Happy Halloween, everybody!!!

Halloween, Halloween, oh my gawd it's HALLOWEEN!!! This is my FAVORITE HOLIDAY of all time!!! The bestest of the best! The spookiest of the spooky and the treatsiest of the, er, treaty!!!

Today I will be celebrating by posting this link to The Mercury Theater On The Air site, where one can download the original production of Orson Welles's WAR OF THE WORLDS, as first broadcast on October 30, 1938! It's a great show, and more interesting yet is the response from the public, many of whom believed it. Here's a Wikipedia article on the phenomenon-- you can see that a skeptical mindset really came in handy when listening to it!

In the spirit of the season, I will leave you with the famous closing words of that broadcast:

This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that The War of The Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo! Starting now, we couldn't soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night. . . so we did the best next thing. We annihiliated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the C. B. S. You will be releieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian. . .it's Hallowe'en.

Meme Thursday today! Atheist meme

I was tagged by musesusan over at Intrinsically Knotted AGES ago, and I even wrote my answers ages ago, but somehow I just never posted it. But today, today, all that changes!!! Yes, today is Thursday, the day of THOR, GOD OF MEMES!!! (Or thunder or something. Whatevs.) And I'm celebrating with... an atheist meme! W00t!

Can You Remember The Day That You Officially Became An Atheist?

Yes. The process was a long and drawn out one, beginning when I was fourteen, but I do remember the very day. My first act as an Officially Self-Recognized, Self-Proclaimed Atheist (I had proclaimed it to the Wonderful Husband moments before!) was to sit down at my computer and read Respectful Insolence, only this time, AS AN ATHEIST! :) I remember being so happy, feeling so FREE as I did that! No more mental contortions to justify this or that belief! It was AWESOME to face the internet as a free woman!

Do you remember the day you officially became an agnostic?

I remember things best in pictures, and this one had a strong visual reference-- the bright goldenrod yellow of an official AD&D character sheet, where I had filled in "Qabbalist" in the "Religion" blank for my Halfling Cleric/Theif. (LOL, now there's an interesting multiclass pairing!)

One might wonder why I wrote my actual, real-world religion onto this fictional, made-up character in a fictional, made-up world. Well-- my extremely forthright, skeptical History teacher had taught us so thoroughly to question all things that I was having a huge crisis of faith. It bothered me! I was happy following the religion of my family. So, I did what many people do in that situation-- I threw myself into my religious studies in an attempt to convince myself that YES! This was RIGHT! Be a HAPPY BELIEVER again! Er. No. Didn't work out that way. But I do remember the bending-over-backward-to-believe was so strong an impulse that I couldn't even bear to write down anything but my own (fictional, made-up) real-world religion, even for pretend.

How about the last time you spoke or prayed to God with actual thought that someone was listening?

As a Wiccan, I believed God was the ENTIRETY OF THE UNIVERSE, and the Universe listened and cared. In our minds we conceptualized the creative principles of the Universe as the God and the Goddess. So I remember the last time I prayed and thought the Universe and its Creative Principles were "listening."

I thought WH and I should raise our son with a strong wiccan culture so that he could better resist fundamentalist dogma from the three dogmatic Biblical religions. So I had instituted a nightly family prayer. My son was maybe 18 months old at the time. Well, I did the Ritual Voice and spoke the Ritual Words, and he looked at me as though I were a complete moron. "What the heck are you playing at, Mommy? Let me in on the joke, will you, 'cause right now I'm kinda bored and want to play with my sticks," his little eyes seemed to say. It was at that very moment, in a flash, though it took me a day to fully process it, that I realized humans do not need religion to be happy or fulfilled.

Did anger towards God or religion help cause you to be an atheist or agnostic?

Nope. Never factored into it. I can't very well be angry at something imaginary, can I? (Hold on-- lemme try. DAMN UNICORNS, ALWAYS POOPING INVISIBLY ON MY LAWN!!!... Er, nope! No, I can't.)

I would like to draw a distinction here, though-- God is imaginary. Religion is not. Religion is all too disturbingly real. Religions are ideas which motivate people to act, sometimes in charity, sometimes in perpetrating unbelievable horrors. So, though it didn't motivate my atheist emergence, I am pretty angry at religion for enabling people to make parts of this world into Hells on Earth.

So, er... I guess I can be angry at stuff that other people imagine!

Were you agnostic towards ghosts, even after you became an atheist?

When I realized I didn't need a God-concept, I realized I didn't need ANY of the supernatural trappings which had shrouded my life for all that time. I happily, nay, JOYOUSLY, let them all slip into the realm of fancy, where the evidence suggests they belong. :)

Do you want to be wrong?

I'm not really attached to the right or wrong of my choice to be an atheist. I'm using evidence to build my worldview, and evidence-based viewpoints are always subject to the possibility of being rendered invalid and rebuilt based on better evidence. In my opinion, that is awesome! :)

But... if I were wrong, then what? If a god or some kind of creator gets proven to exist, how does that change anything about what we do here and now, and why? Why does anyone suppose a creator would want to be worshipped, or even that it would have any volition at all? I dunno, the whole idea just seems kinda wacky to me now. Plus, there are loads and LOADS of prayers that go unanswered (Holocaust, anyone?), so even if there were a god out there, doesn't seem like it's a prayer-answering kind of deity.

Even when I was a theist I didn't believe in worship per se-- I considered religious rituals to be acts of celebration. And you know what? Being an atheist has not changed that! :) I LOVE to celebrate the natural world! IT IS AWESOME!!! What is not to find awe-inspiring about this MARVEL of a universe we live in? It is cool and wonderful and AMAZING that, equipped with our brains and our tools, we are able to suss out properties of our universe which are consistent enough to be called LAWS! HOW GREAT IS THAT??? That makes me want to get up and DANCE!!! And then do some ALGEBRA!!! And then wallpaper the internet with SMILEYS!!!!-- But I don't. Because I respect the anti-emoticon beliefs of others.

Mostly. :D

Tagged!!!

Here's a blog meme (...bleme?...) I got tagged for by PalMD over at denialism blog!

Because I have had no coffee yet I will quote PalMD's pithy explanation of blog meme-itude:

For the uninitiated a blog meme is sort of a meme but not really. A meme is a unit of information passed though learning or behavior, rather than genetics. A blog meme is a set of questions passed from blogger to blogger until it finally peters out. It gives bloggers a chance to connect to each other and to connect their readers to other blogs.

And for today's meme, the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.

2. Post the rules on your blog.

3. Write six random things about yourself.

4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.

5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.

6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.


Six random things about me:

1. My name means "honeybee happy" and my blood type is B Positive. (Perkiness-- Environmental or Genetic???) :D

2. I spend absolutely unreal amounts of time staring at clouds, trying to understand how to paint them in a manner which satisfies me.

3. In grad school, I had to invent an interpretive dance to help me remember the steps of glycolysis.

4. I speak far too much Ewok for my own good. (Yee-chok no-wah, baby!!!) I didn't try. The knowledge just stays in my head like a parasitic prokaryote. Soon it will make itself indispensable to my metabolism, and then the transformation will be complete.

5. I have been playing the same Vampire: the Masquerade character since 1997. She is an insane conspiracy theorist! :D

6. Hand-blown glass is like KRYPTONITE to my Superman-grip on my wallet! ("I'm buying them as GIFTS, yeah, that's the ticket!")

(Bonus number 7, because I like prime numbers: I collect lullabies, and certain chord voicings make me cry. :))


Now to SPREAD the meme, like unto a parasitic prokaryote who seeks to turn the ENTIRE BLOGOVERSE into little furry hunter-gatherers....

Vaklam at Homologous Trend (yes I AM calling in my marker!!!).

Friendly Atheist.

Musesusan at Intrinsicallyknotted.

Arensb at Epsilon Clue.

Cyberlizard, because I suspect him of piratical tendencies.

Zoo Knudsen at Skeptic Shock.

I'm always nervous about tagging folks, so please, do feel welcome to do the meme or not. And to tag others. And to spread the agenda of our Ewok Overlords!!!!

*ahem* Time for that coffee now.

Wednesday Whine-fest! (Yes, yes, I WOULD like some cheese with that whine!!! ...No, seriously. Give me the damn cheese, and nobody gets hurt.)

When I was a young slip of a girl, I was a powerlifter.

I weighed 125 lbs, could bench-press 155 lbs and squat with 240. It was insane how much time I used to spend in the gym! Three hours a day was not unusual for me. This was at age twenty-two.

It was great. I was HIGH ON ENDORPHINS and LOVING IT! (I only stopped because I realized, eventually, that working out was taking up every minute of my free time.)

Now I am age 40. I weigh 144 lbs. I am working out on exercise machines instead of freeweights, doing fast, light, swimmers' workouts instead of pushing my max on everything. I am spending fifteen minutes in the gym and then walking/running a mile on the track.

And I HURT.

Ow.

(I am also a huge flaming wussbag and do not hurt nearly as much as I would had I overdone the weights yesterday, so hush up and count your non-achy muscles, Perky!)

As you may have gathered, I started my LIFESTYLE CHANGES. Low cholesterol! Lots of exercise! Eat right! Limit those calories!

Well... that SUCKS! I'm hungry all the time, and sore! And, and, and... yeah... really, it's not so bad. Honestly, I'll probably be used to this within a couple of weeks to a month, and life will be normal again, only I'll be in a very healthy routine instead of a mildly lazy, eat-like-my-five-year-old routine. I can do this!!!

May I just take the opportunity to give a round of applause and my personal STANDING OVATION to anyone reading this who is actively trying to lose weight! I have a relatively fast metabolism and a background of lifetime exercise to fall back on, and STILL my efforts to cut calories drove me INSANE for-- well, they still kind of are. I'm eating a lot of oatmeal so I'll feel full. So those of you, including my close friends and family, who have been doing the hardcore weight loss thing, my hat is OFF to you! It is HARD to change eating habits.

One thing I have discovered-- a bag of salad can be munched on like potato chips ALL DAY LONG. This is helpful to me. I can TRICK my body!!! I can EMULATE unhealthy habits, but STILL be eating HEALTHILY!!! I AM SO STEALTHY!!! I'm like a HEALTH NINJA!!!!!!!

Seen on a church sign in my neighborhood...

"IF GOD SAYS YES NO ONES NO SHALL STAND"

God is a rapist! Have a nice day.
;)

GAHHHHH, cholesterol! :P

So, I got my lab results back, and YAY, I'm not diabetic! But booooo, my dumb ol' LDL cholesterol (which I just mis-typed as LOL cholesterol) is too high.

According to this great post from Dr. Harriet Hall on Science-Based Medicine, there are cholesterol denialists out there! (Hee, there's a denialist for everything!) Much as I would like to be in denial myself, however, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of my needing to make a few lifestyle changes.

I haven't had my follow-up appointment yet, so I went online and researched the ramifications of my test results. My weight is fine, though I wouldn't mind losing a few pounds, and I already walk a mile a day... so probably the first thing my Wonderful Internist will have me try is to get the LDL down by changing my diet.

There's this thing called Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) touted by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the NIH. I am resistant, yet strangely compelled. So I downloaded this 80-page informational pamphlet on TLC, which seems to concentrate on... EATING PROPERLY (dunh-dunh-duuuuuuuuuuhn!). You know-- 6+ servings per day of whole grains, 3-5 servings per day of vegetables/dry beans/peas, 2-4 servings per day of fruits, 2-3 servings per day of low-fat dairy products. Keep meat/poultry/fish on the lean side (lean cuts, remove excess fat, remove skin) and down to no more than 5 ounces per day. Eat two fish meals per week. Eat nuts in moderation. Use unsaturated vegetable oils (love my olive oil!). Cut out the butter, and instead use a liquid or spreadable-when-cold margarine high in sterols or stanols. Get lots of soluble fiber, meaning eat fruit instead of drinking juice, eat oatmeal for breakfast, and hey, there's always ground psyllium (which I actually find to be a taste treat, texture-freak that I am-- I used to add a spoonful to my morning cereal every day!). Mind the calories and don't overeat.

In other words, eat like my mom always told me to. *SIGH*

Also, now that I think about it, I could probably stand to walk more than one mile per day, seeing as how I don't actually get much other physical activity. At all.

And most of all-- learn to love my coffee without half-and-half.

Saturday (ok, so it's Sunday) Perky Recipe: ZOMBIE FINGERS!!!!!!!

I! Love!! Halloween!!!

It is the greatest holiday ever devised by humankind!!! You get to (1) dress up, (2) go merrily out at night past all reasonable bedtime, and (3) ACCOST STRANGERS FOR CANDY!!!!!!! How awesome is that???

So I really wish I had invented Zombie Fingers as an homage to Halloween. (I didn't; I invented them because I am a mutant freak who plays with her food.) NONETHELESS, here they are! In time to celebrate the greatest holiday ever devised by humankind in a ghoulish and zombie-riffic fashion!

1 bag baby carrots OR carrot sticks of finger-slenderness
1 can of Large, Extra-Large, or Jumbo black olives
1 tub hummus

Dip one end of each carrot in hummus. Shove dipped ends into black olives. Voila-- the fingers of zombies, complete with delicious, putrescent ooze! After you have made at least four of these, insert them between your real fingers and chase your friends around the room with them, making "UUUUUUUUHHHR" noises. Don't forget to shamble! Eat immediately... before they eat you!

Coping

I Have Calmed Down.

The last couple of weeks have been very challenging for my family. Essentially, our Beloved Boy exhibited a behavior that, though normal for autistic kids, and indeed young kids in general, caused him to be suspended from school twice. The second suspension, IMO, was in large part a failure of the assistants to watch him properly, because the new safety protocols discussed in the IEP meeting were not implemented!

After the first suspension, yes there was an IEP meeting. Many, many things were suggested. After the second suspension I called our state's Autism Society. Many, many, many things were suggested. I felt overwhelmed and buried in information. My reflex when overwhelmed is to withdraw, and for the past few days I've done just that. My emotions and my worries have been so raw, so omnipresent, that I haven't dared write about them lest I, I dunno, blow up the internet or something. Or just collapse into tears at the keyboard, more likely.

What I did instead was to read a lot-- for pleasure, first of all. I discovered a blog I really love, and I went back to reading Trick Or Treatment, just to get my mind off our troubles and onto other things. Then I dipped my toes into the material from the Autism Society, and bit by bit, I've been absorbing it. I can handle this. There are specific, non-infinite things I can do to help B, and us.

In addition, the kindness and compassion of passing acquaintances of mine and B's have proven a deep well of resource. Chief among the things the county autism specialist said we need to do for him was to get him involved in sports. Me, I do not enjoy sports, except for solitary things like track and karate. But I needed to stretch beyond that comfort zone for my kid, and it made my skin hurt. Well, we walk a mile at a local metro parks recreation center every day, and one of the older employees there is always pushing the kids to sign up for the teams. He asked how old B was, and I said five, but-- he's special ed-- and I was going to elaborate on how B has difficulty absorbing rules, and how he loves to kick against authority and do his own thing, and, and, and... But the gentleman just smiled and shook his head and said, "I deal with 'em all the time, we've got lots of 'em in the program, and at that age, you can't never even tell one from another." I nearly collapsed in relief. THIS is the attitude I wanted to see in the school counselor! At age five, they're ALL uncoordinated and can't tell their feet from their hands half the time, and only hear half of what grownups tell 'em and can't follow instructions!!!! THEY'RE FIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(*pant, gasp, heave*)

So, just that little bit of acceptance after the week of "OMG SAFETY PRECAUTIONS" made me feel life was good, and not just a constant fight. It helped So. Much. I just want to give a huge hug to everybody, everywhere who treats differences as normal, not as diseases.

Another thing that happened was that B noticed one of the ballet instructors leaving the center, and he, little INCREDIBLY GIFTED FACE-RECOGNIZER that he is (he didn't get it from me, that's for certain!) gave her a grin and said, "How come you're not in your room?" meaning the dance room. She caught on even before I did, and grinned back, "Because class is over and I'm going home." It took me a beat to realize she was the Age 5-6 instructor, and I ran after her. "Do you know anyone who teaches dance who will take a high-functioning autistic boy in class?" Again, she grinned, and informed me she works in a day care and knows lots and lots about autistic kids, and at age five none of them really know how to do the steps anyway, and that we should feel welcome to sign up for her next class in January, and that she'll bring us a registration form on Monday! Again, the burden lifted. Again, the knowledge that people out there will help us make things better.

I guess I had thought school would ease the parental overwhelmedness I've felt for the past five years in raising my wonderful but like-unto-having-five-kids boy. It hasn't worked out that way. School has led to even more crushing issues and EVEN MORE having to advocate for B and stay on top of things. And you know what? I think I can deal with that. Step by step, little by little, and OMG REMEMBERING we're not alone in this, I can deal.

To cap off this week, some wonderful, awesome, close friends of ours offered to babysit last night, overnight. I love these friends. They are so wonderful. And awesome. And I feel SO. MUCH. BETTER. Just from having a night of rest. A single night.

I need to remember this. :)

Also, I am told my son ate their son's entire stack of cough drops, because B is MAD FOR COUGH DROPS! :)

Also also, that he was given a frosted Pop-Tart for breakfast. He took it and examined it and asked, "Why am I getting a frosted Pop-Tart?" My friend replied, "Because that's all we have." B ate it, THEN announced, "Mommy says I can only have the non-frosted ones." ROFLOL!!! The kid is honest, yet pragmatic!

Last but not least, I want to thank hugely all the commenters who shared helpful personal stories and perspective. It really, really meant a lot to us. *HUGS* Yet another reminder (I seem to need them way too often-- what, do I think it's Night Of the Comet out here?) that we are not alone, and parents can be there for each other.

Ups and Downs of Autistic Parenting

He did it again.

The behavior that got him suspended. Different situation, yet the same.

He just does not understand!!! We are trying to teach him the boundaries of what is and is not acceptable, and with an autistic child, it is a LONG, drawn-out process, requiring patience, fortitude, and the ability to think fast. I do not possess all these traits to a great degree. But I am trying my best. Our whole assembled TEAM is trying its best. If we could only make him understand FASTER!

I am so afraid. I'm afraid for his future. I'm afraid for the future of our whole family. It's the uncertainty of child development that is killing me. HOW do I do it??? HOW do I make him understand, RIGHT NOW, to stop certain behaviors before he gets expelled from this school????

HELP!!!

GP visit

Ok! I have quit being a flu shot dumbass and gotten one. Also got a comprehensive physical with blood work and tetanus-diptheria-pertussis booster shot. I love my new GP! He is great. I feel virtuous, but TIRED, 'cause I had to go in fasting. And fasting and fasting. :) Now I want a virtuous nap. Alas, must go run around with my boy as if nothing unusual had happened today! Maybe I'll have a cuppa coffee instead of that nap.

Wonderful French press coffee, hot, with a sinful excess of half-and-half!!!

However, as a nod to my health, I shall walk to the shop.

Stop Enabling Jenny McCarthy!

Me: "I'm a mystery! Cloaked in an enigma!"
WH, without missing a beat: "Preceded by a marching band."

As Wonderful Husband so wittily observed, I'm not what you'd call subtle. So there may be shouty on this post. I apologize to your eyeball-eardrums in advance.

Antivaccinationists and "Green Our Vaccines" apologists make me livid.

They make me livid because they treat autistic people as broken things who have to be fixed in order to be human. And they publicize this viewpoint in popular media outlets and in political rallies around the country. Gee, thanks, THAT really helps me raise an autistic kid to have high self-esteem! And the fact that a PEDIATRICIAN, namely Dr. Jay Gordon, is one of them-- well, that really makes me seethe. It makes me despair, because he is so blindly focused on what he feels is a great cause... only his cause is ACTIVELY HARMING MY CHILD. Actively harming me. Actively harming autistics everywhere, by demonizing them in the public eye!

But more than that, he is helping Jenny McCarthy to promote her pet cause. Dr. Jay says he is not antivaccine, that he administers vaccines himself. Nonetheless, it is his support, as a doctor of children that is helping her in her campaign to bring about a resurgence of DEADLY INFECTIOUS DISEASES. How can he rationalize that??? How, how how? I cannot fathom the mindset, and the disconnect between the evidence and his opinion just leaves me wanting to scream!!!!

So, here's a website called Stop Jenny McCarthy. Please, please stop Jenny McCarthy. (Please please stop, Jenny McCarthy!) There are also extremely lively discussions on this issue featuring doctors and parents who know stuff about epidemiology over at Science-Based Medicine (here and here) and at Respectful Insolence-- the latter featuring comments from Dr. Jay Gordon himself. Even after reading them, I STILL. DO. NOT. UNDERSTAND. how he can support what Jenny is doing, and still consider himself an ethical doctor. I just don't.

Skeptical Parent Crossing, FABULOUS FIRST!!!

HOORAY!!! It's the Fabulous FIRST EDITION of Skeptical Parent Crossing, a new blog carnival from Domestic Father, featuring skeptical parents and skeptical parenting issues! This is a really nice addition to the blogsphere, and a really great opportunity for skeptical parents to get to know each other and battle credulity in parenting-- an endeavor oft' beset by woomeisters, quacks and the just-plain-superstitious.

There is a lot of great blogging linked over there, so please come check it out, even if you're not a parent! Every skeptic can be a valuable ally to parents who try to navigate reality when raising brand new humans.

Sunday Child Anecdote

I would like to take a moment to salute those unsung heroes, those rebels without causes, namely, kids who were born punk. Born to question authority! Born to be wild! Born to fight for their right to party! While a child with this inborn skepticism is difficult to raise, it makes me feel good about his potential as a critical thinker.

I was in the living room cleaning, with my child B happily listening to iTunes on the computer. He started singing loudly, then started to make noises of distress. Finally, he screamed out, "I CANNOT GET A CHOICE!!!"

I ran in, saying, "What???? What's the matter???? What happened????"

B turned to me in placid regard and said, "Well, I'm just singing loud."

I went back into the other room and continued my cleaning. B continued to belt out his song, yelling, "I CAN-NOT GET A CHOICE!!!" intermittently.

I submit to the blogosphere that the sentiment "I cannot get a choice!" may be the most clear-cut example of child punk-rock I have ever heard.

Saturday recipe: Perkily postponed until next Saturday!

I am at my brother's for dinner, no cooking for me! But I will be back with a Full! Culinary!! Report!!! (There may be SCOTCH EGGS in it for ya!) :) Have a great evening, and bon apetit!

Choosing Battles

My high school was about a thirty to forty minute drive from my house. Rather than make this expensive and time-consuming trip completely out of their way every day, my parents set me up with a succession of car pools, people who lived in my town but worked in the Big City, and who graciously agreed to drop me off at school and pick me up at the end of their workday. Since my school was half day students and half boarders, not to mention academically rigorous, I always had plenty of assignments and friends around to occupy and entertain me while I waited. (Let's get real-- I almost never did homework during the afternoons with my friends!)

One such carpooling driver was "Delia," a twenty-six-year-old office worker who was consistently late getting ready and typically used the rear-view mirror to apply her mascara while hurtling us down the highway at 90 miles per hour. I enjoyed Delia's company for the most part, though we had little in common. Indeed, one might infer from my brief description of her habits that her judgment might be somewhat lacking. This was never more true than when I was forcibly introduced to one of her friends.

She was dropping me off at school that day but couldn't pick me up, as she had to go to a friend's house immediately after work to help him move. Thus she had kindly arranged to have another friend of hers pick me up from school and take me home. At that tender age I didn't enjoy interacting with strange adults, but no big deal, I figured. Then came the disclaimer, "He's loud and kinda full of himself, but he's just a good ol' boy at heart. Don't let him worry you." ...Um...!

Then he showed up.

I don't even remember his name, so I'll just call him Mark. He drove a black Honda with an Auburn personalized license plate. He was loud and aggressive of demeanor. And there I was, a timid yet trying-to-appear-confident sixteen-year-old, trying to hold my own in a conversation with a guy who started off by criticizing my choice of schools. "What's the matter, too smart for Chilton County High?" It was meant to be funny, but every word that came out of his mouth was in that same obnoxious, shoving-contest vein. I feigned a light tone and prayed to say nothing to piss him off, 'cause I was terrified of him.

Then the question came, inevitable in the South, "Where do you go to church?"

I froze.

"I'm a Qabbalist-- Most of my family goes to the First Methodist Church-- The First Baptist Church is right behind my house--" all true statements, though each weasellier than than the one before it. They flashed through my brain, none quite making it out through my mouth, until I felt I'd better spit something out or risk further questions. "F-First Methodist Church," I stammered, naming the church at which I had done some summer volunteer work.

All my beliefs in standing up for myself, all my principles about being who I am in the face of all obstacles, all my knowledge of my Constitutional rights crumbled-- CRUMBLED-- when faced with this big, strange bully who was driving me down the Interstate and asked me this question.

"Well, that's ok, Methodists 're saved, too." I was appalled at the condescension, though not surprised, and in fact I was mainly just relieved that I hadn’t picked his church, which would have exposed me to a cross-examination. In that split-second before answering, I had guessed correctly that he was a Southern Baptist.

That ended the religious discussion, and clearly I survived the trip home. But I was angry with myself for years afterward.

Two questions stick in my mind about that incident. First, why did I lie? I think the reason is obvious-- me, stuck in a car with a loud, bigoted bully, at whose mercy I was until he dropped me at home, and even then, all I could think of was, "this guy knows where I LIVE!"

The second question, borne more of maturity, is-- why was I angry? Seriously, why sould I have been kicking myself all those years for not standing up for my beliefs under those specific circumstances? At the time I thought I should have done or said more-- tried to educate the guy about different ways of thinking. Looking back on it, however, it seems a clear case of common sense. Did I really have CAUSE to fear for my physical safety? Probably not, though I've since learned to better trust my instincts in these matters. The guy scared me, and I suspect I felt that fear with good reason. I was sixteen, in a car at 85 mph with a strange, aggressive man who knew my home address and was outspoken enough to raise hell if he chose. As it stands, he probably wouldn't remember me to this day. But if I had defended myself, he could have made things very difficult for my whole family in that little town, and I bet he’d sure as hell remember.

This brings up the question of, WHEN do we stand up for ourselves? Well, I think the key for anyone is to choose battles wisely. Pick the ones that matter, and choose to fight them from a position of strength. In that tiny little community, the ONLY practitioners of the Qabbalah (and very likely the only non-Christians!) were my nuclear family, and my mom would have just as soon thrown me and my dad to the wolves to protect the position of her extended family in that town which was her ancestral home. Back then, this was a town where the tiny Catholic church was treated by the majority of the locals as a quaint curiosity rather on the level of a circus sideshow-- one wondered what went on inside, but no well-bred individual would *ever* be seen going into it. Debating one loudmouth over whether my soul was going to Hell would most probably have done nothing except give me fits of worry about possible repercussions. (As it was, I had nightmares about the guy!) Now, as I write this book, skeptics and atheists everywhere are united in online communities. With more strength to back me up against the nutjobs, I choose to battle ignorance in a larger forum.

Love Letter To The Skeptical Blogosphere

I am feeling warm and fuzzy toward the skeptical, medical, and science blogosphere today! ...So warm and fuzzy that once again I left a loser-length comment on someone else's blog, which is, once again, one of the reasons I have my own blog in the first place, so I'll quit long-windedly hijacking other people's comment threads! :) So today's post is going to be my warm, fuzzy love letter to the warm, fuzzy skeptical, medical, and science blogosphere. (Or Blogosystem, Bloggyway Galaxy, Blogal Group, Blogellanic Clouds, Blogo Supercluster, Blogoverse, Blogsmos.)

Medical and sciencebloggers have been talking a lot lately about how Complementary and Alternative Medicine practitioners (or sCAM practitioners, as I like to call them) have a great frame for peddling their dubious cures and even out-and-out quackery, because unlike ethical medical practitioners, they can project unshakable certainty about their treatments. They can also comfort their clients with lots and lots of face-time and attention. I used to be really put off by what I perceived as a cold impersonalness of the medical profession. Well, these past few years that I've been reading doctor blogs have done SO MUCH to increase my confidence that my doctors really do care and want to help, and wouldn't be in the profession otherwise! I no longer fret about those 15 minute appointments, now knowing what I do about how hard it is for docs to make a living under current reimbursement rules. Plus, doctor-written blogs have effectively increased the amount of "face time" I feel I get with doctors. It turns them into real people, with lives, pets, humor, good days and bad days, hobbies, introspection, and ethical sense, far more than just being white coats with no time. It has given me a better appreciation of the ups and downs of medical practice. It has also made me a more compliant patient, hearing all these stories of how non-compliance ruins health!

As contradictory as this might sound, even hearing about mistakes and missteps from the doctor’s perspective has led me to a greater level of trust in medical professionals and the diagnostic system. It has brought the entire process more down to earth for me, humanized it, and made it seem less impersonal and far more "holistic" than any alternative nostrum. Seeing how mistakes get made and then corrected gives me confidence that my health is being looked after by people who care.

That is the crux of the matter-- CARE.

This goes not just for doctors, but for physicists, mathematicians, evolutionary biologists, researchers of all stripes, and all skeptical inquiring minds taking a hard look at their corner of the universe. No matter whether they go by their real name or a pseudonym, the bloggers whose writing I find most compelling are those who write with the passion they feel for their work. That passion and love for what they do shines through in their rants about pseudoscience, in their anger at people who take advantage of the sick or the lost, in their humor in presenting tough topics, and in the well-constructed educational posts about the fundamentals of their work. These bloggers are doing important work making science and science-based research accessible to the general public-- and making it FUN. Because they care. Because they are passionate about what they do.

Thank you, bloggers who blog from the heart. I love reading your work, because you inspire me to love your work. And that is AWESOME.

More trouble at school

More trouble on the Wonderful Son's school front. He is suspended until Monday. I cannot bear to get into it. I'm just going to link to this post by Wonderful Husband at Homologous Trend, entitled, And the Rollercoaster Continues. Another IEP meeting is scheduled for Monday, and I'm going to insist the autism specialist for our county be there to help us sort out the mess.

I may lose one of my freelance contracts because of my inability to work this week, due to all the kidwatching. But that is last on my list of worries. I just want my boy to be in an educational environment suited to his needs and not where the teachers are constrained by idiotic policies that aren't allowed to take into account that he is FIVE YEARS OLD!!!

I need to quit ranting and make some phone calls to assemble our advocates for that meeting.

Science-based books!

I recently got a stack of sciencey books. Yummy, crunchy science to read about, in book form! Huzzah!!

The first one was sent to me by the beneficence of the Seed Scienceblogs Book Club. I was lucky enough to receive one of the 50 free copies of Dr. Paul Offit's Autism's False Prophets, which I blogged about here. (Encapsulated review: It is a GREAT book, and everyone should run out and buy two copies right now, one to read, and one to send to Jenny McCarthy!)

Next in the stack is Trick Or Treatment by Simon Singh and Dr. Edzard Ernst. This book is FILLED with interesting biographical and historical tales and tidbits that makes the statistics and the medicine just come ALIVE-- and I haven't even gotten to the juicy homeopathy-debunking yet!!! There are a lot of great books about science-based medicine, so-called alternative medicine, and quackery; I'm sure most of them are very good, but personally, I'm daunted by the thought of which ones to choose to spend my precious life-hours reading. For anyone else so daunted, I enthusiastically recommend Trick Or Treatment as a great way to get fired up about science-based medicine! For me, it was literally like falling in love all over again! :) YAY, SCIENCE!!!

This got me reminiscing, because the fired-up feeling so reminded me of how I felt when I was introduced to my first love among science-based medicine books. For me, that book was Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif. I picked it out of a list to read for a book report when I was 13, and from the very first page, I was smitten with science!!! It presents Mysteries, Excitement, LIFE-OR-DEATH MATTERS, and best of all, it's all part of the actual history of science-based medicine! How great is that??? [Edit: I notice that many of the reviews of it on Amazon.com say that the book uses some racist language. How unfortunate! Apparently I blipped over all that as a child and just excused it as a product of the time in which it was written.] I read this account of the rise of science-based medicine at a crucial time in life, when my opinions and view of the world were being smelted in the crucible of puberty, and I'm convinced this helped my love of evidence and the scientific method become chemically fused into my character.

Thinking back even earlier, there were also some great children's books that nurtured a love of science as well. One illustrated chapter book called Reptiles Do the Strangest Things started with THE BIG BANG!!!!! I found the book at my mom's house last month, and I was pleasantly surprised that the explanation it gave holds up even today. Especially today, now that the COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND has been discovered! (I will pause for a moment in order to do the COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND Happy-Dance.)

Where was I? RIGHT! So-- I'm curious to know what other people's first book that got them really fired up about science was! Please leave a comment telling me! :)

Stuff I Find Thrilling

Ok, this is a lame thing for me to be excited about, but I have a history of being excited about lame things, so there you are.

I had a tire going flat. And-- I took my car to a tire shop... and they patched it!!!! JUST LIKE THAT!!!! It's as if MONEY can be exchanged for goods and services or something!!!!! OH BRAVE NEW WORLD THAT HAS SUCH PEOPLE IN IT!!!!!!

There. Have I properly conveyed my excitement? Are you excited yet? Aw, go on-- have a cuppa coffee! Methinks I prob'ly should have given you the one I just drank.

Personal ranty-horse

Gah-- I've been working on several long articles for the blog, and have finished ZERO of them over the holiday! Instead, I got a lot of playing-with-my-son accomplished, which is a good thing. I also got one of the three professional projects I'm working on done, which still means I need to kick my butt into a higher gear, yet still allows me to feel somewhat accomplished. STILL! On to content-producing for the blog!!!

I'm in a mini-ranting mood lately because of my son's school issues. I've got a lot of thoughts kicking around in my head that I've been working on verbalizing... this too shall become Content one day. Today is not that day. Today is a day for... RECYCLED CONTENT, wheeeeee!!!

One of the reasons I have this blog is to keep myself from posting overly-tangential mini-rants in the Comments on other people's blogs, a pattern I was beginning to fall into. Other bloggers would see my IP address coming and run! I was beginning to be the Crazy Cat Lady of commenters!!!... or the Crazy Anti-Homeopathy Lady, or whatever else had bugged me that day. Today I will thus repost, on my VERY OWN BLOG, one of my loser-length comments formerly posted to poor ol' Orac's blog, when his original post's topic was far more interesting, well-referenced, and only barely related to what it happened to remind me of (sorry 'bout that!). Also it's long enough ago that I can't be arsed to look up his original post. Just read Respectful Insolence-- you'll be glad you did!

Anyway, my Crazy Perky Lady rant, slightly edited and expanded upon:

I wish all hospitals in the US, would have the option of putting a sign on the door OUTSIDE the room saying "No Chaplain."

My boy (two-and-a-half years old at the time!) needed dental surgery, and my husband's family has a demonstrated history of sensitivity to anaesthesia, so I was WORRIED SICK. Of course I was trying my best to be calm and soothing for my child, who wasn't old enough to understand what was going on, and was kind of weirded out by the hospital environment, etc. I was doing a great job of putting on a brave face, something I normally suck at, but I was rising to the challenge!

Then there was a knock on the door, and a sweet little old lady came in asking if we minded if she left us some literature and would we like for her to pray with us.

I didn't want to cause a scene in front of my son, which would have upset him greatly. I took the literature and told her I would very much appreciate it if she did not pray with us but rather prayed for us in private if she so chose. She stayed and chatted a bit, then left, and it would have been a lovely visit if there hadn't been the LOOMING SPECTRE of 'Oh gawd is she going to pray at us? That's ALL my kid needs to prove to him something is REALLY out of the ordinary, aieeeeeee!!!' Yes, my nerves were on edge already. Yes, this set them a-jangling.

I recognize now that the whole matter isn't that big a deal-- I said no, and she respected that boundary. But my emotional state was already so heightened that it really kicked my fight-or-flight response into gear. My heart was racing and it took me a long time to calm down (while of course having to feign serenity the whole time). I was already putting everything I had into easing the emotional state of my son at that difficult time. I didn't want to have to worry about offending the feelings of a nice little old lady in the process.

Isn't there some easy way of not having to subject parents to that? My wish would be for hospitals to provide a "Privacy Please" doorknob sign like in hotels so that Chaplains will know that their presence is not desired and may in fact be actively harmful.

Saturday recipe: Perky Potato Soup!

It's SATURDAY!!! And that means another attempt by yours truly to cook fresh, wholesome food for my family, whom I make forage for earthworms and grubs the rest of the week. Watch my travails as I attempt to use a stove! Perky Skeptic guarantees no satisfaction and does not stand behind her recipes! Perky Skeptic accepts no responsibility for accidentally-omitted key ingredients, allergic reactions, digestive distress, house fires, or wails of disappointment/horror resulting from the use of her recipes!

And this one reeeeeally might be a horror, let me tell you!

So, the backstory is that due to a dreadful miscalculation, we're overdrawn at the bank for the first time in a reeeeeeally long time. It has given me a flashback-- to my COLLEGE YEARS!!! Oh, the halcyon days of youth, when we fed ourselves on the poverty diet of spaghetti, ramen noodles, and rice! The height of culinary creativity involved using anything you had in the pantry! Well guess what-- today I've got potatoes, half-and-half, and a KNIFE, and I'm not afraid to use 'em!!!

Since I'm totally winging this one, I'll describe my methods. The first thing I did was go to Mother Google to look up a recipe, seeing if I could find one that didn't want to make me buy anything extra. And, lo, what strange treasures did I find?-- Did you know there is an entire domain devoted to potato soup recipes? That's right, www.potatosouprecipe.com. The internet is a wacky and wonderful place. But my first hurdle soon popped up-- all these soup recipies seemed to want me to use 2 cups of broth. (A) My pantry contains no broth. (B) FTW? It's a soup recipe-- why does it want me to use soup as an ingredient? I needed a scratch recipe for broth. So, again with the internet.

Vegetable broth recipes seem to contain:
1 onion, chopped (Done! Got a frozen chopped onion in my freezer!)
1 carrot, chopped (No can do, no carrots.)
2 stalks celery, chopped (YAY! We have a bunch of fresh celery. I'll use 3 stalks in lieu of the carrot!)
1 potato, chopped into large chunks (REDUNDANT! I shall save my potatoes for later!)
3 cloves whole garlic
1 tsp salt
Blah blah stuff I don't have blah.

More Research indicates the celery may just be all I need to make veggie broth! I'll go for it!... But wait-- the time-and-veggie-saver in me wonders why go to the trouble of making stock in the first place, if you're only going to strain and throw away the veggies? Why not have the veggies in your soup?

Still More Research Later... I find a vegan recipe for "cream" of potato soup which does not use stock or broth but makes it all stew up together! IT CAN BE DONE!! The recipe itself looks a bit... blah. But it gives me the courage and fortitude to make my own up as I go along, whee!!!

So here's the final recipe I made tonight:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, diced
2 cups water
7 small Yukon Gold potatoes, sliced into finger-joint-sized chunks at biggest, and mincey bashable bits at smallest.
1 bunch celery, chopped
6 cloves garlic, chopped
3 teaspoons mustard seeds
3 large bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon dried cilantro
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seed
1 teaspoon cumin seed powder (because I LUV cumin powder!)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon dried dill weed
12 mill-turns of fresh-ground black pepper
1 cup milk
1 cup half-and-half (a mixture that is half milk and half cream, otherwise known to certain coffee fanatics as NECESSITY)
1/2 cup grated mizithra cheese!!! THAT'S RIGHT, MY SECRET WEAPON!!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Take THAT, soup! Just TRY not being delicious with mizithra cheese on you!!! (...Er. I really ought to cook it before letting fly with the Hubris Laugh.)


Put the oil in a big ol' soup pot. Get the oil hot and then toss in the mustard seeds. Fry seeds for about 20 seconds, then add the onions. Fry onions until translucent. Add the water, then bring it to a boil and add potatoes, celery, garlic, herbs, bay leaves, salt and pepper. Reduce to a low boil and cook 20 minutes or until the potatoes are soft. Bash it with a wooden spoon because you can't find your bashing accoutrements, so that some of the teeny bits get creamed but the chunky character yet remains! Add milk and half-and-half. Simmer on medium heat another 20 minutes. Serve hot alongside some lovely whole-grain bread (or saltines), and top with grated mizithra cheese. Makes a thick, chunky, aromatic soup! Prep time: less than 1 hour.

And the verdict from my secret panel of taste-testers is......... It's good!!!! Yaaaaayyyyy!!!

Next time I make it I will put a little more salt in it, because I had to add a pinch to mine in the bowl, even though this is a sweet soup and mizithra's a salty cheese.

So, the moral here is, try to arrange to be broke on days you've got yummy cheese and produce in the house, and you can cook a great meal with little to no effort! Unless your internet connection is off; then you're screwed. And by "you" I mean "I," because if the dish ain't curry, I need the internet to cook my way out of a wet paper sack.


(EDIT: Tarragon would also taste really nice in this soup! Wish I had thought of it before!)

MORE autism-exploiting on the horizon!

OMFSM, two linkblogs in a row, gahhhh, must repent and atone with real articles soon, auuugh...

But this one is really too good for me not to plug. Homologous Trend discusses the American Medical Autism Board. Sounds official, doesn't it? Too bad they're PART OF THE PROBLEM, according to the latest Quackwatch newsletter!

But Homologous Trend doesn't just reflect the awesome of Quackwatch, oh no!!! He did some digging of his own and found even MORE grubs under those rocks! Please read this. Autism is a cause near and dear to my heart, because my Wonderful Son is on the spectrum. (And, oh yeah, probably me too.)

And I'm not just saying Homologous Trend is awesome 'cause he's my Wonderful Husband. Rather, he's like a layer-cake of awesome. For many awesome reasons.

Linkblogging: vaccination is Important!

Here's a super article in a mainstream media outlet, written by one of my favorite bloggers, EpiWonk, about how he contracted measles as a child along with some fearsome complications. I wish everyone in the country would read this.

"Along with the pneumonia I had as a kid (1 to 6 percent of measles cases), the risks of measles include severe encephalitis (one per 1,000 cases) — about a third of which result in mental retardation. They also include one to 10 deaths for every 10,000 measles cases. Another risk is subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, a rare fatal illness (one per 100,000 measles cases) caused by an ongoing measles virus infection of the brain, in which symptoms of brain damage usually begin seven to 10 years after infection.

And the side effects of MMR? Fever, malaise, a mild rash, swollen glands and a stiff neck in about 5 percent of the patients, febrile seizures in about three out of 10,000, and temporary low platelet count in about three per 100,000 patients. About one in 1 million have an easily treated anaphylactic reaction. And no deaths. Not one."

While I'm wishing, I wish that Intro to Epidemiology becomes a required course in all colleges. For everyone. Everywhere. (Ok, at least for all science majors or medical specialties.) Perhaps then the rational would stand a better chance at staving off the Infectious Disease Promoters (a.k.a. antivaccinationists and so-called "green vaccines" supporters) from harming and killing more people.

The things kids say...

During the night I apparently came down with Zombiism. That's right, it is tired zombie Friday 'round here, and no amount of coffee has quite managed to perk me up! So in lieu of a real blog entry, you're getting a NSFW kid quote!

B found the top part (eye) of a peacock's tailfeather. He stroked the feather and I could see his puzzled expression-- I knew he was processing something, and soon I would hear what. Turns out he was trying to work out what to call it, and eventually he declared, "This is a... cock... head."

Skeptics' Circle 97!

HOORAY, it's Skeptics' Circle Day!!! Here's the glorious #97 up at Evolved Rational! Check it out-- there MAY be a wild mudkip in it for ya! ;)

Just because you like the music doesn't mean you have to dance.

Sacred music is like infatuation.

As in, that fireworks, earth-moving, hormone explosion that is SO overwhelming that it is often confused with love, even though a sensible look at the relationship would immediately tell you this guy is no good for you.

(Yeah, this analogy is about to get away from me-- let's see if I can reel it in a little.)

Sacred music is, to me, so moving, so world-rocking, so upliftingly sublime that I confused it for true love-- er, I mean, I confused it for my being religious by nature. In fact, it produced an ambivalence of feeling so deep that it made me miserable. I was a searcher, always seeking truth, but one thing I KNEW was that I was NOT a Christian. I mean, the philosophy behind it was great, but I HATED the exclusionist aspect-- only those who embrace JC as their LaS would get into the cool kids club when they died. Umm, no, I don't roll that way. Any faith that excluded anyone who was a good, moral person just because they believed in calling God by a different name was NOT for me. But that MUSIC!!!! I defy anyone to listen to Allegri's "Miserere Mei" or the Mozart Requiem without feeling stirred to the core.

But, again, I KNEW the guy was no good for me! But the way he-- I mean, the music-- made me FEEL when I was with him-- er, having se-- listening to it...!

Anyway, much like it can take people years or decades to realize their white-hot passionate relationship is no good for them, it took me decades to realize that I could still love the music without believing in God.

It's GREAT to feel moved to heights of sublime ecstasy by music! Even more so, it's great to realize that our very own human creativity made it!!! Now that is humbling and uplifting at the same time. That is the kind of love that invites you to be your very best! In short, THAT guy is a keeper.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think this analogy needs a cold shower.

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

Some days, I swear, I feel like my son is a parody of me-- only he's better at doing me than I am! And he's funnier than me, which just isn't fair!!! He is the Tina Fey to my Sarah Palin.

Tonight is one such day.

I am slightly known among my circle of friends for being, shall we say, a tad recalcitrant about going to bed on time. (Pause while everyone I know guffaws at me.)

Well, my son was just now poking himself in the throat to try to keep himself awake for ten more seconds!!!

And the sad part?

I pretty much acted just like that until I MYSELF BECAME A PARENT. So there's just going to be no talking him out of it.

When he was around two years old, his Wonderful Grandmother made up a song for him (To the tune of "On Top Of Old Smokey"), called "Sleep Is Not Scary":

Sleep is not scary, sleep is not sad,
Sleep is your friend and cannot be bad.
It helps us to feel good the very next day,
So we can sing and laugh and play.

He promptly changed the words to:

Slee-eep is scary, slee-eep is sad,
Sleep is... not your friend, and cannnn be bad.
It does not help us to feel good the very next day...
So we can't sing and laugh and play!

On top of it being a microcosm of my child's philosophy of hard living, I was impressed that he managed to construct all the negatives!

Not being one to believe in superstitions, I nonetheless cannot help thinking of my own mother saying, after I had kept her up all night, "I hope you have a child of your own someday who acts just like you!" I call that "The Mommy's Curse." And thanks to gene expression, it totally came true. Take that, Egyptian pharaohs!

Well, I'm tired and I'm going to turn in.

After I tidy up a little.

And read a couple more blogs.

And write a couple of emails.

And poke myself in the throat a couple of times.

Diabetes makes the Perky Skeptic sad

PalMD on Denialism blog has posted some really important information here about the exorbitantly high cost of test strips for monitoring their blood glucose levels. Diabetes is a terrible condition with dire and expensive consequences for those who don't properly monitor their blood sugar, including blindness, neuropathy, and possibly even the loss of limbs. Please, please go read his overview of the situation, and if you are a US citizen, please consider writing your representatives about it. PalMD's sample letter is:

Dear [congressperson],

Diabetes is a serious disease affecting more than 20 million Americans. Part of the treatment of diabetes is the regular testing of blood glucose levels. In order to do this, diabetics must purchase glucometer test strips, which cost around a dollar a piece, and are usually not covered by insurance. For diabetics, especially those who have financial difficulties, the cost of test strips, which can be up to hundreds of dollars per month, makes diabetic treatment impossible.

I respectfully request that you look into potential solutions for this very serious problem, and bring this to the attention of your colleagues.

Sincerely....

Find your Representative
Find your Senator

He has also set up a Facebook group here for brainstorming other solutions to this problem.

Kid Religion

This post is brought to you by Plants Are The Strangest People, whose photo of the best lawn ornament ever reminded me of this story.

So, I've talked about how education in mythology can lead to general skepticism and critical analysis of all belief systems.

"But, Perky Skeptic, did you ever use this knowledge for theistic purposes, say, in designing your own rituals, or... I dunno... STARTING A MYSTERY CULT?"

Why, yes! Yes, I did. :)

There was one mythological figure who soared above all others in my little-girl imagination, and in the imaginations of all my little-girl friends-- one who tugged at my heart SO STRONGLY that I decided to worship him.

Pegasus.

(Cue tasteful, scholarly discussion of My Little Pony as a symbol of sublimated female sexuality in young girls.)

My best friend and I-- we were eight at the time-- decided to dedicate a Grecian-style temple to the honor of Pegasus. The first thing we did was build the temple itself, so we could conduct our meeting in deepest secrecy, lest the Church (or my brother and his friend) persecute us. This construction project consisted of a white sheet flung over a clothesline-- we had to be portable in case we had to go underground (read: flee the annoyances of my brother and his friend). We put up a big "NO BOYS ALLOWED" sign, because that right there insures maximum security!

Thus sheltered from the prying eyes of the uninitiated, we built a little cairn of rocks about three inches high to use as our altar, and on it we put our Pegasus icon-- a small toy horse figurine of molded white plastic, with aluminum foil smooshed over the mane and tail. Somewhere in our mythological and artistic analysis of the Pegasus phenomenon, we decided a silver mane and tail more befitted the AWESOME that was Pegasus than plain ol' white. This had become such an understood part of our mental picture of Pegasus that it was a tautology beyond question-- "Pegasus is the most beautiful horse ever. The most beautiful horse ever has a silver mane and tail. Therefore Pegasus has a silver mane and tail." Interestingly, as I look back on it, the wings were not represented on our icon-- it was as if the wings of the Pegasus were too holy and ethereal to be properly rendered by mortal (eight-year-old) artifice, so we left them to our imaginations. (But in our imaginations, they, too, were silver, dammit!) Around our icon we piled offerings of grass, straw, clover, apple slices, shredded wheat-- stuff we figured a horsie might like to eat.

And here is our Offertory Hymn, "The Pegasus Anthem," sung to the tune of "America the Beautiful":

Oh beautiful for perfect dream
Of silver wings alight,
Of silver mane and silver tail
Above a coat of white,
Oh Pegasus, oh Pegasus,
Oh how we do love thee,
And crown thy head
With good to shed
And with you flying free!

We penned this hymn in code, and we referred to it as "pear-apple" for "Pegasus Anthem," so that if we chanced to speak of it in public, our secrecy would be preserved.

We conducted our Pegasus rites only a couple of times before getting bored with organized observance. But our made-up religion came directly from the heart, with neither grownups nor guilt to filter our celebration of what we decided for ourselves was the ultimate expression of divinity.

Baby Gods

I wasn't exposed to Christianity until I was five. My first encounter was when I was sent to a parochial kindergarten. (I'm guessing it was free, as that would be the only reason for my specific parents to have sent me there.) Talk about culture shock! But luckily we were all young children and pretty much no one expected you to know anything when you came to kindergarten, so it worked out ok for me. Every morning before our lessons started, the teacher led us through conditioned responses-- "Where does Jesus live?"-- "Up in heaven," we recited back to her. There were others, but that's the one I remember.

Every afternoon I would dutifully go home and say to my mom and dad, "You know what? Jesus lives up in heaven." And every afternoon, my dad would say, "Oh, yeah? You know what you should ask that teacher? 'Is heaven up? Did astronauts ever GO to heaven?'" Which, actually, was a great thing for him to have said, because it made my little skeptical brain centers light up. Nonetheless, I would mentally roll my eyes, because I was never going to ask my teacher that. At that time, I thought of the call and response as just a thing you did, like our daily chorus of, "Good MORNING, Teacher," a social cue and nothing more. I was no more going to ask her if astronauts ever discovered heaven than I would insist she provide evidence for the morning being good.

Plus, I didn't really know who this Jesus dude was, but my teacher sure seemed to think he was the stuff, lemme tell ya!

She taught us songs such as "Jesus Loves Me." Ok, that was pretty cool. This guy named Jesus loves me-- and apparently everyone in my class-- and we know this because some thing called the bible tells me so. Oh, wait-- it's a book, this bible. Gotcha.

Where it REALLY started to get good for me, though, was when we started rehearsing for the Christmas play! All of a sudden, through new songs like "Away In a Manger" and "Silent Night," it became apparent that Jesus was a god-- but not just any ol' god... a BABY GOD!!! The effect this had on my tiny-tot psyche was quite earthshaking. A baby god!!! A god... who's a BABY!!! That was just the greatest thing ever. He was holy, and he loves everyone, and he's LITTLE!!!! I'm little-- so he's like me!!! Only even littler, so he can be PICKED UP AND CUDDLED!!!!! He understands the hardships of childhood, a tough time when it's such hard work to make other people understand you. BABY GOD UNDERSTANDZ ME!!!

Eventually, I heard that he grew up and got a job as a carpenter, and then died and came back to life or something, but that stuff was singularly uninteresting to me. Once he was no longer a child, I just couldn't relate anymore. You might as well have told me Jesus grew up to be an accountant. I remember making up a song about him wherein I waxed rhapsodic about the manger bit, and all the animals, and how AWESOME a baby he was, but the narrative stumbled and rambled through the growing-up bit. So when I started to get bored I ended it with, "Annnd he will grow back downnn, and be-- a babyyy-- forEVERRRRRR!" 'Cause Baby God was totally the stuff, lemme tell ya!

I can only imagine that many other children, possibly throughout history, may have felt the same way. Little ancient Greek tots might have felt similar kinship with Hermes. What a baby Hermes was!!! On the day he was born, he got a little peckish and since NO ONE ever understands babies-- probably tried to change his diaper or something!-- he snuck out of his crib and rustled Apollo's sun-cattle! He even tied brooms to their tails so they'd sweep over their own tracks! Then when Apollo went and TATTLED to Zeus, Hermes batted his huge baby-eyes and said, "But Apollo, I made you this Lyre." And Zeus went, "AWWWW, look how cute! Don'tcha just wanna cuddle him? Don't be a jerk, Apollo." What a clever, plucky little scamp, that Hermes!!! He's like a deified Dennis The Menace! And he plays practical jokes on his annoying older brother and gets away with it!!! BABY GOD IZ MY HERO!!! Ancient Greek Hypothetical Five-Year-Old thinks Hermes is the stuff, lemme tell ya!

I think Baby God stories really fire the imaginations of children because they tap right into the Imaginary Friend stage of child development. What could be a cooler imaginary friend than a GOD with KEWL POWERZ who is otherwise a lot like them? Baby God myths can be potential propaganda devices for spreading religion to children, but they can also be used as fun teaching tools to show children how different cultures have viewed their gods through the ages. This perspective on myth and history can then become a great critical thinking tool for children to use in evaluating any belief they encounter.

Also, I think it's really important to talk to our children so that they know they have real people who love and understand them, even when it sometimes takes us mere mortals several steps to reach that understanding. And we can cuddle them. :)

Happy mystical memory

I realize I've been speaking a lot about the bad parts of my woo-steeped upbringing, and, indeed, one of my chief reasons for writing this blog is the hope that my experiences serve as a warning to others! But it wasn't all bad. This is the paradox of our upbringings, probably for many atheists who were raised religiously, that some of the religious stuff still evokes warm and fuzzy feelings.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of my father standing at the head of my crib performing the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagrams to help me sleep easier at night. Did it chase away all thoughts of monsters in the corners of my room? Well, not quite, but it did show me that he loved me, that he acknowledged my fears, and that he was willing to do something about them. It also provided me with my very first introduction to my family's religious practices.

He always began by invoking the Lord of the Universe. "Holy art Thou, Lord of the Universe! Holy art Thou, Whom Nature hath not formed! Holy art Thou, the Vast and the Mighty One, Lord of the Light, and of the Darkness." Such powerful words! Even typing this still gives me chills.

He would then move on to make the Qabbalistic Cross. "Ah-teh, Malkuth, ve-Geburah, ve-Gedullah, Le-olam, Amen."

Then, with swift, confident strokes, he would sketch the pentagrams in air, one for each of the four directions. I could imagine them glowing there in the dark. As he drew each one, he would invoke an Archangel to guard it. "Before me, RAAA-PHAAAE-EL." He drew out each holy name, letting the syllables resonate as if through eternity. "Behind me, GAAA-BRIII-EL. On my right hand, MIII-CHAAAE-EL. On my left hand, AAAUR-III-EL."

Then he would finish up with my favorite part of all: "For about me flame the Pentagrams, and above me shines the Six-Rayed Star--" Six-Rayed Star!!! Where did that come from??? It sprang into being by magic, or it was there all the time, a holy mystery suddenly revealed by my father's words. I pictured it glowing there on the ceiling with blue and gold and white radiance, yet somehow still invisible, a secret protector. "--Ah-teh, Malkuth, ve-Geburah, ve-Gedullah, Le-olam, Amen." It was beautiful and powerful, and I loved it.

I treasure that memory, and to this day the thought of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagrams fills me with the warm feeling of lying in my crib with my daddy's deep and sonorous voice rolling around the room, wrapping me in its protective intonations.

As I savor these childhood impressions, I recognize that I still love much of the pageantry and the rituals of my mystical upbringing. No matter how much I don't believe in it, I still feel love for it, because a part of me still associates it with my parents' love. But nowadays I also realize I get to keep the love, with no mind-hobbling strings of belief attached.

When I first realized my non-belief in the supernatural, I felt like a diver slowly surfacing from great depth and pressure to breathe free air again. It has left me free to love life in a way I never did before. It has caused me appreciate my friends and family more, and made it possible for me to live more fully in the moments of my life. It has given me a greater sense of responsibility for myself and to my fellow humans. It has left me fully free to appreciate this incredible cosmos in which we live.

Nowadays I listen to Astronomy Cast and read the Bad Astronomy blog and learn about the Big Bang, pulsars, quasars, supernovae, the life cycle of stars, and it fills me with the same core-stirring awe as that imaginary six-rayed star. It gives me chills... only it's so, so much better, so much more powerful-- because it's real!!! It's existence is supported by evidence that anyone can see, hear, and learn to do the math on! We have photographs of stellar objects invisible to human eyes!!! HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!?!?!?!

But on some level, my delight is bittersweet in that I can't fully share it with my parents.

Saturday recipie: Perky Chana Masala!

It's SATURDAY!!! And that means another attempt by yours truly to cook fresh, wholesome food for my family, whom I make forage for earthworms and grubs the rest of the week. Watch my travails as I attempt to use a stove! Perky Skeptic guarantees no satisfaction and does not stand behind her recipies! Perky Skeptic accepts no responsibility for accidentally-omitted key ingredients, allergic reactions, digestive distress, house fires, or wails of disappointment/horror resulting from the use of her recipies!

I LOVE CURRY!!! And it has NOTHING to do with my embarrassing attraction to Indian dudez, whom I mostly cannot even look at if they happen also to be looking at me, causing me to mumble creepily and shuffle off to my OMG I'M SUCH A DORK support group. It's because curries are FUN! TO! COOK!!! Seriously, make 'em a few times, and you get the rhythm of making the sauce. Once you get the hang of making the sauce, anything you add to it is just a snap! With ease, you can wow your cooking audience.

Today I'm making chana masala, which is curried chickpeas with potatoes in a tomato-onion-based sauce! This recipe has been piecemeal-amassed by me from many, many other people's curries, so I would not dare to call it original, but I will certainly call it delicious! This recipie is for what I would consider "Mild," so if you like it "Medium" or "Hot," add more cayenne, or even better, use minced fresh green chili peppers instead! They impart a delicious flavor (but are too hot for my weak little soft palate).

I use:

1 five-quart stew pot with lid
1 large yellow onion, diced
3 cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained in a colander
? Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into finger-joint-sized chunks-- use as many as it takes to form an equivalent mass to your pile o' chickpeas
2 cans diced tomatoes (or whole peeled tomatoes, brutalized with a spatula)
2 inches of ginger root, grated
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch fresh cilantro: Separate the leaves from the stalks. Mince stalks for frying. Chop the leaves and set aside for later.
Half a lemon
2-3 tsp turmeric powder (takes longer cooking time than the other spices, so it goes in before the other powders)

SPICE MIXTURE (which I like to gather all together in a nice little cup in advance so I don't forget anything, because what I usually forget is THE SALT, omg!!! :P):
1/4 tsp red cayenne powder
1 level TBSP kosher salt (or to taste)
1 tsp ground coriander seed
1 TBSP cumin seed powder
3 tsps Garam Masala

1 level TBSP cumin seeds
1 level TBSP mustard seeds
A few TBSPS olive oil (just enough to fry the onions)

Put olive oil in pot, turn heat on HIGH. (Note! My stove is electric. Make appropriate heat-level conversions for gas ranges.) When the oil is hot, toss in the cumin seeds and the mustard seeds and fry them for about 20 seconds-- do not let them burn. Next, add the minced cilantro stalks and the diced onions. Fry until the onions are translucent, and then sprinkle on the turmeric powder, the garlic and the ginger. Stir it around while it all fries up together for about a minute. (SMELLS SO GOOD!!!) Then pour in the tomatoes (if you're using whole, now's the time to bash them into smaller bits in the pot). Stir it all up nicely and bring to a boil, then add potatoes. Stir in the spice mixture, bring it to a boil, then cover and simmer on MEDIUM heat for about 15 minutes.

Stir, add a half-cup of water if necessary, add the chickpeas, and squeeze the juice from the half-lemon over the pot. Stir, increase heat and bring to a boil, then cover and simmer on MEDIUM heat for about 20 minutes. Then stir, turn stove off. Sprinkle about half the cilantro leaves into the pot, then re-cover and just let it sit there for at least 10 minutes, then stir again. Make basmati rice to go with it. Top your chana masala with the rest of the fresh cilantro leaves, and ENJOY!!! :)

Prep/Cooking time: I have no idea, seriously. When I first made this dish, I was an EXTREMELY inexperienced cook, and I think it took me about six hundred hours. Now I chop my veggies a lot faster and worry less and it only takes a couple of hours start to finish. Also, it is six kinds of awesome to prep ingredients in advance and freeze them, then just whack 'em in the pot the next day and ZOOOOOM, dinner! (Just be careful adding frozen diced onions to hot oil, a thing which you would THINK any sensible person would know, except I apparently lose all sense when A HOT OBJECT is involved, and, well, now I know to drop and lid so the hot oil doesn't pop all over the kitchen. And me.) It's well worth the time investment, because if anything, this dish is even better the next day! YUM!!!

Incidentally, if anyone makes this, please leave a comment! I'm interested in the culinary adventures of others! :)

(Note: cilantro = coriander)
(Note: chana = chole = chickpeas = garbanzo beans = ceci bean)
(Note: Perky Skeptic = loves cooking curries!!!)

Vaccination is GOOD: a semi-coherent, semi-ranting plug for Autsim's False Prophets

"Hey, Perky Skeptic! You're a mom of an autistic child! Why aren't you talking about the Jenny McCarthy and her Mother Warriors trying to 'Green Our Vaccines'?"

I'll tell you why.

Because I haven't even got the distance on the issue in my brain at the moment to think beyond, "AAAAARGHLBLARG#@!$&@#&$#&%*%!!!" and that is really not conducive to rational discourse.

My dad had pertussis as a child. It nearly killed him, and he was weak and sickly for years afterward. I was nearly never born as a result of a disease which is now vaccine-preventable! His bout with Whooping Cough occurred in America in the 1930's, which was before widespread pertussis vaccination. I am so grateful to live in a time where vaccinations have largely put an end to these nightmare diseases!... Oh, but wait! They haven't!!! Because antivaxxers are chipping away at our herd immunity to the point where vaccine-preventable diseases are once more endemic to the US!!!!!!!! When will they stop? Does SMALLPOX have to make a comeback before they'll admit that HEY, vaccines might be a GOOD thing to have???

Right, deeeeeeeeep breath.

The "Green our vaccines" so-called movement is nothing more than a sham, a smokescreen to hide their true agenda of discouraging vaccination. They speak of "toxins" in vaccines without acknowledging that they are WRONG about the claim that there is antifreeze in vaccines; that thimerosal has in fact been REMOVED and was no real danger in any event; that our bodies MAKE formaldehyde as a natural metabolic product, and it's circulating around in our bloodstreams right now and the minute amount in vaccines is as the proverbial drop in the bucket; and that aluminum is one of the safest, most innocuous substances known to mankind or toxicology.

Would you like to see evidence for these assertions I'm putting forth? As a skeptic I firmly believe in giving you evidence for claims. Therefore I urge EVERYONE to go read the ScienceBlogs Book Club, wherein this month they are reviewing Dr. Paul Offit's book Autism's False Prophets. In it he talks about the Wakefield scandal, he talks about what the Geiers put Kathleen Seidel through, and about the OVERWHELMING SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that autism is largely genetic-- that it is not the mercury, the aluminum, the formaldehyde, or whatever bugaboo the antivaxxers move the goalposts to next, and it never was.

My emotions on this issue are so raw right now that I can't even talk sensibly about them. I know that these parents who perform all these so-called "biomedical interventions" on their children just feel helpless and want to feel they are DOING SOMETHING to help their child. But right now I have so much anger at them for treating their kids like experiments and for degrading public health to the point that measles is once more endemic to the U.S.A. and Great Britain. The disease was considered ERADICATED in our countries before Wakefield and his ilk started the anti-MMR hysteria-- scaremongering of a sort which is to this day fueled by many media outlets! What people don't understand is that (1) vaccines are SAFE, and (2) that choosing not to vaccinate does not just put your own kids at risk, because unvaccinated kids can spread these deadly diseases to infants who are as yet too young to be vaccinated, to adults who have neglected their every-ten-years booster shots, and to immunocompromised people who cannot be vaccinated. It is socially irresponsible and morally reprehensible to knowingly gamble with the lives of others like that.

Here's the thing... the best and latest research points to autism being largely genetic, and folks with Asperger tendencies (I know full well) can be really hard to talk out of cherished positions. I wonder how many of the Jenny McCarthy crowd have this neurological configuration themselves and just don't know it? It took me until my son was tested to realize that I myself am probably on the spectrum! There are high-functioning autistic adults out in the world-- sometimes where we least expect to find them! By focusing only on the idea that Something has "harmed" their children and "gave" them autism, these parents may be missing the boat on the very real things they can do to help their kids succeed in life-- teaching them, being patient with their different rate of development, and above all, letting go of their preconceived idea of the child who was "taken from them," and loving the child they have.

I am grateful to Dr. Offit for having written this book, and for having endured the hate-filled mudslinging of the antivax crowd. He has done an amazing job combating these myths, and most importantly, he is donating all the royalties from this book to autism research! I'm looking forward to seeing more GOOD research done, so that we can better understand our own neurodiversity. So go pick up a copy-- it's for a great cause.

Also? I'm a Warrior Mother, too-- and I could kick Jenny McCarthy's ass. ;)

I thank my best friend in the first grade for my nonbelief in the Bible!

My best bud at age six was a proud Jewish girl, and she delighted in telling me stories from the Old Testament. I really enjoyed it, too! They were thrilling, and she was a gifted storyteller. She told me the tales of Solomon and the two women with the baby, David and Goliath, Joshua at Jericho, Noah and the ark, the legend of the first Hanukkah, Moses and the Pharaoh and the ten plagues and the flight out of Egypt, Joseph and his dreams... engaging, suspense-filled tales, all!

At regular intervals during the narrative, my friend routinely noted how "you Christians" had oppressed and enslaved her people. "Ooh!" I nodded seriously, sympathetically, mentally resolving never to oppress or enslave any Jews as long as I lived!

Every night I would go home and repeat these tales to my dad, whose response was always an exasperated, "Tell her we're not Christians, we're Qabbalists." This passed right over my head; I thought "Christian" was the default term for "anyone not a Jew." (Only recently did I think to wonder whether my friend had thought so, too, as the ancient Egyptians seemed to fall into her "Christian" category as well!)

With an intro to the Bible like this, it's perhaps not surprising that I grew up equating it with stories told in Greek and Norse myths. It was a holy book to some people, but clearly one of many, and I didn't see how anyone could really BELIEVE the stuff in it. Well, I sort of believed stuff like that could happen a long, long time ago, in the same way I believed in Egyptian mummy curses and that dragons and unicorns roamed Europe in fairy tale days of old. (I was six. Gimme a break.)

Imagine my surprise when I discovered there were people, some in my close family, who believed it literally.

I was shocked. How could anyone really believe in this god, believe in this god's benevolence, when the whole book is packed with stories illustrating god's cruelty??? I mean, come ON!!!

Growing up in the Bible Belt, I all-too-often heard phrases along the lines of, "If God had wanted man to fly, we would have been born with wings!" To which I always wanted to reply, "Then why were we born with brains and hands to build an airplane?" To me it seems so silly, whether you believe in God or not, to think that we weren't meant to use our brains to understand creation! That's why the current political power of fundamentalists really scares me-- so many of them want people to accept the Bible as truth, which cuts off so many areas of scientific inquiry that could actually help make the world a better place. Perhaps they want to force people to think of Heaven as the only hope.

Another great shocker was gifted me many years later by my post-college roommate. I remarked in an offhanded manner that no one but fundamentalists really believes in the literal "virgin birth" of Jesus, and she declared, "Actually, I do." This was probably the most intelligent person I've ever met speaking, and I was flabbergasted. I asked how she could possibly rationalize that, and she said, "It's called faith."

See, that's a conversational brick wall. There's no way to talk someone out of that, and in a way, I don't care to. It's not my business what people believe, as long as that belief harms no one. But on the other hand, I wonder why people even feel the need to believe in stuff like virgin births? Why is faith in the irrational that great in God's eyes, this God who according to this very myth created Man in His own image... and gave us the brains with which to think? Why is it so many people feel God gets upset when we use our brains?

Well, here it comes, 'round to the Old Testament again. Yes, Original Sin. Eve's choosing the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The loss of innocence, the expulsion from the Garden. Some people receive the impression from their religious teachings that knowledge is evil and only by blindly believing can grace be restored. And, you know what? I choose to use my brain. I choose knowledge, curiosity, and learning. I would rather incur any Hell in a putative afterlife than worship a deity on those terms.

But I think I won't be burning in Hell, because I see no evidence it exists. There's simply no more reason to believe in Hell than in Niflheim, Orcus, Hades, or any of the other mythological Lands of the Dead. Or that a crocopantherpotamus will eat my disembodied heart post-mortem... which at least would be kind of cool to watch. Because when it comes right down to it, they're all just stories that we're being asked to take on faith.

So thanks, Lisa, for giving me a good foundation in Biblical skepticism at such an early age! :)

Denialism... where I least expect it!!!!

I have a confession to make.

I am a denialist.

I am a sleep apnea denialist.

More to the point, I'm living in denial of my own (CLEAR, PROMINENT, a-wild-ferret-could-diagnose-me, even if said ferret had never MET me) sleep apnea.

I know I have it. I know I would feel WORLDS better if I would just (1) go to a doctor for a proper sleep study, (2) get allergy shots, (3) sleep with a CPAP machine.

So why am I living in denial instead of making a single phone call to a doctor and taking this positive step to make my life better?

I think that I'm afraid of confronting my own mortality, and CPAP machines make me think of hospitals and death.

This is dumb, and I need to get over it.

(This extremely terse post brought to you by lack of decent sleep, followed by a morning spent chaperoning a school field trip of nine autistic K through 3rd graders, and an afternoon mad scramble to turn a project in by deadline. Hopefully I will blog about something interesting tomorrow.)