A Brita Water Filter Ad

"So drinking bottled water is like giving your car a blow job"

So I can across this on tree hugger and while it certainly is done by a company with something to gain but it's a great image. Read the whole article here.

We have arrived at Con - Con report 1

Alright so I've gotten to the hotel and unpacked. I've taken a bit of time and given the floors a walk about checking in on the various con-suites as they set up and even visited briefly in the video room. Like every year things are going so and people are getting ready for the convention and visiting with old friends, in some cases even trying to make some new ones. Case in point was the guy in the lobby (He had the look of an Anime fan) sitting with and trying to talk with a girl who looked like she was more of a goth chick. It seemed to go fine but my unspoken advise to him would have been to look for cat-girl instead he would have had better luck with it.

You might be wondering what the hell are I'm I talking about. Anime fan, cat girl, Con? well its all jargon in the lingo of fandom. Alright so the next question you must be asking is what is fandom. just click on the link and it will tell you all you need to know about the term. That brings us to the last thing you are likely trying to figure out and that is where I am. I'm at Keycon it is the local sci-fi and fantasy convention here in my town of Winnipeg.

This is the first of several con reports that I will be posting through out the weekend. I'll even be throwing up pictures as time allows and am able to take some. Hope you enjoy the posts and we will post more next time am by the laptop.

Oh for those of you who are long time readers and remember a Thursday Thirteen from ages ago that said I had a secret well. The secret was that I was coming to the convention.

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Things that I need to do more of 1.... Spend time outside. I spend far to much of my day cut off from nature, at work the people closest to the windows even keep the blinds closed. 2.... Do More Exercise I get to the gym about three times a week on average for roughly an hour each time. Its just not enough for the weight lose I want to do. 3.... Writing I love writing and found I really enjoyed it during NANO, I just have to stop letting things distract me. 4.... Ritual Mine is a faith of doing and I find myself rarely doing more then talking and I don't like that fact. 5.... Proofing / Editing I hate proofing what I have wrote but I realize it has to be done. So am always trying to avoid it and it has to stop. 6.... Mediation This is something I have tried to do a few times over the years but it is something I've never quiet been able to make the time for on a regular basis. 7.... Spend more time with my Daughter My daughter is getting older and closer to the time when she will be moving out. There is a lot left to show her and I want to spend what time I can with her. 8.... Working on the Podcast This one is something new in my life but something I am excited about working on and really looking forward too. 9.... Reading I read a fair amount already but there are so many books on my shelf that call out to me sitting there unread. 10.. Spending more time with my wife She is a lovely woman who enjoy spending any time I can with so why not spend more with her. 11.. Eat more veggies This is traditionally the smallest portion on my plate and it should be the biggest. 12.. Eat more salad This one is pretty easy since for the most part I don't eat any salad. 13.. Spend more time on me

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What buddha didn't teach

I find myself enthralled as I read about author Tim Ward’s experience living in the International Forest Monastery. The book offers a candid look at life in Thai monastery told from Tim Ward’s own point of view and experiences. He also shares some of the experiences of those he met along the way on his journey. I cannot help but wonder how some of the other monks would feel about it should they know what he wrote about them.

Tim and an American named Jim arrive at the Monastery at basically the same time and the two of them basically become the main characters of the book. The rest of the monks basically made them in to twins at the start of the book by not being able to tell them apart and often referring to them as the one. While not something they desired originally lead to the two of them bonding over the course of the book and leads a number of interesting conversations.

Am about half way through the book at this point and only have one thing that I dislike about the book is that as the reader we have no real sense of time. At first we know a few days passed because he took his oath and had his head shaved. Slowly however over the course of the book both Tim and Jim begin to notice things that they have moral and ethical problems with. For example they as novices are often indirectly asked to do things against the percepts by the older monks who can’t do something for themselves because it is against the rules. Of course they also can’t ask directly because that to is against the rules. As they see more and more of this and other behaviours they find themselves questioning if the monks are truly enlightened or if they are just lazy people who have found there perfect place in life. Sadly because the book doesn’t offer any time frames we are left with no idea of how long this took.

I want to end on a positive note because over the entire book has been very good so far. So to close at least for now I’m going to mention the rest of the cast, Tim has gone to great lengths to reveal little bits about each of the different characters at the monastery. So many of them are interesting and offer little bits of there own secrets out through the story.

Weigh In

Its been a weird couple weeks for me pretty much any spare time I have had has been devoted to working on some costumes. Which as a sad aside we are not going to get them all finished in time. I was fairly certain that the end result would be a weight gain despite my best efforts in the gym. Much to my surprise that wasn't the case I ended up down a pound.

My Weight Chart:

The God Delusion By Richard Dawkins - Closing thoughts

So despite how much am enjoying the new book and really want to write about it I felt I had to offer some closure to the God Delusion. As I look back at the various topics it raised and thoughts it provoked I have to say am very glad that I read it and would recommend it to others as a book to read as well.

As someone who reads a fair amount of religious and spiritual books this was a drastic change for me. The majority of the book focused on Christianity and Islam after all they are the largest part of his target audience so it only seemed fair that they received the lion’s share of the attention. That being said he didn’t leave others out completely he did offer a few references to Zeus and his fellow Greeks. The closest he comes to touching on things like magic is a section on the power of prayer and some studies that were done on the subject.

Richard Dawkins offers up a well laid out argument against religion (any religion) through out the book. He builds on points that he as already made in the book and from time to time refers to points that he will be discussing later in the book. Any argument he that makes are also backed up by science or historical facts. So it makes it very difficult to dismiss or ignore any of points he brings up.

Through out the book a fair amount of devoted to the problems caused by being religious or by religious people. He also shines spot lights on the various and numerous inconsistency that dominant the Christian and Muslim. As I read often found myself having to remind myself of one of the tenants of my own practice, that being “I honour your god” It’s easy when you reading a book like this to forget that. After all if my worship is to be respected and accepted I must in turn accept theirs. (Shame this doesn’t work both ways for the most part)

I haven’t lost my faith after reading it, I have no desire to rush out and become a Humanist. My faith in the God and the Goddess is unshaken and strong as ever, what did leave me with was a much deeper understanding of the Christian faith. It also left me with a strange desire to stop at my local Christian book store and buy an Anti Wicca book just to give it a read.

So pick this book up and give it a read you will be glad that you did.

Misleading News

Here is the link to the article but rather then generate hits and links for them I've included the full article as part of the blog.

http://newsblaze.com/story/20080511092314tsop.nb/newsblaze/OPINIONS/Opinions.html

Eighteen year-old Samantha was like any other person, and her life was far from
perfect.
Her parents divorced when she was 3-years-old. Finding God three
years after the divorce, Samantha's father became very strict and legalistic.
"We weren't allowed to go out with our friends very often. We never went to
the movies," Samantha remembers. "Everything had to be monitored."
Even her
dad's church seemed "cult-like" to her with their regulations. In her eyes,
Samantha's father lived as a hypocrite and she began to resent Christianity as a
whole.
Wanting a religion with fewer rules than the legalistic Christianity
she had been exposed to, Samantha discovered Wicca at age 12 when introduced to
the religion by a friend.
The main rule of the Wicca faith is "Do as thou
will, and it harm none," Samantha says. So as long as she did not hurt anyone
else, Samantha could virtually do whatever it was that she wanted.
As a
nature-based religion, the foundation of Wicca is the gathering of power from
the main elements- Air, Fire, Water, Earth and Spirit.
"I loved it," Samantha
says, "When I physically gathered the Elements' energy, I felt powerful and
calm."
But even with that power she claimed to experience and although she
loved being a part of this rule-less religion, Samantha felt alone and
unsatisfied.
"I just eventually realized that I need rules in my life. I need
some sort of structure, some 'being' that I know is always there," she says.
"And I needed that above all else."
With home life not getting any better,
all Samantha wanted was to be loved. When she was 16, she got involved with her
boyfriend, Nate.* However, Nate was not the prince charming Samantha had hoped
for.
Abusive and controlling, he would get whatever it was he wanted from
Samantha with force.
At first, Samantha tried to fight back, but she
tolerated the abuse. All she ever wanted was to be loved.
"I didn't have that
at home or at school or anywhere, and I knew that even though Nate was going to
beat me up when I was with him, I also knew that there would be a period where
he'd apologize and give me flowers and kiss me and tell me he loved me," she
says. "That's all I really wanted."
But life continued to spin out of
control.
As a result of being raped, Samantha developed a detachment when it
came to sexual intimacy, which is not an uncommon side effect for women who are
rape victims.
At first, it was a way for Samantha to try to regain control
when she voluntarily slept with random men.
"I was telling Nate, in not so
many words, 'Screw you, I have control over my life, and I have people who still
want me,'" she says.
But her addiction only escalated as she began to sleep
with men she only met that night and did favors for men thirty years
older.
Her attempt to take back control over her body only caused her to lose
even more control of her life.
Feeling even emptier, Samantha found a new
boyfriend and new escape- drugs. Her new boyfriend, Derek,* was a cocaine addict
who helped her get involved with the drug and alcohol scene by supplying her
with the drugs that he was taking himself.
"My favorite drug was Ecstasy. It
made everything feel better. Every physical touch was amplified by a thousand,"
she says. "It just made everything happy."
Samantha says she turned to drugs
because it helped her forget everything; but, that turned out to be the biggest
problem of all. Not wanting to deal with the problems of her life, Samantha
continued her downward spiral of sex and drugs in hopes of forgetting the life
she led.
"It's a scary feeling when you wake up the next morning and hear
stories of what you did the night before and you don't remember any of it," she
says. "Especially when the stuff you did isn't even close to who you are or what
you stand for."
Samantha emancipated herself from her parents when she was
17 and became engaged to her druggie boyfriend, Derek. But when Derek went to
jail on drug charges, she says she felt herself reach another dead end.
She
says Derek having gone to jail broke her down completely to give her life over
to God. In the past, it was the fear of being viewed as a hypocrite like her
father that kept her from taking the leap of faith.
But as her adult life
began, she realized she had reached the end of her rope, so she began her new
life with Christ, she says.
"I knew what I had to do, and my life was in such
shambles that I knew that if I didn't turn my life over to God, I was going to
get hurt. I was going to get an STD or die in a drunken car crash or overdose or
something like that," she says.
Now a new Christian, Samantha finally found
the love she has been searching for all along. As a result, her relationships
began to change as well. She is now friends with her parents. Her father, rather
than being judgmental, is now a person she can go to when she's
struggling.
Samantha says she now has the strength to deal with her past. She
recently has been able to come forward about being raped."God has given me the
courage and the strength to come forward and say 'This happened to me. But it is
not who I am,'" she says. "I don't let it define me anymore. I can face it
head-on and am learning to move on."
Samantha is turning her life around as
she is currently getting her GED in the hopes of being able to go to college and
become a counselor for abused women or rape victims.
"I want people to know
that they're not alone in their struggles. I remember feeling so isolated from
people and from God, and that is the worst feeling that you can imagine," she
says. "If I could save one person from staying in an abusive relationship or
turning to drugs and alcohol or being raped, it would be worth every ounce of
pain and humiliation. And, if my life brings one person to God, I would do it
all over again." *Name has been changed to protect the privacy of person.

Please send success and horror stories of your Wiccan experiences to comment@newsblaze.com.

I've read through the article a few times now trying to make sure that I haven't missed anything but am positive I haven't. This poor girls experience has nothing at all to do with her turning to Wicca as a faith path. Her life went to pot when she got an abusive boy friend had she been following rede "Do as thou will, and it harm none," she would have gotten out of the relationship after all it was doing harm to her.

This type of thing happens to woman and man on any faith path. For writer to belittle her experience by tieing it to Wicca is insane there simply isn't any connection