Don't Pull The Thang Out

Austin will lose three of its most outstanding citizens when J.I., J.N., and K.O. leave, without concrete plans of returning, this week. Last night I was celebrating with two of them at a local eat-drinkery. The jukebox, or its modern equivalent, was on a roll, playing Creedence, Cream, The Doors, The Stones, and that granddaddy of them all, Zeppelin. I was naturally getting into a fervor, and at the end of Thank You I caught myself insisting that the guttural G to G-sharp bend at the beginning of Heartbreaker simply had to be played, just the way Living Loving Maid is required listening after - uh - Heartbreaker. In the future, how about just not even teasing me with the Zeppelin unless you're going to go all the way through the disc with it?

Bloody Hell

J and I conducted an experiment yesterday on the effects of V8 on blood pressure. I am a fan of the beverage and it irks me to no end that people feel the need to warn me of its high sodium content as I prepare to enjoy its tastiness. So here are my blood pressure readings from last night:

Time___Systolic___Diastolic
20:38__110______60
20:49__106______64
20:51__110______64
21:00__110______66

(12 oz. regular V8 vegetable juice consumed, 21:03)

21:04__112______66
21:14__120______74
21:30__120______78

Normal blood pressure is 90 to 119 systolic and 60 to 79 diastolic. I did eat supper at around 7:30, so the next experiment will be done on an empty stomach. Nevertheless, the preliminary results indicate that a single can of V8 (and the store was out of spicy, which I prefer and has higher sodium content) made me pre-hypertensive, at least in the systoles.

Still, be quiet.

INFJ

According to a Facebook test, and therefore as a matter of freaking Gospel, my Myers-Briggs personality type is INFJ, meaning that I prefer Introversion to Extra-, iNtuition to Sensing, Feeling to Thinking, and Judgment to Perception. Another website told me I was INFP. Either way I am rare; Wikipedia says the occurrence among test takers is 1.5% for the former and 4.3% for the latter.

I am not proud of my last three characteristics (N, F, and J, which result I'll focus on for the rest of this short post). And you, dear reader, are probably less likely to seek surcease of sorrow from the writings of an F-ing J in the future. Bear with me for now.

I will say that I find it weirdly accurate what Wikipedia says that result says about my personality, particularly the bad parts of it. I'll let you, dear reader, guess at what I might be talking about. But at this point I am trying to be skeptical, wondering to what extent its evaluation is like saying "Libras strive for abstract fairness but may feel compelled towards emotional bias in specific, heated situations."

Lastly, I find it interesting that Adam Sandler is a purported brother INFJ. I felt uncontrollably sympathetic towards his character in Punch Drunk Love, and I think it's for his very INFJ-ness I just read about. It seemed to me he played his same old type-cast self, just in a drama - Sad Gilmore, if you will - and the profound chord it struck in me rings on today.

JFC

Atheists do not like being called fundamentalists, and from what I know of capital-F Fundamentalism, this dislike is well-founded. But I am not sure the Economist's blogger does a good job defending atheists, or contrasting them with religious fundamentalists.

The blogger bothers to define the fundamentalist mindset in the fifth of six paragraphs, and does so as "one that cannot be changed by evidence." I believe the original accuser (uncited bloggers) would have defined it as rigorous adherence to a set of basic principles, which definition does indeed apply to many atheists I know.

Now, most atheists I know are fundamentalist skeptics, meaning that the only basic principles they adhere to are empirical evidence and reason, which, let me aver, are the best principles we humans have to rely on. When going about our daily lives, teaching our children, hopping on airplanes, healing our sick, etc., they're what we all go by, and the religious fundamentalist who forgets this can go and give up bacon.

But strictly speaking, it takes a fundamentalist point of view to espouse atheism. For to deny that there's a god because you haven't been shown sufficient evidence for one implies rigid adherence to a system of understanding the universe based on human capabilities. I grant that such a system is practically superior to anything preferred by those who believe they have some kind of personal insight to, or communication with, a god, but it's fundamentalist all the same.

A step away from such rigidity is to admit that a god, as defined by most who believe in one, is outside the realm of judgments that a rational skeptic may make. That may be called agnosticism, which tag for subtle reasons I don't really like, but more on that another time. An atheist friend once said that what I have described is essentially a coward's atheism. What's in a name?

I don't advocate for people believing in god; I don't feel qualified to. I am skeptical of anybody who does. But atheists, agnostics, and whatever I am shouldn't pretend that the underlying reality of the Universe defers to the human mind. It is the other way around, and our mind should be open to that. How else is that majestic Hypothesis step of the scientific method to form?