Bonnie & Clyde

Also Bonnie as Clyde is around less.

The pair of Downy Woodpeckers that come to the feeder outside the window: Bonnie & Clyde. :)

Never mind the dirty window. :)

Happy Monday!

Gazelling

With gift cards and a little bit of cash I managed to purchase a Gazelle.  No, not the animal, the workout apparatus.  I'd call it a machine, but the only electric part of it is the distance/calorie/time calculator.

I've been trying to get fit, but once the cold weather hit I lost my motivation to work out, aka go for long walks.

I do not look as happy as this lady, but I am at least getting my heart rate up for 15 - 45 minutes a day.

Shortly after I purchased my gazelle NewWife&Mom lent me a book on finances.  Once I started reading it I had to laugh, because throughout the book he talks about working with 'gazelle-like intensity'.  You guessed it, I read "The Total Money Makeover" by Dave Ramsey.

Despite a spattering of Christian scripture I found the advise in the book to be sound.  It is essentially common sense, and he says this, that is difficult to employ because we like to have things.  He leads you through 7 baby steps to help you control your money and eventually build your wealth.

Baby step 1: Build an emergency fund of $1000.  Keep this fund liquid (cash) and ONLY use in case of an emergency.  Wanting a book, dvd, piece of furniture, etc are not emergencies.  He also suggests keeping it on hand, but not easy to access so that you're not tempted to use it for non-emergencies.

Baby step 2: Attack your debt! Have a monthly budget and track every dollar.  Live on the basics (essentials + bills) and use the rest of your money to pay off your debt. Start with the smallest debt and throw money at it until its gone.  When you've finished the first, move on to the next until all of your debts are paid off.  Besides a mortgage, don't borrow, EVER.  He suggests getting rid of all credit cards and using a debit card.

Baby step 3:  Build up a long-term emergency fund.  Save up enough money for 3-6 months living expenses.

Since I don't have a job right now and am not able to work on steps 2 or 3 I'm not going to go over the other steps, but these were the important ideas I took away from this book.  When I manage to get a job again I plan on attacking my student loan debts and budgeting.

Huzzah for free time to read! :-D

Stasis and NCIS

The job search crawls slowly on leaving me feeling like I'm in a perpetual unemployment hell - stasis.  In times of stasis I usually have a couple tv shows that are comforting, shows that keep me from going nutty.  Currently its NCIS.  I admit it - I love NCIS.

A friend once commented derisively on the show, wanting to know why anyone would care about the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.  I like a lot of different crime shows and Netflix recommended this one to me - I watched the pilot and I guess I was a goner after that.  It's less the organization and more the characters that draw me to the show.

I love Mark Harmon's portrayal of NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs.  He is a hard-ass leader who inspires the stedfast loyalty of all his agents and several coworkers.



Essentially he is the upright hero that gets to the truth by whatever means necessary, breaking rules left and right while installing rules of his own on his team.



I also love Pauley Perrette's portrayal of Abby, the big-hearted goth forensic lab analyst.

She is eccentric, fun, and lovable.  She consumes enough Caf-pow to power the department, sleeps in a coffin, and has a farting hippo that keeps her company in the lab.  Her father-daughter relationship with Gibbs is one of my favorite character interactions in the show.

So while I'm waiting I'll consume copious amounts of NCIS and keep applying and applying and applying.

"No-God Books" Part 2

I currently live in the middle of a relatively conservative county.  There are as many churches as bars and there isn't much to do besides going to church and drinking.  While I've been here I've tried to burry myself in books, to read whatever strikes my fancy at any given time.  I have discovered some stumbling blocks.  In my quest for books revolving around atheism I've discovered that some are not available via the cross-county library system -- no library in the area has them.

This book is not available via the local library or it's associates.  I really want to read it because Dale McGowan, an author, blogger, and FBB advocate, wrote a chapter.  I don't know when I stumbled across his blog, but I've been reading it ever since.

I finally got my hands on it through the University of Minnesota online resources.

I've also wanted to read Dale McGowan's 'Calling Bernadette's Bluff' based on his time teaching in a Catholic college.  The local libraries don't have this book either and eventually I bought it.  When I started reading it I was sucked in by the author's wit and humor.  It's a book that can get you thinking and I loved it.

A search of 'Atheism' in the local library catalogue will give you several books on the subject, but it seems to be very slim pickings.  Perhaps this is due to a lack of demand, at least I'm hoping so, because it also could be a deliberate choice.

"No-God Books"

A comment from my little sister, "Oh great, more of your no-God books".

Its been a week into the new year and I have yet to post anything here, partially because I've been sucked into books and partially because I've been job searching/depressed when I got a NO on a job I really wanted.  My reading tastes lately have been on religion and gender.  I want to know about why people don't believe in god.  I think it makes my sister uncomfortable.  Several of my book choices have made them uncomfortable, but I tell them that I need to read them, I need to understand.  I don't know if it helps.

A Billion Wicked Thoughts
by Sai Gaddam and Ogi Ogas
Billed as "The World's Largest Experiment" on human desire.  Partway through this book I was angry and had a headache.  I finished it because I needed to know all of what it said.

My GoodReads review: (2/5 stars)
"I wan't impressed by the content of this book. The idea of mining the internet for data on human desire is an interesting concept, but their interpretations were, to my mind, poorly supported and based on only some of the current ideas on human sexuality. 

I was offended by the characterization of men as cartoon characters (Elmer Fudd) and women as Miss Marple. The authors do mention in the preface that there is great variety in the human race and that they're using statistics to look at the human population, but the images they chose to use to describe men and women were ill-fitted.

There was almost no mention of the behavior of bonobos that challenges the concept of women trading monogamous sex for food and protection for her and her offspring from a single dominant male that is espoused on page 72. I would suggest a reading of 'Sex at Dawn', which takes a more detailed and nuanced approach to looking at prehistorical human sexuality. 

They did have a section on notes and sources, but it would have been helpful if they had been marked in the actual text - many times I read a set of statistics and wanted to know exact sources, but had to dig through the notes and references to find it. Then it was still unknown how substantial those statistics were. Statistical significance was sometimes skirted altogether - the graph on page 169 was used as evidence for the similarity between bisexual women and heterosexual men but the y-axis had no labels (I assume %) and there was no actual statistical evidence of any difference. 

Overall, if you're curious about what's out there on the internet about sex, have a read, but take their broad interpretations with a grain of salt".

Delusions of Gender

by Cordelia Fine 

I haven't finished this book yet, but I think it is very well written.  As it is described on GoodReads, "A vehement dismantling of the latest pseudo-scientific claims about the differences between the sexes".

Fine goes through a large number of studies used to support differences between the sexes and dissects their methodology with a fine-toothed comb (sometimes even that is unnecessary) to show errors that influence their conclusions.  She makes many good points about sample size, unaccounted variables, and false positives. She also goes over historical measures, ones that seem preposterous now.  It highlights how technology can be used incorrectly.  

Maybe because I read the "science" book above first, but I noticed how well documented (sources cited within the text) and well argued this book is.  

When I have the funds I'm going to buy this one.

Women Without Superstition "No Gods-No Masters"

Edited by Annie Laurie Gaylor

I haven't finished this book yet either, but this is because it is so long and I can only read it in sections.  There is so much information here - so many good thoughts that I'm going to have to digest this book by reading it many, many times.

This is one of my "no-God" books that LilSis was commenting on.

I find this book very comforting and I'm only up to Ernestine L. Rose (1810-1892).

I may feel alone in my beliefs here in this little town, but this book is full of women from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that questioned the popular ideas of the time.

--

I recently found a friend's description of his religious beliefs on Facebook and I think its the best I've found yet:

"Perception is a fingerprint: People and their faith and beliefs are ineffably beautiful. Organized religion, however, is not".

I need to move to a larger town where the likelihood of meeting someone with my ideology face-to-face is greater.  

I'm also reading The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins and Calling Bernadette's Bluff by Dale McGowan.  I love being able to read whatever I want.