Forgive Me, Steve. I Might Not Buy an iPad

So I don't think I'm going to pre-order an iPad tomorrow. This is a big deal, considering my devotion to The Steve (peace be upon him). I have what I call my Apple Fund, a chunk of my personal spending money socked away in the even of a major tech gadget unveiling that I feel I must snap up immediately upon its release into the wild, and I usually assume this device to be made by His Industrial Design-ed-ness, The Steve (pbuh).

And the iPad looks fantastic. I am unimpressed by arguments that its lack of Flash or camera makes it sub-par. I believe Stephen Fry when, well, he says anything, but also when he says that one must actually make contact with the device to understand why it's so great. My Apple Fund was locked and loaded to be splurged on the iPad.

But a little bit of grownuppy realism sunk in--though it wasn't all as boring and dispiriting as it sounds. I have an iPhone 3Gs, which is still a piece of magic to me. Calling it a phone seems absurd to me now--it's a computer that happens to make phone calls. It continues to amaze me how many more genuinely useful things developers manage to cull from its hardware.

I also own a Kindle, which I also adore. And I think I love it as much for its limitations as its capabilities. Yes, having all my books in one light device is great, as is the ability to buy online right from the device, as is the ability to take syncable notes and have instant, in-book access to the dictionary. But it's also fantastic in that it doesn't do anything else (well, at least not well; its Web browser is crap). Only lately, that my job requires so much computer and Internet work, and that I am driven to exhaustion by job and baby, that I realize that the Kindle's singular purpose, to be an e-book reader, makes it the perfect way to escape, to sit and envelope oneself in the text of a book, just as one would do with a print book. No emails, no Facebook notifications, just the book, but a little better.

And part of the draw of the iPad was that I wanted the next, better version of the Kindle. But the iPad is backlit, like the iPhone. I actually can and do enjoy reading on the iPhone, but I love reading on the Kindle, with its cozy e-ink display, and that's a big clue--it's very unlikely that the iPad will serve as a replacement for the Kindle. Perhaps as an augmentation, but that would be it.

And with that consideration put away, I am left with, well, a big iPhone, as the cliché goes. But if you think of the iPhone as a computer, and then you simply think of the iPad as a larger, more hands-friendly version of that, the logic behind owning all three of these devices loses its appeal. I am guessing that I will still prefer reading on the Kindle, and that computing on the iPad will not be sufficiently better than it is on an iPhone to justify the addition of this device.

Also: There'd be no way I would also shell out for the 3G-enabled version of the iPad and pay an extra data subscription fee on top of it all, so then we're talking about a device that's good only when there's WiFi around. I know that WiFi is more ubiquitous than it's ever been, but come on, how reliable is WiFi outside your own house? How often do you really get a good signal? Or a free one? This essentially limits the iPad's usefulness to my home. And I have a big, fat iMac for that.

So I may continue to lust for the iPad, but I won't be getting it just yet. I could be persuaded, I'm sure, for The Steve (pbuh) works in mysterious ways. But for now, the Apple Fund remains safely tucked away, but always ready to spring for, say, the iPhone 4G or the Kindle 3.

Why You Maybe Shouldn't Buy DiskWarrior

The wife's hard drive crashes. After doing my research, it looks like buying DiskWarrior is the solution to at least salvaging something of the drive. It's about $100, but totally worth it if it works.

It doesn't. So here I am with hundred-dollar software that I will never use again. I make this case to the DiskWarrior folks, Alsoft. They say, "No refunds." I say, "I know, but I bought it just for this one thing, and I will never use it again. I promise I'll delete it." They say, in essence, "Screw you. It is not useless. You might use it down the road. No refund for you."

So this is important, I think. A tough lesson learned. You may find yourself in a similar pickle, and decide, hey, this universally-beloved hard drive saving software is just what I need in this hour of desperation! And then, like me, you find it was not the fix you were hoping for.

And then you're stuck with it.

Perhaps I didn't know enough about what I needed. But it also seems to me that the onus is at least somewhat on the makers of this highly technical product to make it clearer to layfolk like myself -- and I am no Luddite or computer novice here. In the end my purchasing decisions are my own, so that responsibility is ultimately mine, but I can't help but feel somewhat screwed that there was nothing to tell me, "Hey, this isn't going to do what you think it will."

The lesson: If you need to fix something that's broken now, you probably shouldn't buy DiskWarrior. It seems pretty clear to me that the only reason you'd buy it is so it can do what it does do eventually. In other words, it's "whatever-DiskWarrior-fixes" insurance. You may never use it, but I suppose they want you to buy it so you feel snug and secure or something. But save you in your time of need? Don't bet on it.

Starscream is so F*cked

Metatron: Jews believe him to be the leader of the angels.

Megatron: Jews believe him to be the leader of the Decepticons.

- Joel Grus

Dreams from the Father?

I recently read Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, and it took a couple of weeks before something about it dawned on me. While Obama gained a lot of early national political credibility when he began to strongly advocate for more engagement with and embrace of faith in the Democratic Party, and often espoused his own religiousness and Christian-ness during the campaign, these themes seemed wholly absent from Dreams.

When Obama does deal with religion in the book’s narrative, it is almost exclusively raw pragmatism, figuring out how to harness existing religious institutions in Chicago and learning how to navigate their politics. To the best of my memory, at no point does Obama claim a “come-to-Jesus” moment in which he sees the proverbial light and converts from idealistic wanderer to committed Christian.

Perhaps this is more apparent in The Audacity of Hope, which, I have to admit, I have no inclination to read whatsoever. For while our president is obviously a very skilled and fluid writer, I am not inclined to use up my time on what from what I understand is essentially a campaign book, primarily published as an excuse for a by Rev. You-Know-God-Damn-America-Who, and I take it that it elaborates on his position on religious engagement Obama takes in his semi-famous 2006 Call to Renewal speech.

But it strikes me as interesting that his since-super-hyped Christianity is not apparent in Dreams. I suppose he could have had his Francis-Collins-meets-a-waterfall moment after having written the book, but somehow, I can’t help but think that Dreams serves as a truer foundation for where Obama is spiritually. The mysteries of the cosmos are too vast to be dealt with by mere mortals (“above his pay grade,” as it were), but only a stupid politician or community organizer would overlook the potential force behind an already-unified and malleable contingent of believers, and in the quest to do some good, not think to oneself, “I need to get them on my side.”

I’m not jumping on the Obama-as-closet-atheist bandwagon, because I see no evidence for it. But Dreams makes me suspect that if Obama is a Christian, it is more in the philosophical sense than in the theological. But, I stress, it is just a guess.

A Reason to Give a Damn

That's my boy.

Space Goggles

This is very serious; even we space captains must use caution. We will all don our amazing space goggles, so that we may protect our eyes from dangerous levels of space magic!

Of course, no goggles for frowny-faced Hojatoleslam.

Boundaries

Let me just get this out of the way, for formality's sake. As I mentioned to some who follow me on Facebook and Twitter, I have a new job, and that job places me in a more formal position within the atheist movement. This, of course, can put a minor strain on what I now say publicly in regards to atheism, religion, politics, etc., as one can never tell what will be in conflict with the message of my organization, what might reflect one way or the other on said organization, and on and on. So let me simply say that nothing on this blog or on my Examiner column is in any way endorsed by, approved by vetted by, associated with, married to, dating, or has in any way to do with the organization that employs me. That said, I will be experimenting post by post with what I feel is now appropriate given my new role. This concerns me very little, frankly, and I don't expect any readers would really even notice a difference, particularly since I have expanded the scope of this blog beyond mere godlessness. I will, however, never blog about my employers' activities, or anything to do with the group, other than perhaps promote my own appearance at an event or when I am giving an address, simply to let you know I'll be doing it, but that'll be it. Okay? Okay.

Speaking of which, I'll be speaking this Sunday to the Center for Inquiry's DC branch, doing my "new taxonomy for atheists" spiel. This, too, has nothing whatsoever to do with the aforementioned employing organization.

Whew.

Less a Tragedy Than a Deadly Farce, or, That's One Dead Phoenix!

I keep waiting for the glimmer of hope, the silver lining. In fact, I am often promised it, but it is so rarely delivered.

I am speaking of the recent spate of "Is America Doomed?" articles that have cropped up of late as our government has so clearly demonstrated its uselessness, cowardice, gluttony, laziness, and short-sightedness, aided and abetted by a media with that covers the goings-on with all the depth of middle school cafeteria gossip.

Two of these doom articles come to mind; both of them espouse hope, and then offer none. I'll go easier on the first, Paul Krugman's piece in today's New York Times. The false hope is probably more the fault of editors, or because he is trying for a pithy title that fits the thesis of his piece. Entitled "America is Not Lost," one might think that Mr. Krugman intends to buck us up. Alas.

We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.

What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. . . . Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it. 

Well, that hurt. Mostly, I am disappointed with the promise offered by The Atlantic's James Fallows for his cover piece which boldly claims to know "How America Can Rise Again." Hooray! Like the phoenix, we can rise again!

Only Fallows' piece offers no evidence at all to support the cheery headline. If anything, Fallows makes clear why America is not "rising" any time soon, and that the best we can hope for is to muddle through by gnawing away at the edges of policy, stepping around the cracks and mines, and hope America doesn't turn into Mad Max. Despite some tepid examples of America's toughing it out in rough times and coming out mostly better for it, the real points we are left with are that a) our institutions are incapable of addressing the serious, grave, imminent threats to our security and well-being and b) we haven't the leaders, national will, or existing mechanisms to do anything about it. Rise again!!!

Lawrence Lessig's major piece on changing Congress in The Nation offers no solace, for even though it is supposed to be a prescription to saving us from ourselves (or, more to the point, saving Congress from itself), it is clear that the changes he would like to see enacted could never, ever be passed by the very Congress he damns. Rise again!!!

Look. The Democratic Party is feckless, disjointed, and several vertebra short of a spinal column. The Republican Party is not only unserious about governance, but it's greedy, and at times downright malicious and vengeful to boot. The Tea Party movement, regardless of how it is being portrayed lately by the mainstream media, as some "genuine" uprising of concerned citizens, is an excuse to celebrate willful ignorance, xenophobia, racism, and religious intolerance--why this is not completely obvious is beyond me. The progressive movement can't decide whether to prop up the Democratic Party's festering corpse and engage in a generation-long retelling of Weekend at Bernie's or to nobly go down with the ship of state saying, "Well, at least we tried." What, out of this morass, is supposed to rise up and save us all?

I was among the millions who thought it might be Obama. As the man we sort-of-re-elected president with 52% of the popular vote once said, "Fool me once, shame on...shame on you...y'fool me, can't get fooled again."

...!!!