Rheo Link

http://www.goodgonedead.rheostaticslive.com/gonelinks.shtml

I was reminded of the pain and sorrow of a somber night nearly a month ago.
Approaching the one-month anniversary, revisiting the postings and re-reading the official last post from the official rheosite...I guess I wish it just didn't happen.

Music will not die, however. Music is strong, and music with their provocative tenure will be the structure of which music is moulded upon. The intensity. The melody. The funk. The Punk. The attitudes. The aptitudes. The raw talent. The sauteed personality. The rant. The screaming love of sound. The Rheostatics.

Born to be obedient

"everybody knows the bible is the word of god"

"we fully embrace the scientific method - as evangelicals - and we think as time goes on, as we discover more and more facts, we will discover what god has made on earth"

"but the scientific method clearly shows that Earth is four and a half billion years old"

...

"get off my property...you called my children animals"


Well...um...sorry Mr. Evangelical, but they are. No intellectual debate upon that.

So, where were you going with your espousal's of god and jesus and all those mythical beings that keep your pay cheque coming in?

Bring on the Couch...pass the baby food

What the hell ever happened to running, grains, walking the dog, sports, vegetables, walking to work, cooking your own meals, drinking water, taking the stairs, avoiding sugar-water soda, joining a team, family walks after dinner, turning off the car and walking to the movies, ... ?

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/04/26/infants-leptin.html

No, no, no. We must, instead, unsheathe our fermented ideas of using our energy-based biological system for actually doing (*gasp*) work and relegate ourselves to the couch, the clicker, a bag of chips and a hearty serving of stay-slim manufactured sludge.

It will start as baby food, it will revisit our shelves as adult food (even though it wont work because it relies on developmental genetic co opting) and serve as non-diet diet food. So, we will sit longer, do less and eat more. But live a stress free life because we thing we are gaining from our "anti-caloric" fare.

For christ sake, get off your ass and do something. Put down the celebrity enforced ideology of 'skinny' and pick up the reality based ideology of 'healthy', and realize that GMO diet food is not going to make you healthier.

Buy a bike.
Eat toast, rice, pasta...
go for a walk....
Live like an animal, not like a feverishly devout christ-loving human-centric ignoramus.

That is all I can share about this.

Published

Sort of.

It only took 28 years, 1 month, 26 days and 5 hours to be recognized (officially) for something!

http://vts.bc.ca/pgrasc/

Not sure how long I will be the one posted, but at least for two more weeks I presume. click on "Astro Photo of the Month" and you shall see my glint of recognition.

I bet there is a R.A.S.C. near where you are reading this from. Email them. Talk to them. Join them. Learn from them. I did. I will keep doing so.

Cheers.

Wake up, Face the Curtains...

This will require patience and persistence. This may require more than that which I have.

This may work. Let's try.

This is a daily, developmentally charged continuum of floral development in a budding tree, coming out of stasis.
Here are the progressive shots.



ABOVE: Day 1

ABOVE: Day 2

ABOVE: Day 3

ABOVE: Day 4 (April 29/07)

Refreshing a previous post

...of course when I wrote that "biology tells the story", I left it to be assumed that if said statement was true then geology tells THE story.

Rock beats fish.
Plate tectonics beats evolution.
Minerals beat pupils.
Extrasolar stratigraphic and orogenic development...well that one loses out to extrasolar biology and life. But since there is none yet (yet, yet, yet...) I will keep the evidenced universal geology on top of universal biology. Although you could argue that they are two entirely separate and disparate entities: universal geology - looking to see what kinds of rocks pepper our universe; universal biology - looking to see if biology peppers our universe. So, both searches, both different. Both wonderful, really.

But water is the visceral fluid that binds them together, and that which allows my coffee to be so grand, so water beats all.

Quotes:

This quote was stripped straight from the text of a news article in the NY times entitled:
Iran Exonerates Six Who Killed in Islam's Name
by Nazila Fathi


According to the Supreme Court's earlier decision, the killers, who are members of the Basiji Force, volunteer vigilantes favored by the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, considered their victims morally corrupt and, according to Islamic teachings and Iran's Islamic penal code, their blood could therefore be shed.The last victims, for example, were a young couple engaged to be married who the killers claimed were walking together in public.

At the same time, he laid out examples of moral corruption that do permit bloodshed, including armed banditry, adultery by a wife and insults to the Prophet Muhammad.

It is with a saddened tone that I decry the values held by religious moderates and extremists, and their perpetual allocation of trust and honour by the rest of society.
"oh, he is muslim, it is ok for him to beat his neighbour"
When will we, as a collective society, take a concerted step towards eradicating corrupt and incomprehensible morals? When should killing a person ever be condoned due to religious beliefs? I realize, absolutely and completely, that it is done every day and every moment somewhere around the world. But, it needs not be accepted and 'understood'; it needs to be vilified and eradicated.

But the tragic train of embattled views continues, on and on, towards the future. Witches, a couple in love holding hands, a meek kiss on the cheek, and other 'contestable' actions will cause death the world over - legally sanctioned death - perpetually.
It does not need to.

Perspective: Biological

Just sitting here thinking. About evolution.

I know of a fish, somewhat, that breathes air.
I know of a Crab that is not a crab at all, but an Arachnid.
I know of a dinosaur era fish that was thought dead, only to be found again.

And I know we are all related to them.
And I know that the ability to understand this genetically is a glorious addendum to the profits of the natural sciences.

Above: Coelacanth; thought dead, thought extinct, found in Madagascar. And people have trouble accepting that chimps are related to humans.

Above: Horseshoe Crab; not really a crab. Trilobite, anyone? Uncanny phynological resemblance, and distinct genetic connection to ancestral early-ear biota.

Above: Ahh...take a deep breath. The drown prone lung fish. A fish. A drowning fish. A fish that can drown. Now of course reptiles and mammals (whales, dolphins included) can drown, but fish? Well, yup.

Now why do I post this and ramble as I am post internet-searching images of these living fossils? Well, a bite of perspective, that is all. These species (well, these representatives of their respective other sibling species) are living fossils. We have 80, 90, 100 million year old fossils that look anatomically the same as these three (of four living species - Lingula the brachiopod like species that is extant today still, in stark resemblance of million year old species). These living forms have anatomically changed very little since tens of millions of years ago.

And we have species that reach adulthood and revert to adolescence.

And we have species that live on dry land (cant swim, in fact) but who lay eggs in water.

And we have species that ...

Point: Nature is pretty neat. There is no rhyme to follow, no stochastic tempo to pattern out, and simply no way of knowing what is to be uncovered next. Today, to make the point, a brand new mineral was discovered. Pretty darn neat. The lungfish is deemed humanities last ancestral link to 'fish' species before our evolutionary trajectory took us out of the water, to the tree's and into the suburbs. The Coelacanth a step before that. They are special, they are alive STILL.

Biology, my mind says, is fantastic. It tells a great story. It tells the story.

Im just thinking out loud...

You know, statistically speaking, at least one person gave up jesus today and picked up reality.

Lent flame to the bible, and lent and ear to truth.

It is, perhaps in this lonely way, a good day - I am sure that this coincides with at least one saved life and one more free mind.

Dawkins Defeats O'Reilly?

OneGoodMove has a quotable comment if I have ever read one:

Apparently Bill's only standard for truth is that he believes it.

And thus describes the contest between Dawkins and O'Reilly this evening. The only foundational evidence that the intellectually-incongruent bastion of false knowledge had (O'Reilly, in case it wasn't clear enough...) was that he believes, so it is true.

Because he believes.

So it is true.

And that was the basis of his side of the debate. Although I feel that Richard got the best of thoughts in the battle of words, it was not a clear cut win. How could it be, from an outsiders perspective. I would have liked to see/hear their off camera discussion after the interview - I can only assume that Dawkins either placated Bill by saying "thanks for your time" or destroyed him with cogent vengeance and tacit thoughts, ones which he feared too offensive for television. Or he just got up and walked away. Anyway...where was I going here...oh yeah: Richard got the better of thoughts across, but due to Bill's simplistic and intellectually void inputs, there was nothing for Richard to go with. Not unlike discussing a molecule's actual weight with a newborn child.

At least the newborn would have an excuse for being stupid. Bill, sadly, didn't.

I think it is true, therefore it is.

I'm rubber your glue.

These are, while observationally false, quite the range of arguments that creationists and religious apologists lean towards.

PS - the link above will take you to the 2 min clip of the interview.

Uranus: Hershel Controversy

Im a "nus" ... WHAT?!?! ... Your a "nus" (get it..Uranus....heh heh...)

How freaking cool is this picture? It is a near-infrared image of Uranus from Hawaii, which clearly shows the rings of Uranus. Now, realizing that Uranus images are not really new to science (I wonder if astrologers new about them? Hmm.....four hunders years ago?) but to see such an honest picture like this, well, it somehow puts things in perspective. I dont know why this does it for me, but it does. Spooky. Imagine this was home. Imagine.

Just another ball of matter, gravitating around one (well, many actually) point of mass. Obviously it makes you stop and think. Well, it should.

QUOTED FROM www.badastronomy.com :
This is pretty interesting– the rings of Uranus were supposedly discovered in the 1970s, but there is some indication that William Herschel — a brilliant observational astronomer in the 18th century who discovered Uranus in the first place — may have observed them 200 years before!

Taken, obviously, from Phil's site.

In consideration of the planets, I wonder if it ever came to a religious apologists mind that the fact that there are so many unused planets in our known universe (or, better stated perhaps: our known universe of the stipulated multiverse) suggests that he got a lot wrong before he decided on his favourite colours and stuck with the green and blue ball of rock. He screwed up many times before making the one he was happy with. Infallible? Heh. Multi-fallible.

Anyway, just some thoughts that are most certainly not my own, but those of a contingent of like-minded aware people.

Go back and look at Uranus.

Scare-Crow: Arguing a Dead Opinion

Nothing short of a gregarious attempt to cajole innocent minds to a world of bad science and disinformation, religious pounding continues to ignore the words of their opponents and choose to make up their own, and stuff them down our throat without us being there to stop the stuffing.

Although I attribute my fury to nothing other than cognitive deceit, I append to said fury the relegation that the problem at hand will never end. Never.

Straw man arguments are bred on weak premises. Straw man arguments are futile in their purpose when in conversation with learned others. If, for example, you use a fake counter argument to bolster your position and the person you are talking to knows nothing (or very little) of the topic at hand (obviously I don't infer lacking of intellectual abilities, simply a lack of context on a given issue), then the straw man argument can hold ground.

If you lie to someone who doesn't know you are lying, then it is taken as truth.

Now, the inciting literature that I met up with today was a publisher-anonymous report on Dawkins and the theistic movement. It stated, in more stringent terms than I can reproduce herein, that Dawkins and the revival of atheistic premises are founded on a lack of love, reality and a desire for people to die.

Which, of course, is nothing but a lie. Nothing but a lie.

I realize that the only counter that the christian and mormon (whom were specifically elevated to a tarnish-free level of beauty) ideologies do nothing but teach love, and Humanism teaches nothing but hatred and the like. I wish I could have stolen the issue from the desk on which I saw it, brought it home and quoted it completely. However, as an atheist I saw this an an unruly and unjust movement. I chose not to steal because I felt, as much as I realized that the content was fabricated, that it was not mine and that somebody was eager to read it. It was a stringent christian, so I also realized that it would only fuel his contemptible knowledge and not change his mind or serve as a push off the fence.

The stinging nettle in my mind is this: this is one of many publications that are propagating disinformation, lies, about a topic. Forget what the topic is, the fact is that it is a lie. And it is done on purpose. No questions.

And to attack purely on personal indictable comments, fake as they are, and ignoring the reality of the biology and the science that serves as confidence in understanding.

Paralleling this, I could make the same synopsis of Sir Isaac Newton:

Sir Isaac Newton "discovered" gravity.
Sir Isaac Newton did not like cats.
I like cats.
I, therefore, don't believe in Gravity.

The idiocy of that statement is played out everyday that a personal attack and straw man arguments are pushed forth as purported evidence against biology, science, genetics, mutations, anthropology, evolution, geology, and any further knowledgeable study. I cannot fathom the contempt of science in light of false premises and astute lies. Astute, because they are constructed, programmed and targeted to promote their point. Their lie.

So, to the authors of this article of scholarly-deceit, I feel proud to defame your name and to defame your contemptible attack on fake ideas and to base your indoctrination on your own constructed thoughts. Rot in hell - I know you believe in it.

Randi Prays: Rebuttal to G.W.Bush

Not to override the power and importance of the last post, but in certainty to elicit further condemnation of the tyrannical inspiration of "god", I give you a tongue-firmly-in-cheek response to the illiterate dictator to the south's espousal of a loving-god to clean up the mess this last week. I also lost my socks last week, perhaps that same loving god can illuminate them. Or something. I really liked those socks. Anywho, here is the Randi approach to prayer. Enjoy.

(Taken from J. Randi SWIFT e-paper, April 2007)

I’ll end this week with a prayer, inspired by President George Bush’s recent appeal to “a loving God” who he asked to “comfort those who are suffering today,” in response to the massacre of 32 persons at the Virginia Tech campus. My prayer:

To God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, God of Abraham, Jehovah, whoever or whatever:
God, You in Your omniscience – You know everything, past present and future – and also in Your omnipotence – You can do anything You want to do – why, 23 years ago, did You create this deluded man Seung-Hui Cho, then allow him to buy the guns, go to the Virginia Tech campus, and slaughter all those students and faculty? That took long-term planning, determined intention, and careful nurturing of Cho’s delusions and hatred, by You. God, what’s “loving” about that? Our President may labor under the delusion that such an act somehow shows Your “loving” nature, but in my admitted ignorance, I cannot see that. Help me to understand.
Or was this – forgive my suggestion, God – yet another failure of Your Intelligent Design, along with tobacco, cancer, spina bifida, and Crohn’s Disease?
A better plan, God – in my humble opinion – would have been to prevent that horrendous, senseless, slaughter, and then You would have had no reason to have to “comfort” those parents, friends, fellow-students and so many others who will now have to do without the delight of knowing these beautiful people. You see, God, You could have saved the lives – and futures – not only of those 32, but of Mr. Cho, as well! This deranged young man, angry and desperate, reacted to a society he felt was opposing him. He murdered 32 persons because he felt he had to, in answer to impulses he could not control. But You, Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, etc., etc., could have intervened – “omnipotent,” remember? – and there would be far less sorrow in our nation today.
Why did You do this to us? The figures show us that most of us believe in You, believe in Your loving nature, and appeal to You for Your comfort even after You have decided to allow tragedies such as this to happen; doesn’t that count? Personally, I don’t believe in You, but don’t the numbers count?
God, I’m sure that Dr. Richard Roberts, president of Oral Roberts University, speaks for You when he says, “…there’s no doubt that this act was Satanic in origin." He calls Cho's recently-revealed writings, “just words,” which he says are “one of Satan’s tools to bring about Man’s destruction.” Now, this fits the Christian idea of demonic possession, which says that human existence is predicated on the narrative of Man’s Fall from Grace in the Garden of Eden, and that wherever there is good, Satan is trying to destroy it.
Please, God, try to get Your act together, or there may be fewer people out there willing to appease a jealous, callous, vindictive, cruel, obviously insecure deity such as Yourself. And what would You do then?
God only knows…

JAMES RANDI

Earth Day: Let's Try Again

So on this morning, Earth Day '07, booming with sunshine and infrared glow, we bid hello to yet another Earth Day. We can thank Carl Sagan for this perspective and metacognitive appreciation of the loneliness of the planet we live on, the subtlety and meekness of our grasp on life, and the diversity and pervasive intricacies of "life" on our 'pale blue dot. Or, better still, we can thank NASA for taking that lone picture of Earth, compounded by the myriad Earthrise images that came back with the proud astronauts on their sojourn to the Moon many 'moons' ago. It was this picture that gave humanity, our lone communicative species, a view of "our" home; natures home. Or, we can thank the profound writers, teachers, leaders (well, ...perhaps not our Leaders, but for sure our leaders...), ... who put pen to paper, words to ideas, paper to hand, and who then and today stand up and speak loudly to posit ideas of our fragility and mammalian status. Nature, the land, the ecosphere, the world - it is all one rocky, active ball of rock that purports to explain nothing, but that has so many clues. 4.5 billion years of them. Humanity, homo sapien, is taking apt care of this rocky ball that is in free fall, bounded only by gravity, in excellent course. Excellent in terms of control, excellently-horrible care in terms of protecting the bounty of life and complex biological and ecological structures enacted.

One species, homo sapien, is drowning the planet in a murky tidal pool of synthetic chemicals and ignorance. Ignorance is drowning us through religion, politics and culture (some cultures).

On this, our proud Earth Day 2007, take a moment to consider that, no matter how much you 'love our environment', you are doing nothing to curb the problem unless you are doing something. Blowing out the candles on Earths birthday cake and saying 'I love you Earth' will do about as much as doing absolutely nothing.

Throw out the bible, Koran, .... , turn off your car, stop watering your snow and lawn, stop driving EVERYWHERE, choose less wasteful products, choose local food, choose local organic food, make your own food, grow your own life, stop shopping, stop vilifying people who choose against fashion and societal-norms of new clothes, fast cars, ... image.... , chose to walk to work, choose to wear a sweater and turn off your heat, choose to sign a petition, choose to start a petition, choose to run for office, choose to vote, choose to take off a shirt and put on some shorts and turn off your A/C, choose to car pool, choose to air dry your laundry, choose to not buy sweatshop clothing, choose recycled clothing, choose to recycle everything and reuse what you cant, choose to turn off your lights, choose to enjoy your freedom against societal perpetuated destruction of our ecosphere.

You. Choosing.

So, today, do not say I love you to our planet. Don't use it for an excuse to go for a hike. Don't use it as a reason to talk about "the environment" with your class. Don't. Please.

Use it as a reason to understand. And then live out that understanding everyday until the day you fall dead and rot. That is responsibility. That is what is needed. Enact a new reality for yourself, and make your existence one with purpose and one with reason.

Let our self-image take a rest. Let us hang our laundry, grow a garden, walk to work, shun the airconditioner sales van, shun biblical and political tyranny, and let us live symbiotically within our Ecosphere.

We cant go anywhere, so why ruin it?

Peace.

Apparently we all deserve to die: God knows no borders

You MUST click on the link below. I hope your angry-metre is set low because if it is raised at all to any modicum of reality before reading this, it will be pushed past an hope of reasonable control after reading this.

Why can a church of love make so many hate? Perhaps..and I say perhaps strongly, meaning 'certainly'....the church is a repository of hate and self-importance, relegated to spiritual insecurities and personal incapacitation of daily survival.
God bless...god hates, more like it. Or at least they believe this. I believe all together otherwise, but the evidence (which, again, religious people have an elegant disregard for) proves beyond a reasonable or calculable point that god = hatred = damage to life on this planet. But, let me not ruin the surprise.

http://www.godhatesamerica.com/


It is almost as if people want attention, so they make up the most inaccurate, ignorant, inane and obtuse ideologies and profess them in public.

Well, earlier this week alongside with the obvious mourners for the atrocity at VT, others were pounding the pavement with their thoughts on the matter (and, for sake of argument, many other matters from death of soldiers to death of anyone who is not a literalistic, fundamentalist strict christian) and enforced their faint beliefs with placards in hopes that others would 'understand' them.
Now how can one hold respect for any church that demonstrably propagates hate for the sake of hate? Death for the sake of death, in the name of a loving god?

For fuck sakes. I believe these people deserve to be exiled - although they show nothing less than islamic indifference and hatred (make of that what you will). Make them the test pilots for our first mission to the edge of the universe. Go meet god. Go have tea and crumpets with him. Her. It. Whatever.

Just leave.

And leave your children. We can raise them appropriately. It is you, the foggy minded dissidents of reality and panderers of hate that must go. Leave. Now. Quicker.

Here is further coverage of their actions (thank you www.richarddawkins.net)

http://richarddawkins.net/article,906,Gay-hate-church-to-picket-VT-gun-rampage-funerals,PinkNewscouk

Where is rationality? Where is REALITY? Where is conscious thought? Where is intellectual thinking?

Moon Venus: A Celestial Dance

Thursday, two days ago now, was the epitome of celestial events for the month (at least from an atheist amateur astronomer point of view) as Venus' and the Moon's ecliptic's met quite close (they will be closer later next month).

It was quite a moving sight; not only is it a rare event that two such prominent celestial bodies meet in the night sky (or day sky), but it is a rare event that the moon is in the waxing phase. The stellar images of observed astronomy that permeate the internet and textbooks usually deal with full moons or new moons (ok, the 'lack' of moon during the new moon) but this event, which can still be sort of witnessed, brought together a 'fingernail' waxing moon, giving quite a lot of texture and emotion to the sight. Further, because it was just passed new moon and thus the bulk of the rocky orbital satellite was darkened, it gave an eerie sight - Earthshine (the reflection of light off Earth and incident on the moon) gave an glowing red hue to the remainder of the moon. So, not only was the moon and Venus in close proximity, and not only was the moon in a very uncommon phase, but the rest of the moon was a beautiful red glowing beacon of astronomical wonder. I enjoyed it immensely. We tried to take a gander again last night but the clouds had other plans. Maybe god was angry because I don't believe in him, so he negated my viewing for the evening. I will pray today and see if that helps the seeing tonight.



What if I pray to Allah? That'll piss of Jesus and the crew, no doubt.



So, on Thursday, I took out my camera and got to work. I thought they would turn out horrible as I was in the city with significant light-pollution and only had the normal camera (non-astrophotographical equipment).



Alas, I came in and checked out my attempts and found that they turned out quite fine. I share them here with you.



LINK: www.greatturtlerace.com This is a site that is dedicated to following a researched group of 11 Leatherback sea turtles as they move from their nesting sites in Costa Rica to the Galapagos. There is a significant amount of research here, but the main intent is for school education. Nonetheless, there is a really neat tracking map and animations to follow.

Vile Things, Vile People

This man is an idiot.
No other way to explain it.

http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/04/19/dawkins-message-to-mourners-get-over-it/

Pope without Hope: Apologists for Religion without Relaizing So

Why, amid the confusion and irreparable vigilant damage being done daily on this planet, through incoherent attacks on nature, humans, rights, environment, knowledge, freedom... is the birthday of the Pope considered to be news. Why has the afternoon, mid-day no doubt, news taken to appeasing the religious apologists and given a voice to the damning austere of the catholic church?

Because religious people and religious views and hatred are always given a voice; religion has always been given respect for its entity-of-being and not for its position. It is respected because it is religion (entity-of-being) and not for its ideas, thoughts and admonishments. Not that it should, or could, be given respect for these things - the catholic faith especially - so it perhaps is obvious that the media ignores the multitude of culturally, socially, environmentally and natural atrocities of the church and focuses on it for rather meek and mild reasons. People fear taking a stand against something they dont believe in, for fear of public persecution. Is this a leftover from the dark ages, from the times where you could not speak your mind for fear of being killed? Has religion still staked its claim on our psyche after all these years of abolishing (or in the process of abolishing) the archaic mythical creation of hatred and self-importance? Do those with the public voice still fear pissing someone off by speaking what they think or, in this case, by simply not mentioning something?

A birthday. His birthday celebration coincides with the death of (today) hundreds due to AIDS, against which he prohibits using condoms to prevent; hundreds of unwanted child births and neglected children because he prohibits family planning of any doctrine; thousands of children growing up with skewed values and incongruent understandings of the world (understandings to which there is today no significant debate over, but that the catholic church 'damns' from their education). I could go on. I should, but I wont. It wont progress the point any further, it could only serve as fodder for further investigation and further understanding. However, I will say this: how many people have died because of the catholic church. How many cultures and histories have been (and are in the process of being) re-written by the hands of the church in absolute disrespect for the cultures and histories themselves? And we give this action the respect of a birthday wish?

Forget for the moment that this man does not matter - he has futile power, no doubt - but he does not matter. His birthday celebration, and dissemination to all of the world, signifies that the media wishes to give mercy and respect to an institution of hatred, suppression and vilification of others on the basis of ideology.

Not only should the birthday of any pope be ignored, but it should be vilified itself. Sever the ideology of those agnostic and religious alike from any contestable reason for believing that the church, let alone the catholic church, is a bastion of good faith and goodness. It is not, and it should not be made to represent something it is not.

Perhaps "pope Day" should be a day or giving: give out condoms, give out medicine, give out knowledge, give out free textbooks, give out understanding, give...give...give....for all the church has ever done is take and destroy. And it continues to do so, and we should not be expected to accept it on national radio, television or as a part of our national cognitive foundation.

I don't, and it is from knowledge and understanding that I reach these thoughts. Not from blind belief. Not from blind hatred. Not because I am afraid of "the other side of the wall" (thanks PZ...see previous post).

Sam Harris makes a veritable point: 'we (as a society) do not respect stupidity, but we respect religious stupidity'

If I were to tell you that my loaf of bread was the embodiment of a lost pet, and that by eating the loaf we are securing our love of said pet, you would think I was crazy and intellectually lacking. If a priest says that a cracker is the embodiment of the holy spirit (and thus god and jesus) and that by eating the cracker you will be saved, you would think it was sane. Only because stupidity is wrapped in the name of religion. When religion envelopes idiocy, it is granted respect. Why?

PZ Myers "creates" quite the read

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/04/the_wall_a_sunday_morning_stor.php#more


I would highly suggest that you take 3 minutes out of your day and read this, and then take the rest of your life to think about and consider what is actually being written. I found it quite moving and unquestionably accurate and poetic.

Grab a pick-ax, follow a star-nosed mole, take the long high road...anything. You'll see.

Street Walking Propositions

Today, while walking home from a quick visit to the 'city' I was propositioned.
This is not all that uncommon; I have before been given the opportunity to turn down propositions while walking home from work. The effects of these propositions are varied, usually from sex to drugs, and all easily traceable to a few individuals. However, tonight's proposition was special. One which, in all honesty, I was not ready for.

Tonight I was propositioned for a ...

head shaver/electric clippers

Apparently that is the going trend in the slums of PG. Maybe it will catch on, but I will maintain that the lady saw that I needed a quick trim and offered to sell me one she had handy (because we all carry our barbary items while walking on a Saturday evening).

That is all.

Quotes for the Day: The Place of Religion

"we try hard, in science, to stamp out the influence of wishful thinking, whereas so much of religious thought seems to be nothing much else"

"I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief and anything that we (scientists) can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and they in fact in the end be our greatest gist to civilization."

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

-Steven Weinberg; Prof. Physics, Nobel Prize Winner (Physics)

Just Another Friday: A Fake Death for a Fake Man

On this, the most absurd day of the solar calendar, I share love and hope. Because christians aren't, so somebody has to.

It's Over. Forever.