Opinion Piece: Opinion Doesn't Enter into Science

Gotta get this out of the way up top.  I'm sure most of you never heard of Christopher Hitchens, though some of you might have.  His stock and trade profession was journalism and he was a damn good one, as well as being a supporter of critical thinking, the skeptical movement and an outspoken atheist.  Sadly, he was also a heavy drinker and a smoker, which probably contributed to his esophageal cancer and deteriorating health.  He passed away on December the 15th, 2011.  He was 62.  He will be missed by his family (not me), friends (still not me, though I think we'd have gotten on well) and admirers (there I am).

In memorium, Christopher Hitchens, April 13, 1949 - December 15, 2011

Anyway, needed to get this out of my head and on (digital) paper and I don't think Mr. Hitchens would fault me for trying to state something blatantly.  There's something that's been troubling me as of late about evolution.  It seems a vast amount of people want to quibble about it being taught in schools or not.  The whole debate has been getting on my nerves because it seems to come from it at the wrong angle.  Let me get my personal feelings out there, which happen to coincide with scientific fact: The theory of evolution is how the natural world makes subtle changes through passing genes, environmental pressures and produces the various species we observe both living today and in the fossil record.*

The issue seems to stem from people either not accepting these facts or claiming such facts assault their religion.  To address the second point first, if you're not going to believe in a religion because the facts go against you, there are very few faiths left available to you.  Religion practically requires belief in the bizarre, impossible or ridiculously unlikely as part of it's dogma, thus that argument holds no water.  If you choose to not accept the fact that evolution is the function by which animals diversify, that's your decision.  It doesn't make the "theory" less viable.

Which brings us to the verbiage of science.  The word "theory" is a major stumbling block.  Yes, evolution is "just a theory," as long as you understand the scientific use of the word "theory."  A theory is the end of the scientific process.  It's a workable definition that applies to reality.  Other examples of theories on par with evolution include gravity, planetary orbits, germ theory of disease (the idea that bacteria, fungi, parasites, viruses and other microorganisms cause illness in humans), thermodynamics, etc.  Evolution has been so well established, it boggles the mind that so many people still think it's "just a theory," especially when they don't understand precisely what that means.

Anyway, all that aside, the real reason evolution has trouble getting into schools is religious groups.  They seem to think that Creationism (aka Intelligent Design**) should be given as much time in science class as evolution so that students can "make up their own mind" about scientific fact.  I wonder, should students be taught similarly about gravity?  Perhaps using the Peter Pan theory of gravitation, that states with fairy dust and happy thoughts, gravity is immaterial.  Evolution is not something you can have an opinion about, nor is it remotely equivalent to the biblical story (or any religious or mythical story) of creation.  It should be taught in schools as what it is; An established scientific fact.  If the religious feel that their children should be taught "the other side" of this situation, nothing prevents them from teaching creationism/intelligent design in Sunday school or at home.

For some light closing, I present some of America's representation to other countries in the form of the video that incited me to write this.  No, these aren't elected officials, nor are they scientists, nor reputed for being particularly bright people.  They are 15 contestants in the Miss USA Pageant answering the question, "Should evolution be taught in schools?"***  One of them "represents" my state, Idaho, and is an idiot.  Pretty idiot, but an idiot nonetheless.  The frustrating thing is, some of them got so close to saying something that made some scientific sense, but tripped at the finish line.  Please to enjoy, catch you later.

*Also humans did not evolve from monkeys, we share a common ancestor.  Subtle, but important, difference which explains the standard question asked of why monkeys are still around.
*For more information on this scientific theory, see The Bible, specifically Genesis.
**Correct answers I would have accepted, "Yes," or "Of course, it's a scientific theory, it should be in science class."

General Update & Comrade Kermit

I've fallen from the blogosphere as of late, but I suppose it's time to start the thing up again.  We'll see how long I stay on the wagon this time... or off it... whatever.  So I'm writing this in my mom's kitchen, listening to the washer runs at 2:30 AM.  Why you ask?  Don't you own a washing machine?  Yes, I'd answer, but the continuing saga of plumbing problems at my house has rendered that area unusable for at least the rest of the week.  Why me, astrologists?  I thought I was an Aquarius, shouldn't water behave better for me?*

Anyway, the fix I had done earlier this year to relocate my washer box to a less freezable wall was apparently not done properly.  Bad news, it was belching hot water and, thus, steam into my floorboards under my washer for the past week or so.  Good news, it's a plumbing companies fault, so I don't have to pay for it.  Yippee.  Should be all fixed soon.  Enough about me, let's discuss some idiots.

It seems that our nation's standards for journalism have fallen greatly in the years since I learned about it in junior high school.  I was taught that you had to be held to certain standards, typically things called FACTS when you reported on something.  Evidently, these rules have been thrown out in modern journalism and it's turned to "print it if it'll get clicks on our website."  No one checks facts, no one looks at things incredulously, no one bothers with it anymore.  In the past year, I've seen at least 3 different stories on Yahoo News about Nessie-esque monsters around the world.  The proof presented?  Bad photos and shaky eyewitness accounts of people who don't spend their time at said body of water year round.  Are we really this dense?  Doesn't anyone ask the important questions like, "What else could that be?" or "Maybe I can't tell a log in the foggy distance from an alleged monster I'ver heard inhabits this lake?"  Occam's razor needs sharpening in most cases.**

Of course, if you have no grasp of reality to begin with, I can see where fact checking might be a foreign concept.  Recently, a Fox News anchor (already a dodgy source of facts) alleged that the recently released movie The Muppets has a disturbingly anti-corporate, pro-communism, liberal agenda that it was pushing on American youths.  Yeah.  That happened.  Read it again, I'll wait.  Need the actual video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl6ekkvWnOE

I can only hope the 9% of people who "liked" this are kidding, but that's hardly the point.  The point is that the piece exists in the first place and is treated as though it's serious.

Now, I don't go to Fox for my news; I go there for the occasional cartoon about America's favorite yellow skinned family, but I gather that a fair number of people do get their news from Fox.  What kind of moron would think that The Muppets, themselves a corporation, could be anti-corporate?  And why does this even qualify as "news?"  This is not something that a serious network ought to cover, this is a fluff piece that Entertainment Tonight should look into.  I feel like this shows just how out of touch with reality so-called Fox News "journalists" continue to be.  The story doesn't matter, the facts don't matter, all that matters is making people paranoid of the "Liberal Agenda."  Kermit and company aren't pushing communism just because the villain happens to be a wealthy oil tycoon anymore than Bugs Bunny was for having the same villain in one of his cartoons.  I know you don't read this, but please grow up, American media.

I'll try to write in here more often.  Comment or complain below.

*And yes, I know that they could twist that around so that water behaves BADLY for me because I'm an Aquarius.  It must be nice having a malleable belief system where any result can be misconstrued as a positive outcome... sigh...
**In case you don't know or haven't seen the excellent movie Contact,  Occam's Razor is a principle that suggests that the simplest explanation is more often then not true.  Ie, the strange objects or lights in the sky are more likely to be (A) man made flying objects, (B) satellites, (C) planets or (D) other atmospheric effects you've never seen than an alien space ship.

Space... A Frontier

As a few of you are aware, I have something of a passing interest in space, be that real space or science fiction space.  However, my birthday can be (however loosely) linked to the two space shuttle disasters*, so I've never aspired to be an astronaut.  On the other hand, I do find it fascinating that people have worked out how space travel works even if a journey to our nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, would take more than several lifetimes to complete.  For the curious, it's 4.23 light years away, or just under 25,000,000,000,000 (or 25 trillion) miles, meaning we'd exhaust Earth's supply of Twizzlers on the way... a terrible tragedy**.

Without some massive scientific breakthrough, we cannot ever travel the stars; We'd die before we got there.  The best we can probably hope for is continued exploration of our solar system and even then it's tricky.  Hell, the moon is only 250,000 miles away and only 24 people have ever been there... and only 12 actually walked on it!  Speaking of the moon, by request, I need to explain a long standing argument with my mom about the dark side of it.

I think it's based solely in the words used.  She maintains that the dark side of the moon cannot be seen from Earth...

All that you love...
and all that you hate...

No, not THAT dark side of the moon... though it is one of my favorite albums.  She means the dark side of our satellite, the moon, which constantly presents one side or face to us terrestrial beings.  I maintain that what she's thinking of is the BACK of the moon, because the DARK side of the moon constantly changes.  I define the dark side of the moon as, "The side of the moon that isn't lit by our sun currently," or, "The best selling non compilation/greatest hits album of all time." (see left)  Any time you want to see the dark side of the moon, all you'll need is a sufficiently powerful telescope and the right time of the month, such as when there is a half or less moon***.  Granted, it'll be hard to observe much detail without the light from the sun, but it's certainly there.

Which brings us back to the space program and my more than passing interest in it.  I think the main reason I like studying the space program is that I find it an inspiring source of pure, tangible human achievement.  People, acting through scientific means, have managed great things in the past and are continuing to discover more to this day.  It certainly marked July 20th, 1969 as a day in history everyone ought to remember, the day Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin first set booted foot on the lunar surface.

363 feet of pure rocket

The Apollo 11 moon landing changed the world.  What's staggering is what they had to go through to get there.  Look to your right and you will see the largest rocket ever designed and built by man, the Saturn V.  To give you an idea of scale, if you were to go up the gantry on the side to the equivalent height of 10 stories, you could see that flag painted on it in better detail.  The Saturn V was 363 feet tall and was almost completely filled with the most explosive fuel ever devised; Rocket Fuel (duh), which consisted of a heavily refined form of kerosene and liquid oxygen to help it oxidize and burn better.  People watched the launch from 3 miles away in case the damned thing exploded on take off.  And three men sat on their backs, strapped in so tight they couldn't sit up, ON TOP of this nearly 7 million pound BOMB all so they could get out of Earth's gravity and launch themselves towards the moon.

Though Apollo 13 is fairly well known for it's failures, none of the missions went completely smooth.  Apollos 11 & 14 had issues with the landing computer (more on that in a minute), Apollo 12 was struck by lightning during its lift off and a litany of other problems beset the men of the Apollo space program on their half a million mile round trips to our nearest heavenly body.  Seeing what they had to work with back then, it's amazing what they managed to pull off by navigating using star fields and controlled burns.

As if that wasn't freaky enough, the Apollo Guidance Computer (or AGC) had the equivalent of 4 KB of programmable memory and 72 KB of saved data, a grand total of 76 KB.  To put that into perspective, that is insufficient space to save the following image...

This icon is 78 KB

On the plus side, they could fit 3 full copies of the arcade version of Pac-Man in there, as it was only 24 KB... of course they wouldn't have a screen or even enough space to PUT a screen in the command module or enough power to run it and the game hadn't been invented yet, but I'm rambling...

A kilobyte (KB) is composed of 1024 bytes and a byte is 8 bits.  A bit is essentially a light switch, either on or off.  Got all that?  8 bits = 1 byte, 1024 bytes = 1 KB.  Going up from there, we get to more recognizable abbreviations like megabyte (MB, 1024 KBs), gigabyte (GB, 1024 MBs) and there are currently terabytes (TB, 1024 GBs) available for purchase in large hard drives.  Eventually, petabytes (PB, 1024 TBs) and exabytes (EB, 1024 PBs) will be commercial possibilities.  To put THAT into perspective, it has been estimated that all the words ever spoken by all humans ever could be, theoretically, stored in 5 EB**** and that the entire content of the internet equals about 500 EB.  Look at these numbers we're talking about... let's just consider a terabyte since my computer has half that much storage space.  Here's a comparison:

Terabyte = 1,073,741,824 KB

My iMac = 536,870,912 KB (just hard drive space)

AGC = 76 KB (total)

Now to be fair, there were two AGC's on each lunar mission, one in the command module, one in the lunar module, but the point still stands.  We, as a species, landed on the moon with less computing power than most pocket calculators have today.  Truly amazing.

So that's my latest treatise on space, large numbers, basic computer information and the capabilities of determined humans.  Feel free to comment or suggest topics for me to write about in the future, I love learning new things and then brashly posting my opinion about them.  Also, you're still wrong, Mom.  Tphbbbt.

* My due date was January 28th, 1986, the day Challenger exploded after a 73 second flight and the day before my 17th birthday was February 1st, 2003, the day Columbia burned up on re-entry.  Again, I'm not superstitious, but some things just stick with you.

** Besides, there's only so many times you can say, "I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with S..." before people figure you're going to pick "star" pretty much every time... 

*** Yes, I know "a gibbous or less" would be better, but I'm not confident that everyone knows that a gibbous is not a monkey.  If you do know that and are reading this, my apologies; You're smarter than the average bear.

**** This might be a low estimate though, as it's been counter-theorized that it would take closer to 42 zettabytes (ZB, 1024 EBs).

On February and Zen-like questions...

IT'S MARCH!!!  HURRAY!  As many of you are aware, February 2011 was not a good month for me.  To be honest, I was prepared for it; I've never liked February.  It's a terrible month that, though short, colors many of my perceptions of the beginning of the year.  February 2nd is my birthday as well as Groundhog Day, February 14th is Valentine's day*, my mom's birthday falls on the 28th** and the whole month is punctuated by bad weather and grey skies. Aside from that, February (which I will henceforth call the second month) seems to be my least lucky month annually.  It's where I've had the most heartbreak, financial trouble and all around bad luck.

This year, I got bitten by a dog the Monday after my birthday.  A local pit bull and two of his buddies were roaming the streets of my neighborhood when I happened upon them.  I didn't think much of it, as I've been around dogs a lot in my life and have had very few negative experiences in doing so.  However, the pit bull apparently had other ideas as it locked on to my left calf, tore my pants and pulled me to the ground, where I skinned my right knee.  One doctor trip later and I got my first tetanus shot in years along with the realization that having your wounds cleaned isn't so bad; It's the freezing cold distilled water they use to rinse it off that REALLY sucks.

As a side note, the dog was NOT, to the best of my knowledge, put down.  It is not the animal's fault and I hope it doesn't happen again, though I am now carrying pepper spray just in case.  I actually think they were rather lucky, had it gotten out an hour or two before it bit me, it would have had school children to seek out... frightening prospect.

The Saturday after that, I was playing a trivia game with my mom when a hot water main under my sink blew off it's valve.  It soaked my laminate kitchen floor and warped several of the panels, so that's getting replaced soon.  Hopefully, the replacement process goes smoothly, now that we're out of the second month and drying ourselves off.  Other minor little things happened too, like my debit card being locked for a while because I made a four dollar internet purchase, but these things happen and aren't what we call "disastrous."

Hopefully next year will go better.  I'm not a superstitious person by nature but, in the face of the evidence, it's hard to remain a skeptic.  So I decided to find something I could rip apart form a purely semantic point of view and for some reason, I fell upon some of the so called "zen questions" everyone seems to think promote wisdom in others.  I'm going to tear these down to help me feel better about reality.  My reason for such an attack is that such thoughts promote sloppy, non-critical thinking, in my view, and can lead to people believing in things that are not the case.  See if you agree with my conclusions.

If a tree falls in a wood and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Trees.  Inna forest.  Honest.

Of course it does.  Saying that it doesn't flies in the face of accepted scientific principles.  That's like suggesting that an animal you find dead in the road didn't actually die.  Sound isn't something that requires our ears to be present to happen.  Sounds is what happens when several hundred pounds of wood impacts the ground at speed or when twigs break on the way down or when a trunk snaps in two due to age and wear.  The movement causes disturbances in the air that we refer to as "sound waves."  Whether or not we're there to witness it is irrelevant, it still happens, just like volcanoes on deserted islands still happen.  If you want to say a tree that falls in the wood DOESN'T make a sound, you need to provide evidence of a completely silent tree falling.  I don't hear anyone coming forw.... let's move on.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

Cl-... or if it's a right hand, -ap...

This is a false premise, first of all.  A "clap" is the action of bringing two hands together.  Therefore, the sound of one hand clapping is a contradiction in terms, like saying, "What is the sound of no feet stomping?"  However, let's take it at it's word(s).  The sound of one hand clapping is either the sound of one hand waving through the air, searching for a second hand that isn't there and causing the clapee to look fairly stupid*** or it is whatever the sound of curling your hand so that the finger tips impact the palm fast enough to produce a sound (perhaps "-ap" or "cl-"...?).  Proven by philosopher/skateboarder Bart Simpson.

Could God make a boulder so big that He, Himself, could not move it?

One helluva big rock

Whoa man... you just blew my mind...  This is one of those questions that pot heads ask each other and, therefore, a kind of modern zen.  Let's start off by saying this is another false premise (ie, there is no God), but that's not an answer, that's just my world view.  Answering this one on it's own terms depends entirely on your definition of the being commonly known as "God," which may or may not be an omniscient, omnipresent, omnicapable being.  If He/She/It is those things though, "God" can make a boulder He/She/It cannot move if, and only if, He/She/It sets out to do so.  He/She/It cannot make it by accident, it has to be the goal from the beginning.  Otherwise, He/She/It wouldn't pass the test of being  omnicapable (a word I probably made up to describe something capable of everything, even stumping him/her/itself).

Hurray!  Another blog completed as we March on.  Get it?  'Cause it's March and... oh, you got it?  Ok...  Anyway, feel free to comment/call me an idiot/start a debate below.

*And I don't care if you're in a relationship or not, Valentine's blows.  For single people it's a painful reminder of something they don't have and for people in relationships, it's a pressure filled day that makes you long for the days you weren't in a relationship.  If you're in a relationship AND enjoy Valentine's, you're not the person who it pressures.

**Celebrating her 29th birthday for over two decades now!  Love ya, Mom.

***For examples of this see Joe Cocker, Performance Style of.

On Cryptozoology

Crypto - Prefix taken from the Ancient Greek word meaning secret or hidden.

Zoology - The study of animals.

Cryptozoology - The study of animals not yet proven to exist... wait, how the hell do you study something you can't prove exists?

I love dinosaurs and have done since I was very young.  Like many kids, giant monsters that are safely dead and buried hold a great deal of interest for us.  Unfortunately, some of us don't pay very good attention in science class* and miss certain key details.  We also watch movies like The Land Before Time and Jurassic Park which color our perception of what is real and what is not.  This leads the more adventurous of us to go looking for dinosaurs that are still alive and, amazingly, if you look hard enough, you can find examples of people believing dinosaurs are still on Earth**, hiding in lakes and forests the world over.

Cryptozoology is unique among science fields in that, should they ever discover something provable (which they haven't) it would immediately be out of their field of study.  It's also not recognized as an official field of study by any reputable scientific organization and is commonly referred to as a pseudoscience.  Cryptozoologists spend their time in search of mythic animals, things like Nessie, Bigfoot, the Chupacabra and other such creatures.  Most of their "proof" can be seen below and doesn't really add up to much.

Wabbits, wabbits, wabbits...

On your left, you will see the Jackalope, a frequently faked internet meme.  Real rabbits occasionally suffer from Shope Papilloma Virus (SPV) which causes bony tumors to grow on certain parts of their heads, which may have started the myth.  Looks pretty realistic though, huh?  Amazing what you can do with some fake antlers and a tame/stuffed rabbit.  Please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times, thank you... Do not feed the mythical, nonexistent beasts.

You seen any Hendersons around?

On your right, the famous Bigfoot, which in this case is a man in a costume in a grainy picture.  Grainy pictures or, on rare occasions, grainy video are a common theme among "cryptids," as cryptozoologists call their quarry.  Maybe Bigfoot is just out of focus in reality.  However, there is overwhelming evidence that he is largely a hoax.  No bodies of dead Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) have ever been discovered and most of the "proof" has either been faked videos or faked (Big)foot prints.

Here is the famous "Surgeon's Photo" of the Loch Ness Monster, which was also revealed as a hoax.  It is nothing more than a toy submarine with a vaguely dinosaur shaped head on its con tower, sculpted out of clay.  While it did wonders for Loch Nessian tourism, it's also led to a lot of bad thinking about the lakes of the United Kingdom.  If there is a plesiosaur in the waters of Loch Ness, and I wish there was more than anyone, it'd be either millions of years old or it'd have to be one of a group of them.  If there's a group, there's nowhere near enough food in Loch Ness to keep them alive.  Also, no remains of one have ever floated to the surface, washed ashore or been discovered by the sonar sweeps that have gone through the loch over the past century.  Still, the belief in Nessie exists...

Nessie made a messie

See the picture on the right?  The one that looks like a floating turd or log?  This is being hailed as the best picture so far of an animal living in England's Lake Windermere*** which has eluded the echo locators installed in the lake for many years.  The photo, taken by an IT professional on a team building exercise (so a credible source?), follows the basic rules of cryptozoology "proof": It's grainy, it's from a huge distance away and it really doesn't show off much detail.  Here's the full article for the curious...

Full Telegraph article

Best yet?  This is the BEST you can do on a completely new animal no one has any other proof of?  I also love the guy's first reaction to seeing a huge, undiscovered creature in the lake: He ran away.  I quote...

• "It was petrifying and we paddled back to the shore straight away" - Tom Pickles, 24

Straight away from the new species of animal... Good thinking Tom.  At least you had your camera phone to take a shitty picture.  I also notice your picture didn't have any ripples from you furiously paddling the kayak you were supposedly in at the time.  My problem with this is how much credibility stories like this are lent by the press.  This is front page news on Yahoo at time of writing and is not written in a skeptical way.  The scientific facts are put at the bottom of the article and aren't used to call a skeptical point of view to a "discovery" like this.  Would it be amazing to find a giant monster living the lakes of England?  Of course, but a crummy photo in today's era of photoshopped images doesn't come remotely close to scientific proof of anything.  For instance...

I've been everywhere, man.  Also, moo.

Pretty cool, huh?  Of course it is, it's a fake picture, but it looks pretty convincing.  The day that they find an actual, verifiable "monster" living in the lakes of the world, I'll be the first to dance with joy.  Until then, I'm sick of finding stories like this in digital print.  All it serves to do is give people bad ideas about this ever changing world in which we're living and qualifies as sensationalist media in the worst sense.

Thanks for reading, feel free to leave feedback below.

* As a note, I did get a C in chemistry, but this is more about biology, which I got an A in.
** Or hijacking research about soft tissue in fossils and trying to prove that The Flintstones was a documentary film... but that's more of a religious issue.  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur.html
*** And really, could we have asked for a more British sounding name for a lake?  That sounds like a lake that does everything in a smoking jacket while having tea and crumpets.

Injustice in Fort Wayne

If you know me, you probably know that February is my least favorite month of the year.  It contains 3 family birthdays including my own (4 if you count pets), but it also contains Valentine's Day, a day that, no matter your relationship situation, sucks.  Either you're single and depressed or you're with someone and pressured to do something involving the color pink and flowers.  Also, it's usually gray, foggy and teases you with glimpses of the spring to come before pelting you with more inclement weather thanks to that goddamn groundhog.*

If you know me really well, you know that this February has been particularly unlucky, what with dog attacks, plumbing issues and my debt card being finicky.  This blog is not about any of that... we'll wait until March 1st to do an anti-February edition (because it's not over yet, it might hear me...).  No, today's post is about something I feel is an important, serious, meaningful... dah, just kidding, it's just funny.

Fort Wayne, Indiana recently held an internet voting contest to name their new government center.  The winning vote, with more than 23,000 votes (more than ten times the votes of the next contender), is being contested by the local government officials.  The name chosen is that of Fort Wayne's 24th mayor, who served his city with distinction from 1934-1947 and a non consecutive term from 1951 until his untimely death in 1954 of a kidney infection at the age of 67.

By all accounts, this man was a great leader and did much for the city of Fort Wayne, including breaking ground on Baer Field, now the current site of Fort Wayne International Airport**, directing war material drives throughout WWII, upgrading his citizen's living conditions and opening up northern parts of the city to improvement by getting the Nickel Plate Railroad to run in that part of town.  Truly a public servant, this man already has a street named after him in Fort Wayne.  Why then are local officials refusing to put his name on a new government center?  Possibly because of his name.

Harry Baals.

Read it again.  Harry.  Baals.

No, I'm not making this up. Harry William Baals, Fort Wayne's 24th mayor, namesake of H.W. Baals Drive is being blocked by local officials who do not think a man who gave so much to the city of Fort Wayne deserves a government center to be named after him.

What message does this send to other amusingly named citizens of this great country?  That you can be a public servant, serve your city/county/state/country well, die in office but if your name makes the general populace chuckle*** you won't be given the honors you rightly deserve?  Is this fair?!

I make this stand for decency not just for the memory of Harry Baals, but also for all the upcoming politicians with amusing names across this country that may, one day, find themselves in a similar predicament.  People like John A. Boehner (Speaker of the House and by all acounts, a stand up guy, rigid in his beliefs, a solid Republican), Richard "Dick" Swett (Former New Hampshire representative), Monica G. Moorehead (Sounds like a James Bond character, but whatever.  And before you ask the G stands for Gail, not Gives, but how awesome would that be?), Young Boozer (Currently the incumbent for the position of Alabama State Treasurer, so no surprise there), Krystal Ball (Yeah.  That's her name.  Deal with it.) and, of course, the dual ticket of George BUSH and DICK Cheney.

Join me in the fight to get hairy balls... I mean Harry Baals his rightful place, emblazoned in huge letters on the Fort Wayne Government Center... then laugh at it with me later on.  As a note, I think any of these names would be fantastic names to have.  JUST NOT IN ELECTED OFFICIALS.

That is all.

* Bill Murray and I are going to get a truck next year and kidnap that little fucker.  We're coming for you, Phil... Count on it.
** Which reminds me, Boise has an international airport?  What the hell man?  You can't call yourself that if you're just going to Canada and Mexico.  That's Boise Intercontinental Airport.  You've at least got to go to Europe or South America directly to get that title.
*** Or, in my case, laugh uproariously for a solid 10 minutes.

Atheism: My Reasoning

Author's note:  Please, for the love of (insert deity, belief structure or candy of choice here) remember that what you read below is ENTIRELY MY OPINION.  If you believe in something that contradicts my beliefs, feel free to post a comment, I will respond in kind.


...In the beginning, there was nothing.  Which exploded.
-Terry Pratchett


I've often told people I don't believe in God, which is true.  I've also qualified that with the statement that I don't believe in Han Solo either, but a lot of people seem to think he exists too.  Both are fictional characters (and Han's ship is cooler), they've just managed to get really popular.  But my mindset goes further than that, I don't believe in God or gods because there aren't any.  There are no psychics, there are no prophecies and there's nothing supernatural about the planet I inhabit.  The world that I see is unique, beautiful, ever changing, mind-numbingly strange and completely explainable, it just takes a long time to do so.

It's said that a god or gods can only exist in the margins.  This means that anything that isn't explained by modern science or human knowledge must be God.  Lightning once came from Zeus on Olympus, the sun was formerly the domain of Ra, fire was stolen from the gods in countless folk tales and myths.  This boundary has been getting pushed back for centuries, ever since we learned that the Earth is not the center of the universe or even our own solar system.  Since the Renaissance, human knowledge has advanced to frightening levels, extending human life, learning a great deal about our world and even how to make peanut butter M & Ms.*

The neat thing about all that is humans figured it all out.  We had no help, no divine inspiration, no etherial cheat sheet.  I've heard theories that aliens must have assisted ancient cultures build their structures; The measurements are too precise, they say.  I think this is honestly insulting to say about the race of beings to which you belong.  Maybe we were a little more anal retentive about stones back in the day, maybe we actually spent a fuck-ton** of time trying to get things right or maybe people are actually smarter than people give people credit for being (if you've worked out what this sentence means, add 3 IQ points to your score).

Saying that science doesn't have all the answers is completely true.  We don't.  Ask any scientist, he'll admit that he doesn't have all the answers.  "But," he'll come back with, "we're learning more all the time."  Then go ask a priest.  He'll hold up a millennia old book and claim the answer is God.  Religion hinders science by taking away the need to explore.  If you have faith, you have the answer to all of the following questions:

• How did we get here?
• Why are there so many different kinds of animals?
• Where did these massive bones buried in the ground come from?
• What made me think of this new invention?

Believe it or not, they all have the same answer: "God did it."  You're done!  No need to study, learn or try to figure things out.  Thanks for playing, go persecute/convert some heretics.

The world is confusing enough as it is, do we really need something spiritual to keep us all in check?  Ask a Bible thumper, next time you see one, why the damn book is so important.  They'll tell you it's the divine word of God, that it teaches you how to be a good person, that it is the foundation of our law and order.***  If they're REALLY crazy, they'll tell you that if it wasn't for the damn Bible, they'd go around raping and stealing and killing.  Run from these people.  Quickly.  They're saying that, if not for their invisible friend telling them "NO," they wouldn't care about other people's suffering or pain.

I'm a moral person, so I think.  I've never believed in a god, I've never felt anything I couldn't explain and I've never needed an imaginary friend to guide me.  Despite my Atheism, I've never fired a gun, never had a drop of alcohol or other mind altering drug, never intentionally hit anyone in my life.****  I don't believe in God, but then I also don't believe in Satan, demons, angels or the Loch Ness Monster.  You're responsible for your actions, choices and morality.  Attributing anything to a higher power lessens the thing being attributed.  God didn't help you get a touchdown or beat cancer or get over your dangerous habits; YOU did, and the people around you probably helped.

Planet Earth is amazing.  It's a one in a million lucky shot that we're here at all, which makes us feel very special and makes us think there MUST be a plan, some divine idea or reason for our existence.  Consider the possibility that there isn't.  The world is still beautiful and tomorrow the sun will still rise and set (unless you're reading this at the South Pole currently).  What is lost by saying the world is godless and purposeless, that it's just HERE and nothing more?  Roses still smell lovely, ice cream still tastes great and a sunset is still a sight to behold.

Finally, all cultures since the dawn of time have wondered if there is such a thing as a soul and what happens to it when you die.  Deep down, most people think the answer is, at the very least, something rather than nothing.  In a spiritual sense, everybody is living for the afterlife.  In my view, the soul is something that is created by the sum of your experience.  It is everything you've seen, done and been that has made you the person you are today.  It's also a fairly brief thing to have, a soul.  When you die, it ends.  There is no where for it to escape to, it resides in the neurons that fire in your brain.  Without blood and oxygen, it stops working and ceases to be.  Some would view this as a hopeless statement, but I see it in this way...

• There is no afterlife, there is no reincarnation.  THIS is all we get.  When your gone, the only things you leave behind are the memories of the people who knew you.  All you can do is try to make some good ones.

Hope this wasn't too heavy a post.  Thanks for reading, hope I kept it entertaining up until that last bit.

*Peanut butter AND chocolate all in a candy shell?!?!?! Simply amazing...
**This is not profanity for profanity's sake, a fuck-ton is a technical term.  It's larger than an ass-load, but is smaller than a shit-load.  Above that you get things like a fucking ass-load, a shit-ton and a metric fuck-ton.
***Refer them to Exodus, the book of Job and most of the rest of the book where people are killing each other and God is smiting the innocent.
****At least, not with the intention of causing pain; Everyone does playful jabs.

Would Vegetarians Eat Meat if No Animals Were Killed?

Welcome!  Or welcome back, as the case may be.  Today's blog is about the things we eat.  If you don't want me to frank about food, please stop reading here.  I'll do my best to be as un-frank as I know how.  I might try being jim about it... or maybe steve... I like steve.

One of the key problems of human existence is that we need to eat to live, yet some of us have developed sympathy for the creatures we consume.  This is one of the main drives of the vegetarian movement, an attempt to limit the amount of animals killed by eating less meat.  That's like trying to keep a democrat or a republican from being elected by not voting for them; You have a slight effect, but it's really just for you.  Vegans are people who take it a step further and won't even have anything with animal products in it, like eggs, milk and cheese.  Vegan is such a strange term that I find it easier to call them herbivores, which is a term I learned about when studying dinosaurs for a creature that only eats plants.

Moo?

As a point of argument, everything we as humans eat came from something that was alive.  Meat, eggs, yeast in bread, grain in cereal, apples from trees.  Plants just don't have faces or make noise when you take their sexual organs off their branches and stalks* and generally don't die when you harvest off them, so it's more bearable.  There is precisely one exception I've managed to find to this rule, which is salt.  Salt is a naturally occurring resource that is mined the world over to make french fries and popcorn taste better... Except in France of course.

What it all boils down to, as I see it, is that some people say that eating animals is "wrong" or "unnatural."  All of that is inherently funny because animals, frequently, eat other animals.  In fact, certain species of ant will invade a termite colony and capture the termite queen so that she produces more termite larvae.  Not to raise them, just to eat them, kinda like cattle farming.  Of course, no one will win an argument using ants, they aren't people.**

However, here's an interesting thought experiment: What if we could have meat without killing any animals?  The ethical argument would go away completely and we could enjoy some guilt free prime rib.  Plus, if we had a way of producing it without using animals, we could remove the costly and land consuming need for huge livestock farms and put that land to better use in the future.***  A couple different scientists around the world are trying to accomplish that very thing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110130/sc_nm/us_food_meat_laboratory_feature

Cluck?

As you may read in the article, assuming you READ the article, you'll notice that the programs outlined in the headline are currently unfunded.  However, it's theoretically possible to take a gene from the meat of a cow or chicken, grow it in a laboratory and produce animal meat without the animal.  The same techniques are being tested to grow new organs for people using their own genes.

Imagine it, the ability to "grow" food without having to grow plants, feed those plants to an animal, wait for that animal to grow to the right age and size, kill the animal, remove the important meat parts and then have dinner.  I'd be curious to see how many ex-vegetarians we'd have in this country.  I'm sure PETA would still have a problem with it, exploiting animals for our own usage, but who really cares about PETA anymore?****  I'm a Person Eating Tasty Animals.

Anyway, let me know what you guys think about growing cultured meats (meaning meat grown in a lab, not meat that can tell you which operas are the best to attend) and I'll try to keep the interesting stuff a-comin'.  Time to go hunt and gather some fried chicken.

*Which is essentially what fruit and vegetables are.  Think about that next time you have a salad.
**Unless you have an aunt in the slaughterhouse industry.  Then the analogy works... sort of.
***Well, better use than a huge manure production facility, I suppose.  There will always be a need for bull shit some where.
****Aside from crazy celebrities who are in it for the media attention.

Japan: Proud Producers of 3D and Mammoths

Since we're early in this blog's life, I figure it's a good time to define some terms for everyone.  These aren't the "according to Hoyle"* definitions, but my own personal ones.  Language evolves through usage and this is how I use these words...


Nerd:  An intelligent person who puts their intelligence towards practical uses.  For instance, a good scientist is a nerd.  Nerds can generally tell you the square root of things or build a rudimentary adding machine out of sticks & stones.
Geek:  An intelligent person who puts their intelligence towards trivial uses.  A geek might be able to tell you square roots, but he'd rather explain how the warp drive on the USS Enterprise theoretically works.
Dweeb:  A moderately intelligent person who doesn't know enough about trivial or practical things to talk to geeks & nerds on the same level.  Someone who can't remember if the Force is in Star Trek or Star Wars or someone who doesn't know the difference between rational and irrational numbers** is a dweeb.
Dork:  An idiot.


That being said, there are many cross breeds in the mix.  I personally define myself as a nerdy geek; I'm more prone to geekdom, but I do know a fair amount about math and science.  Also, anyone can be demoted to "dork" if they make a dumb enough statement (Tax cuts for the rich solve everything!).  Anyway, let's have a look at what some Japanese geeks and nerds are up to.

How about a nice game of 3D Chess?

Humans are innately curious beings.  We are fascinated by the things we do not know (which is a huge amount of stuff) and are always trying to learn more about this little blue ball we live on.  More than anything though, we like doing what essentially boils down to tricks for one another.  Take the newest craze sweeping the entertainment world: 3D screens.  They're everywhere and everyone's talking about them.  Pretty soon, they're even going to be hand held with the upcoming release of Nintendo's 3DS.  Get it?  It's... it's like a DS, but also 3D... so it's a... a... yeah...

The Snuffleupagus in
it's natural habitat.

However, if the Nintendo Wii has taught me anything, never judge a gaming book by it's gaming cover.  It could be great, it could be the next big thing.  Nintendo seems to be good at creating the next big thing.  Speaking of BIG things; Wooly mammoths.  These huge, furry, tusked Snuffleupegases went extinct over 5,000 years ago, but a few were considerate enough to get themselves frozen in ice.  This has led Japanese scientists to the idea that if they were to impregnate an elephant with a cloned embryo of a woolly mammoth, we could have woolly mammoths again.


And, if reading novels and the subsequent film series they are based on have taught me anything, this bringing back to life of creatures that were once extinct means only one thing... Cenozoic Park!  Lawyers trampled by mammoths, a greedy employee shutting off the power, sabertooth tigers turning out to be FAR smarter than we thought.  Oh shit, what happens when they cross the mammoth DNA with that of the common moth?

We are all doomed, DOOMED!

Anyway, hope you all liked my first blog with pictures!  Granted, they probably break some copyright laws or licensing issues, but what the hell.  I'm not makin' any money here.  Though I hear Snuffy's lawyers are real monsters...  Feel free to subscribe/comment/discuss/burn me in effigy.***


*Besides, Hoyle sucks.  Bicycle makes much better playing cards.
**Irrational numbers are more likely to go on shooting sprees or believe in psychics.
***As long as it's not the REAL me, knock yourself out.

Video Game Industry: A Few Steps Forward, a Few Steps Back...

My first post at Blogspot.  So exciting, I can barely contain myself.  Anyway, some ground rules.  This particular post was actually a note on Facebook earlier, so there's that.  Also, if you're reading my work for the first time, I use lots of asides and footnotes, plus I curse whenever the fuck I please.  Those of you with sensitive eyes should turn back now.  For the rest of you, please to enjoy.  Follow if you like what you read, I try to keep a steady stream of text coming and please comment, good or bad.  I like discussion.  Anyway...

I'm a life long gamer, unless you want to get really technical.  I've been playing video games since I was 3 years old.  In that time I've watched video games grow from dots on a screen to near photo realistic interactive stories.  They're, arguably, at the level of most action movies and even surpass them on occasion because it puts you right in the action playing a part in the telling of the tale.  Most interestingly, games are getting to the point where they are actually dramatic fiction, rather than a game of Tetris while you're bored.*  Yet it seems that lawmakers the world over and "concerned parent groups" still haven't gotten that through their heads.  And with what's been going on lately, it's kind of hard to blame them.

Back in Ought 5,** California governator Arnold Schwarzeneggar signed a California law restricting the sale of violent video games to people under the age of 18 (Pause for irony while you realize the Terminator is trying to restrict violence, carry on), and allowing federal fines to be levied against retailers who did so.  This is effectively government censorship, something the first amendment is fairly clear about, ie, "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech..."  This law was challenged and managed to make it to the Supreme Court at the end of last year, decision pending sometime in June of this year.***

Now, I don't WANT children playing violent video games, but if their parents decide to let them that is their affair, not the government's.  More importantly, most retailers already adhere to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) rating system, which gives parents more than enough information printed on the box of EVERY video game sold in this country about the content of the game.  Stores who want to stay in business require anyone buying a game rated M for Mature to be carded, only someone 17 or older can buy it.  Beyond that, it is still a parent's responsibility to monitor what their children do, not to just leave them to their video games for days on end.

For example, Sony released a video game last year called Heavy Rain for the Playstation 3 that is effectively an interactive R rated movie.  You control 4 characters trying to uncover a serial killer who preys on young boys before he strikes again.  I can honestly say it was a gripping tale, one of the most suspenseful "games" I've ever played and really disturbing at points.  It deals with a subject often left to speculative fiction or suspense films of how far a person is willing to go to save someone in their family, in this case, your son.

Note the wording, YOUR son.  Not a character you passively watch, YOUR character, the man you are playing.  Content like this serves a different audience than kids who play Disney games or kick shells around in Super Mario.  It is this very important distinction that lawmakers and "concerned parent's groups" seem to be missing.  Games are not just toys, they are a piece of media akin to movies and books that can deliver deep narratives and touchy subjects.

Then again, for every art house story you get, you get a lot of slasher horror flicks.  Dead Space 2, an upcoming game from EA, is one of those slasher horror games.  I have no inherent problem with someone making a slasher horror game, I honestly couldn't get very far through the original Dead Space before I was jumping at real world shadows.  My problem is with the marketing campaign they went with to promote it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKkPFDEiC6Q

Give it a watch, it shows mothers reacting to footage from the game.  The telling line is "It's revolting, it's violent, it's everything you love in a game... and your mom is going to HATE IT."  Ok... it's rated M for Mature.  This kind of message is in the, "If your parents hate it, it MUST be cool category."  However, if you're young enough that your mother's reaction to this game matters in the slightest... (inhales deeply) YOU SHOULDN'T BE PLAYING THE FUCKING GAME!!!***  Sorry to bold, italic AND underline that, just trying to make a point.  This is EA setting the industry back a few notches, marketing something like this to kids.  This is a game made solely for the purchase and play by adults, why would you even contemplate this kind of marketing scheme?

Remember when Hostel II came out and there were ads for it during Dora the Explorer?  Or when Saw V was coming to theaters and posters went up all over McDonald's Playland?  Or that porno that always has a spot during Sesame Street?  Oh, those things didn't happen?  Right, because THAT would be stupid.  It's a blunder on that level and I am so very disappointed in the marketing team for this...  Anyway, argue, discuss, comment below, catch you later.

*Tetris is still amazing though.  I am the man who arranges the blocks...

**2005, for those of you who don't speak old coot.

***Because, you see, the Supreme Court is composed entirely of turtles, three toed sloths and a species of snail that can read.  I just hope they never read this... glances around furtively

****!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Full text of the first amendment available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text

And the full text of the Supreme Court hearing is here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/08-1448.pdf