Please “like” as you see fit.

The Fat Athlete Hall of Fame;

Roger Kimball: Bankrupting a country 1-2-3

When liberals aren’t shrill;

Michael Vick is a really nice guy;

The disease and filth in your stadium food;

Change and museums;

Liberals for Palin;

The Hemingway Look-Alike Contest;

Some awesomely weird places to sleep;

Do polluted skies contribute to suicide?

Son of Large Hadron Collider;

Non-stop Western themes

Frankie Laine sings “Jezebel” in a feast for the eyes and ears;

Ukrainian cows power biogas plant;

Wikipedia’s list of animal sounds;

Octo-Newf;

The robots will kill us;

Free nature sounds;

The world’s 50 most commonly spoken languages;

How animals contribute to human evolution; and

On music and brain plasticity.

PORTLAND!

What city is more smug than ours?

If you said Seattle as recently as 3-to-4 years ago, you’d still be right.

But these days, Portland is King of the Hill as far as smugness goes. Granted, I’ve never been to, say, Brooklyn — and I’m sure it’s smug there too — but it can’t possibly be as bad as it is here. In New York, you still have a solid bedrock of tough, hard-working people who have lived through disappointment, frustration and pain and emerged with greater strength of character.

Not so here!

We are beset by condescending, privileged twerps.

Just look at the following photo, for Chrissakes, snapped secretly by a friend at the airport the other day. It’s two garden-variety Portlanders. For all I know, they might be wonderful people. Salt of the fucking earth.

But nearly EVERYONE in town looks just like them. Ironic clothing…ironic eye-ware…the same old tiresome song.

To be clear, I have no problem with anyone’s personal aesthetics. I frequently see Portland idiots dressed up as pirates, and though I don’t think of them in positive terms, I spend no mental currency on their place in this world. Honestly, smug Portlanders — I couldn’t care less if your wardrobe personifies indie-rock cliche. When it’s all said and done, you’re just another jerk I’ll go out of my way to ignore.

Here’s the rub though: these wiry, unfruitful clods don’t simply ignore others. NO! They sneer and scoff at anyone who doesn’t fit their DIY Cool Person Template.

It has steadily gotten worse in the 10 years I’ve lived here. It’s one effed-up milieu of shit.

More than ever, the city is teeming with unoriginal, emaciated oafs who wear tight brown pants and sing loudly to themselves at the bus stop.

Such individuals!

(No, I’m not going to hunt down data to support my assertions, but I know there are data out there just waiting to be culled for those exact purposes.)

Frustrating stuff.

I try hard to avoid the cliche of misanthropy. Misanthropy is an easy emotion. But the oppressiveness of the cool Portland alpha culture has reached an intolerable apex. I can’t count the number of times I’ve looked up from reading my book on the bus and some skateboarder fuckwad was glaring (or smirking) at me because my dress shirt and slacks didn’t ooze awesome-fucking-street-cred.

These days, the forecast consistently calls for a torrent of fist-showers…on the faces of Portland “creatives!”

O! I wish to pummel these creatures!

If there was but one day a year when I could rain blows upon their smug faces w/o fear of legal reproach!

O!

What happy times those would be, friend!

So there you have it — another fatuous diatribe, and I’ve been singing the same song since 2000. A terrible earthquake on Belmont would go a long ways toward mitigating PDX’s alpha culture.

Nature? I’m paging you.

If you haven’t done so yet, please read “An Agnostic Manifesto,” by Ron Rosenbaum over at Slate. It’s good.

Rosenbaum argues that the complexities of agnosticism shouldn’t diminish its place in religious debate, where “New Atheism” and religious fundamentalism compete regularly to produce the most belligerent quips and sound bites. Enough of that, says Rosenbaum. It’s time to put on our baking gloves and prepare the Agnostic Loaf of Mystery.

He writes:

Agnosticism doesn’t fear uncertainty. It doesn’t cling like a child in the dark to the dogmas of orthodox religion or atheism. Agnosticism respects and celebrates uncertainty and has been doing so since before quantum physics revealed the uncertainty that lies at the very groundwork of being.

That’s an eloquent statement, whereas a lot of chatter in the atheist world is bratty and juvenile. Atheist discourse often reeks of fraternity/sorority shenanigans; drinking games set against a backdrop of “secular rebellion.” Worse, atheists tend to focus on Bible-bred insanity while avoiding the more prickly domain of Islam. Wimps.

The braver, more honest atheists fess up to this shortcoming. Penn Jillette, for instance, recently went out of his way to praise Christians in a discussion about his TV show Bullshit:

[we] have been brutal to Christians, and their response shows that they’re good fucking Americans who believe in freedom of speech. We attack them all the time, and we still get letters that say, “We appreciate your passion. Sincerely yours, in Christ.”

Jillette explains that Bullshit avoids criticism of Islam for a simple reason, one that offers a sad, illuminating commentary on the world: He (and partner Teller) don’t want to endanger their loved ones.

It’s awful that such a deterrent exists in 2010, isn’t? Complete batshit insanity.

Still, contrast Jillette’s approach with most atheist bloggers, who chortle at Islamist suicide bombers and snake-handling Pentecostals from behind their Dawkins_IZ_Gawd (and, um,  Iced Borscht)  screen names. As a Catholic friend recently observed, it’s not exactly “bold” to participate in “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” from the comfort of one’s Mid-Century modern bachelor pad. (The friend, a journalist who has covered various religious beats in New York State, was unimpressed by my enthusiasm for Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, henceforth known as EDMD.)

While he makes a good point, I disagree with the notion that EDMD was frivolous and sophomoric. Even some of its cowardly aspects contributed to an overriding positive: the mitigation, on whatever tiny level, of a despicable form of intolerance.  (Nick Gillespie makes my point more articulately here, and Paul Berman‘s Flight of the Intellectuals provides a brilliant, if dispiriting, analysis of how Western society — powered by the engine of modern-day “journalism” — gleefully invites Islamism to castrate it).

I don’t mean to suggest that atheism should become a gloomy reservoir for bland introspection. It already has bland introspection in spades; once you get past all the blasphemy board games and kitschy crap, you’re left with an army of killjoys yammering on about epistemological incongruence.

But the killjoys may be on to something. For instance, when I “arrived” at atheism, it didn’t feel like some hedonistic emancipation from God. Yes, I had finally found an “answer,” but the answer was anti-climactic and dull, as many “truths” are. Contrary to popular belief, the road to atheism isn’t a hip grindhouse flick — it’s not paved with priests’ skulls or set to the music of surf rock. Atheism is mundane, normal…unremarkable. But it has a certain undeniable power. Isaac Asimov once said:

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I’m a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.

Back to Rosenbaum, though. He writes:

I challenge any atheist, New or old, to send me their answer to the question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” I can’t wait for the evasions to pour forth. Or even the evidence that this question ever could be answered by science and logic.

Stultifying. But if you peel back the foreskin of this wrinkly catechism, you’ll always be in arm’s reach — and often at the business end — of a sentient creator. Eventually you’ll be tempted by one of several “God-centric” positions, and none of them will be more ironclad than the “certainty” of atheism.

One of my favorite arrows in the atheist quiver is the idea that our minds go straight to the theory of a sentient creator without contemplating esoteric concepts that might be more plausible. We’re stuck on “sentient creator.” That’s the best we can do. Rosenbaum looks into this matter by referencing agnostic blogger John Wilkins:

…there are really two claims agnosticism is concerned with as important: Whether God exists or not is one. Whether we can know the answer is another. Agnosticism is not for the simple-minded and is not as congenial as atheism and theism are. The courage to admit we don’t know and may never know what we don’t know is more difficult than saying, sure, we know.

I’ll put the brakes on here. While the constraints of life and its short window of opportunity sometimes depress me, it’s not an existential crisis. When my time comes to kiss the gallows, I understand that my corruptible body will transform into a snack bar for maggots.

And I’m fine with that.

More analysis of Rosenbaum’s Agnostic Manifesto is available here, courtesy of rock-solid peckerwood Jacob Grier.

• Are Kate Gosselin and Bret Michaels one and the same? Perhaps they’ve got a “One-Armed Man and Bob” thing going on?

• “We’ll be so happy, darling…even though you are poor.”

• On self-esteem and large penises

• JG tackles Ron Rosenbaum’s Agnostic Manifesto

• Paul Berman in the Wall Street Journal: “What You Can’t Say About Islamism“

• On Asperger’s Syndrome and atheism

• Unmitigated ass-whistles of vivacity! Livability grants for everyone!

• America’s “Most Patriotic City” is…Portland?!

• Well, now we know why Christopher Hitchens cancelled his appearance in Portland a few days ago. He has cancer. Fuck. I hope he beats this.

• A leprechaun is on the lam in Colorado.

• Wikipedia’s list of Nonexistent People.

It’s here. Available for a limited time only, ICED BORSCHT & OTHER DELIGHTS — the Book (Volume I).

Excitement is in the air, no?

Addendum: I made this book not only because I find Pedia Press, the publisher that facilitates these Wikipedia compendiums cool and fun, but because I occasionally get feedback that the Iced Borscht blog is too esoteric. Impenetrable even. So I thought I’d make a roadmap. The above compendium contains a lot of things I find compelling. Things I enjoy, things I want to learn more about. For example, hypnagogic mind-states — that time right before the mind falls asleep, right at the threshold– might be the best time to listen to the great music of Ken Nordine. I’m very familiar with these states because I experience hypnic jerks then. I occasionally fall prey to the Exploding Head Syndrome in sleep-related moments too.

The book touches on concepts I’m paying particular attention to lately. This summer, for instance, I have toyed around with a dream machine, and I hope to make my first visit to an isolation tank later this month. I’m obsessed with the mind right now. “I’ll show you the life of the mind!”

And I’ve always had a fondness for:

• Bond Girls
• Edward Hopper
• David Lynch
• Taxidermy; and
• the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Hope this helps.

• Portland artist Bijijoo provides a great service to our nation — portraits of our presidents cradling ham hocks.

• Three questions: What is a “second chakra,” what is it doing in the pubic area, and why does Al Gore have an alleged interest in releasing it? (h/t Jack B)

• Why Peruvians are painting the Andes white

• Big, bad-ass bears from Kamchatka

• Sperm whales, unlike many Portlanders I know, have personalities

• Swimming lizard robot. Hi, fella!

• Bagby Hot Springs gets a write-up in Atlas Obscura

• Does the public function as a mass, partisan critic of administration moves, or does it behave more like a thermostat?

• Following a mishap with a combine harvester, Oscar the Cat gets bionic appendages

• Mark your calendars, Oregonians: July 11, 2010, AD at Lincoln City — the prestigious Competitive Rib Eating Contest returns. Making an appearance will be Joey Chestnut, the world’s most decorated gustatory athlete.

• Did a bag of potato chips lure a confession out of a portly rapist?

• Screwing up makes us whipsmart

• Why is a Ukrainian jet stuck in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan?

• 5 Interesting tidbits about Stevie Hawking

• Obama and cheeseburgers

• The most grating mystery of our time, and one deserving of unrelenting scientific inquiry, is the question of why Ozzy Osbourne is still alive

• Why don’t Penn and Teller attack Islam on BULLSHIT? The reason is a valid one, and I respect and appreciate it, although it offers a sad, illuminating commentary on the state of the world: they have families, and they don’t want to see them beheaded or suffer some other insane atrocity at the hands of murderous, pathological thugs who are offended by what two magicians say on TV.

I guess that’s where we are these days in terms of global, intellectual discourse — if free speech still exists, it’s either hanging on by a loose, tattered thread or floating about nominally. Markets used to rule the world, and back then, we thrived. Now pathological madmen who live in caves rule the world, and nobody can speak ill of them lest we want to see our loved ones slaughtered in the streets.

Barbarism. Seventh-century idiocy. Nukes as readily available as Little Debbie Snack Cakes.

Yep, I like the direction this world is headed in.

Via Jack B and RED EYE: