So yesterday I had to heroically jump in to save Russell Glasser who was stranded without Non-Prophets Podcast co-hosts. For an hour, I chopped it up with him and a handful of others:
Incidentally, if you want to read my takedown of the Black Atheists of Atlanta, you can read it here. Please be sure to read the follow-up as well.
I will have more thoughts on the Wisconsin temple shooting later today.
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We are playing two shows this weekend, so I’m going to be all messed up by Monday. If it shows in the writing then I do apologize.
Until then, here’s a video of me singing one of my favourite cover tunes:
Enjoy! Or don’t. Or… I dunno, something else.
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On Sunday morning I had another opportunity to participate in a Google+ hangout with some of my fellow FTBorg:
We talked about, among other things, why these ‘social justice’ issues – feminism, anti-racism, gender and sex equality, etc. – are so prevalent on the Freethought Blogs network. The video is below the fold:
Last week I sat down with Daniel Fincke from the FTBlog Camels with Hammers to chat about race and race-related subject matters. We were trying out the Google+ hangout environment that we used for last week’s FTB + Skepchick group conversation. I imagine that I’ll be finding more ways to use this tool and be releasing more videos.
We got cut off by a dropped connection, so there’s two parts:
We talked about a number of fun topics, including
It was a fun and productive conversation, and I enjoyed myself a great deal! Hope you enjoy it too.
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*I feel it necessary to apologize for the inconsistent posting recently. Up until now I have prided myself on keeping a regular schedule; however, some recent (positive) changes in my day-to-day schedule have made blogging consistently a bit more difficult. I am trying to make adjustments, but those will take some time.
Some of you may know that I play in a band called CROWN. What you may not know is that I don’t play in a band called CROWN anymore. We changed our name back in April to Even Handed Odds, reflecting not only a change in our lineup (we added a drummer), but the fact that there are a million things out there called “Crown”, which made us really tough to find on the internet. Since the name change, we played our first show as a 5-piece at The Backstage Lounge, a restaurant/live music venue on Vancouver’s beautiful Granville Island.
We shot this video at the gig:
Anyway, more shameless self-promotion.
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So this week I “rediscovered” the joys of performing at open mic nights. Back in my grad school days, solo open mic performance was one of my favourite leisure activities. Since moving to Vancouver, it has been a much more rare occasion to see me perform without the aid of my band-mates (even before Even Handed Odds formed, Stu and I used to hold down open mics as a duo). In an effort to boost the band, however, I went to a open mic this past Monday and was once again bitten by the bug. While I definitely prefer to play music with other people, there really is something about being up on that stage by yourself.
Anyway, this Wednesday I picked up my guitar and tromped to a local spot that does open mic. I had a buddy there, who filmed this song for me:
I was a little rusty – I’ll probably take a run at this again sometime. Once again, apologies for the sound quality. Here’s the original if you’ve been trapped under a rock for the past 15 or so years and haven’t heard it. Also, one of the greatest music videos of all time:
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Last week I gave a 20-minute presentation to the BC Humanist Association on the importance of understanding Black History. It is a longer version of last Monday’s post, given to about 30 Humanists at one of the Association’s regular meetings. The point I was trying to get across is that it’s important to study our history honestly, as it can help us adapt to challenges we face today, and those we will face tomorrow.
The video is below the fold: … Continue Reading
Those of you who read my intro post, or who have been reading for a while, or who know me personally, know that I play in a band called CROWN. If I could go to the band store and pick out the components of my perfect band, I would end up with something that very closely resembles CROWN. It’s a rare pleasure to get to work with 3 other creative people with no egos or private agendas – all our decisions are consensus-based, and even a big chunk of our song-writing is fully collaborative. I also get to hop around to many different instruments and enjoy both the spotlight and supporting roles.
This past Friday a friend of the band’s* shot some videos and stills at our regular live performance at the King’s Head, which is a restaurant in Kitsilano. She compiled them into a pretty impressive video:
The song playing over the video is one of our original tunes, called “Gravity”**. It’s available on iTunes for download, or you could just come to the King’s Head tonight and buy a CD from me in person. Hope you enjoy the video!
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*Who is a great photographer should you be trying to memorialize some upcoming event
** Yes, that’s me singing lead vocals. Line up single file please, ladies…
Many of you know that I am a volunteer with the Vancouver branch of the Centre for Inquiry. One of the regular events that CFI Vancouver hosts is called Cafe Inquiry, which is a moderated group discussion on a variety of topics. This past weekend, I was honoured to be asked to moderate a discussion on a topic of my choosing. Given that I’ve previously given a presentation on the subject of racism and skepticism, I thought I would try and tackle one of the other tent-poles of this blog: free speech.
The issue I chose to present for discussion was Canada’s hate speech laws, and whether or not they are a good thing. This is a topic for which there are strong arguments to be made on both sides, and I thought it was particularly well-suited to a group discussion rather than a didactic presentation. I brought this question to the group, as well as a number of other questions that were of particular interest to secularists and atheists.
My purpose at this event was to moderate a discussion rather than to present my own personal opinion. While I do have a position on this issue, it was not my place to defend that position to the group, although I was prepared to be the only one in the room to advocate it. Luckily, there were an abundance of opinions on both sides of the issue, allowing me to fulfill my role as facilitator rather than partisan. I gave a brief presentation outlining the parameters of the debate, and then tried to step back and let the discussion take its course.
I’ve posted the video of the discussion, which took place over 2 hours. The battery on our camera died before the end, but I will summarize the group consensus. You can see the slides here. (Please note: Having problems with Youtube, and have to re-up all my videos. Process is taking longer than I would have liked – hopefully it will be resolved by the end of the day, but my apologies for the fact that this isn’t ready on time).
Overall, I was very happy with how the discussion turned out. I was disappointed that the group didn’t spend more time talking about the effect that hateful speech can have in terms of discrimination, but other than that I think we hit all of the high points. We took an informal poll at the beginning, asking people whether they supported laws against hate speech. As I suspected, the number explicitly supporting them dropped from 6 to 4 (out of about 20 people) – many people maintained that they were “fence sitters”, which is really the only logical position to have in a discussion that has such depth and difference of opinion. The argument that seemed to hold the most sway was the open question of whether or not hate speech laws actually reduce hate speech, or if they are redundant with the social pressures that do a pretty good job of accomplishing that already.
While I am a proponent of unrestricted free speech, even hateful speech, I am cognizant of the fact that there are a number of reasons why it is desirable to reduce the amount of hate speech in society. Primarily, we have to be concerned with the safety of others, and hateful speech can and does lead to hateful actions against people. Secondarily, hate speech leads to systemic discrimination, which violates the idea of the rule of law. Finally, hate speech is morally wrong, and those who violate moral precepts should be punished.
My problem with outlawing unpopular speech is that it often doesn’t work – by setting up “dog whistle” phrases for certain prejudiced attitudes that don’t qualify as “hate speech” but communicate the same ideas, we drive attitudes underground where they can fester. Putting bigotry out in the open allows us to deal with it, and gives us opportunities to learn from it. Secondarily, I am concerned by the arbitrary way in which we select which groups are protected by these laws. I can see the same arguments about “hateful speech” used to censor legitimate criticism of religion, or criticism of any majority group just as easily as a minority group. The ‘victim card’ that majority groups like to play to cast themselves as on the receiving end, rather than behind the wheel, of discrimination will surely see them deputize hate speech laws in this way. I am not comfortable with legitimate criticism being cast as hate in any circumstance, and I am concerned that these laws will be used to accomplish this.
Anyway, all that being said, I think it was a great event and I really enjoyed being part of the conversation. Enjoy the video.
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Welcome Pharyngulites and redditors! Please make sure to check out the preamble to this post before watching the videos.
Many of you are probably aware that I was invited to speak about race, racism and its relevance to the skeptical movement at the beginning of the month. The event was part of a lecture series under the name New Bright Lights (I’d provide a link, but there’s no homepage), in which speakers on a variety of topics are invited to discuss their subject of expertise.
I was a bit nervous to participate in this event, for a few reasons. I am not now, nor have I ever been, afraid to speak in public. However, I am not an expert with a strong academic background in issues of race. I am a relative newcomer, despite the fact that the issues have been of particular relevance to me my whole life. In addition, there is a lot of information that an audience needs to be equipped with before most of this content can be understood. Part of my reason for starting this blog was in response to repeated requests from friends for more clarification on issues they hadn’t discussed before for fear of being labeled as bigots.
I am glad that I decided to participate, however. It forced me to re-tool my blog content for a different method of delivery, and helped me clarify a few issues in my own mind about how my life as a skeptic is not divorced from my life as an anti-racist. Jason Harmer at New Bright Lights was gracious enough to fast-track the video production for me so that I could put it up for you. A few caevats before you watch though:
So without any further delay, here are the videos:
Feedback is, as always, appreciated.
Crommunist 