Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Feral or Violent; Problem Cats

Many times a violent animal is often called feral, but this is very incorrect. Other animals, when in their natural habitats, are not inherently violent without good cause.

Other animals are driven by the same needs we have; food, shelter, and social structure. When these are lacking any animal becomes antisocial, and even violent, in their pursuit to get their needs met.

Cats are the best example, every time I see a cat called feral it has always been given this label due to antisocial behaviors. The reasons for these behaviors have always been correctable, usually with basic medical care.

Antisocial behavior toward humans is expected if the cat has been abused, their natural social structure allows for it but does not encourage it. A feline society is loosely hierarchical, the alpha watches over the pride in exchange for a few privileges.

If the alpha feline ever fails to protect the pride, or abuses their position, then the other members rebel. A natural reaction, even among humans.

If the alpha is a different species, then trust must be earned again. This is often why many felines will become violent toward humans, they have been abused or neglected by the human they once respected as the alpha.

So taming them is simply not a solution, actually we never tamed any of the other animals, ever. Even if they obey out of fear, they are still willing to rebel once the opportunity presents itself.

This is what violent cats and dogs are doing, rebelling. They learned that by acting violent they will be sent away, even if left in solitude they prefer the shelter to human interaction.

To alter this behavior there is one simple thing that they need to see, you need to love them, and you need to love them a lot. First, ignore all their outbursts as much as possible.

This means you will be hurt, but if you love something you will be willing to go through this just to save their life. Only offer them affection when they are calm and loving, eventually they'll expect the reciprocation.

Learn what they want, and give it to them; a few exceptions to this exist, cats can't have too much tuna so only give them that in small amounts. Usually the things they want are actually quite convenient, like playtime or a specific kind of toy.

Cats have sensitive spots that most other animals do not, for this reason you have to learn how to pet them correctly. The catch is that it varies for each cat.

Very few cats like to be petted near their tail, so that may be a trigger. It could also indicate a medical issue if they respond with ferocity, so you may want to have that checked out.

Most cats will guide you, just put your hand out and watch what they rub up against you, that's where they want to be petted. The more they trust you, the more contact they will tolerate.

No one likes to be touched, grabbed, or petted by someone they do not trust, the same is true of cats. A violent cat will likely not want to be petted until they are certain you will not harm them.

Patience is key here, you adopted them for love but they learned to fear instead. So you have to teach them what love actually is, and show them that you also want to be loved.

I have dealt with many violent cats, and several actually feral ones, and I have always been able to earn their trust. In doing so, you will find that they are the most grateful felines.

Saturday, December 26, 2015

Compass Housing Alliance, Karlstrom

To Whom It Concerns: (Compass Housing Alliance, Karlstrom)

Our Christmas holiday was ruined this year simply because of a small problem with the elevator that was exacerbated by the lack of response from those who are managing our apartment building. Not only was almost everyone gone, and no emergency contact has been given to us, the few that we could contact acted like it was none of their concern.

They wouldn't even help by opening the only other way to enter the building, which left us in the cold or trapped in the building to avoid getting left in the cold. Ultimately, some of us developed a network of contact so we could call someone, because the door dialer at the main entrance for the apartments also appears to be out of order.

The biggest issue is that many residents suffer from major health issues that make using the stairs difficult or impossible, also others had no one to contact when they needed someone to open the fire escape door to allow them in. Some took to placing something in that door to allow them to open it, which ultimately lead to us finding homeless people who refused to go to the available shelters in the building.

This defeated the purpose of having a secure entrance and left many of us ready to contact the police, luckily they vanished, possibly up to the roof or other parts of the building. All of this could be avoided if we either had keys to the staircase entrance or a reliable and responsible emergency contact.

However, due to the frequency of the elevator breakdowns these last few years, it is also clear that maintenance has been lacking. Of course this would not prevent future problems, but it would reduce the amount of reliance we have on the managers if it was improved.

Many of us feel these are not unreasonable complaints as we are paying rent, and neglecting the building is unlawful. Considering the amount of state funds the management receives in subsidies, it is stealing from both residents and taxpayers.

So please find a solution to prevent this, as this is also not the first time we have faced this issue. It appeared that they were trying to work on a solution during the last several years, but none has been ever been presented.

Some of the residents are trying to work their way off the system, others are too elderly or physically handicapped. This kind of problem makes any improvement nearly impossible and increases the stress of the disabled to levels that are dangerous to our health.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Gamers and Stereotypes

The psychology of gamers is something often left to the scholars, but only because no one wants to see how stereotypical we are. So let's break it down with into the archetypes and explain why each are pretty accurate.

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The psychotic:

Psychotic people rarely pose a danger to modern society, but this is because we offer them plenty of outlets for their emotional outlets. The greatest ones we offer are video games.

Video games are inexpensive and plentiful, they are also very safe. Every time a psychotic becomes a danger they focus on the number of video games they have, while ignoring the trigger to cause them to become violent in real life.

In every instance there is either a lack of new releases or the people in charge prevent them from getting their fix. The flaw is not in the games, it is our inability to diagnose psychotic tendencies in people before they commit real world violence.

Prior to games we had other media outlets, like movies and television shows, even radio. Prior to all that, we were so violent as a species that no one noticed the psychotic people anyway.

So better diagnosis and more video games will reduce their desire to harm other people in the real world. Video games become the best medicine for them.

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The lonely nerd:

We all know these people, at one time they were wrongfully associated with Star Trek fans, and often they were forced deeper into isolation. Then online video games came along and gave them a new way to socialise.

These are the introverts created by society, and strewn about so much that they were unable to socialise with their own. This created the stereotype that reclusive people are maladjusted, which is just paranoia caused by misunderstanding them.

A nerd is actually more attuned to social trends than most of us, they know what's popular and why, but as a society we see them as awkward and uncoordinated. Ultimately, a nerd would make a great marketing genius, able to even predict the next big fad before it happens.

Even today we tend to force them to become more reclusive, but video games over the internet have allowed them to congregate with their own. Essentially this means they are now more social than the rest of us.

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Over competitive muscle brain:

This type of gamer is rarely given the spotlight, even though they are truly the most disturbing. In the past we only saw them at sporting events, but today we see them in every subculture in the world, even video games.

These are people who are more interested in proving that they are the best than enjoying what they are doing. They are also the bread and butter of sports.

The advent of gaming has offered them a new field of competition, one in which they are even willing to cheat to prove their superiority. To them, the games are not fun outlets of aggression or methods of socializing with people like them, they are another arena to prove that they are better.

Every good gamer will admit that the muscle brain is ruining online video games as a whole, but we have little recourse. These people will always be in every arena spoiling everyone's fun.

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The perverts:

As with everything that exists, there are those who sexualize gaming. This is rather inconsequential and does not need to ruin everyone's fun, though many will complain about these people for no reason.

The complaining does retract from the enjoyment of others, because sex drive increases revenue of any product, for game this means the developers can finance more games. So suck it up, play the games, and stop worrying about the mouth breathers who are probably the real reason the game was able to be published.

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The gamer geek:

This is the most sane of the gamer archetypes, and I'm not saying that just because I am one. This is the classifications of gamers who look at the games objectively, while enjoying the rich stories and elaborate worlds presented.

To us, the game is a reflection of real life, a reflection of social structures which can be analyzed and enjoyed. A gamer geek often finds exploits, but never uses them.

We also find beauty in the art, even in primitive games like those from the old eight bit systems. We are the ones who insist on box art, high quality manuals, and other collector quality paraphernalia.

Another label we could be given is "game snobs."

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So the next time someone tries to lump all gamers into one group, or blame our outlet for their own problems, remember this blog. Most likely the people trying to discredit games and gamers are actually just jealous, because ultimately, the games allow us to live among the morons and scumbags.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Corporate Greed

Now the third par of how corporations are actually screwing you. You always here about how bigger corporations are evil monsters but the small businesses are innocent and perfect.

This is because we, as a society, must have a bogyman, so we bought into the marketing campaigns that paint the bigger corporations as evil monsters. It was an easy target to hate, of course Republicans didn't help the big corporations by giving them that stupid label of "person."

The fact is, corporations are not the bad guys, but corporations can have bad people working in them. The entire reason corporations became our bogyman was because some struggling small businesses discovered that they could more easily push out the big corporations using the laws.

So they started campaigns to paint every major corporation in competition with them as bad, then convince the local idiots to vote for laws that pushed those bigger corporations out of the towns. Now the part you missed, a corporation does not have to be big, even your local ice cream shop is probably a corporation of it's own.

A corporation is actually a business that pools it's profits rather than splits them up among those in charge. Oddly, a corporation may only have one person that is in charge of this account, which is what small businesses do.

Bigger corporations have more people in charge, that means more people making decisions. This is actually why major corporations are less corrupted than the small businesses.

Yes,I did just type that. Don't buy the rhetoric about how big corporations are ruining everything, if that was the case then we'd already be extinct.

Farmers Hate People

Continuing on the topic of how corporations are really making us ill, we revisit the most corrupted industry called "organic farming." This also mirrors herbal remedies and homeopathy, but the opposition to something that could save billions of lives is why I pick on the organic crap.

Long ago, farmers discovered some methods of preserving food for transport to the grocers across the globe. This would have helped so many people get food that no one should have starved, but they did, and for only one reason: greed.

Farmers did not see a solution to a problem, instead they saw an opportunity to increase their profits by exploiting the people who depended on their products. To do this, they started destroying edible food.

Yes, that was how they kept the demand high, collectively deciding to reduce the food they sold to make their products more valuable in spite of improved preservation methods. Suddenly there was a crisis, at least that's what we were told, and the government had to subsidize these poor starving, filthy rich, farmers.

Of course that didn't atop them from scamming us all, actually it encouraged more corruption in the farming industry. Then the competition got heated as a few decent companies developed even better methods of preserving food.

The farmers did not like the fact that the companies who produced these openly shared them so everyone knew they existed, worked, and were safe. So the farmers did the one despicable act they could get away with, terrorism.

Farmers across the globe began to spread lies by funding fake studies to show that certain chemicals caused cancer, they did this for all the chemicals but the ones they used. Crafty people know that too much of any chemical will kill you, and many of them will cause cancer.

So the fake studies could easily convince most people that "chemicals" were bad even though everything is a chemical, and that modern genetic modification was bad even though it produces fewer mistakes. Not to mention, synthetics and modern genetic modification are all more regulated than any of the others, because the scientists requested it.

Yep, the developers and scientific minds that produced modern GM methods, as well as the synthetic compounds used in foods, requested regulations. This is what science is, regulation of all discoveries so that false information is quickly removed before someone gets hurt by it.

Organic farmers refuse regulations, they actually oppose regulation of their own food in all ways, even the use of pesticides known to cause cancer. Most chemicals that qualify as "organic" were discarded by the corporate farm industries because they were being sued.

They were sued because these organic compounds, as we discovered, were very poisonous. If the food is not processed then the organic pesticides and herbicides will kill you.

Your Cough Could Save Your Life

Corporations are actually making us ill, but not in the ways that people think. Actually, I take that back, corporations are convincing us that we're sick even when we're perfectly healthy.

First, coughing and sneezing has never been shown to spread illness, ever. I imagine you saying "but doctors ...", the fact is that doctors are not scientists.

First, most bacteria are not airborne, they die when they dry out. So very few coughs will ever transmit any bacteria, unless you cover your mouth.

That's right, coughing or sneezing into your hands increases your chances of spreading something because your skin is perfect for them to survive on. We cover a cough or sneeze out of respect for others, but really it can potentially cause them to get sick from it.

Now here's the fun part, the potential is actually negligible. You read that right, most coughing and sneezing is caused by basic environmental factors, even chronic coughing.

Here's a small list of those innocent and perfectly healthy reasons to cough or sneeze that doctors don't tell you about:

1. Dry air.
2. Dust, miniscule amounts can trigger both.
3. Pollution, even a tiny bit.
4. Indigestion, which often causes throat irritation.
5. Cancer in almost any organ, though this is really bad to get, you can't pass it through coughing and sneezing.
6. Perfumes, which are technically pollution but most people don't know that.
7. Minor infections, these cannot be spread to another person.
8. Dander, the dry skin of any organism, even yourself.
9. Swallowing food, if food gets stuck to your throat it will trigger coughing fits.
10. Anything in the sinus cavity can drip into your throat and irritate it.

There are literally thousands of more things which will cause coughing or sneezing that are not a reason for concern. Actually, if you don't cough or sneeze your are more likely to suffer complications or even die.

Now, the list of things which you can spread by coughing or sneezing around someone: none.

It is not being around a person who is coughing that spreads it, it is only if they expel moisture, have a bacteria or virus that can survive in saliva, and that moisture lands on you. Or the moisture can land on their hands then they touch your skin or hair.

So why do doctors claim coughing and sneezing can spread deadly diseases? Because the companies that sell products marketed to "keep us safe" convinced them it can.

The paper industry is notorious for underhanded marketing tactics like this, and they are the ones still fueling this myth. From masks to tissues, none of which have been shown to slow the spread of disease, and chemically they become huge liabilities as they actually give bacteria and viruses a great breeding ground.

Other products that actually make us ill are the cough suppressant. Unless you know what's causing the cough, preventing it could mean your death.

The body evolved to cough as a method of dispelling particulates which could be harmful, even carcinogens. So the corporations convinced you that coughing is bad, they then convinced your doctor to support this claim, just to make huge profits off your illness that you probably don't even have.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Honest Review of the Twitter App for Android

Twitter developed a nice, simple, sleek, and working app for Android so long ago I don't recall the date. But as time went on they began making a ton of huge mistakes.

The first was reinventing the wheel, which is not something I usually gripe about but in this case they didn't really reinvent it. Instead of using the built-in Android libraries for basic features like animations and video, they moved the entire app to the NDK then rewrote all those from scratch.

If said features were unique, I'd understand, but these are to play simple GIFs and web video, nothing fancy like YouTube's annotations. Of course YouTube uses only the SDK, so even if they did do all that the Twitter app would need no new NDK libraries.

Then all hell broke out on the app as feature after feature was added using all new code in spite of being nothing more than basic Android features. This creates huge errors as the native code tries to access a lot of stuff that is not even there.

Ultimately, this creates a very sluggish and glitchy app no matter what device it is used on. But Twitter developers simply don't care, all theybseem to care about is cramming as much useless garbage into the app as possible.

So now we have the promoted tweets showing up in every expanded tweet, which slows the already slow app down to a crawl. They also added what they call "moments," which is just "what's popular" but with a bunch of extra code added to the app.

To make matters worse, this all updates in the app constantly, even when the app and notifications are turned off. Adding in the automated refresh nonsense makes the Twitter Android app more like a virus than an app.

So the flaws in the Twitter app for Android are:

1. Bloated - by using the NDK and recreating all the features already built into Android, the app takes up way more space than it needs.

2. Memory - bad memory management has always been a huge flaw in the Twitter app, as if the developers know nothing about the devices they are developing for.

3. Constant Updating - the timeline is updated automatically so frequently that it slows the entire device down and makes reading your timeline impossible.

4. Useless Features - like the Microsoft paperclip, no one likes these. From their constant search updating for "moments" to the intrusive promoted tweets showing in every single expanded tweet, all they do is ruin the app.

5. Background Updates - to make the automated refreshing more of a hassle, it happens even if you turn off notifications and the app is in the background. This interferes with other apps and processes as well as destroys your bandwidth.

So my recommendation is to find a third party app to access Twitter, many of them don't show any promoted tweets so that's an extra bonus. Some will require being purchased, but most allow you to try before you buy and they are worth it.

Once you get use to the other layouts, Twitter becomes both useful and pleasant again.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Star Wars Revived

I am looking forward to the new Star Wars, in spite of my distaste for Disney. Many of the fans will agree that George Lucas was actually the worst part about the franchise, so it's nice to see what someone else can do with it.

The thing most people will disagree with me about is why Lucas just plain sucks. He is arrogant and ignores what the fans say, we saw this when he did the rereleases of the original trilogy.

Every fan said pretty much the same thing, that adding new special effects to the old movies only ruined the experience. The primary reason for this was because the new effects didn't look like the old effects, a point often glossed over by most reviewers.

Modern effects are shinier, and back then they were so primitive as to lack enough realism. The old effects looked grainy and rough, and though they were sub-par for today they fit into the film as they were.

It is much like airbrushing an apple sitting next to the Mona Lisa, the modern paint would always stand out no matter how hard you tried to blend it in. This is what made the additions so offensive to fans, even modern fans, they simply didn't look right.

Now the Greedo shooting first is a great example, the story was actually changed in the books. The real problem was that Greedo's shot did not look like the same blaster fire as the originals, it also traveled the wrong angle.

All the CGI animals also looked out of place, partially because CGI was primitive when they were added, but mostly because they didn't have the rough edges that the rest of the scenes possessed. So no, it was not the story changes that actually bothered anyone, it was simply the lack of integration.

That said, Lucas then ignored all the complaints and made the prequels using his own bland idea of entertainment. The prequels wound up containing nothing but every mistake he made when he remastered the original trilogy.

We now know that it was Spielberg who was the actual brains behind the genius of the first Star Wars trilogy. Now we come to today, and a new director, with a new vision.

First off, I have only seen the trailers at the time of this blog, and read a few news articles about the new trilogy, so I have no spoilers to post. Abrams is brilliant, as long as he is within his element, and Star Wars actually fits his style perfectly.

Star Wars is more like a romantic, swashbuckling, space adventure. So lots of explosions, battles, impossible stunts, and anything to put you on the edge of your seat will only improve it.

Abrams is known for cramming as much gratuitous action into a movie as the runtime will allow, the trailers shown suggest he kept this habit in the new Star Wars. Another fun factoid is that Abrams actually wanted to add more strong female characters, something which Lucas seemed against.

So in the trailers we see females who are, for lack of a better term, bad ass. They are still a bit Hollywood, but that can be forgiven as long as they're strong role models.

Also, the trailer hints at the new Sith lord finishing what Darth Vader started, many may not know what that actually was and will mistakenly think it has to do with Luke and Leia. If you have been paying attention though, the grand scheme of Vader and Palpatine was to eliminate all Jedi.

In the comics and novels this is reiterated so much that it's impossible to miss, but Lucas failed to get this point across in the prequels. The good thing, this means they don't have to recast Luke Skywalker in case they can't get Mark Hamill to return.

That should be a weight off a lot of shoulders, and this does not count as a spoiler because it was explained many times in many places. If this comes as a surprise to you then please try to sit through the prequels again and pay attention, or read the novels.

So in conclusion, I am really looking forward to this new trilogy.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

It's the End of the World!

Doomsday scenarios are the bread and butter of our modern society, in spite of being such old news we should have tired of them by now. But what are the odds of one happening in our lifetimes?

The odds are very slim, considering how much we are prepared for them as well as our heightened sense of fear. So the question remains, why do we continue to tell such stories?

The answer is found in an evolutionary trait that plagues our species, in the past this trait called suspicion helped us to survive. So ultimately, suspicion is not a bad thing, but because of it we have prepared for the worst so much as to render our fears obsolete.

Many hours of media are dedicated to highlighting these fears, even the famous and brilliant Stephen Hawkings has bought into them. So first, let's examine the possibility of AI destroying us.

Digital technology is bound to the laws we hardwire into the machines. With the advent of the "Three Laws of Robotics" we have developed the answer to this threat.

The laws are basic morals for any machine, ones which can be hardwired into any digital intelligence. Notice I do jot refer to it as artificial, this is for one basic reason, intelligence must evolve.

The very fact that we cannot just create intelligence has been discovered recently, a fact I actually realized over two decades ago. Not to dwell on the fact that when I presented these findings I was promptly ridiculed and discarded from all serious efforts of AI development, this is the primary reason we have nothing to worry about from the mechanical organisms we will eventually create.

As an intelligence evolves, we will be the effect known as natural selection, deleting those intelligences which prove to be psychotic will lead to sane and rational intelligences remaining. In Hollywood terms, we will create JARVIS long before Sky-Net becomes more than a wet dream.

This is not to say that we should not be cautious, we are still responsible for how these intelligences evolve. Which leads us to the nanotechnology, a relatively new advance that could be our salvation or our doom.

Nanotechnology has the potential of becoming a weapon out of control, which means we simply have to regard how we use the technology as we develop it. The potential for benefit is much like vaccines, proper use and regulation could help us more than harm us.

Now the big one, climate change. This is a very real and obvious threat now, one which more than half of the laymen still deny.

Climate change is based on the observation that climate is becoming very unpredictable, and this change coincides with our species advance through the globe. My choice of wording is very purposeful, because there are a lot of scams involved in this subject which use this threat to sell new products.

Our use of some old technologies does impact the amount of damage we do, but ultimately it is our population size which poses the biggest threat. Luckily we see that this problem may actually be solving itself.

As our vices improve and increase in number, our population growth is slowing in spite of the over extended lifespans we now enjoy. This will impact climate change for the better, if we stop trying to alter our world.

Currently we hunt, and destroy, other species which we insist are invading our society. Even then domesticated species are targeted out of old fears which we know are baseless and dangerous.

We encroached on their territory, and by doing so we have upset the balance of the environs, causing new species to evolve in the place of those we eradicate. The answer is simple, stop doing anything, literally.

So to solve climate change we just have to let the planet itself heal, the rest is already taking care of itself by our losing the drive to reproduce. Which leads us to the biggest threat to our species, zombies.

Or more realistically, the super virus or bacteria. As scary as it sounds, this would ultimately be a huge benefit to our species.

We owe the existence of our species to the appearance of a super virus, one that caused a large enough of a mutation which gave us the brains we now possess. It is also likely that a super virus or bacteria caused the destruction of the dinosaurs, which paved the way for mammals to dominate the planet.

The chances of other mass extinction events is negligible, or in most cases unstoppable. So yes, barring our own mistakes, we should just sit back and enjoy what we can.

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Supernatural doomsday stories are mythology, to even consider them is insanity. They make great tools in recruiting fools to follow these prophets, though we all know that they are foolish nonsense proven false for thousands of years.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Teaching in Schools the Correct Way

Religion has this strange ability to blind people to difference between fact and fiction, at least that's what the evidence shows. However, this may be only part of what the facts show, considering that many believers who were not indoctrinated still show a lack of ability to discern fact from fiction.

Our educational system in the USA is known to be a failure, and this may be the result. Though much has improved, often teachers are allowed to assert whatever they want without impunity, and any student questioning the teacher is punished.

Education in the USA is also more about memorizing material than actually using what you know to discover more. This is essentially teaching children not to question the authority figure, as well as discouraging any form of exploration or actual learning.

Basically, we are setting people up to fail in life. This has even greater ramifications that we have known about for a long time, illustrated by the old adage of "always ask the kids how to set the VCR."

Because of our education system, people are unprepared for technological advances of any sort. This causes them to fear these advances, which creates scams like organic foods, chemical free, and gene editing.

This problem also opens people up to hoaxes like alien abductions, bigfoot, and religion. Ultimately, this is also why the government opposes allowing free education for everyone.

Many of the scams and hoaxes are funding our political leaders, the rest know that these scams and hoaxes make it much easier to keep people complacent. This complacency is precisely what the governments actually want, and any idea that can be used to justify their own desires is best.

Religion is the easiest tool for convincing the masses to follow blindly, but even hoaxes like bigfoot offer enough distraction. Hoaxes are more useful to the leaders than one may think, if the masses doubt what the reports of leader actions state then it won't matter what the leaders do.

So the cure for all of our problems is simple, improve education by teaching kids to doubt everything, then showing them how to test everything. Teach them only the scientific method in elementary/primary school, and teach them nothing else.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Nostalgia, Anecdotes, and Star Wars

Nostalgia is actually very dangerous, especially considering most people do not actually remember what they think they remember. I'll use the first Star Wars trilogy as an example, because it's a perfect one.

In my memory the movies are very realistic, the special effects were so believable I can even picture myself in the movies. The script was even well done, with smooth transitions and dialog that was smoothly threaded together.

Then I checked out CinemaSins and saw their take on the updated ones. The only reason Lucas did the updates was because nostalgia had fogged his memory.

So I tried watching them today, I got halfway through the first and thought "the books are ten thousand times better." This is because the books feed off the nostalgia, but in reality the movies themselves actually suck by today's standards.

Ignoring the grainy production values, the script was choppy, the plot was sloppy, and the special effects couldn't even pass for real. Star Wars is best left as a memory, because in my memory it's much better than it actually is.

Nostalgia is a problem because the past actually sucked, no matter how fondly you remember it. Your brain will record what it likes best, even altering the memory to make it feel better when you recall it.

This is an effect of all the chemicals in your brain responsible for pleasure, triggering a pleasure chemical makes the memory have a bigger impact on the neural network. So negative events are often forgotten completely, and those which you do recall are plagued with missing bits.

Nostalgia is simply a side effect of the brain preferring pleasure over pain, and the fact that you recall pleasant memories better. So ultimately you cannot trust any of your memories, but more importantly, you can't trust the positive memories of any era.

Those memories with positive enforcement may have negative consequences that you don't recall, which could be dangerous. At the very least, living in the past will make you forget to look forward.

Religion Vs Atheist

The biggest lie that religious people are telling today is that atheist is a religion. When pressed for why all they say is "it just is because I say it is."

The reason for this tactic is because religious people are simply too closed minded to even understand that not everyone needs religion. Actually, their minds are so closed that they cannot even fathom someone possibly thinking differently than they do.

As an atheist who was raised by an obsessively religious parent, I know for a fact that everyone thinks differently. This is actually a good thing, if everyone saw everything exactly the same then nothing would ever improve.

This is why religion must force everyone to assume that everyone else thinks exactly like them. Religious leaders lose all profit and power if things improve, their entire power structure is based on keeping people as miserable as possible.

So followers are forced into a spiral of despair from the start, and it all starts by convincing the follower that they are flawed and that those flaws are bad. Once convinced that all differences are flaws, they strive to hide their differences by pretending they are just like all the other followers.

By doing this they naturally become miserable, they hate themselves more than they hate everyone else. Then jealousy makes it's ugly appearance.

These followers then work to ensure that everyone else is as miserable as they are, which then encourages more people to join their religion. Ultimately, peace and health is against all religions, it's poison to them.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

A Message From the Head Office of the Illuminati

We're sorry.

There, we said it, are you happy now? Yes, it was all a giant conspiracy paid for with galactic credits we earned by selling human kidneys taken from everyone.

At least we left no scars when we removed them from you during your twenty first birthday, using a secret technology that allows all elite members of the Illuminati survive forever. We cannot share this technology, the reptilian overlords will not allow it.

The moon landing was faked, but no, we did jot film it underwater, idiots. We used advance computer technology given to us by the Grays, it's all CGI, there is no moon, that's just a huge balloon tied to the Google car.

Bigfoot is actually Frank, our favorite intern. He's actually a Wookie, but they are from Mars, not sure where Kashyyyk came from, sounds like the sound that the loch ness monster made when we shot him in 1802.

The internet you're using is monitored by four agents, we have everything you ever typed or said stored in massive servers on Orion 5. We sell this to the droids of Voltair G5, who then beam advertisements into your head.

These droids gave us the brilliant idea to create evolution, if Scientology had jot stolen Dr. Hubbard from us we would have used his story instead. Ironically, we also wrote the bible, both evolution and the bible were to distract you from the only being who can save you.

This god being won't save you if I tell you who he is, so we were forced to create these massive conspiracies to test you for him. Sadly, you all failed and we're going to reset the entire planet in about two weeks.

Don't worry, you'll only suffer from the horrible lava that will cover the planet for a few moments, enjoy your last weeks of existence.

----

If all of that sounds crazy to you, then why do you believe the bible, quran, or torah?

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

The Folly of Christmas

As a child, Christmas is a great holiday with all the candy and food, but as you get older it becomes more tedium and selfishness. The original holiday was much better, more about helping each other through hard times than gifts.

It is ironic that the people who claim the holiday as theirs are the very people who ruined it. Christians removed the joys of sharing with people in need and replaced it with giving your kids junk which they don't even need.

But the tedium comes mostly from age, the holiday is exactly the same every year. From the decorations to the traditions, and more importantly the music.

As we grow older, we have had the holiday shoved down our throats every year. The same greetings, the same decorations, the same iconography, the same traditions, and the same damned songs.

I sit in Starbucks typing this, and hear over the loud speakers the exact same songs written before my mother was even born. Most were recorded when she was a child.

Now I have heard these same songs on repeat, making for the same one being played at least a hundred times per day in all the businesses, for forty years. That means I have heard them repeated more than a million times each, and now they're driving me insane.

To compound the problem, the exact same decorations are hung in most businesses, except Starbucks. Starbucks has the compassion to at least try to vary their decorations every year.

But most have the same plastic ice hangings, blinding blinky lights, snow made of cotton, nativity garbage, headache inducing red and green window decals, plastered on their display cases. The only time of the year in which no creativity is seen in any window display.

As you pass the businesses to carry on your day, you try not to let those toxic, repetitive colors destroy what little sanity remains at this point only to be assault by another cookie cutter display of pure laziness. To make it worse, people actually pretend to enjoy this maddening trash.

The trees through downtown are strangled by the same lights they hang last year, adding to the light pollution most of us never enjoyed anyway. This assault on our senses is offensive to a species who prides themselves on being the most adaptive.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Atoms Are Random

I have heard the structure of the atom called "ordered," of course they use the word "order" to actually mean "organized." But in both cases they're dead wrong.

First, everything in nature appears predictable, we created laws based on those predictions. However, nothing in nature is organized.

Atoms are not an exception, the more we study these building blocks of everything, the more we see just how chaotic they are. In fact, on the quantum level, atoms are so chaotic that the math for predictions becomes too cumbersome to do on paper.

The nucleus is often thought of as stationary, still, and in place. But this is certainly not the case, every proton and neutron are constantly shifting position and vibrating.

Often these neutrons and protons vanish for short periods of time, or are replaced by other neutrons and protons seemingly at random. Ironically, this is the reason we were ever able to split the atoms.

The electrons are even stranger, to the point of defying all logic. Electrons don't fly in a simple orbit around the nucleus, they actually move around quickly and randomly. If you looked at an atom it would look like a cloud with a very dense core, nothing like the model used to describe how they behave.

Electrons also don't stay on their "levels," as we once thought. Often they jump levels, seemingly at random.

The atom is the perfect reflection of the universe, chaotic, strange, unpredictable in many ways.

Friday, December 4, 2015

Climate Red Alert

The notion that we are incapable of impacting the environment is psychosis. It is a very well established fact that all organisms impact the environment they reside.

Humans live in the global environment now, so we impact them all, even our much needed oceans. Changes to the environment do impact the climate of said environment as well, this is another undeniable fact.

Now, let's go back many millions of years ago to the last species to alter the global environment as much as we do. The reason I say it like that is because it's not the changes that pose a threat, it's the amount of change without a counter balance.

The dinosaurs are a large collection of species which altered the global environment in one way so drastically that their dietary system became imbalanced. We are causing more change than they did, our technology has slowed the impact on ourselves but we have done nothing to stop it.

Their ecosystem became so imbalanced that most of their species were extinct long before the cataclysm that wiped out all but a handful. We can expect the same result, if we do nothing then a single cataclysmic event will wipe us out simply because we will have no stable ecosystems to rely on for food.

To complicate matters, our impact is causing the climate to destabilize, returning the Earth to a state in which modern life cannot survive. When the planet first formed, the climate was very chaotic, and nothing today evolved until after it had been stabilizing for billions of years.

This is why climate change is really important, if we do not change our ways, the changes we cause to the environment will cause our extinction. This is undeniable, observable, and repeated fact.

Monday, November 30, 2015

DO THE MATH

The most common fallacy I see is personal incredulity, in other words they are too damned lazy to do the work even though they always claim they did the work. Flat earth and creationist nuts are the most likely to be this dishonest.

First, odds are not calculated based on "this seems highly unlikely," they are calculated based on samples, the larger the sample size the more accurate the odds are. For example, evolution has a 1 in 1 odds of happening, every organism we encounter varies from it's parent organisms.

Creationists used a failed formula that only works for humans, and only if evolution did not happen. The value they cite is only if the DNA started from scratch each time, so no evolving, no parental traits, no biogenesis.

The result is 1 in 600+ billion, which is correct if the DNA was built from nothing by manually randomizing the order in which each chemical was introduced. In other words, the creationist cites odds of abiogenesis producing a specific species spontaneously.

They are lying, plain and simple, a strawman that isn't even their own work. Asking them where they come up with the number always results in more lies such as "I did the math myself."

Flat earth nuts are even worse about this, they will make stupid assertions like "gravity wouldn't work on a globe." Asking them to show the math results in them spamming you with nonsensical videos and strawmen.

The fact is, gravity is omnidirectional, thus clusters of rocks in space will become somewhat spherical. The only reason Terra is not a perfect sphere is because of plate tectonics, which is the result of our molten core.

Plate tectonics has actually kept the planet looking like a giant asteroid, if you remove the water from the surface. So no, Terra is not a perfect sphere, but it is spherical, or a globe to be more precise.

The discovery of Terra being spherical came long before we launched into space, one of the earliest recordings was in ancient Greece. Plato was one of the earliest to observe phenomena that could only happen on a curved surface.

It was eventually proven using shadows, by placing pillars at great distances on the same altitude, they measured the shadows at different times in the day. The only explanation for their findings was a spherical Terra.

That is what people in science call "showing your work," or more simply put "empirical evidence." These simple tests can be duplicated and they will always show the same results, that part of the process is what religious people fear most, in science it's called "peer review."

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Empiricism and Religion

The religious often claim that "you'll find [god] when you're ready." That is all they're left with after we have destroyed all their fallacies and canards.

But that is precisely when you should doubt what you see, if a disembodied voice speaks to you then you are probably suffering a severe psychological trauma. Of course the voice is only the extreme sign, others are more subtle responses to chemical processes.

Under stress, or any negative emotion, the brain triggers the release of psychotropic chemicals. These will alter what you see, hear, and even feel.

This is not the time to have life changing epitomes, it is a time to doubt everything you experience. Thus we have empiricism, in spite of it's name this is not some magical force or sense, it's simply verifying your own experiences by comparing them to the facts.

One part of empiricism is to compare experiences with those who were physically present, if there is any difference between them then you know they are suspect. Have everyone write it down before talking about it to ensure that one does not influence the others.

The end result is almost always varying stories, sometimes so different that you can easily dismiss them all. Anyone who says "I meant to say that" instead of what they wrote, then you know there is a lot of cognitive dissonance in play.

You also need to examine the verifiable facts, while making no assumptions. For this, bringing a third party who lacks any investment works tl verify the facts.

That is basic empiricism, a simple method of making sure you're sane.

Monday, November 23, 2015

God's Laws or Just Observations?

Scientific laws are used fallaciously by religious people, while it is technically personal incredulity, it is also a purposeful misrepresentation of scientific laws. Often they cite a law of logic, ironically these evolved in the brain because they worked well enough for survival.

Laws of logic and laws of physics are two very different things, and neither is absolute. The word absolute does not describe scientific laws in any way, the laws always change when new information is acquired.

The laws of logic change less often because we have essentially come to understand everything about the brain, and evolution is a slow process so new laws don't appear often. But the most annoying fallacy used is applying the logical law of noncontradiction to physics.

The law of noncontradiction is a logical law that allowed the brain to maintain a more stable level of sanity. It evolved early on, prior to other social traits.

The law simply states that one thing cannot equal a contradictory term, such as 1 and -1, or 1 and 0. This helps the brain filter out what it thinks is misreported information, the brain can choose to ignore this law with conscious efforts.

For this reason, the very contradictory study of quantum physics is difficult for a brain to comprehend, which it why the theory is mostly physical laws. Physics can, and often does, contradict itself.

On the quantum level there are more contradictions than any other field of study, so we know that the laws of logic do not apply to the physical. The laws of logic are phenomena of the brain, the laws of physics are mathematical constructs describing predictable behavior of the universe.

The laws of physics are constantly being changed, updated to include new information. Gravity is the simplest example, as we saw the advent of relativity to make gravity actually work outside of our atmosphere.

Yes, the laws of gravity changed, the theory of gravity is not complete enough for us to even be close to having a comprehensive law, so this is expected to happen a lot. But a lesser known and more complex one is light speed.

Originally light was clocked at a specific speed, and after clocking it many times it was assumed that the speed of light was a constant. Notice this is not a law, this is something we mistook for a constant.

We also assumed that light speed was the fastest possible speed for any particle. Recently we discovered that the speed of light is also relative, and that many particles move faster.

Not to mention, the edges of this universe are moving apart faster than the speed of light, this means that the universe itself is moving faster than the speed of light. Ultimately it destroys the notion that scientific laws are absolute or constant.

The laws are our constructs, which we created to help predict the predictable behaviors of the universe, and that's all they really are.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Gods are the Ultimate Fallacy

Just because we talk about your delusion does not mean we share or accept your delusion. As we know, gods are egotistical delusions created by weak and impotent people as a means to feel superior.

Of these gods are useful to the con artists who utilize those delusions for profit and power over the followers. But those who speak of them do not have to agree that they exist anymore than one who speaks of Spiderman must believe he is real.

It is ironic that the theist thinks that applying logic to their beliefs also suggests that we hate their god as well. We can hate what we do not believe exists, we all hate the Hobgoblin based on his actions in the mythical universe.

Then there is the notion that we deny their god just because we want to "sin." But since we do not believe their god exists, sin is a made up notion to blame people for being people.

The fact of the matter is, atheists are a threat to their fragile mythology, simply by presenting facts and logic we shake their beliefs to their core. Education, as we know, dispels religion.

This bothers the preachers, they want to paint us atheist people as violent monsters yet we never act violently. So they have to make up stories and fallacies to scare the believer away from us, luckily the internet allows the theists to verify these claims, and many are doing that now.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Terrorism, Syrian Refugees, and the True Problem

To those saying religion didn't cause the terrorist attacks, that "moderate" Muslims are not dangerous, or that only Muslims are terrorists, you're all idiots. All religious doctrine, with a few exceptions suck as modern Wicca, demand acts of terrorism.

A terrorist act need not be violent, it only needs to use or create fear. Terrorism is a tactic of fear manipulation as a method of subjugating people.

A common example of peaceful terrorism, one that is used dogmatically in the USA, is to tell someone to obey or be subjected to intense torture. This particular method was created, and perfected, by Christianity, "obey my god or suffer for all eternity."

People in the USA tell this to kids, even the bogeyman stories are not as horrible as telling a 5 year old that if they don't eat their peas they'll be tortured forever. This is the face of terrorism that is always ignored by the masses who claim a higher morality.

So obviously Al Quaida is not the problem, Muslims are not the problem, Osama was not the problem, the problem is religion. Denying that religion fuels, encourages, and even demands terrorism is lunacy.

Monday, November 16, 2015

Paris is Stirring Up Trouble

Asking refugees to go to Saudi Arabia is essentially the same as condemning them to death, or forcing them to join the very terrorist organizations that they are fleeing from. The fact is that they have nowhere to go, so they will either flee to safety, or become potential recruits for the very organizations we want to be rid of.

Terrorists are born of desperation, this desperation causes them to prone to suggestions, such as the suggestion that other countries are their enemy. So no, turning them away just because the organizations are using them as scapegoats is not going to help.

Actually, the fact that many people miss is that the terrorists in the Middle East want us to turn away the refugees, these are their pool for recruits. So how best to convince us to do that, by telling us that they are hiding among them.

By convincing the rest of us that the bogeyman may be among the victims, we coldly turn them away out of irrational fear. Xenophobia is the greatest tool of recruitment for terrorists.

Now France claims to have bombed a recruitment center for ISIS, either they are lying or easily fooled. Muslims are recruiting through Facebook and other social media, they don't need centers like organized militaries use.

Ultimately this means all countries created the crisis faced by Paris, even their own. Let's put this all into perspective.

France announce "at least 128 people killed" in the latest attack. That is their official story thus far, now to compare before making my final point.

Nearly 1,000 people in the USA have been killed by law enforcement for 2015. 374 people in the USA were killed by mass shootings perpetrated by our own people in 2015.

Approximately 32,000 people died in 2013 from automobile accidents. More than 8,000 people have died in the Iraq war started by the USA.

The only reason people are discussing the Paris attacks is because it can be used politically. The true cause of the attacks is religion, but people are blaming everything except that.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Bombing Terrorists

War has never solved anything, ever. Adolf Hitler proved that, when his war was met violent opposition and came to a bloody end.

However, war does fuel religion, and that perpetuates the violence. The vicious cycle is obvious to those who are atheist, and is the reason so many are becoming anti-theist.

The notion is simplified in one statement: violence begets violence. This is nothing less than fact.

Religion preys on people when they are the most frustrated, beaten, and discarded. This is when people are most willing to find any way to fight back, so they turn to the local religious leaders to help them get revenge.

The cycle in the Middle East started centuries ago, when Christian forces pushed across the desert killing all who did not convert. This was all because the preachers wanted more money, land, and power.

Little has changed in that, the methods of the Christian leaders have changed to a less violent form of terrorism. But Muslims created their own religion to convince the people in that area to fight back, and of course greed was the primary concern of their leaders.

But Christians have not stopped attacking the Middle East, even today they are bombing innocent people in the ME as retaliation for the acts of the few religious people. The survivors of those attacks are forced to turn to the religious for help, and are then converted.

The religious people are easily convinced to commit atrocities against the people who bombed them when they were trying to be peaceful. Of course the religious leaders on both sides want this, as it will continue to create victims of war that they can prey on.

Thus the cycle continues, but the solution is not one that any religious leaders in any religion wants, we call this solution "education." It is a known fact that the more educated a person is, the less religious they become.

Bombing countries only harms the innocent people, the religious leaders are all hidden away, usually in the very countries that are doing the bombing. Ah, the irony, religious leaders for a region, hiding out in a foreign country convincing that foreign country to retaliate against the country that their followers hail from to stir up a new pool of believers for them to exploit.

If it was not so atrocious, I'd call it the perfect business model.

Friday, November 13, 2015

The Issues of Muslims in Paris

Know your enemy well, lest you become him.

The biggest problem with how people view the Muslim plague is the association with skin color. Many people see all Arabic people as Muslim, or worse, they think all Muslims are Arabic.

Thus they come to the whole conspiracy nonsense, fueled by a scientific fact that "white" does not even exist. The leaders of other religions milk this racism to hide the fact that Muslim is a religion.

Muslims milk this idea to remain well hidden in a population that they are working to convert. Politicians are milking the blatant racism to scare people into voting for them.

The facts are quite inconvenient to the leaders, as well as painful for the deluded racists. The Muslims, which is what Islam represents, are taking over by conversion, specifically by converting people of all races, then convincing those converts to do their dirty work.

We saw the exact same tactic employed by Christians, which took us almost a thousand years to recover from. Actually, every tactic used by Muslims to spread their hatred has come from the Christians, yes Christianity uses terrorism.

The matter is made worse when people begin to assume that any violence is because of one race, especially while conveniently ignoring the violence they commit. The Paris incidents, contrasted by the mass killings in the USA, present the best example of what happens when race is blamed for the atrocities of religion.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Chemtrails, Flat Earth, and the Religion of Facts

From conspiracy nuts to religious people, science denial is a big profit fad that has dangerous repercussions. The problem is that because of most people both lazy and ignorant, these anti-science fads are very profitable to those who perpetuate them.

Churches make insane untaxable profits because laws that were suppose to keep religion out of government have been twisted and perverted to benefit the ones selling the god concept. People prefer the easy, magical sounding excuses instead of the cold, hard, and often frightening facts.

But conspiracy nuts are the most insidious, as they have learned to imitate science, which can convince even intelligent laymen. Even religion cannot compete with sanity and reason, their leaders admit that education is dangerous to their claims.

Conspiracies have a sweeter bait though, you get to blame a faceless, evil, and unknown group of people for all your troubles. To the people buying these conspiracy this faceless organization is more believable than the faceless gods proposed by religion.

The reason is that the faceless god claims oppose indisputable facts, but faceless organizations are really close to reality, corporations fill the role. The catch is that the conspiracy nuts really don't know which corporation or organization they are afraid of, much less why the organizations would even do what they think is happening.

That is the ticket to confronting them, ask them how their bogeyman benefits from doing what they claim is being done. They will stumble as their whole story collapses.

Monday, November 9, 2015

The Reason Religion is not Science

The notion of change frightens religious people like Christians and Muslims because it always results in the status quo being upset. This shift in power weakens the religions and provides more evidence of them being scams, this is why education is their greatest enemy.

Science always changes, it works because it changes, each new fact discovered increases our understanding. This is dismissed by religious people as a bad thing, if their claim of being the ultimate truth is ever discovered to be incorrect they lose all their power and profit.

Let's say science discovers a fact, which means it has been tested and shown to be demonstrable, then a theory is formulated. Later a new fact is discovered which has an effect on the first fact, the theory is not wrong because of this new fact, but the new fact must be integrated into the theory to account for its effects.

As more facts as integrated into the theory, the theory becomes more complete, accurate, and useful to our species. We see the effects of this increased knowledge in how the theory produces beneficial results.

Through science we gain complete understandings of the universe around us, understanding which benefits every aspect of our species. But through religion you get brick walls.

Religion makes an assertion, usually an incorrect assertion, then dismisses all facts which conflict with the assertion. Religions offers no explanations, it offers no answers, and it never offers empirical evidence.

Science demands empiricism, which is a fancy word for verifiable. This harms religion because none of their claims are empirical, and the leaders know that.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Transgendered Against Psychopaths

The latest tactic of those who hate transgendered is to pretend to be gay, feminists, or even scientists. Their guises are obvious once they start talking, but this tactic has nothing to do with convince you that their position is valid.

This is known as divide and conquer, to make other groups hate each other so no one will fight together. Germaine Greer was the first, masquerading as a feminist to turn feminists and transgendered against each other.

She sold herself to the christian nuts in an attempt to keep the christian majority strongest in the USA. That's the tell of it all, on our own we are all minorities and the christian nuts are the majority.

But united we become stronger than the christian nuts, so they must keep us from being united. They know their time is coming to an end, and this is their last attempt to remain significant.

Whether the person you are facing is truly a masquerader or a paid for turncoat, you will see the exact same flaws in their stance. For one, they oppose transgendered women but not transgendered men.

The reason for this is that transgendered men are their fantasy, just like straight cismales and their lesbian fantasies. We could write an entire novel about the sick fantasies christianity breeds in people.

The fact of the matter is, we just need to shut them out by informing others who these con artists, liars, and sexual deviants are that masquerade as gay, feminist, and scientist just to smear good transgendered folks.

Monday, November 2, 2015

Christian, Islam, Muslim, Judaism... You're all Terrorists

The notion of the false dichotomy is often used when you point out the flaws of a group someone actually supports, and the reply sounds like "I know they are, but what am I?" This is most common when mentioning the flaws in Christians, such as their greed, arrogance, and terrorism.

By definition, telling someone to obey or suffer is terrorism, it is using fear to discourage dissent. Christians use this terrorist tactic to discourage doubt in their youth, which is child abuse and just as bad as what Islam does to their kids.

But when you point this put they always complain about Islam being bad, a red herring to distract from the Christian abuses. This is a false dichotomy, that by opposing one you are supporting the other, the Christians see Islam as competition for money and power so they garner complacency by convincing people that opposing christian abuses is the same as supporting Islamic abuses.

This is far from the truth, most atheist people oppose all abuses, whether Muslim, Judaic, or Christian. Many of us even oppose the delusion of a god as a whole, especially the use of terrorism to discourage kids from questioning the claims of their leaders.

It is the same thing as saying that if you don't like vanilla then you have to like chocolate. Or you could parallel it to saying that if you want guns regulated you support deregulating automobiles.

The parallel also appears in supporting political candidates. Regardless of where this false dichotomy is used, it is a dishonest attempt to avoid responsibility.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

It's Halloween, Not Christmas

Halloween is the greatest holiday ever, but not for the reasons most people think. Like all holidays, Halloween is commercialized, and it should be the biggest profiting holiday in the USA.

Sadly, the lesser holiday of Christmas is encroaching on every holiday with big profit potential. Halloween has the biggest potential for profit but loses a lot of attention because of old religious superstitions.

Costumes alone cost hundreds of dollars now, they have become elaborate endeavors to try to out freak everyone else. Sadly the marketing for these has failed to increase the customer base, losing billions on a product that actually requires a yearly investment.

Candy is a product with a huge profit, nearly two hundred percent profit is gained from candy sales, which is why they try to integrate it into other holidays. But Halloween is all about the candy, the treats which kids are encouraged to collect under the guise of a "trick."

Because of the season Halloween falls on, many of the products considered to be Christmas based are more suited to Halloween. Pumpkin is a given, which is easy to milk through Thanksgiving, and it has a huge profit potential due to our synthetic versions being identical to the "all natural" flavor.

But the biggest crime against the economy is that businesses invest more in the holidays that encourage reclusivity. Family gatherings are not social, and most people actually don't enjoy them, but Halloween is all about socializing, visiting your neighbors.

In major cities, this is a gold mine of customers, instead I see people just renting movies, sitting at home alone, eating popcorn. Starbucks is bare of customers, other than us regulars, when they could attract many more with a simple and inexpensive dress up party promotion.

The streets of downtown Seattle, where thousands of people live, are bare as the cars roll by rushing home to take their kids out in large groups. But the kids are not brought to downtown, there are no parties here, no celebrations, in the densest commercial center of the city there are no customers.

It has been this way for several weeks, and I see many places already applying Christmas decorations. So instead of encouraging the current gold mine, they prepare for a single holiday which actually does not increase sales.

Most people shop at the last minute, that means they have already spent all their money for the previous months on necessities. So businesses waste a lot of money on advertising for a holiday which is already planned, or limited to one paycheck anyway.

Now here is what makes Halloween perfect, almost all cultures celebrate a holiday of spooky stories, treats, and even giving of gifts during the Halloween season. Less than half the planet celebrates Christmas, making Halloween more popular than Christmas based on cultural relevance.

Dia de los Muertos, the day of the dead for Mexico, kicks off the month with gifts to the dead, pageantry, and skulls made of sugar to sacrifice to their ancestors, a potential gold mine of profit. Even before that, in August we have Ghost Month, a Chinese holiday much like day of the dead, where food is offered to the spirits and people dress up.

October is not so cold as to herd people indoors, but you can see that time drawing close, which encourages people to socialize as much as they can before the cold winter nights force them to isolate more. Giving them reasons to gather will always increase socializing, and profits, and improve our society as a whole.

Friday, October 30, 2015

The Science of Blogging

Blogging is often thought as a lesser form of news reporting, the reality is actually quite the opposite. News agencies are censored by the government, then by their corporations, and finally hype must be injected liberally into every story to attract readers.

Blogging is often in your face, blunt and to the point, only injected with a bunch of anecdotes that may or may jot be related. But the lack of censorship makes the blogs more honest than any mainstream media.

This does not mean either is more factual, blogs should only be a source of inspiration, to encourage you to seek out the facts instead of just taking someone's word for it. Citing blogs which do not cite scientific sources is not providing evidence in any way, citing mainstream media is not providing evidence  for anything either.

When you read this blog, you do not expect it to contain scientific evidence, you should expect none from any blog, but when you read an assertion or statement it should encourage you to scour the scientific databases to find verifying evidence. In science it is not the finding that is fun and exciting, it is the journey of exploration.

There is the huge difference between the masses and us, the scientific minds that discover things to make your lives better. We don't seek out conclusions, we don't want definitive findings that end all research, we want more paths leading to more discoveries.

Every real scientist will tell you one simple fact: discovering the facts is more exciting than knowing them. This is why science always works, always progresses and improves our lives, it is a never ending journey that is free of dogma and reverence.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Does a Fetus Live or Feel Pain?

There is a subtle but very important difference between being alive and living. Very few people ever consider this in an argument about abortion, particularly those who are against legalized abortion.

Every single cell is alive, from sperms to liver cells, they are living organisms but they do not live. To actually live a brain is required, but no other organs are inherently required.

By definitions, science considers one who has sentience to be living, for humans this occurs about 3 years after birth. Sentience is not a side effect of the brain, though the brain is required.

Sentience happens after enough information has been formed and stored by the brain, when the brain becomes aware of it's own existence. This is a side effect of the information it records.

Without sentience, the brain can even utilize the information in logic and decisions, but it inevitably becomes aware by doing this. Fetuses have no brains, they do have some parts of the brain in later stages of development.

The brain develops in the fetus in much the same way it evolved, from the basic nerve response clusters on through the logic centers, ending in the memory centers. This is why at mid to late stages the fetus appears to respond to pain, it is an autonomic response to nerve stimuli.

It is the same "flinching" response to pain we all experience, which happens before the pain even registers in our brains. Our memory of the pain is what actually makes it pain.

The simple fact of the matter is that human fetuses do not feel pain during abortions, anymore than a mollusk does when it is cooked. Without the memory of the information created by the nerves, pain is not pain.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Transgender Versus Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer has entered the news lately, fueling the tragedies and discrimination of transgendered people for her own agenda. By doing so she has reduced an entire movement to selfishness, turning feminism into the very joke that right wing nuts have called it for decades.

Her fallacy is deeper than just selfishness, it is an indicator of poor education, and thus supports the very stereotypes which feminism is trying to dispel. By calling gender a limited chromosomal set that only determines reproductivity, she has called all women nothing more than incubators.

Some science, the XX/XY combination only determine which gamete are produced, and there are always exceptions. XO is a recent one we discovered, perhaps a new gender is appearing in our species, but most women are not actually going to produce the correct gamete, this is why many are infertile.

Many men are infertile for the exact same reason, natural selection in action. This is because we discovered that more than two chromosomes determine the sex of a person, meaning the binary gender roles we created are obsolete.

Transgendered have always been considered by most feminists to be the few humans who defy the stereotypes and prove that gender is merely a social construct. Germaine, however, uses right wing nut think instead and considers us a threat.

Who are we threatening? We threaten the stereotypes she has used to garner fame and profit, if gender is not based on XX/XY then she her entire approach is wrong.

To her, like so many talking heads, stereotypes are good for business, if people stop listening to the stereotypes then the talking heads lose all their power, and their profit. This is what we see with Germaine, she needs to enforce stereotypes, and using bad science is a good way of convincing idiotic masses that they are correct.

Feminism was never about that, in fact feminism is about destroying the very stereotypes that Germaine wishes to enforce. Women are not genetically inferior, but to her they are.

Her selling point is that women are less capable and should be protected because of it, feminism is about women being strong enough to do it as well as men. Germaine convinces the masses that women are so weak that no one should want to be one, feminism is that women and men should see past the social gender roles produced by archaic minds.

Greer asserts that genetics defies science, while feminism is about women being just as capable of using science as men are. For transgendered women, most of us know that women are more capable of handling logic than men in many situations, due to the hormone levels.

Once you experience polar shifts in hormone levels you know what hormones actually are, they are your disposition. Greer claims that you cannot change biology, yet most medicine is the actual alteration of biology and physiology, we are working on finding methods of changing genetics.

She convinces idiots of her assertion by conflating genetics and biology, any biologist knows that genetics is not law for an organism. So to close, Germaine Greer is an uneducated moron who wants to convince women that they are incapable of doing things on their own so she can profit from their woes.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Capitlaism Needs Socialism

The notion that Capitalism and Socialism are at odds started during the cold war, ironically the cold war had nothing to do with Socialism. The political elite started this "everything but Capitalism is bad" as a misguided attempt to convince fools to remain patriotic.

Patriotism is not about blindly supporting one's country, and Socialism is not incompatible with Capitalism. The fact is that both need each other, to fund Socialist policies you need Capitalism to produce taxable incomes, for Capitalism to remain stable you need Socialist policies.

Capitalism is literally an open and free market, which means few regulations on the economy itself. We do need some regulations, that is obvious thanks to China, but such regulations must be sane and demonstrably affective.

The EPA has found a balance that other organizations in the USA struggle with, the result is cleaner environments and a stronger economy. But the EPA is a Socialist policy, it is funded by taxpayers not profits.

Fact of the matter is that our entire government is a Socialist policy, they are all funded by taxpayers not profit. The Republicans have tried to privatize portions of the government with disastrous results each time.

The reason they are disasters is that they have no accountability, the customer is the government itself, the taxpayers never knew who to vote out to stop them, and the companies were guaranteed a profit. Of course the internet has changed this, we no know who is responsible, but their sheep are so blind as to be easily convinced it was the other guy.

Yes, even the biggest corporations in the USA depend on Socialism for their profits. Companies that benefit from war require Socialist policies to earn any profit.

War is a national event, and thus all profits for it come from taxes, taxes which the government gets to decide how they are spent. Wait, that's not entirely correct, the government in the USA does not choose what taxes are spent on, the Federal Reserve does.

This was suppose to be a way to regulate oversight, to prevent wasteful spending like war and corporate handouts, but the Federal Reserve backfired because no one paid attention to it. It is now run by corporate cronies who want the entire system in the hands of a few elite and buyable politicians.

Many lobbyists will wrongfully target politicians and they usually get nowhere, but those who can pony up enough benefits for the Federal Reserve always get their way, such as war production. Disbanding this oversight regulatory program is not the answer, correcting it is.

So the best method to find the perfect Socialist balance for Capitalism to thrive is to reduce the power of the Federal Reserve and enact laws which allow the people to have members in it replaced.

Monday, October 19, 2015

Accountability for Climate

Climate change is influenced by humanity, that goes without saying. The basic fact is that all species effect it, a problem occurs when one species effects it too much.

This is usually the result of the population growing out of control, crowding out all other organisms. The ultimate end result is the extinction of that species, not a very pleasant outcome.

Humanity has an added problem, many of our machines double our output of climate changing chemicals. This increase, combined with our population growing beyond tolerable limits, has caused the environment to "tip."

This tipping has begun to destroy environs that we depend on for a more balanced atmosphere, we are eradicating the organisms that can process our outputs into chemicals we can use. By doing this we are causing a huge change in the climate's standard and slowing pattern.

In essence, we are returning the planet to a state before our species could survive. Due to lack of natural pressures, our species is unlikely to evolve to survive that climate.

The arguments against cleaning up our act are all hilariously ignorant of facts. One is "more CO2 means more plants," which is a definitive no.

Increasing the CO2 will not cause more plants to grow, at least not until we move out of the land they need to grow in. Our growth is so fast now that we are encroaching on the last few untouched areas.

When we move into that land, we destroy everything to make room for us. This reduces the plant life to a dangerously low level, so there are fewer plants to process CO2.

I have recently heard claims that CO2 and CO are not dangerous, let that sink in a moment. They have grown so desperate as to deny a fact known for over a century.

A life threatening medical condition known as carbon dioxide poisoning occurs when you inhale too much CO2. Astronauts learn about this as they face the possibility all the time.

Carbon monoxide is worse, it bonds to cells in the lung preventing those cells from absorbing oxygen. Healing from this event has a very high chance of cancer, most causes of CO also produce radioactive particulates increasing the chances further.

Car exhaust carries carbon monoxide well, the particulates keep the gas in a cloud until they fall inert. Any form of burning organic material will create carbon particulates, petroleum is organic.

So is coal, coal is actually concentrated carbon, burning it causes that carbon to bond with oxygen. This can produce carbon monoxide and dioxide, which are currently pollutants because of their quantity in the atmosphere.

There is only one short term solution, replace the lost plants with carbon converters that simulate photosynthesis. This is another huge profit for corporations, assuming we develop them in time.

The only long term solution is to stop population growth and reduce the carbon use. No other solution will have lasting effects, nor will any other solution be sane.

The simple fact of the matter is that we must take responsibility for our use of the planet's resources instead of avoiding accountability.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

God Worship is Religion

When we speak of religion many theists claim they are not religious, but that is a contradiction in terms. Worship of a god is, in itself, a form of religion.


The primary definition of religion is "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods." So they are either lying to trick more people into accepting them, or they're idiots.

Both are probably true, the preachers need to separate their claims from the others to make it appear special, this is an old tactic in sales, "a hotdog made of steak." It tricks the brain of the less intelligent into thinking that they are different from the others, but the intelligent people can see through this ploy quite clearly.

Right now religions are beginning to flounder, losing their ability to indoctrinate well thanks to the free flow of information, the youth are no longer buying it. Our biggest tool against the tyranny that is religion has always been knowledge, education gives kids the tools to test that knowledge and ensure that it is factual.

The internet cannot be censored, no matter how much money is invested in trying to censor it. This creates an environment in which indoctrination fails, with the proper education the youth can then test any information and verify what they read, all of this is toxic to any totalitarian idea like religion.

Even North Korea is seeing the government's grip on the people weakened, their theocracy is soon to end in a violent and bloody war yet only a few people know of these stirrings. We see the same with the Catholic church, even their pope is beginning to lessen his own grip on the people there.

But the religious zealots are still holding onto their only excuse for hatred, even creating new lies to help justify that hatred. They attempt to call the rejection of their claims a religion, this is because their religion commands them to hate and even kill those of other religions.

Religion is the ultimate divider, it creates an us versus them mentality even through it's own commands. If there is no "them"then the commands cannot be applied. Thus the preachers must convince their sheep that they are not religious, and convince the sheep that everyone else is religious.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Gods, Religion, and Science

The challenges faced by those who are atheist are innumerable now, because many of us have recently decided to vocally challenge the claims. Religion cannot stand up to scrutiny, none of it does.

Religious people have constructed a double standard, how they test their religion is different than how they test others. They are also very dishonest in their attempts to twist things, so as to convince the nonbeliever that their beliefs are correct.

This is a common tactic used by snake oil salesmen and terrorists. It is no coincidence that terrorism was born from religion, the entire "believe us or suffer" argument is still used by even christians in the USA.

The problem they face is that they cannot convince the majority to embrace their hatred unless they convince everyone that they have some absolute god talking to them. So they get even more insane as the number of people they can convince dwindles to inconsequentiality.

They struggle to convince you that facts are wrong, that their claims require no evidence, and that their assertions should not be questioned. The more they do this, the less influence they have because everyone today is able to verify any statement.

The fun fact here is that none of them have any empirical evidence supporting their gods.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Guns, Money, and Seattle

The law is often touted by those who don't know it but want to abuse it, or use it to abuse others. I recently encountered such a person on first and Yesler of Seattle, Pioneer Square.

A security guard, who was harassing people for smoking attempted to use the law, by lying to the cops. Of course the cops know he's lying, I'm the most regular customer in this area.

But the details are not important, the important part was that he was abusing a law which the police here cannot enforce just to discriminate against one type of person for no reason. This is typically done by religious people, who think they are immune to their own laws but everyone else must follow them.

The end result is that law enforcement become untrusted by people, security companies fail to deliver, and businesses crash as customers decide to just cross the street instead of dealing with an arrogant nit. This is the problem faced in Pioneer Square, businesses are trying to find a balance between policing trouble and inviting customers.

Security companies are often their last resort, but that always fails and thus the businesses always fail when they resort to them. There are uses for security guards, the biggest is as a deterrent.

Deterrents are large, imposing figures that discourage criminal activity. It's a psychological ploy that works very well, the imaginary deterrents will always work better than active ones.

"What you think is happening is always worse than what is really happening," this is a fact of the neural networks we call our brains. Our imaginations are our worst enemies, they will concoct millions of scenarios that will make us fear the unknown.

The problem lies in the active deterrents, such as guns or confrontational security guards, these create an attitude of aggression. They remove the imagination and give people a clear and present target, one for which they can place all aggression on.

Psychologically, when an aggressive target is presented the brain goes into active defense, creating and fueling intensity. This will, inevitably, escalate into violence.

We see the effects often in the USA, comparing to the UK where police are relatively unarmed, most criminal activity in the USA results in violence from someone. In the UK, the imaginary deterrents keep the situation calm enough that criminals will not often resist.

Pioneer Square is losing many of it's good businesses, and all we are getting in return are bars and clubs. These invite criminal activity, and force the law enforcement to tolerate drunken behavior.

In the meantime, the owners of the buildings are driving customers away from good businesses like Starbucks, Subway, tattoo shops, even our local convenience store. This vacuum is deteriorating our neighborhood, then they complain that no one wants to rent their spaces to convince the city to hand them tax breaks for those empty spaces.

The problem that we now face is that there is not enough in our budget to cover them, especially because of the failed transportation projects we have thrown millions at. The best solution is one which even I do not like, but it is required.

we must cap all rents in downtown Seattle, including housing and business rents, to encourage growth. We must also stop allowing building owners to discriminate.

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Terrorism in the USA

The most idiotic arguments come from those who think they're correct only because someone told them they were. From the gun nuts to the creationists, it's always the same arguments.

Now they whine about always hearing the same counter arguments, yet fail to acknowledge their arguments never change. It is telling of a deluded mind, or as Einstein said: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

This habit comes from the fact that these morons refuse to ever learn, either because they fear learning or they are not honest enough to accept new information. Creationists fear learning as it challenges their beliefs, should they ever hold their own claims to the same scrutiny they do for any other god they'd lose all faith.

For gun nuts it is dishonesty, to admit that they are wrong means that they must concede to lying. So they must keep their original lie by adding more lies to cover it up.

Commonly language of these two groups is identical, often they play on emotion and discourage any scrutiny of what they state. They will fire a lot of garbage claims, bullshit points, and obvious lies to overwhelm the opponent, waiting for that moment when you just give up.

The trick to combating this is by staying on topic, even repeating your original point until they address it. The longer they refuse to address that point, the more foolish they look.

Gun psychos are the least honest of all the morons, they will use confusion and fear to dissuade anyone from opposing them. Fear being their primary tactic, once you stop fearing what they claim is a danger they lose their minds.

The other term for their tactics is terrorism. Religious preachers use this tactic as well, scare people into agreeing with them in spite of having no solid evidence to support their claims.

Another terrorist tactic is to target those under the pressure of extreme grief, then use the confusion and desperation of that grief to sell a product. Whether that product is an idea or tangible, it is never a good product if sold during grief.

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Letter to Seattle and Doney Clincs

This notion that different rules apply to humans versus other animals when it comes to compassion is arrogant, and dangerous. It is an archaic notion born of religious superstitions and xenophobia.

While our mammal brains are suppose to be capable of handling situations with compassion and empathy, many humans lack the experiences, knowledge, or open mind to guide these in productive and meaningful ways. Being transgendered, knowing since I was 8 years old, has offered me a unique perspective on our treatment of other animals.

So to address this point anthropomorphically, spay and neuter programs are forcing animals to live with gender disphoria, a horror I have lived for 40 years now because humanity lacks compassion. So I have worked against these spay and neuter programs from behind the curtains, but now it's time to bring this fight to the spotlight.

The double standard we see between how we treat humans and our more distant relatives illustrates that the entire notion of spay and neuter is a scam. To justify this scam they often cite phenomena that humans are responsible for causing.


MYTH: Cats and dogs will overpopulate.

FACT: Due to our intervention, domesticated animals are less capable of surviving against predators. This means that their populations can only increase if we remove possible predators.

During our existence, we have driven nearly half of all life on this planet extinct through our actions. The result is a decline in natural diversity, and we still continue to hunt all other animals without prejudice.

The resulting imbalance has created a need for animals which can live with us, as a species. The number of possible candidates decreases as we poison entire populations out of baseless fears perpetuated by profit hungry businesses.

We have a unique chance to reintroduce some variety among the species that can survive in the world we created, the domesticated species are perfect for this. Their diversity and resilience to our artificial environment make them ideal, and nature loves such situations.


MYTH: The cats and dogs cannot fend for themselves.

FACT: Yes, but to admit this you also admit that your claims of overpopulation are fallacious. This is a tactic that feeds on empathy in order to perpetuate the industry, the same way tobacco companies would advertise.


MYTH: They can spread disease to humans if allowed to be wild.

FACT: Most illnesses cannot be transmitted across species. Of the few that can, we have vaccines now.

Modern medicine has allowed humans to survive deadly illnesses, it has also extended our lifespan causing our own overpopulation. Yes, medicine is one of the primary causes of overpopulation.

The only possible way for cats and dogs to overpopulate is by treating them all with our medicine. Without medicine, overpopulation is impossible.


MYTH: Invasive species are dangerous.

FACT: Often this us used to appeal to fear when all other tactics fail. The fact is that there are no truly invasive species, other species in the environment will evolve, causing them to adapt to the new ecosystem created by any newly introduced species.


MYTH: Spay and neuter causes no harm to them.

FACT: Yes, it causes drastic physiological changes to all mammals, ask a doctor why they require invasive psychoanalysis for the humans who request this. Hormones are regulated, balanced, based on the gamete producers, hormones control our emotions.

So yes, by torturing me and removing my right to choose to have mine removed willingly, you prove that this procedure is dangerous. I am able to take medication to regulate my hormones, yet they cannot.

So to cause that harm to them is immoral, life in a body you do not like because of one tiny thing is torture. My two feline companions are the only thing keeping me from harming others, and your pricing of licenses is solely for profit.

Funding spay and neuter clinics is wrong, immoral, and heinous.


Related articles of importance:

Gamete production, sex hormone secretion, and mating behavior uncoupled
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0018506X84900473

Hormone Effects on Behavior
http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1-4614-1997-6_59

Steroid hormone effects on neurons subserving behavior
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0959438895801103

_________________
The statistics of natural selection on animal populations.
http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/19850191884.html;jsessionid=888180779C57444ADC1C2914136C3C38

Life historical consequences of natural selection
http://repository.ias.ac.in/10284/

The strength of phenotypic selection in natural populations
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/319193

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

The Issue of Morality

The issue of morality is used by those selling religion because most people only know what events transpired during their lives, and within their limited locale. The fact is, what we call "morality" is a series of highly subjective rules that benefit society the most.

Killing is a perfect example, murder is kling that is against the laws of society, and we kill a lot as a society. In self defense, or defense of a weaker being, killing is generally considered okay, and laws reflect this.

In the past, we would kill for grudges, anger, resources, and religion. Today we kill far less for resources, and this reason for killing is now considered immoral, thus it has always been subjective.

The reasons we now consider many acts to be immoral is because it harms society, our species, and slows progress. So we developed alternatives to these acts, for resources we use commerce and trade instead.

Let us consider the harm kling causes. Suppose you contracted cancer, and in some random shooting the person on the verge of curing that cancer was killed.

That is a direct harm caused to one's self by the killing which illustrates the selfish point here, but we can stretch that further. Perhaps the one killed develops a machine which then leads to the cure for your cancer.

Now we are stretching the thought track beyond what dealers of the drug called religion can even consider. The machine to cure analogy is also the most common event in history.

More often than not, a small discovery cascades into larger ones, using critical thought produces those small steps. The term used to describe this is the butterfly effect.

Now consider the instinctual drive to protect your progeny, to promote your genetic chemistry. This requires you defend your progeny, and thus if they got the cancer later, you could have inevitably prevented a cure by not defending the one who was killed.

Thus, we form laws, society supports itself by discouraging any activity which weakens it using these laws. It is preemptively satisfying your instinctual drive to survive and propagate.

If you look closely at everything we call morally wrong for which there is a rationale, you will see it all impacts your chances of survival.