Clark Adams, RIP

I received the unfortunate news this morning that Clark Adams has died, and that he took his own life.

Clark was a long-time board member of the Internet Infidels (and for many years its public relations director) and a frequent speaker and attendee at atheist, freethought, humanist, and skeptical events. He was a jovial, funny man whose talks about atheism in popular culture were always crowd-pleasers. He was not particular about what label to put on his nonbelief, and was supportive of all groups that promoted rationality and critical thinking, including the "brights"--though he did not care for what he called "religion without the god stuff."

In a recent posting in which he gave his opinion of last month's celebration of 30 years of Humanist chaplaincy at Harvard University, he described himself as a "conference junkie," noting that he attended "upwards of a half dozen atheist, humanist, skeptic and freethought conventions a year." He frequently spoke to freethought and atheist groups on college campuses, and was an active promoter of student freethought groups like the Secular Student Alliance and the Campus Freethought Alliance. He was one of the founders of the Secular Coalition of America and regularly helped organize the annual July gathering at Lake Hypatia, which is where I first met him. The frequency of his speaking schedule can be seen in an April 2006 posting on the Internet Infidels Discussion Boards, which showed him giving six talks in April, June, and July, which included talks on "How to Prevent Your Freethought Group From Looking Like a Funeral" and "Godless Role Models."

Suicide always provokes questions about the cause. Given Clark's activism in support of atheism, I won't be surprised to see opportunistic speculation on the part of some advocates of religion that Clark's atheism was why he killed himself, but there's no evidence to support that.

He attended a performance by his favorite comedian, Doug Stanhope, on Sunday evening, and was found by a friend and his ex-wife in his apartment after the friend did not receive her expected daily call from him. She announced Clark's death on the Internet Infidels Discussion Boards, where his friends have left their condolences.

Clark has left a mark on the world in the lives of people he's met at these conferences, and communicated with online. He's left an extensive record of postings, which he usually closed with "THOUGHTfully Yours, Clark," which includes the story of his deconversion to atheism in the south.

If anyone has a video record of any of his presentations, it would be great to see them made available online.

Clark will be missed.

UPDATE: Cathe Jones has put up a tribute to Clark, with some links to some of his writings. She has put up a more extensive blog entry now, as well.

UPDATE: Friends are also leaving tributes on Clark's MySpace page, and there are blog tributes from Friendly Atheist and Mark Vuletic.

UPDATE (May 24, 2007): The American Humanist Association has issued a tribute to Clark.

UPDATE (May 25, 2007): Information about a memorial service for Clark will be posted at the Las Vegas Freethought Society website. His ashes will likely be scattered at Lake Hypatia at the June 30-July 2 event he was scheduled to emcee.

UPDATE (May 27, 2007): Raul Martinez has put up a story about an amusing experience with Clark a few months ago.

UPDATE (May 31, 2007): There will be a memorial service for Clark from 2-4 p.m. on Sunday, June 3 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Las Vegas, 3616 E. Lake Mead Blvd. There will also be a memorial service at the Lake Hypatia event mentioned above, at 12 noon on Monday, July 2.

UPDATE (June 7, 2007): Eric Pepke has put up a tribute to Clark.

UPDATE (May 25, 2008): Clark's MySpace account has been deleted, but this story in the Las Vegas Weekly reports what happened after Doug Stanhope heard about Clark's death:

---
A few days later, he receives word that longtime fan Clark Adams killed himself the night after the Tommy Rocker’s performance. Not that it pushes him over the edge; more apparently, it provided a high note upon which to take his leave. In Adams’ MySpace “Heroes” box, he’d included Doug Stanhope under the heading, “People I Admire that I’ve Had the Honor of Meeting.”

There’s a bit on 2002’s Die Laughing: “Life is like animal porn. It’s not for everybody. ... Life is like a movie, if you’ve sat through more than half of it and it’s sucked every second so far, chances are it’s not gonna get great right at the very end and make it all worthwhile. No one should blame you for walking out early.”

And there’s a new entry in Adams’ Comments box from one Doug Stanhope:

I don’t believe in Heaven but I have a strong faith that there is MySpace in the afterlife and we will all be checking our comments.

May your eternity be free of Macy’s gift-card spam.
Run amok, dear sir.

life is like animal porn ...

Even if he’s not the best man for the job of deregulating their lives, Stanhope clearly empathizes with those regular people he speaks for, if not always with. He may be solely in it for him, baby, but whether he’s flitting from Vegas to Bisbee or Edinburgh to the Oval Office, he’s pushing the physical and mental and comedic boundaries for all those Joe Schmoes out there who can’t. No drunken goof about it.

---

At a show in Indianapolis, Stanhope started to talk about Clark Adams (at 4:26), but got distracted and didn't come back to it (at least in the first three of twelve parts on YouTube).

Ahwatukee Pet Idol

The Ahwatukee Foothills News is sponsoring an "Ahwatukee Pet Idol" contest, all proceeds of which will go to the animal rescue group that Kat and I volunteer for, Arizona R.E.S.C.U.E.

Our dog Otto is a contestant and could use your vote...

UPDATE (June 23, 2007): Otto has made it through the first two rounds of cuts and is one of the 25 finalists in the last round of voting.

Bill Maher's eulogy for Jerry Falwell

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

John McCain's f-bomb habit

Someone should tell John McCain that pandering to the religious right and dropping f-bombs don't really go together.

Michelle Malkin slanders Rep. Ron Paul on Fox News

As reported at the Reason blog:

GIBSON: According to a recent Rasmussen Report poll, 35 percent of Democrats think President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand. The so-called 9/11 Truth Movement has already infected people like Rosie O'Donnell and one in three Democrats, and many other people, Americans evidently, including Congressman Ron Paul. With me now is FOX News contributor and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin.

So, Michelle, this stuns me. It wouldn't have stunned me had it come up in the Democratic debate, but it's a jaw-dropper to see it in the Republican debate.

MICHELLE MALKIN: It is and it doesn't belong here. And I'm glad that this moment provided great TV for FOX News — it was a very instructive exchange — but Ron Paul really has no business being on stage as a legitimate representative of Republicans, because the 9/11 truth virus is something that infects only a very small proportion of people that would identify themselves as conservative or Republican. And as you say, John, this is far more prevalent, this strain of 9/11 truth virus, on the left, and in much of the mainstream of the Democratic Party as that Rasmussen poll showed.
...
You know, I try not to spend too much time in these cesspools, but it is worth taking a visit to places like, you know, these WTC7 sites and Students and Scholars for Truth, and I note that Ron Paul has basically allied himself with these people. He appears with Students for Truth on campus and he's appeared on radio shows like 9/11 conspiracy nut Alex Jones.

If Ron Paul has ever said anything in support of the "9/11 truth" nutcases, I've not heard of it and would condemn it. He certainly didn't in the debates--rather, he said, correctly, that "blowback" is a significant cause of terrorist attacks against the U.S. and U.S. interests. That doesn't mean that Americans have "invited" attacks, nor that Bush planned 9/11. The fact that conservatives are completely misrepresenting Ron Paul in order to discredit him and avoid addressing his arguments shows their moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

Malkin's claim that Ron Paul has "allied himself" with 9/11 conspiracy theorists and "appears with Students for Truth on campus" is a fabrication--the factoid behind the latter is that a student member of a 9/11 conspiracy group (Justin Martell "Students Scholars for 9/11 Truth") was in the audience at a Ron Paul campus appearance, and asked Paul's opinion about 9/11 (there's video at the Reason blog).

Ron Paul has appeared on Alex Jones' show (to criticize Bush, advocate the gold standard, and oppose plans for a North American Union), and I think that does show a sign of poor judgment on his part--he does have some wacky and wrong-headed ideas.

Malkin has, for once, admitted her mistake:

Last week, on John Gibson's Fox News Channel show, "The Big Story," I was asked to comment on 9/11 conspiracy theorists and Ron Paul. Here's the video. In the segment, I referred to "Students and Scholars for Truth." The accurate name of the group I was referring to is "Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth." (There's a separate group called "Scholars for 9/11 Truth," which I've blogged about previously.) I also stated that Paul appeared on campus with Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth. This is incorrect. The incident I was referring to was an exchange that took place at a campaign house party, not during an on-campus joint appearance, as I mistakenly stated. I regret the errors and am forwarding this post to The Big Story producers so that they can air these corrections if they wish to do so.

Correcting mistakes doesn't seem to be her usual practice, but it should be encouraged when it happens...

Bush's body language

An excellent John Hodgman appearance on The Daily Show.

Here's the context of the final Bush quotation:

I like the idea of people running for office. There's a positive effect when you run for office. Maybe some will run for office and say, vote for me, I look forward to blowing up America. I don't know, I don't know if that will be their platform or not. But it's -- I don't think so. I think people who generally run for office say, vote for me, I'm looking forward to fixing your potholes, or making sure you got bread on the table. And so -- but Hezbollah is on the terrorist list for a reason, and remain on the terrorist list for a reason. Our position has not changed on Hezbollah.

Crazy.

Underground Paris

It looks like underground Paris is even more interesting than underground London:

The Paris underground, often referred to as the catacombs, has been luring curious visitors for centuries. The City of Lights is built atop a vast realm of darkness: enormous gypsum and limestone quarries that were mined beginning in the 12th century for the construction of Notre Dame, the Louvre, and other edifices. Burrowed haphazardly beneath the surface city, these quarries became increasingly unstable over time. When a street collapsed in 1774, Parisian authorities investigated the galleries and reinforced weak areas. As they did, the investigators marked the tunnel walls with the names of the corresponding ground-level streets. These two-century-old signs are still used for navigation.

The freshly mapped underworld would soon have many uses. From 1785 until the 1880s, the quarries received bones from Paris's overflowing cemeteries—the public Les Catacombes museum, housed deep inside a blocked-off section of the quarries, alone contains the bones of some six million citizens. During World War II, the passages were occupied not only by the French resistance but also by Germans, who left their traces in a military installation called the Bunker Allemand. Since then, artists, performers, graffitists, and others have added to the catacombs' multilayered history. "Regardless of where your research takes you, there are always new things to discover about subterranean Paris," says Ingmar Arnold, a Berlin-based underground historian. "Wherever you walk, you can never be sure you're not passing across something mysterious—behind every corner there could be a great secret."

One of these secrets was unexpectedly revealed in September 2004 when the Paris police discovered an illegal cinema beneath the Palais de Chaillot. Patrolling officers had stumbled across the hidden amphitheater, fully equipped for movie screenings. For an illegal setup, it was remarkably sophisticated: Next to a screen and projector sat a bar and restaurant outfitted with several telephones and Internet access. The complex was protected by a closed-circuit-TV security system that set off a recording of barking dogs whenever an intruder passed by.
...
We crawled through a narrow corridor that dripped with mold and entered the heart of this ossuary. There, a central room, filled with stacks of bones, opened onto small tunnels on every side. The entire area was saturated by an ocean of broken skeletons. It was impossible to move without crawling over piles of bones several feet deep—they crackled beneath our weight. In one eerie chamber, a sculpture made of femurs rose from the scattered heaps. Only John and I climbed into that central room; turning off our lights, we crouched on bones in utter darkness, each paying respect in our own way.

The article refers to Carolyn Archer's book Paris Underground, which contains photographs of some of the underground locations. The underground movie theater is described in a 2004 article in The Guardian.

Bogus separation of church and state case in Arizona

Anthony Sciubba, a student at Higley High School, was featured in a profile in the school yearbook. That profile edited out some of the statement he submitted--specifically removing a statement where he gave credit to God for his accomplishments. He was told in advance that his bio would contain no references to God.

The school and yearbook editors have failed to understand that voluntary, student-initiated speech attributed to no one but the student does not violate the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution. There was no establishment clause violation prevented by this censorship; the school was wrong to prohibit it.

More detail and mostly uninformed commentary on this issue may be found at the Arizona Republic's website. One commenter appealed to an Illinois federal court case in defense of the school--De La Rosa v. Rock Island School District, where a student's cover artwork included the phrase "God Bless America." The difference is that in that case, the expression was on the cover of the yearbook, implying that the school endorsed the expression.

Ed Brayton points out that a similar case in Michigan was resolved in favor of the student with the help of the ACLU.

Falwell or Hitler?

Who is responsible for each quote below, Jerry Falwell or Adolf Hitler?

1. My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter.

2. This 'turn the other cheek' business is all well and good but it's not what Jesus fought and died for.

3. Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.... We need believing people.

4. I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!

5. Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.

6. We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.

7. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press. . .we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess.

8. This the national government will regard its first and foremost duty to restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our people. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our people and state, under its firm protection....May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our people.

9. Remain strong in your faith, as you were in former years. In this faith, in its close-knit unity our people to-day goes straight forward on its way and no power on earth will avail to stop it.

10. We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism ... we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today.

Answers may be found here.

(Hat tip to James Redekop on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)

Staggeringly large numbers

General Motors sold off 51% of its interest in the General Motors Acceptance Corporation last year, its financial arm. Yet that remaining 49% interest in GMAC proved to be a big problem for GM's first quarter 2007 financial results. It seems GMAC got into the mortgage business, and had a first-quarter loss of $305 million, causing GM's overall results to go from $602 million in profit in the first quarter of 2006 to $62 million in the first quarter of 2007. GM's 49% stake in GMAC caused it $115 million in loss--and Toyota passed GM for the first time to become the #1 auto manufacturer in the world.

I can't really imagine a $305 million loss. But even more staggering is that this is only about six hundredths of one percent (.061%) of the U.S. government's spending on the war and occupation in Iraq, which is about to exceed $500 billion. (Thanks to Einzige for suggesting the comparison.)