Well, but a bookshop wouldn't go amiss.

[slemslempike]

I was looking at the website for the British Humanist Association (trying to work out what humanism is, after thinking about a post thatlsugaralmond made), and found this part of their quiz hilarious:

5 When I look at a beautiful view I think that …
A) it must have been designed by God.
B) it would be a nice place for a motorway.
C) this is what life is all about - I feel good.
D) we ought to do everything possible to protect this for future generations.

My general reaction to beautiful views is "oh, that's nice", so I'm probably up there with the unsustainable-transport-planners in many people's eyes. I don't tend to be moved by scenery, although hedgerows do bring out an occasional patriotic murmur. I'm thinking that the BHA is not the place for me, based on that.

Today I finshed The Archaeology of Knowledge. The main outcome of this is that I can now say that I've read The Archaeology of Knowledge, as long as it's in a situation where there will be absolutely NO follow-up questions. Tomorrow will be spent going through the spark notes guide to work out what it actually means. I made an icon from the phdcomic feed, because it seems that it's going to become useful very soon , and I thought that if I needed to make a post and illustrate it with an icon of despair, it would only be exacerbated if I had to make the icon as well. It was mostly in Photoshop, but I couldn't work out how to do a border, so I saved it and then did the border in Paint.

This time next month I'll be in Africa.

Comments

[nerdcakes.livejournal.com]

I LOVE YOUR PAINT SKILLZ. Truly you are hardcore.

And, dude! Don't you always look out at beautiful rolling countryside and think fond thoughts of bulldozers? I know that I sure do!

Humanism always struck me as something I should really look into. Mostly this was becuase of Linda Smith and because I was working from the shoddy guesswork assumption that is was connected with atheism in some way, but it's been sort of peripherally in the vicinity of my radar for a while now. THAT'S how serious I am about it. Dude.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm just too advanced for Photoshop.

Most beautiful rolling countrysides that I come across make me think "just how late is this train running". I do feel a bit crap about it. Surely I'm meant to be moved by mountains? But there's nothing can compare to a Penhall, so what's the point?

I only thought of Humanism because of Linda Smith! Lsugaralmond linked to the national secular society as well, which seems a bit less quiz-prone.

[netgirl-y2k.livejournal.com]

I'm currently convinced that there's a giant conspiracy involving Glasgow city council finding out where I work and deciding to have massive roadworks on every possible route between there in my house. So right now I tend to look at every piece of un-tarmacked land and think 'if there were a road over there I could be driving on that instead of sitting in this logjam.'

Does this make me a terrible person? Possibly.

Would this make me a person who is not late for work? Definately.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Start driving a bulldozer, so you can either get through the traffic, or start work on the extra roads while you're waiting.

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

When you look at a poll, your first reaction is to:

a) consider which of the answers most accurately reflects your attitude.

b) make sure all the answers are the same type of sentence fragment and form a grammatical whole with the introductory bit so that your head doesn't explode OMG.

c) tick all the ticky boxes!

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I don't see an option for motorways in that poll, so I'm not going to take it.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

There are some texts about which it is not true to say one didn't understand a word, the words aren't the problem, it's the sentences and the paragraphs that they're in that are totally impenetrable.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Having had a look at the spark notes, almost everything has sunk in anyway, but it's nice to have it confirmed. I just wish he wouldn't do that thing of saying "could discourse be this?" followed by pages of words with me going "oh that's interesting" and then he goes "NO! It's not! HAHAHAHAH" Only in French.

[lsugaralmond.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit hazy on the differences between atheism and humanism to be honest, but the reason I decided to go with atheism is largely down to this text, which was originally used in testimony in a court case in the United States in 1959 about compulsory school prayer:

An atheist loves himself and his fellow man instead of a god. An atheist thinks that heaven is something for which we should work for now — here on earth — for all men together to enjoy. An atheist accepts that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, subdue and enjoy it. An atheist thinks that only in knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment.

Therefore, he seeks to know himself and his fellow man rather than to 'know' a god. An atheist knows that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist knows that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.

He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man. He wants an ethical way of life. He knows that we cannot rely on a god nor channel action into prayer nor hope for an end of troubles in a hereafter. He knows that we are our brothers' keepers in that we are, first, keepers of our lives; that we are responsible persons, that the job is here and the time is now.

That about sums up my thinking on the subject. So atheist I am.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, that text reads a lot like humanism to me - with the focus on ethics. Because I don't think that being an atheist does mean that I want disease conquered, or that not being an atheist would mean that I was all about the spreading. And I'm not an atheist because I want the world to be a better place. I do want the world to be a better place, and I'd like it if that "better" was defined on non-religious grounds, which seems more like secular than humanist. It's so confusing! I guess I'm secure with atheism, but hazy on the differences between humanism and secularism.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I have to admit I always associated humanism solely with non-religious funerals and with my mother's bonkers religious friend (the one who actually does believe that God will bring about the apocalypse by means of store loyalty cards, because she told me so at length) occasionally sputtering 'Humanism IS A RELIGION!' apropos of absolutely nothing like Old Faithful erupting.

I was a bit confused by the quiz, as I was mostly D with occasional Cs and kept expecting to come out as 'you are a quite militant atheist' whereas apparently I'm their target market.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I think that humanism is an addition to atheism? Like you might be a Christian, but then there are denominations. Possibly. And not that I think that atheism is a religion, but I couldn't find an analogy. Oh! Atheism is like the main Sims game, and then humanism is one of the add-ons, so you play the game through the humanist disk, but it's all based on whether or not you have atheism installed.

[irrtum.livejournal.com]

H'mm. I went from pretty devout Christian to agnostic to aetheist. I used to define my own agnosticism in terms of no longer occupying myself with questions about the existence of a deity - so not caring rather than not knowing. Not that that has much to do with anything. I don't personally think aetheism is to do with ethics or morals though. Some friends used to criticise humanism as a way of asserting human superiority over everything else.

And I love your icon! I teared up today when I was teaching, because it was a film on the Argentinian dictatorship. Is that inappropriate? And finally - bucolic nature quite often makes me weep, as do bulldozers, but for different reasons.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I don't know about appropriate - if it felt comfortable to you, then I'd say it wasn't inappropriate. Or does film studies emphatically not look at viewer response?

I like cityscapes better than nature, I think.

[whatho.livejournal.com]

Hedgerows don't do it for me. I like dry-stone walls though.

Africa! Such excitement.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I had been aware that I was going soon, but had utterly overlooked that that meant I had to do all my Christmas shopping by about NOW because I will be away. Oh dear. But I am really excited.

Dry stone walls! My parents once spent a teenage summer together building dry stone walls. They are also rather stirring. I also like allotment fences, but not other fences, generally.

I think I am about to start cooking jeruslem artichokes. I have absolutely no idea what they taste like, and it's a little worrying.

[owl]

The way I do borders in Photoshop is to crop the icon to 98x98, then set the backgroud colour to what I want the border to be, then do Image Size and set it back to 100x100.