All generalizations are faulty – including this one.

That said, we seem to be highly attuned to generalizations – making them, and accepting them. ‘Whatever line you’re waiting in, the other lines will move faster’. ‘Republicans tend to be pro-business and anti-social-welfare’. ‘Blondes have more fun’. And so on. Likewise, there are some areas where the only way one can discuss something is by the use of generalities. "Fundamentalists". "Atheists". ("Fundamentalist" is really not the most accurate term. As I am not a theologian, nor all that well studied in matters of faith, I hope the use can be excused. Perhaps "Orthodox" would be a better word…?). Present me with two religious fundamentalists, and chances are each will have some very different opinions and beliefs from the other, even if they’re of the same faith. The same with atheists. There’s no such thing as a ‘pure’ fundamentalist or atheist. The descriptor may be helpful, but underneath it all, you have to accept that both the fundamentalist and atheist must sometimes have to stand naked (with apologies to Bob Dylan). What defines a man or woman cannot be boiled down to a simplistic term like ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘atheist’.

Nevertheless, in order to discuss the differences, you have to use the generalizations. And so, I shall.

Yesterday, I viewed a thought-provoking video on youtube. I’ve seen a number of this fellow’s videos, and he’s definitely a smart cookie. He has a knack for highlighting the ‘grey’ that fills the expanse between the extremes of any particular two points of view. Heck, a man after my own heart.

This particular video was about fundamentalists, agnostics, and atheists. As my legions of fans know, I’m interested in matters of and about faith. A bone I pick regularly has to do with the ‘extreme’ atheists who should more accurately refer to themselves as antitheists – atheist is too gentle a term for them. The extreme atheists/antitheists exhibit many of the tendencies of the extreme Fundamentalists – they can be shrill, hectoring, annoying, self-absorbed, exceedingly judgemental, and downright nasty towards their fellow humans. If you don’t share their views, you are seen as ignorant, deluded, and dangerous.

Again, note that I refer to extreme fundamentalists and extreme atheists. There are legions of fundamentalists and atheists who do their own thing, and really don’t have any interest in getting in other people’s faces about whether or not they should share their beliefs.

On that basis, I think what I’m driving at is – and reminding myself of the caveats regarding generalizations – that I think a broader continuum may be more informative regarding these measures of faith than ‘fundamentalist, agnostic, atheist’.

Generally, that’s an accurate representation of the range of opinions regarding faith/god. Acknowledging all the same that there are non-extreme fundamentalists, as well as non-extreme antitheists. Acknowledging also the weakness of labeling the moderate view as simply ‘religious’.

An ironic characteristic of generalizations is how they both shape, and are shaped by, the person making the generalization. You’ll often find that the most zealous, extreme fundamentalists are convinced that most of the world is filled with either godless communists or believers of other faiths who are on the wrong path – and that both pose a grave threat to their way of life. Likewise, the most zealous, extreme antitheists are convinced that  most of the world is filled with either religious fanatics or apathetically religious dupes – and both pose a grave threat to their way of life.

As a person with a fairly centrist mentality, my generalization tends to be that there are some zealous extremists in the world who are fundamentalists and some who are antitheists – but that neither poses a terribly great threat to my way of life.

Interestingly enough, most people – regardless of where they fall on the continuum – tend to believe that they have the superior view of the world. If anything, the most grave fault – and threat – may be that tendency in itself.  Perhaps the less conviction one has that their own views are infallible, the more balanced that person’s view of the world may be.

Then again, perhaps that’s merely my centrist superiority complex being expressed…

Now, the video I referred to touched on a number of other aspects of beliefs. I have quibbles with some of the ideas presented, but only because their imprecision is in some ways where all the problems arise. The commonly posed statement from atheists is "There is no proof of the existence of god". The problem is that "existence" and "god" are antithetical concepts. The fact is, there is no proof of the "existence" of love, for that matter. You cannot objectively measure love. No quantity of microphones, seismic instrumentation, microscopes or telescopes, geiger counters, or calipers, can quantitatively measure love. According to the laws of science, love does not "exist". But as any reasonably mature individual will assure you, from their own direct experience, love does indeed ‘exist’. The insistence that physical evidence must be presented for the existence of god indicates that one doesn’t have a clear grasp of the concepts.

Setting aside that conceptual issue, an important point still remains. Atheists, in general, state "God does not exist", because there is a lack of evidence that god exists. The problem with that is that to state that something does not exist because there is no evidence for it is illogical. 

Here’s an example. In 1928, Paul Dirac postulated the existence of the positron, a nuclear antiparticle. In 1932, the existence of the positron was proven experimentally. In the interval between 1928 and 1932, there was no proof, no evidence, that the positron existed. Would it have been logical then, in 1930, to have stated unequivocally, that "The positron does not exist"? Of course not. The lack of evidence for the existence of the positron had no actual bearing on whether or not positrons really did exist – we were merely ignorant of their existence. Surely, some people in 1930 believed that the positron existed, and some people believed that it did not exist. On the basis of belief, both were right. Absent the evidence, all one had was belief.

And belief, as we know, most certainly and emphatically, is not fact.

Stating that god does not exist is irrational. The only rational statement is that god may or may not exist. And that, my friends, is where the middle of the chart above comes in to play.

Thankfully, we humans have no obligation to be rational in all things and at all times. It’s quite irrational for me to love my wife, and quite irrational to enjoy watching Wings of Desire. There is no logic involved – merely humanity.

I suppose my beef with atheists and antitheists is their insistence that science, logic, and rationality are the only acceptable modes of thought.  That if one isn’t scientific, one is ignorant or deluded.

I beg to differ.

 

           A mind all logic is like a knife all blade.
          It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
           —Rabindranath Tagore

 

The irony of the last post, juxtaposed against the "Love at first boot – OpenSolaris" logo to the right is not lost on me.

I’ve had it. I’m done. Can we please stop talking about computer operating systems as if they were Burger King versus McDonalds, the Dodgers versus the Giants, or Coke versus Pepsi? Never mind that there are three ostensible contenders to the crown. Never mind that there is no crown to wear. Never mind that what we are talking about is what amounts to utter, incomprehensible gibberish consisting of sequences of ones and zeroes that together are intended to do nothing more than make those ones and zeroes appear comprehensible to us humans.

What a mundane term to begin with. Operating System. The System that Operates. It’s akin to being a fan of pushpins. An operating system is a bunch of digital code that is a buffer between humans and machines. Essentially, it’s a game of pretend, so that we mere mortals can put the power of the machine to use.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not belittling the incredible human effort that goes into creating an operating system. Hundreds of thousands of people have toiled millions of hours to build these operating systems. They are truly marvels in many respects. I’m able to sit here, banging my fingers against a panel of plastic with flexible points on it, and quite magically, tiny squiggles of black appear on an illuminated screen, corresponding to the flexible points I’ve selected to bang on. While I’m doing that, the mysterious whirring box to my left is assuring that the squiggles are going into the right place on this screen, and simultaneously playing music, showing me the time of day, and displaying a pretty picture in the background. Forty years ago, I’d be punching paper tape all day just to create what I have written so far.

Operating systems, like the computer hardware they run on, are extraordinary marvels of human ingenuity.

The problem is, we have these camps of followers. The Windows fanatics. The Mac fanatics. and the Linux fanatics. (There are other breeds of fanatics as well of course – I’ve been accused of being a Solaris fanatic, and I can’t say it’s wholey inaccurate).

The problem is, it should be utterly and totally immaterial what the operating system is. For the majority of people, there’s only a handful of activities they perform with their computers. They read email. They browse the web. They balance their checkbook. To a lesser extent, they listen to music, watch movies, play games, and view photos. Sure – there are myriad other activities one can do with a computer, but for the most part, it’s what I just listed. I think I could safely say that for at least 75% of people who own computers, all they need is a web browser, an email client, and Quicken. Add in some music software, DVD playback software, a few games, and Picasa, and you’ve covered 85% of people.

I suppose that one could say I’m arguing in favor of a computer appliance that has seven functions that it’s capable of performing. Yes and no. I’m not arguing in favor of it – it’s what we have, for 85% of the population! A computer, an operating system, and about seven applications that are all that are ever run. Why not cut out the middle-man? The fact that one can browse the web on a Windows PC, a Mac, and  a Linux machine rather suggests that the operating system is not so damned important.

Maybe there is a market for a dedicated appliance….

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, on the Peninsula – Redwood City. As a child, our family watched the local news broadcasts, coming over the air from transmitters on Mount San Bruno, just south of San Francisco. In glorious Black and White, we watched Terry Lowry in front of a whiteboard map of the U.S., placing little magnet-backed clouds over California, and a little magnet-backed sun over the midwest. We watched Van Amburg report on the latest apartment fire in the Tenderloin, and we watched Wayne Walker report on the latest San Francisco 49ers Superbowl Win.

In that long-ago time, there was still a bit of a "small town news" quality to the major Bay Area news broadcasts. There would be glitches, dead air, tape wouldn’t roll, a camera would be cued while it was panning to the other anchor – all pretty typical, and they still happen to this day, just far less frequently. The production values today, even on the struggling independent major KRON, are excellent.

Because the Bay Area is such a splendid place to live, there has been a blur of reporters and anchors over the years, from station to station. Anchor Pete Wilson began as a reporter at KGO, went on to anchor at KGO, then KRON, then many years later returned to KGO after KRON went independent. It’s rare for a reporter or anchor to leave the Bay Area, at least not willingly.

Aside from the six major stations in the Bay Area (KTVU, KRON, KPIX, KGO, KQED – and KNTV which took over as the NBC affiliate when KRON went independent), there has always been a presence of smaller independent stations throughout the Bay Area. There are dozens of them. Most have subsisted on syndicated sitcoms, old movies, infomercials, and some local-interest programming thrown in from time to time.

One of those smaller stations is KFTY, based in the North Bay – way up in Santa Rosa, where the designation "Bay Area" begins to thin. Those of us up here generally consider ourselves Bay Area, and the rigid definition seems to be ‘any county with land meeting the Bay’, so in that regard, Sonoma County is indeed Bay Area, but only by a whisker.

The population up here is not significant, not when compared to the counties really bordering the Bay. There’s less than a half million people in Sonoma County, while Alameda County in the East Bay – a fraction of the size – has three times the population.

KFTY is just another small, independent station. Small operating budget, small viewership. They air the staple fare of syndicated sitcoms, infomercials, etc like all the others. But unlike any (to my knowledge) of the minor independents in the Bay Area, KFTY produced two full-fledged local evening news broadcasts.

You’ll note the past-tense there. Keep reading.

These were not – by comparison to the major stations – polished productions. The studio video tended to be somewhat washed out. Camera flubs and miscues were a regular occurrence. Tape would fail to roll, or begin rolling well after the anchor had begun to move to the next story. True, these happen at all stations, big and small, but they tended to be as much a staple on KFTY as the repeats of ‘Frasier’.

However, for a lonely little independent station, quite a throw from the major market, it was a damned fine news broadcast. Much of the news content was locally produced by their own reporters. The main anchor, Ed Beebout, has been with the station for twenty three years, and has anchored the news for more than a decade.  And he’s not bad – not bad at all. The smaller markets across the country tend to be a dumping ground for those not blessed with good onscreen personality, or poor teleprompter skills. But Ed – while certainly no Tom Brokaw – has held his own with aplomb, and could likely have worked at a major market station if he were inclined. Almost two years ago, Tricia Hua joined the newscast as co-anchor, and she has also shown remarkable poise and presence. Brent Allen served up a very snappy and accurate weather segment, and Bay Area veteran Curtis Kim produced ‘local flavor’ segments that – while often ranging well into corny territory – were nevertheless thoughfully and professionally produced bits of local interest.  The field reporters tended to have high turnover, and varied in quality from abysmal to excellent, but that’s to be expected at a small station. Recently, a new reporter named Cindy Chen appeared at KFTY, and showed real talent – I’d bet we see her reporting at KRON any day now.Considering the likely minuscule budget available, they produced an amazingly good broadcast.

I’ll be the first to admit: In the evenings, when my wife would tune to KFTY’s news, I would regularly ridicule it, albeit light-heartedly. I’d break into the refrain "Small Town Newwwws", which Paul Schaffer would sing before the Small Town News segment on Letterman – a collection of quirky, sometimes bizarre newspaper stories from backwaters across the country. I’d cringe at every miscue, and when a cub reporter, fresh from the local Junior College, would fall apart live and on-camera – well, it was as painful and entertaining as watching the early auditions on American Idol.

But that’s all gone now. Last thursday, the station pulled the plug on both evening news broadcasts. ‘Insufficient ad revenue’, which certainly isn’t a stretch to believe is true. There are rumors that ClearChannel – the owner of KFTY – intends to divest itself of small stations and markets such as these. That’s also no great stretch to believe true.

It’s a shame though. Having watched KRON’s long, drawn out decline after they lost NBC has been painful, almost more painful than having a longtime local newscast just disappear overnight. One wishes the broadcast could have been scaled back somehow rather than terminated – add another minute or two of commercials, use more syndicated feeds – who knows. As above, I’m no expert in these matters, just another armchair quarterback.

In the grander scheme of things, this is but a blip. Those who watched the KFTY news will have fond memories, but nothing more. We’ll just watch the major news stations, and in time the lack of local news will not be so strongly felt . Fifty years ago, the notion of a backwater like the North Bay even having a local television station would have been absurd. So we’re lucky in that respect. But without locally originated programming, an independent like KFTY just blends into the landscape. There’s simply no compelling reason to watch the station – unless you’re some sort of diehard fan of ‘Frasier’.

The internet has yet to fill the local gap. One can gather information in an instant from Byelarus, but accessing locally relevant information is still a hit-or-miss proposition. The local newspaper serves to some extent, but lacks the immediacy of a local news broadcast.

I suppose my only motivation for writing this is to express my appreciation for what was, and express my regret for what now is…

Every year. Every year. Come about April, my wife and I begin speculating about when the first utterance of the above sentence will occur on the local news. Without fail, every year, every local news station will air those words. If California had a light winter, with lower than average rain—then by May or so, the reports will be that there’s a ‘tinderbox’ of dry brush out there that could make this the worst fire season on record. If California had higher than normal rain, the reports will be that the "excess" rain has created a dense overgrowth of brush that’s going to become a ‘tinderbox’ of dry brush, which could make this the worst fire season on record.

Since every year deviates in some small proportion from the mathematical average for expected rainfall…then you can count on speculation every year that this could be the worst fire season on record.

And don’t get me started on droughts. The semi-arid Bay Area climate means that there will be stretches, every winter, where things dry out for a few weeks. By the end of the second week without rain—maybe early in the third week—some weather forecaster will allude to the dreaded "D word" as they refer to it in Happy Talk.

And don’t get me started on Global Warming/Climate change. Every deviation from seasonal averages is interpreted as a sign of the coming Climate Apocalypse. Every instance of extreme weather is interpreted similarly. We were told that the extremity of Hurricane Katrina was clearly a sign of things to come, all due to our evil burning of million-year-old plant matter. So…since there was no similarly devastating hurricane this past season, does that mean we’ve turned the corner? Or that the speculation is wrong? Why no, of course not! The absence of disaster is never tallied as a contrary indicator to the speculations. It’s merely ignored, until the next extreme weather event comes along…just as they’ve been coming along for the entirety of human history (and before, amazing!).

Grumble grumble mutter mutter.