Metro Etiquette

You're on the subway and it's really crowded. You take the only seat available -- next to a stranger -- who for the sake of argument is an overweight minority. You are comfortable enough in the seat, though the size of the stranger means you two are more snug than usual.

Eventually you get near the end of the line and the train car clears out. There is an empty bench right across the way. You're sitting on the outside, so it would be easy to slide over. Do you move?

Everybody enjoys some personal space and, let's face it, you'd both have way more if you moved to the empty row. But will the move be construed as disgust or bigotry.

What is the proper thing to do in this situation?

My first instinct is to stay in the chair. That way no one's feelings get hurt, even if it makes for an awkward situation. But is that just being over-sensitive?

Here's an urban etiquette primer, but I didn't find what I was looking for there.

Why US is sliding toward statism. In 3 sentences.

Democrats could be more libertarian if they weren't beholden to special interest groups. Republicans could be more libertarian if they weren't beholden to the religious right. Libertarians could be more mainstream if they weren't beholden to the allure of a free society.

From worst to best to so-so

This article, "What's Good about Atheism" has been sitting in my virtual archive for several months. Initially, I was going to title it "The worst article ever."

But then I read it again. And a third time. I'm not ready to claim that it is the best article I've read, but it is a very interesting look at what atheists can learn from theists and vice versa.

Some excerpts:

...Rationality cannot prove itself. The fundamental validity of reason therefore must be taken on faith; the only difference from a purely logical point of view between an atheist who believes in reason and a religious person who makes a primary act of faith is that the religious person recognizes the pre-logical basis of his beliefs, while the atheist does not.

...Virtuous atheists actually have a stronger claim to real goodness than virtuous Christians, Jews, or Muslims, because there can be no taint of cupboard love in their obedience to the moral law. They do not believe in a reward for goodness, and thus must love goodness for its own sake.

...We have seen what atheism looks like on the large scale, and it is not pretty: the Holocaust, the Gulag, the Cultural Revolution, the Killing Fields. Religion has indeed been a cause of appalling slaughter during the course of human history; but it must take fifth place behind atheist ideology, nation-state aggression, mercantile colonialist expansion, and tribal war in the carnage sweepstakes.

...one of Dawkins' favorite arguments against the rather feeble theist objection that you can't prove that God doesn't exist—you can't prove a negative. Dawkins triumphantly retorts that

"There's an infinite number of things that we can't disprove, You might say that because science can explain just about everything but not quite, it's wrong to say therefore we don't need God. It is also, I suppose, wrong to say we don't need the Flying Spaghetti Monster, unicorns, Thor, Wotan, Jupiter, or fairies at the bottom of the garden. There's an infinite number of things that some people at one time or another have believed in, and an infinite number of things that nobody has believed in. If there's not the slightest reason to believe in any of those things, why bother? The onus is on somebody who says, I want to believe in God, Flying Spaghetti Monster, fairies, or whatever it is. It is not up to us to disprove it."

Blogging from Salvador: Parte dois

This morning I went to Plaze Aeroclube to pick up my abadás (t-shirts) that privelege me to walk for hours on end behind a truck blaring music. Everybody, including the taxi driver that took me out there warned that ladrões would try to steal my t-shirts. At $70+ a pop, this isn´t too surprising as this is about how much a lot of the people here make in a month. My solution was to stuff them down my pants. Let me tell you, three t-shirts down your pants is hard to hide. I got several looks; I´m not sure if they knew what I was doing or if there were just impressed...

Blogging from Salvador: Parte Um

My Hostel is one historic city block from an internet café and instead of taking a nap (difficult when a 20 drums and brass ensemble is banging/tooting away right outside the window), I decided to blog :).

Last night I walked about 2 miles down this main road just to get out and see the city. There were locals selling soda, beer, meat on a stick, and of course, water every two feet. It seems the whole facade of the city along this road has been adapted for the purpose of providing a cold beverage to a festival goer no matter which precise step he wishes to have one (on step 10,304 or 10,307).

I partcipated in last nights festivities as "pipoca" or popcorn. That what they call the people that view the parade from the side of the street because they didn´t shell out 100 bucks or more to buy a t-shirt that allows them to walk behind the music trucks. I did shell out but not for last night . Besides, being pipoca was fun because you get to see all the bands drive by instead of just the one you are following. The other way to watch all the bands is to get a ticket to a "camarote" which is basically a roadside stand/night club, which also costs loads of money.

So as pipoca you are chilling with the poor people, the cheapskates, and the commitment-shy. Some of these would like more than anything to have your money, though I haven´t experienced the hands in my pocket that everyone had been telling me will happen. You can make a lot of friends with $20 by buying people beer or soda for their kids, so you got to bring the money.