on Stem Cell research, for Lisa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell_research

make special note of the section entitled "Blastocyst stem cell ethical debate" around half way down the entry. notice that these Blastocysts, from which the stem cells are extracted, are already being legally used by in vitro fertility clinics, "and when not used in additional therapy or in embryonic stem cell research are destroyed or frozen indefinitely by the thousands."

so... rather than actually try to help humankind by destroying a 5 day old clump of cells with no nervous system etc, which will absolutely be destroyed anyway if not used in an actual fertility procedure... let's just hose the whole thing because we're a bunch of bleeding heart religious conservatives with a personal agenda who can't put 2 and 2 together to see how stupid we're being. :-)

Bush pledges to veto stem cell bill - May 23rd 2005

US stem cell research in jeopardy - January 24th 2005

make special note of the last two sentences in that article: The existing rules cited are designed to prevent the destruction of further embryos from which stem cells are extracted. The process has provoked considerable polemic in the US, with George Bush coming down firmly on the side of the antis.

*ahem* let me make this clear...

They're going to be destroyed anyway you clueless dolt. Now because of your ignorant dogmatic politicking, we're going to lose all the possible benefits that might be had.

have I made myself clear?

thanks Chief.




Now, I'm going to head one argument off at the pass by playing the devils advocate here.

<devils_advocate>being frozen indefinitely does not mean destroyed. doing the stem cell extraction procedure on the blastocysts will actually destroy them, whereas being frozen indefinitely doesn't.</devils_advocate>

fair enough I suppose. I don't know enough about the process of storing embryos used in in vitro fertilization procedures. I'd have to ask.

however, we know that not all are even frozen indefinitely (or as the following article states, "for a long time"), but that at least some, if not most are destroyed under the current procedures, and they been handled as such for awhile now I'd guess... but again, I'd have to research more.

so, guess what I'm off to do? ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_fertilization

ok, just from that, we know that this has been going on since roughly 1978. 27 years now. and while we see that many of the same "concerns" are being raised, obviously this procedure has been allowed to continue because of it's obvious, directly observable, desirable effects... namely, allowing parents who might not be otherwise able, to conceive and bear their own children.

that's the trouble with ignorant people... the more abstract or complicated an issue is, the less likely they are to understand or accept it.

put simply, some of the issues here are:

• lack of knowledge of all the pertinent information.


• lack of ability to comprehend the pertinent information even when available.


• lack of ability to perceive long term benefits.


• desire to adhere to the religious/conservative group ideology.

put very simply, fear of the unknown.

---------

remeber kids, the following things are wrong! now can you tell me why?

• Bypassing the natural method of conception.


• Creating life in the laboratory.

because only the imaginary sky god is supposed to be able to do that! if we can create life ourselves, we're heading down the path of making the imaginary sky god obsolete.

and we just can't have that! we need to stay in the dark ages where intellectual thought and literacy were suppressed to maintain belief in the church (and yes Markavillie, I know that there were mainly "political" motivations behind that, to maintain a power structure dependant on the absolute belief in the Catholic Church as the sole means of communcation with god, the sole channel of biblical learning and hence the sole means of salvation.), the bible, and it's imaginary sky god and outdated, backwards, and downright heinously erroneous ignorant fictitious worldview.

*walks away in disgust*

I'm starting to get pissy, and when I get pissy, I start losing my objectivity. so that's it for now.

things I'm pondering

First... I've been reading a lot lately about things relating to the Left and Right... to Liberal and Conservative.... Democrat and Republican...

I'd been considering for awhile that my view of the differences between the Democratic party and Republican party was colored by my rather recent introduction into politics, and that I was weighing my view of each party and what it stood for by the beliefs and actions of the candidates put forth by each party.

lately I've been starting to realize that that was not quite correct. so I've been starting to try to get a better grasp on what each stands for and why. I've been reconsidering things.

I think this somewhat came to a head about 2 days ago when I stopped by Barnes & Noble and picked up the latest issues of 2600, SKEPTIC and The Philosophers Magazine. There was an article in The Philosophers Magazine (Issue 30) entitled "The Hobbesian state of America". It went into how the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke affected the American ideology and how this in turn affected foreign and domestic policies, perceptions, relations etc. This article really sort of pushed me over the edge to the point where I feel that I need to do some serious studying on the roots and historical foundations of these groups or ideologies, rather than basing too much of my understanding on contemporary empiricism. :(

Second... I was reading the latest SKEPTIC (Vol.11 #3) and came across an article entitled "Flashbulb Memories - How psychological research shows that our most powerful memories may be untrustworthy" which went back over a number of experiments going all the way back to 1899. this got me thinking that if there was such repeated scientific evidence from all these studies done about the fallability of human memory, from as short a time as 24 hours, up to 3 years later... and that with many of the subjects and essentially all of the subjects from 2 and 3 years later, the false memories had actually completely supplanted the original memories... and even when subjects were shown video and/or their own written descriptions of the events at the time they actually happened, they retained the new false memories! these false memories had essentially become reality to them and they were unwilling and/or unable to revert back to the real memories of the real events. these memories were simply gone. vanished, erased, replaced by fabrications of their minds.

can anyone see where I'm going with this? these are people who had directly witnessed events in their lives... things which had taken place directly to them... and they had fabricated false memories that had completely replaced their real memories, and in other cases the memories were completely fabricated... of events that never happened. and remember, this almost irreversible loss and replacement of memories happened within 2 to 3 years.

now imagine that you have memories of events which are written down, not by anyone who directly witnessed the events... and which are not written down for decades... events which follow similar patterns to those in the article... would or should this cast doubt on the authenticity of those accounts? especially given obvious inconsistencies and discrepancies between the different accounts? given our newfound understanding of the fallability of human memory etc?

'Flashbulb memory' theory fades in light of new findings

9/11/01 - Reactions of Psyhological Scientists - FLASHBULB MEMORY RESEARCH

Third... now this third one isn't such a serious thought... I was just thinking about how it was such an odd coincidence that the things written in the bible all just happened to be exactly what the people of the time saw around them. contemporary fiction as it were. the animals of creation were the animals around them because they didn't know of any other animals before those... it wasn't a divine vision from god of the actual creation... it was a story derived from what they knew. Gods only begotten son just happened to be sent to earth... and that just happened to be right in northern Israel... not in the Americas, or Asia etc... nope... out of the entire universe (see my earlier post on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field), the one and only son of God just happened to end up right there in their back yard (of course, this also goes for other religions too... but that just bolsters my point).

now, I'm sure you can turn this around and say "of course it's that way... the bible was written after the fact because he was born there... you're switching it around!", but then we have the issues of him conveniently fulfilling prophecy, the old testament etc... and I've heard arguments about how he must be the messiah and whatnot because how else could he have fulfilled so many prophecies? again, it couldn't possibly be an issue of the facts being bent to fit the prophecy could it? especially in light the factors I explained above in point #2?

(not to mention a lot of the modern scholarly work into the origins and authorship of the bible, and the historicity of the events depicted etc. political pressures, personal agendas etc.)

--------

this is the kind of stuff I'm usually always thinking about. taking a holistic view of things and comparing, contrasting etc... finding connections and new ways to look at things using information from a different source, on a different topic. for instance, the Hobbesian state of America article grabbed my eye because of the discussions I was having with Markavillie... so I read a little further and decided I had to buy the issue.

I'm constantly trying to read information on many many different topics so that I can stay as well informed as possible, and have a larger, deeper pool of knowledge to draw my associations and holistic view from.

for instance, read this entry on Cold Reading and maybe even do a little further research... and notice how much of a difference it can make on how you perceive the world from then on (assuming you didn't already know this specifically).

hopefully this gives you a little idea about how my mind works... and maybe some interesting things for you to think about for yourselves.

-------

remember, if you see something you can't explain, and it makes you think of a ghost, that is how you generally would explain it... the human mind fits things to what it knows... it by nature attempts to categorize, explain, figure out... it doesn't like unknowns, so it fills in the blanks. and what it fills those blanks in with can seem just as real, or as experiments have shown, even more real than other events.

but it doesn't make them true.

this is all about getting to that truth and trying to learn to avoid the cognitive pitfalls along the way.

on flag burning

proc was kind enough to point me in the direction of some flag burning posts this morning, so I'll pass them along for your consideration. you might get a laugh... and then a pretty serious look on your face as you continue reading.

http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003585.html

what does happen when you burn an american flag?

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/us/civil_liberties
and a little commentary from Sean on the above link:
<koden> "Symbols are everything in politics. They can get you elected or defeated. That's why Democrats fear getting singed by a proposed flag-burning ban, forced into a vote that Republicans will cast as a test of patriotism."
<koden> Fucking retarded.
<koden> It's nice that we live in a world where style is more important than substance.
<koden> That article is a perfect description of why I hate Republicans and Democrats.
<koden> http://www.hutta.com/store2/products/1002

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_burning

and a flag desecrator in action! - http://www.metaphoria.us/FlagPatriotism/Dubya_signs_flag.jpg

(credit for all of these links goes to other people. I'm just aggregating them here.



personally I'm for the right to burn the flag. freedom of speech. I think putting that much force behind nationalistic imagery... it's leaning towards the trappings of fascism. dissatisfaction with a symbol should be allowed to be expressed, not repressed. it's just a piece of cloth, regardless of what it stands for.

people need to start realizing that we have to STOP MAKING IT ILLEGAL TO FUCKING OFFEND PEOPLE. IF I'M NOT HITTING YOU, HURTING YOU, STEALING FROM YOU OR OTHERWISE ENDANGERING THE SAFETY OF ANOTHER PERSON, YOU CAN FUCK THE HELL OFF. YOU DON'T HAVE A RIGHT TO NOT BE OFFENDED, BUT I (AT LEAST USED TO) HAVE THE RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH. Jesus Fucking Christ... does anyone actually have the slightest concept of what our founding fathers wrote down? I'm really starting to wonder.

*smack* *smack* *smack* *smack* wake up and quit whining! this is the kind of ignorant bullshit that happens when people are too busy trying to make everyone else happy, and everyone is afraid to tell someone else they're being stupid because they're afraid to offend them. in the meantime it becomes ILLEGAL TO OFFEND ANYONE. and just spirals into abject idiocy... and what's fucked up.. is that once these rights start flying out the window, and you've handed them over to the government... you can rest assured, YOU'RE NOT GETTING THEM BACK WITHOUT A VIOLENT FIGHT.

take a fucking lesson from history people and WAKE THE FUCK UP.

EDITORS NOTE:
Mike pointed out a shortcoming of my post... and he's probably right. the problem was, I kept editing this post to add to it. it originally didn't have the blurb from Sean, or some of the additional links, or everything including and below the picture etc. I had at one point stopped before that last rant part.. but added it for some reason. I guess the more I thought about it, the more pissy I got. :(

<proc> largo: in your latest blog post, everything is all fine and dandy and then BAM, you hit with the last 2 (and a sentence) paragraphs, where you just go bananas
<proc> save the caps and emotes dude, if you would've continued in the same tone as the rest of your entry, it would've been teh awesome(er) [sic]

ah well. shit happens. I'll keep it in mind for next time.

<proc> 1st corollary to Godwin's Law: First person who uses The Matrix as an example in existenialism related rhetoric loses the argument
<proc> 2nd corollary to Godwin's LaW: First person who uses CAPS in an argument loses the argument
<proc> 3rd corollary to Godwin's Law: If the argument is on /., SA, or Fark everyone loses.

scary.

I was watching a special on "Who Wrote the Bible", produced by Channel4, and right at the end, the last 7 minutes or so, the main narrator Robert Beckford stopped to speak with Richard Land (see here for a more in-depth description of who he is, from his own website). The following is a brief transcript of that very tail end of the show. I wonder if anyone else finds it as disturbing as I did. (mind you, seeing someone saying these things matter of factly as he does, and to a congregation etc.... UGH.)




hahaha... I was just looking for a link to information on Robert Beckford and ran across a rebuttal of this program, and one quote leaped out at me: "The whole programme, of course, was the devil’s lie."

yes.. of course... if we agree with you, we're influenced by god... if we disagree, it's not our actual studying and research... it's THE DEVIL. such a clear worldview must be very comforting. :)

you can even read the whole thing for yourself here in the evangelical times, just to be fair. I'm sure it will be a fairly unbiased and honest evaluation of the material. ;)

UPDATE: I typed and formatted all of this myself. stepping through the video, writing down and describing every few seconds of video. just wanted to point out that I didn't copy this transcript from somewhere else, which is what Jen thought this morning when she asked me what I spent all night doing. this is what I was doing.

--------

RB = Robert Beckman, Theologian
RL = Dr. Richard Land - President of the Southern Baptist Convention

RB: My journey is almost over. It's taken me back thousands of years, but the questions I've been asking matter today more than ever, and I'll tell you why.

(video clip of George W. Bush. audio byte of GWB saying "Freedom and Fear... are at war.")

RB: US President George W. Bush claims to live by the bible, and between 30 and 40% of the American Electorate are Evangelical Christians who believe that god wrote it.

Just before the presidential elections, Bush knows that if he rallies the religious hard-liners that didn't vote last time, it'll be 4 more years in the White House.

(audio byte of RB's car radio playing part of a sermon by Richard Land (RL): "If the Christians in America get right with God, God will bless America. If they don't, God's not gonna bless America.")

RB: I'm on my way to a baptist church in Georgia to meet a big time preacher who's been dubbed "Spiritual Advisor to the President". He's known Bush since 1988 and even wears Presidential Cuff-Links.

RB speaking to RL: What does the bible mean to George [W.] Bush?

RL to RB: I believe he believes it's God's word, and it's a source of guidance.

(video clip of RL speaking emphatically to his congregation: "God said it. That settles it. I believe it.")

RL to RB: The most important source of knowledge about Good and Evil, Right and Wrong... umm.. meaning and purpose for Human Life... umm.. that is uh.. available to human beings.

RL to congregation: I was asked the other day by a liberal uh.. if I had anything I would suggest the president had done differently, I said "yes, I would have flooded Iraq with American troops. Not 120,000... 500,000."

RB to RL: Is it right for the bible to impact Domestic and Foreign Policy?

RL to RB: Sure. Biblical Truth is Truth with a capital T... and if it's true on Sunday, it's true on Monday... it's true 24 hours a day, 7 days a week... and it should apply to every area of our lives.

RL to congregation: For a Christian to be involved in an armed conflict means that it must be authorized by the legitimate authority. I do not believe that a legitimate authority for the United States is the United Nations. Now, if they want to agree with us, great. But if they don't, (throws hands in the air and makes noise) EHH. I don't care.

RB to RL: Does reading the bible make you a better President?

RL to RB: Well, as a Christian, I believe it does. I would think it would make you a better person, a better husband, a better Senator, a better wife, a better father, a better mother, a better welder, a better lawyer uh... it'll make you a better human being.

RB to RL: On this journey, I've been looking at who wrote the bible, and I've come across theologians who say you don't have to take the New Testament literally.. because it was written decades after those events took place, so surely one needs to be a little bit more flexible...

RL cuts in on RB: I don't.. I.. I think surely not. umm.. it's not a question of intellect. It's not a question of scholarship. It's a question of Faith. umm.. most of the people that you're referring to come to the bible with what I call a Napoleonic Code... uh.. Assumption. In the Napoleonic Code, you're guilty until proven innocent. umm.. and I come to it with an English Common Law approach. You're innocent until proven guilty. It's God's word until you prove it isn't.

RB to RL: There are Theologians who argue that the biblical text was written thousands of years ago, is inaccurate, and can't be the basis of sound Domestic or International Policy. What do you say to that?

RL to RB: Rubbish. *smirk* *chuckles* You wanted a short answer, I'll give you a short answer. Rubbish. Dangerous Rubbish. When you believe the bible and you follow the bible, God blesses you and you grow. When you stand in judgment of scripture, that is a theology of death.

(video clip of Bush's victory with audio clip of Bush saying "I want to thank you all for your hard work...")

RB: 16 days later, the American Electorate gave George W. Bush a landslide victory. Many believe that preachers like Richard Land, and Bush's own very public relationship with the bible, won the day. It's been an earth shattering journey for me. From my roots, where whatever you do, you certainly never question the bible... first the so called Law of Moses turns out to be the work of many human hands... then I find much of the Old Testament was ruled by ancient politics as much as by Divine Insight. The New Testament too turns out to be a masterwork of spin. Written by people who were nowhere near the events they describe. All gathered together by powerful editors who made sure to keep out ideas they didn't like.

But my Mother always taught me: "Stay intelligent despite your education.", and what she meant by that was "use your experience to work out what's in front of you.", and if I apply that to this journey, Who Wrote the Bible? Well, I've learned that biblical authorship is messy, and it's messy because life is imperfect... and if we can find God in the imperfections of our lives, of my life, then maybe we can find God in the messiness of the text. Who Wrote the Bible? Well it's a complex question, and it takes some thinking through, and that tells me that to have Faith in the world today, is to ask questions and never have the wool pulled over your eyes.

update to the previous "yay religion" story.

a friend of mine had this to say... I couldn't help but share it.

<knix> largo, That nun story is just sad
<knix> I sure hope they got the demon >:F

I have tears in my eyes. :'P

and while we're at it... yay religion! :-D

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4107524.stm

read it and weep. :)

UPDATE: I'm moving this post back to the top because it kind of got lost in the flurry of other bullshit over the past 36 hours or so. in case anyone else wanted to chime in, or watch the mutual frustration ensue. ;P

and because PC keeps mentioning it.

I'm sure some people are probably wondering by now just what the fuck the "bobbi shirt" is. well, allow me to lay that mystery to rest as best I can.

back in 2000, I met John/Dragon while working out in California on contract work for what was VA Linux at the time (VA Software now, VA Research initially...) doing the front-end design for sourceforge.net.

in the spring of 2002, John had flown out to attend the Linux World Expo with a bunch of us who were at the time running the windowmaker.org booth. PC drove up to attend, as it was in New York, and he was living in New Jersey at the time I believe. I'd known PC for a few years already at that point.

anyway... we ended up renting 2 hotel rooms in Hopatkong for whatever reasons that PC probably remembers better than I do... Kenny was with us, and my friend Bastien, who had flown over from England (he's actually French, but was living in England at the time).

so... John being his normal cocky self, had made the bet that nobody could hack his laptop, and to prove the bet, left it in our hotel room and went off to sleep in the other room. the combination of I think mostly PC and Bastiens skills, maybe Kenny's and probably not much of mine, I don't remember... but we got the laptop booted into single user mode, blah blah... we got access. so as a practical joke, (again, ask PC for the details, I think it was him) someone got the idea to set up his desktop to wait for like 15 minutes of use and then open up a porn video, fullscreen, playing, with sound etc.

this was the very video that was to become the start of a private in-joke that spread like wildfire around the LWCE convention floor, within our social circles.

you see, the video starred a beautiful girl named Bobbi who was, as she stated in the video, from Colorado and just turned 18.

the actual execution of the joke fell far far short of the infamy the video received... John had the lightning reflexes of a shaolin monk and managed to close the video before nary a few frames had hit the screen. this could have had something to do with his wife sitting right next to him... who knows. ;)

anyway... the now (in)famous opening line of the video is as follows:
"hi... my name is bobbi... I'm 18 years old... I'm from Colorado... and today.... I'm gonna get my ass fucked."

this was (for obvious reasons) shortened to a simple "hi, my name is bobbi..." which became an inside joke that would be spoken as a sort of greeting whenever we ran into each other... (person 1): "hi, my name is bobbi..." (person 2): *starts giggling uncontrollably* "I'm 18 years old..." (person 3): "I'm from colorado..." (person 4): "and today...." (person 5): (by this point everyone is laughing) "what the heck are you guys talking about?"

whereupon we'd have to usher the unsuspecting victim off to see the video and hence become a part of the inside joke. ;P



so, with that said... we decided to make a t-shirt for those of us who attended the expo to commemorate the event... but never got around to it for a number of reasons. the shirt still lives on as an inside joke, and something that most everyone who heard the joke still longs for.

so, without further ado... the design of the shirt:


that's the best copy I have of it... I never actually made a hi-res or vector copy to send to a printer to have the shirt made.

one of these days maybe. I still know a few people who keep asking for one.

oh, and we can't forget this; the actual words that inspired a legend:


(blame it on PC... he's the one that kept bringing it up. ;) heh blame it on John/Dragon too, he's the one who first showed us the video.)

just how much is really out there.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter...releases/2004/07/

follow the top link to view the shot at full resolution (warning: it's 60mb. it's 6200x6200px)... and then do the following:
hold out your hand at arms length, up towards the sky, palm towards the sky, fingers out. now look at the amount of sky covered by your pinky fingernail. that is more than the area covered by that picture. and take a good look at just how much is in that picture.

start reading a little bit about the numbers of stars in the galaxies in just that picture alone, just the ones visible. then imagine that in every direction...

if you can even begin to grasp the sheer amount... maybe you might want to think about things like whether or not you really believe that out of all that... that we are the only life in the entire universe? there could be life all over the universe, right now. traveling around the stars... and we wouldn't know it because unless they were traveling exponentially faster than the speed of light, they wouldn't be able to get here or send us ANY type of signal that we would recieve for THOUSANDS, if not MILLIONS of years. some of what we are just now seeing out there is BILLIONS of years ago. the LIGHT is just now getting to us.

there is plenty in the universe to be amazed about, but don't let it stop you from pursuing the facts and understanding what is actually there. resting on fantasy and superstition isn't going to get us very far, to say the least.

what PC was looking for.

ascii pr0n.

in my IRC channel, sometimes the conversation turns less than intellectual. today's witty banter was between gresco (Geronimo P. from Argentina) and knix (Jimmy M. from California) about each other being gay or variations thereof.

some of the highlights:

* gresco kicks knix in da head.
* knix kills gresco's parents and burns them
* knix jerks off on gresco's face with his dead parents ashes under his foreskin
<knix> hahahha UBER pwnt.
<gresco> I know.
<gresco> of your dirty fantasies
<gresco> like a good Californian.
<gresco> go fuck your Mexican lawner
<knix> ok, done.
<knix> What now?
* gresco beats knix in the stomach.
<knix> Aww, that wasn't very kind
* knix rapes gresco in the ass and defiles his inerds
<gresco> I'm like a washing machine.
* gresco pulls knix teeths off.
<gresco> I'll be right back.
<gresco> knix: are you crying?
<gresco> knix: I won't apoligize motherfucker.
<gresco> apologize, whatever.
<knix> It's ok, you don't have to apologize for being a homosexual
<gresco> who cares
<gresco> knix: I hope Schwazennger runs over you in a big truck.

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<gresco> knix: and what does your father think about you being gay?
<gresco> isn't it the fathers day today?
<gresco> knix: how about telling him the truth as a gift?
<pinskia> yes
<knix> lol
<knix> gresco, At what age were you sexually molested by your father?
<pinskia> heh
<proctologiste> children, children

honestly, it's not always that bad. but considering that gresco doesn't exactly speak the greatest english, and knix is only 17... well... it makes for interestingly entertaining conversation at times.

:)

interesting post on fascism, religion etc.

read a nice post over on Balloon Pirates blog...

as he said, here is a flash animation link for the impatient, however, I suggest you go and read the entire post... hell, read the whole site. he's a lot more focused and articulate than I am. :)

wisdom

"[The Abrahamic religions] use faith, revelation, and authority rather than evidence in order to conclude what is true about the world. This is a recipe for disaster because when you rely upon faith, revelation, and authority, it is almost inevitable that your brand of faith, revelation, and authority will turn out to be different from that of other people and if you believe with sufficient passion as people in all three religions do, then that is a recipe for fighting."
-Richard Dawkins "Islam, Religion and Democracy" - KCRW radio, October 2, 2001

"To fill a world with religion or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns."
-Richard Dawkins - September 15, 2001 issue of The Guardian

shit shit SHIT!

Senate panel votes to expand Patriot Act

...

SHIT.

SHIT.

In response to Lisa's "the nature of man" post.

First off, talking about the nature of man using the words "good" and "evil" shows a lack of understanding of the subject matter. While I VERY GENERALLY agree with what you're saying, I feel that some clarification is in order.

Define "evil" here? Rape? Murder? Define those acts? Simply having a shitty attitude is not "evil". Not helping out someone who is drowning is not "evil"... apathetic or cowardly to a criminally negligent extent... sure... but EVIL? Hardly.

The nature of man is self service. Man wants first and foremost what is best for him. By nature man wants multiple sexual partners, anything he sees that he wants, etc etc. It is social constructs such as monogamous relationships and property laws, along with their consequences that make him not follow these urges.

People in the US and most "civilized" cultures would say that cannibalism is evil... but we know that it has been done by "civilized" people in extreme conditions... shipwreck victims adrift at sea... frontiersmen lost in the mountains... plane crash victims in remote areas...

Were these people evil? No. They were following the laws of nature and survival.

Nature is not a friendly place. It is survival of the fittest. Animals kill and eat other animals to survive... they aren't evil for this... they are simply surviving... and as you would probably put it... following the obvious will of god for creating them that way.

We really do have free will... and just because some people truly have no conscience in the sense that they don't respect the lives or property of others... this doesn't make them EVIL... the idea of EVIL is a concept created as part of religious fairytales... black and white... good and evil... and to start categorizing the real world in such a binary manner is simply WRONG.

I do feel that man is by nature selfish... and that that selfish nature is destructive to the world we live in. Generally given the option to serve ones self without the possibility of serious repurcussions, man would do so most of the time... mind you, not all of the time... but most.

This is what has led to things such as law and religion... to setup consequences... both in the material and the spiritual realm... a sort of double fisted approach to reign in the consciousness of the people. If you do something wrong, either you're going to get caught, and get put in jail, killed, have your hands cut off... etc... or even if you don't get caught... there's always the religious approach that states that you're still going to pay for it. God will get you and you'll go to hell etc.

It's easier to just say that people are evil than to understand that we are just animals... capable of free thought and capable of every deed that you can find anywhere throughout the animal kingdom. Just because we've evolved this much, doesn't mean we don't still have a lot of those animal aspects still. We are still predators... forward facing eyes... canines and molars for both ripping and tearing meat etc... and for eating vegetables and such as the omnivores we are.

Man has labeled certain actions "evil" to give them a social stigma... because they are unpleasant and/or undesirable (to say the least in some cases). But in the end, that label is just an arbitrary construct created by man.

Given that in the end there is no such thing as good or evil in some spiritual battle over the fate of mankind, but simply us as humans, with free will... doing what animals have done since the beginning of life on earth... live and breed... by whatever means necessary... your imaginary god simply doesn't figure into the real world happenings. It's nothing more than nature... the way it was long before mankind... and if we are too stupid to avoid our own destruction through nuclear war... or simply from a meteor wiping out around 84% of life on earth AGAIN... (yes, there have been several mass extinctions on earth, and the one where the dinosaurs died was not the worst)... life will go on as it has in the past.

I should probably put together a list of reading material to familiarize you with some of the topics that would give a better insight into the concepts above. I know that some of this is culled from my Cultural Anthropology studies in college... but mostly from a wide variety of sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil
that one covers a lot of the concepts I've tried to convey here in greater depth etc.



Let's boil it right on down. Man is just another animal. An animals primary biological function is to survive and breed. Looking out for the best interests of others is of secondary importance. While it is "admirable" for people to do such, it is only perceived as such because man has labeled it so. This is simply an extension of organisms living in groups giving up some amount of freedom in order to gain the safety of numbers found in a group. In such a group, it is undesirable for one of it's members to disregard the well being of the group in some manner for it's own benefit. Any such action, while possibly bad for the group in part or as a whole, is not evil... but simply the way of nature and unfortunate for the weaker party on the receiving end.

That's life. Survival of the fittest.

Sorry dear, real life isn't a fairytale and there's no man in the clouds to make it all better.

folding update.

Team members
-------------
     Rank
(within team)   User      Score  WU
      1        phreadom   3884   19
      2        optical-i  1156   9
      3        skw4sh     825    5

yay! :D I'm in the lead still! :D

if you'd like to find out more, or join the team, please check out the standford Folding@Home website.

if you do decide to try it, if you'd like to join our team, the number is 44247.

also, something to keep in mind, running this will run your CPU at 100% as long as you're running it, UNLESS YOU CHANGE THE DEFAULT SETTING. you can set it to only use like 10% or something if you want. the reason I mention this, is because you probably rarely ever use 100% of your CPU's processing power... and doing so makes the CPU run hot. if you don't have the proper heatsink, fan and ventilation... you can cause the CPU to overheat etc.

I run mine at 100% on all 3 boxes, but I had 1 of them overheat and the other get close. I adjusted the ventilation after that. ;) *added fans* been peachy since then. running nice and cool. 2.2ghz, 1.33ghz and 300mhz all AMD chips.

anyone with more questions can feel free to message me etc. :)

(for the record, skw4sh wussied out. Optical-i started up again. poor yath is still waiting on his first Work Unit to finish. :'( poor guy is going to take like 6 weeks to finish 1 Work Unit on his pentium 200mhz)

cute debate on slashdot.

comments on "why smart people defend bad ideas"

you just KNOW that's going to involve a religious debate... and sure enough, it does.

interesting reading (at least for me).

(causality, thomas aquinas, occams razor, blah blah on and on...)

quotes and thoughts.

We are not loved by our friends for what we are;
rather, we are loved in spite of what we are.
-- Victor Hugo


reminds me of what one of my friends once said about me...
"to know him is to love him anyway."

a nagging thought

I figure that I'll try to get this onto "paper" and out of my head... (so it's going to be sloppy and haphazard... it's such a huge mesh of ideas that it's an ongoing process for me to learn more about different aspects and continually cross-reference, compare, analyze etc...

I've been thinking for awhile now about how ignorance, religion, power structures, law, socialist tendencies, true democracy etc... how they all fit together into todays society/societies.

for instance, what would happen if everyone actually knew as much as I'd like them to? if people stopped being religious idiots and were simply good people in a secular sense. would people be able to function without the "happiness in slavery" aspect of a controlled society? without having the police, laws, government etc? most people don't realize that we have a direct democracy... and that we have a lot of socialist tendencies in our government etc.

it makes me wonder when I see things like the Montana Freemen... and hear something in their manifesto that makes me say "hrm...".

although I think that the Ruby Ridge guy, and the Freemen were all a little off their rockers, they all did have some valid points as well. (and look where they are now)

it makes me wonder... is there anywhere on earth that you can go and be FREE? without having to pay taxes, follow someone elses rules and laws etc? what if you say "I just want to go live on this mountain and have nothing to do with you. I don't want to be a citizen, I don't want your federal ANYTHING. I want to grow my food, make a little money by selling and trading with my neighbors, and be left alone."

what do you think would happen to you?

what if everyone really dug into the foundations of our government... had the intellect to do it... if everyone stood up at the same time and said "our government is a corrupt shadow of what it was formed as and intended to be."

do you think we'd be able to do anything about it?

I think most people are happy being ignorant... happiness in slavery. they give up many rights and freedoms because it makes them feel safe. they have a keyhole view of what's really going on in this country and around the world, and they really don't care.

I just wonder sometimes which world is a better place REALLY...

our voting system... political parties... taxes and our governments usage of them...

I guess in the end it's a moot point... as statistically the vast majority of people just aren't smart enough to be able to really comprehend all that... and the vast majority are also simply apathetic. they generally get what they want and/or need. they like having structure and order in their lives... and while they might bitch from time to time, overall, they like it, want it and need it. it lets them feel safe.

I just wonder if the world, or more specifically this country at least, couldn't be a better place if we started back the way the founding fathers intended it again. re-evaluated all of this mess.

I think that ignorance and greed have simply destroyed this country. and in the same way I say that we deserved 9/11, we deserve the fate we're headed for. every great empire falls in the end.

IP law, copyright corruption, patent law, corporate law, etc.

the list goes on and on...

this country is fucked... and the most depressing thing to me is that statistically those of us with a real clue, are fucked, because we're just a small minority.

when the majority of people are fucking stupid... and the majority vote makes the rules...

yeah. it's fun living in a place where your life is controlled by people generally far less intelligent than you are. (which is, in case you forgot, 98% of the population in my case... actually I'd only include about 75% in there, just to be accurate. the other top 23% are at least generally intelligent, ranging up to my intelligence. have to remember the curve.)

it's a ceaseless stream of instances like "we just passed this STUPID FUCKING LAW to fuck up your life because we're too stupid to understand the ramifications." "but that's stupid for x, y and z!" "but we don't understand that, and there's more of us, so deal with it."

yay.

I love for instance laws from people who believe they have the (literal) god given right to impose THEIR biblical views on morality into other peoples private lives.

sodomy, adultery, oral sex, pornography, homosexuality...

in case you didn't know it, in most states, ANY sexual activity besides that of a husband and wife having sexual intercourse in the "missionary" position, is illegal.. EVEN IN THE PRIVACY OF YOUR OWN BEDROOM... and some even have laws beyond that.

your wife sucking your dick? ILLEGAL. doggy style? ILLEGAL. anal? REALLY ILLEGAL. threesome? ILLEGAL. (even though harems, polygamy and mistresses were all quite common in the bible, and homosexuality was common place and a social norm in biblical and post-biblical times. one of the many reasons leading to the burning of the libraries (temples etc) of Alexandria to destroy all this knowledge and enforce the word of the Christians etc...)

as my mother said "it's gods word, so we have the right to do what's best for those people... they don't know what's best for themselves."

uh oh.

Minnesota court takes dim view of encryption

I hate the implications of this. essentially anyone that chooses privacy is now considered a criminal? this has been brought up many times before: "if you've got nothing to hide, then what are you worried about?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy
that probably outlines the subject better than I could.

for the record, I think the guy did commit a crime. but I think that aside from that, the courts handling of the matter of him having PGP on his computer (aside from the fact that he didn't even use it) is terribly wrong.

choosing to use encryption in no way makes you a criminal.
the right to privacy isn't criminal.

the line of thought that choosing to exercise your right to privacy is proof of criminal intent is very dangerous indeed.

another way of putting it:
"guns are criminal because they can be used to commit crimes."
"knives are criminal because they can be used to commit crimes."
"filesharing programs are criminal because they can be used to commit crimes."
"cars are criminal because they can be used to commit crimes."
"water is criminal because it can be used to commit crimes."
"bricks are criminal because they can be used to commit crimes."
"computers are criminal because they can be used to commit crimes."

all of these things are legal things with valid uses. just because PEOPLE can use them as tools to commit a crime, doesn't make the tool criminal, it makes the CRIMINAL A CRIMINAL.

this kind of assosiation is generally made as an excuse to allow people to try to maintain control. police and government don't like the idea of not being able to know everything they want about you. they don't like the idea of you having REAL privacy... so they use things like this to try to demonize encryption etc in an attempt to have it outlawed, thereby maintaining their power structure.

this actually touches on quite a number of other topics, which I won't go in depth into here.. but things like the MPAA and/or RIAA calling "copyright infringement" "THEFT" in an attempt to justify their ridiculous actions, when that is NOT what it is... or the government bending the meaning of the right to bear arms to somehow mean simply the right to own a duck hunting gun, when it was meant to mean a cutting edge military grade automatic firearm etc... because of the threat that an armed populace could be to the government power structure. the government was never supposed to have a standing army... the people were meant to be the militia... every male from 17 to 45 was supposed to own and be proficient with a modern military class firearm in order to defend his country if need be while an army was raised. this has been downplayed, buried and whatnot ever since... the government has gone on to have a HUGE standing military and stripping the citizens right to bear arms beyond small arms and single shot or semi-automatic arms, generally for hunting or target shooting.

(more information here as well as other places)

control. maintaining the status quo.

to get a better frame of mind about this... I'd suggest studying what the founding fathers did during the rebellion against Britain... read things like the constitution, declaration of independence, the federalist papers etc.

our founding fathers were by todays definition, terrorists.

our country was founded on certain principles of freedom, liberty and neutrality towards it's people.

this is starting to segue into another post I had in mind... so I'll finish this one and move on to the next one as a separate post. (makes commenting easier etc)

more on eye color

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_color

essentially, by saying that people with blue eyes have underdeveloped (and therefor somehow defective) eyes, is about as intelligent as saying that white people are underdeveloped and therefor defective because we don't have as much melanin in our skin as black people.

if we further dally down this road of thought, we can come to the INFORMED conclusions that blue eyes and light skin are both the result of evolutionary adaptation to climates with less direct sunlight, and therefor less need for high levels of melanin in the skin. this allows for more absorption of Vitamin D from sunlight, whereas people with high levels of melanin can suffer from Vitamin D deficiency more easily.

both are simply the result of human evolution and are examples of humans adapting to their environments.

wow. getting the facts is really hard. *cough*

(there is a bit more to it, but that's the basics. spend a little time on wikipedia, it will do you good.)

eternal life?

http://www.geekinformed.com/content/view/229/2/

I don't get why it's so hard for people to understand this very simple concept:

IT'S A COPY. IT'S NOT YOU. YOU DIE AND THEN A COPY OF YOU THINKS IT'S YOU.

continuity. oddly enough, if you could split yourself in half, while simultaneously copying the other half of your self, all without losing consciousness... that is the only way I can actually having 2 of YOU... as this follows with the body's natural process of shedding and replacing cells in the body. however, the YOU that is the one perceiving the "copy", is still going to die. a part of the actual "you", still containing the unbroken stream of consciousness etc, will still exist...

heh. brainbenders. :F

I'm straying from the point.

point being, downloading your brain into a computer doesn't do SHIT for you, except POSSIBLY enable the duplication of the data in your brain. and I have a good feeling that even this is PAINFULLY ignorant of the nature of the chemical/neurobiological complexity of the brain, and is still thinking of memory and thought etc, as just 1's and 0's packed into your head.

I'm not saying that something remotely like this isn't possible... but even then, it's still just a copy... unless you can preserve the brain, and then rewire it to a new body perfectly. no matter how insistent the "new" you is that it is really you, it's only because from it's point of view, it feels that continuity because it has all of your memories, perceptions etc... it "is" you in that sense... but doh.... you're dead. :)

ok.. I feel like I have clay packed in my head now. time to go lay down and read.

(and it just occurred to me that this would possibly be a good topic for Ian to weigh in on)

(oh, and also, in case you missed it... this also applies to the teleporters in Star Trek, unless you somehow remain conscious while you're REDUCED TO YOUR ATOMIC CONSTITUENTS AND BEAMED ACROSS SPACE AND REASSEMBLED... *cough*)

who knows, maybe we'll discover some fundamental shift in our understanding of the universe and be able to teleport through wormholes and all kinds of good stuff. :P

YOU NEVAH KNOW!!!

beating a dead horse

http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/service.asp

for those of you out there ignorant enough to still believe the BULLSHIT about John Kerry... here is a good starting point on rectifying that.

I almost feel guilty bringing this up, but it's a bone of contention with me... after butting heads with my father over the topic... my father having been mainly a medic in Viet Nam, as well as demolitions, etc. (he was a sergeant of some sorts I believe?)

he told me that he hated John Kerry so much that he wouldn't vote for him if he was the last man on earth, or if it killed him etc... that he was a traitor to his country etc.

so, I went and did a lot of studying, came back a few weeks later and had a nice long talk with him about it... and in the end, he said "I guess I really can't argue with that. I hadn't thought of it that way."

to me it's just a matter of perseverence sometimes in getting someone to consider a different viewpoint... to take a look at the facts and reevaluate them etc. and getting my own father to reevaluate something he was so passionate about, and to give any credence at all to the totally opposite viewpoint... it was quite an accomplishment for me.

so I guess the reason I still beat this dead horse now, is that even though Kerry lost the election, there is still a lot to learn in relation to the stories behind the candidates... and a lot of misinformation that has been left to stand since then. I don't see any reason to not try to correct that misinformation... if only to illustrate to people that they've been duped... and to maybe teach them a bit about doing a little research of their own.

oddly enough, it echoes what Kerry himself was doing after Viet Nam.... it wasn't just that he was fighting against the governments lies about Nam and the lives that it was costing.... it was about making sure that the American people knew what the government had done, and trying to make sure it never happened again.

think about it.

--------------------------

for the record, I'm not a big Kerry fan, I simply thought he was a better candidate than Bush. I would have probably voted for Dean, given the chance. it started as a matter of simply trying to figure out the best candidate... the lesser of 2 evils so to speak... but ended up turning into a matter of fighting to get people to learn the TRUTH behind crap... hell, even PC got suckered by all the propaganda, lies and bullshit (redundant?)... and after I argued with him for like 3 hours after I found out how he voted, he said "why didn't you tell me this sooner?" and I said "BECAUSE I THOUGHT YOU KNEW BETTER!!". PC is rather Libertarian... blah blah

anyway... I just try to make sure people have the facts straight and aren't making any more choices since the elections based on the horribly flawed BULLSHIT that most people were totally suckers for during the elections.

for the love of god...

Would you Adam 'n' Eve it ... (dinosaurs in Eden)

...

...

just read it. I really don't have anything else to say right now.

(thanks proc for the link!)

:-/

Lisa...

now, as long as we're both aware of Freedom of Expression... and that even if you get all offended and steam starts coming out of your ears, technically, in a truly free society, you shouldn't be able to censor that person.

now as far as calling it ART... that's entirely subjective. is art a form of personal expression? is art only things that are beautiful? how do you quantify beautiful? where do you draw the line between what is aesthetically pleasing to you, or to someone else? etc.

unfortunately, the dictionary seems to take the view that art has to be beautiful or aesthetically pleasing. I was always of the impression that it was a form of personal expression. if I wanted to paint what was on my mind... (and I did chalk "art" when I was younger, among many other things... including pieces being displayed in an art museum etc.) what if what was on my mind was darkness and hate and anger and despair... and I let that flow through my hands and onto canvas and left something terrible... ?? then it's not art? even if 1 other person could look at that and see the beauty in it? the window into a persons soul?

where do you draw the line and make the decision for what someone can and cannot call art, based on YOUR perception of it and feelings towards it? if it's not hurting you, robbing you, or depriving you of some inalienable right or something... I don't see what the issue is. you're free to disagree and not call it art... but you really can't say that someone else can't. to THEM it very well could be art.

just my 2 cents I guess. I'm sure this could be argued in circles all day. and I know that I could argue "both" sides, and a number of tangents. but I think in the end, I covered the main gist hopefully.

Piss Christ

expression... might even be "beautiful" to someone... beauty being in the eye of the beholder after all. ;)

it's all relative... it's all subjective.

I think a more fruitful discussion here would be to focus more on the fact of simply offending other people... not about the "art or not art" aspect of it.

and I think I already covered that too. freedom of speech and of expression. I have no pity for people so grievously offended by the equivalent of pissing on a picture of hansel and gretel standing outside the gingerbread house.

want something to really get upset about? consider things like how upset you'd be if someone murdered your parents... or raped your sibling... REAL LIFE. people need to stop getting their panties in a bunch over PIECES OF FUCKING PAPER or LITTLE PLASTIC STATUES.

I honestly wish they'd all just kill each other off and leave those of us with (un)common sense to refill the gene pool.

god damnit

ok... here is an example of the reason I paid for the results on that IQ test. there were a few that I -knew- I would likely get wrong, not for lack of my own mental ability, but for lack of either accuracy or clarity on the part of the test.

for example, here is question #4, which the test stated that I got wrong.


(the green arrow being my answer, the red check being the "correct" answer)

now to clarify, a square is by defintion a rectangle, but a rectangle is by defintion NOT a square.

square: n.
1. A plane figure having four equal sides.
2. Something having an equal-sided rectangular form: a square of cloth.

rec·tan·gle: n.
A four-sided plane figure with four right angles.

now, given the above definitions, we can see that the colored portions of the 2 figures are NOT squares, but are actually rectangles. they are not even CLOSE to being squares. HOWEVER, the 4 corner shapes on the other hand ARE squares.

so, the correct answer here would obviously be "neither colored shape is actually a square, so none of the possible given answers is correct.".

but... given what I had to work with, and allowing for the fact that it is a SOLID fact that the colored rectangles are NOT squares, I had to move down the line of reasoning to the related shapes, these being the SQUARES at the 4 corners of the associated colored shapes. now, while this doesn't exactly fit the phrasing of the question, neither do the given answers fit the facts.

so I had 2 options. either dumb myself down to allow for the fact that they probably made the mistake of incorrectly calling 2 rectangles "squares", or I actually use my brain to follow a train of logic and make the best guess in what would, in an abstract reasoning sense, be a trick question/answer.

obviously I was shooting for a higher score, so I chose the more accurate per definition answer... and got it wrong.

now, while I wasn't entirely correct, being fully correct is perfectly impossible, given the fundamental error of the question.

yeah. sometimes I think too much. which is funny, given that this is an IQ test.

oh well, like Stephen said... "what, being a genius isn't good enough for you? you need to be a super genius?"

really, I just wanted to get to the bottom of it. :)

---------

for the record, the only question I got wrong as a result of me just mentally screwing up, was the question about which would be cheaper, the ham or the beef. my mistake was in not subtracting 40% from the price, but in calculating 40% of the price and using that number. (divide by 10 to get 10%, being 25 cents, multiply by 4 to get 40% = $1, which I should have then subtracted from $2.50 to get $1.50, which would have made the ham $0.50 more than the cost of the beef while both were on sale.) one of those where I smacked my forehead after the fact, but that one was my own fault for an oversight.

the other 3 (besides the above "squares" one) that I got wrong were the stapler, which I misjudged the width of the staples and chose the second one... the chairs and table, where I figured that the size of the table in relation to the chairs wasn't specified, and therefor either both could fit, or just the last one, or none... depending on the unspecified relative scale. another I should have dumbed down for I guess. and finally, the peanut and the paper. again, another unspecified one. I could simply fold the paper into a paper airplane and drop it... it's wind resistance at that point relative to weight would be less than the peanut and therefor it would fall faster. *sigh* again, I should have just picked the obvious answer.

sometimes overthinking things isn't the best route.

yay for Occam's Razor.

and a counterpoint, lest you think I'm being too biased.

http://godsfriends.org/Vol13/No1/allah-akbar.html

when trying to really understand something in depth, you should learn as much as you can about all the possible facets of a situation, and then take an informed, intelligent and holistic approach to that path towards understanding.

of course, this also takes skepticism, critical thinking skills etc... but hopefully yu get the idea.

I'm not saying that all muslims, or all christians, or all of any religion are bad people... in fact, I'd say that probably the majority, in a sense, are good people. or even "very good".

the problem lies in the fact that the underlying loss of cognitive ability, objective reasoning and critical thinking skills... that ability for rational thought... it is a symptom of religious belief... it is requisite for that belief, and is bolstered in turn by that belief... it is that lack of rationality that becomes the most dangerous symptom of religion... the lack of objectivity inherent in that belief leads to things like bigotry, discrimination, repression... and when those beliefs start being passed into law because that mindset becomes so widespread... THAT is where those beliefs start doing a much more widespread and deeprooted damage to society as a whole.

let's see if this very simple description of something is too hard to follow.

the judeochristian and muslim conflicts over the past several centuries including the crusades have led to a deep rooted animosity between these "2" religions.

the united states is by far the single largest ally and supporter of Israel, at the cost of $15,000,000.00 PER DAY of United States tax payer dollars.

the United States in the mid to late 1950's CHANGED our National Motto to "In God We Trust" (which as far as I know doesn't fully replace the original) as well as added "under god" to the Pledge of Allegiance and added "In God We Trust" to all of our paper currency. (in violation of separation of church and state no less... a very hotly debated topic in it's own right that we won't get into here.)

this centuries old, deep rooted animosity towards judeochristianity held by a portion of the muslim world now falls upon the United States for a three fold reason.

1) #1 backer and ally of their greatest enemy, Israel.
2) United States foreign policy, military operations and covert operations resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arab men, women and children over the past several decades.
3) the United States taking a concerted stand as a christian nation, echoing it's crusading christian forebearers, which in light of point #1 and point #2, only make this third point more poignant.


now hopefully that isn't too hard to understand. if you wish, you should read about the war crimes trials against israel and note who the dissenting vote(s) is(are). research the amount of money we REALLY spend in Israel. (a $3,500,000,000.00 per year "loan" that is quietly written off every year, so that we don't have to state it as actual outright funding, brand new military equipment being "sold" to Israel at discounts over 80%... lots of interesting things going on.)
read about the history and facts behind the whole "in god we trust" and "under god" debacles. study about the reasons why separation of church and state is so important... something I've covered in several previous posts, some at great length with references.

hell, just go study... go dig. go gather information... and remember to keep digging for different sides of the story... try to get a solid and in-depth over-all view of the situation and see if you gain a much deeper understanding of what's going on.

generally when you start "investigating" something like this, you might end up learning a lot more in the process... ie; study the number of international assassinations that the CIA has perpetrated in the past 60 years... the number of dictators we have replaced democratically elected leaders with for our own monetary or political gain... or the truth behind Bush's military and past political record... or for that matter John Kerry's (I read his military records and watched the actual video of his speech before the congressional committee). which in turn might lead you to learn about the truth behind the Viet Nam "war" (it was actually a Police Action, NOT a war.) and the Gulf of Tonkin.


I guess, now that I've gone on at a bit more length than I intended, in closing I should say that I have hopefully provided you with a well illustrated example of at least a small part of a train of thought and investigation which leads me, in part, to the kind of knowledge and understanding that I have of the world around me.

I am CONSTANTLY researching and investigating and thinking about the world around me, on such a vast variety of topics that I can't really list them all here. essentially about almost everything there is in the world around me... I seek to have at least a basic understanding of it all, so as to better facilitate a truly knowledgeable, intelligent and holistic view of the world.

and an EXCELLENT follow-up.

http://edition.cnn.com...05/21/saddam.photos/

----

President Bush was asked Friday whether photos of Saddam -- as well as the now-retracted Newsweek story about military interrogators flushing a Quran down a toilet -- serve to inspire opposition in the Muslim world.

He said, "I don't think a photo inspires murderers. I think they're inspired by an ideology that is so barbaric and backwards that it's hard for many in the Western world to comprehend how they think."

----

this of course, ignores the ties that the muslim beliefs have to the christian idiocy here domestically... but hey, it's a step in the right direction that someone finally realizes that the photos are not the problem... the idiots murdering people based on a primitive superstition and ideology is the problem. follow the problem to it's root. quit focusing on the symptoms of the symptoms.

todays "the idiocy that is a symptom of religion is the cause of most of the worlds problems" post.

http://edition.cnn.com...05/20/britain.protest/

and I quote:
'Martin Mumbanga told CNN: "The soldier picked up the Quran and threw it on the floor."

Holding their Qurans high, they called for death and mayhem, praising the destruction of New York's twin towers on September 11, 2001, and saying the White House is next.

Before they broke up, the protesters joined in meditation, and then they all prayed.'

...

OH MY GOD!#%!#%$!#% NO!!!!!! OH MY GOD!!! WE HAVE TO KILL SCORES OF OUR OWN PEOPLE AND CALL FOR THE DEATH OF GEORGE BUSH AND TONY BLAIR, THE NUCLEAR BOMBING OF THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE PENTAGON AND TOTAL JIHAD BECAUSE A BOOK GOT THROWN ON THE FLOOR!!! OH MY GOD!!!!!

read the article. I think it speaks for itself.

(and for the record, I'm aware of a hell of a lot of back story on this situation, but at it's root is the horrible politics of the US, not just the Bush administration, and also of the religious conflicts that have been going on for centuries. (un)fortunately, my point still stands.)

"some notes for lisa" or "A RANT FOR THE MASSES".

stopped by her blog... saw a few things I felt the need to comment on.

as for the whole thing about not saying anything about anyone elses beliefs because they're all ok and don't do me any harm and are none of my business.

*sigh* lisa.. lisa... I could have sworn I'd covered that on here enough times for you to see that your view is WAY overly simplistic and simply wrong. :-/

if someone wants to believe something in their own home... or simply say something about it... fine. when suddenly they make their own beliefs into law and I'm suddenly a criminal for not agreeing with them, or by not abiding by their ideas of morality etc... even though I'm not harming anyone... then their ignorant beliefs or whatever beliefs they are, have suddenly done harm. they have infringed upon my life.. put my freedoms in danger etc. it's very naive to think that all ideas are perfectly fine in ANY CONTEXT.

it's like saying that if I believe in eugenics, that's perfectly fine. and then when I get that passed into law and suddenly it's illegal for you to have children... then wouldn't that start to become an issue?

there's a reason I make such a big deal about stupid beliefs... because when allowed to run rampant without correction or debate, shit like that happens. foolish beliefs become the beliefs of the masses and end up as law... and then the few who know better, or choose to believe differently, are suddenly criminals in a system where they've committed no crime.

hopefully you can distill the point I'm trying to make from that.

oh.. and as for the Qu'ran being flushed... what makes you think it DIDN'T? there have been repeated reports of this happening for a long time now... this was simply the first time someone in the government backed it up. and it was only after a LOT of pressure directly from Bush and the media etc that Newsweek finally backed down and retracted it. it would (again) be naive to take it quite so lightly without questioning not only exactly what happened within the government, and with the pressure applied by them, to make that story crumble. also, let's not forget the whole issue about exactly what about flushing a few pieces of paper down a toilet justifies the deaths of over a dozen people and massive riots and hundreds of wounded people?

ignorance based on religion.

if they weren't so wrapped up in such STUPID ideas... NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED!!!!

how many times do I have to point to the obvious!?

you get so caught up in the symptoms... and trying to lay blame with Newsweek, or with the soldier who supposedly flushed the pages... but WHAT ABOUT THE IDIOTS WILLING TO KILL PEOPLE OVER PIECES OF PAPER?

"I am so offended that you have flushed a piece of paper from a book I can simply replace by walking to the nearest religious book store, that I am going to start murdering people in a fit of rage."

HELLO. WELCOME TO THE POST GUTENBERG ERA. HELLO. WELCOME TO THE MODERN WORLD. HELLO. WELCOME TO REALITY.

..........................

*deep breath*

I remember when I was younger, and Sinead O'Connor tore up a picture of the pope on SNL... I was watching that. it was the year after I graduated high school.

http://simr02.si.ehu.es/FileRoom/documents/Cases/391sinead.html

I respect a person like her who has the guts to stand up and speak out. who has the guts to not be politically correct... to not be cowed... to say what so desperately needs to be said.

I do NOT respect the people who bend to the media... who say that they're "outraged" and "appalled" by things like seeing Janet Jacksons breast on TV for a few seconds. things like that are simply so far beyond ridiculous that it's almost incomprehensible to me. it's actually a fact that many of these "outraged" people are simply focus groups of extremist christians, mostly from a single organization, flooding the phonelines to raise a stink.

most people simply don't give a shit... and most of the ones that do, only do because everyone else seems to.

I hate always feeling like I'm one of the only people to stand up and say "HEY! YOU'RE BEING STUPID!".

----------------------

anyway... as for the holocaust... generally I agree with you. the only point I try to remind people of, is that the jews were not the only people persecuted. gays, political dissidents and essentially any other people that were deemed unwanted were also thrown into the concentration camps. I'm no fan of holocaust revisionist history, but I like to remind people that just because jews are the only ones raising a huge fuss about the holocaust, they were not the only ones targeted.

(and the "holocaust" wasn't the only massive persecution and genocide of a people in history either. it's, AGAIN, just the one that gets made the biggest deal of. there have been many.)

and I do think that the youth of today lacks respect, lacks focus, lacks a lot of things. with the frenetic pace of bullshit being flashed before them all the time like strobe lights... nothing but marketing non stop and stupid crap... and the level of violence and whatnot on tv... people just really don't care anymore. they'd rather get drunk, have sex, listen to shitty rap music, try to dress like G's and think that they're the shit.

I used to consider going into teaching... but when I look at the youth of today wherever I go... what I see disgusts me. I would lose my job long before I made any real difference.

anyway... I guess to sum it up, I just get tired of hearing about it honestly. we know it happened, we're not forgetting. I'M JUST SICK OF HEARING ABOUT IT!! it was over 60 years ago! what the fuck do you want me to do about it now!?!? why don't we raise memorials all over the fucking globe for the victims of the Nipponese in Nanjing China... or of the millions killed by Stalin in Russia?

I guess that's really what irritates me the most... them sitting there constantly making such a huge deal about it...
oh, and for the record, using the words "good" and "evil" is STUPID.

STUPID. STUPID. STUPID. STUPID. STUPID.

FUCKING STUPID!!!!!

clear? "good" and "evil" are arbitrary concepts invented by man and used in religion for the ignorant and simple minded. they are used in modern day to evoke the same emotions and justify political actions and propaganda... it's like saying that Osama Bin Laden is EVIL. how fucking stupid is that!?!?

Osama Bin Laden has hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who consider him a hero who is fighting for their rights. who is fighting for the good of a repressed people... who is avenging the Arab nations against the United States for the tens of thousands of women and children that we've killed directly or indirectly in the middle east through our meddling in foreign affairs... both covertly and openly.

calling him evil is as good as saying "I'm either a downright liar who is trying to manipulate you, or I'm a total fucking idiot."

using words like that is a key sign that you should stop and really think about why that person would use a word like that. make references to some vague "eeeevil".

Hitler was not EVIL... he was a misguided and angry man who used his charisma and firm belief in christianity and nationalistic pride to manipulate a country into following him blindly because they believed it was the right thing to do. they believed he would raise them back up from the dregs of post world war I... that he would make them strong and respected in the world... he brainwashed their youth and he crushed his opposition. that doesn't make him EVIL... and to use that word is simplistic and naive.

you should learn and understand WHY a person does something... understand all the nuances... how different people perceive his actions in different ways... how he could come to power... how he could do the things he did and why people would follow him in light of all those things... THAT is how you gain a REAL understanding of the world... to do any less... to simply peg him as EVIL and not really try to understand the whole matter... that is a disservice not only to yourself, but to everyone else... because that kind of ignorant and simplistic view of what someone like him did.... is what allows it to happen again.... and again... and again... and again.

people need to really dig into a subject... look at it from all angles... stop trying to peg things in childish terms like "good" and "evil"... as though everything is black and white... "the good guys" and "the bad guys"...

start understanding that the world is FAR FAR FAR from being so childishly simple and then you'll really be getting somewhere.

END RANT.

make your own decision.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050530&c=1&s=mcgarvey

The Phantom of the Opera

just watched the new movie. I really enjoyed it, partially I think because of how closely it sticks to the broadway musical. I have the 2cd broadway cast cd set, and am very familiar with it... so while it was really fun to watch the movie (and because Christine is ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL and has a voice to match), I was so used to the specific voices, words and notes, that the slight variations in the movie threw me a little bit.

but overall... go watch the trailer on the website, and if you're a fan of the musical, you really should watch the movie. :D

prompted by koden.

yeah... Sean got rather persistent in questioning me yesterday about why I constantly bitch about religion.

today on CNN.com gave several examples of why.

edition.cnn.com...05/11/uk.abuse.reut/
edition.cnn.com...05/11/afghan.protest/

and one of the morons responsible for spreading this type of idiocy...

edition.cnn.com...05/11/vatican.pope.satan.reut/

now come on people... how hard is it to see the kind of blatant ignorance involved here? when you start believing in all these supernatural forces and salvation and all that bullshit... people suffer.

the koran/quran is JUST A FUCKING BOOK... and people are being killed because someone wrecked a copy of a fucking book. and as for the little girl... she didn't fucking do ANYTHING! but because her aunt is a religious wacko.. and the bible itself says "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus 22:18), hell, she's justified in abusing this little girl to the point of seriously considering murdering her even.

now do you think that if these people knew that witchcraft in that sense was BULLSHIT, and that the koran/quran was just a fucking book, just like the bible... that people would be being killed, tortured and seriously injured en masse?

*sigh*

THINK ABOUT IT PEOPLE. SERIOUSLY.

speaks for itself

Folding@HOME

http://folding.stanford.edu/

(check out Protein Folding on wikipedia for more information)

I decided to start helping this project out today. formed team "phreadom", #44247 if you'd like to help out our team.

so far I think it's myself, josh (yath) and josh (the mormon). proc insists on helping out arsfoodcourt (the ars technica boys I guess) Team Eggroll. :-/ TRAITOR! ;)

so far, I'm running a client on this machine (2.2ghz/2gb ram) and on my webserver (1.33ghz/768mb ram). (both AMD Athlons) crunching away...

I downloaded the latest Slackware-current (linux) to install on here... figure that way I can at least compare the results on this box fairly against those from the webserver (also running Slackware linux) and see what kind of performance discrepancy I'm getting... as right now it appears that the webserver is kind of kicking this boxes ass, which doesn't make sense unless either the work unit is really that drastically different in it's computations (folding 2 different proteins) or that windows is simply sucking a lot of the CPU with stupid crap (a distinct possibility).

I have another 300mhz box just sitting here... but need a bigger hard drive for it and haven't really felt like swapping it's 2gb with the 10gb that I for some STUPID reason put in the OpenBSD router, which does nothing but sit there with a basic install sorting packets all day. :P

Graphical Windows Client:

Command Line Clients for Linux (left) and Windows (right):