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Miscellaneous

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Unnecessary Blog Design Update

I decided to take out the jQuery I mentioned in my last design post and just the plain Okay theme with a few small UI changes in an external CSS file. I installed a plugin that will automatically add the Creative Commons footer to every blog post. I noticed that plenty of colophons on personal Unnecessary Blog Design Update

Utterly Shocking: First Episode of Cosmos Reboot Contains Unscientific Propositions

I was going to do an original post on this but Wintery Knight did it sooner and better. Quoting J.W. Wartick: The depiction of the multiverse with little-to-no qualification was alarming, for there is much debate over whether there even is such a multiverse, and if there is, to what extent it may be called Utterly Shocking: First Episode of Cosmos Reboot Contains Unscientific Propositions

The Story Behind Damien Jurado’s Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son Album Cover

I’m a softie for album art explanations; I’ve posts in the hundreds combined on Buzzgrinder and Noisecreep, et al., on album art design and the stories behind them. Former colleague and radio guy (radio-bro? bro-adio? brodio?) Sean Cannon interviewed Damien Jurado for his radio show, and Damien mentioned the cover of Brothers and Sisters of The Story Behind Damien Jurado’s Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son Album Cover

Bands Need to Buy a Domain Name

Some more advice for bands from Seth: What happens when Facebook determines your tour announcement is not high-quality content? Or that your line of products that you’ll be selling at this weekends market isn’t high-quality content? … Get your fans, the people who LIKED you, onto an email list. Now. Tell your fans on Facebook Bands Need to Buy a Domain Name

How I Avoided the Flu This Year

I know flu season isn’t over yet, but I still haven’t gotten sick yet, even with two kids who came down with something. Who knows if what I’ve been doing is affecting anything, but here’s a few things that may be contributing to my success. 1. No flu shot! I’m not an anti-vaccine guy but How I Avoided the Flu This Year

Bands: Improve Your Live Show

“9. Say your bands name clearly on stage after the first song and after your last song. Like, actually say it, not just “heywe’resoandsothanksforcomingout…” but in a way that people may remember it. Say it clear. Not too fast. I hear so many bands do that, “we’reblahblahblahthanksofromingout” while the drummer is still tuning his snare.”

BabyMetal Just Made Metal Adorable

BabyMetal’s “いいね!- Iine!” (which I believe translates to “Sounds good!”) is probably the only underage jpop-idol metal song with a hip-hop break ever in existence. I could be wrong.

On How Dystopias Are Formed

Interesting post over at the Freeman blog, touching on how fictional dystopias are formed: Second, let’s say that we are indeed right now living in a capitalist dystopia, yet, for the vast majority of us, it really doesn’t look or feel much like the dismal world of Blade Runner or Elysium. If the hyper-capitalist world On How Dystopias Are Formed

How American Currency Is Created

This is part four of a five-part series, but to me this is the most important/”useful” part. Someone in the comments section mentioned that this is how all currencies are created. I don’t how much truth there is to that but since all fiat currencies need a government behind them to declare “by fiat” that How American Currency Is Created

An Atheist Abortion Doctor Read Matt Walsh’s Blog. What He Does The Next Day At The Office Will Completely Blow You Away.

No Bake Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Larabars This recipe is totally cribbed from My Whole Food Life but I thought I would repeat it here. Since Larabars don’t put anything goofy in their stuff, replicating them at home is easy to do. Like the Primal Energy Bites recipe I posted a while back, these are An Atheist Abortion Doctor Read Matt Walsh’s Blog. What He Does The Next Day At The Office Will Completely Blow You Away.

Michael Murray’s Response to the “Hiddenness of God” Argument Is Eh

Wintery Knight posted a while back (a while back on the scale of Internet time) about a response to the argument about God’s “hiddenness”—i.e., the phenomenon that God’s existence isn’t more plainly known to everyone in the same way that other, less important things, are apparent. [Michael Murray] argues that if God reveals himself too Michael Murray’s Response to the “Hiddenness of God” Argument Is Eh

Math Can Determine Good Books

At first I thought that this declaration was due to journalistic bravado, since no academic would ever propose that one narrow study would be so broadly definitive. But then there’s this: After analysing 800 novels available to download at Project Gutenberg Yejin Choi, an assistant professor at Stony Brook University, claims she can predict literary Math Can Determine Good Books

Orson Scott Card Lets a Secret Out

Taking a break from the blogging break to post this. I’m reading through Orson Scott Card’s Ender quintet series, currently on Speaker for the Dead (read for free here). Here’s a quote from one of the characters, who gives away the secret weapon (heh) of governments. “My beloved father, this has always been the way Orson Scott Card Lets a Secret Out

Taking A Month Off

I’m taking December off of my rigorous blogging schedule of maybe posting once or twice a week to finish the first and second drafts of Retardo Montalbán*. It’s verboten form for writers and bloggers to explicitly state things like this, but I’m neither so I don’t recognize those social constraints. There will be one small Taking A Month Off

The “Accumulative Past” Argument Against God’s Existence

Most Christians are too scaredy-cat—skeptics, too dull-witted—to really step into the thinking process of someone different. I, on the other hand, can spend inordinate effort doing so. This argument is very weak because it’s just a framework. A more realer philosopher-guy needs to put some meat on the steps. Additionally, this can only work for The “Accumulative Past” Argument Against God’s Existence

The Appeal to Current Affluence Fallacy

Here’s a certain kind of fallacy I’ve noticed that is a specific form of the appeal to consequences fallacy, where one person leverages a premise’s favorable or unfavorable state of affairs to a certain conclusion. The current affluence fallacy appeals to a person’s present sensibilities and comfort levels to imply that a different situation would The Appeal to Current Affluence Fallacy

The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

I wonder why I’ve never heard about this until now. The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge is offered by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), which says it will pay out one million U.S. dollars to anyone who can demonstrate a supernatural or paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria. I was actually getting ready The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

I Growed a Beard

Despite the mild blowback on beards I’ve noticed recently, I formed one. Thus sayeth Clement of Alexandria: How womanly it is for one who is a man to comb himself and shave himself with a razor, for the sake of fine effect, and to arrange his hair at the mirror, shave his cheeks, pluck hairs I Growed a Beard

Hitler on John Piper and N.T. Wright

I’m not a super-theology buff so don’t yell at me for being a Piper or Wright fanboy. I have seen some N.T. Wright videos and liked them. I have seen some John Piper tweets and liked them. That’s about it. As with some Hitler Reacts videos, it’s hard to really determine who is meant to Hitler on John Piper and N.T. Wright

Thomism.org’s Proofs Against Theism

A Facebook friend linked to these recently. Most of them are satirical strawman proofs; no need to take them seriously, but some do point out actual weak arguments. There’s too many good ones to point out, but check out one of the Carl Sagan Dragon arguments, number 90: CARL SAGAN’S DRAGON IN MY GARAGE ARGUMENT Thomism.org’s Proofs Against Theism

Stop Asking For Evidence

Intense online debates tend to go only one way. Some hapless dude makes a claim that is more or less self-evidently true, and a high-minded scientismist-debutante asks for “EVIDENCE??”. That’s really not the only way but many debates can follow this simple framework. The implication with this triple-syllabled rejoinder is that a failure to produce Stop Asking For Evidence

Weird Language on The Walking Dead

I heard this sentence on last night’s episode of The Walking Dead: “If you weren’t in here already, you’d be here.” It was spoken to a doctor who had gotten sick and was being quarantined with a load of other non-doctor patients. It was meant to show the speaker’s (Herschel’s) regard for the sick doctor’s Weird Language on The Walking Dead

Italicizing Foreign Words in Fiction

The dialogue in my current work in progress uses three languages: English (most of it), German (here and there), and Franco-Arabic (it is what you probably think it is). I was under the impression from previous reading that some or many foreign words that were actual foreign language words and not common loanwords (i.e., “taco”) Italicizing Foreign Words in Fiction

Jesus Was Invented By Rome, Why Not?

Old, old news by now, but there’s another guy claiming Jesus was invented by Rome in order to appeal to the occupied Jewish population, and he has suspiciously non-peer-reviewed evidence to prove it. That a nation would go to such great lengths and expense to play pattycake-nice with (or a joke on) people who where Jesus Was Invented By Rome, Why Not?

Desire the End

This came up on a randomized Youtube playlist I was streaming on cred.fm, and it reminded me of how much I liked the lyrics. There’s not a whole lot there, and I get that the music isn’t the first choice of everyone who reads my posts, but it encapsulates the view the church should have Desire the End

Food Chain Makes Jesus Wafer Burger, Some People are Allegedly Pissed

Via Metalsucks here. A specialty burger at Kuma’s Corner has a communion wafer as a garnish. A Catholic foodie blogger (ugh) reacted negatively. From the Director of Operations at Kuma’s: “People have been kind of upset,” he said. “The thing with this is, the communion wafer is unconsecrated, so until that happens, it’s really just Food Chain Makes Jesus Wafer Burger, Some People are Allegedly Pissed

Peter Ruckman Really Is Crazy

The guy who started the self-parodying and extensive av1611.org, the website that documents Ruckman’s dislike for just about everything you can think of, for the flimsiest of reasons. But he also seems to have inside info about aliens and the American government* as well. It’s comforting, in a way, when someone is demonstrably crazy all Peter Ruckman Really Is Crazy

Prometheus Analysis

I had a longer post but I watched the last video down below and it seemed to hit on a lot points of explanation. It also does a good job of putting to rest a lot of “Hey, why would they do that? That’s stupid,” kind of criticisms. Lifehack tip for people that watch movies: Prometheus Analysis

In Russia, Pure Reason Critiques YOU!

American twenty-something males shoot each other over Nikes and women. Russian twenty-something males shoot each other over philosophy: [T]wo men in their 20s were discussing Kant as they stood in line to buy beer at a small store on Sunday. The discussion deteriorated into a fistfight and one participant pulled out a small nonlethal pistol In Russia, Pure Reason Critiques YOU!

Once You Go Dark…

A blank LCD monitor.

Kind of a throwaway post, but in the last few days I made everything darker here at jd.com. The development environment I use at work is by default a white background and customizing the colors is hellish, so I leave it as is. I generally don’t like staring directly into flashlights so I thought I’d Once You Go Dark…

Baby Incubators in Amusement Parks

Rick Sebak narrated a PBS documentary on the history of amusement parks (Youtube playlist here). He mentioned baby incubators at Luna Park in Pittsburgh at the turn of the century, but it was also at the Luna Park at Coney Island. It comes off as unseeming to put babies and nurses on display for the Baby Incubators in Amusement Parks

“There is no X, except there is X.”

One of the dumbest comments I’ve seen goes to this one, on an article about some schmuck brain surgeon who killed people. See bolded part: There is no regulation in Texas of ANY kind. Regulation in Texas only exists to protect the businesses and individuals from the consequences of their actions, just like this so “There is no X, except there is X.”

SYNTHETIC CHRIST-CONSCIOUSNESS GRID…

Needs more Jesus.

…IS A GO. Watch this. It’s a brief overview of the leading alternate human history theory, going from Atlantis to the Greeks to Jesus to the Illuminati. Basically anything you hear on Coast to Coast AM. It’s standard fare in that regard. There’s actual logical progression of events, not a mishmash of crazy, and the SYNTHETIC CHRIST-CONSCIOUSNESS GRID…

Having Your Head in the Scientific Sand

Experience the horror of this very crudely paraphrased argument I had with someone on the IMDB message boards. I searched my darndest to find the original but it’s been lost in the black hole of Internet history, possibly for the sake of its participants’ sanity. When you are raised in a philosophical climate—the techno-Enlightened West—that Having Your Head in the Scientific Sand

Zach Braff Is Kind of a Knucklehead

Zach Braff doesn’t always tweet about penises: RT @UberFacts There are almost 5,000 gods being worshipped by humanity.” But don’t worry… only yours is right. — Zach Braff (@zachbraff) October 7, 2012 I get it. The implication with this statistic is that all religious belief systems can’t all be right, but that declaring them all Zach Braff Is Kind of a Knucklehead

Ernest Hemingway: Crossdresser

Ernest Hemingway boxing

Hemingway’s mom, Grace Hall Hemingway, was a little off: Ernest had four sisters but always wanted a brother, vocally expressing his discontent at the births of his two sibling sisters. In his very early childhood his mother, as was not totally uncommon, dressed Ernest in frilly girls clothes and paraded him and his elder sister, Ernest Hemingway: Crossdresser

What God Can Do and Can’t Do

Socrates in the Athens School

A pastor I follow online posted a quick rebuttal of a boilerplate criticism of theistic belief. In his blog is mainly concerned with theistic belief qua theistic belief, not as interpreted via Western modes of reasoning, though this post shows his strong grip on formal logic. To wit: Smart-aleck atheist wannabe asks, “Do you believe What God Can Do and Can’t Do

J.G. Ballard, We Gotta Have A Little Talk

Concerning your methods of courting the muses. INTERVIEWER I’m curious to know how material from the “real world” comes to be incorporated into the rather enclosed spaces of books such as High-Rise, Crash, or Concrete Island? BALLARD Well, before starting Crash, for example, in 1969, I staged an exhibition of crashed cars at the New J.G. Ballard, We Gotta Have A Little Talk

Thor (2011) Credits Sequence

There’s no reason for me to post this other than I thought that this was one of the better modern movie endings I’ve seen. I didn’t see this in theaters but I imagine this scene was quite the spectacle, especially in IMAX theaters. The score certainly helps. It’s obvious that Branagh, et al, proposes the Thor (2011) Credits Sequence

“We were married within three months.”

An wonderfully-written excerpt from Ballard’s Super-Cannes. Content warning: We were married within three months. I was still on my crutches, but Jane wore an extravagantly ruched silk dress that seemed to inflate during the ceremony, filling the register office like the trumpet of a vast amaryllis. She smoked pot at the reception held at the “We were married within three months.”

Monasticism and Trigonometry

From Chapter 3 of Lost Horizon: He was also interested in the mountain beyond the valley; it was a sensational peak, by any standards, and he was surprised that some traveler had not made much of it in the kind of book that a journey in Tibet invariably elicits. He climbed it in mind as Monasticism and Trigonometry

Free Movie Time: Wings of Honneamise

An overlooked film from 1987, about an alternate history space program. It comes off, to me, as a precursor to Contact but without the latter’s stupid heavy-handedness of the conflict thesis binary. Science and religious elements play hard in the story but their treatment is far from Hollywood’s childishness. Like Magentic Rose, the mechanical designs Free Movie Time: Wings of Honneamise

Religion and Science Blah Blah Blah

Below is a comment I posted on a blog post written by a Facebook friend of mine, Jason (from Becoming the Archetype—a reference point for those of you who are familiar). The post was a response to a video titled “My Question For Theists,” which I haven’t watched yet—my comments were general and more in Religion and Science Blah Blah Blah

Gulliver on the Good Life

From Chapter 10 of Gulliver’s Travels: No man could more verify the truth of these two maxims, “That nature is very easily satisfied;” and, “That necessity is the mother of invention.” I enjoyed perfect health of body, and tranquility of mind; I did not feel the treachery or inconstancy of a friend, nor the injuries Gulliver on the Good Life

Not Your Parents’ Government Collapse

Useful physical objects: not known to just disappear. I doubt the collapse of nations occur as they do in movies. Things would more likely end gradually, with a quiet, undramatic whimper (sorry, doomsday preppers, and people who think The Purge is realistic). This holds true if the collapse occurs via the government’s own hand—enterprise-wide, self-inflicted Not Your Parents’ Government Collapse

We Are All Something Agreeable Now

After raiding the newfound Language Log’s archive for a few minutes, I found this post, on the increasing usage of the “We are all x now” snowclone. Quoting from a Jeffrey Kluger article in Time: “This increasingly common trope has an easy, fill-in-the-blank quality to it that allows us to affect a bit of purloined We Are All Something Agreeable Now

An Unanswerable Question Rebuffed

A bit late in mentioning this, but Tom Woods addressed Slate’s “unanswerable” question to libertarians nicely here (with some follow up here and here). An introductory quote is below. The scattery Stefan Molyneux also provided a decent video answer here. If I can offer an uneducated answer: the reason nations don’t “do” libertarianism is because An Unanswerable Question Rebuffed

What High Schoolers Read Now

Via Media Bistro, an infographic (.pdf, ugh) on how high school reading lists have changed over time. The immediate conclusion is that kids aren’t as easily attentive to words on a page as they are to whatever shiny device is eating their free time up like so many Pringles, so they aren’t able to process What High Schoolers Read Now

Vengeance Rising’s De-Awesomed Artwork

Related to one of my recent posts about art inside the church, I came across this gem posted in a Facebook group. While not really single-church related it bears out the attitude of gatekeeper Christians needing to sanitize expression. Here we have Vengeance Rising’s Destruction Comes, released in 1991, with the cover as it should Vengeance Rising’s De-Awesomed Artwork

James Altucher Wants Your Bits

Consistently hit-or-miss James Altucher‘s new book, upon first release, will only be bought with Bitcoins, the currency of choice of libertarian doofs everywhere. It’s supposedly the first of its kind to do that. Many people who self-publish right now are simply uploading their files and hoping for the best. I am self-publishing as if I James Altucher Wants Your Bits

A Post About Urinating

Below is something I wrote in an email to a friend, and I guess it’s something that I think the world at large needs to read. I apologize for the crassness. About the piss: I was typing my response e-mail and stood up to do something mundane, then I had an additional thought and found A Post About Urinating

E-Chapbooks and Prison

From a correspondence with Matt, who runs Safety Third Enterprises: The other day a friend of mine let me see the “chapbooks” his students made. He teaches English lit at a prison. The rules were books could only be put together through found items at the jail. What was done and written in the books E-Chapbooks and Prison

Why Are All The Popes So Frigging Old?

The official answer, as in Catholic church code “official” answer, is as unsalacious as it comes: 47 years of some sort of church officialdom needs to be in the can before the smoke de blanco can rise for thee (source, sort of). Jose Canseco, the final word on all things church leadership, sagely offered on Why Are All The Popes So Frigging Old?

Electric Rabbit Chasing

It’s excerpts like this that made me a Bradbury fan: The lights came on. I blinked. For I saw the entire unholy thing. There it was, laid out for me under the drizzling rain. The lights came on. The men quickened, turned, gathered, and we with them. A mechanical rabbit popped out of a little Electric Rabbit Chasing

Why Are Heroes Always Serious?

Why are protagonists the serious ones in the fight? The partial explanation, of course, is that the villain sees a minor breach of scruples, like kidnapping or murder, as a means to a grander end. The protagonist’s outrage is a source of the villain’s distracted amusement. The hero’s end, the intrinsic value of a human Why Are Heroes Always Serious?

My Burpee Workout

I posted a few weeks ago about my workout schedule, and there was mention of a 100-rep pullup burpee workout. It’s actually pretty varied so I thought I would post it here with some explanation, since burpees are wonderful conditioning exercises that get a lot done in such a short time. There’s a lot of My Burpee Workout

I F*cking Love the Universe!

There’s a Facebook group called “I fucking love science“, which basically posts science-lite factoids, mostly by way of photos of astronomy- and zoology-oriented things, and quotes from scientists. But why love science? It’s a method and process of uncovering facts and collecting data about material, observable phenomena. I’ve said it before on here, but science I F*cking Love the Universe!

Hmm: Russell’s Teapot

I came across Russell’s teapot the other day, and I thought I had unearthed the source of the “evidence or GTFO” argumentation. But it seems that Russell only throw his skeptic torch on a strawman: If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun Hmm: Russell’s Teapot

My Workout Schedule

I always find people’s workout schedules interesting, so I thought I would post my (future) schedule. Clicky: A few notes about this: This was actually pretty hard to organize, mostly because of working around prior commitments and the fact that the Legs and Back workout always gives me DOMS, so I don’t want to schedule My Workout Schedule