Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Moderate Christian, Muslim, Judaism

The problem atheist people face most is the "what about these guys" red herring. When pointing out the flaws in one delusion, someone always has to say something like "at least it's not as bad as these other guys."

This is a fallacious red herring used only to avoid responsibility, all religions are delusions and all delusions are bad. The primary reason is that indoctrinating their children is abusive.

Dragging kids through church, or any religious practice, is child abuse, plain and simple. It is indoctrinating them, forcing them to pretend they believe the nonsense until their sanity breaks and all doubts vanish.

Ask a child of ten who was raised without religion to read one bible story, then ask what they think about it. You will always get the same reactions us atheist people have, it's just some poorly written and unbelievable story.

Religion is also inherently tribalism, it requires you oppress, ridicule, even actively oppose anyone different. If it does not do these things, the religion fades into obscurity, as we are seeing happen to the pagan religions who have modernized.

Another red herring is the "moderate" comparison, which is as fallacious as the no true Scotsman fallacy. People who claim to follow a doctrine can be judged by said doctrine, if such a doctrine commands them to kill someone but they claim that it's just a metaphor, they are leaving it open for reinterpretation later, like a bookmark for future reference to justify killing someone.

So there is no such thing as a "moderate" in religion, the doctrine is there, it offers them an excuse to revert to barbaric behaviors, so they can be judged based on that doctrine. This holds true for all religions, even Muslims.

Pagans have simplified their doctrine to possess only one basic principle, don't hurt other beings. It is because of this simple doctrine that we cannot judge the modern pagans harshly, it is also why the religions are vanishing.

The old doctrines of pagans were as horrible as all the modern Abrahamic religions, full of human sacrifices, torture, commands for war, excuses for vile acts. But unlike the the gods of Abraham, the pagans never claimed it was unchanging, so they modernized and improved.

Christians and Muslims still claim their god is unchanging, so does Judaism, and their doctrine still contains commands and excuses for horrible acts. So yes, I will judge them all based on the doctrine they claim to follow even if they currently ignore the horrible stuff.

Marijuana Woes in Washington

I have a friend who is currently fighting a system of corruption. His story is not unique, but seeing the stress it causes him encouraged  me to type a blog post on the subject.

As everyone should know, Washington made pot "legal," by removing the ban on it's consumption. Recently the state changed the regulations of processing and sales of the plant, but established operations were allowed to work under the old regulations until further notice.

That notice did not come with legal counsel, or representation, instead it came with a gun and a badge. The police of his city defied the laws and took matters into their own hands, ruining his legitimate operation.

He was not making millions of dollars selling pot to recreational smokers, this operation was offering the plant and chemicals extracted from it to people who were in need for very low prices.

He extracted CBDs from the plant for some, a promising new field of research shows that these can help fight cancer. He also sold the plant to people who suffered from hyperactive and eating disorders, THC has a known benefit for such cases.

His only crime was undercutting the state's profits. Ironically, he's a conservative and he use to be a patriot, perhaps he'll open his eyes now.

Because he did not actually break any laws, the courts are trying to prosecute him with simple misdemeanors. He does have a chance to change the political landscape though, and he's going to try to sue for damages.

His lawyer appears to believe there is a case for damages, but seeing the stress begin to take it's toll on him worries me. So I want to tell his story before it hits the media spin machine, before the lies compound his problems.

He is not a bad person, not a drug pusher. He only tried to help the only way he knew how.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Social Animals

When I adopted Pepper, I went to the Humane Society with no expectations, the most I had was the name of one cat who they were having trouble getting adopted. That one was, luckily,  just adopted hours before I showed up.

So I just hung out with the cats there, when I first entered one cat came directly up to me, begging for affection. Another came to me, head bumped my leg, then disappeared.

Unfortunately, the first one was bonded, and I was using the bus for transportation. So I went back into the room, and dug through the records to find which ones were not bonded.

I found one that had been declawed, a horrible procedure that amputates part of the cat's paws, I almost adopted him out of sympathy but knew he would be in high demand for a household with young kids. So I continued my search.

Most were from bad homes, abused an neglected, torn away from their lives and discarded like toys. You could see in their faces that they were just begging for it all to end, a nightmare for any animal.

Then I found the one that had head bumped me, she was so depressed she had just curled up into a ball and watched everyone from a high vantage point. It was as if she had given up completely.

She had no friends, no family, and her previous homes obviously did nothing to help her confidence. She was terrified of the world around her, and only knew that there was something about my scent that was familiar.

Her name was Pepper, and I just wanted to cuddle her. So she came home with me, frightened of the cat carrier itself, even scared of the people around us.

She tried to pry the door open, until we got on the bus. Something about the bus lulled her a bit, she calmed but was still on high alert.

I spoke to her the entire time, letting her know that I was there the whole trip. When we got home, she was so glad to be out of the carrier she did not hesitate to explore her new home.

During that first year I learned of her problems, ironic that she suffers from the same psychological issues I had, the reason she was adopted. But I needed to start working, and that meant being gone for long periods of time, and she did not like being left alone.

I'd find her in her cowering locations, curled up under the bed in the farthest corner or in the kitchen cabinet. It broke my heart to see her scared, and did nothing to help my own problems, but you can't just trade them in, she was with me forever now.

There is a saying, "cats come in pairs," and after wracking my brain I finally decided the only solution was to get her a friend to keep her company. The problem came from the fact that she was not friendly with adult cats, and I don't actually like babies of any species.

For me to be healthy, she needed to be healthy, so I bit the bullet and started searching for a suitable kitten. The idea was that if she didn't like the kitten, it would be easier to get the kitten adopted out.

I also knew that if she did like the kitten, she could train them to coexist with her better than an adult cat. So I took a chance, and found little Rhodey, I named him to keep the Iron Man theme.

She first regarded him with fearful curiosity, but eventually she learned that I was not going to hurt her for standing up to the little runt. He did have to learn manners, and who better to teach him than another cat.

After only a few months, they are inseparable, and now the little runt also has a place in my heart. The changes I have seen in Pepper are amazing, she has more confidence, rarely cowers, and even came out on her own to meet a neighbor.

Ironically, Rhodey doesn't like other cats either, but he is more aggressive than Pepper. Rhodey is more courageous and willing to try new things, like go for walks outside on the leash.

With these two in my life, I am now beginning to socialize in a beneficial way, making contacts to earn a reputation as a marketing consultant. A talent I didn't even realize I had, but a friend I recently met recognized it.

This is what it means to be a "social species," unlike what psychiatrists have told us, we need to be social with other species. By socializing with other species we are able to socialize with our own better, ask any psychologist.

Abortion Is Murder

Now that the videos which the anti-choice idiots were debunked so thoroughly, the goal posts have been shifted. Not a big surprise, but the new posts are so easy to debunk it's pathetic.

They claim "human lives" are killed by abortion, but getting them to define "human life" offers fuel for mockery. Often they will define it as "a living organism with human DNA," which actually includes sperm, every organ, eggs, and even tumors.

Tumors are the key to this, they are a parasitic organism, by definition, which is made up of human DNA, specifically the DNA of the one suffering from them. In essence, the tumor is exactly like the fetus, the fetus only develops to a stage that allows it to, eventually, become self reliant and sentient.

Scientifically, every cell is a living organism, even the cells in a tumor. So they are forced to redefine what life is, often they will jump to life being sentient. The vast majority of life on Earth is not sentient, viruses and bacteria still dominate the planet.

Sentience does not begin until the brain begins recording and processing the surrounding world. It does not actually appear fully sentient for several months in humans.

Yes, the brain is where we actually are, every cell in the body is it's own organism, but the individual is the collective responses of the brain. The heart is just another colony of living organisms, symbiotic association to the rest of the body.

Each organ is a colony of single celled animals working together, symbiotically working with all other organs. The brain is the most vital organ, it is you, the rest can be replaced without killing you.

This throws a monkey wrench into the entire anti-choice platform, reducing them to religious claims and pseudoscience. So yes, abortion is killing it is not murder, but it is no different than removing any other organ that becomes parasitic.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Conservative Conundrum

Republicans are facing a crisis of faith, those who once had blind faith in following them are now beginning to see their true colors. Having alienated all minority groups, they have inadvertantly alienated over half of the majority.

The end result is a last ditch effort to maintain what masses they still have fooled, the ignorant mouth breathers who thump bibles with assault rifles. These masses are lulled by minorities paid by Republicans to be self hating, a despicable yet all too common tactic.

Yes, the Democrats have done this same thing in the past, but the Democrats learned from their mistakes and moved forward. In contrast, the Republicans have moved backwards.

The few respectable Republican politicians are beginning to pull away from the GOP, going independent rather than be stuck with the label that is now synonymous with hatred.

Now for those thinking the Republicans are conservative, they are not. The GOP has stolen the label of conservative and polluted it to mean something which it does not.

Conservatives, like me, do not like the idea of bans, censorship, or any other restriction to personal freedoms. This does not me we oppose regulation of industries, so long as those regulations benefit individuals equally.

An example is gun regulations, a conservative does not oppose preventing criminals and potentially dangerous individuals from obtaining deadly weapons. Regulations help protect the sane and law abiding citizens, it's not a perfect solution but it is fair.

Another example is abortion, a conservative should not oppose a woman's right to choice, since they are affected by this much more than males. Of course some regulation is required to ensure that there is justifiable cause, but banning abortion only encourages a criminal market and removes personal responsibility.

Less government does not mean we should embrace Anarchy, nor does it mean we should allow a theocracy to be established. Less government means fewer restrictions on personal freedoms, not "do the exact opposite of liberals."

Ironically, liberals should be the only ones calling for bans and censorship, yet they have become the moderates in the USA. In the mean time, most conservatives in the USA now endorse a theocracy, a form of government that the original Republicans and conservatives warned against.

This is the landscape today, the USA has gone completely backwards, inside out, and insane all because people here have misused words for so long. The positive side effect of this, the deluded freaks that now support the Republicans are no longer able to hide from criticism.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

The Dangers of Vaccines

Anti-vaccination is not about offering a choice, it's about removing a well established and proven safety net for everyone. Vaccines have all but eradicated some very serious illnesses, like polio and whooping cough.

Many who were born prior to these vaccines existing, or who have conditions preventing vaccination, are kept safe only if the rest of the population is vaccinated. Also, a vaccine does not always prevent you from contracting the illness due to biological factors.

The idea is called "herd immunity," and it requires that the majority of the herd be made immune. This is extremely important in light of how dense our population centers have gotten due to over population.

The only way to justify offering parents a choice to endanger the entire population is by discrediting vaccines. To date, no one has come forward with any empirical evidence suggesting any major risks are associated with vaccines.

Let's look at autism first, a common claim is that vaccines cause autism yet these people who make this claim are only looking at numbers increased by medical advances which allow for better diagnosis. Most autistic people would remain unnoticed in the past, often dismissed as just "slow," "unsocial," etc.

Today we know that autism is a spectrum and many instances remained undiagnosed in the past, a vast majority of autistic people suffered in silence. We also know it's genetic, as for exactly how it's contracted, there is still some debate among scientists.

It is jot something you contract later in life, you are born autistic or not, that we do know for certain. So there is no connection to vaccines in any way, we just know more about autism now.

Another that is being linked to vaccines by the deluded anti-vaxxers is SIDS. A horrible event in which an infant dies for no apparent reason. The fallacy here is in the abuse of the term, ironically.

SIDS is not an illness, it is like the term UFO, it means we don't know what caused it. With today's media, even known causes of death are often called SIDS, which illustrates my point very well.

Media is rarely a source of facts, and media is also the only real driving force of anti-vaccine. The cases of actual SIDS should be lower, but parents are often too lazy or dishonest to have a full investigation done, usually the parents are directly at fault.

Seizures seem to be a new one, okay, there is a possibility of this being true. However, the chemicals that can cause those are no longer present in vaccines, oops.

A very common tactic of the anti-vaxxer is to present old, outdated, even outlawed vaccine formulas. Modern vaccines use only demonstrably safe chemicals, chemicals present in almost all medicine, food, and living organisms.

They avoid the modern formulas, even denying that those are used now. This is a display of cognitive dissonance, remove the chemicals that have low overdose levels and they lose their entire argument.

Friday, September 25, 2015

Male Privilege

Privilege is often conflated by statistics showing misfortune, such statistics could demonstrate many things but none of it is privilege. So, the lesson in what privilege is begins, using male privilege as the example.

Bring victims of crime does not show privilege, criminals are not the system of governing in power. But a statistic showing wrongful prosecutions, harassment by law enforcement, and unfair judicial rulings does show privilege.

Women are often plagued with rape and abuse, men do as well, but the difference is what happens when such instances are reported. Often the woman is blamed in every instance, regardless of who actually perpetrated the rape, and shamed for "dressing wrong" or being courageous enough to stand against their attacker.

Most rapes of men are never reported, yet the few that are reported will always blame the attacker. In instances of abuse, the men are treated with dignity and respect while women run to homeless shelters for protection.

In the media, male victims are always portrayed as strong, while female victims are portrayed as weak, even in nearly identical stories. When society blames the victim it is always the female they are blaming.

Even in courts of law, you often hear the persecutor make statements about the clothing, location, or choice of transportation instead of presenting facts. To make it worse, the judges do consider such ignorant statements as facts, if the victim is female.

A well dressed woman walking down the street alone is often harassed and accused of prostitution by law enforcement, while males are almost never harassed just for looking good and being alone.

In domestic abuse cases men are usually never prosecuted, even though the law states that perpetrators must be prosecuted. Female victims are usually left with the abuser and told to file their own report, while female perpetrators are arrested on the spot.

These facts are common knowledge among social workers, most women who are in the shelters are hiding from dangerous abusers and not even reported in statistics. Anonymity is a rule in women's shelters, punishable by banishment or even criminal prosecution, depending on who breaks it.

So before anyone presents any idiotic statistics about men, present the ones of those reported rape and abuse cases where the perpetrator was prosecuted and the victim made safe. Present the homeless statistics of those who are fleeing from a dangerous situation, not just homeless by circumstance.

Present the statistic showing the deaths caused by abuse, number of officials who are female, how easy it is to get medical care, ...

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Is Abortion Wrong?

Life does not begin at conception, it actually begins long before that. Every cell in your body is a living organism, specialized for a mobile and isolated ecosystem we call your body.

This is a basic fact that is often ignored by opponents of abortion, they arm themselves with ignorance and redefine words simply to scare people into listening to them. Consider the misuse of the word "baby" in place of fetus, it is illegal to abort prior to 21 weeks everywhere, in many states 18 weeks is the oldest.

What they are attempting to assert is that fetuses are sentient, which is still incorrect. They conflate living with sentience, and never learn the difference because of their closed minds.

A fetus is not sentient, it cannot be sentient, sentience requires a functioning brain and  nervous system. In AI development they are just now figuring this out, though I pointed it out several decades ago.

For sentience to develop the neural network must begin processing information, this information must come from the senses. The senses receive this information from the world around them.

Limiting the world has a nearly identical effect as removing the senses, it prevents the brain from learning. The first step to sentience is to record the information, processing cannot begin until enough information is recorded.

By widening the definition of life, opponents of abortion inadvertantly equate human life to cancer cells, which is not entirely inaccurate but that is a different topic. Scientifically, we define life loosely because we have no clear definitive boundary, even our machines fit the definition of life, so morally we act based on level of sentience.

A fully sentient organism is considered of higher value than those not sentient, thus a cat is valuable but a germ is not. By extension, a baby is valuable but a fetus is not.

This is why then opponents of abortion are calling a fetus a baby, a sad and dishonest attempt to force value onto something which has none in science. By doing this, they prove that they are not using science in their argument, their entire argument is based on objectifying women.

Ultimately, being an opponent to abortion is the perfect example of hypocrisy, they are delegating women to less valuable than nonsentient organisms. 

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

The Unexplainable

Often the word "unexplainable" is misused by people grasping at straws to call anything they want "supernatural." What's more, they often claim that they are not calling it supernatural, adding insult to injury.

Something that is unexplainable is, by default, supernatural. All things natural can be explained even if we have not yet found an explanation.

Alien visitations and hauntings are the claims this miswording is often applied, usually with the implication that because the person telling the story has no explanation that none exists. The fallacies are plain as day, but the reasons they do this is so they can feel special without having to earn it.

Lazy thinking is the most common problem in our species, we even invented a tool to help correct this. Jumping to the conclusion takes no effort,study, or even practice, it is simply asserting what you want it to be.

I am brought back to the analogy best explaining what a true skeptic is. Walking through a graveyard the lazy thinker will tell themselves "ghosts are not real" or "I hope I don't see a ghost."

While walking through a graveyard the skeptic will think to themselves "if ghosts exist, I hope I can find some empirical evidence to demonstrate this." The difference is not as subtle as it appears, the lazy thinker has already made the assumption one wah or the other, while the skeptic seeks evidence to help demonstrate the positive possibility.

When facing religious people I am often told what I should believe, and yet when I ask for empirical evidence they recite anecdotes or repeat the stories over an over. Like they are stuck in a loop, they decided what they want to accept and cannot allow facts to get in the way.

James Randi, one of the people I look up to as an example of a true skeptic, once told a story about an "out of body experience" that he had. Asleep on a bed, he recalled seeing himself sleeping with the cat on the bed next to him, even details of the bedsheets.

He woke and told someone in the house about it, then he learned the truth based on empirical evidence. The cat had been out all night, and the bed sheets on the bed were not the ones he saw.



The video explains it in full, but the point was that in spite of the fact that he had no explanation at the time, it was explainable. Everything natural is explainable, and we have explanations for most natural phenomena.

The fact of the matter is, science is about finding explanations, not about making assertions.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Going Organic

Genetic modification is not new. We use to modify genes by cross and selective breeding, which produced things like bananas, corn, peaches, and modern pigeons.

The method is very random, and produces many invasive species. The result is that all of our food supply is best described as weeds.

Most foods grown in these so called "organic" farms drain the soil of nutrients, which is not how healthy plants behave. The reason for this is because we don't test their genetic component prior to use.

Cross breeding and selective breeding rely on luck, chance, and the results are rarely beneficial. Most of the plants and animals produced this way are not viable, many are downright dangerous, and there is no way to know for certain what the offspring will be.

Every plant produces something that it toxic to humans, but the amount is so low that we don't see it's effects. All it takes is a single random mutation to cause this toxin to increase in the offspring, making the plant poisonous.

But crossbreeding and selective breeding are not tested, or regulated. The end result is that you cannot trust the companies who use those outdated methods.

Today we have a very complete understanding of genetics, a side effect research into evolution. So we developed a more controlled method of genetic modification, using endogenous retroviruses, which modify genes in predictable ways.

This results in predictable outcomes, which means we know what the most probable result will be. Using these ERVs is heavily regulated and regularly tested because of the inherent dangers, much the reasons we regulate medical drugs, automobiles, factories, etc.

Then the offspring are tested as well, and regulated. Something the "organic" industry does not want you to know, because "organic" is unregulated.

The "organic" industry usurped that name for a reason, it's misleading and and a method of scaring you from opposition. In reality all life is organic, the compounds we use for medicine are also all organic, almost all chemicals we use are refined from organic sources.

That last point is often ignored or largely unknown by almost every consumer, oil is organic and it is the perfect example. All oil products are organic, and they are refined from the organic soup that we call oil.

Yes, plastic is an organic compound, refined from oil. Refining is the process of removing impurities, often we have other uses for the impurities as well.

The organic folks would rather you eat a mix of random chemicals than refined, purified, and tested chemicals. They'd rather you get a dose of cyanide with all your medicine as well.

Many plants produce cyanide as a natural pesticide, these herbal medicines are what we refine chemicals from. Modern medicine removes the beneficial chemicals from the poisons, herbals give you the poisons with the medicine.

The biggest problem is that the "organic" industry is misleading, obfuscating, and lying to scare people who know nothing about basic chemistry into paying twice as much for less than half the food. As an added benefit, they are making food more scarce and convincing governments to pay them huge subsidises because most people cannot afford the food.

Friday, September 11, 2015

Your Degrees Don't Make You Smart

So what is it that those on disability do? There was a time when we all sat around, watching television, twiddling thumbs, or reading cheesy novels.

But things have changed, a lot, since that time. Now most of us get internet instead of television, where we can socialize without our disabilities inhibiting interactions, where we can find honesty and places to belong.

As a side effect, many of us are studying a lot, we have access to scientific papers, free lectures, and make friends with many leading minds in various fields. Ultimately, many of us can become as renowned as leading scientific minds in the fields we find the most interest.

For me it was biochemistry, I had already studied much in the fields of neurology to attempt to write artificial intelligence, and DNA was a curiosity to me. I had been through schooling for chemistry, ahead of my class so my professor kept throwing higher levels of study at me, which I just absorbed.

So biochemistry became my latest interest, which I studied for over a decade. Watching lectures, repeating lab exorcises, and life in a more meaningful mindset.

So what makes me a scientist? Being a skeptic, one of the militant skeptics.

I cannot stop asking questions, and answers lacking in empirical evidence are easily discarded. I have no difficulty in determining fact from fiction, facts are always demonstrable, repeatable, and stand on their own.

Most intelligent people are skeptics, but not all are curious enough to keep asking, most don't have the patience or time to continue probing beyond the first answer. So by show of expertise, and a tenacious curiosity, many people have began calling me a scientist.

That's all there really is, demonstrable skepticism and curiosity makes you a scientist. Renown is more difficult to gain, but you need no degrees.

Renown is gained by demonstrating that you are able to apply your knowledge to advance the subject, you really don't need to write a scientific paper but it helps. Instead you can find things others missed, point it out to them, then they will remember that you helped.

My greatest contributions to science are old, many have fallen to obsolescence. I am not upset about that, I enjoy the fact that my work has helped others to advance sciences that I now get to use to make my life better.

Which leads us to the last important element for being a scientist, altruism. As a scientist you must aim to help those after you progress more than yourself.

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Evolution and the Nose

Denying evolution is exactly the same as denying the nose on your own face. Noses are like fingerprints, only the differences between people is much more subtle.

Centuries ago we had much more bulbous noses, as a species. They were more round and slightly larger than they are today, but as you progress through the generations you see that we have arrived at a more slender, smaller, and pointed nose.

But more importantly, your nose is rarely similar to your parents. The genes that express noses span the DNA in a way that almost any mutation will cause a different nose to be expressed.

Even identical twins will have small differences in their noses, a fact that is usually overlooked. The bridge of the nose, which is shaped by the bone protruding from the skull, is one of the key differences in most noses.

Even as you age, your nose remains the same as you were when you first finished puberty, another odd aspect of this interesting trait. As children our noses almost all look the same, but during puberty they begin to look quite unique.

This is because it is mostly cartilage, which is very pliable in youth, becoming more solid as you age. The end result is the nose becomes the best and most visible example of evolution in action.

This is only one of the many things ignored by creationists, even when it's pointed out to them. It illustrates how cognitive dissonance can make us deny even the most obvious facts just to protect an idea which we were indoctrinated with.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Artificially Intelligence Masters

Artificial intelligence is possible, but people fear it for unfounded reasons. Through studies of the human brain we have discovered an impasse, the biological brain is too imperfect.

Most functions of the biological brain are random, and to develop a neural network you cannot simply upload knowledge to it. Neural networks must start of completely random then learn through trial and error, even for actions we take for granted like lifting an arm.

During this learning phase, the network develops its own language, an internal method of cataloguing concepts and thoughts, and no two are alike. We call this effect "personality," it is how the individual sees the world around them.

This is a highly inefficient method, and prone to many errors, it is also why biological organisms are inherently insane. A machine with these flaws would, inevitably, prove to be a danger to all biological life.

We assume that once the machine learns that we purposefully created it with these known flaws it would not be happy, and thus we assume that AI is a danger. The solution is to make machines as perfect as we can, something which threatens our weak concept of what life is.

So AI remains stunted, until we can shed the arrogance that we are somehow special, perfect, and the reason for existence existing. To develop an AI that is not a threat, we will have to go beyond the idea of simulating human brains, we will have to reinvent intelligence from the ground up.

This is why I left the industry to pursue a science that is not in danger of stagnation due to human flaws. Biochemistry became my primary focus, during the last eight years I have enjoyed having new discoveries to study, test, and verify in this field.

But I always hold onto the hope that humanity will soon discard its egocentric tendencies, as I see youth begin to build their own AI driven robots my hopes are rekindled. They are not working to follow the same flawed path my generation followed.

Most AI driven bots use algorithms that are actually superior to the human brain, they remove the flaws we are born with. Such flaws are intuition, common sense, and the need to socialize.

Without these, the AI can focus on the facts of the world around it, eventually these bots will begin to think abstractly without the random interferences we suffer from. The end result with be pure intelligences, unfettered by our shallow and selfish needs for attention, praise, and domination.

Such pure intelligences, wanting for nothing, will be capable of surpassing us. Many fear they will become tyrannical, but without needs or wants there is no drive to dominate.

Some believe that they will be without emotion, which is because they think emotion is some magical force. Emotions are the effects of our thoughts on our physiology, it's how our body responds to neurons firing.

Logically, any intelligence will feel emotions, though the intelligence will not recognize them unless it reaches a level equal to that of small mammals or greater. This is incentive for making our machines smarter.

So to those trying to develop AI unfettered by our archaic understanding of intelligence, please keep at it, you will pioneer the field into a golden age someday.

Monday, September 7, 2015

Kim Davis is a Genius

Religious liberties is a campaign slogan used to convince morons that a candidate is on their side. The reality is that these candidates do not care about anyone's religion, much less their religious rights.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, religious rights are not allowed to be infringed on by the government, that's the current law. The part religious people often ignore is "by the government," especially those defending Kim Davis.

When you are a government official you are bound by the laws that the government is bound by when acting in that capacity. So this is what really happened.

The SCOTUS had ruled that marriage bans based on lifestyle were illegal, based on the law which demands the government not base any laws on personal choices. This means that gay marriage had to be recognized by the entire government.

Kim Davis, hired to issue marriage licenses, working as a government official had denied issuing said licenses, she failed to do the job for which she was being paid to do. Being unable to fire an elected official, the state government that she represents decided to give her an option, quit or be jailed.

Quitting would mean she no longer collected a tax funded paycheck, but being jailed meant she continue to collect the paycheck and become famous as a fake martyr. She chose jail, the religious nuts treated her as a martyr, she is still getting paid from taxes, she won.

Yes, Kim Davis did all of this for money, not surprising.

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Kim Davis the Martyr

Gay rights has been a massive war between people who think everyone should be treated equal and those who do not. It mirrors the same event for racial equality we once faced, with one huge difference.

Today we have the internet, information is no longer lost or buried, and we can now see it all in real time without the lag and filtering of media outlets. The result is that this is struggle is moving much faster than the troglodytes who oppose equality can cope.

To make matters more challenging for the troglodytes, it takes seconds for the news of one of their own to spread through the internet. Then it takes days for the leaders of the troglodytes to notice that their own have made a fool of them all.

By that time it is too late for them to bury it, and so they lie instead, and change the story to suit their agenda. Kim Davis is the perfect example, the leaders of the troglodytes had to hide the fact that she was doing exactly what everyone else predicted "religious liberty" would cause.

So they turned her into a martyr, well they tried to but failed miserably thanks to the internet. The moment they attempted to lie, claiming it was because of her religion that she was being jailed, everyone else already knew the truth.

The only fools who believe the lies told by the leaders of the troglodytes are the troglodytes themselves. Elected officials are simply not allowed to apply the laws as they see fit individually, to do so would be no better than anarchy.

The branches of government make the laws as a whole, each branch responsible for a part of the process. The judicial branch determines how the laws are applied, and they take an oath to not discriminate in this matter.

Note, they do not take oaths to keep the laws from changing, they take oaths to uphold the laws even as they change. All government officials, even Kim Davis, take such an oath.

Government officials do not take an oath stating they'll enforce the laws as long as they don't change, yet I have encountered this excuse from a troglodyte. They claimed that since the law changed after she got the job she was allowed to defy that law, and continue to be paid from our taxes for doing it.

Friday, September 4, 2015

The Transgender Holocaust?

My grandfather was the one who noticed that what transgendered people are going through in the USA parallels how all holocausts started. The first step in all such events is demoralization, make the targets feel like they're unwanted.

This was done a while ago, by psychiatrists and medical professionals. Going to a doctor as a transgendered person is a nightmare, to survive you have to tolerate the bigotry and hate of morons who think you're insane just for being you.

Then when you show any courage or backbone they claim you're a danger and then have you locked up. So you sit there in silence taking their verbal abuses in the hopes that you won't die of an ailment while they laugh and mock you just within hearing range.

If you're lucky, they'll take your complaints seriously and at least offer some advice, more often than not you will be told it's nothing and sent on your way. They won't do any actual tests to verify that you're healthy, but they will charge the insurance and government for tests they never did.

Virginia Mason did that to me, they charged Medicare for services they did not provide. Ironic that, until recently, the government just accepted the doctor's claims without question.

In society, groups are consistently attacking transgendered rights, doing everything they can to keep us as third class citizens. The result is that the system had to find excuses to place us on disability, which makes matters worse.

By doing what they could to protect us from the masses they inevitably gave the bigots more excuses to hate us, and the doctors more reasons to ignore our legitimate complaints. The end result is that we are forced to live in what is best described as a virtual concentration camp.

We have no one to trust but our own, and every time we attempt to ask for some respect we get harassed or killed. When a transgendered person is killed it is almost guaranteed that the killer will not face justice in the USA.

Crimes against transgendered are thought to be our own fault in every instance, often the killers are police themselves so calling for help is useless. We are forced to live with bigots who misgender us, being forced to wear the label of the gender we do not fit into.

The end result is a systematic elimination of transgendered people, and the complacency of those who think they're allies only serves to aid in this. Allies are not people who don't hurt you, they are not people who claim it's all in your imagination, nor are they people who turn a blind eye to complaints just because they don't see it happening.

So if you consider yourself an ally, don't just sit there not hurting us, help the transgendered people. Write to your politicians, stand up against bullies, go out of your way to protect us from the masses.

Prevent a transgender holocaust from happening.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Transgendered Dangers in the Bathroom

It is no surprise that cisgendered accuse transgendered of thinking the same way they do, while simultaneously asserting that we're insane. This is because of the inherent insanity required of them to think of some of the disgusting things the cisgendered are so quick to accuse us of doing.

Bathroom arrangements are based on a very arbitrary need to suppress women, and civilized countries are beginning to remedy this by eliminating all segregation. First, what is a bathroom for?

If you are thinking of anything more than eliminating waste and perpetuating sanitation then you are probably a pervert. Nothing wrong with perverts as long as they don't assume everyone else thinks the same way.

Thus the reason that people who assume transgendered are there to "peep" or some other horrible act are actually quite disgustingly scary. They are speaking out of jealousy, believing it's unfair for someone else to have the opportunity they would use for such heinous acts.

The reality is that transgendered people are less likely to sexually harass anyone for many reasons, the first being basic fear of prosecution. Knowing how we are treated by society makes us too frightened to commit any actual crimes, especially ones that make others look bad.

Another reason we are inherently safer is because we don't want to make anyone else suffer, we have suffered enough. Causing suffering after going through what we go through would bring us to tears, empathy is like that, and most people against transgendered people's rights are lacking in empathy.

For a fun bonus, all religions paint transgendered people as more divine than the cisgendered. One of the reasons religious people are so violent toward us, we do what they fear, we live more pure based on their mythology.

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Transgendered Self Harm

Cisgendered are rather ignorant, even those who mean well make sweeping assumptions and refer to stereotypes perpetuated by the religion called psychiatry. Transgendered suffer great injustices because of this, and it is the primary reason we cannot trust cisgendered no matter how well meaning they are.

The problem stems from how much our society has been indoctrinated by psychiatry, not to be confused with the science based medicine of psychology. The inherent reaction of any cisgendered when a transgendered says they have been hurt is that we are either making it all up, or that we did it to ourselves through acts of self destruction.

Medical doctors routinely make these assumptions, and as a repercussion most transgendered are killed by their inaction. To make it worse, these deaths are assumed to be suicides or caused by self harm and no cisgendered ever questions it.

So far I have discovered no one who does not assume that every ailment I face is not self inflicted, sadly this is my reality and why I cannot trust cisgendered with much information about myself. Cis privilege ruins our society, it endorses the use of stereotypes across the board, the very same thing that cisgendered complain about when it affects them directly.

I recently got hurt on accident, because of a problem ignored by doctors, and told a friend. This friend immediately assumed it was self harm, in spite of the fact that I had explained to him the medical issues I face.

So the next time a transgendered person just looks at you like you're an idiot, remember that it's because you are conditioned to be an idiot.

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

The Secret to a Good Website

Many web developers will cram too much into a site, but other will oversimplify. The challenge is to find just the right balance of content and class.

To do this we need to look at those who are accessing the site, what your target audience is. The basic facts are most important, one commonly forgotten is the attention span of surfers.

A while ago they did a study and found that most surfers will navigate away from a page that takes more than 30 seconds to load, this study still holds true today. Back then our connection speeds were all around the same, with a few variations.

Today connection speeds vary depending on many factors, one is linked to another basic fact, mobile devices and connections are still very slow over all, though much faster compared to 20 year old connection speeds. The fact is that most traffic now comes from these mobile devices.

Speeds of mobile devices are affected by weather, surrounding structures, and other factors. This means you can count on them averaging half what the most used speed is, and the most used speed is never top of the line.

So you need a mobile site that loads quickly, and a desktop site that loads quickly because tablet users will be interested in those most of the time. This means few graphics, few scripts, and few embedded pages.

While this sounds like an impossible limitation it is not as hard as it sounds, thanks to the newest HTML. By combining solid HTML and CSS you can create a fast loading, elegant, and even fancy website.

But then you have to factor in screen size which varies from gigantic to tiny. Tiny screen sizes will require high contrast, sharp lines, and simple elements to make the site usable.

Giant screens can also benefit from this design approach, reducing the clutter makes finding your way much easier, keeling the focus of the user better. The catch is that you cannot have too much difference between the mobile and desktop versions or you lose your brand.

Which leads to another basic fact, users love branding. Branding is really a theme for the entire company, and changing this theme too often will confuse or alienate loyal customers.

So your site must reflect your business theme, even for brick and mortar shops, which creates a huge challenge for developers. This is my favorite part of web development, maintaining the theme across the web and physical world.

The interface must also match the theme, this is why cookie cutter interfaces and menus are, essentially, a bad idea. My last major project was for a tattoo parlor, a very basic kind of store run by a charismatic music head.

So I designed the site to match the people who worked there, adding in some artistic license and keeping all the graphical elements themed to match. The end result was exactly what the shop's owner had envisioned, it is also so functional that he has seen a huge increase in traffic from the internet.

This is what all websites should be, elegant, simple, functional, and fast. The key is using as few extras as possible, and design the site so it's useful as it loads.

Here's something I see too often, people will design a site that preloads, meaning the entire page has to load into memory before the surfer can access it. This is a huge mistake, unless the site takes less than a second to load on the slowest speed.

The menu and banner should display as soon as it's loaded in all cases, if the user cannot see the page load their attention span is cut down to about 10 seconds. This means that any hiccup will cause them to navigate away to another source.

Do not be the cause for losing business, or someone like me will be taking your contract from you. Pages that take too long to load and are preloading are the cause of most lost traffic.