Something just crossed my mind: Who do atheists thank for Fridays?

I’m gonna thank God. I need the sleep. I slept terribly Wednesday night, but last night seemed to be going really well until a few minutes to 4 actually, when the woman in my smoke detector started screaming that she needed a new battery. “BEEP! New battery!”. That’s what I was thinking too… “BEEP new batteries!!”

I spent hours in the room last night without a solitary warning. I read. I spoke on the phone. I ate bacon, eggs and toast for dinner ;). No beeps. I fell asleep without incident and apparently stayed that way for hours. All of a sudden, and well into REM, the voice of the “sound sleep detector” tears off it’s clothes and starts streaking (and shrieking maniacally) through the early morning silence. It didn’t seem like it was running out of battery to me – unless of course this was tantamount to the grand finale!!

Perhaps there was such urgency because it detected a fire lurking in shadows peeping around the corner to see if the coast was clear to really get started. Perhaps it was an orange ninja running along rooftops as fires are want to do. But I hope that if ever she really does detect smoke or fire, that she says something other than “BEEP. Low battery”.

Last night I started reading a book called “Smart People Should Build Things”. This is a timely and accidental find. It caught my eye yesterday as I left the business library, and I’m glad that it did. I’m full of book recommendations and though I’m only a few chapters in to this one, I feel comfortable recommending this. The premise is at least worth a review.

I shave and cut my hair roughly twice a week.
I withdraw cash from an ATM roughly twice a week.
I eat at a sit-down restaurant on average twice a week.
I watch an item on Netflix on average twice a week.

Twice a week… TWICE… a black person is killed by a white police officer in the United States.

What do YOU do twice a week?

Melissa Harris-Perry’s Searing Tribute To Black Men Killed By Police
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/16/melissa-harris-perry-black-men-killed-by-police_n_5684588.html

This week there was another story making the rounds online about women of all shapes and sizes (except “skinny”, in the interest of full disclosure) celebrating their bodies. Everyone seemed happy, and from the looks of the image, the bodies all seemed reasonably healthy and functioning. This is ample cause for celebration and gratitude. Agreed.

Once smoke from the fireworks cleared, confetti settled, and the deafening roar of “Fabulous!” and “You go, girl!” had died down, a longer-lasting question remained: What makes any of these images and their drivers “Fabulous”?

I ponder this question with all seriousness, but am forced to conclude that each is now a kind of hackneyed, bandwagon story that shamelessly panders to women. Even a baby with a noise making toy quickly learns where the boos and applauses are, and as that baby grows to become an adult engaged in media, the ratings.

Women should be celebrated for much more than their bodies, which is how I believe this well-intentioned movement began, but ALL we do now is talk about their bodies. We talk about how “normal” they are, but a big part of what makes things normal is that we don’t have to keep talking about them.

For this reason I’ve grown sick of these “normal body” stories, that play on the same field by the same rules a game that they claim to hate, while effectively only changing (and changing only) the uniform in which they play. Why do women respond so favorably to this? To me, this is another entry in a competition that women celebrate, yet simultaneously decry as vulgar, demeaning and ridiculous.

Naturally, the criticism of my response will include how valuable the participants are, and what great mothers, citizens, workers, partners etc. were captured in this image. My point is that this is what we should have been hearing about in the first place, which would go considerably further in valuing them. In fact, if we really intend to be honest, we know that statistically and based on what “normal” is, some of them are mediocre in the above attributes at best. I agree – let’s celebrate “normal”.

Finally, the story suggests that the reader will never see these bodies on a billboard, but that we should. I argue that we shouldn’t because normal is already present in abundance, and for free. Your billboard is your mirror – buy into that.

This weekend I’ve been educated on the existence of an app that allows people to identify “sketchy” neighborhoods (no word on if they will be attaching purple triangles or Afro picks to door posts).

I’ve just now also read this NYT article “Sentencing By The Numbers” – a practice already in place in almost half the country that projects (projects!) future risk of criminality as a factor in current sentencing. This is of course based on factors historically not at all related to race, such as: education, geography, socioeconomics, proximity and relationship to other convicted criminals.

You be the judge.. because justice might have a better chance of succeeding.

I know the feeling.. the sad truth.

Shared with me by my good friend, Conan.

http://vimeo.com/m/71544405