The Warfare Is Mental

How Skateboarding Helped My Intelligence

June 27, 2009

This post was originally going to be titled "How Skateboarding Helped My Education," but by the end hopefully you'll see why education was swapped for intelligence. Though related, the two are not the same thing.

One way people learn things is by observation, which humans have been using to test claims long before science arrived on the scene. Science and its tools merely extend or accentuate our observational abilities, with the added bonus of providing a somewhat reliable filter for false claims. How does this relate to skateboarding?

On Beliefs & Justification

June 15, 2009

I was skating this morning when I encountered a most interesting situation that reminded me of an online discussion at a certain blog I visit.

A woman was walking west on the sidewalk along 16th Street's westbound lane, as I was skateboarding east (approaching her) also in the westbound lane. A few steps in front of the woman and just to her right sits a pad of concrete that I occasionally like to "ollie" up on and off while in transit. It's fun! However, the woman did not know that I occasionally do this. So, when I ollied onto the sidewalk headed for the concrete pad, she flinched and tried to get out of my way, as she obviously thought I was going to run into her.

On Full Disclosure & Knee Jerk Reactions

March 27, 2009

Enough with the whining about lack of full disclosure in (a)theist discussion. There are very logical reasons for not painting oneself into some silly little mental category that is both culturally fabricated and deduced via subjective experience. I believe it is ultimately foolish and non-productive for a group of people to assign themselves emotionally-charged and socially-conflated labels while attempting to have anything even remotely close to a rational discussion. FAR too often it's more of the same in the blogosphere: Consider your average internet (a)theist discussion: Believer A shows up on atheist website B and leaves some comment C that falls anywhere between Cro-magnon man and Einstein on the intelligence scale. Atheist commenters D – Z then proceed to accost believer A anywhere from Bill Cosby to Christopher Hitchens on the respect scale, each according to their own ideas of what A believes.