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See, I thought you meant the American West.

We never went wrong.

Yeah, that's what I get for naming something after an REM song.  I need to rewrite it to put more emphasis on Western philosophy and less on Christianity. 

What's Christianity got to do with the West?

I meant Western Civilization and not the western portion of the United States.

This is exactly why 52 year old women shouldn't wear thongs.

I'm honestly hoping that we will finally get serious about renewable energy if/when gas prices get completely out of control.  And I'm not talking about biodiesel either.  As much as I'd love for corn-based ethanol to take off like a rocket (for greedy, self-serving reasons) it isn't the answer because it takes away from our food supply.  We need to seriously look into wind, nuclear, wave, and solar energy.  If we could get several large solar panel satellites into geosynchronous orbit then we'd have enough power to hold us over for decades.

Optimist.

This is the first time I have ever been called that in my life.

I'm honestly hoping that we will finally get serious about renewable energy if/when gas prices get completely out of control.  And I'm not talking about biodiesel either.  As much as I'd love for corn-based ethanol to take off like a rocket (for greedy, self-serving reasons) it isn't the answer because it takes away from our food supply.  We need to seriously look into wind, nuclear, wave, and solar energy.  If we could get several large solar panel satellites into geosynchronous orbit then we'd have enough power to hold us over for decades.

See, I thought you meant the American West.

We never went wrong.

Yeah, that's what I get for naming something after an REM song.  I need to rewrite it to put more emphasis on Western philosophy and less on Christianity. 

I enjoyed that.

hey, lemme ask you this
(not to be Old Hat or anything, but--)


if the world is random,
and the only forces at play are order and disorder,


               and not good and evil or any of that jazz

why be a "good person"?

and for that matter, what does a "good person" do / not do?

It's a meme that I think most many of us live by, even if we're not really sure what Good means.



Humor me,
I never took Ethics.

Quick summation:  being a "good person" insures that the other apes don't lock you up/kill you. Ethics is a social contract that is mutually (for the most part) agreed upon.  We don't need a Cosmic Higher Power telling us how to treat each other.

  PURE WIN!

A pretty good summation of the concept of scientific peer-review whether you intended it or not.

PS.  I know this sucks but I had to write it out for my own sake.  Thanks to Cain for suggesting the book "Unholy Spirits" to me.  It's completely awfulness inspired me to write this.

The number one thing Christianity gets so wrong is this whole business of determinism.  They often repeat the mantra of "Everything happens for a reason" or "God's Got a Plan" or sing little songs like "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands".  This is the biggest thing I had a problem with when I was still a Christian.  As a philosophy it completely denies the very existence of Chaos.  Everything has a reason or a purpose.  Nothing is out of place, nothing is superfluous.  Every part does something.  They use these little sayings as a security blanket to protect themselves from reality. They want Someone Else to be in control.  They want it all to make sense on some cosmic level. They want their narrative where Good eventually triumphs over Evil. 

Well, guess what.  The Universe doesn't give a fuck what we want. The word "purpose" is a literary fiction.  It's a grid that we place on our own reality to help us sleep at night.  We decide the purpose of something, not God. There is no Cause. There is no Effect. Everything is probabilistic. Whatever happens, happens. Whatever doesn't happen, doesn't.

The problem is that they can't see the glory in being a happy little accident of the cosmos.  The odds are incredibly stacked against you ever existing, and yet you are still here.  The powers of CHAOS and ORDER conspired to bring you where you are today.  It's not God who has you in His Hands, it's Eris. And She is ready to drop us at any time.

He was talking to some guest who wrote a book about the internet, and part of the interview included them discussing what "creative chaos" is, at least in terms of the internet. I'll watch the interview again and pay more attention, see if I can transcribe any of it. But yeah it was pretty interesting.

If you wait about a day the interview will be up on Comedy Central's website.  I loved the interview with Kenneth Miller from last night, BTW.  Calling cdesign proponentsists "welfare queens" was pure win!   

I have to agree with NIgel here.   

I was thinking you were going to tell me it was like the tongue curl thing and some people couldn't see them or whatever.

Well, hopefully someone will do an experiment comparing hand-eye coordination and the ability to see optical illusions.  I'd love to see what the results would be. I wonder if people with great hand-eye coordination (like professional athletes) have a shorter neural lag or if they are just better able to fill in the gap.

Reading "Unholy Spirits" by Gary North at the suggestion of Cain. I dove into it knowing absolutely nothing about Mr. North and his crazy beliefs.  This thing is like a massive trainwreck.  I'm only on page 26 and I've already busted 3 Irony Meters. 

His overall thesis so far seems to be: the damned-dirty hippies (especially The Beatles) are to blame for the rise of both occultism and humanism in the United States, the occultism has started to corrupt our universities and is harming science and OUR VERY WAY OF LIFE!!!, the best way to save Western Civilization is to reject occultism and go back to the old mythology of Christianity. 

I don't think that there is any way I'll be able to finish this thing because the amount of horrormirth has been overwhelming so far.  Damn you, Cain!!!   

This book sounds ridiculous. I think I want to read it!

Ok, but don't say I didn't warn you:

http://www.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/21ea_47e.htm

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/080602-foresee-future.html

Scientists have figured out one of the reasons that optical illusions play such weird tricks with our brains:  we have a 1/10 of a second neural lag between our eyes and our brains.  Our brains compensate for this by trying to predict what will happen next.  Hence why we have problems seeing lines in some optical illusions and why it looks like certain illusions appear to be moving when they are actually static.

I thought that you were leaving...