Well, after that last heavy, preachy post, I thought you might like some humorous salt and pepper bovines. In the last pic you can tell that the green shirt one is the cow and the black vest is the bull. Like all great cartoon character and humorously anthropomorphized animals before them, they wear tops but no bottoms. I don't really know why I find this so funny; my wife thinks I need therapy.
If you had access to a time machine, would you go forward or backward in time? Forward absolutely - gimme the good stuff. A lot of people would like to go back - see some dinosaurs, Cleopatra, crap like that. I too have some times and places I'd like to experience - ancient Greece and learn from Aristotle, even more ancient China and talk with the Buddha, experience a Jimmi Hendrix concert live at his peak - you know the greats!
Right now, even though we are at an all time high of technology and knowledge, it seems we are at the precipice of a great back slide - a new intellectual dark age where people no longer believe that science is factual. Where ancient homeopathic cures are more trusted than modern medicine because they are deemed 'natural' therefore better and because the ancients knew something that we don't today. Yes, it is true that aspirin is derived from the bark of a willow tree. But, it took chemists to distill out the curative chemicals and concentrate them so we can take two small pills and don't have to boil down large quantities of bark to make a bitter liquid (of an uncontrolled and unknown concentration) to drink.
Here's the problem, an easily grasped belief seems more true and real to a lot of people than real science, that is very difficult to understand. I don't pretend to understand all of the science I believe in. To a large degree I am taking the word of the scientists that they are conducting their experiments correctly and are reporting the results correctly. However, what I do have over a concocted belief is the all mighty Scientific Method. Test your beliefs against the scientific method and see if they hold up - then I will believe.
Genetically Modified foods create mutant monsters?! Tested false. There are some concerns, but let's not dismiss them without knowing the facts. GM foods on my plate? Yes, a second helping please. Do you realize that without GM foods we'd never be able to feed the billions on this planet? Plant disease resistance, drought tolerance, vitamin enrichment are not bad qualities. So GM foods or vast famine; don't trust me, do your own research. Or just go eat a petroleum-based cream filled, yellow dye colored artificial sponge cake and be quiet.
Vaccines will give children autism and a host of other nasty diseases? What you believed was wrong. Tested false. Vaccines against disease? Yes, please. If I never get the flu again, I buying my doctor a gold-plated putter for his short game. Vaccines have been proven over and over to not cause autism, however they DO prevent or polio, rubella, and other crippling and debilitating diseases; once again don't trust me, look it ups on your own. And don't trust an entertainment celebrity as an authority, go to the people who do research and have professional degrees and careers established on science. Or you could dig out the leg braces that your great grandfather wore because of his brush with polio and oil the hinges because your child might need them.
Because, let me tell you people, prayer and placebos did not make your vitamin enriched breakfast cereal, your pasteurized milk and your smart phone - science did.
Placebos are fine until belief replaces science, then people die. And it is a slippery slope once your beliefs start to replace fact. Did bleeding ever cure anyone? Can acupuncture cure cancer?
And now a short video...
For some unrelated amusement on this topic listen to Brian Dunning of the podcast Skeptoid sing "Buy It!"
Have you ever felt like work was just one big train of lemmings and 'yes' men? And when someone with vision and intestinal fortitude finally comes along - they're given a long walk on a short pier? The best person for the job just performed an assisted belly-flop in the empty pool of life. There is something to be said for standing in the back of the line. Keep your head down and play more Tetris.
Here's a couple of shorties that illustrate my point...
Finally here's a movie that run the gamut of human emotion! The dialog is direct and revealing. The acting is heroic and cleansing. The popcorn was crunchy and salty. The soda was cold and overpriced. The ending was everything I expected, but not more.
Hurray for the screenwriter who finally shows us the true heart and soul of American film making - the formulaic margin notes!
Japanese death poems were written by a person as close to the moment of death as possible. Ideally, as they finished and put down the ink brush, they would exhale their last breath and die before the ink was dry.
Seems that most were written by monks, priests, noblemen, and other well educated members of Japan's history. They reflect on what it means to live and die, and their philosophy on both.
Some are beautiful and reflective, such as Koraku's
The joy of dewdrops In the grass as they Turn back to vapor.
Others display a wonderful humor about the inevitable, such as Morikawa Kyoriku's (1656 - 1715)
Till now I thought that death befell the untalented alone. If those with talent, too, must die surely they make a better manure?
My favorite so far is from Moriya Sen'an:
Bury me when I die beneath a wine barrel in a tavern. With luck the cask will leak.
C is the speed of light in a vacuum - approximately 300,000 km/sec
In addition to the points that Mr. Myers brings up, I would like to know what are we solving for? An equation has a variable for which we are to solve. If everything is defined, where is God? Is He the culmination of light speed, a decimal carried out to 10 places, the frequency of an element in space, and pi?
That's silly.
X is God according to ( a + bn )/n = x There is a story that has made the rounds in mathematical history books about the well-known mathematician Euler embarrassing the philosopher Diderot. This quote is from http://scidiv.bellevuecollege.edu/Math/Euler.html which was Condensed from Men of Mathematics by E.T. Bell (1937, Simon and Schuster), and An Introduction to the History of Mathematics , 4th ed., by Howard Eves (1976, Holt, Rinehart and Winston):
Diderot had been invited to the court by Catherine the Great, but then annoyed her by trying to convert everyone to atheism. Catherine asked Euler for help, and he informed Diderot, who was ignorant of mathematics, that he would present in court an algebraic proof of the existence of God, if Diderot wanted to hear it. Diderot was interested, and, according to De Morgan, Euler advanced toward Diderot, and said gravely, and in a tone of perfect conviction: "Sir, ( a + bn )/n = x , hence God exists; reply! " Diderot had no reply, and the court broke into laughter. Diderot immediately returned to France.
However, this is apparently a fabrication. Read of the debunking on http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/euler.html explained by Dirk J. Struik, from his book A Concise History of Mathematics, Third Revised Edition, Dover, 1967, p. 129:
This is a good example of a bad historical anecdote, since the value of an anecdote about an historical person lies in its faculty to illustrate certain aspects of his character; this particular anecdote serves to obscure both the character of Diderot and of Euler, Diderot knew his mathematics and had written on involutes and probability, and no reason exists to think that the thoughtful Euler would have behaved in the asinine way indicated. The story seems to have been made up by the English mathematician De Morgan (1806-1871). See L. G. Krakeur and R. L. Krueger, Isis, Vol. 31 (1940), pp. 431-32; also Vol. 33 (1941), pp. 219-31.
Too bad that story was a hoax; I liked it. Stupid philosophers, they should get some comeuppance!
Anyway, let's wrap all of this up with an enlightened quote from a Nobel Prize winning Physicist Steven Weinberg, "With or without religion, 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."
Liquid Television was an experimental short animation show on MTV - back when it was cool. Example One: Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions - written and directed by Henry Selick
Feeling big today? Think about this: "There are far more galaxies than people." -Carl Sagan
But, by the same token, don't feel bad; think of the uniqueness of you in the face of the rest of the cosmos. Only once ever has a configuration of atoms come together to have your thoughts and experiences.
Now, finish your beer, get another, and go watch SportsCenter...
There are 26 lectures. The first one can be skipped; it mostly lines out what the course will cover - not science, not religion, but the philosophy of death. Also the first lecture covers some classroom expectations and grading scale (boring).
So skip the first one and jump into the second one - Dualism vs. Physicalism
You can help classify the heavenly bodies - sweet! The following is quoted from their Web site: "The Galaxy Zoo files contain almost a quarter of a million galaxies which have been imaged with a camera attached to a robotic telescope the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, no less). In order to understand how these galaxies — and our own — formed, we need your help to classify them according to their shapes — a task at which your brain is better than even the fastest computer."
So go now and help; it'll be the coolest nerdy thing you've done since selling your Everquest character for $200 and a case of Mountain Dew!
Preliminary research on mice indicates that there are nerve cells that pass along an itch signal to the brain that appear to be seperate from the pathway for pain.
Dateline... A Sewer pipe, Cameron Village, Raleigh, North CarolinaApparently, it's just a cluster of invertebrates called bryozoan, which are commonly found in both the sea and fresh water environments, says Thomas Kwak a biology professor at North Carolina State University's Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. Research:
PZ Myers a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, writes about it in Server blobs of North Carolina
I really can't stand Ann Geddes' so called art, babies with flower petal hoodies and other babies as seemingly random vegetable matter. This one is a baby kitten doll in her style; isn't that cute...ralph. So it's a baby wearing a donkey outfit next to a teddy bear wearing a camper's outfit sitting on a plate in a picnic basket. I'm not hungry anymore...
I know this one may not initially look all that odd or offensive. Two sculpted faces (in the style of the 80s) looking hopefully to the future. However, consider that the sculpture is made of leather. That's right; not one leather face but two. It's even creepier to touch; believe me. This one is not so weird, but in a previous post, I pointed out wastes of resin castings. It is missing Beethoven in the mix.
What a disappointing ending. I was trying to get an interesting story out of the scammers at Poetry.com and they just stopped contacting me. Evidently, my poem wasn't good enough for their anthology. It might have something to do with me not paying for their fine leather bound books... It's been more than six months and nothing, but wait let's go visit them again and read some of the past winners. That's always good for a chuckle.
Hmm...the website looks different. Let's take a look at the "Welcome" link. Well, this says it all, "*Lulu.com, an award winning Internet company, recently purchased the URL 'www.poetry.com' from the previous failed business that owned it."
Stay tuned; I'll be submitting there soon. Maybe I'll get that story after all...
Well, summer is approaching, the grains have reached the perfect height, and it's crop circle season again... No, it's not UFOs, but it is awesome rural graffiti! Check out the jelly fish!
Since when do clowns belong in baseball? Rodeos sure, but not baseball. I hate clowns. Although Bobcat Goldthwait did make a funny clown movie once (Shakes the Clown), but that hardly makes up for the fact that clowns suck. They're never funny or cute or wanted at parties. Brass monkeys those funky monkeys... Help me robot angel! Do robot angels dream of collecting little kids gold teeth? Brass angel? Why not gold or silver? Brass is for monkeys and saxophones.
So it's a baby wearing a donkey outfit next to a teddy bear wearing a camper's outfit sitting on a plate in a picnic basket. I'm not hungry anymore...
