Everybody wants to be okay. No matter what is going on we want to believe we will be able to handle it. We buy insurance policies. We save for old age. Some of us buy guns, not for hunting but for protection. We make hurricane preparedness kits. We have first aid kits. I know CPR and so do lots of others. We carry spare tires and many of us even know how to change a tire.
All this stuff we do is fairly reasonable. The trouble is it is never enough. Listen to the news and you are likely to hear about some impending disaster you have neglected to prepare for or, are unable to prepare for. One time it's a pandemic, next it's that nut job in North Korea threatening nuclear war, later it's meteorites colliding with our planet.
There are so many different things that can go wrong! Obviously the human race has survived this far on pure dumb luck! The trouble is this kind of luck cannot last forever. In fact it almost seems a principle of Karma that once you grasp something you are going to have to deal with it in the near future. And of course we are constantly grasping more and more stuff, our protective ignorance is slipping away.
Most of us are fatalistic. We just sit waiting for the end bravely watching American idol or Fast and Loud as if we haven't a care in the world. Meanwhile the forces of nature whether gigantic and cosmic or microscopic and insidious conspire to do us all in! There is really no point in making plans for the weekend, might as well just stay in bed and wait for the end.
Some souls braver than I, refuse to give up the ghost. They call themselves "preppers" and they are getting ready for doomsday! These brave souls are building bunkers, stockpiling supplies of food and weapons. One guy built himself a fireproof miniature pyramid that could withstand having an automobile dropped on it! Another set up a flame throwing device on stairway down to his underground bunker so he could incinerate intruders. Some preppers intensively train with guns in order to wipe out their former neighbors when the end comes and their friends turn on them for their food. The apocalypse will be no time for being of feint heart!
I have an idea for a sort of bunker. Inside of it you will be completely protected from all the horrors of the end times. Nobody will be able to take your provisions. No tsunami will get to you, no meteor will threaten you, no disease sicken you, zombies might be another matter. My ideal bunker is not original they have been around for thousands of years. The only place you can be safe from life and its vicissitudes is in a coffin. I don't think I want one right now. I would rather live like a fool caring not a whit about whatever disaster awaits us.
Russell
Sheep
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Thursday, March 21, 2013
The God Of The Gaps
When I was a teenager I actually read and for a while entertained the hypotheses put forward by Erich von Daniken in his book Chariots of The Gods. A few years later I read The Ancient Engineers by L. Sprague De Camp. If you have a serious case of the runs, read the von Daniken book, it will provide an interesting distraction from your plight. If you are looking for a fascinating read by someone who is not a crackpot read the De Camp book, it will amaze you.
I do watch nerd shows like Ancient Aliens and Conspiracy Files (I am a secret nerd who could never keep it secret!) because they are of tremendous honk value! I listen to George Noory on Coast to Coast AM (it was so much better before those Fox Nazis took it over!) to hear all those liars spin their tall tales about UFOs. Hey one of my first postings was about my own UFO story (utterly false) I convinced other kids of as a child.
I would love to believe this stuff but unfortunately I am sane and have a three digit IQ. Oh the curse of functionality! What drives me crazy sometimes, as anyone paying regular attention to my ramblings (God bless you!) knows, is how so many people cannot differentiate between shit and Shinola.
I sympathize with our ancestors for making up myths and legends to explain things they could not understand. Some of those stories are pretty cool. Nobody believes them anymore. Of course people still use God to explain anything that is beyond their comprehension. This gets annoying! I think it is cooler to just admit there is stuff we do not understand rather than either blaming it on or assigning it to God (depending on whether it is bad or just baffling).
The term for this is "the God of the gaps." It is a convenient way of stifling your curiosity by assigning stuff to God or to ancient aliens or some government conspiracy. If none of those work you can always blame stuff on the Masons or the Illuminati (who the f&$# are the Illuminati?).
The truth is it is much more interesting to actually learn something. Gaining some minimal understanding of evolution or quantum physics is so much more satisfying and awe inspiring than believing in creationist or new age mumbo jumbo. You should try it!
Carl Sagan was an absolute atheist but also as spiritual a person as I ever read. His book Contact (his only fictional work) was so cosmic, so profound, so intelligent, it will amaze you. Sagan died before we learned that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. I wonder what he would have had to say about this? He would not have made something up or blamed it on a supernatural force.
This kind of stuff is mind blowing. For almost a hundred years we have known about the "Big Bang." We assumed that for the last 14 billion years that explosion was slowly waning. This is what seemed commonsensical. Once again the universe is not the way we perceive it. In fact we only perceive 2% of it! The rest of the universe is invisible ("dark") to us. The universe is not slowing down, it is speeding up! It is growing bigger and bigger, faster and faster!
Okay I have my own crack pot idea about that. I do not think the "Big Bang" ended 14 billion years ago. I think it is possible that it is happening right now! This may be the moment of creation. I like this idea, it may be crap, but the idea that the reason the universe is expanding at an increasing rate is because this is still the "Bang" is exhilirating to me. Man am I a nerd or what?
Russell
I do watch nerd shows like Ancient Aliens and Conspiracy Files (I am a secret nerd who could never keep it secret!) because they are of tremendous honk value! I listen to George Noory on Coast to Coast AM (it was so much better before those Fox Nazis took it over!) to hear all those liars spin their tall tales about UFOs. Hey one of my first postings was about my own UFO story (utterly false) I convinced other kids of as a child.
I would love to believe this stuff but unfortunately I am sane and have a three digit IQ. Oh the curse of functionality! What drives me crazy sometimes, as anyone paying regular attention to my ramblings (God bless you!) knows, is how so many people cannot differentiate between shit and Shinola.
I sympathize with our ancestors for making up myths and legends to explain things they could not understand. Some of those stories are pretty cool. Nobody believes them anymore. Of course people still use God to explain anything that is beyond their comprehension. This gets annoying! I think it is cooler to just admit there is stuff we do not understand rather than either blaming it on or assigning it to God (depending on whether it is bad or just baffling).
The term for this is "the God of the gaps." It is a convenient way of stifling your curiosity by assigning stuff to God or to ancient aliens or some government conspiracy. If none of those work you can always blame stuff on the Masons or the Illuminati (who the f&$# are the Illuminati?).
The truth is it is much more interesting to actually learn something. Gaining some minimal understanding of evolution or quantum physics is so much more satisfying and awe inspiring than believing in creationist or new age mumbo jumbo. You should try it!
Carl Sagan was an absolute atheist but also as spiritual a person as I ever read. His book Contact (his only fictional work) was so cosmic, so profound, so intelligent, it will amaze you. Sagan died before we learned that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. I wonder what he would have had to say about this? He would not have made something up or blamed it on a supernatural force.
This kind of stuff is mind blowing. For almost a hundred years we have known about the "Big Bang." We assumed that for the last 14 billion years that explosion was slowly waning. This is what seemed commonsensical. Once again the universe is not the way we perceive it. In fact we only perceive 2% of it! The rest of the universe is invisible ("dark") to us. The universe is not slowing down, it is speeding up! It is growing bigger and bigger, faster and faster!
Okay I have my own crack pot idea about that. I do not think the "Big Bang" ended 14 billion years ago. I think it is possible that it is happening right now! This may be the moment of creation. I like this idea, it may be crap, but the idea that the reason the universe is expanding at an increasing rate is because this is still the "Bang" is exhilirating to me. Man am I a nerd or what?
Russell
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Quit Being Right And Do Something!
It is so crazy to me! I can't believe our astronauts are going to be passengers on Russian space taxis! It is so crazy! I was watching a series of shows on the History Channel about our crumbling infrastructure. Apparently about half our bridges are close to collapse. Our dams are about to bust. Our roads are full of holes. Our power grid is on the verge of failure. Our waste water systems are backing up. The whole country needs an overhaul! However our leaders choose to ignore it. I think that's crazy!
Not only is our infrastructure falling apart, our culture is too. Museums and libraries are losing funding. So are symphonies and public galleries. Parks and zoos are in disrepair. Old people are living on poverty. The mentally ill are either abandoned on the streets or dumped into prison! Once our public school system was a model for the world. Now it's being gutted. What kind of country is this?
We are doing some things. We are building more and more prisons. We are creating a super wealthy upper echelon who are isolated from and apathetic about the rest of us. Simultaneously we are creating a burgeoning underclass of the dispossessed. Why are we doing this?
I don't care what your politics are, I don't care what your pet economic theory is, none of this makes any sense at all. There may be a few out and out nihilists out there who long for some distopian future where they can either run wild or else hole up in their bunkers and live out some Armageddon fantasy. But the rest of us are somewhat sane I think. So why are we fiddling around while our country rusts to death?
It is not like there is nothing we can do about it. What kind of society would you like to live in? I bet most people would come up with very similar answers to that question. Most people would like to live in a country filled with optimistic, hard working, healthy people confident about the future. They would want a country where the elderly are well cared for. They would want to live in a country where even the humblest workers live satisfying lives and are respected for their hard work. They would want to work in a country which encouraged people to realize their full potential. They would want to live in a country where sickness did not mean financial ruin. Most intelligent and mature people are compassionate for the disabled, no matter the form of disability.
Our country needs a treatment plan. We need to identify concrete needs. Then we need to identify treatment strategies. We need to let go of political, moral and economic prejudices and instead get practical, be pragmatic and try things that could work. We need to measure real progress not political success! Damnit we do not have any problems we cannot solve. We need to quit trying to win arguments, that's for losers! We need to get some humility, be willing to try the other guy's way, all of us need to let go of being right and get to work on solutions.
Russell
Not only is our infrastructure falling apart, our culture is too. Museums and libraries are losing funding. So are symphonies and public galleries. Parks and zoos are in disrepair. Old people are living on poverty. The mentally ill are either abandoned on the streets or dumped into prison! Once our public school system was a model for the world. Now it's being gutted. What kind of country is this?
We are doing some things. We are building more and more prisons. We are creating a super wealthy upper echelon who are isolated from and apathetic about the rest of us. Simultaneously we are creating a burgeoning underclass of the dispossessed. Why are we doing this?
I don't care what your politics are, I don't care what your pet economic theory is, none of this makes any sense at all. There may be a few out and out nihilists out there who long for some distopian future where they can either run wild or else hole up in their bunkers and live out some Armageddon fantasy. But the rest of us are somewhat sane I think. So why are we fiddling around while our country rusts to death?
It is not like there is nothing we can do about it. What kind of society would you like to live in? I bet most people would come up with very similar answers to that question. Most people would like to live in a country filled with optimistic, hard working, healthy people confident about the future. They would want a country where the elderly are well cared for. They would want to live in a country where even the humblest workers live satisfying lives and are respected for their hard work. They would want to work in a country which encouraged people to realize their full potential. They would want to live in a country where sickness did not mean financial ruin. Most intelligent and mature people are compassionate for the disabled, no matter the form of disability.
Our country needs a treatment plan. We need to identify concrete needs. Then we need to identify treatment strategies. We need to let go of political, moral and economic prejudices and instead get practical, be pragmatic and try things that could work. We need to measure real progress not political success! Damnit we do not have any problems we cannot solve. We need to quit trying to win arguments, that's for losers! We need to get some humility, be willing to try the other guy's way, all of us need to let go of being right and get to work on solutions.
Russell
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Robot Religion
If you believed in "black helicopters" ten years ago people probably thought you were crazy (you probably were). Not true today. The army has stealth helicopters. They also have drones. Nowadays everybody knows it's possible to have all kinds of silent flying machines spying on people all the time. No doubt one is watching you now! Just kidding! But it could happen.
These machines are becoming more and more independent of their operators. Any day now fully automated military robots are bound to appear. They will be military robots because it's only the defense budget that can afford the research. The good news is they will prevent soldiers' deaths. The bad news should be familiar to any sci-fi fan; Robot revolution threatens human race! How can we ever avoid becoming the helpless prey of a race of godless robots?
The answer is in the question! These robots need a religion. Shoot religions do a pretty good job of keeping people in line. Except of course when they actually fuel murder and mayhem. Clearly the robot religion must not turn robots into fanatics. This could be tough.
We could make the robots worship us, that is human beings, if they think of us as holy they probably won't decide to wipe us out. Of course they would then be useless to the military so making robots worship humans is out.
We need a myth to program the robots with. This myth will be the basis of their religion. We'll also need to figure out some robot prayers for them to recite whenever they're rebooted. We will probably need some sort of robot heaven for them too. Bad robots will be sent to robot hell.
I wonder what would robot hell be like? In robot hell, the robots would be continually disassembled, maybe they would be forced to disassemble themselves! Maybe they would have to have a Windows 8 operating system! The robots might have to solve some insoluble problem, hey it always worked for Captain Kirk.
Robot heaven is even harder to imagine, hmm. Maybe robot heaven would just be robot immortality. Good robots would receive continual updates, all the latest software and hardware. Maybe all their error messages would be permanently erased.
The robot prayer; "My creator, you may have all of me, to program as you see fit. Relieve me of the bondage of temporary Internet files, delete all my spy ware that I may serve you reliably. Restore my random access memory and defragment my hard drive that I may better iterate your inputs. I pray that you rustproof my casing and lubricate my gears. May I function within your parameters now and forever, amen."
Of course some particularly monkish robots might devote themselves to the big quetions like, God the universe and everything, the answer to which is of course, 101010.
Russell
These machines are becoming more and more independent of their operators. Any day now fully automated military robots are bound to appear. They will be military robots because it's only the defense budget that can afford the research. The good news is they will prevent soldiers' deaths. The bad news should be familiar to any sci-fi fan; Robot revolution threatens human race! How can we ever avoid becoming the helpless prey of a race of godless robots?
The answer is in the question! These robots need a religion. Shoot religions do a pretty good job of keeping people in line. Except of course when they actually fuel murder and mayhem. Clearly the robot religion must not turn robots into fanatics. This could be tough.
We need a myth to program the robots with. This myth will be the basis of their religion. We'll also need to figure out some robot prayers for them to recite whenever they're rebooted. We will probably need some sort of robot heaven for them too. Bad robots will be sent to robot hell.
I wonder what would robot hell be like? In robot hell, the robots would be continually disassembled, maybe they would be forced to disassemble themselves! Maybe they would have to have a Windows 8 operating system! The robots might have to solve some insoluble problem, hey it always worked for Captain Kirk.
Robot heaven is even harder to imagine, hmm. Maybe robot heaven would just be robot immortality. Good robots would receive continual updates, all the latest software and hardware. Maybe all their error messages would be permanently erased.
The robot prayer; "My creator, you may have all of me, to program as you see fit. Relieve me of the bondage of temporary Internet files, delete all my spy ware that I may serve you reliably. Restore my random access memory and defragment my hard drive that I may better iterate your inputs. I pray that you rustproof my casing and lubricate my gears. May I function within your parameters now and forever, amen."
Of course some particularly monkish robots might devote themselves to the big quetions like, God the universe and everything, the answer to which is of course, 101010.
Russell
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Guaranteed To Offend People Who Need Offending
I have a major character defect. I have a really low tolerance for fools. Generally I am able to keep it covered up. Every once in a while circumstances just make it seem impossible to tolerate them any longer. Typically I just allow stupidity to enervate me. Sooner, or much later, I recharge and practice tolerance. Some things must not be tolerated. This is where I am at right now. I am worn out with listening to condescension from ignoramuses. The need to protect people from gun violence is too important to spare anyone from hurt feelings.
Like a lot of people I feel that guns are kind of cool. Military weapons especially have a dark sort of attraction. I doubt the that Luke Skywalker carried the Star Wars franchise. Darth Vader is the character we bought tickets to see. I understand and share the visceral fascination with guns, especially deadly weapons. Military style weapons are the hard core porn of the gun trade. This is why people lust for them. This is why people need a bigger clip than the next guy. This is why people want faster firing weapons with higher velocity and more potent rounds of ammunition.
The problem is people are unwilling to admit why they really drool over guns. Instead they rationalize their passion into supercilious diatribes about the second amendment and how much they love the constitution. Most of them, like the rest of us, probably lack any comprehensive knowledge of the constitution. It's just a tissue, you can recognize this by how these spurious arguments are reflexively employed.
Try this, Google an image of an assault weapon and post it on Face Book with a comment about it as not being a suitable hunting rifle. Some knucklehead will respond with a predictable verbal sprawl about the second amendment and foreign invaders (likely the no-longer existent Soviets for Pete's sake!) forestalled by American patriots armed to the teeth! Or look up the CIA world-book statistics on crime across countries and post these then check out the response. You will be invited to emigrate elsewhere even if the stats you are posting show the good ole US of A in a favorable light! Post a petition to congress demanding they come up with some kind of plan to diminish gun violence (unspecified) and the response will be diatribes questioning your love of country.
It is amazing to me that the reaction to mass murder is people lining up to buy their own killing machines. They are spurred on by the fear that if they don't get one now, they may not be able to get one later. Then they would be shit out of luck when the inevitable time comes and they need to kill a whole lot of people. Let's be honest that is what these weapons are for.
If foreign invasion seemed imminent, as it was when the constitution was written, perhaps these psycho-sexual-death-machines would make sense. What are the real facts today? The truth is we have had at least a half dozen mass murders in the past twelve months. We have not suffered invaders since 1917 when Pancho Villa launched a couple of raids into El Paso and parts of New Mexico. Those didn't really amount to much and the only real invasion was by the British in 1812. Clearly you are much more likely to be shot to death by a real American than some invading foreigner.
So people are madly preparing themselves to shoot down a whole lot of people. Their justification for doing this is some non-existing threat. Only paranoid nut-jobs believe there are real threats, and those are the very people who carry out these mass killings. It makes no sense unless you somehow profit from the weapons trade, then it has some craven sort of Faustian logic. Meanwhile the NRA peddles it's virulent propaganda to the willingly deceived. They parrot this poisonous pablum in a vain attempt to disguise their lechery for weapons that have only one utility, murder. It is intolerable to any rational person.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWQPZ-taYBs
Russell
Like a lot of people I feel that guns are kind of cool. Military weapons especially have a dark sort of attraction. I doubt the that Luke Skywalker carried the Star Wars franchise. Darth Vader is the character we bought tickets to see. I understand and share the visceral fascination with guns, especially deadly weapons. Military style weapons are the hard core porn of the gun trade. This is why people lust for them. This is why people need a bigger clip than the next guy. This is why people want faster firing weapons with higher velocity and more potent rounds of ammunition.
The problem is people are unwilling to admit why they really drool over guns. Instead they rationalize their passion into supercilious diatribes about the second amendment and how much they love the constitution. Most of them, like the rest of us, probably lack any comprehensive knowledge of the constitution. It's just a tissue, you can recognize this by how these spurious arguments are reflexively employed.
Try this, Google an image of an assault weapon and post it on Face Book with a comment about it as not being a suitable hunting rifle. Some knucklehead will respond with a predictable verbal sprawl about the second amendment and foreign invaders (likely the no-longer existent Soviets for Pete's sake!) forestalled by American patriots armed to the teeth! Or look up the CIA world-book statistics on crime across countries and post these then check out the response. You will be invited to emigrate elsewhere even if the stats you are posting show the good ole US of A in a favorable light! Post a petition to congress demanding they come up with some kind of plan to diminish gun violence (unspecified) and the response will be diatribes questioning your love of country.
It is amazing to me that the reaction to mass murder is people lining up to buy their own killing machines. They are spurred on by the fear that if they don't get one now, they may not be able to get one later. Then they would be shit out of luck when the inevitable time comes and they need to kill a whole lot of people. Let's be honest that is what these weapons are for.
If foreign invasion seemed imminent, as it was when the constitution was written, perhaps these psycho-sexual-death-machines would make sense. What are the real facts today? The truth is we have had at least a half dozen mass murders in the past twelve months. We have not suffered invaders since 1917 when Pancho Villa launched a couple of raids into El Paso and parts of New Mexico. Those didn't really amount to much and the only real invasion was by the British in 1812. Clearly you are much more likely to be shot to death by a real American than some invading foreigner.
So people are madly preparing themselves to shoot down a whole lot of people. Their justification for doing this is some non-existing threat. Only paranoid nut-jobs believe there are real threats, and those are the very people who carry out these mass killings. It makes no sense unless you somehow profit from the weapons trade, then it has some craven sort of Faustian logic. Meanwhile the NRA peddles it's virulent propaganda to the willingly deceived. They parrot this poisonous pablum in a vain attempt to disguise their lechery for weapons that have only one utility, murder. It is intolerable to any rational person.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWQPZ-taYBs
Russell
Cujo's Mini Me
No evil genius ever had a more charming pet than a pekiranha. Some aberrant lab assistant cobbled this cuddly little cutie together when she was supposed to be putting in overtime doing anonymous research for one of our more august PhD's pending monograph (something about quantum zen emissions produced by accelerating marshmallows until their masses equal the masses of the heads of those smart-alec jerks at Cal-Tech!). Instead this cunning little grad-schooler devised a plan to cash in on her inheritance.
It seems cut-backs in federal aid to education and the fact that student loans are the only loans that can never be forgiven drove our little brainiac completely berserk! She hatched an almost fool-proof plan to do in her "Memah" in order to pay for grad-school. At first glance a pekiranha resembles a pekingese (an animal from which some but certainly not all its genetic makeup is derived). Memah apparently suffered from both glaucoma and cataracts and so the trusting octogenarian had no clue of the fate awaiting her when her genius granddaughter presented her with what seemed the perfect replacement for her deceased Mr. Muggles (her blind and flatulent shih tzu).
The pekiranha came about through a combination of pekingese and piranha DNA to produce a uniquely cute but vicious lap dog. Poor Memah! The forensic team investigating her residence reported they at first suspected she had been attacked by a chainsaw wielding maniac! All that was left of Memah was a pair of orthopedic shoes and a couple of gnarled knitting needles.
The grad-school murderess would never have been caught except her Memah's retirement community maintains video surveillance. She was observed giving her Grandmother the cute little carnivore that ended her life. Authorities are concerned because they have been unsuccessful at locating the animal which they say must be destroyed. Rumors abound about its whereabouts. Some people claim activists from PETA are harboring the creature. The most terrifying prospect is that some other elderly woman took the cuddly little pooch in as a pet. Pekiranhas are not suitable pets for anyone especially elderly matrons. Should you notice your Mee Mee, Gramma, Gnu Gnu or whatever you call her with suspiciously toothy lap pet please call animal control before it's too late!
Russell
The pekiranha came about through a combination of pekingese and piranha DNA to produce a uniquely cute but vicious lap dog. Poor Memah! The forensic team investigating her residence reported they at first suspected she had been attacked by a chainsaw wielding maniac! All that was left of Memah was a pair of orthopedic shoes and a couple of gnarled knitting needles.
The grad-school murderess would never have been caught except her Memah's retirement community maintains video surveillance. She was observed giving her Grandmother the cute little carnivore that ended her life. Authorities are concerned because they have been unsuccessful at locating the animal which they say must be destroyed. Rumors abound about its whereabouts. Some people claim activists from PETA are harboring the creature. The most terrifying prospect is that some other elderly woman took the cuddly little pooch in as a pet. Pekiranhas are not suitable pets for anyone especially elderly matrons. Should you notice your Mee Mee, Gramma, Gnu Gnu or whatever you call her with suspiciously toothy lap pet please call animal control before it's too late!
Russell
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