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Pronounce that sign

3 January 2012 / / Comments Off on Pronounce that sign

I really like the bilingual signs in Canada. It’s good for English speakers to be reminded that English isn’t the only language in the entire world. (Remember: Republicans made fun of John Kerry because he spoke French. What kind of president would he be?!)

But while driving through British Columbia, I saw a bilingual sign, and French wasn’t the other language. Here’s the sign, snorfed from Wikipedia.

So what’s the language? Why the accents and lines? And what is a ‘7’ doing in the middle of a word?

The Wikipedia page for the Squamish language answered most of my questions. The language is known as ‘Sḵwx̱wú7mesh’ (or the more Anglicised ‘Squamish’). It was first documented by no less than the legendary anthropologist Franz Boas. Sadly, it appears that only about 15 native speakers remain. I don’t know if those 15 speakers do a lot of driving, but I’m glad the signs are up anyway.

So, to the characters:

The ‘7’ is a glottal stop. That’s the sound that Cockney speakers use in the middle of ‘bottle’ or ‘mental’. I use it in the middle of ‘uh-oh’ or (a little strangely) ‘hot water’. A real glottal stop looks like this: ʔ. I don’t see anything on my keyboard that looks more like a glottal stop than the 7 does, except the question mark, which would be even more confusing, so I guess 7 was a good choice.

The ‘k’ and the ‘x’ with lines under them are just like a regular ‘k’ or ‘x’ (the latter of which which we don’t have in English — think ‘ch’ as in Scottish ‘loch’), but they’re farther back in the throat. You have to take it all the way back to your uvula, also known as ‘the hangy down thing in your throat’. Just make a ‘k’ sound as if you’re choking. (Why do they make sounds in such strange places? Oh, everyone does in one way or another. We have a ‘th’ sound in English, which other people think is weird.)

What about the ‘k’ with an apostrophe? That’s the exciting one for me. It’s an ejective. Usually we make the ‘k’ sound with a puff of air, but the ejective ‘k’ is different. To make an ejective ‘k’, just hold your breath, and without letting it out, make a ‘k’ sound as best you can. That’s ejective ‘k’.

Finally, if a vowel has an apostrophe after it, that just means that vowel takes the stress.

There you have it — Squamish phonology. Or more appropriately, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh phonology.

Getting an early start on the War on Xmas

1 January 2012 / / 7 Comments

I couldn’t believe it. There I was watching the NYE festivities, waiting for the ball to drop, and Cee-Lo Green is doing a version of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. Hm, thought I, a secular song. Wonder if he’ll tamper with it. And, sure enough, instead of “and no religion too”, he decides to slide in “and all religion’s true”.

How does that work? “Imagine there’s no heaven… And all religion’s true.” All religion can’t be true! They teach mutually incompatible, multiply contradicting things.

Couldn’t we just have one atheist song performed in public this holiday season? You know, all Xmas long, I sang songs about Jebus, and I wasn’t that happy about it, especially because Xtianity is not the whole point of Xmas. But I sang them anyway, words intact. And fuckers in the USA can’t even play an atheistic song straight. Seriously, fuck you, Cee-Lo Green, even though I don’t know who you are. You’re a horrible singer.

That does it. Now I’m going to give Xtians the War on Xmas they always thought they were getting. Tooth and nail. Anybody says anything remotely religious around me, I’m going to tell them they’re a deluded fool. It’s war.

Another thing. Someone asks me if I want to go to church on Xmas, I’m going to tell them they are wasting their time in that place. I went this year, and I was nice about it. No more. What’s the two things that apologists always say in defense of religion? They have great music, and they have great architecture. Well, I went to church, and the music was excruciating, and it was being done to me in a horrible featureless suburban church building. Fuck you, Mormon church.

In a year, all the religious people will thank me for speaking out and helping them see how they were wrong. If not, fuck them anyway. Fuck cultural deism, fuck Xmas carols, and fuck default Xtianity.

This is the new me.

Why do Mormons cut Christmas services short if they fall on a Sunday?

27 December 2011 / / 5 Comments

Nobody asked:

Dear Daniel: In other churches, people go to church on Christmas. There’s a Christmas Eve service at midnight, another in the morning, and maybe even again that night! It’s all they do! But Mormons seem to do it differently. They don’t go to church at all on Christmas if it’s not on a Sunday, and if it is, they actually reduce the length of the meetings. Why do Latter-day Saints do it this way?

Dear Nobody:

It’s because Mormons secretly loathe and detest their church meetings, and look for any way to avoid them if they have anything better to do. And who can blame them? Between the well-meaning but excruciating ward choir numbers, amateurish talks, infantile lesson manuals, and other people’s screechy children, many Mormons are under the (probably correct) impression that their meetings are the worst part of being in the church.

The Mormon method of worship has a lot to do with this. At their meetings, Mormons try to ‘feel the Spirit’. This essentially involves boring themselves into a quasi-meditative state in which any sensation they feel is assumed to be the Holy Ghost. No wonder they gratefully escape when there’s an opportunity to do something fun with family.

As for other churches, they ramp up their Christmas services because they secretly loathe and detest themselves.

Tim Minchin’s Xmas song: Woody Allen Jesus

22 December 2011 / / 5 Comments

If you liked “White Wine in the Sun“, you’ll be sure to enjoy his new offering for the season: Woody Allen Jesus.

Sadly cut from the Jonathan Ross show, due to an unscheduled failure of courage from some contemptible executive.

Dollar coins

22 December 2011 / / 2 Comments

Americans: Y u no like dollar coins?

The U.S. government, its vaults stuffed with 1.4 billion one-dollar coins bearing the likenesses of dead presidents, has had enough of them. It is going to curtail production.

“Nobody wants them,” Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday. That is for sure: The Mint says there are enough $1 coins sitting in Federal Reserve vaults to meet demand for a decade, and the inventory was on track to hit two billion by 2016.

More than 40 percent of the coins that are minted are returned to the government unwanted, the Treasury said. The rest apparently sit in vending machines — one of the few places they are widely used — or in the drawers of coin collectors.

Dollar bills are kind of dumb. They only last somewhere around 18 months to 3 years (estimates vary), whereas coins last for decades, making them more cost effective. But people are inertia-driven critters — they won’t use coins until paper is phased out. That’s something that would take more political will than US politicians seem to have, because they’re also inertia-driven critters.

But dollar coins are used in other countries (like Australia), and they’re great! Make them gold in colour, a little heavier, different from other coins, and they’re a fine upstanding member of your numismatic repertoire — something you’d be proud to have in your pocket.

Unlike pennies. Thin, and not worth the trouble. Seriously, Americans: You don’t like dollar coins, but you still use pennies? Really?

Ex-Mormon tries coffee

20 December 2011 / / 10 Comments

Even though I’m no longer a Mormon, I still act like one in some ways. I still haven’t drunk alcohol (ever). Never smoked or tried illegal drugs. I guess arbitrary religious rules can exert quite a hold on one, especially rules pertaining to food and drink. Or maybe I was just never curious. Either way, breaking the Mormon “Word of Wisdom” still seems terribly transgressive. Sex before marriage? Yes, please. Deny the holy ghost? Why not? But trying coffee? Whoa, that’s really out there. Totally badass, yo.

Miss Perfect, my girlfriend/partner/fiancée, does drink coffee, and at a café once I timidly ventured a slurp of her demon drink. I say “demon drink” because it tasted like it came out of the ass of one of the legions of hell. No, wait — you know how you burn an entire pot of beans, and then you have to labouriously scrape it out to clean it? It tasted like the water at the bottom of the pot.

“That wasn’t very good coffee,” said she.

I thought it was probably a flawed concept from the beginning. Sure, you could make it taste okay if you added enough sugar and milk. But as Sandra Boynton said of carob, the same argument could be convincingly advanced in favour of dirt. I thought I’d stick to chocolate as my bean derivative of choice.

But I kept taking the occasional slurp (and making the occasional face). Some people say you can push past it. It got better.

And so when we found ourselves in Seattle, we sat down with a Starbucks latté and a Cinnabon, and I found myself sampling more than usual of the brew. The aroma reminded me of supermarket trips when I would eye the forbidden coffee beans (lined up in plexiglas containers, singing their tiny sirens’ song) with trepidation and fascination. And this time the taste, bitter by design, was just right for cutting the extreme sweetness of the sticky buttery bun. Complementary.

I could never do a whole cup though.

The entirely understandable evasion of Neil deGrasse Tyson

14 December 2011 / / 9 Comments

Neil deGrasse Tyson describes himself as an ‘agnostic‘, and that’s okay. I’m an agnostic myself, just an atheistic one.

But this tweet seems like an evasion:

“Am I an Atheist, you ask? Labels are mentally lazy ways by which people assert they know you without knowing you.”

Hmm. I didn’t ask him for his label; I asked a question about his stand on some issue, to which one could reasonably answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Sometimes I’ve seen people shun labels as a subtle method of self-flattery. “Oh, I’m so deep and complex and interesting that I can’t be put into a box.” Well, yes, you are interesting, and yes, you can be put into a box. We’re not all special snowflakes; in many ways we’re terribly like other people. I am, anyway. I consume the same products, read the same books and websites, and have the same thoughts as other people with my interests. Hopefully, once in a while I create something interesting and original, and that’s what makes me kind of special.

Anyway, I can understand NdGT not wanting to tick the box for firm atheism. He’s influential in science communication, so he wants more people to listen to him, and perhaps not turn off those who would be turned off by an atheist. We need him doing what he’s doing, and others of us can wear the atheist tag. As for me, if atheism is a label, it’s a label I’m proud to wear.

Still a wonderful life

11 December 2011 / / 1 Comment

Last night I sat down with the boys and Miss Perfect, and watched It’s a Wonderful Life. It may not be my favourite Christmas movie (that would be Brazil), but I find it lives up to its feel-good status.

And what’s not to feel good about? George Bailey is a heroic everyman who’s not out to gouge the people who borrow from him. Mr Potter is an old-school plutocrat.

Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about… they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn’t think so. People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they’re cattle. Well in my book, my father died a much richer man than you’ll ever be!

Remember when wealthy “fat cat” bankers were villains in movies, instead of being held up as paragons of virtue and job creation? And when George is down and money goes missing from the bank, the 99% step in and save his building-and-loan from closure and him from arrest. Thanks goodness these themes are becoming relevant again.

For me, though, the peak is George’s new-found elation at being alive, his joy for life, even with its unmet ambitions and frustrations. Okay, so there’s a warning for religious themes (what the hell was Zuzu’s teacher thinking, telling schoolkids that?), but all that aside, it’s still worth a watch if you haven’t seen it for a few years.

Why I engage

6 December 2011 / / 7 Comments

I had an online discussion (or perhaps a “run-in”) with a Mormon guy who I disagreed with on some issue. The issue isn’t important (gay people). What was interesting was his way of dealing with the disagreement. His response was essentially: I don’t expect you to agree with me. I’m a Mormon. You’re an ex-Mormon atheist. Our worldviews are too different.

Now I think this is a cop-out. I’m very open to hearing other views, and if they’re based on sound evidence and logic, I’ll even change my mind. But his “different worldview” view allowed him to miscast my reasons for not accepting his argument. It wasn’t that his reasons or his argument weren’t good ones; no, no. It was that I wasn’t open to change, or that our views just weren’t reconcilable.

I think this is projection on his part. While reason and evidence would change my mind, I seriously doubt that it would change his. He’s the one who is immune to reasoned argument because reason isn’t how he arrived at his religious opinion. And if he tries to use secular arguments, they’ll be hollow because they’re not his real reasons. He’s just using them to justify his religious reasons. He hauls out the secular reasons when he’s talking to secular people, but if those arguments are faulty, it won’t affect him at all. He’ll just shrug and keep believing.

I mentioned the discussion to an ex-Mormon friend who knows him, and to my surprise she said essentially the same thing: What did you expect? He’s a Mormon. He lives in Provo, for crying out loud.

I find this baffling. Here I am on the blog, and a lot of readers probably agree with things I write because, after all, we can’t read everything, and we like to pick things to read that make us feel good about our worldview. (Or I do.) But I’m also happy to engage with readers who disagree, and in fact I hope I get a lot of them. I learn a lot more that way, and it’s more interesting. But I feel like I’m standing on a chasm, shouting to ideological opposites.

Is there any point to discussing things? (Have I done any good on the blog today?) Or are we doomed to be divided into two camps that can never understand each other because of our different worldviews? I don’t think so. I think there’s a point to engaging in the Great Debates for two reasons.

First, people do change their views. I have, quite a lot, and I’ll do it again. Engaging with others is my way of saying that maybe no one’s beyond hope. Okay, maybe an online discussion won’t change the committed, in which case I’ll still keep arguing and discussing because I’m not trying to convince the committed — I’m trying to convince uncommitted bystanders.

The other reason I engage is that if I’m wrong about something, I want to know about it. How is it that I can say so confidently that there’s no evidence for the Book of Mormon? that that arguments for gods are uniformly awful? Because I’m here on the blog, and anyone who wants to can tell me something I don’t know, and I’ll consider it and change my mind if necessary. It’s not just meme propagation. It’s my continuing education.

The Debunking Handbook

4 December 2011 / / Comments Off on The Debunking Handbook

It doesn’t always work to debunk a myth just by presenting facts. Sometimes your careful presentation could actually entrench the wrong information. If your presentation is overly long or complicated, people may only remember the simple myth. And when you’re talking to people who are committed to the myth, your explanation may drive them further into it.

Wait — I’m doing this all wrong. I’m starting with the myth. Let me try again.

Step 1: Present the core fact.
John Cook and Stephen Lewandowsky (of UWA) have released The Debunking Handbook. All science communicators need to read it, if they want to avoid reinforcing the very myths they want to debunk.

Step 2: Give the reader an explicit warning to cue them that misinformation is coming.
One incorrect perception people sometimes have is that people change their views when facts are laid before them. This is a myth.

Step 3: Now that you’ve ripped the misinformation out of the reader’s head, fill the gap with simple, correct information.
Cook and Lewandowsky suggest a few simple ways to communicate scientific ideas clearly, and avoid psychological “backfire effects”.

That’s better. Boy, this science communication can be tricky.

h/t Lara from the “exmormon-atheists” group

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