And as a side note, my Mac-only clients see me and need me just as often as my PC-only clients. When you troubleshoot the machines regularly you notice pretty much all the same problems, just in slightly different ways. Where it gets interesting is which ones are easy on one OS and frustratingly difficult to solve on the other. And that goes in both directions.

But while I agree that that bias WAS there against you guys, and I can’t argue against your experience that it’s still there, in the world I live, it seems to be the Mac users that have taken over in looking down upon the rest of us. They’re the educated elite, and we’re the unwashed masses who need to open our eyes, stop being “sheeple” and convert. Macs are now cool, the marketing that they’re “simply better” is just accepted, and the belief is rampant that everyone else just needs to catch up. But I assume the physical culture one’s in heavily influences this, too.

Now this is not evidence if its existence, granted, but to those are feeling the “presence” no other evidence is needed. And there are fabulous scientific contributions to the explanation of what exactly people are feeling that they describe as “God.” There’s right temporal lobe disorder, stimulation of areas of the brain that mimic the “Third Man Factor” (a book with the same name describes this phenomenon at length), there are drugs that bring on mystical experiences, i.e., visions, etc… so yes, science can bring doubt because there are explanations to the physical sensations that pass for “God’s presence.”

Where it gets weird though, and again, this is not proof to a non-believer, (in fact, some believers don’t even believe these things – see Cathechism of the Catholic Church) is when these phenomena occur with no prodding, no prior religiousity in the subject, no religious knowledge, no desire for them, no drugs, no disorders, no stress, no death (for the sake of near death experience arguments), etc.

The spontaneity of mystical/religious experiences and the information that comes with them (see gnosis) is what keeps belief going. Why? Because the experience is so incredibly overwhelming, and it deals with something so completely *other* and powerful that it can’t be ignored or denied.

Documentation of these experiences exists from time immemorial, but if someone has never experienced it, it is just ignored or written off as a hallucination and left at that. Where what *should* be happening, is study of the phenomenon. Thankfully, there are scientists finally on this bandwagon (see Neurotheology).

If there were millions of people (and there really are this many having sensations and visions of what they claim to be God) every year actually *seeing* or feeling the presence of the tackliot, well, you can imagine the difficulty in excising it from the population.

The experience/perception/sensation of “God” is self-reinforcing. It is more pleasurable than any man-made drug, idea, sexual experience, anything. Logic cannot *even begin* to compare to the feeling of it. And yet there are people that pause to find scientific explanations for it. Keep in mind though, that being and staying skeptical in the face of such an experience is *not* proof that God goes *not* exist…there is free will…or so the story goes. Absence of proof, is not proof of absence.

But it is absolutely reasonable, and understandable, that those that have never felt a single sensation argue against a “God,” or tackliot.

As an aside, my speech of “God” here, does not refer to any particular god. It speaks of a God that may have a completely different make-up and purpose (if any at all) than purported via the Bible, or any other holy book. Individual facts within the Bible or Qur’an are verifiable, and able to be scientifically disproven, once that occurs they should be discarded.

But the instinct to believe in something greater than ourselves is never going to go away so long as people get random firings of neurons that reinforce a supernatural presence. Most people just aren’t strong enough to resist it.

But as for my issue, you’re likely perplexed by it because you’re not running a ROM that has the problem, so can’t recognize just how excessively problematic it is. I’m not running several media files at a time (not sure what makes you think I am); my complaint is ONLY over notifications interrupting. But during the middle of a workday I might get work email notifications, personal email notifications, text messages, and who knows what else anywhere from a few times an hour to a few times a MINUTE. When listening to a podcast (also BeyondPod, which does NOT pause the audio but mutes at least part of it) or music this completely ruins the experience. And while I can mute the phone, I then lack awareness of potentially important messages. You have different notification needs/desires which also account for you being less aware of this issue.

My main point, though, is that this should be easy to resolve officially in a way that makes everyone happy. If it’s not an issue for the two main competing OSes, there’s no reason for Google to have ignored it so far.

I hate the iPhone for a lot of reasons, mainly that its popularity only validates my observation that people are retarded and buy whatever is trendy over whatever is functionally better. But another reason is that the iPhone is the smart phone for everyone, especially dumb people. And kids. the iPhone was built like a toy, and while it does games well and all that stuff, I don’t care about that. I want my phone to actually _do_ stuff I want it to do that it _can_ do…which is to say, I care about actual apps and productivity and internet-based non-entertainment applications. And especially now, Android-based hardware has almost caught up with the iPhone in terms of gaming and stuff. If I wanted to do all that gaming and video stuff I could, but it’s nice having the option, as opposed to the iPhone’s North Korean-like restrictions on everything.

The bluetooth issue, however, IS one of my biggest gripes as well. It’s something which is so annoying and affects SO many people, it’s not like they missed it. There’s ways to sort of work around it, but that shouldn’t be necessary.

I’m still perplexed by what seems to be a constant occurrence of interrupted audio with your phone, though. I rarely get that, but it seems like it’s plaguing your device for some reason. Quite odd, but I don’t know what else one might have going at the same time beyond 1 media file, intermittent GPS speech (which is fucking irritating so mute the shit) and intermittent notification sounds (again, most of mine are off, since I can just look at the screen and do so often).

The way I see it, you can write your own melody or improvise on one that already exists. Either way you’re contributing something unique and valuable.

Besides, someone has to provide commentary on said creativity, n’est-ce pas?

I would liken the individual that is always willing to keep opening the box to one that never learns. The process of “closing one’s mind” to the increasingly improbable is, perhaps, nothing more than the process of learning.

For those “fully open minded” people being really close minded; it’s so true. The specific thing they are close minded about is that it is possible to prune back the forest of possibilities as information becomes available. That is, not all things are equally probable and the refusal to see that is simply being close minded about that.

It is frustrating to debate with these people as they insist they are the ones with open minds and that we are the ones that need to “think outside the box” in order to see the “higher truth!”

As for your involvement, I did a cursory Google search and saw an Arizona Skeptics group on Facebook, as well as some others. It might be worth your time to seek them out and take the plunge. The reality of this field is that every individual member is important regardless of where they are or who they’re working with. The IIG was quite diverse, and made up of people I would never have assumed were skeptics, or never assumed were the type to get up and make a difference. And yet they were intricately involved in doing just that. So find a way if you can. You’ll feel darn good about it in the end, I assure you.