"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
“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 »
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.
The Solaranite Theory of Climate Change starts around 3:00 into the flick.
Solaranite Theory of Rapid Anthropomorphic Climate Change: “Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe.“
The details of the Solaranite Climate Change Theory come to light in this following riveting conversation. Pun intended.
Eros, the leader, confronts a group of skeptical earthlings with the true nature of his plan. The scientific minds of Earth are on a treacherous course of weapons discovery that will eventually lead to a bomb that could explode the whole universe, the “Solaranite Bomb”.
Colonel Edwards: Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our earth?
Eros: Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots!
Jeff Trent: Now you just hold on, Buster.
Eros: No, you hold on! First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade: you began to kill your own people, a few at a time. Then the bomb. Then a larger bomb: many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb, split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you can arrange the total destruction of the entire universe served by our sun: The only explosion left is the Solaranite.
Colonel Tom Edwards: Why, there’s no such thing! Why, a particle of sunlight can’t even be seen or measured.
Eros: Can you see or measure an atom? Yet you can explode one! A ray of sunlight is made up of many atoms.
Jeff Trent: So what if we do develop this Solaranite bomb? We’d be even a stronger nation than now.
Eros: “Stronger.” You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The impassioned plea continues with an appeal to intelligence and metaphor.
Colonel Edwards: You speak of Solaranite. But just what is it?
Eros: Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe. This is why you must be stopped. This is why any means must be used to stop you. In a friendly manner or as (it seems) you want it.
Al Gore’s wettest dreams of global destruction don’t even come anywhere close to this awesome beyond awesome film, 2012! Sorry Al, just like your film An Inconvenient Truth, 2012 is just science fiction – none of it’s going to happen (unless we don’t stop the asteroid – see below!!!!). So sit back with your drink and pop corn and enjoy the ride!
Ok, the real trailer for the film (short version):
A pretty funny review of the movie with N special effects, where N is ___!
The second trailer, medium length. Awesome!
The full on third hard core extended version of the trailer that really shows mega destruction!!! YES!!! Al Gore eat your heart out! Oh, this one can only be viewed at youtube… since they turned off embedding….
Oh the FEAR! Soothsayers predicting DOOM and DESTRUCTION!!! Yikes!!!
Nope, no hard science behind the warnings! No soothsayers can’t predict the future! Sorry Al Gore, that includes climate soothsayers in the ninny crowd of those that can’t predict the future!
But does it have Nazi’s or Zombies??? Nope, for that you’ll need to see this film.
This is the real concern that we face:
Oh, the lunacy. You’ve got to love how insane we humans really are…
On August 7, 1974, shortly after 7:15 a.m., Petit stepped off the South Tower and onto his 3/4″ 6×19 IWRC (independent wire rope core [3]) steel cable. The 24-year-old Petit made eight crossings between the mostly finished towers, a quarter mile above the sidewalks of Manhattan, in an event that lasted about 45 minutes. During that time, in addition to walking, he sat on the wire, gave knee salute and, while lying on the wire, spoke with a gull circling above his head.
Port Authority Police Department Sgt. Charles Daniels, who was dispatched to the roof to bring Petit down, later reported his experience:
I observed the tightrope ‘dancer’—because you couldn’t call him a ‘walker’—approximately halfway between the two towers. And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire….And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle….He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again….Unbelievable really….[E]verybody was spellbound in the watching of it.[4]
Petit was warned by his friend on the South Tower that a police helicopter would come to pick him off the wire unless he got off. Rain had begun to fall, and Petit decided he had taken enough risks, so he decided to give himself up to the police waiting for him on the South Tower. He was arrested once he stepped off the wire. Provoked by his taunting behaviour while on the wire, police handcuffed him behind his back and roughly pushed him down a flight of stairs. This he later described as the most dangerous part of the stunt.[5]
His audacious high wire performance made headlines around the world. When asked why he did the stunt, Petit would say “When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk.”
He crossed EIGHT TIMES and danced while doing it!!! You’re kidding right? Nope…
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TXrMLKDu5g]
Very amazing. Beyond words amazing. Indelible WOW!
A true tribute.
Man on Wire is an Academy Award-winning 2008 documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center. It is based on Philippe Petit’s book, To Reach the Clouds, recently released in paperback with the new title Man on Wire. The title of the movie is taken from the police report that led to the arrest (and later release) of Petit, whose performance had lasted for almost one hour. The film is crafted like a heist film, presenting rare footage of the preparations for the event and still photographs of the walk, alongside reenactments (with Paul McGill as the young Petit) and present-day interviews with the participants.
What in your life gets you to take risks and get to your edge of peak performance?
Philippe Petit (born August 13, 1949) is a French high wire artist who gained fame for his high-wire walk between the Twin Towers (WTC) in New York City on August 7, 1974.[1] For his feat (that he referred to as “le coup” [2]), he used a 450-pound (200 kg) cable and a custom-made 26-foot (7.9 m) long, 55-pound (25 kg) balancing pole.
Tight-rope walker, unicyclist, magician and pantomime artist, Petit was also one of the earliest modern day street jugglers in Paris, having begun his career in 1968. He juggled and worked on a slack rope with regularity in Washington Square Park in New York City in the early 1970s. Other famous structures he has used for tightrope walks include Notre Dame de Paris, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Louisiana Superdome, the Hennepin County Government Center, and between the Palais de Chaillot and the Eiffel Tower.
The documentary film Man on Wire by UK director James Marsh, about Petit’s 1974 WTC performance, won both the World Cinema Jury and Audience awards at the Sundance Film Festival 2008. The film also won awards at the 2008 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, N.C. and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Petit is one of the Artists-in-Residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. He currently lives in Woodstock, New York.
Learning to tight rope walk. Not as easy as Petit makes it look.
Finally the real cause of Global Warming is Revealed!!! It’s ALIENS! Yes, ALIENS are TerrorFroming Earth for their liking! It’s V all over again (oh they are remaking V too which is too cool…)!
She’s an ex-model. He’s an elite commando. They’re going to solve global warming – by stopping the aliens who are causing it!
The most important question: Is Al Gore a Lizard creature hell bent on terrorforming Earth? Yes, inquiring minds want to know!
Al Gore on a terrorforming rampage!
This, ahem, theory of “Global Warming as Caused By Aliens” (Alien Global Warming AGW) has about as much credence as the Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW)! Oh, wait, the above video is indisputable proof of the Alien caused Global Warming! So now the science is settled as in the Aliens have Settled on Earth terrorformed by Global Warming!!!
Has anyone noticed Gore’s red eyes?
All in good fun… the only reason I poke fun at the AGW crowd is that they think the science is settled… science is just about never settled in the sense that asking questions is at the core of science… asking questions and VERIFYING the answers with EXPERIMENTS to confirm or refute the hypothesis! For example, new particles are being discovered which upset the standard model… or at least require it to be rethought at regular intervals. Were are the experiments that “settle the science” of “anthropomorphic global warming”? Lacking basic methods of science isn’t having the science settled. Anyway it’s a fun little movie that provides more evidence for Alien caused Global Warming that I’ve ever seen for Anthropomorphic Global Warming and you’ve gotta love that!!!
Inglorious Bastards is a 2009 epic ensemble war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, it has the largest number of speaking roles of any Tarantino film to date and was filmed in several locations, among them Germany and France.[2] Filming began in October 2008.[3] The title (and partial premise) of the upcoming film are inspired by Italian director Enzo Castellari’s 1978 movie Inglorious Bastards, but it is not a remake of that film.
The director has repeatedly stressed that despite it being a war film, the movie will be his “spaghetti-western but with World War II iconography”.[4] In addition to spaghetti-westerns, the film also pays homage to the World War II “macaroni-combat” sub-genre (itself heavily influenced by spaghetti-westerns), as well as films by Jean-Luc Godard.
Inglorious Basterds is Tarantino at his absolute best! I highly recommend this film although it’s not for the squeamish. Surprisingly a higher percentage of women then they expected are going to see Brad, so it’s a great date movie too. Get those juices flowing!
Quel maledetto treno blindato (literally translated as That damned armored train and released as Inglorious Bastards in the USA) is a 1978 Italian war movie directed by Enzo G. Castellari, written by Sandro Continenza, Sergio Grieco, Franco Marotta, Romano Migliorini, & Laura Toscano, and starring Bo Svenson, Peter Hooten, Fred Williamson, Michael Pergolani, and Jackie Basehart. It was released in 1977. The film score was written by Francesco De Masi.
Rather than wasting resources on the myth of global warming we should be putting all of our resources into preventing and averting the inevitable asteroid impacts that will befall Earth given time. To do nothing is irresponsible.
Drag Me To Hell is one of the funniest movies I’ve seen a very long time. Sure it’s got gore, squirting blood, absurdities and of course nasty monsters and all but it’s one funny scary spine tingling movie! On the LTS scale it gets FIVE spine tingles with three of them being full body tingles and two nice spine tingles! Just when it’s funny is when they pull the scary bits making for an excellent unexpected surprise. Sure the pregnant woman to my right had a look of disgust on her face whenever I looked… her husband seemed to enjoy the film though… on my left was another woman clinging to her man with a smile on her face… if you like to squirm this movie has got it in store for you as it drags you to hell! This really is a movie to see in the theaters since the audience reaction is part of the fun!
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.
No not the extreme Al Gore and his carbon trading business partner David Blood but really BLOODY GORE follows.
Well, to speak truth Al Gore does have a lot of blood on his hands as he was Vice President for many years but that is a different story to tell on a different day, this story is about revenge sought out by The Machine Girl.
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.
Ridley Scott is talking about what preachers do with religion without any evidence. How is it that so many people are so convinced by their imagined god stories? Read the rest of this entry »
Get your popcorn, pull up a chair, press full screen and play! Enjoy this full feature film with Vincent Price in his full glory!
The Last Man on Earth (Italian title: L’Ultimo uomo della Terra) is a 1964 Italian horror/science fiction film based upon the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. The film was directed by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow, and starred Vincent Price. The script was written in part by Matheson, but he was dissatisfied with the result and was therefore credited as “Logan Swanson”. William Leicester, Furio M. Monetti, and Ubaldo Ragona were the other writers.
It was filmed in Rome, Italy, and was later released theatrically in the United States by American International Pictures. It has since fallen into the public domain.
…
In the year 1968, every day is the same for Dr. Robert Morgan (Vincent Price). He wakes up, gathers his weapons and then literally goes vampire hunting. Morgan lives in a world where everyone else has been infected by a new disease that turns them into vampire-like creatures. They cannot stand sunlight, fear mirrors, and are repelled by garlic. They would kill Morgan if they could, but fortunately, they are weak and not too smart. At night, Morgan locks himself inside his house listening to jazz on the hi-fi, and in the morning, he kills as many vampires as he can, destroying the bodies.
The film Knowing pretends that it’s Science Fiction yet is a full on brain injection of the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Arc and the Rapture with a twist which is that “aliens” aka “angels” steal away, well invite away, a small number of human children in a Noah’s Arc and take them to a new planet to start humanity again, a lush Eden with a giant white Tree of Life. Rabbits are along for the ride to show the kiddies how it’s done. Yes, that’s it.
This evenings full feature entertainment. Enjoy. Get some popcorn, a drink. Sit back and press play and full screen and enjoy. The lines are beyond fantastic into the realm of classic. 72 minutes.
The Brain that Wouldn't Die
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, also known as The Head That Wouldn’t Die, is a 1962 science-fiction/horror film directed by Joseph Green and written by Green and Rex Carlton. The film was actually produced and completed in 1959, but was not released until three years later. A scientist develops a means to keep human body parts alive. When he unexpectedly must use his discovery on someone close to him, events do not go as planned.
This film has fallen into the public domain and can be freely downloaded from the Internet Archive. A gaffe during the end titles lists the film’s name as “The Head That Wouldn’t Die.”
Scientists have found two large leaks in Earth’s magnetosphere, the region around our planet that shields us from severe solar storms. The leaks are defying many of scientists’ previous ideas on how the interaction between Earth’s magnetosphere and solar wind occurs: The leaks are in an unexpected location, let in solar particles in faster than expected and the whole interaction works in a manner that is completely the opposite of what scientists had thought.
Of course the SUN couldn’t be influencing the Earth right? It’s impossible for the extra energy increase to have come from the SUN? Maybe, maybe not. Prove which it is. We still don’t even know the full Nature of the dynamics of the SUN-Earth-Moon system yet we are certain the SUN isn’t causing all of the temperature increases? Where is the proof? Must comprehend complex subject…
Paths To Knowledge (dot Science) 