Tuesday, October 18, 2011

http://vegetableassassin.blogspot.com/2011/10/eff-you-eff-bee.html

I like Facebook! It helps me "get" all these Facebook jokes.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

http://outofbevshead.blogspot.com/2009/12/wrap-it-up-wrap-it-in-let-me-begin.html

That's one damn interesting situation you describe. Huh.

Damn interesting.

Stolen underwear, huh.

I guess I probably would have noticed if it happened. I'm not prone to commando raids, so. Probably I've never had my undies swiped out from under me. I know I definitely haven't stolen any panties as a trophy, although, all this talk of panty trophies gives me an idea what I'd do if I did luck into a pair. Let's say they'd been left behind accidentally, such as some have proposed happened with yours, Bev!

If that happened, I would have them bronzed in a pleasing, lightly billowing pose, (or would it be brassed? Trophies seem shinier than mere bronze) and mounted on a slim, tall pedestal with a commemorative plaque of some kind.

"ALL-STATE PANTY CHAMP '10."

Thursday, July 21, 2011

http://asurfaceofinfiniteshallowness.blogspot.com/2011/01/menstrual-cramps-outrage.html

Jen. I love when one of my far-gone ad absurdum libs provokes a serious, thoughtful response like this, that so nails the sad and tragic aspect of reality I was either running away with, or possibly from. So often I see something wrong and run with it. The truth is, it is not so funny. There is deep bitterness infusing the sick-sweet broth I stew my barbed skewers in, and that lip-smack tang of salt is all tears.

Life is hard, bitter; a sore trial and an unfair one at that. It does not seem like it should be so hard to see better, to know better - to reach out with hands not fists! If we could only take our common humanity as a starting point to work from and to rejoice in. But it is so easy to believe in life as a fight, and that means the enemy must be all around. We embrace hate and divisiveness because if we can make our enemy so damn strong, then maybe it can make some sense how hard life is.

I am truly a committed feminist. There is no joke, there. But as a friend of mine pointed out, too many feminists do not have equality at their heart's core for the cause, but enmity.

Thank you for making me look closer.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

http://vegetableassassin.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-to-be-unpopular-part-two-denounce.html

Heck, I believe in God. And I agree with the Vegetable Assassin.

In pretty much everything but the insignificant details - people are too hung up on those! I mean, come on.

"God does not exist."

"God exists."

Two unprovable assertions! Pure leaps of faith - both of them. Irrational, to take it that far. And frankly, a waste of time to debate the irrational person who has overinvested so much personal stake in an unprovable assertion. Anybody who thinks that what they believe about the fundamental state of reality alters the fundamental state of reality - in either direction! - whoa. Those people are the mean kind of fun to have at parties.

"Proof of God does not exist." Now there's a sweeter statement. One I'd make every day, and I'm pretty confident no one can gainsay me. See, the reason I get along so great with atheists is because neither of our personal leaps of faith away from pure skepticism conflicts with observable reality. And ultimately, observable reality is where I interact with people. It's the best place I know!

And that's why I say I agree with you, Veg: because the realities you point out here are far from insignificant, and all too readily observable. They matter a great deal. We need to be banging out danger and warning. Because those who interpret religion as primarily a means to make this life unlivable (or less livable) use it as a wedge and a weapon against those who don't. Those for whom religion's main use is as a hittin'-stick to control others' lives don't limit themselves to true believers when they swing that stick around. That's not near a big enough stick for who they want to hit. They want the religion stick swung by government, and aimed at everybody. They want to enforce a moral order, where God is Caesar and heretics be not only damned, but prosecuted.

Of course, not all theists want that. Comparatively rational theists who value secular liberty make common cause with agnostics and atheists. We have all made a good bit of progress away from theocracy, but the hollering from certain quarters is still all in favor. Those opposed need to band together and pull together against that kind of impulse. It's us vs. them, and I know where I stand.

But let's be clear about the problem: the common root of all intolerance-based misery in the world isn't religion. Ultimately, it's xenophobia. The need to feel secure in one's chosen camp and demonize the other. To come up with some aspect that you can judge the book by - any aspect will do, but some are more obvious, others more powerful - draw the line on that aspect and say: this person is not like us. We cannot trust this person, we do not know them, we should not try to know them. This person is not worth knowing, is dangerous to get to know. The stranger who is not like us is less worthy of human consideration than we are. They might as well be called inhuman - devil, animal. Slave. Not a person. In the end the one not like us is the enemy, and this attitude makes compassion for the enemy an offense.

The human map has lines drawn all over. Religion. Patriotism/nationalism. Ethnicity, race. Gender, class, region - even neighborhood. To use any of these aspects to draw lines of hate and enmity is to misuse them. And we must be wary, for misuse of religion is particularly powerful, particularly dangerous. More powerful I'd say than any of those others - and that holds true whether it is being misused or merely used.

Even people who believe in God badly need to beware of religion's misuse. I'd say people who believe in God ought to feel that much more a duty and an obligation to confront their coreligionists, on religion's misuse.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

http://frumptonshire.blogspot.com/2009/06/melons-are-best.html

I love Wise Blood! Hazel Motes is the coolest. I mean. Hm. Hard to put it. He's like my role model of people I don't want to be like?

I mean, he's kind of nuts, but he's sure got soul. It's a beautiful book with roots in the wormy dirt, and a reach to the top of the sky's dimly lit dome. Love it. Love the book; love O'Connor.

Now her other novel is also good (The Violent Bear It Away), and very much worth reading, but for me it is not nearly as good as Wise Blood.

http://wildthymeunseen.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-do-you-think.html

It takes a weak woman to need a man who pretends to be her superior. But it takes a weaker man to do it. Sick, sick. Sick.


Of course, it takes a weak man to need a woman to be his inferior as well.

What I don't get is, surely men need wives more than women need husbands right? WOMEN! GET TOGETHER ON THIS.

Don't settle for men who are too intimidated to function in an equal partnership.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

http://friendlyocelot.blogspot.com/2011/05/science-pie.html

This is a triumphant story. This story makes me feel like we can get BACK TO THE MOON.

As a species, I mean.

Wait, that's dumb, we've been to the moon. Insert similar but less "played" accomplishment.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

http://www.cynicism101.com/2011/05/experiment-in-self-discovery.html

There's something wrong with that Venn diagram. There's something wrong with that Venn diagram! I'm sorry, I don't mean to get all hung up on the Venn diagram; I realize it's just a totally random diagram meant to humorously and none-to-rigorously illustrate the many ways in which school bathrooms fail us! But...there's something wrong with it. I can't put my finger on it; the finger slips - as if from a missing latch.

Okay, I think it's this: the two sections that say "Doesn't latch" and "No toilet paper." For everything outside the set "Has a working latch," we have to be able to assume "Doesn't latch" applies. That's just a consequence of falling outside that set. Just as everything outside the set"Has Toilet Paper" should logically have "No Toilet Paper."

In other words, "Doesn't latch" can't apply just to that small section marked "Doesn't latch" - it applies to everything outside the latch set. The entire circle representing the set "Has Toilet Paper" and the entire circle representing the set "Doesn't smell horrible" do not latch - except for the small portion of each set where there is intersection with "Has a working latch."

The section that says "Smells REALLY bad" of course poses no problem. Even if everything outside the set "Doesn't smell horrible" must therefore smell horrible, we can suppose the "Smells REALLY bad" intersection smells even worse than its horrible-smelling near neighbors. True, one might logically question why the intersection of "Has toilet paper" and "Has a working latch" must necessarily produce a worse smell, but we're talking about restrooms, here. I think we need to make some allowances for Murphy's Law were diagrammatic convention and the sets-as-defined don't specifically exclude the possibility.

All of that is by way of irrelevant aside. I'm interested in cynicism, and I look forward to learning more about it!

Saturday, April 30, 2011

http://facecrooks.com/safety-center/scam-watch/item/1269-scam-alert-omg-i-cant-believe-justin-bieber-did-this-to-a-girl

You know, I appreciate you trying to warn people away from this scam, but if you're serious about that goal then you should at least tell us what he did to that girl. Now I still have to go through all those steps to find out! Kill it with spoilers next time.

And if it turns out there's no juicy Bieber scandal at all waiting at the end if this scam rainbow, then that ought to have been the FIRST thing you put under "why it's a scam." Because "why it's a scam" in that case would not be oh, malware, hijack etc. - "why it's a scam" would be THERE IS NO "OMG! I Can't believe JUSTIN Bieber did THIS to a girl" at the end of it. I'm making a serious point, here. Is the promised content there or not?

Because if not, then that's the real #1 scam, here. But if that payoff was really there, then all that other clicky survey bunk is just the price paid for prime Bieber dish.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

http://100days100ways.blogspot.com/2011/03/day-77.html

The first video is a neat illustration of the double-split experiment, but it's a little funny to me how our host makes such a mysterious lips-smacking deal over how mere observation causes the particle to change its behavior "as if it were aware of being watched!" This can only be deliberate silliness. The people putting this thing together know full well that at a quantum scale, detection = direct interaction with the particle.

It is as if some gigantic quantum physicist wanted to observe me walking down my street, and to do so, threw a bean-bag chair at me at a high rate of speed. As I stagger along recovering from the impact, the physicist, in jubilant wonder, cries: "why, he changed how he was walking - just as if he knew he had been observed...!" Bugger off you prat - you just threw a bean bag chair at me! Of course the electron changes how it acts after the process of being measured. The first time, it passed unmolested through the slit. The second time - from the electron's teensy tiny standpoint, it got mugged.

The detector isn't an eye standing to the side. The detector is any device placed directly in the slit that interacts directly with the passing electron and is physically changed by the interaction. The electron is physically changed by the interaction as well.

Or to put a finer point on it: it isn't observation (a conscious process) that changes what is being measured at the quantum level. It is the process of measurement itself. A physical process.

We trigger the physical process, so we can use the result it will generate to make an observation. But our tools are so big and clumsy (relative to tiny, quantum-scale phenomenon) that we change what we seek to observe - not by observing it, but by measuring it.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

http://willowmanor.blogspot.com/2011/03/salley.html

Ah, to be young, and bid by one's love to take love easy! And to spurn such advice as that!

To be young in all ages, is to be foolish - and to be old in all ages is regret.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

http://www.skyblue-pink.com/?p=4903

The pack of wolves running down the highway, okay, pretty wild. But am interpreting this right? In Russia, a cop can pull you over...by standing at the side of the road and sticking his arm out?

Wow.

If a society can train people to do that...heck, those wolves ought to be juggling balls and tooting horns as they swarm by, no problem.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

http://seanibus.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-tie-clips.html

I love ties!

I don't have a single tie clip. If I weren't so suddenly jealous of your smooth tie clip collection, I'd paint my lack of tie clips as a personal preference. I'd say, "I like my tie flapping in the blurred breeze of my forward progress."

Which, hey, that's probably true, but where the hell do I get me some tie clips.