About Ryan

Ryan McLaughlinWhat’s there to say about me really? I like to write. I’m Canadian. I live in China.

On this blog you’ll find musings, rants, information and media about my life in China as well as a number of other things that strike my fancy. I now live in Suzhou, but started my life in China up in Dalian, a city in the north-eastern province of Liaoning.

In a previous life I worked editing and writing for several prominent Canadian publications. I often say I was a “journalist”, but as I never had any interest in interviewing politicians nor having brushes with death in war-torn countries, I don’t really deserve the title.

I have been known to write professionally, and may one day do so again. Currently my interests are focused on learning Chinese, blogging and Web design. In regards to that last one, check out my company, Dao By Design. If you want to know a few more details about how I got here, check out “How I got where I am“, a post that gives a basic rundown.

This blog isn’t the only blog I write at. I am also the founder of Lost Laowai, a site and blog for expats in China. Additionally, as of late 2008, I’ve started writing CNET Asia’s The Tech Dynasty.

This Blog

I started this blog back in 2003, when I first began a five-month trip backpacking around Europe and Asia. At the time it was on LiveJournal. The blog went on a short hiatus after I returned to Canada, but I picked it up again after deciding to move to China to teach ESL in January 2005.

At that time the blog was powered by Blogger, but in 2006 I moved it to the much more robust WordPress system, which it has been on ever since.

Some other parts of the site you might find interesting:

  • Published Works: Here are some of the travel articles I’ve written.
  • Photo Gallery: A collection of photographs I’ve taken through the course of my travels.
  • Video Blog: A once interest of mine – video blogging/editing. Here are some videos showing various aspects of life in China. One day I promise that new entries shall be made!
  • Music: Yup, gots me a CD. It was recorded on my laptop in my basement (when I lived in a country that had basements). I am by no stretch a “musician”, but I can strum a bit and sing a bit and write a bit. These are a few of my songs.

Elsewhere Online

Though The Humanaught strives to be my personal blog and aggregator of all I am doing online – I can often also be found online at the following haunts:

Beliefs

out-campaignI am also an “outted” atheist.

Though many of my thoughts and beliefs have changed and evolved through the course of my life, and I’m sure they will continue to do so; two things to me are constants.

The first is that there is no god nor gods. I don’t think that the god of Abraham has any more substance or relevance on modern life than the gods of the Greeks, Romans or Norse.

The second is that living a moral and ethical life has absolutely no tie to religion in anyway. Unlike religion – which tends to indoctrinate the young, weak and poor – morals and ethics are a personal choice available to us all. That a large segment of the world’s population continues to use archaic literature riddled with immoral, cruel and inhuman actions to guide their “moral” lives is both baffling and worrisome to me.

For more about my views, please see my post entitled: “I am an atheist“, which includes a lot of interesting conversation from both the religious and non-religious camps. It, unfortunately, also contains some rather moronic arguments as well. Spice of life and all that…

I mention my beliefs here, both as a proclamation and as notice that some content on my blog (but not much) may attack or challenge beliefs held by others. I make no apologies for this.