Social justice book reviews
White Magic is the weirdest book I have ever read. I knew it would be weird before I started it; the reviews I read were so mixed, and none of their writers seemed to know how to describe it, either. Before starting the book, I wrote, “. . . there’s definitely something to be said for just jumping into a book that people have loved to an extent that it was indescribable.”
If you have been following my blog for the past few months, then you know that one of my favorite YouTubers is Progressive Christian Brenda Marie Davies. I feel like I’m talking about how great her channel is in every other post. So you can imagine that when she posted a podcast episode this week all about astrology—interviewing full-time “astrologer” Aliza Kelly—that I was frustrated because belief in the pseudoscience of astrology is my #1 pet peeve.
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When writing my first post about why astrology is pseudoscience, I had the intention of ending it by suggesting the Myers-Briggs Personality Test as a more accurate way to identify people’s traits. I was surprised to find that while personality types are more valid than zodiac signs (or their popular equivalent in Asian countries of categorizing personalities based on blood type), they are still far from perfect. For example, I once took my own Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test and found that I was an INTJ, but when my husband took the same test about me, we found that in his eyes I was an ISFJ. (I’ve also gotten INFJ and INTP.) This was my first hint that personality tests might not be all they’re cracked up to be. Knowing that, and having seen how ubiquitously popular the Enneagram test has become, I decided it was time for me to put personality types to the test. They’re not as bad as astrology, but they’re by no means an exact science. Where do they land?
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Since I was a kid, I’ve had a tendency to get “obsessed” with various things. I think “obsessed” might be a harsh word for it, but it’s not entirely inaccurate: over the years I have become enamored with different book series, TV shows, and musicians in the sense that one could have thought that my being a fan of that thing was my main personality trait. As I’ve grown older, this zeal has gone more towards things like atheism, paleoanthropology, and most recently, everything Carl Sagan has ever written.
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I started working at my first-ever office job in March of 2019. During a typical week, I would go into the office for three days and work from home for two. I enjoyed working in an office, mostly because it was the definition of success and of being a true adult after college. My coworkers were all very close friends with one another, and I enjoyed the lightheartedness in the air that came with the camaraderie. Unfortunately, I don’t think I ever truly made my way into that circle of friends (I’m talking best-friends-outside-of-work level friends) for many reasons. I believe that the overarching reason is because they all shared common interests that I could not have cared less about.
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One of my favorite things about my blog has always been the ability to sit down on the weekends and write about whatever topic it is that plagued my mind all week. Sometimes it’s paleoanthropology or progressive Christianity, and this week it’s been astrology. I’ve written about astrology before (why it is pseudoscience, and why mercury retrograde is strictly an astronomical rather than astrological phenomenon), so one might wonder why I can’t just let it go. The fact is, something about astrology really rubs me the wrong way, and anyone close to me knows it.
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If you read my review of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos two weeks ago, then you’ll know that it became one of my all-time favorite books the moment I read it. I felt as though Sagan took topics that we think of everyday, not taking the time to really ponder, and made them spectacular. This is the power of his writing. Thus, this week I am passing him the metaphorical mic. I hope you enjoy these 37 great quotes from Cosmos as much as I did!
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I started this blog as a way to vent about the things in my life that bothered me. Usually it’s been different aspects of religion invading my life that made me so upset. Since those days, I’ve managed to separate myself from religion, and so I haven’t blogged many rants for a while. Well, today’s post is in a nostalgic spirit as another rant rears its ugly head just in time for Mercury to enter retrograde tomorrow, February 17th.
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I remember sitting in class at Grove City College in the fall of 2015 and disagreeing with every single Christian point that the professor made. I didn’t really know about the word “atheist” then, and I didn’t exactly know what I was, but I knew I wasn’t a Christian. It was probably around this time when the events of this post took place, and when I first tried watching the famous Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham debate. It was also around this time that I first saw Zeitgeist: The Movie.
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As we all know, there’s a lot of pseudoscience floating around out there today. Some people think the Earth is flat, and some people think it began 6,000 years ago. Some think vaccines cause autism, and some think that human-caused climate change is a hoax. And some people think that their being born in January makes them exceptionally sexually compatible with a person born in June. To each their own, I guess. Although I don’t believe in astrology, I can’t help but thinking that compared with beliefs like climate change denial, it’s not horribly harmful. Just silly.
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