Saturday, January 21, 2006

Hilarious Jokes told by Albert Einstein

I was going through scienceblogs.com and wandered upon a little jem of blog post about science jokes. At the bottom of the post was a link to Jokes With Einstein. I watched these flash animations and laughed my ass off... probably because I am such a science nerd myself. I highly recomend watching these little animations in order, make sure not to watch number 4 first because it is a surprise ending. The hilarious joke that scienceblogs.com posted was this:
A physicist, a chemist, and a biologist get together for a few drinks, and get to talking about life, the Universe, and everything. Eventually the conversation turns to relationships, and what the ideal way to arrange relationships between the sexes would be.

The biologist says "Well, as a believer in evolution, I feel that every person should sleep with as many other people as possible, in order to provide the greatest range of potential diversity for natural selection to work on."

The chemist says, "No, no, no- that's all wrong. There are some bonds that are just too strong to break, and the marriage bond is one of those. Everyone should be strictly monogamous."

They both turn to the physicst, who says, "Well, I think I'd sort of split the difference between those. I think every man should have one wife, and one mistress, and furthermore, each should be aware of the other."

The other two are absolutely boggled. "Why in the world would you want that?," they ask.

"Well," he says, "That way, if I wasn't with my wife, she would assume I was with my mistress. And if I wasn't with my mistress, she would assume I was with my wife. then I could go in the lab and get some work done."

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

ACLU and Other Civil Liberty Groups Step up... and Sue Bush!

Finally! A message is being sent to the Bush administration that domestic spying is not only illegal but also hampers free speech. The ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, Green Peace, Council on American-Islamic Relations, and other civil liberties organizations, as well as individuals, are suing Bush and the NSA for illegal wiretaps after September 11th. The lawsuits are taking place in New York and in Detroit. Bush, of course, claims no wrong doing, that he actually had the right to order those wiretaps because of an authorization from congress to use force in the fight against terror.

Can spying on the citizens of the USA be considered a use of force against terror? Well, in my opinion, no. First of all it is simply a way of trying to find terrorists in America and not a use of force against known terror groups. Secondly, it is not a good idea to cause fear about what is said over the phone or by e-mail because that is a way of limiting free speech. So is limiting our free speech, one of our fundamental freedoms as part of the US, the fourth amendment of the Constitution, okay if it will help to find possible terrorists? Nope, there are much better ways of rooting out terrorism than giving the Bush administration totalitarian control. Some sort of check needs to be in place and that check should be a judge’s issuance of a warrant.

Salon.com has a good article to review what is going on:
http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8F6GFHO9.html

or,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/politics/17spy.html?hp&ex=1137560400&en=998d7190aee080f7&ei=5094&partner=homepage

and,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/politics/17cnd-nsa.html

Sunday, January 15, 2006

A new American Revolution formed from some of the ideas of the Cuban Revolution

I just finished watching the movie Motorcycle Diaries about Che Guevera’s traveling experience with his friend Alberto Grenada and it got me thinking about Che’s later revolutionary life, which obviously led me to thinking about the Cuban Revolution.

When Fidel Castro, with help from Ernesto "Che" Guevara and other revolutionary leaders, overthrew the Batista regime they installed a communist government. Communism is not and, especially in the 60’s, was not highly commended by most people (to say he least) in the US and it became the focal point of malicious media coverage of the Castro regime. One aspect of Castro’s rise to power that is almost completely over looked because of the focus on communism is his atheist standpoint. He nationalized all land owned by churches and exiled all the priests. This atheist government still persists today, although religion, by no means, has been completely driven out of the country. I think this is absolutely great, not the part about exiling people because of their beliefs but the creation of an atheist government. I believe his reasoning for exiling members of the clergy was probably that Castro was worried that they would help organize a counter-revolution against his atheist government.

Atheism seems to go hand in hand with communism for some reason but as far as I know, Atheism is not a prerequisite for socialism, communism, or any left leaning ism I can think of so I’m not exactly sure why the two seem to correlate so closely throughout history. It is also too bad that atheist governments have historically also been very repressive in that atheism (as well as many other requirements that limit freedom) is forced upon the people, such as in North Korea and China. Although I suppose it would be difficult for an atheist government to claim religion is allowed but that if you do believe in a God then you cannot hold any power in government.

According to one poll I found on the web only 3-9% of the US is atheist or agnostic. Those numbers are far too small for an atheist to become president of US at the moment but I would really like to see it happen. To the best of my knowledge there has never been an admittedly atheist or agnostic congressman even; too bad really.

Anyone want to help me organize a group that discusses and disseminates information about atheism, democratic socialism, and the next American Revolution?

Pop Culture

Okay, so by request I will be diving back into the realms of my unknown: pop culture, specifically fashion.

I went down to New York city a few weeks ago to visit my friend Amber and while there I learned that images of skulls on clothing is fashionable now, so I bought a shirt with a creepy looking cat holding a skull and some skeletons dancing around. I really like the shirt because of its fairly original design as well as the pattern of dancing skeletons and Celtic knots made of vines that wrap from the front to the back. So far I have had nothing but complements about my shirt so I have to give Amber laud for picking it out for me.

Fashion is not my forte so maybe others will disagree with me, and by "others" I mean women/girls, but Ugg boots are the most hideous fashion trend for women since not wearing skirts that showed off more than the ankle. And I hear that longer skirts are becoming fashionable also... what the hell is going on!? Are girls starting a new revolution, similar to the feminist movement in the 60's and 70's but this time they are going for all out separation of females from males by making themselves as unattractive as humanly possible, thereby removing the male's urge to reproduce and hence the need for men to talk to women at all? Okay, so don't get me wrong, I like smart women, but I also like attractive women and if we can have both then that is ideal but how am I supposed to know if the girl is attractive if I can't see her legs, or if they are wearing what reminds me of disgusting sausages for shoes? Soon women around here will be claiming that muslims got it right in that women shouldn't show any skin at all when in public.

Oh and has anyone else noticed that celebrities are starting to look less and less attractive these days? Even Angolina Jolie was looking down right ugly in a few shots of her with her new prego belly. What's with the trend for celebrities to get pregnant? I mean it's one thing to say so-and-so is pregnant and make it news but to say that it is a "trend" to get pregnant is ridiculous. I can't stand hollywood sometimes.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Dreams are Nature's Way of Making the World Interesting

Yesterday was incredibly hectic, because a bunch of mice were ready for cancer injections so I had to get ready to deal with 25 mice. I had to inject them with cancer under the skin and I felt so bad about it because they whined and squirmed, trying to get away... if only they knew it would be a lot less painfull if they just sat still! So yeah, one of my dreams dealt with mice but I really don't remember much of it. One dream I had involved me dropping around 13 hits of acid with my friends Troy, Rachel and Brent, and I thought that if I looked at the shadow of a butterfly that I could float. Eventually I learned to fly as long as the shadow was in front of me. Rachel was taking pictures of the whole event and it turns out I was just running in circles pointing at the floor. While I was high Brent and I tried running across the support wires of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco but it turns out that he was just puking all over the floor at my house and I was hysterically laughing at him. I eventually woke up from that and then immediately started dreaming that time was not a linear forward function but was, in fact, a just another dimesion that can be traversed in any direction. The idea was that time is similar to light and all matter, for that matter, in that it has a wave quality to it, the waves are so huge though that they can not be detected very easily. To prove the wave quality of time I hooked up an old Nintendo to an ocillating timer that would cause the game to fade in and out and slowly everyone around me somehow realized my theory was correct and that we could travel back in time or way forward into time, as well as time went in other directions not just the typical forward or backward but an infinit number of possible pathways throughout history have been continuously played out through time. By messing around with the Nintendo and the timer we could go anywhere at any time. When we got where we were going though we found that we were actually inside a video game. I think at this time in the dream I was trying to convincing my friend to try to fly a 256-pixel jet for an air show, he eventually tried it and crashed causing a lot of trouble. At about this point the dream became too strange to remember but altogether it seemed really incredible and I thought I should write it down.

Friday, January 06, 2006

Sodalicium Cordatus

I came across this on the web and thought it would be cool to be apart of. The site was no longer active so it must have been indexed at some point and was in another language but here are some pieces I was able to put together from it.

Sodalicium Cordatus
Society of the Wise

Removal of religion and spreading knowledge of the natural world is the goal
Power of the order and sodalis is necessary to reach the goal
The goal cannot be attained with violence
There is no leadership, all are equal
Recruit those with money or power
All forms of power are useful


Anyone want to join me and start the US branch of the Society of the Wise?

Monday, January 02, 2006

Democratic Socialism – With a Sprinkle of Anarchism

How can we create a functional social democratic government that also leans heavily toward anarchism? It’s not easy to even think about such a party arising in the US today, but I think that if the ideas begin to be emanated from articulate and well-educated activists then in our relatively near future we could have the possibility of seeing this form of government. I believe that democratic socialism is the only humane form of government possible in this technologically driven world. First I should express a little of what I think social democratic anarchism would entail.

Minimal government influence in personal life is a necessity for true freedom (and is what makes the system anarchistic in nature), so basically the government would only have a policing and military presence, as well as being in charge of the redistribution of wealth. However, documents such as the Patriot Act would not be tolerated, nor would any “war on drugs”. People would still be allowed to own their property; just because socialism is involved does not mean it is communism.

Employees would democratically control all business. This idea is similar to the massive growth of cooperatives in Venezuela right now that is being supported by Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Movement. This is absolutely necessary for the equal rights of workers and would alleviate the strongly polarized class division seen in many capitalist societies.

Business profit as well as individual profit needs to be heavily taxed and on a linear scale so that money can be redistributed back to companies to take care of social issues, such as education and healthcare, and domestic infrastructure issues, such housing and energy. Ideally, government would not need to be involved with taxation because class division between rich and poor would not be present and businesses, democratically run, would want to take care of these issues themselves. I do not believe, however, that businesses, even if they are run by the common people, can be trusted to take care of the less fortunate people that for whatever reason are incapable of participating in the societies growth. A skeptic of this ideal might say that people would become apathetic towards their work, or that they wouldn’t even bother working at all because all of their hard work would be taken away by taxation and there would be no reward. This is intrinsically not true, however, because if a business is making a lot of money from whatever it is producing then the employee would be making a lot more money also, albeit also getting taxed more but not so much more that profit for the business would not be seen on the individual level. Also, there is a lot to be said for the reward of successfully completing a task like finishing a project, making a scientific discovery, surgically saving another life, etc. then that person will feel as if they have contributed to the world and with that thought will be gratified by their success.

Of course government would be decentralized, i.e. there would be no president, but there would be committees, voted for by the people – not an electorate college – that would democratically help to set up institutions that were capable of protecting the rights of the people, providing military protection for the people, and redistributing the wealth to business and individuals. Because of the redistribution of wealth the country could be seen as a social welfare state similar to Sweden, with the exception of lack of government involvement in business.

This form of governance (or mostly a lack there of) would, I think, provide people the most freedom that is possible in the world that we live in today and therefore provide people with the highest standard of living.