Wednesday, December 31, 2008

William Lane Craig, worlds foremost wall puncher.

I haven't brought him up before but William Lane Craig is a gasbag. He's one of the foremost apologists alive today which is akin to the distinction of being the world's foremost wall puncher. His arguments are almost always nearly exact copies of the same argument somebody else used but he changed a few words to hide an error or two. "Oh, look at that he changed 'exists' to 'begin to exist' in order to avoid this one fairly philosophical objection."

Similarly he raises objections to the idea that an intelligent designer cannot be the ultimate explanation of something because, if you are required to say that something needs an intelligent designer then that designer needs a designer and you get into an infinite regress. To wit, he raises the objection that you don't need to know what caused something for that something to be the best explanation. Craig claims that you can suppose God Did It, without needing to answer the question "What just did God then?"



It would almost sound good so long as you don't give it a modicum of thought. The original claim is that an intelligent creator can't be the ultimate explanation of anything. The reason for the infinite regress isn't pulled out of thin air, but rather the exact same setup the intelligent creator was supposed to explain. Which has everything to do with the divergence of the series.

What caused these amazing arrowpoints and pottery shards?
-- People made them.
What caused those people?
-- Well, we have a long and well understood explanation of early human migration and human evolution. Each step is explained by similar smaller steps and other explanations as the problem is broken down into composite problems.

What caused this odd machinery on the moon.
-- I don't know. What parts does it have, can anybody on this planet make that, did we land anything there? What materials is it made from? We can break the problem up into smaller pieces.

What caused the universe?
-- God. What caused God? Nothing, super-god, God did, magic... none of these are smaller issues or less daunting than the original problem. The answer of God explains absolutely nothing and gives you another boatload of problems. The objection isn't that it instantly raises the question of the designer of God, rather it raises the bigger question of the designer of God. At the core is the problem which befalls all skyhooks. You need another skyhook to hold them up and they never have a foundation. Whereas the other supposed problems could easily be supposed to have cranes supporting them directly or cranes to support the cranes at most with a solid foundation in real world explanations.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

My computer seems to be...

"... randomly crashing but will start back up after 2 minutes."

Hm. I think I know what might be causing that.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Friday, December 26, 2008

In the Warren snaffu, Obama seems clean.

Watching from the sidelines I have to say that Obama's actually looking pretty distant and unscathed. He invited him to say a silly prayer and suddenly everybody dug up a crap load of dirt on the guy. I've never really liked him, he's always seemed pretty smarmy but managed to stay above the fray. Walking out before Dan Dennett came around to compliment his book and pretending he was a reasonable member of society. Obama clearly can't rescind the offer, so you couldn't blame him considering all the new stuff we're learning.




Warren changed the language on his webpage to make it less gay-unfriendly (failure to delay gay satisfactions until after death means you no get into church), and Obama more of a commitment to the gay community on his transition site (which is certainly a more honest step).

But largely, I think this is all pretty positive. Obama comes off a little naive but stuck and Warren gets to writhe in the flames of public opinion.

Clean Coal: It's the future.



Clean Coal.

In case you didn't hear 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash spilled in Tn. My recommendation is to pave over the county. That stuff is toxic and unlike nuclear waste it doesn't even decay.

The spill has reignited a debate over whether coal ash should be federally regulated as a hazardous material. Environmentalists have long argued that coal ash, which can contaminate groundwater and poison aquatic environments, should be stored in lined landfills. The ash ponds at Kingston were separated from the river only by earthen dikes.


Toxic sludge is natural. It's from the Earth! Don't regulate it!

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Oh, something I made achieved moderate popularity!

Woot.

Introduced on this blog last February.

Sandwalk actually made a post about it.
Having actually borrowed it from another site!

And was added to a few other image sites.

http://imagechan.com/img/5078/Fractal%20Wrongness/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/themadlolscientist/2421967468/

-- And it was edited to remove the watermark. Somebody actually went to a minute amount of effort!



I actually own fractalwrongess.com after earlier this year the Non-Prophets talked about the concept of Fractal Wrongness by Keunwoo Lee. I fully understand that I just stole a picture of a fractal, plugged it into despair.com's diy demotivator maker and changed the general theme from one of describing the noun to a declarative statement with a little more brevity. -- But still. Something I made achieved moderate popularity... unlike this blog.

Merry F'ing Christmas!

Merry Fucking Christmas

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Sciam about Evolution.

Yippee.

I saw the cover and thought Goodie. Pandagon already citing the Pop EP article. Apparently having been accused of being anti-science for not accepting that men are cavemen and women are bimbos who need ravishing because that's what we evolved to be.*

* This is actually utter crap. Minds don't work that way. We're perfectly mentally adapted for the 21st century.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Thursday, December 18, 2008

My first Vista™ Experience...

I wanted to break that fucking laptop.

Seriously, how goddamned hard is it to access the functional network with the cord hooked into you?!?! I never have to have XP or Linux do so much as hiccup. Either tell me the cable isn't giving you internet or connect you worthless piece of crap.

Wow. I'm sure it's something easy but it has an ip address and it has IPv4 support and it refuses to work. I had to stop trying because if that bubbly asshole of an OS claimed to have fixed the problem one more time, while refusing to work, I would have ended up doing hardware damage.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Bush misses last chance to save his legacy.



It was a very very narrow margin. Had he caught the second shoe and tossed it back at the man, he would have been forgiven for everything. He would have not been known as the guy who sucked at everything and lead to the downfall of America as a superpower. He would have been known as the badass that caught a shoe. So close.

Unlike that guy, I resist the urge to toss footware at people whose unprovoked aggression against my country leads to the death of hundreds of thousands of countrymen. Give me one of the 9/11 bombers and I won't toss a shoe at them. That would be rude.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Dr. Pepper Contest


Is this what the world has come to? You can enter in long codes on a computer to re-win the same damn wall paper that you could have just googled if you wanted it... but never bothered to collect?

Shouldn't the prize be worth more than my time to type in the code? Shouldn't it be required that the overall price be greater than the price of the soda used to win said prize? What the hell kind of screwed up contest lets you win the same wallpaper (1024x768 rather than the 1680x1050 my screen runs) over and over and over again. Also, what are they making on the wallpapers? I'm sure softcoin claims that the prize is worth something and expects Dr. Pepper to pay up for costs.

What a sad state of affairs. I remember when you could look under the cap and see a new soda in contests like this. You'd look and see you won a new soda. Then you'd get another new soda. You could hear stories from people you know about winning three sodas in a row. You could expect victory and want to look under the cap. If caffeine wasn't highly addictive I'd quit drinking strictly on the poor performance of this "contest".

Friday, December 5, 2008

Earthquake USGS soo slow.

So an earthquake hit (really tiny) about 30 seconds ago.

Damned USGS doesn't have it on their list yet!

So slow!

They should have the information before the earthquake is over. They should text me on a cell phone before the sucker hits. Hey, your GPS says you're in a location 10 seconds away from a place getting an an earthquake and 20 seconds away from a place that had one 10 seconds ago. We think you're next. Brace Yourself.

How hard is that. Earthquakes are actually pretty slow and take a minute or two. Light goes a lot faster than that. Why can't I get told about the quake before it happens?

Bing!
USGS
5.3 10 seconds,
9 seconds.
8 seconds.
7 seconds.
-- Not sure how the countdown clock would work but it's pretty minor compared to the rest.

UPDATE: Finally. That took nearly 40 seconds!

Hambone Talks: Richard Carrier & PZ Myers


* This is part 1, there's like 14 of them.

Carrier makes a number of great points. Science is a moral good. If we want to be healthy, then the Bible is really bad. Jesus goes around shooing demons but in Mark 7 says it's fine to scoff at unwashed hands and dishes are fine to eat from.

7:2 And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault.
7:3 For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders.
7:4 And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brasen vessels, and of tables.
7:5 Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands?
7:6 He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

However, we have strong scientific evidence that washing your hands is leaps and bounds more effective than shooing demons.

Atheist sign stolen.

So the Freedom From Religion Foundation put up an atheistic sign in the Washington Capitol after the Washington Capital had the silly policy of letting people put up religious displays.

Well, somebody stole it and gave it to a local radio station. The policy of putting up atheist displays where religious displays are put up is kind of entertaining. If it's just a public space, first come first serve, then it's acceptable to put up whatever holiday display you want. If the government themselves are putting the displays up, then it's a constitutional issue. Whenever the government puts up a public space it needs to be first come first serve for everybody and, as such, why not toss up a good secular display?

Apparently it pisses off the right and they steal your signs. Last year there was a "tree of knowledge" display put up in Philadelphia that got its fair share of abuse. On the main point of the issue there's some entertainment factor but the underlying idea that atheists should be excluded and that they are simply interlopers as that "public space" thing is just Christians getting around that pesky constitution and atheists aren't really invited to participate.

I'm sure the atheists stole their own damn sign. No Christian would do it because it would violate the 8th commandment. Clearly. But atheists hate God and just want to go around drawing pictures of fish, stealing things, and doing things on the sabbath.

O.J. Simpson convicted of armed robbery... but really murder.

15 years for going up to somebody with guns and taking their property. What a railroading?!?

Also, not really following anything this, but I realized that before that Simpson really doesn't understand how good his lawyers were in his murder trial. The case against him for the double murder of his wife and her *ahem* friend was outstanding. They nearly ran out of jurors because anybody who might have convicted him was kicked off for a "book deal". This conviction notably came as a surprise to him. Last time they had a better case against him and lost, this time it's worse and he's going away for 15 years.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Monday, November 24, 2008

Study finds old women who attend church services twice a week smoke less than those who do not.


And the headlines read: BEING RELIGIOUS REDUCES YOUR CHANCES OF DYING BY 20 PER CENT

Here I thought 100% of people died. Apparently not, as 20% of Christians are actually immortals. How strange? Looking at better reports for the study we find a pretty critical point.


The apparent benefits of deriving substantial strength and comfort from religion disappeared when the researchers also controlled for smoking and alcohol consumption.


Realsie journalists are all blighted by this kind of poppycock.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

85% Man!

Some clever place has a gender analyzer to find the gender of a specific blogger using Artificial Intelligence. Lets see.

We think http://godsnotwheregodsnot.blogspot.com/ is written by a man (85%).

I am a man. I possess at least one penis. I have a Y chromosome given to me by my father.

The analyzer finds my blog to be less man-ish than skepchick.

We think http://skepchick.org/blog/ is written by a man (89%). There's the one male writer (Sam Ogden) just testosterones the hell out of that place.

Artificial Intelligence == Fail.

UPDATE: This post failed to move the percent.

Boobs, breasts, knockers, video games, kill, kill, murder, shoot, stab, snips, snails, puppy dog tails, pwn, noob, crush!

UPDATE2: Previous update reduced my manliness by 1%

UPDATE3: I just rechecked for kicks... I'm a woman now. Shhhh... don't tell my penis.
We think http://godsnotwheregodsnot.blogspot.com/ is written by a woman (69%).

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Faith and Uncertainty

Faith is necessarily inconsistent. In fact, Godel proved that any system which could be used to determine the truth of any marginally complex statement must itself be inconsistent or incomplete. If it could prove itself true then it must necessarily be contradictory, able to prove any statement, and thus be completely worthless for establishing the truth of any claim. Since you can have faith that your faith is justified, one must properly understand that faith proves nothing. In fact, it is necessarily powerless to establish the truth of any proposition.

I know it seems a bit like hitting a flea with a bulldozer to show faith is pointless by way of Godel, but it's still a fun point to make.

Digital Cuttlefish: I am Darwin.

http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-am-charles-darwin.html

There's something too awesome about his poetry at times, this is an exemplar of that point.

I am Charles Darwin—what I mean is, I am Man
I’m a billion trillion accidents instead of One Big Plan
Just a step or two from chimpanzee or from orangutan
Maybe more than distant cousins, but you recognize the clan

Friday, November 21, 2008

What the end of the world would look like...



Except after getting brighter there... it would get even more bright and more bright before a lot of bad things happened.

September 20th, Police Dash Cam of Meteor.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The Rapture and You.

According to the general theories put forth by your average Adventists (believers in the second advent, return of Jesus, rapture) Jesus will appear over Jerusalem and shall stay fixed in the sky. As the world turns he will take his faithful up in what is to be called the rapture. This is typically because the general picture given of the rapture suggests a flat earth where Jesus just floats in the sky and everybody gets sucked up towards him. Given a spherical planet this doesn't work so well.

Now, as an evil vile atheist, I will not be taken. However, you are like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future and not very good at thinking 4th dimensionally. We live in the information age. Jerusalem is GMT +2 whereas I live in a GMT -8 time zone and thus have a 10 hour difference. So given that I probably am not going to be cut off from the biggest news story in human history for 10 hours it seems likely that I will hear about this astoundingly precise prediction made by religious idiots hours prior to Jesus floating over my location. I will have a number of hours to convert to what would, at that time, be a nearly undeniable statement of fact.

So don't worry about my soul Christians, I'll be sure to convert when there's ample evidence and regardless that I think you're utterly idiotic beliefs are absolutely false. I'll be sure to convert with a few hours to spare making you look utterly stupid for wasting your entire life when I'd only have wasted a couple hours of my time.

Banking.

Giving money you didn't have to people who couldn't pay you back was a bad idea. Who knew!?!

Monday, November 17, 2008

I hate when cars stop for me.

When I'm walking and the road is wide open and they have more than enough time to drive passed. I often purposefully stop so that they can go by without even chancing it and increase the chance that they just drive right on by. But, no! They stop and wait for me to walk in front of their car. It would be absolutely no inconvenience for either side if they had just drove by in the first place. Nobody would have needed to slow down or change anything and we wouldn't have any collisions.

People go out of their way, even if I go out of my way to make doubly sure that they don't, to make sure they have the most opportune chance to murder me. Maybe I don't want to walk in front of two tons of metal ready and able to crush my flesh and bones at the press of a pedal. Maybe you shouldn't go out of your way just to make sure that I do.

"Oh, a person is going to cross the street about five seconds after I'm long gone. I simply MUST stop and force them to acknowledge my ability to crush them with my massive automobile or they don't get to go anywhere!"


Wee bit ditzy and crazy, but it really annoys the crap out of me sometimes.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Stop dissing the unexamined life...

It comes in HighDef with 7.1 Surround Sound... that's gotta impress even the most fuddy of the duddies around.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Large Protests Against Prop 8

I hope they travel back in time because otherwise they are pointless and an example of why prop 8 passed.

Honestly, giant No protests on the news nightly for the last couple weeks before the election would have had considerable sway back when sway was possible.

The No camp was all reaction. Yes sent a bunch of cards around saying Barack Obama doesn't support gay marriage and only then did the No people point out that Barack Obama supports voting no. For a proposition that had 70%+ African American support they should have taken the president elects support to the bank early and often.

I'm glad that people are passionate, they should have done this before.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

At Least There's Still No God.

Politics should probably be ignored about now. I'll hope for the best for Al Franken recount and maybe perk my head up for the Martin/Chambliss runoff, and pay some attention to the Merkley count which predictions suggest he's going to win outright as the count more Dem counties and some lesser places calling it for him. And hope for that guy "A SERIES OF TUBES" is running against.

But honestly, I'm pretty well done with following the races. I really should be. Letting my mood rise and fall with the polls is probably not recommendable. And this blog seems a little makeshift with the politics and quirkiness and atheism all gobbly-gooked. I suppose it's written mostly for myself but it seems a bit odd to have "God's Not" not clearly defined. That or perhaps it is. I'm quite happy Obama won just like the 63 million (more than any other presidential race ever) who voted for him and the many more million who are also happy about it.

As for those people who insist that this is the time we really need to hound him to get our agendas fulfilled... eh. If both houses and the presidency can't manage to push a viable agenda to help people then they don't deserve any more help.

There's still hope for a 60 seat majority in the Senate... a very lowly and silly hope. I think I'll crawl back under a rock somewhere and stop paying attention to things. I hope Palin runs and wins the nomination on 2012. That'll make reelecting Obama an easy task. I'm fine with that. And hope I don't fall for paying attention to the 2010 midterms.

There's still no God. At least there's some debate on that issue by people too silly to realize they are talking to themselves.

Enjoy.

Farm animals > Gays

Prop 8
Yes
5,344,012
52%
No
4,854,132
48%

With 99% of the vote in. Prop 2 which says farm animals need to be treated with a bit more care passed with flying colors. So farm animals get more rights and gays get less.

Okay back to only caring about myself. It'll be a few months or perhaps years before this crap is finally overturned. I'm pretty sure it'll need to be decided at the 9th circuit level in order to strike down the constitutional amendment. Even if your case is a solid winner it takes a while to get up to that level.

California Gives Obama The Win... then goes gay bashing.

Damn it. I know it's not counted yet and still in processing but it looks like 8 is going to pass.

Yes

4,488,600
52%

No

4,173,033
48%

With 82% in.

Fricking California.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Election '08 Results

Go Vote.

Vote.
Today.
If you haven't already.

* Yes, I'm very American-centric with this demand.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Watching Expelled: Underwhelmed beyond expectations. Part 2.

43 minutes in. This douche is in a chair.

Berlin wall of non-academic freedom. Good Comrade. Scientists are bullies. Pull back the clothe, it's like the wizard of oz.

They can't say it's complicated? I've read enough biology papers and reviewed enough to see they say that a lot. The nitty-gritty is a pain in the ass and more complex than you previously thought at pretty much every turn. If not for evolution we'd be completely swamped.

Liberal Christians hate fundamentalists and so they side with the atheists. Those evil colluders!

Evolution says there's no God.

Dawkins turned toward atheism by evolution. Overly frank. He constantly comes off really well.

We don't get even level debate. Those bastards think that ID isn't worthy to be considered on the same level. -- DUH!

Some ID supporting journalist wrote some favorable ID stories and ended up getting laughed at. -- How oppressive!

In Poland the courts don't need to decide. Court cases don't decide anything! Poland doesn't have crappy creationists wanting to teach religion in public schools or the first amendment which says that they can't. Did that polish guy support ID? Seriously? I don't know.

It must be very important! It must be something more sinister!

They move to attack religion in order to stamp out ID! Awe, it's that dumbass who tries to ride Dawkin's coattails. He's totally douche and lame. Another clip of douchey guy in chair.

Why is this clipping out Murrow and making it seem like he supported ID or something? That seems pretty stupid.

Early scientists were believers! Science is biased towards atheism.

But were their other consequences? ...

You're here today and you're gone tomorrow! -- Okay duh.

Guy deconverted by understanding evolution. That's pretty reasonable. No free will? No meaning? That's a bit cold but eh.

I'm going to shoot myself in the head. I don't feel bad about it. That's absolutely seems reasonable.

More deconversion with evolution. Evolution and atheism do have strong correlations.

PZ called it fairy tales! ZOUNDS!

Dawkins says goblins.

Attenborough says it's stupid.

Maher says regulate religion if you're regulating dangerous things

PZ says it's like knitting. Fun, gathering, no importance, and we should let it die a slow death. -- Clearly he wants to eradicate it by force.

HITLER!

Here's somewhere where the Germans killed some handicapped people.

Breeding programs are a human invention which long predate Darwinian evolution. It isn't that they are taken from evolution but rather Darwin's great insight was to see that the same factors which allowed for the breeding of livestock would equally apply to the breeding of animals themselves via slower natural means and that a Malthusian argument could be made for all organisms and, as such, this would cause a gradual improvement in complexity and explain many vast arrays of lingering questions in biology. -- So yeah, pretty much all of it is pretty much nonsense.

Ben Stein keeps asking the tour guide some retarded questions.

Eugenics!

This is why medicine is largely not very sciency.

Planned Parenthood!

Stein is overacting, and doing a crappy job at it. Hitler was very logical. Clearly. Evil but logical. Science is evil! Muahahahahaha! -- This is epic fail.

I know Darwinism isn't responsible for Nazism but Darwinism is responsible for Nazism and it will happen again!!!!

Journalist women is talking about abortion and euthenasia like it's a holocaust. I get the distinct impression that all of these people are very right-wing... why is that?

The Elites control all the research money. No religion!

Ew. You sick bastard. Ben Stein is now in Down House. Isn't there some rule?

Some more sinister walking around.

Hey, there's a statue of Darwin somewhere? That looked pretty cool. I want one.

Jefferson wrote "creator" so values come from God. Scientists aren't alone. Darwinians hate America! It's a massive conspiracy.

Baylor refused to say their issues had to do with ID. Even though it was tainting their good name.

We didn't want ID tainting our names. Avalos is great.

It's just like the Berlin wall!

Dawkins is donning his armor for the coming battle. Armor being make-up and battle being sucked into a fairly nonsensically cut up interview.

Why do you use the word who? -- Dawkins wins. Panspermia is possible, but certainly didn't happen. He supports ID! What? You're a dumbass Mr. Stein.

Stein is obsessed with some gods.

What would you do if you ran into God? "Sir, why did you take such pains to hide yourself." My favorite reply to that kind of question is, "what I would say would depend on how good his apology was."

Back to the lecture.

YOU MAY HAVE YOUR SCIENCE BUT YOU CAN NEVER TAKE OUR FREEDOM*!!!!

* freedom to take your science out of context and push religion.


I knew I would. I want my hour and a half back!

Watching Expelled, prepairing for underwhelmity.

Expelled Exposed.

Intro with spiced up prison camps.

Freedom is great, freedom makes us great, but what if we didn't have freedom?

We are losing our freedoms in science!

Creationists does something stupid, gets canned. (I expect this shall be a theme)

Shermer things "something else going on". -- Yup. Apparently he published the paper faking the peer review himself and was lambasted for not going through proper channels and for completely abusing his authority.

Another creationist starts teaching creationism and is not invited back to work more for the university. -- Zounds.

Doctor says evolution is false. -- Internet is mean to him.

Mark sets ups a fake lab at Baylor and it gets shut down. Baylor, though a Baptist university, is actually pretty good. Although, they recently fired the president and decided to go way more stupid. So any diplomas pre-2008 are probably legit.

Astronomer doesn't get tenure. Um. Nobody guarantees you tenure and I think ID would be a pretty good reason to deny you. Look how screwed over Behe tenure at Lehigh worked out. He doesn't publish papers anymore and he's a complete embarrassment. Lehigh is a good school but in my mind I associate it with stupidity.

"We don't want people to be taught that the earth is flat or that the holocaust never happened." -- Um, irony of irony, this movie got condemned by the Anti-Defamation league for holocaust denial. I haven't yet been confronted with this part of the film, so I suspect it is going to get much worse.

Ben Stein is lost... still lost.
He found it.

He talks with the Discovery Institute then a Bible college and then a bunch of religious points. They are suppose to keep up this front.

Evolution:Intelligent Design::Newtonian Physics:Einsteinian Physics... ? Really? Somebody needs to read Isaac Asimov's Relativity of Wrong to get the basic idea of how science works. Sure you can evolve but how does evolution do design? Wow that's pretty dumb.

It isn't going to be settled by the numbers but by the evidence and the arguments. If ID had any of those, they'd be set!

Now Ben's in France. Nothing's clear, you don't have very much math. We don't have a good idea of what a species is! -- That's true but has no bearing on evolution. I'm considerably underwhelmed here.

Dawkins is back. These clips are the only oasis in the whole thing. Though Dawkins atheism is fairly different than his evolution belief. There's certainly a relationship there, but it's pretty unrelated.

First cell? -- What long before that it works fine even in the RNA world.

No explanation for abiogenesis. Claims Miller's experiments were wrong. Popular theory is crystals! He's not joking because that's actually a really good theory. What the hell?

Ben Stein's Money joke...

250 proteins so it's math wise inconceivable. That's not possible! The problem with every last thing that says anything remotely close to this is that we don't actually know what the very minimal would be and we get evolution kicking in pretty early making all the future odds non-existent (once evolution kicks in the odds are ~1 that you get something, moreso considering it already happened).

Directed panspermia? That's mostly in jest and simply outsources the problem. Though if 4 billion years isn't enough we can use most of the 13.7 billion years to do whatever we need. Though, 2 billion seems more than enough.

A gigabyte. Zounds. I could put my genetic code on my thumbdrive. Oh the humanity!

I'm lost. I'm not even sure what I'm suppose to be impressed with.

Hey, it's that stolen Harvard animation that ERV talked so much about. Making for one of the few good bits in this entire production. Ouch, they changed it a lot. This is actually way worse in places. The Harvard animation was better.

Where do you get information from? Isn't that a question for computer scientists. Hey, I'm one of those and have an okay understanding of information theory. Let me explain. SDFKDSfioasdfoijsdfjasd2-289023d8923di2klj2kl;3dmkmndalksdfds -- That's more information than pretty much anything else I've typed here. Any mutation would produce information just as there is more information in the TV static than their is in the TV show. Evolution largely works to parse this information and isolate via natural selection any little bit that lucks into creating an organism marginally better than it's cousins. What? They are still harping on this crap?

OH SWEET SPAGHETTI MONSTER! I'm ONLY HALF WAY THROUGH!!! ARG!!! -- I'm burnt out about now. I'll try some more a bit later.

Friday, October 31, 2008

Prop H8 is close, but there's bigger fish to fry.



Anybody notice that the trend lines on the proposition looks like a Jesus fish?

Freaky.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Interesting Math Questions

1) If 2 fish are recommended per ten gallons and a fish tank holds 35 gallons of water then how many fish could I have in the fish tank? I could have zero. I could have 35 gallons of fish. What does the recommendation have to do with anything. And why would I want to maximum number of fish? That's a stupid question.

2) According to the diagram the library wing 1 foot 10 inches by 2 feet 3 inches and is asking how large the dimensions of the new wing are if the length is 50 feet longer than the width? But, it already gave me the dimensions for the wing and it's not even large enough to stand in properly. Does the question want me to add 600 inches to one of the sides? But the question says the diagram of the wing is shown? That's a stupid question.

3) If you're a fish, and your computer is overclocked and you can make a model blush with a really tawdry joke... what was the height of the Titanic? According to Michael McGaughan (The Birth of the Titanic, page 46) the Titanic was 236 feet tall from keel to mast. If you wanted to build the model to scale you'd want to make it 2 feet 6 inches by 8.02 inches but the fact that you could build a non-scale model at 6 inches is as pointless as your computer being overclocked.

School kids are judged by how well they do on these questions. They are part of Holt Geometry questions. Really?

Monday, October 27, 2008

Sarah Palin Fighter of Her Own Campaign.

You should elect Sarah Palin President in 2012 because she's smart and sassy and knows what's up. During her 2008 vice presidential bid she was completely opposed to how the campaign was run. She actively bucked the mold and made smart calls as the McCain campaign was swirling down the drain. The only time McCain lead was just after picking Sarah Palin, and then she watched as they squandered that lead and ran it down to a overwhelming defeat 60/39 and a 60 senate majority for the democrats.

She spoke up when the campaign dwindled their states down, objecting to pulling out of Michigan, she objected to being sent to just the boonies to gather money, she objected to the way McCain's disastrous campaign was waged. That's why she's the best candidate to defeat Barack Obama in 2012.

-- Mostly in jest but there's a certain ring of truth to it. She has been getting kind of angry at the campaign and distancing herself from their decisions. She's mostly been kept hidden because every time she opens her mouth words come out in some random order and it embarrasses the campaign. But, she became governor by opposing some slight ethics infraction in her highly corrupt state then through a huffy-fit, resigned and ran for mayor... even doing that same ethics infraction herself. Don't be surprised at all when she runs in '12 on the claims that she was the only rising star on this sinking ship.

As all the reasonable people bailed out the Republican party for either the Dems or independents the primary season can only really be won by an ideologue.

Why gay marriage is constitutional.

The Loving v. Virgina case was settled on the grounds of equal rights by the 14th amendment. If I have a right everybody has the same right. I have the right to marry a white women, therefore everybody has the right. It does not suffice to suggest that everybody has the right to marry somebody of their own race. Likewise I have the right to marry a women, so everybody has the right to marry a woman. Thusly, even women have the right to marry women. Equal protection under the law legalizes gay marriage without needing to say anything about it being gay.

It is a restriction on my rights to say that my sister can do something that I cannot do. Although, I have no yen to marry men, it's a right and must be equally honored for all people. It isn't gay marriage which is being restricted by prohibitions against gay marriage. It's the rights of all individuals to marry those of the same sex... even though only gay people would care to do so.

When gay marriage is legalized by the supreme court, that'll be the logic behind it.

Update:
Adding Video, via Pandagon

Friday, October 24, 2008

The coolest thing I would never have thought of.

There are a massive list of things that I would never do. They typically fall into a hierarchy of different things.

Impossible things. - Create and destroy matter or energy.
Improbable things. - Win the lotto.
Impractical things. - Dedicate my life to reading every book I can.
Things beyond my ability - Run a three minute mile.
Things I never would think of doing - Escalator Spinning.

This is the coolest thing I would never have thought of.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

True Blood: Werewolf

I think Sam Merlotte on True Blood is a werewolf.

1) Picture of a dog saving a girl on his wall.
2) Called the dog, that always hangs out nearby, "brother".
3) Runs out during the full moon and gets seen running home naked.
4) Sookie can't quite hear his thoughts.

... yeah, kind of random but werewolf I says...
Okay please tell me I'm not the only one that sees that Sam is most likely a Werewolf. I mean the signs are everywhere. Because if I am everyone needs to pay more attention to the episodes and less to the hot guy characters. - suicidalbarbie08

California Propositions

Yes on 1a, 2, 3, 5, 12.
These are official SSnot endorsements.

1A High Speed Rail -- Trains might actually be kind of nice.

2 Farm Animal Conditions -- The standard claims of animal rights and from groups like PETA tend to try to exploit the desire for animal welfare with animal rights. While the former is a position everybody agrees with the latter is fairly silly. That said, this prop supports the former and suggests that farm animals shouldn't be forced into tiny boxes and never get to move around until they are killed for food.

3 Children's Hospital Bonds -- This sounds like something you'd call a proposition that creates death camps and forces people into slavery. Who would vote against Children's Hospitals? According to latest polling very few and according to the letter of the proposition it does what it says it does.

4 Parental Notification -- If a kid is under 18 and wants an abortion they gotta tell their parents. This is about as extreme as the pro-life people could get a bill in the state. The latest PPIC finally has it polling as a fail.

5 Drug Rehab Programs -- We love our drugs and our forced drug rehab rather than prisons.

6 Anti-Gang -- No, LOVE THE PRISONS INSTEAD!

7 Renewable Power Standard - Seems to force up the amount of renewable energy requrements at different levels but groups like the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists because they say it's really poorly written.

8 Anti-Marriage -- Removes the constitutional rights of certain individuals to enter into a private contract because we hate them. Thankfully the PPIC study finally has this polling at a loss. The No on 8 crew sucked. They were caught completely offguard by a large influx of Mormon money pushing for a yes vote. "Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that would end same-sex marriage in California, is losing among likely voters, 52 percent to 44 percent" -- After the silly laws against same sex marriage were overturned and the polling looked good then no so good and now good again.

9 Victim's Rights -- REALLY! LOVE YOURSELF SOME PRISONS!

10 Pickens Natural Gas -- Eh, no. Pickens doesn't seem like a bad guy from the commercials but screw giving him massive amounts of money. Sierra Club again against. I like my fighters for an energy secure future far from fossil fuels to not advocate switching to fossil fuels, especially one he has a massive stake in.

11 Redistricting -- Fair redistricting is a massive loss for the Democrats. If the dems can't draw the lines then a number of seats will be lost. I have nothing in principle against redistricting or against fair redistricting... but unless every state does it it's going to be a strong disadvantage to one party over another. Take the proportional delegate amendments that come up in California here and there, those serve only to make the Republicans win the presidency if they passed. BTW the PPIC polling says Obama is up by 23 points in California.

12 Veterans Bonds -- Much like the childrens hospital it's hard to vote against helping veterans.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Family Scrabble



Coistril keeps the 50 bonus points.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Mark Twain, naked people

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." - Mark Twain


As much as I'm a fan of Mark Twain, I daresay that quote has undue amounts of naivete.

Dug into the internet.

So my internet is down again. I'm slick enough to scratch some up by burrowing in through a PCIMCA card in the other room having turned off my DHCP server on my router rather than opting for the better choice involving forcing a VPN connection and opening wide the entire network. Still, it's been a bit better. Less jonesing this time. I might be able to survive in some kind of freak time warp... so long as diseases don't kill me.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Rainbows and Dust

Oh, God of dust and rainbows, help us see
That without dust the rainbow would not be.

by Langston Hughes


I'm a fan of Hughes' poems but this just seems completely confused. Rainbows are not effected by dust but rather water and the general diffusion of the atmosphere. You could have a dustless world with rainbows. There was once the belief that dust and water vapor in the air made the sky blue, although why it didn't change color during dry heats and wet heats never seemed to get addressed. It is actually because of the diffusion of the atmosphere itself (photons get pushed a bit by the EM of the atoms).

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Forced Birthing

Apparently the "health" of the mother is a reason for abortion but that clearly just lets the flood gates open. Anybody with a modicum of common sense would see that restricting abortion in cases where the health of the mother is concerned makes an absolutely massive impact on the ability of the government to control women's bodies. It's nothing more than a wedge issue to try to prevent the government from forcing women to engage in pregnancies that are unwanted and unsafe for them.

Kinda Awesome

Wind blew down my internet for a day.

I nearly went insane.

I think there is some issue with internet addiction, if being unconnected causes such utter turmoil. For example, a good solid 40% of my thoughts ended with "but I can't do that because I don't have internet." -- I don't think this is healthy. I pride myself on being ready if I ever fall into some kind of timewarp and being ready for transport into the past. I even kind-of-sort-of want a smallpox vaccine just so that I'd be safe from the disease without needing to find a dairy maid with cow pox. However, if transported into the past, I'd go crazy without internet then I certainly don't want to fall into a scientifically impossible reordering of the universe.

I am unprepared for this course of (impossible) events.

I probably couldn't even manage to live through 1998 internet. What good are secret keywords (they've been the same for a decade or so now/no I'll never tell you them), that only I know so that I can identify time-travelers from the future, (including myself) if timetraveling leads to saninternetsanity?

Sure, I never bother to prepare for depression era financial collapse or post-peak breakdown of a world unable to dig energy out of the ground, or even a global warming run away world where climate change kicks off a chain reaction of accelerated heating and leads to a post apocalyptic world of subterranean existence as actual and real possibilities... but time travel? I thought I was prepared for and it seems that I would be utterly time-shocked.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Pointing fingers.

I personally blame the entire financial crisis, which has demolished stock prices and allowed to Dow Jones Industrial Average to drop as low as 7882.51 in trading on Friday, on people getting subprime mortgages. That's right largely-minority-families-given-house-loans-at-prices-you-could-barely-afford-and-then-couldn't-when-the-rates-got-jacked-a-bit-higher: it's all your fault! You people destroyed the entire world's economy. I hope your happy. Damn minorities! You sell them a house and they topple the entire capitalistic system.

It's as if they didn't know or care that the entire liquidity of the market was based on very small amounts of real capital to make and claim exorbitant amounts of debt to be traded and dispersed and borrowed against repeatedly and that real capital was mostly their 400k mortgages on their 200k houses! Shame on you. Shame!

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Limbo: 8579 DOW

http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/dow/

The first time in five years the DOW closed below 9,000 points. How low can it go? Well, we'll see in short order. But don't worry the fundamentals of the economy are strong. If you have stocks I recommend switching to Cocacola, Campbell soup company, McDonalds, and pretty much anything that sells really cheap food. But only after it stops losing record amounts every day. Welcome to Black October. When the stock market collapsed and Obama pretty much was guaranteed his election.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Monday, October 6, 2008

The BBC stole an hour: The Shroud of Turin

So I am apparently retarded. I watched something called the Shroud of Turin which was get this, about the Shroud of Turin and completely bogus nonsense.

The argument went like this,

The Shroud of Turin carbon dates to the 1320s. The Shroud of Turin was first seen around the 1360s. However, there were other fake shrouds which purported to be the burial cloths of Christ which dated back to the 11th century. So the Shroud of Turin dates back to the 11th century. There's also some hood thing which dates back to the 5th century so clearly the Shroud dates back to the fifth century (because both of them have blood) that look nothing alike in pattern (it seriously overlays them and they look nothing alike). And therefore the Shroud of Turin is 5th century. However, we also know that the Gospels say Jesus was crucified and we have this cloth and so this cloth clearly dates back to the first century.

There! Amazing! Now why is it that this cloth only carbon dates to the 14th century when it first appeared and the local church leader actually tracked down the forger and thought people were really stupid for wanting to worship another idol? When the clear and obvious historical evidence suggests through thinly-veiled innuendo that this is totally the burial cloth of Christ. The carbon 14 dating must be wrong! Perhaps some carbon-14 mixed into the linen via carbon monoxide. *tests* -- Nope that doesn't work at all. Still, it's a mystery!

I am utterly astounded at how many hoaxes people buy into lock stock and barrel (I'm sure there's a holy barrel of fatima or something) simply on the grounds of religion. Certainly there couldn't have been multiple hoaxes throughout history and all share the same general theme which was a part of the artwork themes as well. How could you ever create such an forgery anyhow!

In the end, I lost an hour of my time watching that crap and asking myself WTF at different points. It even goes on to claim that on any other endeavor such great evidence as this would totally be examined, and went back over the list of things which were so exceedingly weak that I didn't think they even had the balls to count as supposed evidence. I'm pissed. I lost an hour of my time with that crap.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Vice Presidental Debate: Palin wins.

She answered every question. Her answers had no relation to the questions in question. Expecting otherwise would be expecting too much. And she didn't light the stage on fire. That's a win.





Friday, September 26, 2008

Stereogram lies.


Yesterday's Daily Show had a joke about McCain not reading the three page document for the bailout plan that he got on Monday and still hadn't read by Tuesday even though it was three pages and probably important. John Stewart said that "to be fair the front page was one of those pictures you need to unscramble your eyes to see" which he followed by "spoiler alert: dolphin!" -- It's a shark.

This kind of playing fast and loose with the truth is completely absurd. Mallrats did the same thing. They claimed that there was a sailboat when, in fact, there was just some geometric shapes. Why must you lie about stereograms?

# The MagicEye "sailboat" picture is actually a 4 x 3 matrix of geometric shapes consisting of a cross, a circle, a diamond, a star, 4 segmented circles and 4 cones.

Peter Schiff sounds like such a douche.



There's certain truths about understanding and sometimes things are just out of your intellectual reach and perhaps economics is one of them. However, there's something about hindsight which makes even the most novice person able to judge who was right and who was wrong. You don't need to understand economics to understand who the idiots are circa 2006 from 2008.

There's a few signs that global warming wins.

One of them just happened. Methane is trapped in different places, when it gets released it will trigger more heating and more release. It's started. How fun.

Tim Minchin: Not Perfect



I love this song.

Jesus Christ: Wrong For America



I'm certainly voting for the other guy.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The Guild



"I was quick to establish parameters. I started cry hysterically and then he put his pants back on."

Wow, why didn't I watch this earlier.
(via ERV)

It stars Felicia Day well known from her roll as Penny in Dr. Horrible (which you've also seen if you have any taste).

McCain Campaign strategy: a series of gimmicks.

Seriously, Palin worked kind of well because people finally started to pay attention to McCain in a what the hell is doing kind of way. However the whole hiding her away and refusing to talk with anybody kind of think is irksome. Now, his plan is to shutdown his campaign during the economic crisis. Because nobody has the power to have advertisements run in their name and have other people hammer out the specifics of a plan and then have a debate. McCain can only do one thing at a time.



Hiding does not make for a successful campaign and neither does shutting down your campaign.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Friday, September 19, 2008

Save People Not Corporate Debt.

The US government is wrong dealing with the credit crisis. They are making the same mistake that lead to this current financial problem in reverse.

Joe Blow buys a house for $200,000 suddenly people say Joe Blow's house is worth $500,000 and offers Joe Blow a 125% second mortgage to let him buy a boat. Now Joe Blow owes around $550,000 dollars but has a boat. Suddenly, the market realizes that Joe Blow's house is only worth about $250,000 and starts panicking and raises Joe Blow's interest rates and he's having a really hard time making his payments. They say they are going to foreclose on Joe Blow's house! Joe Blow figures out that $550,000 is less than $250,000 and it's about $300,000 in his interest to let them keep the house. Joe Blow lets the dumbasses keep his house. As do all the Joe Blows who find themselves in the same situation.

So now all these places which suddenly took millions upon millions upon millions of dollars worth of hits because they were giving really bad loans to people who couldn't pay them back and no longer had anything worth what the price of the loan was started to crumble and die. They simply weren't worth what they paid for them. -- Now isn't that a lot like what the government is trying to do. We're trying to prop up a bunch of companies with large sums of money when the companies themselves aren't worth anything. The reason they are heading towards bankruptcy is because they aren't worth anything much less the $1 trillion dollars we're going to end up paying.

Do we really want to buy up all the bad debt? Why? Isn't acquiring bad debt the reason these giant corporations are dying? Why don't we actually embrace the capitalistic thing to do and let them die? We want capitalism when it comes to raking in a profit without any hint of so much as making sure the numbers add up. But, when it comes to losses we're suppose to socialize them? No, we shouldn't. Let the Earthquake happen.

We shouldn't be risking the solvency of the United States government in order to prop up corporations which cost more than they are worth. We're ten trillion dollars in debt and we're suppose to dig ourselves another trillion with war and another trillion with bailouts. The Chinese should stop lending us money. We're a bad investment at this point. We should ignore the corporations and focus on saving the people. We need to make sure they have a roof over their head, food so they don't starve, opportunities in life and a modicum of privacy. We should save the least among us, not the richest. We should, like Joe Blow, walk away from trying to fight the untamable monster of bad debt and simply focus on the Joe Blows of society.

We're making the same mistakes the companies are by letting this debt move up the ladder from bad debtors, to bad lenders, to bad lender conglomerates, to bad business propped up by bad lender conglomerates and trying to fight this with bad government policy. There is an old saying, the solution to pollution is dilution. If we just put enough bad stuff in a large enough area we'll be okay. It'll get to low enough levels that we'll be perfectly fine. In practice, this works fine until it doesn't. There's a point where the toxic contamination just like the toxic debt is enough to overwhelm the entire system and cause it all to come tumbling down with far worse consequences than it would have been if we just cut our losses and dealt with the problems head on.

1 trillion dollars is $3000 dollars from every man woman and child in the United States. In reality, you can live on about $1200 a year if you're mindbogglingly poor and covering all your very basic needs. We can far more easily catch the people with endless welfare checks if need be than we could catch the corporate giants who brought this on themselves. The government will not go broke or collapse saving our own people from starvation, but buying up massive amounts of toxic debt from corporations who spend millions to save themselves billions by using lobbyists to avoid paying taxes.

And while you're at it, legalize pot, living in crappy government housing with crappy government food and crappy government attempts to find you a crappy jobs would be far more tolerable if you were totally high. Ever faced a great depression? Ever faced a great depression on weed?

It's the 19th, Talk Like a Pirate

It is international talk like a pirate day.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

But I Channel Ramtha Too!

In case you don't have your ear to the ground when it comes to new age bullshit circles you probably wouldn't have heard of Ramtha and the associated business. Well Ramtha is the creation of JZ Knight who has made a multi-million dollar industry out of her "channeling" of "Ramtha", the 25,000 year old Atlantian warrior! Well, a former student of Ms. Knight Whitewind Weaver stole those teachings and tried to make some money with them on her own. Knight sued of course. And recently won her case.

The lawyer for the defense argued in vain that Knight was a giant corporation bent on crushing the little guy. That argument is certainly a stinker. And he constantly shot off ad hominems of no concern whatsoever.

"So there are people willing to believe that there's a 35,000-year-old man here to teach you?" he told the jury, itemizing hypothetical multimillion-dollar revenue streams at the Ramtha school. "It's a sales gimmick."

Co-counsel David Spellman of Seattle, in closing arguments, tried to discredit Knight's case by alleging that the lawsuit was filed by "Ramtha, the arrogant one," evoking an old science fiction TV show.

"You have now entered the Fourth Dimension," Spellman told the jury. "You're in the Twilight Zone in Thurston County."

Spellman said Weaver didn't channel Ramtha at her seminar, but focused on her own work called "Spherical Reality."

But Creatura said the jury was swayed by a series of side-by-side videotape clips comparing Knight teaching Ramtha school seminars with Weaver leading similar processes at her August 2006 event.


Spellman used the wrong defense. You don't argue that you didn't steal it and they are a big evil corporation. You claim that your client was told very similar information by Ramtha and given permission to use those teachings. If they actual come from Ramtha they are the intellectual property of Ramtha. If they are made-up bullshit from Knight herself, then they are the intellectual property of Knight. The contract signed forbids her from teaching the school's teaching. Ms. Weaver however received her information from Ramtha himself then the argument can be made that they are independent teachings and only similar because Ramtha is the same.

All Knight has to do is admit that she's lying through her lying teeth to win. And since that is far fetched it just might work. Then the whole crazy beliefs are working for you rather than for her. Any dislike the jury has for the crazy works in your favor because if both sides say it's real then they get to let Weaver off the hook. On the sheer merits of the case you clearly lose. You need to let the jury channel their dislike of hokum into letting your client go. The jury can't say it's fake because that's not their job, they can only decide the facts in contention as to whether or not independent teaching counts as a violation of a contract.

There's as many Thursdays as there are days.

Both the set of Thursdays and the set of days are infinite integer sets. As the infinite sets share the same cardinality. That's assume they are infinite sets ofcourse, so I'm wrong if the universe ends. Although, if the universe ends my failures will be the least of our worries.

You can show the equality by counting them one to one.
You say the next day, I say the next week...
The one value will never outpace the other.

Monday, September 15, 2008

John McCain polling well, economy plummets... McCain says economy is doing well.

It could be a good and nuanced argument to suggest that the government could have perhaps stopped the damage at the housing market by making some steps in the right direction when the first bits started to trickle like the Danish boy who put his finger in a dike (that's not how dikes work and its a myth and only an American myth at that). However, I'd like to make another argument...

The economy hates John McCain. It wants regulation and somebody to stop the losses and when it became possible that there would be more hands-off and deregulation (to solve the problems caused by deregulation), which reminds me of Enron claiming that the California brownouts were caused by too much regulation rather than Enron manipulating the market to steal lots of money, being able to because there was deregulation, just as Bush took office to remove the protections against price gouging Clinton put in before he left.

Deregulation causes a problem, the solution is clearly more deregulation. I think the market is suffering heart attacks and wants more red meat but really wants a nurse to regulate its diet and make sure it doesn't die. When red meat gets potentially back on the menu, it becomes obvious that you're going to die and it causes depression. There might be hope under a Democratic administration. Under a Republican administration lead by lobbyists and self-admitted economic novices it's pretty much game over.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

SNL politics.

I thought the parodies of the 2000 election debates were classic by SNL. The latest intro is also quite good.



Tina Fay absolutely nails the Palin impersonation.

Quote of the Day: Benjamin Franklin

"We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately."
- Ben Franklin

Saturday, September 13, 2008

I give up. John McCain is a scientologists.

I have this on good authority. How do we start sending this around as an email? He's an OCII which is before you learn about Xenu. He'd probably deny it knowing that's it's probably politically costly.

Lipstick on a pig...

All the nuanced explanations of context for the statement seems remarkably like throwing your pearls before swine...

Monday, September 8, 2008

Rofl: propaganda







Ah, the good old days. I'm astounded that lying works. All you need to do is get a large group of well funded people to lie a lot and have those lies broadcast and you're instantly a winner. Seriously the truth never stands a chance.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Don't homeschool your kids...



A friend's kid.
He's pretty smart. Listening to him I was going to chide him for calling Pluto and Eris planets. However, he corrects himself later. Jupiter has more moons than Saturn.

My nephew knows pi to 50 digits. That's about as useful.


* I don't actually think he's homeschooled, just added knowledge from other sources.

I support the legalization of marijuana, but come on...

Cures bacterial resistant staph infections? Really. It's bad enough that it makes people drive better (they drive slower and that overwhelms any other factors) but really? I think they are just making this crap up now.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Evolve: Flight

A one technology solution to energy.

If we developed robust cheap room temperature (or higher) superconductors it would change the world overnight.

Seriously SMES technology, an entire grid of superconductive power lines, we'd pretty much be able to switch from oil to electricity overnight and increase the range cars can drive during the switch (more if we created maglev cars). The need for baseline power would be a thing of the past because we could loop the power grid and turn the entire thing into a massive battery (a virtually lossless battery). It would also allow us to account for the ebb and flow of fairly random renewable sources of power but working as a virtual UPS and power stabilization unit.

We could build massive arrays of nuclear power plants off in the boonies where nobody would go NIMBY on their ass and conduct the power to everywhere else in the US. It wouldn't instantly destroy our need for fossil fuels but it would completely and utterly remove our need for oil.


"You drive that old oil sucker? But can only drive like 500 miles on a refill. My car has a 10 MWh SMES coil. I've never recharged it. Got it from the dealer precharged with a special deal they were running, "The first 30k miles are on us!"* Hell I could run my house on this thing."


We'd still need to green up the power grid, but this one invention would completely demolish oil as we know it.


* .27 kW/h for average electric car, 10 MW/h coil = 37,037 miles per coil charge. Current electric cars like the Tesla Roadster have about 50kW/h max charge.

** Might be better to run a much lower current properly insulted. It occurs to me that this kind of force would turn the car into a massive superconductive magnet to the extent of being able to fly (with a proper track).

I'm not sure what to root for...

Sarah Palin is a train wreck.

Palin says the Iraq war is a task from God.
As a mayor she canned the police chief for caring about public safety.
She's a long time supporter of a Alaska secessionist party.
Dr. Laura thinks she's a bad mother for working.
She threatened to fire a librarian for failure to ban books.
She claimed to have fought pork when she was first to the trough.
She fired a guy for not firing her ex-brother-in-law in a personal dispute. She's now refusing to testify unless the investigation is turned over to her cronies.
She goes to a church run by a leader of Jews for Jesus*.

Now, should I root for change or more of the same? This train wreck seems to be giving Obama a boost and the media seems scurrying to find out more and more dirt because there's so much dirt to find. However, I kind of want more Obama laying some smack down. I suppose it's a wealth of riches. I mean, suppose they yank her nomination within the next couple days and put up somebody else? Is that good or bad? I mean this is one gnarly looking slow-motion train wreck... but would I prefer to watch this or have a good narrative about how bad McCain's judgment is? Ofcourse, maybe she stays on the ticket and McCain wins... drops dead... and we have Super-Bush in office?

I'm at a loss as to what I should want.


*Jews for Jesus is not confused, it's a Christian evangelical group which proselytizes primarily to Jews under the auspices of being Jewish themselves.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Monday, September 1, 2008

Aliens found on Earth!



They are from the 4th dimension!

Eeek.

*Not real plants, just good animation. Sixes Last.

Understanding Palin.



* -- Please note nothing about this post is meant to be pejorative. I actually really like that song. Redneck pride has actually been coming up a lot in recent years. I don't like Palin, and figure this might put her in better light than she deserves. I'm pissed that all my politics talk about policy debates and national conventions got turned into the Jerry Springer show upon the unvetted whim of somebody who crassly thinks that women really wanted to vote for just some woman on a presidential ticket (if it was that simple Kathleen Sebelius might have got the Dem's nod, but they actually wanted Clinton herself).

You know they are digging when they pad the resume.

Sarah Palin lived really close to Russia.
Sarah Palin stopped in Ireland for half an hour last year.
Sarah Palin has executive experience in the PTA.



Even with that gone I think Obama should just stick to the message he outlined in the convention because this plays into his hand so well. John McCain doesn't have the judgment or temerity to be president. He agrees with George W. Bush 90% of the time. On Iraq he was wrong. On timetables he was wrong. On energy he was wrong. On healthcare he was wrong. On veterans issues he was wrong. Contrast with correct choices made by Obama on those issues. Then bring up the first presidential decisions each of them made. Obama picked Joe Biden as VP who has more foreign policy experience than anybody in Washington and who nobody would doubt for a second could be president at a moments notice (even though Obama is perfectly healthy) whereas McCain picks the most inexperienced person possible while his health and age isn't that great. Really?

The republicans still aren't done with the convention stuff. They could still say "Psyche! It's Romney!"

Friday, August 29, 2008

Danielle Quayle?

There has been a fairly constant implication that if you pulled somebody off the street they would, without fail, be better than Bush and Cheney have been. Apparently John McCain is testing that theory by yanking somebody off the street. After making sure she opposes abortion in all cases (including rape and incest) and is the right gender to attempt to peel away the McCain supporters who already support McCain but previously nominally supported Hillary.

I guess we should give it a few days and before this completely dwindles to a joke.

Wow. I'm the best debater ever.

Not really, but I'm apparently marginally good. I mentioned some of my Debate.com exploits and funbits here and there. Apparently they just updated the software to include a ranking system.

Hm. Ranking system.

Member Debates Won Lost Tied Win Ratio Percentile
Tatarize
92 69 19 4 75.00% 99.95%
Kleptin
83 50 25 8 60.24% 99.85%
solo
55 40 10 5 72.73% 99.79%
Logical-Master
75 39 31 5 52.00% 99.74%
DucoNihilum
55 37 13 5 67.27% 99.69%

I'm number 1!

On theology and skepticism.

In response to the suggestion that theology is a progression like that of science.

Evaluation of data and understanding of how we should review that data is a critical step to insure that we have as many true beliefs as possible and as few false beliefs as possible. That's where the idea of rationality, science, and skepticism come in and why I took so much offense to your silly suggestion that theology is as legitimate of a progression as those enjoyed by science. It is the epistemological foundation to a rational worldview that makes anything in our human experience able to advance at all. It is this progression towards truth by excluding the more wrong, an intellectual honesty and accepting what we might not want simply because it is reasonable to believe that it is true.

That makes skepticism and science accurate. No amount of theology is every going to build the internet, the computer, powergrids or spacestations because it doesn't go anywhere. It is, what creationists accuse of evolution, a powerless bit of random waffling in no particular direction. Within science and skepticism much like in real evolution our ideas are tested and refined within the reality of the universe rather than the hobgoblins of imaginary physics.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Obama's acceptance smackdown.

Wow, of the top ten speeches I've run into Obama has about three of them.

Elevator group think.



I ain't a joiner.

(Via Of Two Minds)

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Hillary Clinton gives a knock out speech...

...except for that one part:

That is our duty, to build that bright future, and to teach our children that in America there is no chasm too deep, no barrier too great – and no ceiling too high – for all who work hard, never back down, always keep going, have faith in God, in our country, and in each other.


There's no ceiling to high for those who have faith in God? Does that imply that there are ceilings for those who don't?

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

NIBIRU 2012 A.D. The End? - No.



I don't pay much attention to idiots but apparently sometimes it's too funny not to. Did you know that the planet Nibiru is set to destroy the Earth in 2012? Now you may ask, what's Nibiru? And why 2012? Nibiru is a mysterous planet X which may be a red giant from 100+ light years away (slated to travel suddenly at Tachyon speeds to get to us in the next 4 years) or a somehow undetectable planet on a far out orbit. But, Tatarize, you ask "isn't the definition of planet such that anything crossing the orbit of another planet shouldn't really qualify?" - Yes. But, we aren't dealing with reasonable facts here... we're dealing with bizarre conspiracy theories assembled out of effectively nothing.

Oh, and 2012 because that's when the Mayan calendar ends. Why should you believe the Mayan calendar has any bearing on reality? You shouldn't, also you should note that the Mayan calendar doesn't end in 2012 it starts another cycle. It's like saying the world will end in the year 999 because they never got around to using the fourth digit yet.

12.19.19.17.19 is going to roll over to 13.0.0.0.0 oh the humanity! Clearly we're going to be hit bit an undetectable bit of space junk of the gravity of it floating by will cause chaos!!

Sunday, August 24, 2008

The Genius of Darwin Part 3









Argument from Oranges



Oranges are not first cousins to anything but other oranges (as much as the term applies) but they are certainly cousins to our pets as well as ourselves. Almost as good as the argument from bananas.