the power of 3!

I watched an Ancient Aliens (I don't know why...) about how the number 3 is a gift from extraterrestrial life. The experts say that the prevalence of the number 3 in history is calling our attention.

 

This is actually true, but of course has nothing to do with aliens.

3 "is a unique number" (as Ancient Aliens would state it) because it is representative of 'perspective' reality (or the reality of perspectives?). Many philosophies and religions are laid out as a battle between good and evil. Some very astute religions (philosophies? where is the line drawn?!?) have taken this a step further as chaos vs. order.

"But what does this have to do with the number 3?!" you may ask.
Of course, 3 is everything! In the religious battles of good vs. evil there is always a 3rd side to the story: mankind. Or in the case of chaos vs. order the middle is "the dao" (or "the way").

 

Both of these ideas are so close to truth. When it's good vs. evil the neutral zone is mankind, or who we are. When it's chaos vs. order the neutral zone is "the way," or what we do.

 

In reality it is everything vs. nothing and the neutral zone is perspective, or consciousness. In essence, consciousness is the phenomenon that occurs at the interface of two extremes. It is the existence that we all experience. It is untouchable because when it is breached on either side it is no longer an interface of contrast. In other words, consciousness is awareness, not knowledge. In order to truly understand something you must be separate from it -- this is the fractional nature of our reality.

 

Untouchable and unknowable at the same time and us, right in the middle.

Let's Check My Mail!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while!
College has been really busy...* (sort of ;P)

Anyways, remember that "young boy with a purple button up shirt and gelled hair"? Well he's been e-mailing me!

"Hey, it's me again. I thought about what you said, and I clearly understand your view of the Bible and faith. However, I strongly encourage to keep your mind open to truth. I'm sorry you couldn't make it to our revival meetings*, but there is another date I'd like you to keep in mind. November 1 is a special service for our guests. I understand your busy schedule but if it is possible, I can promise you it will be well worth the effort. It's not about joining the church, it's about hearing truth. I really believe if you come with an open mind you'll find answers to a lot of your questions about Christianity, the Bible, and faith. I think it would benifit you more than you think. I appreciate you getting back to me last time and I respect your willingness to talk. My prayer is that the truth (whatever it is), would be clearly revealed to both of us. Here's a Bible verse, John 3:18. There are only two kinds of people, those who believe and those who do not. And there are only two consequences, either you are not condemned to hell or you are. If you have minute, I strongly encourage you to check it out. Later Callif."

 Hefty stuff! Let's focus on the last part:


"There are only two kinds of people, those who believe and those who do not"
Translation: I believe in god, you don't.

"There are only two consequences, either you are not condemned to hell or you are." 
Translation: One of us is going to burn eternally, guess who it is.   
I think he just threatened me!
Fuckin' hypochristians.

*My best friend was coming back in town and I needed to do some heathen partying with him!

Okay... SOME Parts of College Rock

My Child Psych course is a pretty standard 200-person lecture class. It's a prerequisite for almost every other psychology course, and is fairly low level. I'm pretty bored with it, but I'll deal. My problem is that the people aren't exactly the brightest bulbs. The other day we were talking about prenatal genetic testing for heritable diseases.

The professor asked what the moral and ethical implications for prenatal genetic testing were, so, of course, a (slightly) older gentleman in the front row raised his hand and said:
"You could test for a disease, then get an abortion based on the test results."
And the teacher agreed; prenatal testing could lead to horrible things like abortion. It is true that this is an ethical issue that we should contemplate, but I am inclined to disagree with my professor's sentiment. There are many diseases that would cause a child to be better off dead. We could argue about this all day, but it would be missing the point of this post.

Two days later we were talking about the spread of HIV and AIDS through breastfeeding, and the same guy asks:
"Is there a law against breastfeeding if you have AIDS?! There should be! It's murder!"
This statement missed the obvious fact that all childbirth is murder, not even mentioning the multitude of horrible genetic deformities and diseases that can drastically decrease the quality of life (and lifespan!) of those who inherit them... All of those could be easily avoided. Through what you ask? Abortion of course.

Later on in my discussion group the T.A. asked what the ethical implications of genetically engineering children could be. One particularly perky girl (this class is at 8 A.M... No one should be perky at that hour lol) answered in a spectacularly thoughtless fashion. She said:
"Well, if we make perfect humans we'd be interfering with the way God made us."
Thank Pasta it was so early in the morning, otherwise I probably would have smashed my forehead into my palm.

Oh well! I guess I'll just have to focus on the positive... like, I'm in college! I have my own house! I love learning!

Poorly Considered Argument

Rudeness abounds in YouTube debates!
It started with a comment made by some Christian bigot.
He said something along the lines of:
"Stop having sex with holes that are meant for excrement!"
To which I responded:
"Vaginas are used for excrement."
So he said:
"Vaginas are not used for excrement asswipe, WTF is wrong with you? move the hell out of the US if you like gay, sickening perversion loser!!"
Really?...
Someday the world will be filled with intelligent discussion, or I'll be dead. Either way works.

Ray Comfort... *sigh*

These people are fucking moronic.

"An atheist believes Nothing made everything."
"help to pull the plug on the rising tide of atheism"
-Ray Comfort

And this guy thinks he could take Dawkins in a debate... are you fucking kidding me?

YouTube Sucks!

After writing a lengthy and disparaging response to a Christian troll via comment I proceeded to click "Post Comment" but to my despair, when I clicked the button, instead of showing the usual "Comment Posted!" it just said "Post Comment" again! Even worse, that incredibly long comment I posted couldn't be highlighted! No copy and paste for me... So I refreshed the page and wrote the comment again. I figured it was just a fluke, so I didn't even bother copying my post... I was wrong. This time I refreshed, wrote my response, copied it, saved it in a word document, then pushed post. Still nothing. After about twenty minutes of troubleshooting, and posting, and copying, and blah blah blah, I got an error message at the bottom of my screen.
It looked like this.



Of course, I was absolutely horrified! First you don't let me post a comment (on my own video even!), then you insult my intelligence so directly and personally? Perhaps you missed it. How dare they insinuate that I "Can't read?" Those obnoxious bastards! Do they really think this kind of thing is a user error!?!

Well needless to say, YouTube has caused me too much frustration... I'm afraid I can no longer visit that wonderful (on paper) website.
;)

Intelligent Discussion Is Hard To Come By

I'm reading a book called "Why Don't Students Like School" and let me tell you, it really has me thinking. I haven't gotten very far, seeing as I'm in the middle of moving out and have no time for reading, but the first couple of pages that I've read are fascinating!

It basically explains that humans don't like thinking. It's slow, takes up lots of energy, and rarely leads you to the correct answer. When I think about it like that it almost makes me feel bad for people who seem ignorant...

For example, I overheard a conversation about talent. Most of the people were arguing that talent is something you have to work for, while only ONE person was arguing that it was inherent. Now, this may just be semantics, but the definition of talent according to Princeton's website is:

"A person who possesses unusual innate ability in some field or activity"

Uh... Innate ability? Do you have to work for that? It seems fairly ridiculous that people don't even think about the very definition of the word when they're arguing about it, but even more ridiculous to think that the person arguing for innateness didn't even use that argument!

It seems as though my outrage with the world will not come to an end until we genetically modify ourselves to be more efficient thinking machines. For now, I will have to endure living in the minuscule minority.

Really?...

Give me 30 minutes in a room with any of these kids and I guaruntee that if they haven't drastically changed their viewpoints they will within 6 months.

I am the antidote.

Media... *sigh*

Taliban 'brainwashed' Pakistan [sic] teen suicide bombers
Really? Well what's the difference between that and this?

The latter is too subtly harmful to hold our attention.

My Bad...

Sorry guys. I thought I'd have more time over the summer to blog... but it doesn't seem like I'll be near computers very often. I may spit out a post or two ever couple weeks, but don't count on my usual tenacity until the school year starts again. So let's take a brief hiatus, and I'll be back posting with regularity in a couple months. Thanks!

The Idiot Escapades At Computer Geeks (Part IV)

Here we are again... in moron land.
So, as it always starts, a man comes in to the store with a very, very old printer. He says he just bought it and he's only missing the power cord. I tell him that we can't help him, and more than likely, no one can. On older models like that the power cords are proprietary, and even if he manages to find a cord it'll be worth more than the printer itself.
"Well, what's the printer worth?"
"Absolutely nothing." I tell him.
So he walks out the door, leaving the printer on our counter. Half an hour later our receptionist asks if she can just throw it away. Well, I don't care, I basically told the guy that it isn't worth it at all to fix, and he just leaves it here, so yeah, I tell her to throw it out.
Five minutes go by and the guy walks back in.
"Hey, can I have that printer back?"
So of course, I'm the f*cking supervisor, I get to go retrieve it from the dumpster.
Damn printer probably broke from falling into an empty, smelly, oversized garbage can. Of course, this poor guy will never know it, because he's never going to get the power cord for it!

Baseball? You F*cking Kidding Me?

The world is surely in a sad state. Bryce Harper, a 16 year-old boy, is quitting high school to become a professional baseball player. He's going to make $20 million a year to play a f*cking sport. In what way is he bettering the world? People work for up to a decade getting a higher education degree so they can make, what? Maybe $100K a year (if they're incredibly lucky)? What are they going to do with this hard earned knowledge?.. Entertain people? F*ck this world.

I feel like ending this post with a quote from Idiot America:

"This is the moment in the hangover in which you discover that... things are in the wrong place. Religion is in the box where science used to be. Politics is on the shelf where you thought you left science the previous afternoon. Entertainment seems to have been knocked over and spilled on everything. We have rummaged ourselves into disorder."

America sucks.

1.61803399

Tada! Phi. The golden ratio. 1.61803399 etc.



Actually, the uppercase (as is shown in the picture) more often represents (among a bajillion other things) the reciprocal of the golden ratio, or 1/1.61803399 = 0.61803399

God's A Dick...

In my Linguistics class we were talking about the Tower of Babel... and I know we all realize that god is a dick, but I never really payed attention to this one before.

So it basically goes like this: all of humanity (god's creations) are working together to build a tower to heaven so that they can meet their father and almighty god. Well god, he doesn't like this at all. 'How dare they try and attain perfect happiness through cooperation!' and he makes everyone speak different languages so that all the esprit de corps is completely in vain. So since god was upset at our camaraderie, he made us forever live in discord.

The moral of the story? Peace and love are for chumps. Differences matter.
The end.
(god's an asshole)

The Idiot Escapades At Computer Geeks (Part III)

Jeez... a lot of these posts lately...
This'll be a short one, I promise.

I was helping someone through a computer problem over the phone and he thought that he sounded like an idiot. He really didn't sound like an idiot until he said, "Sorry I'm so bad at this. I'm not technically computer knowledgably saavy."

Yeah.

The Idiot Escapades At Computer Geeks (Part II)

A lady comes in. She seems nice, but slow. I replace the power chord on her laptop. She has trouble understanding what I did. I explain a couple of times and she feigns comprehension. I know she's still lost. That's okay, you don't need to understand a computer to use it (which is a travesty). She asks "What do I owe you?" and I say "Nothing." She says "Oh, thank you..." and before I can say "No problem," she says "...Jesus!" and looks up reverently into the sky with her arms outstretched.

I should have made her pay.

Idiot America

I just bought an awesome book!
I've only just begun it, but even the intro is pure genius. It's called Idiot America. Here's a snippet. (The author is outraged at the Creation Museum's portrayal of dinosaurs on the ark and Adam as a eunuch.)

"These were impolite questions. Nobody asked them here by the cool pond tucked into the gentle hillside. Increasingly amazingly, nobody asked them outside the gates, either. It was impolite to wonder why our parents had sent us to college, and why generations of immigrants had sweated and bled so that their children could be educated, if not so that one day we would feel confident enough to look at a museum full of dinosaurs rigged to run six furlongs at Aqueduct and make the not unreasonable point that it was batshit crazy, and that anyone who believed this righteous hooey should be kept away from sharp objects and their own money. Instead, people go to court over this kind of thing.
Dinosaurs with saddles?
Dinosaurs on Noah's Ark?
Welcome to your new Eden.
Welcome to Idiot America."

Yeah, hopefully the rest is just as good. I'll keep you posted.

Tattoo!

Check it:

Probably getting that (phi) on my upper chest... left or right shoulder?

Crap...

So... when I was in 8th grade they had us make time capsules for ourselves to open when we were graduating from high school.  I didn't go to the "unveiling" because I thought I remember everything I put in there... I was wrong.

There was a tiny note that read (in my handwriting):

"To the future me, from Callif.  I want a tattoo, get one for me.

P.S. Don't forget me."

Of course, I feel horrible... Past me would get so depressed if he knew I'd forgotten all about him (his favorite poet was John Keats... he wanted to be famously immortal), so I need to get a tattoo, because if I can't be loyal to myself I have no hope for the future.

I know, it's a rash, foolish, permanent decision... oh well.

Now to decide what to get...

Brain Damage

If you haven't heard yet, an abortion clinic doctor was killed in Kansas today. I learned this from PZ Myers, who also posted a link about getting a free pro-life book. Of course, I had to sign up for the book. It's a free book! Even if it is filled with drivel, it'll give me an opportunity to hone my argumentative logic. So I signed up, and got a verification e-mail from the author.

A cursory glance at the e-mail suggested nothing out of the ordinary... blah blah, thanks for signing up for my book. blah blah. But then, my critical reading eye started tingling...

"My father Ronald Reagan was touched by God many times, including when he was inspired to right his book Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation."

What?!?!?! He was inspired to right his book?!?!?! My poor brain is going to explode. I don't think I'll be physically able to read this book anymore.

Should anyone really be listening to this guy's opinion about moral issues anyways? He doesn't even know the difference between write and rong... bahahahaha.