What causes me cognitive dissonance and why I've had a tendancy to avoid Facebook.

I wish to be optimistic about the future of the human race, but then I see stupid shit on Facebook that runs counter to that wish. This causes discomfort that I wish to avoid. Instead of giving up my wish, I instead chose to give up on Facebook. It is time to fix that. If I am going to honestly call myself a realist, it is time I give up on that wish.

There is one more issue worth mentioning. I'm not quite sure if it is an irrational fear of criticism...it may be a little...I think it is more a fear of having to defend myself. I lean more to the later because I did not have near the issue of facing criticism in the past. The fear has come about, I'm quite sure, from past attempts at defending myself where my words would not come out right and I'd feel stupid about what I said later. There might be some cognitive dissonance there as well because I view myself as a smart person, so doing something stupid contradicts that. On the flip side, I feel that I have accepted as fact that I am not good at thinking of quick, witty responses. So that would not be dissonance then. It must then be that fear, though one of the reasons I started this blog was so that I could take my time writing responses so that I could develop better arguing/debating skills. It is time I dropped this fear as well!

Hi, Mom, I'm on Pharyngula!

  I made it onto PZ Myers' blog, and I just feel like gloating a little. That, and I want to share the picture that was taken. I'm in the middle and the one Jesus with fake hair. :(  To the right (my left) is vlogger Thunderf00t (a.k.a. Phil Mason) and to the left (my right) is the American Atheists' Arizona state director, Don Lacey (OK, maybe his head hair is fake...I can't remember what he looked like out of costume). In case you don't get it, we're doing "Speak no evil; see no evil; hear no evil."

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UPDATE: Mr. Lacey has confirmed that is his real hair.

Where I've been

It looks like it has been 1517 (it helps to hit the "PUBLISH POST" button!) days now since my last post. My few followers may be wondering where I've been...well, part of what has kept me away is saving Hyrule from the evil Ganondorf! Now that Princess Zelda is safe, I can return to blogging!
I've also been taking an online class to help me "get assertive." Basically, the goal is to help me with presenting my ideas. The class is designed mostly for personal conversation, and not a blog, but I figure I can still make use of some of the ideas.

In other news, I am taking a motorcycle class this weekend, so I won't be posting much. I may try to get out the first part of my morality post since the draft has been pretty much done for some time now (thus, you'll have something to read without me putting together something from scratch). I'll also try to get around to a soccer report, too.

This hit home for my experience this week.

Yeah. HTML. Good times.