"The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact." - KURT GÖDEL
"According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".
A guiding principle for accepting claims of catastrophic global events, miracles, incredible healing, invisible friends, or fill in the blank is:
“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” - Carl Sagan
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - H. L. Mencken
I would add irrational and highly delusional to the mix when faith requires one to accept magical violations of the well known, well tested or easily demonstrated laws of Nature. - PWL
"Science is Progress and the Future. Faith is regression to the Dark Ages." - PWL
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” - Carl Sagan
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
"Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." - Alfred Korzybski
"Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence." - James Randi
"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch." - Novalis
"Nullius in verba. Take no one's word for it." - Motto of the Royal Society
"I'm trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS." - Richard Feynman
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley
“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein
"Science is empirical. Knowing the answer means nothing. Testing your knowledge means everything." - Lawrence Krauss
"Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism - and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency." - Stephen Jay Gould
"Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work." - James Randi
Ok this is bizarre. Somebody has already retouched the Newly Released Certificate of Life Birth that Obama released today. Heck it’s not even been a day and it’s been retouched.
Hold on, the PDF file is NOT just a bit map, the background pattern is just that with other images and items LAYERED on top of it. In other works it’s not one image it’s a composite set of images in the PDF document! For example there are multiple items making up the black parts of the image, the signature block at the bottom is clearly a bit map while the lines and labels seem to be text or other bit maps that highlight white while being drawn! This gets more interesting.
You can see this by saving the PDF and opening it in Adobe PDF Reader then resizing the window and watching it redraw, it redraws in layers a piece at a time quickly. Hmmm….
Could be just the way they do it in Hawaii… but it’s not just a scan of an image. This would also explain how they can easily get multiple different backgrounds, as that could easily be removed or changed with a PDF editing program!
Just the observed facts with questions. Please don’t shoot the messenger. I’m Canadian and really have no vested interest in this one way or the other, just curious about it.
What’s with the “green” background that looks so fake?
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are to entering to possess, and drives out before you many nations, and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy. Do not all any of them to live. This is what you are to do to them: break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their trees and burn them in the fire. For you are a people chosen by the Lord over all others on the face of the Earth.” – From the Old Testament of the Bible, Deuteronomy 7: 1-2, 5-6.
When God is on our side we can commit any crime. We are absolved individually from that crime by believing that we have a higher sanction and that is the danger of religion in that it allows people to do that, it allows them to kill without a shred of conscience. ” – Kevin Annett, former minister
Kevin Annett was expelled from the United Church for bring this matter of their crimes to their attention. Finally a priest with some actual ethics and morals who wouldn’t take it up the ass from his church hierarchy. Read the rest of this entry »
Actual Science vs Faith in Anthropomorphic Global Warming Climate Change (click to enlarge).
“One of the key features of Hansen’s global warming theory is that the polar regions are supposed to warm much faster than the rest of the planet. The image below is from his classic 1984 paper, and shows that Antarctica is supposed to warm up 6C after a doubling of CO2. If the cooling trend which UAH shows continues, it will take Antarctica a very long time to warm up six degrees.” – [1]
There is very little difference between what Hansen is doing and the old time soothsayers. Sure Hansen has computers with which to ply his magical tricks of math and dead tree entrails are at the core of his “dire doomsday” climate predictions. It’s the same old confidence game just different means of deception.
Bishop Hill [1] and WUWT [2] are reporting on the success of British beurocrates in letting the Climategate CRU criminals, Phil Jones, et. al. at UEA, escape from penalties for their frauds and cover up under the FOI Laws:
“I was told that while there appeared to be a problem, I needed to be clear that there would be no prosecutions under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, regardless of the final outcome of the investigation. Although withholding or destroying information is a criminal offence under the terms of the Act, apparently no prosecutions can be brought for offences committed more than six months prior. As anyone who has made a UK FoI request knows, it can take six months to exhaust the internal review process before the ICO even becomes involved. The ICO can then take another six months before starting his investigation.”
“Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has once again accused the United States of playing God. But this time it’s Haiti’s disastrous earthquake that he thinks the U.S. was behind. Spanish newspaper ABC quotes Chavez as saying that the U.S. navy launched a weapon capable of inducing a powerful earthquake off the shore of Haiti. He adds that this time it was only a drill and the final target is … destroying and taking over Iran.”
Maybe Hugo Chavez is using too much of his country’s local white powdery substances mixed in his coffee.
Any weapon capable of causing an earthquake of a 7.0 magnitude would have itself registered as a bomb detonation on the seismic sensors. Bombs and earthquakes have different seismic signatures in the data streams that are recorded.
The following video shows the results of a deep programming and cult inculcation of a “radical ecological green” belief system. This deep devotional commitment is in part fostered during a long period of fasting and indoctrination with fellow cult members. It is very disturbing as it reveals a deeply commuted individual that would be willing to take just about any action in “the revolution”.
“Ecological Sustainability is an absolute unequivocal non-negotiable necessity. … Long Live the Revolution!” – “Paul”, a member of the Cult of Ecological Sustainability aka “Climate Justice”
A very dangerous video for anyone who falls for it. At the end under the increasing music he utters “Long Live the Revolution!”.
The deep and disturbing power of belief in ecological sustainability at any cost forms the foundation of The Potently Dangerous Militant Cult of Ecological Sustainability.
Before Al Gore there was and remains Darth Maurice Strong.
“I’m convinced that prophets of Doom have got to be taken seriously. In other words doomsday is a possibility.” – Darth Maurice Strong, BBC Interview, 1972.
“I found that people were turned on that our Earth was in danger, and that our own life depends on the Earth and having a hospitable environment, and so how to translate that into a political kind of energy that would move the governments to do the right things in Stockholm [and by extension Copenhagen], to take the right decisions.” – Darth Maurice Strong.
“Today, Maurice Strong sits atop the global environmental movement headed by the United Nations and its interlocking NGO’s and tax-exempt foundations.
Strong is considered to be the person behind the globalization of the foundation-funded environmental movement, and was the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in 1972, in Stockholm, Sweden.
He co-authored the ‘Earth Charter’ with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1992. It was Gorbachev who stated in 1996 that the “threat of environmental crisis will be the ‘international disaster key’ that will unlock the New World Order.”
In 2004 the BBC aired this series of three one hour long documentaries on how the political class has seized upon the Power of Nightmares to control the population through fear and intimidation.
The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. Its three one-hour parts consist mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis’s narration. The series was first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and has subsequently been broadcast in multiple countries and shown in several film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
The films compare the rise of the Neo-Conservative movement in the United States and the radical Islamist movement, making comparisons on their origins and claiming similarities between the two. More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to unite and inspire their people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies.
The Power of Nightmares has been praised by film critics in both Britain and the United States. Its message and content have also been the subject of various critiques and criticisms from conservatives and progressives.
[Alan] Curtis has a remarkable feel for the serendipity of such moments, and an obsessive skill in locating them. “That kind of footage shows just how dull I can be,” he admits, a little glumly. “The BBC has an archive of all these tapes where they have just dumped all the news items they have ever shown. One tape for every three months. So what you get is this odd collage, an accidental treasure trove. You sit in a darkened room, watch all these little news moments, and look for connections.”
I wonder how the Climate Scares(tm) fit into the theorized Power of Nightmares Control System that we see taking hold in every country around the world? For the Climate Scares of yelling fire and doom in An Inconvenient Truth sure seem to have worked their scary magic. Al Gore fits into this in so many scary ways.
Politics – The Power of Nightmares, (Part 1/3), “Baby it’s Cold Outside“ – by Adam Curtis, BBC
The first part of the series explains the origin of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism. It shows Egyptian civil servant Sayyid Qutb, depicted as the founder of modern Islamist thought, visiting the U.S. to learn about the education system, but becoming disgusted with what he saw as a corruption of morals and virtues in western society through individualism. When he returns to Egypt, he is disturbed by westernisation under Gamal Abdel Nasser and becomes convinced that in order to save society it must be completely restructured along the lines of Islamic law while still using western technology. He also becomes convinced that this can only be accomplished through the use of an elite “vanguard” to lead a revolution against the established order. Qutb becomes a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and, after being tortured in one of Nasser’s jails, comes to believe that western-influenced leaders can justly be killed for the sake of removing their corruption. Qutb is executed in 1966, but he inspires the future mentor of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to start his own secret Islamist group. Inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, Zawahiri and his allies assassinate Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat, in 1981, in hopes of starting their own revolution. The revolution does not materialise, and Zawahiri comes to believe that the majority of Muslims have been corrupted by their western-inspired leaders and thus may be legitimate targets of violence if they do not join him.
An amazing editorial by the CBC’s Rex Murphy. Stunning in it’s clarity. Absolutely stunning. Breathtaking in it’s scope. A video that everyone interested in their planet must see.
Here is the Rex Murphy transcript interspersed with memorable quotes including an expanded quote from Clive Crook.
“When Jon Stewart the bantum rooster of conventional wisdom makes jokes about it you know Climategate has reached critical mass. Said Stewart: ‘Poor Al Gore, Global Warming completely debunked via the very internet he [you] invented.‘.
The Alleged Science Journal Nature wrote an editorial in response to the recent Climategate.
The science journal Nature reveals a pernicious “elitism” that is pervasive in science, that of being in the “in” group. One such “in” group is having the “proper scientific qualifications”.
Einstein’s was a “patent clerk” when he did his work on Relativity. Had an “in” group doing what the Climategate alleged scientists (Jones, Mann, et. al. ) or Nature keep his work from being reviewed, published and accepted we’d be much worse off as a society.
Another example is from the Climategate alleged scientists who’s “in” group meant anyone who “agreed with their hypothesis”.
The science journal Nature seems to have adopted both “in” group requirements. In groups form “cliques” or “cults” when the rules of membership get too constrained. The Climategate emails are rife with examples of this “in” group behaviors.
Unfortunately for science to work ANYONE must be allowed to access the data from ANY publicly funded science regardless of their “in” or “out” of group status.
We have seen Noam Chomsky’s principle of “Manufacturing Consent” working with the Climategate criminals Jones, Mann, et. al.. A conspiracy of “values and beliefs”, an elitist clique that thought that they were above the rest of the people they worked for, us. Other scientists have this “academic” elitist bias or shared value, that says that you need not just the “qualifications” but the “right attitude” otherwise you’re “outside the group”. Einstein broke the mold as have McIntyre and others, Einstein was a “patent clerk” when he worked on his famous breakthroughs.
Now we see it with Jon Stewart. While making light of the Climategate in a really funny way he reveals his bias in that he “believes” in “global warming” when he says “does it [Climategate] disprove global warming, no”. Unfortunately it’s much more complex than Jon Stewart realizes and that his shared values and beliefs in “global warming” blind him from deeper inquiry. OR, as a masterful media perception shaper he’s doing his job of making people laugh with short segments and the Climategate is way too much to get into and his demographic also shares his values in “global warming”.
In any event the science will clearly demonstrate what’s going on as time unfolds and Nature does what she does.
What’s interesting in Jon Stewart’s masterful media play is really how good he is at it.
Following on the Watts Up With That article on Google Trends I was curious. Naturally.
Spending a few minutes with Google Trends I typed in “Monckton” and the graph of searches goes up with time while the new reports go down with time. They, the mainstream news, seems to be avoiding Christopher Monckton like the plague.
As this Google Trend (link at bottom) shows this trend graph is troubling for a number of possible reasons.
For starters it is obvious that Christopher Monckton is having an impact through Al Gore’s Intertubes and alternative sources.
It’s also clear that Monckton is being avoided by the mainstream press, at least those that are included in the Google Trends.
Could it be the “manufacturing of consent” that Noam Chomsky talks about at length where it is “shared values and beliefs” that creates the “conspiracy” to subvert certain ideas, thoughts, and people or groups, and not an explicit phone call such as Al Gore calling up his fellow board members at Google and other friends at news companies and saying “down with Monckton” in the news?
Alas it’s not a question that is likely to be answered, although we did think that before the revelations of the Climategate emails, data and programs were released which confirmed the long suspected criminal behavior of Jones, Mann, et. al. and of the fraudulent activities of AGW promoters such as Al Gore.
I do wonder though what it will take for Christopher Monckton to breakout into the mainstream news media. Maybe his attendance at the up coming Copenhagen Climate Conference (of global domination) will enable him access to the mainstream press in ways that they can’t ignore? We’ll see. It certainly will enable one to see the “shared values” of the mainstream news media in a new light.
We have seen Noam Chomsky’s principle of “Manufacturing Consent” working with the Climategate criminals Jones, Mann, et. al.. A conspiracy of “values and beliefs”, an elitist clique that thought that they were above the rest of the people they worked for, us. Other scientists have this “academic” elitist bias or shared value, that says that you need not just the “qualifications” but the “right attitude” otherwise you’re “outside the group”. Einstein broke the mold as have McIntyre and others, Einstein was a “patent clerk” when he worked on his famous breakthroughs.
But wait there more of interest at the Google Trends.
Homerian Wisdom tells the tale of the shifting perception.
That’s a subtle way of putting it Homer. The inside tip of course are the Climate Research Unit (CRU)’s released emails. They were either released by (1) a hacker, (2) incompetence leaving the internally collected Freedom of Information (FOI) Requested information on a public server, or (3) a whistler blower intentionally leaving it on a public server.
Of course Al’s still at his game setting up his corporate pieces to position himself so that he can make billions in various ventures such as Carbon Credit Trading and other investments opened due to his propaganda now shown to have been based upon falsified and “mannipulated” techniques.
The entire basis for Al Gore’s claims using the infamous hockey stick graph has suspected of being based upon fraudulent science for some time. NOW there is evidence to back up these suspicions. As close to a smoking gun as you can get!
“This is not a smoking gun, this is a mushroom cloud.” – Climatologist Patrick J. Michaels on the CRU Files.
To quote the immortal word of Homer Simpson, “Doh!”.
This is a potentially a very serious issue should these charges be proven. Should criminal charges be laid against Dr. Mann and members his close inbred network of 40 or more climate scientists who very possibly manipulated the data to achieve political and career ends and in the process distorted science with fraudulent activities? Certainly it’s unethical science that has been conducted. Time will tell who goes to jail or has their career in science ended for their role in doing the alleged fraudulent climate science of Dr. Mann and his cohorts.
“This is horrible,” said Pat Michaels, a climate scientist at the Cato Institute in Washington who is mentioned negatively in the emails. “This is what everyone feared. Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult for anyone who does not view global warming as an end-of-the-world issue to publish papers. This isn’t questionable practice, this is unethical.”
…
“Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics’ research was unwelcome: We “will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday.”
– Wall Street Journal
This documentary is a good companion to the latest documentary,”The Great Global Warming Swindle” recently shown on CH 4 UK and is available on Google video. The hoax of Global Warming / Green House was exposed 19 years ago by CH 4 UK in this documentary entitled Green House Conspiracy. Those who subscribe to the rubbish trotted out by Al Gore and his mindless followers are not new they were the same arse clowns who were telling us we were all going to freeze to death 30 years ago.
What The FUCK? Almost every aspect of this video from 19 years ago is exactly the same as it is today!!!! Wow, nothing has changed. The warmies are still crying wolf. I wonder who let them out of the asylum?
This time the Math of Zombies tells us like it is: basically were all doomed to either be eaten alive for our brains (highly nutritious component of the Zombie Diet not to mention very addictive) or be converted into a zombie and eat the brains of the rest of us. Take your pick: be the food or the eater of the food.
“A zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. ”
“Zombies are … usually … brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions …. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection, determine equilibria and their stability, and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions. We then refine the model to introduce a latent period of zombification, whereby humans are infected, but not infectious, before becoming undead. We then modify the model to include the effects of possible quarantine or a cure. Finally, we examine the impact of regular, impulsive reductions in the number of zombies and derive conditions under which eradication can occur. We show that only quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario: the collapse of society as zombies overtake us all.” – Math of Zombies (pdf paper)!
First off you should note that there is a fundamental flaw in the paper: it assumes that Zombie Attacks are not real but just in the movies! This is a way of keeping the secret while discussing this serious problem in academic papers! Zombies are as real as Jesus Christ! The more real you think Jesus Christ to be the more real Zombies are! Fantasies come alive in our brains and that is why Zombies of all kinds including Sweet Zombie Jesus want your brain! Don’t let them have it, remain belief and faith free by embracing Nature and Rational Thought and Science. May your brains survive the Zombie Attacks of religion, faith and belief in the supernatural and may you avoid having the delusion of an invisible friend in the sky who will save you from death with the false promise of an everlasting life! Obliterate faith and belief in delusions that can’t be proven since that is how they get your live brains and then control you sucking the independence and life out of you! Face it, the only way to exist is to not have your brains eaten by the Zombie Virus and other mind eaters!
An outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead. While aggressive quarantine may eradicate the infection, this is unlikely to happen in practice. A cure would only result in some humans surviving the outbreak, although they will still coexist with zombies. Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time.
Furthermore, these results assumed that the timescale of the outbreak was short, so that the natural birth and death rates could be ignored. If the timescale of the outbreak increases, then the result is the doomsday scenario: an outbreak of zombies will result in the collapse of civilisation, with every human infected, or dead. This is because human births and deaths will provide the undead with a limitless supply of new bodies to infect, resurrect and convert. Thus, if [WHEN] zombies arrive, we must act quickly and decisively to eradicate them before they eradicate us.
The key difference between the models presented here and other models of infectious disease is that the dead can come back to life.
In summary, a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.
The extremely high dilutions in homeopathy have been a main point of criticism. Homeopaths believe that the methodical dilution of a substance, beginning with a 10% or lower solution and working downwards, with shaking after each dilution, produces a therapeutically active “remedy”, in contrast to therapeutically inert water. However, homeopathic remedies are usually diluted to the point where there are no molecules from the original solution left in a dose of the final remedy.[81] Since even the longest-lived noncovalent structures in liquid water at room temperature are only stable for a few picoseconds,[87] critics have concluded that any effect that might have been present from the original substance can no longer exist.[88] No evidence of stable clusters of water molecules was found when homeopathic remedies were studied using NMR.[89]
Furthermore, since water will have been in contact with millions of different substances throughout its history, critics point out that any glass of water is therefore an extreme dilution of almost any conceivable substance, and so by drinking water one would, according to homeopathic principles, receive treatment for every imaginable condition.[90]
Practitioners of homeopathy contend that higher dilutions (fewer potential molecules in each dose) result in stronger medicinal effects. This idea is inconsistent with the observed dose-response relationships of conventional drugs, where the effects are dependent on the concentration of the active ingredient in the body.[82] This dose-response relationship has been confirmed in multitudinous experiments on organisms as diverse as nematodes,[91] rats,[92] and humans.[93]
Physicist Robert L. Park, former executive director of the American Physical Society, has noted that
“since the least amount of a substance in a solution is one molecule, a 30C solution would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance dissolved in a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of water. This would require a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth.”
Park has also noted that “to expect to get even one molecule of the ‘medicinal’ substance allegedly present in 30X pills, it would be necessary to take some two billion of them, which would total about a thousand tons of lactose plus whatever impurities the lactose contained“.
The laws of chemistry state that there is a limit to the dilution that can be made without losing the original substance altogether. This limit, which is related to Avogadro’s number, is roughly equal to homeopathic potencies of 12C or 24X (1 part in 1024).
Killing your child with the delusional beliefs of Homeopathy:
Going to jail for killing your child with the delusional beliefs of Homeopathy:
The Thriller Zombie Attack Strikes Yet Again in it’s myriad of ways infecting the population with an insatiable desire to consume Michael Jackson content.
Some think that this phenomenon is because no one truly had a happy childhood and others speculate it’s because most people just haven’t become adults yet. Either way or yet another way it doesn’t matter… this could be the last time the wave of The Thriller Zombie Attacks occur and for that many of us will be grateful. Although we need to be prepared for yet another wave as soon as the test results from The Thriller Zombie corpse inspection(s) have been released.
And woe be to the world if foul play occurred. Well some do consider that “foul play” did occur and were paid off handsomely (sorry for the choice of that word). In any event is this the last time we’ll see The Thriller Zombie Attack or will it strike again?
Seriously the NET aka The Intertubes aka the Internet has come under what is now known as The Thriller Zombie Attack since Michael Jackson died last Thursday afternoon. Google’s network defenses classified the up swelling in Thriller Zombies searching for news about Michael Jackson as a coordinated Denial Of Service Attack against it’s services and shut down for a time! Yikes.
Google has confirmed that the surge of Michael Jackson-related searches on Google News Thursday was first interpreted as an attack on its service.
Google News was inaccessible for some people Thursday afternoon right as rumors of Jackson’s death began to circulate, replaced by an error message reading “We’re sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.“
Many news services also collapsed under the load of hordes of zombies with swelling Live Brains ripe for the plucking by The Thriller Zombie even and especially in His Death. Even the money grubbing advertisers servers couldn’t handle the volume of Zombies hitting their ad servers. Server defenses just can’t handle a good sized Zombie Horde!
He will return as all Zombie Overlords like Elvis, Jesus and Spike Lee… oh wait Spike is still kicking making awesome movies… there’s still time… they will return I’m told by the people who visit my door once a week with the Watch Towers of Doom!
A zombie computer (often shortened as zombie) is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, a computer virus, or a trojan horse. Generally, a compromised machine is only one of many in a botnet, and will be used to perform malicious tasks of one sort or another under remote direction. Most owners of zombie computers are unaware that their system is being used in this way. Because the owner tends to be unaware, these computers are metaphorically compared to zombies.
Paul Erdős (occasionally spelled Erdos or Erdös; Hungarian: Erdős Pál, pronounced [ˈɛrdøːʃ ˈpaːl]; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was an immensely prolific and famously eccentric Hungarian mathematician. Erdős published more papers than any mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. He worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory.
Because of his prolific output, friends created the Erdős number as a humorous tribute; Erdős alone was assigned the Erdős number of 0 (for being himself), while his immediate collaborators could claim an Erdős number of 1, their collaborators have Erdős number at most 2, and so on. Some have estimated that 90 percent of the world’s active mathematicians have an Erdős number smaller than 8 (not surprising in light of the small world phenomenon). It is jokingly said[25] that Baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron has an Erdős number of 1 because they both autographed the same baseball when Emory University awarded them honorary degrees on the same day. Erdős numbers have also been humorously assigned to an infant, a horse, and several actors.
One day a Novice came to the Master.
“Master,” he said, “How is it that I may become a Writer of Programs?”.
The Master looked solemnly at the Novice.
“Have you in your possession a Compiler of Source Code?” the Master asked.
“No,” replied the Novice. The Master sent the Novice on a quest to the Store of Software.
Many hours later the Novice returned.
“Master,” he said, “How is it that I may become a Writer of Programs?”.
The Master looked solemnly at the Novice.
“Have you in your possession a Compiler of Source Code?” the Master asked.
“Yes,” replied the Novice.
The Master frowned at the Novice.
“You have a Compiler of Source. What now can prevent you from becoming a Writer of Programs?”.
The Novice fidgeted nervously and presented his Compiler of Source to the Master.
“How is this used?” asked the Novice.
“Have you in your possession a Manual of Operation?” the Master asked.
“No,” replied the Novice.
The Master instructed the Novice as to where he could find the Manual of Operation. Read the rest of this entry »
“It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.” – Michael T. Eckhart, president of the environmental group the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), wrote in an email on July 13, 2007 to Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)
In every way imaginable, that is real, science and objective humanism obliterates not just religion but the need for religion as well. Objective Reality, Nature, what is real verses what is fantasy and delusional beliefs that an invisible super being that violates all of, or the vast majority of, the known and well tested laws of science, laws of Nature, and even the nature of Nature is very clear.
Dead bodies don’t rise from the dead once brain death, organ death, heart death, and cell death have set in – not even in modern hospitals can that be achieved. The only gods that exist are the ones within the skulls of believers, the fantasy gods that they construct to avoid the harsh facts of life: that they, that all, will die the permanent death without any life after death. Even the memories of our lives left behind with those still alive will fade with time and the passing of the ages. Even the Earth and all that is on it will perish given time and celestial events in our solar system.
That which makes us unique in space and time and in biology passes into oblivion from whence we came in time. There is no hope of an eternal salvation. Hope itself is a great killer of minds. The kind of hope that supports delusional thinking that that which is impossible in Nature can happen, that hope dooms you and all to a path of delusional fantasies of rising dead bodies, of the doom of death avoided, of walking on water, of all the other miracles that require the other great killer of minds and free will, faith.
Pernicious faith, the evil of the ages roosting within the dark minds of it’s committed adherents. Faith the denier of objective reality. Faith the denier of that which is real and the limits of reality. The dead only come back to life in zombie movies and other silly mythologies only most people can tell that zombie movies are fantasy yet for some reason those same people can’t tell that their jesus is also just a fantasy delusion of epic proportions. The act of faith kills the best minds and brings them into the fold of the cult of death that each and every religion or faith on earth represents. A cult focused on selling life immortal if only you’d make your donations as a good member. The greatest con game perpetrated upon the human species by their fellows.
Oh, I went to the midnight showing of the action fantasy film, “Angels & Demons”. As far as action goes, it’s got that in spades. Intrigue, for sure. Suspense, yup. Delusional fantasies, absolutely tons of delusionals all over the screen spouting their silly beliefs of gods and demons. They even have a pope as an action figure! Never saw that one coming! Overall a good movie if you can stomach the religious nonsense and not take any of it seriously; if you do you know that you’re beyond the typical religious delusional and are into the total nut job category. They even have a really big boom. I’ll have to say that the cinematography was awesome but the music was one of the best parts of the film. Yes, it’s pretty much 24 meets the Vatican conspiracy chest of delusions. Bright light, bright light.
Of course the movie opens with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and spins a technobabble story with, oh scary, antimatter! Yikes. How about some real science to correct the silly myths that Angels & Demons took extreme liberties with.
Don’t know if this last one qualifies as science but what the heck.
If you like history this is an awesome documentary of the battle of Crete and the insurgent resistance that took hold during the Nazi occupation of the island. Nasty stuff which shows that the invaders are never in the right from the perspective of those they occupy. A lesson the USA should learn before it bites them hard again.
These photos and video where taken in Vancouver, BC, Canada a few weeks ago. Yes, it is a real surveillance helicopter… just don’t know who’s they are flying it for… Vancouver Police? CSIS (Canada’s spy agency)? RCMP? News? Someone else?
The chopper was flying near Vancouver General Hospital however it’s NOT a medical chopper as it didn’t land on the hospital like many choppers do. No, it circled for a while, maybe five to ten minutes… My Cannon G9 camera wasn’t going to get any better shots… need an SLR with a telephoto lens for that… besides I wanted closeups with the photo function of the camera. Anyway these are max optical zoom with digital zoom due to cropping and image magnification… otherwise no filters or touch ups… I tried a sharpen but it didn’t really help as the G9 is a bit grainy when you zoom in lots.
Here are some close up shots taken with the same camera in photo mode.
Can anyone tell what kind of chopper this is? What kind of camera is that? What are it’s capabilities? Whose chopper is it?
As anyone who knows anything about biology will tell you, dead bodies can’t rise from the dead once they have experienced brain death or their heart stops and their organs die. Sure in a modern medical hospital or with CPR a heart can sometimes be restarted, not as frequently as TV lets us believe, but ~2008 years ago they didn’t know about CPR or have emergency rooms anywhere on the planet!
Nature is a harsh mistress which is to say that not even a man named Jesus can rise from the dead once his brain stopped it’s biological processes, once his heart stopped, once his organs stopped. Also, three days of rotting would also prevent him from looking good.
So enjoy your myth with the sure and certain knowledge backed up by the biological sciences of cold hard objective reality, Jesus’s resurrection is a myth and nothing more.
The purpose of the myth is to get you to suspend your rational thinking process so that you can be a good member of the flock and bow down to the cult of the church or congregation. The purpose of the myth is to compromise your thinking process so much so that you can be controlled by the leaders of the cult who desire to take advantage of your gullibility.
The purpose of the Resurrection of Jesus Myth is to suck you into their death after life cult and all that it entails.
The problem with conspiracies is that there can be truth to them even while they are stitched together in paranoid delusions. How do you tell if they are really occurring or not? Hmmm…