Chris Dwan

Author: cdwan

  • Atheist.

    Went to the Providence Atheist Meetup last night, and had a pretty good time. My friend Dan has been encouraging me to speak my mind and to push the group in the direction that I think they should go. After some coaching from _earthshine_, I went for it.

    I sat next to one of the officers of the Greater Worchester Humanists. I asked him what the club did. We danced around the fact that, really, they don’t *do* anything. Sure, they’re getting Chomsky as a guest speaker this summer. Sure, they have bylaws … but what do you *do*? Nothing. He offered up front that he is frustrated that they’re so small that they can’t sponsor significant charity on their own. I suggested that they might do well to find allies in the world who also want to do good. They might even have to choke back their bile and work side by side with people of faith.

    That went over about as well as might be expected … but I decided to keep at it.

    We talked about Haiti, about the protesters at the ACOG conference, and about thinking locally. How the vast majority of people who attend church do so because it’s their culture, because it’s where their family and friends and support network are. Because they wake up and want to do good in the world. We talked about the fact that if you try to do good in the world, you *will* wind up shoulder to shoulder with people of faith … and that fact should teach both parties something very important.

    Most particularly I said this:

    I can’t stomach adding any more negativity to the world. I can’t simmer and stew in irritation of my own making. To that end, Dawkins, Harris, and the other angst-stirring militant atheists hold little attraction for me. Sure, they’re clever. Of course, within their own world of logic, they’re terribly compelling. But fundamentally they’re in it to pick fights and to upset people. That may be fine and good for them … but I need to focus on creating positives in the world … rather than grinding and accentuating negatives.

  • Be easily satisfied.

    Something occurred to me this morning. I think it’s one of those simple truths that underlay a whole bunch of other, more complex behaviors and pieces of advice. Namely:

    The more complex and specific your desires are, the less likely you are to be satisfied and happy.

    For example:

    This morning, I was hungry. I wanted breakfast. I didn’t particularly care about the particulars, so long as there was coffee involved. I went where we were going and ordered what appealed to me out of the choices available. I ate. I was happy.

    While eating, I watched a person in line get very upset that they couldn’t have the raisin bagel today. Oh le SIGH, whatever shall I eat from this huge case, groaning with tasty food if I cannot have le SIGH the raisin bagel.

    Similarly, I see friends and acquaintances with very specific desires for their employment … their house … their love life … I see them being very upset when they have to vary from these detailed requirements for happiness. I wish I could convince them to expand the thing that they can control … their requirements for success … instead of being unhappy where they are.

    (Note: No I’m not talking about you. Don’t be so vain.)

    Maybe I’ve just given up on always getting what I want. Maybe I just have so much goodness and plenty around me that I’ve lost perspective on what it is to suffer and want. Still. I’m really very happy right now.

    On the other hand, I would really, really like it if my ‘R’ key worked consistently. It’s sticking. Grrrrrr.

  • Moon bounce

    We had a party today, in honor of redmeds graduation. amnesiadust, capital_l, technolope, justkidding_nr, and sacredangle were all there, as was the mighty giraffe moon bounce.

    I wound up being attacked by four kids at once in the moon bounce. Two would grab my ankles, and the other two would push me over. It was hilarious.

    Is there video, you ask? Aw heck yeah, there’s video.

  • Sneaky moves

    So, I’ve been playing this little game lately with my credit card companies, and it’s taken an interesting turn. Perhaps my opponents are more wily than they first appeared … but I shall have the last laugh!

    here’s the game

  • Cat cam

    This is too funny. A guy in germany tied a camera to his cat and let him roam for the day … and then made up little narratives from the pictures that it took.

    f’ing brilliant.

    For example: Look, is there a cat meeting under the car?

  • Knot of pain

    Both redmed and I woke up this morning with wicked muscle knots in our shoulders. Mine has survived the hot beanbag, the ibuprofen, and the slow and deliberate stretching (both positive and negative, thanks for asking). I’ve also done the “rub your back against a doorframe” dance for a while … to bemused looks from my cats.

    Grrrrrrr.

  • Permit me

    Permit me to share, for a second.

    This fellow, at TED, shares a remarkable bit of his journey of faith. It parallels mine, in many respects.

    I highly, highly recommend that everyone watch at least one TED talk a week. It’s good for the soul.

  • 10,000 days

    10,000 Days, by Tool

  • Not entirely bad

    It’s been a pretty good couple of days.

    Spent the weekend out in the catskills with technolope, capital_l, multiplexer, ect, mcniadh, aerospcgrl, and Nichole, whose LJ handle I do not know fire_starter_. Ostensibly, it was an “art” weekend. Many of the participants practiced their artistic hobbies … which included everything from painting to chainmail making. For my part, the closest I got to art was in playing my cello and practicing my forms (hey, I’m a ‘martial artist’, right?). Still, I walked into it with a goal of getting some quality, undistracted, thinking done … and I certainly did that.

    Compassion, compassion, compassion. It really all comes down to acting with compassion.

    Had a funny experience at work today – I think I was stuck in the mud and not as open as I could be to a new and nifty technology. My colleague cariaso suggested a very innovative way to use content tags on a wiki instead of making up a web based database of some sort. My initial reaction was to pooh-pooh it … but as we wrangled the idea around … it’s actually very clever. If you’re trying to manage a small to moderate number of very free-form documents … with a small number of pieces of metadata which might be consistent across them … some clever scripting on a wiki can do it for you. Turns out that this is almost exactly the case when you’re dealing with a small lab that needs to keep track of experiments. here is kinda what I’m talking about.

  • Intention

    I find myself floating intentionless. Cut me some slack: It’s LiveJournal … it’s *supposed* to be whiney.

    I’m back from the latest in an interminable series of business trips. Things seem to be in solid shape to hand off to other people … at least the soul crushing travel aspects of it. This weekend, I’m off to the Catskills to create art with creative and interesting people. Hopefully they won’t kick my mopey ass off the ranch.

    Caught up with sacredangle last night in Baltimore. The new apartment looks good. He showed me an amazing Indian place that, so far as I could tell, made our incredible meal from scratch.

    redmed graduates in a week. We have rented a moon bounce. We’re discussing a lightning trip to Detroit the weekend after that … followed by a week at the beach? Who knows.

    The inspection sticker on my car was only a month out of date … so I decided to get that done this morning. Hooray for noticing details.

    I still have no capacity to articulate my thoughts from Haiti. They’re all images and feelings … no conclusions or wisdom.