yes, I'm still on our first day in Taipei!  I promise I'm almost finished!

Anyway, the last destination for the day was to hit the Lin Jiang Tourist Night Market on the walk back to our hotel.

For my fellow American readers, a night market in Taiwan is a lot like what we know here in the USA as an outdoor "flea market."  The Lin Jiang night market consists of a stretch of stalls and stands hawking mostly food and clothing items along about two side streets that are closed to vehicular traffic, with the apparent exception of scooters.

While the Lin Jiang night market is not as large or famous as some of Taipei's other night markets, such as the Shilin and Huaxi markets, I picked it because it was conveniently located on the way back to our hotel, and its rather small size made it easy to see it all in a short period of time.  Since it was a Thursday night and it had only stopped raining a short while earlier, the market wasn't crowded either.

My wife used the occasion to indulge her inner Imelda Marcos to visit the clothing and shoe booths.  I looked forward to trying some fried stinky tofu and bought some from the same vendor pictured in Nino's post on the Lin Jiang market.  It was a bit spicy, but I liked it well enough that I would try it again.

While the Lin Jiang market is billed as a tourist market, nearly everyone there appeared to be locals.  There were a few interesting characters, such as the man in the picture below who attracted some onlookers by walking around with his small dog on his shoulder.

We also found a noodle stand that we would visit again the next night.

In the background, you can see one of the scooter riders who frequently drove through the market.  I wasn't too happy about this, particularly since I had my two kids with me, as it seemed potentially dangerous to me.  I also can't tell if the man behind my wife is checking out her ass or if something else is drawing his gaze.

The photo above also gives you an idea of what a good stretch of the night market looks like.   All in all, a night market like this is good for killing a couple of hours.  You get to mix a bit with the locals, try some interesting snacks or "little eats" and maybe shop for a few bargains.

We would return to the night market the following evening as one of my son's sneakers conveniently started falling apart late in the day and we had remembered one of the booths that sold sneakers.

But It Was Just A Thought Experiment!

In my last post, I pondered the thought that the Religious Right's answer to the gay question was to make them so miserable that they would commit suicide.

But just a few days later, a Pastor Charles Worley of North Carolina offered his take on how to address the problem.

"I figured a way out — a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers. But I couldn’t get it passed through Congress. Build a great big large fence, 150 or 100 miles long. Put all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. Have that fence electrified so they can’t get out. Feed ‘em, and– And you know what? In a few years they’ll die out. You know why? They can’t reproduce."

Worley's little brain fart conveniently omits a number of important things.

First, an 18 year old homosexual put in an internment camp isn't going to die "in a few years."   Some of the younger ones could live for a half century or more in Worley's prison for "lesbians and queers."

Second, how does Worley propose to handle family members of gays who love them and resist their imprisonment.  Does Worley intend to have SWAT teams raid their homes and forcibly remove gays from their families?

Lastly, why does Worley assume that no more gays will be born after the current crop is walled off from the rest of society?  Will there be tests to identify gay children at a young age so that they can be put into special schools where they will receive reparative therapy to cure them of homosexuality?

While Pastor Worley clearly is a despicable human being and should be roundly condemned for his remarks, he clearly is not in any position to put his ridiculous proposal into action.  I look at Worley in his proper context, as being at the extreme end of a movement in this country to deny gay Americans their humanity and their right to equality under the law by denying them the right to marry, adopt children, serve in the military, or to hold a job without fear of being fired simply because of their orientation.  Gays being rounded up into internment camps is simply a bigoted hayseed Christian's wet dream that will never come true.  A Romney presidency that would reinstate DADT is a potential reality.

Do Right Wing Republicans Expect Gays to Commit Mass Suicide?

On the most recent episode of Bill Maher's Real Time, Maher asked, rhetorically as it turned out, what do Republicans expect gays to do, because they apparently don't want gays to have jobs, serve in the military, get married, or adopt children.

For some reason, it didn't occur to Maher to ask two of the guests on his panel who were conservative activists, Margaret Hoover and Grover Norquist, to answer the question.  Maher mentioned the flap over the hiring and abrupt departure of Mitt Romney's foreign policy adviser and openly gay Richard Grennell after Bible Thumpers like Bryan Fischer made a public stink about it.

And then we have James Lankford, Republican (of course!) representative from Oklahoma, who told ThinkProgress recently that it should be legal for an employer to fire an employee who is gay.  The irony in this is that if you look at Lankford's picture in the linked article, it looks like what you would expect to see in a phrase book dictionary next to the phrase "Queer as a three dollar bill."

I have an idea what Right Wing Christians would say to all this.   In short, the same thing that Stan in South Park told his gay dog Sparky, "Don't be gay!"

The thing is though, if you believe that being gay is a choice rather than an orientation that you are born with, then by the same token it should be okay to fire people based on their religious or political beliefs.  After all, those are choices too.

If gays are going to continue to insist on being, well, gay, then I guess the Right Wing strategy for dealing with them is to try to make their lives so miserable that they will just commit suicide, or, to paraphrase a phrase from Mitt Romney, they'll self-abort.

That Other Christian America

Ed Brayton at Dispatches From The Culture Wars had a post the other day about a debate between Dinesh D'Souza (or as I like to call him, Dinesh D'Douchebag) and Susan Jacoby.  Brayton highlighted this excerpt from D'Souza's remarks:

If you look at the great social movements of American politics, not only the movement that led to the founding, which was driven in part by the First Great Awakening, but the movements that led to the temperance movement, the suffragette movement, the civil rights movement, the anti-slavery movement, there were not only waves of religious revival that often preceded and sometimes accompanied these movements, but the arguments in favor of these causes were made in explicitly religious terms.

But this cuts both ways, because the arguments for slavery were also made in explicitly religious terms.  

While figures on the Religious Right, like David Barton, like to claim that the United States was explicitly founded as a Christian nation, the Constitution of the United States is a secular document.  However, if the United States was this Christian nation that Barton and his ilk argue, then we have an example of what the Preamble to the Constitution would have looked like.  One need only look at the Preamble to the Constitution of the Confederate States of America:

We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God — do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.

Besides explicitly invoking God, what else did the Confederate Constitution contain that the original Constitution did not?

Well, there's Article 4, Section 2, Paragraph 1:

The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.

Then there's Article 4, Section 2, Paragraph 3:

No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs; or to whom such service or labor may be due.
We can also look at the concluding remarks of Confederate President Jefferson Davis's inaugural address:

...let me reverently invoke the God of our fathers to guide and protect us in our efforts to perpetuate the principles which by HIS blessing they were able to vindicate, establish and transmit to their posterity, and with the continuance of HIS favor, ever to be gratefully acknowledged, let us look hopefully forward to success, to peace, and to prosperity.

Well, we all know how that turned out.

My Proposed Blasphemy Law

In the mid-13th century, the future Byzantine emperor Michael Paleologos was charged with a crime.  The archbishop declared that if Michael were able to carry a red hot iron ball in his hands without burning them, it would prove his innocence.  Burned hands would be a sign of his guilt.  The astute Michael told the archbishop that he would gladly do so if only the archbishop personally handed him the hot iron ball.  After all, being a holy man of God, the archbishop obviously need not worry about his own hands being burned.  Needless to say, the archbishop declared that the charges were dropped.

Now on to the present.

The Kuwaiti parliament recently voted on a proposed law that would apply the death penalty to those found guilty of blasphemy against the Islamic faith.  However, perhaps in response to international pressure, it was softened a bit.

"The draft now includes a new clause which will mean the death penalty will only be applied if the person stands by their actions when questioned by a judge.

This would give defendants the opportunity to repent and face a prison term or a fine instead."

As an atheist, I object to blasphemy laws on two grounds.  The first and obvious reason is that I do not believe in the existence of a deity that can be insulted by humans.  What is going on with laws like these is that certain religious believers want to immunize their religion to public criticism or ridicule.  The second reason is that if such a deity exists that is offended by the mockery and insults of a mere human being, said deity can easily dispatch that person by sending down a fireball from the heavens to consume that person and thereby send a clear message to all other would be blasphemers.

That being said, I am a practical man.  If these primitive people want to have a blasphemy law, let them have one, on one condition.  Any person charged with blasphemy should have the right to request that God be the one to carry out the death sentence by lightning bolt within one hour of the imposition of the sentence.  If the time passes without the alleged blasphemer being struck dead, then all charges are dropped and the person walks free.  Or do these religious believers lack enough faith in their god to do the deed?

Oh Lordy Lord! Think of the Children!

I got really riled the other day when I read this article about a woman named Cathy Samford who was fired from her job as a volleyball coach and science teacher at the Heritage Christian Academy in Texas because she was - gasp! - pregnant out of wedlock.

In defense of the school's decision, the article quoted the academy's headmaster Dr. Ron Taylor, who said, "How's it going to look to a little fourth-grade girl that sees she's pregnant and she's not married?"  

That's the same bullshit line I heard from some politicians who opposed legalizing marijuana for medical purposes.

"What kind of message are we sending to our children?"

You know what?  A lot of kids aren't as ignorant or dumb as the people who purport to shield them from the harsh realities of life must think they are.

Hey Dr. Taylor!  Ask your fourth grade girls this question:

"Girls, do you think a woman who is pregnant without being married should be fired from her job just weeks before she is going to have her baby and lose her health insurance which would cover a lot of her medical bills?"

I bet you the majority of those girls, if asked, would say that Ms. Samford should not be fired.

It just so happens that I conducted a very unscientific poll of a lone third grade girl, my daughter.  I just gave her a quick summary of the situation and asked her if the school was right or wrong to fire her.

Her answer was "It's wrong."

I asked her why it was wrong.  After pausing a few seconds, she said, "Because now she has no money."  There you go Dr. Taylor.  Out of the mouths of babes.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Dr. Taylor was one of those self-styled "pro-life" types who opposes abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or medical reasons.  Funny thing is, if Ms. Samford had gotten an abortion in the early stages of her pregnancy, her school would have been none the wiser and she would have still had her job today.

Then again, "pro-life" just means forced birth.  What happens after the birth is not Dr. Taylor's concern.  Too bad Cathy Samford.  You made your choice and now you have to suffer the consequences, along with that out-of-wedlock child you're going to have.  Take that you slut!

And here's where the misogyny really kicks in.  If Cathy Samford had been Carl Samford and had impregnated a woman to whom he was not married but they were co-habiting, he could have easily kept it hidden from the school and need not have feared losing his job.  It's only the pregnant unmarried women who ever seem to have to worry about getting shafted by these kinds of rules.  And just remember folks, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint is on record as saying that he wants it to be illegal for unmarried pregnant women to be teachers.  That's the American Taliban for you.

I don't know if Cathy Samford has delivered her baby yet, but I hope she has a healthy child.