"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
One of many proofs against the existence of alleged gods goes as follows.
The Speed of Light Limit prevents all matter, energy and most importantly information from going faster than the speed of light, c. Since the universe is a very large place it takes a very long time for matter, energy or information to travel from one place to another should they not be near each other. For example the nearest star system to Earth’s Sol system that has a known planet is about 20 light years which means that it takes light and thus information 20 years to travel there.
The alleged gods are super alien beings because of their alleged super powers, specifically their alleged omni* powers, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, omnibenevolence aka omnievil.
Unfortunately for these alleged gods their omni* powers are not possible in the actual objective reality of Nature due to the limiting factor of the Speed of Light. Read the rest of this entry »
The Elite Cult members of Government, have been using peoples delusions and fears to trick them as elites of all political persuasions have done throughout history. In this case Obama is using peoples very real god delusions and fears of retribution from their alleged god as a means of connecting with and conning them. Obama also plays the climate doomsday wild claims fear card as well quite frequently.
“I will not respect a book of lies. I will not tolerate intolerance.
…
What we are witnessing are efforts by authorities to confer special secular and legal privilege on the intangible aura of sacredness — a figment of the imagination of deluded believers, which they insist all we non-believers must honor.
“Jesus Never Saved Anyone From Dying, Not Even Himself. Three Day Rotting Dead Corpses Shall Not Rise From The Dead, So Sayest Natural Biology! Sorry Zombie Fans.“
The profound deep arrogance of man is revealed in the self imposed delusional mythological belief systems from the Bronze Ages. Many people, purportedly the vast majority of people on Earth, believe that the universe was created for man. How arrogant. How sad. The cartoon above says it well.
Let’s get it through our thick skulls. The universe wasn’t created for human beings. We simple evolved here fighting and clawing our way from sub-cellular life to multi-cellular all the way up to human being. To say that the universe was created for us is so insulting to our ancestors that it isn’t funny- it does them a deep disrespect for it says that their struggle in the continuous chain of life from them to us was unnecessary and make believe just to suit the whims of some arrogant God that want’s to toy with us for his/her/it’s own designs.
Anyone who truly gets the notion of freedom and independence must reject the notions of arrogance implied and supported by the profoundly horrific self conceited notion that the universe was created for us.
Yeah, the planet is either cooling, staying the same or warming. Dah.
What amazes me is that they think they can find the causes in such a complex system and assign with any accuracy the percentage warming from each of their selected causes of warming or cooling or staying the same.
December 7th, 2009, a day that will go down in infamy! Not allowed to exhale anymore. You can inhale but no exhaling anymore. No running. No exercise. No mice that roar! Nope, can’t have CO2. Grrr… Arrrgg…
Scientific hypotheses are supposed to fall when they fail to make predictions and another hypothesis comes along that can predict better.
The AGW Hypothesis has failed to predict the cooling trend and now they are looking to explain it after their hypothesis was falsified by Mother Nature.
The Solar Weather Technique gets better results! Sometimes as accurate as 85% a year or so into the future! Now that’s impressive. What’s even more impressive is that he tracks his successes and failures to learn from them! Wait? A scientist learning from his failures? Seriously wow, epic!
As it stands the Solar Weather Technique is doing better than AGW!
The fact that the AGW Hypothesis Alarmist crowd keeps having varying explanations indicates that they hypothesis has once again failed as it shows little if any predictive powers beyond soothsaying with dead tree entrails!
It’s “manN made ” since Michael Mann, one of the primary Climategate alleged scientists, invented the hockey stick graph used in Al Gore’s science fiction film used to cry wolf and fire in crowded theaters everywhere. When we say he “invented” the graph that is saying he “made it up” as in faked the data with his fellow alleged climate scientists, Phil Jones, et. al.. They cooked the data books! They falsified the data which also happens to falsifies their hypothesis as well.
Climate change belief given same legal status as religion In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that “a belief in man-made climate change … is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations“.
An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs.
Facts do not matter anymore as belief in global warming is now officially recognized as a nutter religion!
(All religions are anti-scientific since they require faith above facts of Nature and Nature always wins thus the supernatural religions are false).
The Religion of Climate Change
He’s close “belief in human caused climate change is a religion” but it’s not that they’ll believe in anything its’ that they put “belief” above reason and facts and they’ve been convinced by the likes of Al Gore. It is not the lack of a belief in god that is the problem it is belief itself that is the problem, belief in god, belief in climate change caused by man (aka Mann) that is the real problem. When you are willing to “believe” rather that use reason to examine the facts of Nature that is when you take the irresponsible “leap of faith” into the land of being belief stricken with something that is more likely simply wrong than even having a hint of being right. Critical thinking and reason and the scientific method and open science with peer review by anyone are the tools we need to move forward as a society. Not belief in something. Belief and faith are the great mind killers and possibly the death of civilization as well.
The Religion of Climate Change, UN Ki Moon Cult
Yes indeed, sober scientific based discussion still has it’s place. No science is ever settled. If you think climate science is settled then you don’t know about the facts of climate science as much as you think you do. Not only that, but you also don’t understand the scientific method nor science eduction. Questions are essential of all science at all stages. To suppress discussion is anti-scientific.
To make scientific questions such as “mann made climate change” into a religion based upon belief is the height of insanity and irresponsible governance by the court and anyone else.
Over a period of 28 hours or so this long weekend I had a conversation with someone, CK, I met on Face Book who shared a common technical interest. We had a number of other exchanges with each other over the past few months but this one was different partly for it’s brutal honesty and partly since CK choose to jump out of what was likely the most important conversation of his life.
I managed to save a copy of the conversation moments before CK deleted my access (it was on his wall) and thus ending the conversation with us two. Likely he’s busy gathering agreement with his friends that I’m an evil no good person when in fact it’s likely that I’m one of his best new friends he’s ever had. Be that as it may, here is a non edited transcript (spelling corrections were made). Oh, from what I can tell CK is a young adult male with a gay lover and a roman catholic upbringing.
I hope this helps when talking with religious delusionals of all sorts but christians in particular since we deal with dispensing the christian miracle mythologies here.
I’ll add comments and expand my responses and even critique my own responses over the next few weeks or so as I have time to reread the transcript below and think longer it.
All the best and live long and prosper in peace. Your feed back and comments are appreciated.
PWL
ps. This Jesus and Mo comic is appropriate since CK’s solution for “resolving the incompatibilities” between science and religion is to become insane by fully embracing “cognitive dissonance” and not working to resolve the conflict even though he claims to work towards that end. More on this in the conversation. He also, as you will see, negotiates his way between these two incompatibilities by accepting part of Objectivism (it’s basic three axioms of existence, identity and consciousness) while maintaining his “faithful belief” in his invisible super friends even though acknowledging that objectivism provides “proof” that there are no gods other than those in human minds. Thus CK’s religious driven insanity.
CK: just wants to find SOMEONE who shares his philosophies… lol
PWL: What philosophy are yours?
CK: Except for the stance on matters of sexuality and religion, I’m a staunch objectivist. Go Ayn Rand!
I believe cognitive dissonance is the greatest evil in the universe.
That’s a good start to the summary. In essence, I believe you must accept a small set of axioms as true, and then use inductive logic based on that. If only I could put my axioms in words… lol
PWL: I am also a big fan of Ayn Rand.
People do work well together and can in many circumstances work towards their mutual benefit.
What do you mean by cognitive dissonance?
I’m confused by your sexuality considering you seem to be very catholic… seems mutually incompatible to me.
I’m confused by your religious stance and Ayn Rand, objectivism proves that your mythical god doesn’t exist and is just an artifact of your mind wanting comfort or what not. So you’re not a staunch objectivist if you believe in the mythical invisible super beings and thus the supernatural realm.
The real world doesn’t care about our philosophies since it doesn’t care about anything.
They are not axioms if they are not in words…
BUT then Leaps of Faith know no boundaries or limits and ignore any that are pointed out. That is the essential nature of a leap of faith, it destroys actual rational thinking with the emotional non-rational leap of faith.
“Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The “ideas” or “cognitions” in question may include attitudes and beliefs, the awareness of one’s behavior, and facts. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.[1] Cognitive dissonance theory is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.” – Cognitive Dissonance.
So if you believe “cognitive dissonance” is the greatest evil in the universe why do you practice it?
Why do you consider it evil?
MD: wow :{
CK: Sexuality: Rand didn’t exactly believe they should wait until they found the right one, and then stay with them the rest of their life. Yes, objectivism does reject the almighty.
When I say cognitive dissonance, I mean holding two apparently exclusive beliefs wihout batting an eye — it’s an offense to reason. In my case (objectivist Catholic), although you’d think they are exclusive, but the reason I believe they are not is that I do not blindly believe — I observe the positive effects of faith, I observe the evidence of miracles, and I make judgments for myself. I consider the beliefs and try to reason and justify them.
If I were to just say, “well, it is” THEN faith and reason would be exclusive. But to examine faith and try to reason about it, why you believe it even when you know science, then you have used reason. You just use inductive logic rather than deductive logic.
PWL: Actually you must use actual repeatable verifiable evidence not logic or some belief stricken dogma system…
As the saying goes you are mistaken about a great many things CK.
There are no real positive effects of faith that are not available without faith!
“Religion puts your mind in a straight jacket.” – Dr Death aka Doctor Jack Kevorkian
“Creeds are a weakness of the will. All religions are to make you conform to a different way of thinking than you feel naturally.” – Doctor Death aka Doctor Jack Kevorkian in part quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson.
“America fits all Fourteen Principles of fascism.” – Doctor Jack Kevorkian
The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism: here and here.
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause.
4. Supremacy of the Military..
5. Rampant Sexism.
6. Controlled Mass Media.
7. Obsession with National Security.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined.
9. Corporate Power is Protected.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption.
14. Fraudulent Elections.
In the video you prove the speed of light with a microwaved piece of chocolate.
Given the speed of light and that nothing can go faster than it, not even god this means that god can’t be omnipotent, omnipresent, nor omniscient. Since those are defining characteristics of they invisible friends known as god must have in order to be a god, god can’t possibly exist. Enjoy the chocolate while your god delusion melts down.
Sorry, that also means no FTL warp drive for all you sci-fans and Star Trek Fans. No, and no worm holes for you Star Gaters either – you’d be crushed and torn apart in an instant, oh wait you are… never to be reintegrated again, sorry Too Much Critical Information Lost (TMCIL).
Looking on the bright side of life, chocolate tastes awesome especially when microwaved.
Many of the sentences in the bible and beliefs uttered at church are in fact designed to be rules that the congregation – aka cult members – can use to identify members of the cult and to more importantly identify those who are not members of the cult and to whom they can treat differently, often harshly differently with torture, murder, rape, death and nasty killing methods. The koran does this with us heathen atheists and anti-theists. The bible does it with the quote above and many others.
Actually what it is giving is a practical and effective rule for keeping members of a cult, any cult, in the cult when their family comes to attempt to save them from their doom as a member of the cult. The cult makes it ok to murder your own family members if they try to extract you out of the cult or to not follow the leadership of the cult “lord”, whomever that might be: jesus, hitler, stalin, bush, jones, the pope, … the list is essentially endless although groups without this don’t count.
Thanks, I’ll be using to in a very important letter to my evangelical young earth creationist zombie jesus death cult focused preacher sister to put into her own “literal” taking of the bible how and why she obliterated my relationships with over eighteen people in my family. It’s her faith that destroyed our family of eight siblings, a still living mother, and all the inlaws and their offspring. Very sad situation which this passage clarifies directly to the heart of it. Thanks. Peace.
I must apologize, the video didn’t have that annoying RED BOX with it’s pernicious political propaganda splattered all over it when I linked to this video last week. I’ll find a version without that annoyance if I can. In the meantime ignore the red menace and listen to the video. – pwl
Yikes, even the US President Obama isn’t immune. It’s almost like the virus targeted him. It got close too given this report. Our bacterial and virus overlords are taking over finally.
The individual – an advance security staffer for Energy Secretary Steven Chu –appears to have spread the flu to his wife, son and nephew. All three have tested probable for swine flu, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said.
“While the GPL powers as much as 77% of all SourceForge projects, Eric Raymond argues that the GPL is ‘a confession of fear and weakness’ that ‘slows down open-source adoption’ because of the fear and uncertainty the GPL provokes. Raymond’s argument seems to be that if openness is the winning strategy, an argument Michael Tiemann advocates, wouldn’t it make sense to use the most open license? Geir Magnusson of the Apache Software Foundation suggests that there are few ‘pure’ GPL-only open-source projects, as GPL-prone developers have to ‘modify it in some way to get around the enforcement of Freedom(SM) in GPL so people can use the project.’ But the real benefit of Apache-style licensing may not be for developers at all, and rather accrue to businesses hoping to drive adoption of their products: Apache licensing may encourage broader, deeper adoption than the GPL. The old GPL vs. BSD/Apache debate may not be about developer preferences so much as new business realities.”
Wow finally!!! The truth is said in public clearly about the vile pernicious bankrupt philosophy of Richard Stallman: enforced freedom and enforced sharing.
I think we live in a…universe…in which the GPL is unnecessary rather than futile. Mind you, I am not claiming the GPL is entirely useless. It’s a signaling behavior, like wearing a crucifix or yarmulke or pentagram; it helps build trust groups. But it has costs, too.
It [the GPL and it’s GNU Cult Members] creates a lot of needless fear from potential allies and users who suspect they won’t be able to control their exposure, if they let it in… Is the GPL‘s utility as a form of in-group signaling worth the degree to which [of] fear and uncertainty about it slows down open-source adoption? Increasingly, I think the answer is no.
The GPL may be a community-building signaling device, but it is also a confession of fear and weakness. To believe that it matters, you have to believe that you live in a…universe where closed-source development is such an attractive proposition that you have to punish people for trying to move to it.
BSD wins for open source business hands down since it lets the developers (the only ones who actually matter from our point of view) do what ever the heck they want without being forced by communistic licensing terms of the GPL to give away our competitive advantage!!! If you don’t like that too bad for you. This is our point of view. You don’t have to like it or accept it for yourself but just don’t force your commune upon our income earning potential. Thanks.
Che-Stallman, Commune Overlord and Dictator of The GNU Communistic GPL Viral Infective Software Cult Clearly we don’t advise anyone to put their code under the GPL license as that means you’ve joined the dark side of the force. Why? For the reasons listed in this articles and others that describe how the GPL license is pernicious and a viral infection. It also imposes serious limitations when one wants to use otherwise good open source code within ones projects – it means that one can’t mix any GPL code into your own program without it being infected with the GPL virus. What a waste.
Che Guevara, a communist militant who was involved in the murders of many thousands of people. Although Richard Che-Stallman might not have murdered any people it’s clear that his cult has had a massive disruptive effect preventing open source developers from maximizing the potential of GPLed software due to the insane communistic restrictions of the GNU project and it’s GPL philosophy of Enforced Freedom which is a Faux Freedom. Heck, you can’t even load a GPLed DLL without infecting your code!!! How crazy is that!!!
Embrace Truly Free Software, BSD, MIT, Apache, et. al. (where et. al. excludes GPL like restrictive licenses) to ensure your freedom.
Uncouth Hippie Icky Richard Stallman, the Publicly Rude Slob-Icky Poster Child of Open Source.
Get a bathroom dude. Wash your hands with soap for ten minutes Ricahrd. Now we know NEVER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES to shake Richard Stallman’s hands as we know that he doesn’t even care where he puts them. Tasty toe jam there Richard? Ick dude, get some manners Richard Stallman. Ok this is just too much to handle. Ick.
Most users never care about code. They simply want their system to work. It’s programmers who care about code.
If I want something you GPLers created I simply use it without paying you anything. There are ways around the GPL rules. Simply stick the darn program into it’s own space and only make essential minimal if any changes to it. Keep it a separate program wrapped in a protective condom to keep the GPL virus from infecting my code with it’s silly and stupid license terms that would convert my code into the GPL commune. No thanks, my code stays mine.
I have contributed some of my code to the GPL but always I have a dual license with the BSD license providing the true freedom for other coders (the only ones who matter are coders not end users) and even users.
Many projects are BSD-style licensed without the need to enforce sharing. That’s what the GPL does, it enforces sharing but it creates a nasty pernicious situation where if it’s included into your program ALL your code in that program becomes infected with the GPL virus license. Why? That’s totally insane terms. Just because I compile a source file into my program space ALL my other code in that space MUST become GPLed. Insanity.
So as a result wrap GPL code in separate program spaces to keep it from infecting other code.
Now, let’s compare that with BSD, Apache, MIT, the truly free license styles. They are truly free since I, a programmer, can include as much or as little of their source code in any program space I choose without their license infecting the rest of the code in that space. So they are non-infective and since they don’t require me to contribute my changes back to their projects I am free do so as I please: share or not.
I as a programmer dedicated to excellence in software for my clients do care about my end users, they after all provide my income. Producing the best software for them is paramount. However, giving them the source code won’t make the software any better for they are not programmers!!! So they really don’t care about the code. You just have to get that. The vast majority of end users are not programmers and never will be and really don’t care about the source code – it’s just gobbly gook to them. It’s geek without a translation matrix. What end users care about is great software.
Furthermore, more often than not the quality of open source software is, well, to be polite, a bit clunky and full of errors. That’s fine, you get what you pay for and since it’s free one must accept it as it is and if one chooses one can fix it as needed or even improve upon it as one is inspired.
The GPL is mainly aimed at people like Richard Stallman: DORKY PROGRAMMERS!!! Well, the vast majority of human beings will never program a computer. Certainly they’ll never want to go through the horrors of getting make files to actually work. It’s too geek for them. They are actually humans not geeks.
The GPL may actually make a lot of sense to people who are like Richard Stallman: dorky programmers who want a cause. You do know of course that Stallman is a hippie. Have you ever met him? I’ve meet him a number of times and he’s basically a geekie hippie with a cause. Great for him and his commune cult followers. Join his cult if you want, release your code as GPL if you want. Just don’t expect me to do the same. Just don’t expect me to be happy that you put so many restrictions on it that I have to alter my build process so as to not include your source in the same program as my code. Eesh. Annoying.
Anyway the work around the GPL is to simply keep GPLed programs within the condom protection of their own program space and to enhance them as needed to provide access to the real programs that are doing the primary work load: my code. That interface might be CLI in which case missing CLI options are added.
What’s really needed is something that is between CLI and having the code in my space. Sorta like a DLL loading but wrapped in a protective condom so that the GPL viral license terms don’t infect my application code. Maybe a program that loads up the GPL DLLs into it’s own space and then communicates with a BSD dll in my program space via shared memory. That’s the kind of protective bubble that’s needed to fully take advantage of ALL and ANY function in GPLed space. Not only would function entry points be visible but data structures would also be visible and usable from my program space through the protective layers always keeping the GPL infected code within it’s own memory space.
You see the lengths that you GPLers force people to go to just to take advantage of your code – some of which is good but most of which is well, to be polite, not. We have to jump through silly hoops that just mess up the beauty of code. That’s another reason that GPLed code is just a bad idea: it brings it’s ugliness to my code because hacks are needed to get around the license terms without actually violating them. I prefer to follow the rules when possible as it just makes life easier.
Ok, so we’ve established that you think that the GPL is hot damn and I think it’s communistic. Of course you’d like it as you gain benefits from being a member in the commune and don’t see the dark side of your jones town like commune with Richard Stallman as the nefarious one.
Ok, BSD, Apache, MIT, … are truly free licenses. Take the Apache project for example (or any of the big BSD projects or even a small project like minix3). These are all unrestricted licenses that don’t force sharing upon their members yet they still have people contribute freely. You see non-forced sharing is more free than forced sharing. When someone is forced to share under the GPL they are doing so against their will, I know many who have grudgingly shared. Yes, you counter with they don’t have to use your GPLed software and in some senses you are right about that, they don’t and I know many who don’t. However you falsely market your GPL software license as being “open source” when it’s not in fact “open”. The fact is that it’s “open with hooks into your flesh” as it REQUIRES you to share should you distribute your code as most/many programmers do who want to make a living from coding must.
If it’s truly open then I AS THE PROGRAMMER can choose what I want to do: (1a) including it in my program space or (2) keep it private for whatever reasons or (3) share it as I choose to or (4) contribute back as I choose to or …. many other choices that are LEFT UP TO ME!!!
Not the commune. When the commune gets to choose then it’s not free it’s communistic!!! You see when folks like you come out of the woodwork insisting that I follow your communities rules you are the ones enforcing the commune and being communistic! My mom came from a country that fell to the communists, I know many people who actually lived in real communist societies and yes some are even programmers and they have no hesitation in saying that the GPL is communistic in nature since it values the commune more than the individuals. Sure the propaganda would lead you to think otherwise however that’s just typical communistic propaganda, the official party line.
Anyway who cares really? I don’t use GPL code whenever possible. When I’m forced to use it either by it being required for a project or if it’s the only working solution out there it must be wrapped in protective condom layers so it doesn’t infect the rest of our code or other truly free code that we might want to merge with it – but we can’t merge them since the GPL virus wins in those situations resulting in our need to protect the truly free code from the nasty pernicious viral spreading of GPL.
So do as you do and continue your commitment to your communistic ways in your community of the GPL commune. I’m sure you’ll do fine.
I prefer the ways of true freedom unrestricted by being forced to share code. Apache doesn’t force me to share the code back so why should any GPL project do that? For no reason other than Richard Stallman’s geekie hippie communistic leftist agenda. So be it. We’ll wrapper the heck out of it and project ourselves and find alternatives to the GPL.
LLVM rules. LLVM proves that the GPL philosophy isn’t needed to make successful truly free and open source.
May you go in peace and leave us freedom fighters alone with our true freedom. Stallmanistic Communism not wanted here.
Just for fun:
Make sure to check out the list of links to “Tools [BSD Style]” at the bottom of the right column —>.
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 »
“We are risen apes not fallen angels.” – Andy Thomson
Science and Religion are highly incompatible for science is based upon the actual evidence of facts of objective reality while religion is based on nothing but faith that crazy ideas that have no evidence are true. Evidence verses nothing but faith. Science wins.
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?
YECs = Young Earth Creationists. Those that think the universe is six days old, where six days is about 6,000 to 10,000 years give or take a few minutes.
Scientists, those that actually test their ideas against objective reality and who are willing to adapt to the verifiable facts of existence given what is REAL in NATURE!
Unfortunately one of my sisters and her husband, and even at least a couple of her kids, are sucked into this vile Hovind style of religious death cult that sucks the life out of them with the whacked in the head delusional beliefs. It’s quite sad really.
Even people who believe in Darwin can have delusional beliefs such as this Christian narrator of this BBC show “Did Darwin Kill God?”. Of course it does, it’s the last nail in the cross!
WARNING DELUSIONAL MATERIAL PRELEVANT IN THIS SERIES OF VIDEOS!!! DON’T LET YOUR BRAIN FALL OUT OF YOUR HEAD WITH THESE CRAZY DELUSIONAL BELIEFS OF GOD.
As the Hitchens points out Paul Edwards is evil precisely because he (Paul Edwards) embraces the notion of being a slave of “god” who will do whatever “god” tells him to do even if it’s committing murder and genocide because that’s what “god” might want. Since “anything is possible” with “god” “god” might want his slaves to commit murder and genocide and in fact the “bible” does advocate such actions in the name of “god” – thus it’s evil. Being a slave to “god” is to be evil because it removes your responsibility for your actions by deferring them to your imaginary super friend who ordered it or who forgives you. Read the rest of this entry »
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…
Warp drives have been the focus of science fiction writers for decades. But scientists kept them at arms length until 1994 when the idea was put on a firm (ish) theoretical footing by the Mexican physicist, Michael Alcubierre. His thinking is that while relativity prevents faster-than-light travel relative to the fabric of space time, it places no restriction on the speed at which regions of spacetime may move relative to each other.
Yes, imagination is wonderful. Nature is beautifully harsh though.
… Physicists have long wondered what would happen if you threw quantum mechanics into the mix? … They … studied a property of a quantum field called the renormalised stress-energy tensor which should be well-behaved under normal circumstances. But in the front wall of Alcubierre’s bubble travelling at superluminal speeds, the renormalised stress-energy tensor grows exponentially.
That strongly implies that such a bubble would be unstable. So it looks increasingly likely that, after a brief few years of excitement, Alcubierre’s warp drive is impossible.
To this someone replied:
When the word “impossibility” appears in discussions re science, I am always reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s quote:
“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.“
When “impossibility” is ignored and Arthur C. Clarke’s quotes start flying I’m always reminded of The Sagan Principle which states that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” which certainly applies to here and in general to FTL.
Do you object that Newton proves that it’s impossible given the Earth Moon System for a human being al natural to jump from the Earth to the Moon (without the aid of technology, aka space ships)? I gather that you’ll bring out Author’s old men quote for this case too. Gravity Sucks in so many ways, and one of those ways is in keeping you firmly within the Earth’s gravity well (unless you are one of the few to reach escape velocity doing the rest of us a favor).
The Fabric of Objective Reality sucks in so many ways. Not traveling faster than light is one of them.
Optimism or pessimism are both irrelevant to the Nature of Objective Reality. The Universe doesn’t care about us, as it doesn’t care at all about anything.
Each aspect of Nature, each Law of Nature that we learn is what is actually going on gives us insights into what is actually possible and what is impossible. Nature is the limiter not our imaginations. Clearly our imaginations run amok all the time (see Amok Time episode of Star Trek for an example of this).
When you willfully ignore hard earned scientific knowledge that can be tested, that has been tested, you might find yourself crossing into that no man’s land of fantasy and delusion. You are not alone as many if not most humans live their lives in the land of delusional fantasies that simply can’t be true given the harsh Laws of Nature, which are the very Laws of Nature that enable you to exist!
So be optimistic or pessimistic all you want. Nature is the final judge of what is possible and what is impossible. Not that Nature is an is. I choose to embrace Nature in all of it’s beauty and horror rather than have delusional fantasies about it. I save my fantasies for entertainment (like the upcoming FTL fantasy Star Trek movie out in about a month) and private relationships.
So enjoy your invisible friend of FTL all you want, just know that no matter how much you enjoy it your enjoyment won’t alter the Fabric of Nature one iota.
A really great series of videos that hit back slicing and dicing the silly inane beliefs of creationists with hard hitting science. As someone with a sister and brother in law who are young earth rapture creationist preachers this series of videos is excellent potential deprogramming materials for the creationist delusional insanity. Enjoy.
These videos were made for the communal and greater good. All these videos are copyright free for educational purposes, feel free to mirror these videos with or without accreditation. Part of a series of videos exposing the funny stupidity of creationists and why they deserve to be laughed at. In each case the creationist statements are shown to be outrageously stupid by even the most rudimentary knowledge of science. Creationist are tackled at every level from the scientific illiterates like venomfangx who want to play in the scientific arena but don’t even understand the words they use, to convicted fraudsters like Kent Hovind who abuse the scientifical illiteracy of people like venomfangx to dupe them out of money. An enterprise which is clearly very successful as merely the tax Hovind didn’t pay was about a million dollars. Hovind himself has no discernible academic education, and gets by solely on using his confident delivery of scientific terms to convince his audiences that he knows what hes talking about. Then of course there are the professional such as the Discovery Institute, the hub and founders of the Intelligent design movement. After the humiliating rout of ID in court where it was found that ‘ID is not science’, and that ‘ID is only a relabelling of creationism’ the Discovery Institute do not utter the word once in their latest promotional video. Instead they now have decided to ‘teach the controversy’ which is an irony as they are the only people who disagree with evolution. What they are really asking is not to teach the controversy, but to teach their views, which are supported by neither research or evidence, in schools.
Any video with nuclear explosions gets headlined on the first page and has my blessing!
What is clear however is the notion of objective reality as distinct from ourselves. While this isn’t an idea original to Rand it’s the key notion in her objectivism that forms the foundation for the rest which can be taken or cast aside.
The three core axioms of Existence, Consciousness and Identity are irreducible. And again these ideas are not original to Rand.
Yet the combination of these ideas and others is unique to Rand and that is her value to humanity.
“The not-so-good news is that in a “compromise,” the board also voted to require that students “in all fields of science, analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations… including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations, so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.”
Excellent! Science is all about the pursuit of the truth of objective reality. Every assumption needs to be questioned otherwise it’s not science but rather it’s dogma if you’re not allowed to question the science.
“Score one for the Discovery Institute.”
Utter NONSENSE. These and other anti-science and anti-science-education crowds LOST in Texas: Discovery Institute, Intelligent Designer proponents, Creationists, Religionists, Our-Science-is-Correct-and-we-Don’t-Have-to-Prove-It-And-If-You-Ask-Questions-You’re-Automatically-A-Denier and Delusionals of all sorts had a huge loss.
Asking questions leads people to give up their delusions if they get the power of asking questions. Sure some imaginary friend delusionals will use that to attempt to push their religious agenda but in the end what will happen is that the battle ground shifts to critical thinking skills where it belongs!
Sharpen your pencils girls and boys and get ready to educate people who don’t know about science, about your field of science, in the ways and means of science, the scientific method and critical thinking skills.
The fostering of asking questions and learning to think that my Roman Catholic parents encouraged in me helped me deprogram their attempts to bring me into their faith. Thank ERG (pardon the expression) for all those science books at home and at school.
Without getting the power of critical thinking anyone is lost in today’s world of magical claims, weird fake science, television, government, bogus medical claims, con men of all kinds, parents, friends and family who are constantly attempting to pull you into their delusions.
Every CULTure you interact with has it’s own delusions and often those are the very ones that people use to justify their killing of others one way or the other. Do you even know how many different CULTureS you’re embedded within? How many? How can you tell? What are the beliefs of your CULTure? How do they blind you?
The Human Belief Engine we call the brain-mind is the culprit not what is in a book and the sooner that people realize that the better. Critical thinking skills are the only path to knowledge devoid of delusions, or at least with minimized delusions, about objective reality.
“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
Sagan’s Principle applies to ALL FIELDS OF SCIENCE as well as ALL wacko claims by non-scientists. To say differently is to assert that any part of science should not be questioned! Asking questions is the fundamental core of science.
“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
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.
The GPL may actually make a lot of sense to people who are like Richard Stallman: dorky programmers who want a cause. You do know of course that Stallman is a hippie. Have you ever met him? I’ve meet him a number of times and he’s basically a geekie hippie with a cause. Great for him and his commune cult followers. Join his cult if you want, release your code as GPL if you want. Just don’t expect me to do the same. Just don’t expect me to be happy that you put so many restrictions on it that I have to alter my build process so as to not include your source in the same program as my code. Eesh. Annoying.
Paths To Knowledge (dot Science) 