expelled exposed

You know, I used to like Ben Stein (or at least that quiz show anyway).

Expelled: No intelligence in theatres!

I'm Voting for Dukakis...

On the subject of the upcoming elections (as everything seems to be) I am reminded of Donnie Darko. In one scene Donnie is told to place somebodies actions on a line between fear and love. He refuses based on the fact that life isn't that simple. He gets a 0 for class that day. Figures.

What does this have to do with elections? Well, as much as people like to pretend that democracy leads to fair representation, the fact is that life is more complex than 2 or 3 parties can represent. when you vote you always compromise, because odds are that neither candidate agrees with you 100%. This is why we wind up with minority governments. It's also one of the reasons that George Bush won the first time around (Ralph Nader's followers would have been enough to push Al Gore past Bush's BS). The fact is that the decisions that need to be made are far more complicated than the American Democracy was designed for. 200 years ago what was really needed was a united but agreed upon front and thats exactly what the American's built. There are now a wide variety of issues all of which need completely different ideologies to approach and the system is bending under the strain. Good luck fixing this problem America. For all our sakes.

Single Last Name Syndrome

I have nothing against Hillary Clinton. Honestly, from what I can ascertain she was responsible for most of the good things that happened during Bill's reign. I am also very attracted to the idea of a female president. But why do we keep electing people with the same last name? Didn't the Bushes teach us anything? Ok, so perhaps I'm being unfair in comparing the situations. Why Bush 2 got in at all is beyond my mind, especially knowing how bad Bush 1 was. I can see why people would vote for Hillary and she isn't tainted by parentage by imbecile. But I do think that its important to mix up the political gene pool and get some different backgrounds in there. At least pull me out of Texas.

Big Evil Corporations! Run Away!

In Shadowrun there are 7 big corporations that run everything. those corporations are run by...well by dragons. While certain parts of this situation are pure fiction (there will obviously be 6 corporations run by dragons), I believe that on the whole there is an element of truth to it.

about 50 years ago people were really angry at countries, namely the USSR and Cuba. Now countries still do nasty things, but they have been overshadowed by the wonders of capitalism. the fact that the term anti-trust even exists is quite disturbing in itself and the fact that there are many companies which completely abuse their power without a significant backlash is even worse. I'm not going to get into the details of all the evil things that happen all over the globe (including in the west) but I think it's important that we all realise that corporations should not own the world. They are worse for us than professional politicians who fear the general population becoming so educated that we realise what a bunch of useless bastards they all are.

New Song

by the way, I put up an originl song, tht's where the first competition is.

This Isn't Emo!!!

score

I've decided to start doing little competitions on youtube, and this post is where I'm going to keep score.

Youtube Suicide

Let's say someone wanted to broadcast their suicide over youtube without help. I think I've sussed out everything that they would need to do. This requires some coding ability so it isn't feasible for most prospective dramatists, but I'll tell you anyway.

Step 1: fill out all the information for the video and then write in the location that the video will be stored.

Step 2: Write a bat file or program that clicks on the "upload video" button when you're program is finished recording the file. Run it.

Step 3: Plug the video camera into you're computer and begin recording straight to the hard disk on a timer (i'm assuming that you are using Windows Movie Maker, but if you want to use something else the theory is the same. Also, WMM sucks). The clip file that the program makes afterwards should be usable by the youtube converters. now kill yourself before the timer runs out.

I hope this is useful, if you try it please contact me with the results :)

The Beginning of a New Era

I do however a plan for a new youtube show. I'll write up the first episode tomorrow and film it then or on Thursday.

It's been a while since my last weird idea. how about this?

I just read watchmen. It follows a pattern that I have noticed in great works of fiction, such as 1984 and The Outsider. It seems like they had no idea how to end it. They had a fantastic world which says something about us, but when making the story they seem to have gotten lost and put together something that sort of works but ultimately feels contrived. Particularly, I don't like Dr. Manhattan's change of heart. I don't want to give away the ending, so I'll shush now.

The End of a very Short Era

I will no longer be posting links to my musical youtube videos. It just seemed silly and redundant. however I will tell you that I accept requests and will make every 10th song an original. If you want stay updated (for some strange reason) than subscribe to my channel. updates should be VERY regular. Once I've run through the stuff I already know, I hope to do at least 2 songs a week. Until then expect regular updates (except on Friday and Saturday).

more music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnMoDHusR2o
this is Billy Bragg. like I promised.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoVLMbfAWNk
They Might Be Giants. I went a little...nuts with this one.

Bouncing Light To Look Back In time

When light hits our planet most of it bounces off and spends years travelling away from us. I wonder if it's possible to capture that light bouncing off of nearby objects. If the objects were far away, this could allow us to see backwards in time! that would be awesome... I guess...

Isaac Asimov did a story about looking back in time. Its one of his best so I'll get back to you later on what it's called.

"I'm Just a traveller in time
Trying so hard just to pay for my crimes"
-Uriah Heap

Sunday Bloody Sunday Acoustic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rZqG4qXxS0

I messed it up in bits. It works well enough though. I really shouldn't sing that song.

Look forward to "Levi Stubb's Tears" by Billy Bragg.

Minorities and the Others That Support them

I am straight. I have never been part of a pro-gay movement. And I feel sort of guilty about that.

the thing is, I've never really thought about it before. I support all forms of equality, but I have never once felt the need to actively help any minority, including gays, Blacks, and women (though how 50% makes a minority I don't know). I don't think many people really get involved in these types of things, even if they support the principles. the simple reason is that majority groups aren't searching for that piece of their life most of the time.

the the movie "The Assassination of Richard Nixon", the protagonist finds himself with a great hole in his life. he tries to fill it by joining a black equality group. They don't want him. I think this says alot about how far we have come in bridging such gaps since the time when that movie was set. Still, The drive simply isn't there for anyone but a minority to actively fight. Having considered this , I would like to help some such group. unfortunately they don't exist in Qatar, so I feel rather trapped. Darn.

Poor Poor Joy Division

Having flipped through other Love Will tear Us Apart covers on youtube, I have determined that there are alot of people who don't get Joy Division, but think that they do. As if the previously mentioned "Let's Dance To Joy Division" weren't bad enough, most of the covers and comments I saw were totally emo. though there was one guy wearing a scary mask. He was cool. His version was good to. And I won't mention names but there is a girl out there with one hell of an over-inflated ego. She had to look at her fingers to play 2 chords while singing the song. the video has 40,000 views. Maybe Ian was on to something with the depression and suicide bit...

If I Had A Science Blog...

Than this would be my tagline:

"Making the impossible slightly more accessible
Making the implausible slightly less acceptable"

Love Will Tear Us Apart

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uWhYPO6qvg

This isn't my favourite Joy Division song (that honour goes to the version of Ceremony on Heart and Soul) but it really lends itself to one man and a guitar thing. I've played it life a few times, but this is the most that Iv'e played around with it.

By the way, there's a song called "let's dance to joy division". It sucks. just thought you should know. If he hadn't already it would cause Ian Curtis to kill himself. And I mean no offence to him when I say this.

Multi-Causal Universes?

If there are multiple universes, I wonder if they all follow the same laws as ours.

Think about it: does every possible state of the universe within our physical parameters occur? or does every set of laws exist? could there even be non-causal universes? If there were, then there must be an infinite number because there is a infinite number of possible parameters.

"Time, it's flexing like a whore
Falls wanking to the floor
It's script is you and me"
-David Bowie

Apple Has Their Collective Heads In the Clouds of the 80s

A brief history lesson. Back when Apple Computing was essentially 2 guys and a garage, those 2 guys had alot of cool ideas. They created the Apple which only sold to computer geeks. the Apple II, however, really sold the lay audience that they wanted and needed computers.

When 5 1/4" floppy drive went on sale they cost thousands of dollars. The Steves (Jobs and Wosniak) designed a drive for the Apple II which drastically cut down the number of chips required. By doing this they significantly reduced the cost and size of the apple. the drive cost under 200 dollars to make, but they sold it for about 600. This seems evil, but if you consider the fact that they were still a small company and that they were still pricing far below the competition you can see that they were justified in charging for their creativity.

And now we have the mac book air. Starting at 3500 dollars, we have the most stripped down computer you can find. The thinnest perhaps, but the functionality is minimal. And people wonder why Microsoft is the leader. I would love to own a mac, but they simply cost to much. A 1000 dollar PC goes for at least 1500 in mac terms. and PCs have so much more software support it isn't funny.

the same goes for iPods. They cost about 250 to make AT MOST. add another 50 bucks for transportation and R&D and they still charge almost double for the best models. I have an iPod, but that's only because iTunes is so darn good. They are coasting on a piece of software. and those 600 dollar iPods? Your lucky if it lasts a day after the warranty expires.

Apple has forgotten about the innovation that allowed them to get away with this kind of behaviour.

My Ode to Carl Sagan.

We go about our daily lives
and generate a ceaseless drive
that can't be true
but is not a lie
a precious who
some sacred why

We doubt this is all
and obey ancient scrawl.
We cannot admit
that this is our end.
How audacious is it?
to think that we are godsend.

The works of the sentient
Human or alien
They fall short of black holes
And quickly will rot
But we bask in the soul
Of this pale blue dot

X-files Hates Guns!

Mulder and Sculley from the X-Files both have guns. They are FBI agents, it only makes sense. But for some reason, they don't keep them nearby when in their homes or hotel rooms. Given that they often come under personal attack, you would think that they would keep them close. It's not like they tend not to pick them up for dramatic purposes. Quite the contrary, there is generally a 5 second scene where they pick it up off of a desk or couch. How strange.

On another note, they tend to butcher pseudo-science in that show. Like the time loss in the first episode. Mulder said that it was due to a physical difference in the time dimension. The reason that people lose time is that they don't remember 2 hours. Everyone knows that, why did they have to invent something? It's all silly anyway!

BTW, Sculley is cute.

Me and Religion

I try to keep this blog impersonal, with my opinion playing a backseat to the various thoughts and ideas that I've had. However, the best way to analyse what somebody says is to know exactly what their stance is on the subject that they are discussing. I run into religion alot (especially when discussing evolution) so I've decided to go into detail about my take on the matter.

Occam's Razor. DONE!

Ok, let's be serious. The first thing that we have to start with is that there is no evidence for the existence of a god (hence he term faith). There is no evidence that could disprove the existence of a god. Anything that happens could be caused by a divine power. Steven Hawking talked about this in A Brief History Of Time when he said "The expanding universe does not disprove the existence of god, but it does place limits on when he could have carried out his jobs". If god exists than he does everything according to the laws that we have extrapolated from the evidence.

On the other hand, there is lots of stuff that could happen to imply a god. If events occurred completely randomly, or according to purely ideological reasons than that would imply a higher power. Of course, when we discover a phenomenon it always takes some time to figure out what caused it, but if we spent 4000 years trying to figure out the laws that define gravity it would be fair to say that there isn't a description that really works. If gravity is the only thing that we couldn't describe, than we should assume that we haven't developed the proper math yet. However, if we make no progress in any scientific field over that time than the idea that there is a god doesn't really break Occam's razor anymore.

So, we have seen steadily increasing rates of progress in science and everything seems to hold up quite well (pending further evidence). So, why should I add a god?

Let's look at a big question as an example of applying Occam's razor. Where did the universe come from? Right now we don't think that we can infer anything that happened or existed before the big bang. So, god could have set the universe in motion. But then where did he come from? It's another layer of complexity that we don't need. Science works by putting the answerable unknowns right behind what we already know. So putting something as big as GOD behind that curtain makes a huge number of assumptions. And even if god did exists before the big bang than he almost certainly doesn't exist now, because he fundamentally changed the way the universe works. He becomes a massive anomaly in a causal universe. Oh yeah, and why haven't we found heaven or hell yet? And why aren't all skeptics struck down by lightning bolts? Just a thought... It almost seems like god wants us to believe in a causal universe...

The nutty religion of Scientology was invented about 50 years ago by a science fiction writer named L Ron Hubbard. He did it to avoid being thrown in jail for making medical claims and left a paper trail of allegations and statement. The guy even wrote about how much money you can make by creating a religion. So, what if that happened when the Bible was written? What about the Koran? Of course the evidence for that is gone. If a scientific study is done a while ago, we should probably redo it now in order to test our base assumptions. The only reason to believe that any one religion is correct (again, assuming that there is a god) is if we derive it from religious texts. Unfortunately there are a gazillion religions and texts, with no method of determining if one is more legitimate than another. There is no subjective way of determining that the christian god exists and that Allah does not. This question is unanswerable unless god herself (god couldn't be male, since she essentially gave birth to the universe) were to come down and set things straight. So even if I accepted god, It's highly unlikely that the REAL god is YOUR god.

The last point I want to make is in a similar vein (I know that this is an argument from final consequences, but it's not like I'm debating anything but real evidence anyway). Who does god think that she is, judging people all the time? Depending on which account you believe, I'm going straight to hell when I die. But I don't think that I have done anything so horribly wrong that it deserves eternal torture and neither does society. So because one consciousness doesn't like me, I go to hell. how is that fair? God sounds like big brother to me. Big Brother was built on faith to. Big Brother both loves and punishes his people. Creepy.

So, now having offended just about everyone in some way, I will finish describing my take on religion. Ok, so god might exist but if she does we don't know what she is like. So that makes me agnostic. I think the whole idea is silly and my gut reaction is atheist, but my intellectually honest self is agnostic.

"There was a time when religion ruled the world
It was called the dark ages"
-Greydon Square

Retraction of the Ammendment

Having thought about it I have realised that the "god-spot" is not incompatible with the "god-net". I actually take issue with the study that was done with the nuns (I'm reffering to the live science article in my last post) but even if we assume that it is correct, what I said still stands, and may even be more probable.

According to this study, the whole brain is responsible for the religious experience. However, the God-spot does in fact produce the results that were in my original post. A single spot can easily affect how the system works, which provides more than reasonable compatibility between the 2 findings.

The reason that this makes what I said is more probable is part of the basic workings of evolution: adaption of existing resources to do something new. It is more likely that these parts of the brain would evolve to contribute to a single event than that a whole separate part of the brain would be created.

Evolution deniers (and that IS what they are) always point at "irreducible complexity" as evidence against evolution. How ironic that the very mechanism which they refuse to accept is responsible for the religious fervour that drives virtually all of them.

God Spot Ammendment

http://www.livescience.com/health/060829_god_spot.html

I mentioned the godspot in a previous post. I found this while looking for more information on it. This is old news, so I can't really defend myself, but the source I got it from was only about a year and a half old, so I felt it was timely enough. Guess not. I sincerely apologise, I don't pretend to be a neurologist and my data is sometimes wrong. sorry. I'll try and re-analyse the topic in another post.

Remember, this blog is for IDEAS. I try to stick with facts, but don't take anything I say as definitely true. I mean, I wrote about speeding up computers with black holes. seriously.

New Study for Judging Human Ability to Improve Multi-Tasking Skills

lets say we get 500 people as our study group. We'll split them into 5 groups. The study will be carried out over a 3 month period.

Group 1:Is given an audio recording on a topic (a podcast for example). They are also given reading material on the same topic.

Group 2:Is given the same material, but the reading material is on a different topic than the audio.

Group 3:Is given the audio material and a copy of Tetris.

Group 4:Is given music and reading material.

Group 5:Is given nothing.

Group 5 is given a test. They have a 5 minute recording on a topic as well as reading material on the same topic, but which contains different information. They have 5 minutes to listen to the recording while reading the information. After this time they are given a test which requires knowledge of both items.

These tests are stored away until the end of the study WITHOUT BEING SCORED (in order to maintain blindness on the part of the experimenters). The other groups spend 1 hour a day listening to their audio while reading the material they were given, or playing Tetris. After 3 months of doing this, they write the same test that group 5 wrote. The tests are scored and results compared.

The point of this study is to determine whether or not people are capable of learning to take in 2 streams of data.

"Why do you continue to
change the subject and break my concentration
As I dump the bottle out and count the Advil up again!"
-They Might Be Giants

I just found this...

NONONONONONONONONONONONONO!!!!!!!!!!!

This is so wrong! I can't deal with it. It's just not right. This sucks. I mean, yeah it's Coldplay. They are sell-outs anyway. But...NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The precedent this sets is vile. I may be forced to lead a musical revolution of some sort.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

"And blind acceptance is a sign!
Of stupid fools who stand in line
Like EMI!!!!!!"
-Sex Pistols

EPIC

This is the trailer for a video that we did before I left Nova Scotia. The film is intended to be part 1 of a 5 part series about music.

Social Evidence For Evolution

*note: Religious people may be offended by part of this post.

evolution is pretty much the most proven theory there is. We have DNA evidence and fossil evidence. We also observe very different creatures that use different solutions to the same problem (bats and birds have totally different wing structure). On the other side, there are similar creatures that use the same solution (all birds use essentially the same wing design, with minor variations). On top of this, I think there is another layer of evidence in the way we behave. I have a list of things that clearly show that we function in ways that allow our DNA to be passed on.

1.Family
We want to defend our families, because they contain our DNA. If we didn't defend our families then they probably wouldn't survive long enough to reproduce.

2.Racism
Ok, This isn't a pretty one but it works. We naturally want DNA that is similar to ours to be passed on. A genetic mutation that helps itself in other copies is more likely to survive. In this way, someone who appears to be genetically different from us is naturally repressed. Part of the reason racism has lessened is that we live in a global society, and people who can function with anybody are more likely to be successful. It's a social evolution that's happening right in front of us.

3.Homophobia
As much as we want to promote our own DNA, survival of the species takes precedence. So when we meet someone with no interest in pro-creation we have a negative reaction. I think that this attitude is going to go the same way as racism because we can support a gay community (the world is OVER-populated!) and our society has been moving in a liberal direction for the last 4000 years. Therefore it will be advantageous socially to be tolerant of gays.

4.Religion
There is a part of the brain, often referred to as the god spot (g-spot), that causes a religious experience when manipulated (people who have seizures in this part of the brain have an illness called "hyper-religiosity"). So what possible function could this serve? Well, it's responsible for belief in god. The odd thing is that the evolutionary advantage of this is not immediately obvious. I have a few theories, all of which probably play a contributing role:

We have developed the ability to question the universe. So when we come across the big "where are we going" issue, ancient man had no answer. Religion gave them one, avoiding suicide, depression and all other sorts of things. Now that we can explain so much of our universe and know how to find out other things about it, i think that the situation has changed significantly. It is hard to identify with someone who knows nothing but survival.

Religion provides alot of certainty, which can help immensely when trying to motivate others. Motivation and leadership increase appeal when seeking mates.

Once religion took hold, non-religious people pretty persecuted for a few thousand years. That would be social selection and is pretty much identical to natural selection.

5.sex is fun!
If you enjoy sex you want more of it. If you have more sex, you have more kids. If you have more surviving kids they pass on your DNA. QED.

Interestingly, the god-spot actually plays a part in orgasms, tying sex and religion together. neato!

"He's an or-gasm addict!"
-The Buzzcocks

How to use Physics to speed up your Computer!!!

There are 2 things that limit how fast any component of a computer can function: heat and error rates. Take for example a processor. No matter how much cooling you give it, you probably aren't going to overclock a 1.8 Ghz machine to 7 Ghz. Even if you have dealt with the cooling issue, the processor simply cannot handle that kind of information without making a huge number of errors.

Luckily, physics can help us deal with the error rate issue (and If you want cooling, just install some fans, or water cooling).

Step 1: Create a very small black hole.

Step 2: Put your computer in a place where the black hole is warping space time, but not so close that it passes the event horizon.

Step 3: Set the video output framerate to 30 hz, so that your monitor can keep up with the computer.

Step 4: bask in the glory of your now twice as fast computer!!!

The idea is that time is moving faster for the computer, so it appears to be running twice as fast. This doesn't deal with the heat issue, but it does allow for any number of processor cycles in a perceived second.

Unfortunately, even if we figured out how to do this games and movies would be out of the question. Each program would have to know how fast the computer was being "warpclocked" in order to compensate. On the other hand, things like servers that don't need to follow a specific time frame could benefit greatly. And of course a standardized game console would work too.

"ROAD RUNNER ROAD RUNNER!
GOIN' A THOUSAND MILES AN HOUR!
LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!
AH WITH THE RADIO ON!
Ah I Don't Fuckin' Know it..."
-Sex Pistols

Pretentious, Meaningless Dribble and it's Effect on Science

The moon is not within walking distance.

That sentence doesn't mean anything at all. Nothing. There is nothing at all profound about that sentence. But I guarantee you that if you think about it long enough you can derive something from it.

So this is stupid. Or is it? Here's the thing: When we apply meaning were there is none intended, we create completely new ideas. I think that this is the real benefit that society gets from art. We create leaps over large gaps of logic and reason, which allow us to think in completely different ways. Usually this leads nowhere and a reasonable person can tell when they are going to down a false logical road. Occasionally, however, abstract thought brings to brilliant conclusions.

Off the top of my head I can't think of any specific examples of art influencing science (I'm sure they exist), but there are some insane things in science that standard logical rules probably wouldn't lead to. The biggest examples are Relativity and Quantum Physics. These were derived from math, but there are some huge logical gaps to jump before arriving at those theories. Of course evidence later confirmed these crazy ideas but they are proof of just how imaginative that we can be when confronted with seemingly meaningless information.

Computers as a Description of Science

Want a cool (and nerdy) analogy to explain science? here you go.

People are a processor. like, everyone all together is a processor. On our hard-drive we have 3 files: Evidence.zip (which represents what we can observe), Logic.bat and Occam.duh (which are small).

So first we run Logic.bat (an unzipping protocol) on Occam.duh (which contains Occam's razor, "That solution which makes the least assumptions is probably the correct one"). We extract the folder "Rules of Evidence", which contains dlls representing all of our different specific rules for determining things. We also extract science.bat which references those dlls.

All of this should be pretty fast (but actually took thousands of years because the R3lg1on+StAt3 virus was eating up processor cycles). Now we have the long process: unzipping everything into the folder "Laws".

Science.bat extracts things from Evidence.zip. Unfortunately this compression protocol is self-manipulating. Sometimes data is uncompressed, but is later modified via inference from other data seen later on. However, this is self-correcting since that change is retro-actively applied to the other data. It's inefficient for the processor (the scientists), but it requires far less data on the hard-drive before de-compression

"Words are flowing out like endless rain inside a letterbox
Exiting and inviting me."
-The Beatles

Why I Hate Blogs

And Facebook and Myspace and Youtube. The sites themselves are perfectly reasonable (actually, I take issue with Facebook as a concept, but that's another article in itself) but people ruin them. As a bit of research for this post I looked at about 50 random blogs. 47 of them were a combination of the following:
Link farms
Spanish teenage girls
Japanese teenage girls
American teenage girls
About babies

The other 3 (the interesting ones) were the following:

A pretentious emo guy with very little to say, except for the obvious (things like money sucks).

A housewife trying to relieve the monotony of her life by analysing parts of her life, like movies she just watched or unusual things that she got for Christmas. Actually, she seemed kind of cool.

A guy who manages christian ministries for teens. Among other things, it included tips on how to take advantage of people's natural reasoning faculties in order to convert them. This one made me physically ill. I hate it when people use anything but the facts to convince people of things.

I think you get the idea. I recently read an article (that I can't find anymore) about Facebook relying on it's users to be "Beacons of Egoism" and I think that the same logic applies here. So now I feel like more of a jerk for writing this IN A BLOG!!!!! Still, I'm trying to use this blog to say something (or rather a collection of nothings). If I ever mention my personal life, it's in order to prove a point. And in it's purest form the internet is a catalyst for the free exchange of ideas.

Apathy and Anti-Gun Laws

From what I've seen, the right to bear arms is the single most protected right in the American constitution. It's easy: If someone is of age and not completely insane and they want a gun, we give it to them (intelligence and responsibility don't factor in apparently). But why? At the moment this right hasn't really helped anyone. I'm sure that there are stories of people heroically protecting their families, but I have no doubt (and this is conjecture) that accidents and wilfully violent behaviour have eclipsed the benefits of gun ownership.

The reason that the second amendment exists is actually quite interesting. The "founding fathers" knew that no political system was safe from, well, politicians. For this reason they wanted all Americans to be able to rise up if the government stepped out of line. This is a perfect example of the way a democratic system is supposed to work: The government should be afraid of the people, not the other way around. In fact, the very existence of this amendment says alot about the differences between modern politics and the people who first arrived in America (which is not to say that they were angels, remember they had slaves too).

So what does this have to do with apathy? Well, how bad would the government have to get in order for the masses to take up arms? If the government was nimble enough to quickly change it's policies to something more Orwellian, than we might see something. unfortunately politics don't work that way and the change to any attitude is to slow to be really noticed by the public. Does anyone know how the world would have reacted to a 9/11 style disaster 100 years ago? how about our dependence on oil? We don't know and it's difficult to measure changes like that over generations. But I digress, my point is this: We have gun laws in the USA that have led to both accidental and intentional deaths. At one point these laws made sense, but that was 300 years ago and frankly I don't think anybody is going to be rising up anytime soon (I mean, if I were the entirety of the American populous I would have just booted out the government in the last election). I don't think there is a simple solution to this issue, though I DO believe that education solves most, if not all long-term problems. Unfortunately I don't think anybody in power has noticed or really cares about the problem. And to hell with revolution, I don't even get to vote for the president of the world.

Being Eaten

The fate of the universe is a fascinating question. For one thing, no one who believes anything reasonable thinks that we will actually get to find out what is going to happen to "the big it". There is, however a guarantee that the universe as we know it will end. You see, at some point everything is going to get eaten by black holes. Now whether or not the universe will survive long enough for that to happen is debatable. It IS a guarantee though. So even if every other possible way the universe could end is prevented, one day everything will just be giants piles of nothing. on the other hand, nobody knows what's on the other side of a black hole...It could be a whole other universe...Of course we would be crushed and wouldn't get to see it, but eventually all of that mass could form back into planets and life and such. And then that would get eaten by black holes. Fun huh?

And try wrapping your head around this one: If the universe didn't exist than what would reality be? I'm not talking about vacuous space here, I mean nothing. No universe. No space. No time. Scary eh? Actually, that isn't the case so honestly it doesn't matter.

"But if you could just see the beauty,
These things I could never describe"
-Joy Division (You try finding a good lyric about astronomy)