Archive for the 'General' Category

Paris

Published on 8 August 2010 ago in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .
This is part 1 of 1 in the Europe on a budget series
After a few questions from friends and such, my wife recommended that I/we write down our tips for easier reference (i.e. ‘read this link’). So, for the first of our essential Europe on the cheap, I’m presenting Paris.
Transportation
There are a few ways to get to Paris. Trains connect directly to the underground. If you fly into Orly or Charles de Gaulle, you can take a train into the city and connect to the underground. If you’re cheap and fly Ryanair (like we did), you’ll be an hour outside of Paris. The easiest way to get into the city from Beauvais is to take the express bus from the airport to Porte Maillot. From the bus terminus there, it’s about a two block walk to the underground.
Speaking of the underground, we found it easiest to buy the 10-pack of tickets (called carnet) and split the tickets. There is a day pass as well as a 3-day tourist pass, but we didn’t use it enough for the day passes and the tourist pass was overpriced for us (if it included travel to/from Orly or CDG, it may be worth it). Tickets work for all modes of transport and run around 1.70€ for singles and 12€ for the 10-pack.
Lodging
We did Paris on the cheap, so we stayed in a hostel slightly away from the major sites but still close to the metro. We were at one called Vintage Hostel which was decent and near Sacre Coeur and Gare du Nord. It was nothing special, but it was fairly cheap, had a basic breakfast, and had A/C (which is important for the summer months). Half a block away from the hostel was an excellent (and cheap!) Portuguese restaurant. I can’t remember the name, but if you’re around Gare du Nord or Sacre Coeur, it’s worth a stop. However, we had recently heard of lastminute.com, where good deals on 4 star hotels can be had (it’s how we got our hotel in Rome). It works best to reserve the hostel (as a backup) and 2-3 days before arriving in Paris, check on lastminute.com for any deals.
The Sites
There are tourist passes for the museums and some historical sites, which are worth it if you go to enough museums (the 2-day one works if you hit 3-4 museums). The big museums (Louvre, Orsay, Pompidou, etc) are really big. Unless you want to spend all of your trip in museums, choose wisely and selectively. We went to the Louvre to see just a few specific things (Mona Lisa, Code of Hammurabi, etc) and whatever we’d catch along the way. It’s well organised (first by type of artifact, then by period), so if you don’t fancy medieval ceramics, skip that section. We also went to the Orsay, as it is where the majority of the impressionist paintings (van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, etc).
Besides museums, the museum pass also works for the Arc de Triomphe, Versailles, Saint-Chapelle, Concierge prison, and the upper part of Notre Dame. Practically the only major tourist attraction the museum pass does not work is the Eiffel Tower, which is worth the visit (particularly for the romantic stuff couples do). If it is open and you can afford it, go to the very top for the view and photo.
Food
Speaking of the Eiffel Tower, there’s an evening dinner cruise that leaves next to the Eiffel Tower for 50€ a person. It’s a 3 plate (four courses) meal plus two bottles of wine. It’s relatively good for the price (when done through France Tourisme), considering the same cruise through the actual company (Bateaux Parisiens) is 15-20€ more. There’s one that has live music and runs closer to sunset, but it’s a bit more as well. Very much recommended for couples.
Regardless of relationship status, everyone must get a falafel at L’As du Falafel (a falafel and drink make a good lunch for ~7€). It’s near the Louvre (get off at Saint-Paul and walk two blocks). There are a few copycat places in the neighbourhood, but this one will stand out as it’s the only one with a queue of customers one block long in the winter (and longer in the summer). Don’t worry, it moves quick. You’ll order and pay a guy who walks around the line (no, he’s not a scammer) as the menu is short: falafel or vegetarian falafel; soda, water, or beer. I’d go back to Paris just for another falafel (seriously, it’s that good).
One of the high street macaroon places is Laduree, but it is pricey (2.50€ a pop). It’s worth getting at least one from these places even though McDonald’s in France now sells them (and they’re supposedly pretty decent). Of course, you should get at least one crepe while in Paris. There are a lot of good creperies, some as little kiosks and others as restaurants. There’s a creperie between the river and the Sorbonne (if you’re down that way in the Latin Quarter) which had excellent buckwheat crepes. I believe it was simply labeled as ‘Crepes’ (big yellow signage if I remember correctly). Last tip worth noting is to stay away from eating along the Champs-Elysees as everything there costs more.

Annual Review

Published on 24 May 2010 ago in Geekiness and General. Closed Tags: , .

I’ve been preparing my thesis for an upcoming annual review due Friday. While the review only asks for a writing sample of 5,000 – 10,000 words, I’ve been wanting to see how much of my thesis I have written in some form. Besides completing a new section for my sample, I’ve also gone through all of the texts I have written over the past few years that I have intended to use in my thesis and placed them in their relevant sections. Over the last two months, I’ve gone through, re-structured my outline, and re-wrote my initial ‘abstract’ to fit with my plans. I’ve been pleased with what I have so far. Structurally, I have 14 sections across 5 chapters. 8 of those sections have detailed outlines. 2 sections are fully drafted (if I wrote this next week, I would say 3), while 3 more have at least 25% written of what I have planned. Alternatively, that’s 24,000 words of text. Of that, 10,000 has been drafted as viable sections. The remaining 14,000 words need to be re-organised, edited, etc. The limits for the thesis is between 70,000 and 100,000 words (including all references), so my target is 80,000 excluding references (which is what my word counts above follow). I won’t be publicising the direct contents of my thesis until it’s nearly complete, but I will continue to post the non-thesis texts (i.e. articles, presentations, etc) both here in my writings section and on Academia, as I believe the feedback received from others helps produce a better text than what I would have gotten either alone or with a few people within my department.

The Problem with Identity

Published on 8 December 2009 ago in General. Closed Tags: , , , , .

I’m a big fan of Sci-Fi TV. One of my current favourites is the canceled-but-still-bleeding series Dollhouse. In one of the recent episodes (2×05), there was a good segment that reveals a lot about identity construction (OK, so I think the whole series has been playing with that). So, I posted that clip to YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Before getting to the video, I want to frame the scene (which will contain spoilers).

Continue reading ‘The Problem with Identity’

Saturday in Sanity

Published on 27 September 2009 ago in General. Closed

In this week’s edition of Dumbass Evangelicals, we have a wonderful case of foot-in-mouth disease leading to the nomination in this week’s award.

In the blogosphere, Jim West is a reputable person and even well-liked by other decent folk. He’s a Christian pastor and adjunct instructor, holding some postgraduate degrees and membership in a few key professional associations. Chances are, he even helps his landlady carry out her garbage. However, Jim also leads a second life, one lived in computers, where he goes by the hacker alias ‘JWest‘ [1]…

Recently, Jim posted a blog about naming sex offenders. The following play-by-play is in place in case Jim decides to delete more comments and make it difficult to contextualise this award. As one can read, the first comment asks about a particular case known colloquially as ‘Romeo and Juliet‘ clauses. Jim replied that he did not see a difference between a couple who was already having sex before one of them became an adult (which suddenly turns the relationship into a forbidden act) and a case of an adult taking advantage of a minor (i.e. actual rape). At this point, Anthony Paul Smith joined in the chorus, asking if Jim was serious in not being able to discern a difference between the two cases. Jim responds by immediately fabricating a straw-man and asking Anthony if he thinks it is acceptable for a young adult male to rape a young female (following the Romeo and Juliet law). Anthony begins to take offense with Jim’s accusation, as it is a poor reading of Anthony’s post. He then details the ‘Romeo and Juliet’ situation clearly and says that this is different from the situation in the original post (the 15-year-old raping a 5-year-old). And this is where Jim’s character starts to show. He responds by implying that Anthony (1) was leading an immoral life, (2) is defending immoral actions, (3) had premarital sex, and (4) committed statutory rape:

finally, over a long life, i’ve discovered that the people most willing to defend immorality are the ones who themselves have behaved immorally. so i’m guessing that you’ve had both premarital sex and sex with a minor. i’m sure you won’t admit it, but given the facts and your extremely clear interest in defending the action of the 20 year old, i’m sure i’m right.

Any reasonable person being accused of such would take great offense to this, as it is a very low blow, doubly so if it is fabricated. Anthony is a reasonable person. Jim’s response to the offense is to try to weasel his way out by saying that he was only asking a question. That’s not an appropriate response, especially coming from someone who is (1) a Christian, (2) a pastor, and (3) an educated, professional person.

So, let’s get to know our week’s honoree. First, Jim holds degrees (MDiv and ThM) from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, a fairly conservative Southern Baptist seminary. It’s clear that he holds to a form of morality that is prevalent in the Southern Baptist Conventions, which is a perfectly acceptable thing (I say this as someone who grew up in the SBC and has attended SBC schools at both grade-level and university-level). What’s not acceptable, however, is attacking a person’s credibility in an argument by fabricating accusations of possibly illegal activity. We can cite various passages from the Bible to this end, but I’d rather jump right to Jim’s institutional beliefs: the Baptist Faith and Message (I know and highly respect one of the members of the committee who drafted this). I’ll just cite the ultimate sentence in section XV (‘The Christian and the Social Order): In order to promote these ends Christians should be ready to work with all men of good will in any good cause, always being careful to act in the spirit of love without compromising their loyalty to Christ and His truth. Are Jim’s responses and accusations done ‘in the spirit of love without compromising [his] loyalty to Christ and His truth’? I was originally against writing this post because I thought Jim would be a reasonable person himself and, when faced with such a concern as this, he would offer some gleam of righteousness. Instead, Jim deleted my comments and continued on.

Secondly, Jim also holds a doctorate from Andersonville Baptist Seminary and uses the academic honorific of ‘doctor’. However, after Jim’s unprofessional conduct and some research, I have to question the veracity of such a claim. First, Andersonville is accredited by two organisations (Transworld and ACSI) which are not recognised as valid accreditation agencies in the US (search for yourself). Secondly, the level of work required for that degree is half as long and (apparently) without much quality research compared to accredited programs. Thirdly, the level of conduct Jim has displayed in his comments to Anthony show a lack of self-control and professionalism. Had he been in a professional position (e.g. a faculty member in an accredited institution), his institution would reprimand him for much less. I’ve seen faculty members in ‘liberal’ public universities reprimanded for discussing sexuality in a class directly about sex.

In a discussion about morality, ethics, and the law, Jim doesn’t seem to practice what he preaches, but perhaps that is a normal thing in the SBC that I somehow missed. Perhaps it is because Jim is not a professional (in which case, my claims of unprofessionalism do not apply). It’s still impossible to make these derogatory comments and claim moral high ground. If one wants to claim to be a moral, righteous, upright, or ethical person, one should not make such claims that could be construed as defamation.

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1. I hope the reference to The Matrix is not lost here.

Atheigulous

Published on 25 May 2009 ago in Current Events, General and Religion. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

I recently watched Bill Maher’s documentary Religulous. I had been interested in it for a while because I have a good deal of respect for Maher and both of his TV series (Politically Incorrect and Real Time). In one aspect, this show did a great analysis of the fundamentalist variety of religion. However, Maher also extends this analysis to all varieties of religion; and this argument follows the same reasoning that he criticises.

I take the main focus of the film to be that religious faith and objective science is incompatible. In fact, religious faith is now an absurdity in these modern times. Maher travels quite a bit throughout the US, Europe, and Israel interviewing people who would generally be classified as fundamentalists in their approaches to theology. At one point, he is interviewing Ken Ham (of Answers in Genesis and its Creation Museum fame). He takes Ham to task in resolving huge differences between scientific evidence and the “common sense” literal reading of creation espoused by young Earth creationism. From my perspective, Ham’s creationism here has already lost its sense of direction by adopting the language and system of scienctific observation that negates the teleological goal of creationism. In oversimplified terms, Ham’s creation science is much like trying to raise freshwater fish in salt water; the freshwater fish behave at the cellular/organic level differently than saltwater fish. The language and goals of the creation story in Genesis, much like the stories of Christ in the Gospels, are not meant to adhere to modern-day scientific (or biographical) literature. In this respect, Maher is spot on with his critique of faith. If one holds religious faith to be coterminal with empirical science, faith will always lose because it centers on phenomena that exceed the bounds empirical science has made for itself.

On the other hand, Maher’s critique is the the “atheist version” of the very thing he critiques. In one segment, he is asking a few Muslims (including an imam) about the Qur’an. His questions fall along the lines of “the Qur’an says to kill infidels, is this true?” Every Muslim asked answers the question along the lines of “that is not how we interpret that text because it was linked to a particular historical context that no longer exists.” Maher pushes his point by denying the possibility of interpretation, setting himself up as the more accurate interpreter than the believers who study the text! This is the same thing that he critiques people such as Ken Ham (and others). In other words, Maher wants religious/theological hermeneutics to be a closed event ripped from any context and made into an absolute ideological framework in order to reject religion. He then rationalises his work by claiming its standpoint of doubt is the best position.

Ironically, it is here that Maher again falls prey to the very thing he criticises. If doubt is the best place to stand, he hasn’t doubted enough! The “true” sceptic is the one that doubts everything, not just what one is prejudiced against. Maher emphasis empirical science as the strongest evidence for his position, yet he never doubts the framework of assumptions that undergird the empirical sciences. He never suggests that empirical evidence itself may be already tainted by a predisposition to certain beliefs (namely, that an external world exists and is discernable). Obviously, then, Maher should insist that some kind of belief is “acceptable” without entering into fundamentalism or scepticism. It seems, then, that the rational position is somewhere between the fundamentalism he decries while using and the scepticism he touts while evading.

One last thing of interesting note is that Maher suggests in his film that science has discovered a gene that is linked to belief in God. Ironically, the original researcher said that it was linked to spirituality and “feeling God’s presense” and not to simple belief in God. Further, these findings were never published in peer-reviewed literature. Even more striking is that this gene can also be associated with the feeling of beloning to a political party. In other words, it isn’t a very strong theory and it doesn’t suggest that belief in God is a genetic trait. Perhaps if Maher had utilised more of his “scepticism,” he would have noticed that.