Writer

I'm a writer. I write. That's what I'm doing right now. Writing changes and evolves, as do people. I can't remember the last time I saw something I wrote on paper. I have some vague, nebulous kinda-sorta understanding that some of the thoughts that form in my brain are directed down my arms to my fingers and, mixed with vision and co-ordination the fingers touch the right keys which cause electrical contacts to send digital versions of alphanumeric characters to a processor which decodes the information and displays it on a screen I can see. I know it's an applied scientific process which some people fully understand and are capable of creating...otherwise I could do what I'm doing. But it's almost close enough to magic to make it seem so.

Thomas Jefferson was a smart guy and he wrote a lot of things. But every bit of his writing was done (I think) with the end of bird's feather repeatedly dipped into a small container of ink, then applied to paper. The only way he could get others to see his writing was to take or send that paper to someone. I think our biggest improvement so far is that we don't have to carry our screen around to show to people we want to see our words. There are billions of screens now and we can, almost magically, send our words to huge numbers of them. I sure wouldn't write very much if Mr. Jefferson's feather, ink and paper were the only way I had to do it, in part, simply because the process is hugely time consuming and laborious, compared to this. Sometimes I wonder what's next. When a time comes in which writers look back at this period and say, "all that messing about with tapping physical "keys" and things called "mice"...shudder, how did anyone ever get anything written?" Will there still be such things as "writers" then and how will they do it?

There are some "voice recognition" programs now which can instantly convert your spoken words into visual text on a screen. I don't see that as much of an improvement. Judging by how much "texting" people do with phones, as opposed to talking, many agree. Of course, there is another thing about most writers...they wish to involve others. How many writers would write anything at all if they were reasonably certain that not a single human other than themselves would ever see and read the words? I think of writer as social...but it's a kind of what I call a "projected" sociability. They intend their words for some future audience. Writers write for a myriad of reasons but I view most as the passive aggressive intruder sort. The aggression is wanting to intrude their thoughts into your head. It only works if you agree and allow it (that's the passive part)...so far. :)

But there surely has to be an easier and faster way. Some draw analogies between individual cells making up your body and individual persons making up humanity. Maybe this is still only in the crude and primitive stage. Suppose humanity eventually becomes a "creature". A global mind composed of billions and billions of single brains, supplemented with still more billions or trillions of "artifical" devices. Could we learn to adapt to such an environment? Would we still be "humans"? Would it be good or bad if we were not?

I've written hundreds, maybe thousands of books. Not a single one has ever appeared on screens or on paper. All of them have appeared in my "mind's eye", fleetingly and never fully formed...I think of them as miscarriages. The best and most extensive have contained a few paragraphs or pages that might possibly be discernable to another mind - if the technology existed yet to do that. All these books, Julia Loui-Dreyfus finishes for me with "yada, yada, yada". I understand them without the tedium of having to form complete thoughts and words and sequences of events, etc., but no one else would.

This kind of communicating with other brains is exhausting. Even when you supposedly speak and understand the same language, a great deal can be lost (and inserted) in "interpretation". If a whole different language is involved, well, hang it up. I might say I'd like some jussipussi with my supper and folk could get the wrong idea. See?

TRB

Beliefs

The title of this one is "Belief" and I hope to address that and a few more things, but will try to keep it reasonably short.

Proposition: Choosing to believe (or not to believe) any given piece of data, purely as an act of one's "will", is not a capacity the human brain possesses. If you would defend the notion that "people can believe whatever they want", I would appreciate a step-by-step explanation of how one can accomplish this feat. If you agree that people cannot believe whatever they want, I would hope that you would point that out whenever appropriate and possible.

The young feller in this short (only 2 minutes) video puts it well.

I'm sure there are many atheists who think belief is a choice too, though it is most common to hear that from believers. As he says, part of it may be a mental "justification" for a given believers' sense of superiority for having "made the right choice". But this whole notion of "Free Will" that is typically preached from Christian pulpits (and some other places) can be proven wrong by very simple thought experiments, and will hopefully soon be so proven empirically with neurological scans. This notion is also at the root of a great deal of general trouble in our society. Its nefarious effects go well beyond whether one believes any religious claims, but to any and all other claims as well. Such as one's sexual orientation, for starters.

The way that anyone at all can prove to themselves, right now, right where they are (sounds a little like a televangelist don't it), is simply to bring to mind something - anything at all - that you believe strongly. Then, as an act of your will or choice, choose, just for a couple of minutes, to believe the exact opposite of that. Surely you will see that this is impossible. If you are an intellectually honest person, will you seriously tell all and sundry here that whatever your beliefs might be about a given thing, they are so because you choose them to be the way they are?

I was a devout Christian for more than thirty years. One day I was an atheist. This scared the shit out of me. That alone is irrational partly because, upon serious thought, it makes no sense whatever to have any fear of God punishing you to an eternity in Hell, if you have just come to believe there is no such thing as a God. But all that kind of thought came more gradually and later. I had barely heard of atheists before that and certainly nothing good. I had to set about looking around to find out what an atheists does and doesn't do, what kind of people they were; for all I knew I might have to go underground or something. I was lucky enough to very shortly thereafter find Pat Cleveland at Lake Hypatia, long before there was such a thing as Lake Hypatia, when they were having meetings in the library at Birmingham.

Some things, such as sexuality, are a continuum and all people are not firmly locked into one thing or another. But in general, the ends of the spectrum seem to be purely heterosexual at one end and purely homosexual at the other. Other people recognize the fallacy of "choice" most starkly in relation to sexuality. Many people have said, "Just when did YOU decide to be gay - or straight?" Surely thinking people can apply the same reasoning to other things. Just when did YOU decide to be... a liberal, a Libertarian ... a serial killer, a pedophile?

If I am a devout Christian, which I was, I am quite content, happy, satisfied with my life and my beliefs. Everyone knows there is a God, even if many people don't behave well. Everyone knows you will spend eternity somewhere...heaven, hell....purgatory...the Outer Limits? If I feel so happy and content with my life, what possible motivation could I have to DECIDE, just like that, that I'm not going to have the beliefs that I have? And if I did decide that, how would I do it?

There are many factors that go into a person believing the things that they believe at any given point. I doubt there is anyone here over 20 or so who believe and feel and think exactly as they did when they were ten. Brains continually evolve, different hormones and other chemicals come into play, sometimes emotions produce them, sometimes the genetic programming of certain changes happening at roughly certain times in growth; sometimes external events can change how one thinks about "X", sometime can even actually change a person's genes. Neurons die away, new ones form, different sets of connections between neurons and neuronal groups happen; various things may strengthen or weaken these connections. But no mater what you think or feel about "X" at any given moment, it is so because your brain is as it is at that moment. With many things it will change. Sometimes the very major things. You are never told about any of these plans to change. You are not sent a memo or a questionnaire asking how "you" feel about the proposed changes. Stuff happens inside your brain, things change; then and ONLY then are "you" made aware that things are different now and, it appears, the easiest thing to do is say, "I changed my mind", because it helps your brain maintain the illusion that "you" are in control.

To Bill, from previous blog: I thank you good sir, for your apology about being so harsh. It is genuinely admired and appreciated. I will also apologize about my saying "working" for pay is immoral. I can see how one might be rather insulted by that. I can only say that I had no intention to refer to you specifically, or any specific person, as being immoral...I meant only that it is my position that the current system in which we are all embedded, like it or not, is immoral. I also realized my temper was beginning to have more influence than I wanted, which is why I took a little break.

At the risk of producing yet another "tl;dr" tome, I also want to mention this... my previous short blog was about a man who decided to rob a bank for one dollar in order to get the medical treatment he knew he could get in jail, because he had no money or insurance. We start to hear, more and more often, in the media that "health care is a basic human right, not a privilege". Wonder why that is ... that this thought seems to be becoming more common? Where was that thought in our society twenty years ago? Ten? If most caring people would agree that food is a fundamental human right (some wouldn't...some say, 'if he don't work he don't eat')... and now some are thinking medical care is too...what other things might be fundamental human rights? How long might it take for such ideas to gain any traction in society?

One more thing... in honor of Columbo... check out wikipedia's charts just on the different flavors of Christianity. How does it make any more sense to wonder which of these is "right" than it does to wonder which of the various outrageous claims of schizophrenic folks is "right"?

TRB

The Secret of Oz and Soylent Green

Most libraries are reasonably neat and organized places. Try to imagine what one might look like if 50 5-year-olds were allowed to play in it for a week. That is a bit like my brain now...I think. I like random stuff too. And by the way, why is the Random House Dictionary as orderly as all the others?

I got defriended on the Face because I "liked" Alex Jones. It got real quiet at my page when I posted a link from prisonplanet dot com to a Glenn Beck show about the Federal Reserve. I asked, since most liberals hate the idea of privatizing such things as police, prisons, fire departments, etc., why would they like the idea of a private banking cartel running the country (and the world) rather than the US Government issuing and printing its own money. Only one response I think. Is that because people know nothing about the Fed? Because people find it boring and say, "Who cares"? Because people think if you would post something Alex Jones or Glenn Beck said you have gone to the Dark Side?

"In the year 2022, the population has grown to forty million people in New York City alone...". From the wiki entry about the movie Soylent Green. The actual projection by the Department of City Planning is "For the year 2020, we project the city's population
at 8.7 million, and at 9.1 million for 2030." Source. And no mention of Soylent Green. Looks like they missed it. BUT. The Japanese are coming through with meat made from poo. Source. Hopefully, the production price will drop drastically. Surely all of us who hate the idea of factory farms will applaud this effort? Oh... sorry, I should not have used a Fox News link for that. Is Yahoo News better?

When L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, did he intend it only as a children's story...or was he doing a commentary on the economics and politics of his time? Or, is that just a stupid 'conspiracy theory'? Does it matter that Dorothy had silver, not Ruby, slippers in the book, before the movies were made? Watch this video and see what you think. The Secret of Oz.

TRB

Dead and Transcendent

I have done a blog previously about the death of my mother. I decided, for no particular reason, to do another.

Almost twelve years ago, in 1999, my mom died of a heart attack in a nursing home in Cedartown, GA. I went to the funeral home which was handling her "arrangements". My cousin Jimmy and his young son were the only other people there. Jimmy was always close to his "Aunt Bessie" too.

I looked at her dead body lying in the casket. She looked like ma, only too white. I touched her face and it felt exactly like a wooden mannequin. She was wearing a very pretty dress, which kind of pissed me off, since she could never afford to wear nice dresses in life. It was always what she called "housecoats" and mumu, tent type dresses, mostly of several years vintage. Jimmy cried.

I knew ma for just over 40 years. To me, she was the finest example of being a human that I have ever known. She was short and dumpy, not very attractive as women go. She was not really bright, only got to the fourth grade in school. She was very kind and enjoyed laughing. I saw her genuinely angry maybe five or six times in those forty years. You could tell when she was really mad because she would likely say something like, "I'm about ready to spit red and cuss dammit!" I never saw her with teeth. She always called black people niggers but that was what they had been to her all her life. There as no malice or disklike and certainly no hatred, it was simply a descriptive word. She had worked with black folks all her life too...far as I know she never hated a single person ever, for anything.

That day in the funeral home, I sat in a chair in the front row of chairs next to ma's casket. It was as though everything around me just melted away, and the only thing existing were snapshots and clips of my ma, playing in my head, hearing her laugh, feeling her love...and knowing it was all gone forever. I screamed, mostly silently, though probably a couple of loud moans escaped me too.

As the only child, the funeral and arrangements fell to me. I thought about this, about the southern funerals I have attended, many of them. I knew what was expected, what was wanted, maybe needed by most of her relatives. Only about two years earlier, I had been to the funeral of my half sister Marie (Jimmy's ma). I loved her dearly too and felt the pain of her absence, even though it had taken many years for me to get old enough to relate to her on an adult level. I knew she had come to see me as brother, not just little kid, when she confided in me that none of her children were fathered by her husband.

I sat in the front row at her funeral and it required all the strength I had to force myself to remain sitting quietly throughout the ordeal. The lies...coming one after the other, slamming into my head like being assaulted with stones, yet embraced by most others there as soothing balm. It genuinely made me nauseous. I highly doubted my ability to sit through such, involving my own mother. I made the decision that I had seen my ma for the last time, had said my goodbyes, had felt the world drop from beneath my feet and float in the endless void alone, until my brain could regain some equilibrium. I would not subject myself to the lies. It might well be disastrous.

My intentions were to give the other relatives their chance to play in la-la land as they wished, but to avoid the muck myself. So it was that after that goodbye in the funeral home, I would have nothing further to do with any funeral or arrangements. Her nieces could do whatever they wanted in that regard. Apparently they did, though I still remain ignorant of what that was.

Twelve years later, two in-person visits to that funeral home, phone calls, letters, emails, to them, to the newspapers, online searches, visits to all the cemeteries in the surrounding area...and I have no clue where my ma is buried...or, for that matter, IF she was buried. It is not a huge deal for me, I don't lie awake wondering. It just crosses my mind sometimes, my own personal little mystery that I doubt I will ever have answered. I do wonder why... did some of the relatives who were aware that I had become atheist so hate and/or fear me that they gave orders to the funeral home to not divulge information to me about my ma's burial? Did some of them think I might go dig her up and do unspeakable things to her remains, because I was atheist? Quite possibly, I just don't know.

Also makes me think of the fact that, if Melinda dies before me, I can't think of more than maybe three people in the world who would have the slightest care where my remains might be. I find it a little depressing to have so little importance. Then again, one rotting chunk of meat is pretty much like another. Funerals...the one time in life where you should be totally free to be completely honest about the dead person; zero fear of any recriminations from them, that they might be pissed about something you said, etc. Yet it's strangely the one time when most people go to extraordinary lengths to avoid any truths they might find unpleasant.

Why do people always say, "they live on, in our memories, in the works they may have left behind"? Why is it so hard to say they do not live on, period? There is no small ma running about in my head. I have mental images of her that my brain still sometimes reproduces. I do not have a single photograph of her. Frank Lloyd Wright does not live on in his buildings or designs. He is just as dead as anyone else who has died. Elvis does not live on in his music. Woody Allen said, "I don't want to "live on" through my work...I want to live on through not dying." Some might say that my ma "lives on" in the genes she passed on to me. Does Plato live on because some atom that was once a part of his body may now be part of one of us? But this is not true either. If she does not live on as the conscious entity I knew as ma, then she does not live on. Nor will you or I. Whether or not we may like or approve of this, is quite a different matter from the truthfulness of this.

It is not life per se that has any real meaning in a human sense, but consciousness. Many living things live shorter time spans than humans. Some live only a day. Others live far longer... a Bristlecone Pine might watch the centuries pass as we watch months pass...if it could watch anything. It is alive. But it has no more conscious awareness than the rock beside it.

The dog is much more alive than the Pine, is it not? It is both abundantly obvious and proven by science that the dog experiences the same kinds of physical sensations that humans do, and also experiences emotions such as joy, anger and fear. The dog's brain does not have the capacity for it to philosophically contemplate it's existence in the world, relative to elephants or ants or humans. Does the fact that we can do this make us more alive than the dog? Suppose that someone, somewhere in the universe, thinks thoughts as far "above" humans as ours are above dogs? Suppose that we met them...what could we understand about them?

Perhaps Ray Kurzweil's Singularity is the beginning of what will eventually be Pierre de Chardin's and Frank Tipler's Omega Point? Perhaps I'll see you there. Near the end of Kurzweil's movie Transcendent Man, he says, "Does God exist? No...not yet". Perhaps whatever evolves from humans will one day truthfully say, "I am the Alpha and the Omega".

TRB

Boobies

Why is it that women are said to be "topless" if they wear nothing above the waist, yet men are not "topless", they just don't have on a shirt? I know it's really early still but this is one of my favorite "holidays" and I hope you will mark yer calendar and not forget. Sunday, August 21 is National Go-Topless Day. Is it legal?

According to an email from the NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public information, Paul Browne:

"The state's highest court established long ago that women have the same right as men to appear topless in public...." Source.

Apparently it is legal in the state of New York, but please check your local listings. Also, please be good enough to take and share photos and videos if you participate in this exercise to call attention to gender disparity in America. It also might offer an interesting flavor if all guys wore only a bikini top from the waist up on that day.

Go Topless Dot Org

Note: It doesn't matter if you agree with the Raelians...especially if you're topless.

TRB

Are We There Yet?

So, here's where we are... American citizens can go to prison simply for not paying a bill. But you can also be arrested when you DO pay your bill using legal American currency.

American citizens can be targeted for killing by the President of the United States.

"...in Barack Obama's America, the way guilt is determined for American citizens -- and a death penalty imposed -- is that the President, like the King he thinks he is, secretly decrees someone's guilt as a Terrorist." Source.

"That Obama was compiling a hit list of American citizens was first revealed in January of last year when The Washington Post's Dana Priest mentioned in passing at the end of along article that at least four American citizens had been approved for assassinations;..." Source.

There are "free speech zones" in America (what happened to the quaint notion of the whole country being a free speech zone?).

The police in America can arrest and jail you merely for using a camera in a public place, especially if you are taking pictures of them.

Example 1:

"Consider the case of Anthony Graber, a knucklehead from Baltimore who was speeding on his motorcycle on Interstate 95 in March, popping wheelies and doing other dumb and reckless things, according to an editorial in the USA Today. He's facing 16 years in prison but not for reckless driving. No, the horrendous felony Baltimore cops and prosecutors want to imprison Graber for is a video of his arrest made via a helmet camera and posted on YouTube." Source.

Example 2:

A good blog on thenecessity of filming police which includes four videos and the note that "In Britain there is a new law that restricts photographs/videos of police by the public."

Example 3: Even if you are mainstream media...

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has ruled that corporation ARE persons.
"The corporate rights movement has reached its extreme conclusion in today's Supreme Court ruling," says Jeffrey Clements, general counsel to www.freespeechforpeople.org and a consultant to Voter Action. "In recent years, corporations have misused the First Amendment to evade and invalidate democratically-enacted reforms, from elections to healthcare, from financial reform to climate change and environmental protection, and more. Today's ruling, reversing longstanding precedent which prohibits corporate expenditures in elections, now requires a constitutional amendment response to protect our democracy." Source.

Guantanomo Bay and other places, some even worse (and much less known), exist in which people can be held in prison for the rest of their lives without ever so much as being charged with anything, much less having a trial.

The popular media is all over a "story" about Representative Weiner sending a pic of his weiner, as though this had some relevance to national political policy, while mostly ignoring these other issues. A president was impeached (but not convicted) for getting a blowjob and lying out it. Why do these people not simply tell the public and the media "no comment" on sexual matters that do not involve criminal activity or matters of public policy?

But...there are REASONS why it's called the "popular media". Consider why it is popular. What might make it unpopular? The American electorate in general is a woefully misinformed and downright stupid herd...and damn proud of it! Evidence of the truth of this assertion is that both the political left and political right agree with it, lol.

Culture Wars:
A CNN poll asked about how much federal funding goes to NPR. The average estimate from citizens asked was that $178 billion went to NPR. The actual figure? "The CPB received about $420 million last year from the federal government, making it roughly one one-hundredth of one percent, of the overall budget. That means that the median response was about 424 times higher than the actual amount of federal funding that went to public broadcasting last year." Source. Wonder why they would think that?

The right says there should be no government funding for Planned Parenthood because they use it to kill babies. "Planned Parenthood performs abortions on a massive scale: 332,278 abortions in 2009, more than one-quarter of all abortions nationwide." Source. Planned Parenthood says they provide a broad range of health care services for everyone, with abortions being a small percentage of the services provided. Source. Who's right?

We have a GLOBAL monetary system that is designed to make completely certain there can never be any such thing as "economic equality", either within or among countries. In America, we have the Federal Reserve System, which is neither federal nor has any reserves. It is NOT any part of the government...uh, well what the public is TOLD is the government. It actually IS the real government because, as Mr. Rothschild said, "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), founder of the House of Rothschild. Who cares? The point here is not that Rothchilds control all the money; rather, that WHOEVER controls the money controls all else (as in Allen Greenspan, former Fed Chairman and Ayn Rand devotee¢). It's the Golden Rule for the rich, ie, "He who has the gold makes the rules."

Forgive me fellers, if I can't work up a full head of steam about them alien amphibians, 'specially since you ain't proved such a critter exists...we seem to have a full load of fully human slimy critters to try to wiggle out from under.

Now to something important...will Facebook exist in five years? Ten?

TRB

Public Prayer

No matter who you are, what you think or believe, if the majority around you agree with you, it usually makes you feel good; you feel pride, strength, power. If you know that you can stand up publicly and say (_____) and you will hear cheers in response, you feel these things and confidence, and you do not doubt or question at all whether what you have said, or what you think, is true or untrue, it hardly matters. You know you are on the right side; all those people could not be wrong, and YOU certainly could not be wrong. This takes no courage, no self reflection, no concern with whether truth is prevailing or not.

If you know that if you stood up publicly and said (_____) you would be, at best, ignored, or more likely ridiculed, shouted down, threatened, maybe even physically attacked, would you still stand and say it? If you know this is the likely result of your comments, would you not "think twice"; would you not consider whether or not what you are saying is really the truth? Or perhaps you think "the truth" is, by definition, what most people believe?

We, in the West, especially in America, with our supposed great pride in our pluralistic societies, where "everyone has a right to their own opinion" have whatever degree of stability that we have only by general silent assent that there is no truth, that all opinion is equally valid, that a "live and let live" attitude and being "respectful of other people's beliefs" is all we need to get us through. There is precious little in the way of "courage of your convictions" in these societies. It helps to maintain the status quo to not rock the boat, not to mention lessening the possibility of a rock or bottle to your head or being imprisoned.

I don't call upon you to endanger yourself, to risk ridicule or worse in the service of truth. I ask only that you honestly try to grip and feel the burden of it within your own mind; whether or not it is ever outwardly manifested. Please watch this video, it's just over 7 minutes. Try to picture yourself as an atheist student at this school. What would you do? If you are a "believer", can you spot things that are not correct or not right about the positions of the believing folk in the video?

Is it about "free speech"? Is it about the atheist student's "Constitutional rights" over riding what the majority wants? What about Matthew 6:5-6?

TRB

Easy Come, Easy Go

The disability check came today. The disability check went today. There is about $60 left for gas, cigs and stuff we forgot for the rest of the month. That's with only a partial payment on my computer and a zero payment to the landlady. If it were not for Food Stamps, we would be hungry. It's not fun telling the landlady we have nothing to give for rent this month, which is partly why I will shift that chore to Melinda. She has lived her longer than I. We have been as much as six months behind on the rent and caught it up. She has a history of working with us when we are short on money. Although it's unlikely, living with the knowledge that she could simply tell us to leave is demoralizing...dehumanizing. Even though I logically 'know better', I'm still bound emotionally, to some degree, to the primal notion that a man is "less" if he cannot provide for his family, even if the "providing" is only a government check. For many of the people who are making payments on a house, it is not substantially different. They can simply be told to leave also. The systems is designed so. It is not accident that being too poor to have the necessities of the culture around you grinds you down, makes you less, psychologically. It's why sometimes a man might fly an airplane into a building...

Earlier in the day I was "up". Having money to put gas in the car just so you can go to town and get a few things, including a cigarette is uplifting even though we know it is fleeting. It's so hot here lately that sleep during the day is impossible, even with two air conditioners and two fans running 24/7. I will try to devise a way, with blankets or something, to contain a much smaller area in which we can have the computers, TV and the a/c and fan during the day, leaving the "womb" only for feeding and eliminating.

I learned of the death of two people who certainly never knew I existed, but whom I admired to a degree. Jack Kevorkian, who some derisively called "Dr. Death" died. He was 83. Matt Dillon also died. Oh, not the young actor named Matt Dillon, the Matt Dillon, US Marshall of Dodge City, Kansas. An epitome of manhood for some men of a certain age. Oh yes, of course, it was the actor James Arness who died. He was 88. But I knew nothing of James Arness. I knew Matt Dillon. Amazing really, the he and Peter Graves were actually brothers. You could see it in their faces, in their voices, but they seemed so very different. Most of the time the age of the person is given, presumably so that the reader can experience whatever reaction they are supposed to. If they were in their 80s, as these guys were, well, it's bad, no one likes to hear of a death, but they lived a long time. They had good lives. It is less bad that they died than that a young girl of 16. *sigh* They are "at peace". So are a qatrillion other humans who will never be born or exist at all.

We distract ourselves, luckily for most it is fairly easy to do, from the hard parts of life with the less hard parts and the occasional good part. I had food, played online, wrote some. Now I will sleep while it is cool. Wondering when my final eviction notice will come...I suspect long before I reach my 80s.

TRB

Really!?

Hey y'all. I just read a blog comment in which Bill (Hardcase) Gillen refers to snopes dot com as "horse shit". He seems to think they are to the left what Fox News really is to the right. I know a lot of folk do still actually care about such trivial things as truth and factually correct information. With the caveat that there is no such thing as an infallible source or site, here is a small list of sites you might consider consulting BEFORE you pass on that email or other claim you came across that sounds, as the case may be, too good or too bad to be true.

The Straight Dope

Hoaxbusters

Truth or Fiction and
what they said about Snopes

Snopes

Urban Myths

Keepin' it real since the 20th century...

TRB

Watson

Watson is (arguably) the smartest machine humans have ever made. It's one thing to be able to do twenty thousand trillion calculations per second (20 petaFLOPS) like Titan... quite another to be able to beat human champions at Jeopardy. But Watson clearly did that...beat the humans. Watson is an example of rather advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI). He is "artificial" in that humans constructed him; obviously intelligent in that he can beat human champions playing Jeopardy. But. Turns out he is lacking - if that's the right word - what Commander Data is lacking on Start Trek TNG, namely, emotion. It is this which would make Watson care whether he played Jeopardy or whether he won or lost.

Watch the full episode. See more NOVA.

But this emotion thing is a double-edged sword at best. Why is is not sufficient, for example, for Data to be far superior to humans by any measure than emotion? So what if he feels no emotional pain or pleasure or anger or love. He's still way superior. Unless you are one of those humans who think THAT - emotion - is superior to all else. "It's what makes us human", we often hear, but that's simply a lie. All kinds of animals feel various kinds and degrees of emotion. Nothing especially "human" about it. But as for machines like Watson and Data...?

Would it really matter one way or the other if the Terminator were an emotionless machine assigned to terminate you, and cannot be reasoned with or bargained with or feel anything at all for or against you...or if the Terminator were programmed with an intense hatred of you in particular and this is what drove him to forever hunt you down and kill you?

Would it matter to you if your android nurse used her kind voice, nice smile and gentle touch in caring for you because she felt care for you, or if she felt no more for than your dishwasher, but only followed her programming?

TRB

The Big Club/Party

Look around you Americans. You can find blogs and web sites galore supporting the Democratic slash liberal point of view or the Republican slash conservative point of view. Do you honestly think that your country or your world can be reduced to these two "views"? Suppose it were all a kind of "shell game" designed to make the bleating masses think they actually have choices, that they have the power, that the political world revolves around them and their desires. Suppose that in the US anyway, there were no competing parties at all, just one Big Party, you could call the Republicrats or Demopublicans. One endless game of "good cop, bad cop".

The Urban Dictionary (Definition 3), describes it this way:

Overall, the concept that the two political parties in the US are actually indistinguishable - the party of ONE. The two parties are not actually parties but rather, two halves of a symbiotic system. They are indistinguishable because the output of the system remains the same, regardless of which half is 'in power'. Either half, when 'out-of-power,' is obligated to obstruct ANY/ALL progress by the other half while screaming the half 'in power' is about to destroy the country. All problems and issues of the country are explained as having been caused by the other half.
In this party, you don't vote FOR a President, you defensively vote AGAINST the other candidate. You choose 'lesser' evils. If you give the Presidency to one half, you generally try to give Congress to the other half to minimize the damage either half can do to you.
Because NEITHER half is interested in what the public wants, the single party therefore generates a lot of unhappiness. This dissatisfaction guarantees regular and routine trades of where they hold 'power.'

Well, that's just ridiculous "conspiracy theory" stuff. Really? When was the last time a President of the United States was neither a Democrat nor Republican? Millard Fillmore in 1850. He didn't get elected either, but got there through the death of Zachary Taylor. You have any idea how many other parties besides dems and pubs there are or have been in the US? Loads...that's a scientific term. Here's a list. So...in over 160 years not one single "third party" candidate, even ones with their own billions to spend on campaigns, have been elected? And this is just...coinky dink?

These are the qualifications for US President. So, if you meet those, you could be President, right? Pssst...if you actually believe that, it kinda puts you in the alien-lizard-people-run-the-world category. Oh, absotively do NOT take my word for it. Just try it yourself. Here's how to run for President. That's a little more realist list of qualifications...you may notice being rich is a biggie, though that alone won't do it. Ask Ross Perot.

A lot of people, even Republican people, say Sarah Palin is not qualified to be President. I'll go out on a limb and assume you agree with that. My question is why not? Really though, "cuz she's dipstick" or something like that really isn't an answer. Perhaps you might think you are more qualified than she. If so, how? Seriously, name one Presidential qualification you have that you don't think Sarah has. How much does being good looking or "telegenic" count? Remember a lot of folk liked John Edwards when he was running. I did. I thought he said a lot of stuff that sounded really good. He was very obviously a "viable" candidate; looked nice, professional, good speaker, was going for a major party nomination. If he had won, might he have been a good president? Suppose that John McCain had actually won and become President...do you think there would be a huge difference in the way things are now? I doubt it. I'm fairly sure The Agenda rolls right along through the decades and which "party" the President is in makes about as much difference to the state of the nation and world as which color shoes you wore today.

Here's a question; if the Patriot Act was a bad thing when Repub Bush did it, and most libs would say it is, I think, then is it still bad that Dem Obama keeps it going? Why would he do that? Is this act a conservative or a liberal act? Just how much difference is there between Obama and Bush anyway...or, for that matter, between any Dem and any Pub?

Lifting the Veil from S DN on Vimeo.

You can also watch the video here.

Ever heard the term "bread and circuses"? Ever notice how many more of us there are now who are lucky to have any bread? But, boy don't we have our circuses... I think most of us really liked George Carlin. In this riff he goes off on the big club that you and I ain't in. How come, for some folk, when George said this stuff it was way cool, but when some other folk said the same thing, they were conspiracy nuts? What, it's only ok to say this stuff if you laugh about it? George was a comedien, he didn't mean any of it? Go George...

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