It's just a joke man

Yes, I critique humor seriously.

"It's just a joke" does not make what is said meaningless.

How about you stand up in the middle of your town and tell the joke about how many Jews can you fit in a beetle, or the one about why don't Mexicans and blacks have kids? Because we know damn well that a joke can easily not be "just a joke." The intention of the teller is irrelevant, the intention of the writer is irrelevant.

Because even when you're being funny you're saying something. In order for a joke to work, some things must be taken as facts. x + 2 = 4 Four may be the punchline, but x is what can offend and upset.

The assumptions made in a joke can quite insidiously train a human mind to see reality a certain way without them ever knowing they've been trained.

And that's how I feel about the trillions of examples of relationship humor when sexist assumptions are made. I'm tired of being told I have to put up with that shit if I want a girlfriend. Well, I don't. I decided a long time ago that if a girl wants to be important to me she gets to abandon and hope of riding me into an early grave so she can enjoy a plethora of double standards.

And you know what happened? I figured out that if I'm just a little patient, given the population of 6.7 billion, I can find people that don't demand total servitude. So you can take your boring 1950s sexist "normal" humor and leap headfirst into the dust bin of history.

Deadlight

I think I wrote this somewhere before but I can't find it so here I go again.

The point of this game is to teach people to spot anomalies on the road. It is designed to teach awareness and observation,a and to decrease reaction time.

It is named Deadlight for two reasons, first of all because its fast to say and easy to recall, and secondly to remind the player that it is a seriously valuable skill, since one can die at nearly the speed of light on the road.

Equipment needed: None.

Rules: (Pick and choose as needed.)

Core-
If you are in a car with the engine running you are playing.
First player to spot and call a Deadlight gets a point.
Last player to score a point when the engine shuts off, wins. If player exits vehicle while holding the point, player wins. (this allows kids being dropped off places to win)
There is no score beyond last point scored.
Deadlights may not be called from mirrors or outside normal view. (This negates driver view advantage).

Optionals-
Deadlights can only be called at night. Night is defined by street lamps.
Tail lights, fog lights, broken windows, broken or turned off wipers, car crashes, deer, etc all count as Deadlights, turning without signaling. Any potentially dangerous road anomaly.
Players without seat belts can not win.

Games I invented as a child: Virtual assassins.

Equipment needed:
Toy guns, and explosives. A multi-room setting. Toy Swords Boffa, rubber knives, etc allowed. Nerf guns.

Goal:
Kill everyone in the house (non players as well) and then suicide to score a point. (Suicide bombing counts.)

Rules:
A dead player must stay in the room he was killed in and take no in game action for 30 seconds, or more depending on handicap and agreed upon rules.

A player can elect to stay dead by staying in the room, once a dead player is past his time limit he may cross the threshold of the room into another room to revive.

A single touch into another room with the foot is required. Hands do not count. Unless the player is prone.

Players may play dead.

Weapons by default can only act on player in the same room. A player must be in the room to use a weapons in a room: Solid foot if standing, solid hand if prone, or more than 50% of body mass is beyond threshold.

Firing rate depends on click of gun or actual firing rate in the case of Nerf, if it doesn't click or beep or something, it's a dead weapon.

Semi automatic rifles are 1 room spanners. Melee weapons are limited to actual range, and cannot be throw unless throwing is their only function. (no throwing swords or daggers)

Explosives are room killers, shelter is ignored. These need not make noise. Explosives are limited to one room.

Pets are always in play and their noises kill rooms, pets are immune to physical contact weapons. Players using physical contact weapons on a pet are killed for 24 hours. (In honor of Mitzi. M.I.A.)

Improvised weapons are allowed. Walkie-talkies make good remote bombs. Oven timers are also handy. String and bells may be used as claymores. Or cardboard box mines. Be creative.

Games I invented as a child: Wiffleball Frisbee Bat Beat Down

I invented this game when i was like 10 or something.

Equipment needed: Goal markers, Frisbees (that you don't particularly care about), Wiffleball bats.

Goal: To know the crap out of Frisbees and feel like a ninja. Or to score points, whichever.

The game can have as many players as you like I guess limited by the geometry of the goal zones.

The idea is for each player to have a goal zone, and a bat. Another player's goal is to toss the Frisbee past the player between the goal markers. The idea is to stop the Frisbee, Violently.

You handicap or advantage expert and new players by distancing the markers.

If the Frisbee passes between the markers that's a point for the thrower and it now becomes the defender's turn to throw, always to the left. (In honor of my mom's southern paw.)

If the Frisbee is tossed higher than the defender can theoretically reach, standing bat in hand, then no point is gained. The idea is to get it past them not over.

Itch

Elsevier Article Locator

Abstract


We compared itch sensations and axon reflex flare induced by transcutaneous electrical (0.08–8ms, 2–200Hz) and chemical (histamine iontophoresis; 100μC) stimulation. Stimuli were applied to non-lesional volar wrist skin in 20 healthy human subjects and 10 patients with atopic dermatitis. Intensity of evoked itch and pain sensations were rated on a numerical rating scale (NRS) of 0 (no sensation) to 10 (the maximum sensation imaginable). The axon reflex erythema was measured by laser Doppler imager and areas of alloknesis (itch evoked by light brushing) and hyperknesis (itch evoked by pricking) were assessed psychophysically. Electrical stimulation was most effective for stimulus durations ≥2ms and frequencies ≥50Hz. It evoked pure itch as threshold sensation in 80% of the subjects that was perceived with a delay of approximately 1s. Itch intensities of up to 7/10 were not accompanied by an axon reflex flare. In contrast, histamine provoked a massive increase of axon reflex erythema and maximum itch ratings of 3.1±0.2. The extention of alloknesis areas (2.3±0.5cm) evoked by electrical stimulation clearly exceeded those induced by histamine (0.7±0.3cm). Healthy subjects and patients with atopic dermatitis did not differ significantly in their response to either stimulation. We conclude that C-fiber activation underlies the electrically evoked itch sensation. The low electrical thresholds and the absence of an axon reflex flare suggest that these fibers are not identical with the previously described mechano-insensitive histamine responsive C fibers, but represent a separate peripheral neuronal system for the induction of itch.

Now I'm not going to protend to understand all that, but what it looks like to me is that there is a way to induce itching or more specifically the sensation of itch with a TENS unit, by direct nerve induction.

If that is the case I have an idea.

Martyrs and Patience

workboredom.png (PNG Image, 472x508 pixels)

Californication

Well season one was a real page turner.

Sat and watched two thirds of it in a single sitting.

Laughed so hard at one point I thought I was going to stroke out, seriously I stopped it and did some bogus breath control shit trying to slow my heart down, which for the record failed miserably. It was like the adult version of trying not to laugh in class.

But of course as with House, as with Dexter, and so on, it transformed into a after school special about how to sell your soul to the vagina.

I don't know which is worse, the fact that these shows portray all women as lying whores or the fact that when I say so in defense of real women I'm told, by real women, that I must think all women are whores.

So either they actually are all lying whores, or they feel behaving like lying whores is acceptable, or they don't and they are lying to themselves.

It's like Catch 22, what happens if I use a bit of healthy skepticism to admit the fact that I might be wrong but in so doing actually reinforce that I might be right?

All I see on TV is men having women's backs against the world and then being berated at home for it. Am I dysfunctional for wanting no part of that? Apparently so.

Well, it was nice while it lasted, one good season is better than none since I'm not allowed to do shit but sit here and watch TV like some catatonic.

Edit: The show picked up after the half way point, it got just a smidge less about conforming with sufficient vigor to please the unpleaseable, and actually introduced at least one excellent character, but of course they executed him. Probably because they can't afford his ass since season 3 was late 2009 and that's when he's going to be in battlestar.

"Big ups" to him. I'd pick battlestar too.

The Internet

The Internet's greatest power is showing that no pain is above mockery.

Merry Xmas!

Sometimes its shocking how things turn out.

I got a hot chocolate mug, a SWEET hoodie and a gal bladder attack this xmas.

And would you believe it as of this moment I'm having a damn fine xmas.

1. The mug and hoodie were very thoughtful.

2. I generally feel really guilty come xmas time because I have no job and no money.

3. I feel even more guilty because the people that love me enough to get me gifts I'd rather not take from, and the bastards that owe me money never even send so much as a card... with my money in it.

4. I had some muscle relaxers left over from my emergency room visit for my last gal bladder attack, so while I was literally writhing in agony for I'm not sure how long, it had to have been under an hour. Having had previous attacks last for several hours this means a lot to me.

Now I'm the first to point out the selective reasoning whenever people point out a 99% catastrophe as a miracle. You know, bus of toddlers goes over a cliff, one lives, invariably someone calls that one living a miracle. I myself say why toss it over at all? Why not miracle a total prevention? Personally a floating buss being gently placed back on the road would be more effective in conveying god's love, but I digress.

I am genuinely happy that I am no longer in pain. I also feel no malice that I was in pain. I wonder if that's just me being seriously stupid, or cowardly, or somehow noble.

Intellectually I know that I could have been placed in this state of mind without the pain, but, I'm happy just the same.

Pedophilia, Paraphilia and Society

It was once said about me, when I was attacking what I characterize as the pedophile witch hunt in the west, that perhaps I wish us not to "hunt" pedophiles at all. Ignoring the use of the word hunt with regard to human beings and before I explore the question of whether or not merely hunting pedophiles is the best way to protect children, I'd like to clarify my position on pedophilia generally.

In short, I think we shouldn't create pedophiles and then act all surprised when we find them. The natural next question is how can they be created? And who is doing the creating?

The first question's answer is obvious. and to ask it exposes a fundamental and willful ignorance. To ask the question exposes a deep and pressing ideological bias quite honestly not seen since Nazi Germany. You probably felt it already and have formed opinions about me before ever reaching this sentence because of a clear and factual implication that I've already made that you probably disagree with. The implication, and indeed my outright statement, is that pedophiles are humans. They are not monsters to be caught and tortured.

I dare say they aren't even sick genetically speaking. In my view pedophilia is formed like any other fetish, though obviously it has some drastic social consequences. This bring us to our next question because I've just explained that pedophiles are not born, they are made.

To go into this in detail would be dissertation material in both content and length. To understand my position you must also have a basically workable conceptual understanding of genetics, psychology, sexuality, and sociology. I consider myself rare in meeting all those requirements. Though of course I have no accredited stamp 'proving' it beyond my entry level college courses.

The DSM IV has a great section on paraphillia. I myself have a quite harmless fetish, and that was part of my motivation for undertaking the reading required to help answer the question "why do I feel this way?" I believe I have a satisfactory and accurate answer. It is environmental.

I am quick to add that I believe homosexuality to be a genetic anomaly, though I also believe one can acquire a "fetish" for the same sex as a result of the same mechanism that grants fetish's to all people, which accounts partially for the confusion about the origin of homosexuality. Those of one genetic sexual preference, with a fetish for the other, in my opinion accounts for the majority of people labeled "bi". I will of course not discount the possibility of a genetically bisexual individual, but I will hazard a guess that they are quite rare. And determining a blood test for sexuality so to speak will be to put it mildly, difficult, if not entirely needless. A good starting point for understanding this hypothesis would be the book Adam's Curse, which explores the consequences of intracellular genetic competition between mitochondrial and nucleic DNA.

The mechanical or environmental formation of a fetish is actually quite simple, and amounts to accident and timing. The fact that most people share sexual traits with their peers is no accident. Without going into the evidence I'll simply state that as some point during the transition from childhood to adolescence sexuality is in large part imprinted, in precisely the same way a baby bird imprints when hatching from the egg.

Children by definition are not at fault in this process, or put in another more obvious way, one cannot help and or is not responsible for their sexual formation. This is important because it shows that disposition towards pedophilia is ethically neutral. Again, put simply being a pedophile is not evil.

It must be noted that this process is analog not digital, it is not an on off switch, one can be afflicted only in part while still harboring 'healthy' sexual appetites. This in my view accounts for the infantilization some men require sexually despite not being pedophiles. (hairless vagina, child like behavior, extreme petiteness preference, pigtails, etc) This in turn partially and ironically accounts for the demand that the market is responding to when it uses sexually appealing and yet childlike models to hock its wares, which in turn creates an environment conducive to the creation of criminal pedophiles.

We create them by first and foremost by annihilating all possible routes to free, easy, and safe sexual release. Also by demonizing masturbation, pornography and outlawing all forms of non-sanctioned sexual indulgence despite their harmless nature. This over reaction stems from ignorance mainly, and to a lesser but still significant degree, from cultural puritanism.

For example, cartoons of pedophilia, which is not well understood, are illegal, but cartoons of murder, which is fairly well understood, are not only legal, but desirable. This approach of annihilating all safe outlets for pedophiles has tragic consequences for both pedophiles and children.

A good way to test the accuracy of this claim would be to compare sexual assault rates per child in the united states and japan. I say this because japan has a famously permissive attitude toward pedophile themed cartoons and manga, while the united states decidedly does not. I predict that sexual assault on children in japan is lower adjusting for population differences etc, than in the united states.

We as a society need to realize that our actions have consequences and that sexuality is both a basic human need and an effect of the environment. If you starve someone long enough they will sometimes steal, or even kill to sate their hunger. Guilt and fear are not 100% reliable tools to prevent pedophiles from acting on their paraphillia. Thus 100% emphasis on humiliation and punishment is tantamount to causing child rape. We all share responsibility for this.

Understanding, Faith, and Gravity

This essay is in response to the video below.



Resisting the urge to explore why it is everything with an 'intellectual' feel has to be presented by someone with a smug English accent (Q Perhaps?) I'd like to explore a serious oversight with this position generally. IE that you must go the degree/education/peer review route to understand something with sufficient strength to attack it.

What they are saying amounts to you must be one of us before you an disagree with us, and if you were one of us you'd not disagree. That's sounds a bit familiar.

Understanding as a matter of faith.

I'll cut through all of it and restate what I hear in different ways whenever scientists like to talk about lay people attacking their work.

The basic claim is that before you can effectively attack a given view, you must first "understand" the view you are attacking. A rational version of this is to say that before you can write a program you must learn code.

That's all well and good but the way most scientists use this attack amounts to an intellectual pissing contest and pulling rank based on time investment rather than any sort of rational refutation or objection. This amounts to an argument from authority. (Your objection is invalid because I have a PHD.)

That may sound absurd on the surface, but consider what is meant by the word understand. All fields over lap at some point. We only live in the one reality. Every frog is connected to every star. Thus, true complete understand is impossible for us presently, perhaps totally if you're a fan of the uncertainty principal being a reflection of ontological reality. IE being unable to observe reality to such and such degree actually limits reality.

So you have to draw a line. You have to apply boundaries. Sometimes these boundaries are very clear, such as exploring the logic of a card game. But as set study shows us, its not always that simple. You can see this yourself when you start a conversation about dogs and end up talking about astrophysics. Dogs>park>park at night>stars.

The point is that you may completely understand something only within bounds, if at all, and where you apply those bounds is your choice ultimately. In addition, since context alters meaning, that understanding can be rendered useless with external and non conflicting data coming from outside those bounds.

Hypothetical: I've shot someone in the head. I'm also being tried for murder. You can fully understand both facts, but do you claim to completely understand the situation from those facts alone? What more data do you need? Consider the true scope of the question. To fully understand you'd have to perfectly master history and psychology at the very least, and perhaps the human brain if an insanity by mental defect defense is used, that would radiate out to physics since the brain is an electrochemical mechanism, and philosophy since you'd also have to define "person"See what I mean? You have to draw a line somewhere, and the key word is you.

So while the argument sounds good there is one insurmountable problem for claiming any scientific claim is totally objective. How you define "understand" and where you put boundaries are themselves subjective decisions.

For the record I don't care if I'm the only person who thinks this way. I don't care that you built a shuttle or this computer. Accomplishments don't denote absolute knowledge and agreement does not alter reality. Contrary to what O'Brian may claim he cannot levitate. But of course this is merely my belief, my faith if you will, in gravity.

Sure you may feel you have good reason, you may even feel you have evidence ,but the rule always applies, your understanding of those reasons and your understanding of that evidence is also subject to applied bounds and is therefor subjective. This extends to understandings of both refutation and prediction. The extends to understanding of experiments. This extends to the very nature of knowledge. Thus science, itself, in a very fundamental way, is subjective. Sound familier?

Ultimately science can be understood as a religion which changes its dogma based on interpertations of clergy derived from what they call experimentation, observation, and prediction.

To dismis this similarity with older faiths is dangerous to the integrity of science.

Reality is in fundamental paradox. There are questions that cannot be answer with the scientific method. But that's another paper.

My point is that I don't need complete understanding of a theory to attack it. It's like chopping down a tree, I don't need to see the whole tree to cut it down, the trunk will do.

If you're a scientist I'll let you make my arguments for me. What If I said understanding Christianity extends to memorizing the KJV bible letter for letter? What if I said you don't understand it enough to attack it or any claim it or I make about it until you have? Would you not immediately attack my definition of understanding? Would you not try to convince me or others that where I put my bounds is somehow invalid compared to where you put your bounds? What if I then said you didn't understand my definition of understand which I said stems from my understanding of the KJV?

We both rationally make the same claim: I don't need to read all your books and records to attack your claim.

The irony of scientists making this claim to religious people is staggering. Never forget, religion gave birth to science they will always be related, as both are effort to understand and predict a world that in some ways is forever mysterious, and unpredictable.

All of reality is in fundamental or harmonious paradox like this at same level.

All of knowledge is suspect (thanks Kant) and the degree to which we accept it is a matter of faith, that fact must be understood by scientists if they wish to avoid turning into a cult. This is both true and unprovable. Thanks Godel.

So I guess in closing what I'm saying is before science can attack religion it needs to understand philosophy and epistemology. :)

Bet the lab coats in the crowd are objecting already, and all I have in response is a question.

Are you sure you understand?

The war between religion and science is futile. It's the left and right had attacking the face. There is a derogatory slang term for that kind of behavior. Retarded.

Why not the whatthefuckicord?

Alice Video - Animusic 2 - 03 - Resonant Chamber, a video from willowb. musique, animation, vidéo, Animusic, Chamber

Animusic 2 - 03 - Resonant Chamber

Animusic 2 - 03 - Resonant Chamber
by willowb

That device is perfectly possible though I can't say it would actually sound like that.

For example, one could simulate the effect by making it a midi player with robotic components keyed to certain instrument+note combinations and have the components react in kind.

Further down the line I could see a kind of "listen and tap" system where by the robots listen to an actual song, and pics it apart by note, and then does the same as above mapping and sorting.

Still further simply have an intelligent instrument capable of hearing a piece and duplicating it on itself.

All I see is a really complex printer with a sound element. Beautiful, faceted, but not fantastical. Indeed in some ways I'd say the CG of it was more difficult in the making than actually building it would be.

Once we bout it what should we call it? See title.

Let's see...

When I say centrifugal, I mean centrifugal! | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Brandon M. Sergent Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
November 11th, 2008 at 6:44 pm

Sergent’s Law: The Length of total comments on a “intellectual” post varies proportionally with the perceived prestige of the blog’s host.

Or put another way this is intellectual masturbation designed to distract the participants from real issues that require personal discomfort to solve, such as how you all would live if WalMart weren’t selling you products built with slave labor, while conversely making you feel oh so much better than the uneducated wretches “beneath” you. Ironically those very same slaves oh whose backs you live.

This is as absurd to me as a picard vs kirk debate. I mean really, how is this not just yet another idiotic human faction thing? What is at stake here other than ego? Just hire cheerleaders and complete the obvious pointlessness.

And deep down you all know it, which is why you’re having this debate on a discover magazine blog, if this were scientific American the comments would read like the library of congress.

Ra Ra Centripetal ! ! *backflip*

My favs.

Software Engineering Proverbs

It is not enough to do your best: you must know what to do, and THEN do your best.

-- W. Edwards Deming

A leader is best when people barely know that he exists.
Less good when they obey and acclaim him.
Worse when they fear and despise him.
Fail to honor people, and they fail to honor you.
But of a good leader, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
they will say, "We did this ourselves."

-- Lao-Tzu

You must be the change
You wish to see in the world

-- Gandhi

One test is worth a thousand opinions.

If something is worth doing once, it's worth building a tool to do it.

Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein

Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein

* "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."
* "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
* "Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
* "I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."
* "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
* "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
* "The only real valuable thing is intuition."
* "A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."
* "I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."
* "God is subtle but he is not malicious."
* "Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."
* "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
* "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
* "Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
* "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
* "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
* "Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds."
* "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
* "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
* "Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it."
* "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
* "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."
* "God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically."
* "The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."
* "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
* "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
* "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
* "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
* "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."
* "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
* "Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."
* "Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity."
* "If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."
* "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
* "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
* "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
* "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
* "In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep."
* "The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."
* "Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves."
* "Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"
* "No, this trick won't work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?"
* "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
* "Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever."
* "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
* "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
* "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
* "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
* "The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."
* "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
* "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
* "One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year."
* "...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought."
* "He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
* "A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
* "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

Copyright: Kevin Harris 1995 (may be freely distributed with this acknowledgement)

Universal AutoCorrect.

Spellcheck autocorrect everywhere on the fly in the background and you can teach it to make it better.

1. Download + install Autohotkey.
2. Download + Doubleclick the Autocorrect Script.

Notice the little H on the task tray?

Now, in any application, like even Diablo 2, you have a good degree of automatic spellchecking.

To add your own simply highlight a misspelled word in any text box and hold down the windows key and hit h.

Someone give this man and the AHK people a medal.

Good Plan

ch930204.gif (GIF Image, 600x188 pixels)


Too bad irl the school security guard would taze him for insubordination.

Ta Da !

tadah_jesus.jpg (JPEG Image, 310x386 pixels) - Scaled (97%)



Cute.

But really, it never fails to amaze me how this logic doesn't bother some people.

Oh please...

t020art.jpg (JPEG Image, 400x370 pixels)

Behold, the lie they used to get a man like bill gates to build an evil empire and become the richest and one of the most powerful men who ever lived.

i mean seriously.

Intelligence isn't sexy. A half million dollar car is sexy. People who sell this lie are just trying to invest through sex. Take my word for it, on the rare occasions where a woman finds intelligence sexy, she'll still leave the man in the dust if he doesn't use that intelligence exclusively for fiscal gain.

Notice to lazy bitches: Instead of trying to fuck someone smart, pick up a publication that doesn't contain a list of "54 sexy things to do in bed that will ensure you never do anything for yourself ever again."

Awesome kid.

23801_1_468.jpeg (JPEG Image, 400x595 pixels) - Scaled (86%)



Heh, I think I like this kid.

Spiders

Play With Spider - Flash 3D - OneMotion.com

Absolutely awesome. Enjoy a digital pet spider.

Customizable legs/body/movements, even remote control. And you can give him little bugs to eat. They appear to spawn dead, so don't feel bad for them.

I love spiders. I have them all over my house because I refuse to squish them, But, I don't have bug of any other kind, other than the stray moth.

I didn't remote control him because that would be killing him in my mind, I also was very gentle about pulling him around, I didn't try to yank his legs off or anything which I'm sure everyone else does.

We robot.

I spent a summer as Data. Trying to think like a compassionate rational machine for a whole summer as a child probably has a lot to do with the way i think now.

Good help is hard to find.

This is dedicated to my webev friends, may your customers be easy going, simple to please, and affluent beyond description.

Yes. Yes we are.

Awesome.

Wrong Card Triggers Realization

Ha! This brings up a valid point. I really have been thinking this way.

Schoolghost

http://www.kirotv.com/video/17131579/index.html


IMO It's a bug crawling on the dome of the camera. the "shadow" is just it partly blocking the light reflected from the floor. As an example put your finger up to your eye till its out of focus, no look at a light source, move your finger to obscure the light source slowly, you'll notice that its not a clean line between covered and uncovered, the light gets dimmer as more and more of the photos get absorbed by your finger.

You can do this to see "through" a pencil or a straightened paper clip.

For more information about how this works look up the double slit experiment, and the difference between coherent and incoherent light.

Mission Accomplished

Two Face

And what happens when you tell the woman you're in love with after hopping off your bike because you sold it after quitting your job when you realized just how expensive the damn thing was, and you're 4k in debt from your jaunt across Europe?

Happily ever after or epic fail?

Which do you think is more likely?

Friendfeed

http://friendfeed.com/innomen

Debate

Real debate is a holy thing. Real debate in my mind is the exploration of the validity of an idea between two parties interested in knowing and willing to act based on their findings. Debate is the essence of human value, it allows imagination to interact with intelligence. It is what allows the evolution of abstractions based on data received from reality. It is what allows humanity to act as a single organism.

It is the agent which we use to form our picture of existence in relation to our collective self.

A discussion is an exchange of ideas that does not include a willingness to change on one or both sides.

An argument is the desire to force the other side to conform to ones position regardless of the target's willingness.

There is no real debate of written or unwritten social policy in this country, nor in any other with a government as far as I can tell.

There is no real debate over who leads us or why the rich get to keep their inherited wealth like kings. There is no debate over why family life is structured as it is, there is no debate over tax itself being justified, or the attempted legislation of morality. Because real debate must include an opportunity for change in either direction based on said debate. Marijuana law is a standing example of debate being a bloody farce in this country. If real debate occurred it never would have been criminalized in the first place. Need I even mention the 9/11 investigation? Regardless of your position on that matter, you should be able to agree that at the very least there is significant public interest in the matter, and yet officially the book is closed.

I wish with every fiber of my being that debate were existent in this world. But so long as we are paralyzed with fear greed jealousy and willful ignorance, it cannot. I believe that fear is at the heart of what it is to be human, hence my transhumanism.

Ego search leads to rape chat.

So I read about cuil.com and decided to search my name.

And I found this...

"Rape is rape, if someone doesnt want to have sex and they are forced into it, thats what it is, wether a state defines it that way or not"

And What I have to say to this person is as follows. Let it be known honey that if you reply its going on this page. Feel free to comment but I'm not in the mood to debate you privately.

Rape is rape you say, and yet I'm sure you've made a drop the soap joke at least once in your life.

Rape is a political bargaining chip by and large and the unpopular fact is it simply would not occur nearly as often if women didn't choose to hang around aggressive atavistic muscle bound alpha thugs due to perceived sexual ability.

I'm not saying rape is the woman's fault, but its not the man's fault 100% either. The myth of the innocent victim princess has got to die. The majority of rape involving a female in the west is not preceded by home invasion.

If you hang with thugs and gang bangers and beer happy frat boys and inked up pill head hair dye musicians because you still want to piss off daddy by bedding liberty spikes you're gunna pay for it eventually. Play with fire, get burned.

Rape is a feminazi buzzword these days more than anything, when it needs to be just another crime. Why can't I get a security escort to my car? Oh right because being shot in the face for my wallet is not near as bad as being raped. I'm tired of being a second class citizen just because I have a penis.

I must say you couldn't cut the irony here with a chainsaw.

Fact is, most of you probably don't care that harmless pot head men are raped daily at shiv point after having their teeth knocked out. You're far more concerned about some little tease that let Johnny frat boy and company buy her enough booze to kill a rhino and then magically wakes up with her skirt lifted.

Are you even aware of the simple fact that more men in the united states are raped than women? And please bear in mind that when a man gets raped its never in a hole that's designed for entry of any kind. I'll venture to say that torture heavy serial killers aside, prison rape is a billion times worse then anything a women is likely to encounter on the outside.

So please get over yourselves. Sure, rape is horrid, but until I see some hate for it across the board, this whole discussion will remind me of bigots and GRID.

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Ending and beginnings

Things change.

Axioms are uncovered, and I find myself with a job and without work.

No life's work anymore.

You cannot be convinced.

Could I honestly talk you into anything you did not already believe?

It comes down to trust, trust in people and trust in your perceptions.

I can't make you trust me, and without that nothing I say or even show you matters.

You have no choices. You can not be enlightened. You either are or are not. Timing is irrelevant and an illusion.

Do you know what things mean? No choice. Who you are as a person is a function of choices you never made, choices made for you at the instant of the universe's inception.

It's been said before. This is not news. Electrons behave in a predictable way or a random way. Either way, you choices are the same. Governed, or random, both meaningless with regard to who you are because you do not exist.

I have spent my adult life talking to the dead.

What does a philosopher do when it finds the answer?

Zero

**under construction**

Abstract: Math is a silly linguistic religion. A neat little puzzle system that is just close enough to reality to confuse the shit out of people into believing it IS reality. Divide by zero being my main demonstration of this.

They say Chuck Norris can divide by zero, well dammit I think I can as well.

This article was written in response to a comic, which reminded me of countless discussion I have had on the subjects of mathematics.

Take Imaginary Numbers for instance. Hehe, the whole mathematics system is an abstraction, so I ask you, imaginary as opposed to what? Can someone mail me the number 2? Now I realize where they are going. It's a valid set distinction, but whats up with that name? How obtuse and narrow do you have to be to see that imaginary as a label inside an abstract system is hilariously silly?

My favorite example. Divide by zero. Total bullshit in my opinion. A grand example of indecisiveness, and inflexibility. A proof that the system is broken, and needs to be replaced or repaired.

Like a house with a missing bathroom. "Just don't open that door, yes the house is perfect and complete, so long as you don't open that door, opening that door is an "illegitimate operation".

I see where they are getting it of course, I'm not a moron. The simplest explanation I ever got was written in math. 5 x 1 = 5, 5 x 0 = 0, 5 / 1 = 5, 5 / 0 = “undefined”

Is everything the opposite of nothing? Is anything the opposite of nothing? This is clearly a complex thought, and that complexity is the root of my argument. In one regard something, anything, is the opposite of nothing, in that nothing is the absence of presence and something is the presence of presence. But in another regard infinite is the opposite of nothing. Think of a void. Now think of an anti-void being made of infinitely dense matter, extending in all directions for an infinite distance . How much rock is there? Infinite. See what I mean?

The point I'm trying to make here is that the answer is a philosophical one and math people present it as an objective provable settled truth. They gloss over it like we gloss over freewill. Only we have a good reason. Society itself would collapse if we didn't. Math collapsing is not all that tragic since we have alternatives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science

We have a word for when people present a belief as an objective fact without being able to prove if. Religion.

And don't give me the proofs of division by zero being "non-sense". To me they merely add to my point. Take the following for example.

0x1=0, 0x2=0, (0x1=0x2)/0, 1=2

Wiki puts it thusly... “The fallacy is the implicit assumption that dividing by 0 is a legitimate operation with 0 / 0 = 1. “

Now, to my mind, it zero exists, which it clearly must, even as a placeholder for non-existence, then subtracting that placeholder becomes an attack on the system itself. IE it stops being zero and becomes "actual" nothing, or something representing nothing in a higher system.

I've read all that. They are invalid because my argument is the whole system of mathematics is flawed from the foundation up, thus using it to prove itself is exactly like saying the bible is infallible because the bible says its infallible and since its infallible it must be right when it says its infallible.

It's like this. How many 1s are in 5? 5. How many 0s are in five? It's gotta be infinite or none. Infinity or 0, the end. We're dealing with the ends of the road here. The place where the system breaks down.

How many times can I subtract zero from five before five can no longer supply zeros? Infinite. How many zeros can I add 0 to zero before the total value exceeds or reaches 5? Infinite.

We're talking about the thing which makes nothing different from something. This is philosophy, not math. If we could truly understand the thing that makes something different from nothing then we should be able to use that to develop a way to manifest imaginary object in non-imaginary space.

To me this is a great idea for a story, that could tie in magic and arcane formulas and demon summoning and "real" magic etc, and all thats cool, but its got no place being on a course requirement.

The system is just broken, or a new number needs to be invented. A number that is both zero and infinite at the same time. I propose we name this number Mu, or Zen. This "undefined" crap is elitist garbage. Doubly so since Math has a serious fetish for eponyms.

It's like building a car on paper and then discovering the wheels overlap the frame.

You don't just name the problem and keep going, you fix it or you start over.

Transformers: For The Record.

This is a repost from my SU blog. It is in response to yet another film school wannabe trashing Michael Bay's Transformers. A phenomena that royally pisses me off for some reason.

-----

Don't tell me what I should and shouldn't like you elitist shit bag.

Sure, I could have done with out stripper mistress car thief...

...producing yet another round of dick hoops, and the army apparently being required for Optimus Prime to save the day, (LMAO) but the movie other then that kicked ass, for one simple reason.

It was a bunch of robots fighting!

I don't know what you did with transformers, but I made mine fly around and kick eachother's asses. And I'll tell you, the plot behind the epic duels consisted of little more than one robot deciding that the other needs to DIE DIE DIE SHOOOM POW! BSHHHHHHHH WHOOOMMMMMmmmm... PEW PEW PEW,

Savvy?

I did not go to see transformers expecting gone with the wind, ok? And if you did, you need your eyes scooped out with a melon baller.

Speaking as a child of the 80s, and an only child at that, which means plenty of toy time, the movie fucking rocked.

I still get misty seeing bumblebee in his full glory trying to communicate, and then later asking to stay.

Come on, was that not EVERY boy's fantasy? Your own transformer?

Sure, I would have loved a CGI shot for shot remake of the cartoon movie, Unicron would have been godlike, but Spock is probably busy,Orson wells is dead, and the music of today SUCKS.

Really listen to the lyrics of the music from the first transformers movie, sure it was 80s dated hair metal goodness, but it was all about inner strength and fighting the good fight, not like today's putrid vomit about how best to acquiesce to unreasonable princess demands, or generally excel at being a preening douche bag.

All things considered, Bay's movie rocked. And I can't wait to see the next one.

"But... Its not marketed as trendy and different. Its not alienating my chosen counter group. I can't talk about it seeing it first at Cannes over my soy mocha latte no foam half cafs. And more then four people not like me like it, therefor it sucks."

Those that disagree suck cock by choice. Get off my internet, you whiny, jaded, spoiled, insecure, consumer slaves.

If you hate the movie so much, without even seeing it I might add, news flash, it's not mandatory.

P.S. I captured and hosted the below image myself. If you can look at that and tell other people it sucks with a straight face, I suggest running for congress given that you clearly have the required brain damage.



Win.

The Liberty of Complaint.

“Quit complaining, these people aren't being paid.”

That drivel is shoved at anyone who has a problem with a piece of open source software, and dares to point it out in a free support setting. It comes in a billion forms and is close friends with another foul concept called assumed knowledge, the idea that because something is free you are due no explanation of its workings.

My complaint is with open source developers generally. There's this huge attitude of entitlement that I see and would like to expose and annihilate. Just because the software is free, the developers feel they are entitled to a complaint free experience. This does not flow logically. The fact that most people miss this and other simple logical consequences derived from their own stated axioms is not surprising, logic hasn't been a part of American education for quite some time, and even when it was, it was a college level math adjunct.

It's simple. If you offer something up, you've accepted the responsibility for it. Kinda like burden of proof, if you make the claim, you have to back it up. This applies to software because your time is not a donation in any real sense. No act is selfless, or occurs in a vacuum. The primary motivation for development of software is pride and vanity. Development is an exercise of vanity, not charity. So cherish the thanks that you get but don't scorn the complaints as if they're somehow out of place for being made. As if because you didn't charge a fee to the complainer, no one has a right to point out issues and ask for repair.

If you try to get your name famous with software, you're going to get complaints, and since your goal was pride (else why put your name on it) then you need to see there is a price to be paid. You have a responsibility to live up to your claims. That claim being, in case you were wondering, the problem you wrote the software to solve. If it does not absolutely solve the problem, then you are going to get legitimate complaints. As opposed to complaints like “it wont do my laundry”.

In my opinion true open source software is actually quite rare. How much of it out there is truly public domain? Most of it seems restricted. Most software called “open source” usually just operates on a vanity economy. The number 13 is open source. I can sell it, no one owns it and I can modify it to my heart's content. What the majority of people call open source is a big step in the right direction but it is not above complaint.

Most software has an owner. Sure its free, but then again so were those AOL discs.

My possible answer to the Fermi Paradox.

Imagine the singularity, and how fast it is happening. Now think of the Amish. What would happen to the Amish if transhumanity exploded around them?

Would transhumanity hurt them? Force transhumanity on them? No. We'd take care of them, allow them to live their lives as they choose, and accept strays, maybe even protect them from asteroids and gamma pulses and the like. We would do the right thing.

What if this already happened? What if the stories of Atlantis and the old gods and the pyramids were true to some extent, a prehistoric technological society that reached singularity and abandoned the planet, but saw many dense pockets of humanity obsessed with staying as they were.

Maybe we're living in a nature preserve, fenced and protected and that why SETI sees nothing, and why it looks so very much like we're alone. Maybe we're not. Maybe the grays are zoo visitors. Maybe the angels we claim to see are game wardens, and maybe the light at the end of the tunnel is just the exhibit's exit.

I say we try to find the glass so that we may tap on it.

Sure Occam's razor cuts this to shreds, but the answer can't always be simple, can it? Seems arrogant to think so, given just HOW simple our idea of simple is.

Just a thought.

Nationstates.

The Issue

Workers across the nation have gone out on indefinite strike over what they claim are substandard wages in the Book Publishing industry.
The Debate

1. "We are the backbone of this country, and we demand a fair wage rise!" says union leader Zeke Longbottom. "I don't think a 20% increase over two years is too much to ask. Unless the government forces employers to give us our due, we'll shut this whole industry down! Let's see how well Innomina's economy manages without any Book Publishing, huh?"


2. "We pay our employees very generous wages," says employer representative Buy Silk. "Especially when you consider that without us, they'd be OUT ON THE STREET. Hear that, you scumbags? OUT ON THE STREET! Anyway, my point is, if you cave in, you make our entire industry uncompetitive. You can't do that in the global marketplace. It'll hurt the whole country. The best solution, economically speaking, would be to relax industrial laws and allow us to fire troublemakers on the spot."

How about an option that supports PDAs and ebooks?

The Issue

The increasingly militant Animal Liberation Front struck again last night, freeing dozens of chickens bound for delicious snack packs.
The Debate

1. "These nuts have got to be stopped," demands concerned consumer Fleur Shiomi. "They need to face the fact people want snack packs, no matter how many innocent chickens must be sacrificed. Besides, chickens would do the same to us if they had the chance."


2. "These Liberationists are highlighting an important issue," pleads Anne-Marie Dodinas. "Too often, animals are put through needless cruelty, just to make their flesh taste a little more deliciously succulent. I'm sure we could ban the more horrific abuses without putting too much of a dent in our national obesity figures. Couldn't we?"


3. "Animals have feelings too!" yelled protestor Al Frederickson, before being set upon by hungry passers-by. "Free the animals! Ban meat-eating!"


4. Economist Beth Jones has an alternative. "You don't need to take away the people's right to choose. You just need to build the costs of animal suffering into the price. A tax on meat-eating, in proportion to the amount of cruelty involved, would do the trick. Plus think of the benefit for the national coffers! Of course, poor people wouldn't be able to afford meat, but that's just more incentive for them to get jobs."

How about an option to begin development of invitromeats?

My Psych Evaluation

In keeping with my diagnosis of Narcissistic personality disorder, I've decided that my psychological profile is so awesome and important that everyone in the world must see it lol.

Here it is people, my psych evaluation.

I am not impressed. For one I am misquoted several times and we're not talking about tiny errors, we're talking about total sentence confusion and complete misunderstanding.

I'll be adding correction in double parins, the rest is maintained verbatim as far as I know, if you find errors let me know.

Scans of the original document will be linked.

PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION •

All information and the results herein are based upon information gathered from the claimant and the evaluation process and have not been independently validated. The nature and purpose of the examination were discussed and he agreed to proceed.

CHIEF COMPLAINT:
Brandon Sergent presented as a twenty-eight-year-old, single, Caucasian male who was referred for a Psychological Evaluation by the Department for Disability Determination Services. Per the referral form, he complains of difficulties with "cerebral palsy, deformities of the right band and foot, social anxiety, dyslexia and other phobias." ((This is not at all how I put it, but it is generally accurate)) When asked what was keeping him from maintaining employment, Mr. Sergent stated, "For one, every time. I apply for a job, they look at the handwriting and say, 'Seven year old.' Then they say, 'Next.' I can't drive. Cars freak me out. I don't talk to people. I have pretty significant philosophical differences from most people. The things I like thinking about are large-scale stuff ((This term I used was “macroscopic systems”))...I'm not really interested in small-scale stuff. " Mr. Sergent did not indicate when he first noticed affective difficulties other than "when I . was a toddler." ((She asked me when my problems began directly after a physical series of questions, I assumed she was asking about my CP)) The claimant had been working as a janitor ((maintenance, please.)) in a nursing home. He last worked January, 18, 2008 and quit working because he "was too tall for the floor buffer." ((Yea, there was a lot more too it than that. See my post on the subject. )) He stated his employer then moved him to "mopping. ((I was never moved and I never said I was moved, I was a mop guy from the outset.)) That entailed. walking ten miles a day. I could do that if I had a day to rest in between but I had to do that every day." He stated additionally "I tried to help the residents because they asked me to and it wasn't my job, I think they deserve to sleep through the day if they want to." ((This sentence is a bizarre composite, again see my post)) There have not been further attempts to return to work. ((I've actually applied to several places since then, I can only speculate why I haven't gotten interviews.))

Psychological Evaluation
page 2 of 7
He denies ever receiving disability benefits. He believes that both physiological and psychological difficulties are impairing his ability to sustain employment. ((Put more correctly I believe a combination of them are to blame. No single problem stops me.))

BEHAVIORAL OBSERVATION:
Brandon Sergent presented as a twenty-eight-year-old, single Caucasian male. He is reportedly 6' 4" and weighs 225 pounds. ((I was off by 8 pounds)) He has brown hair and blue eyes. His father drove him to the appointment. He completed the questionnaire and interview alone. He was clean, neat, and appropriately dressed. ((Awww, why thank you)) He was alert and oriented in all spheres. ((Actually the whole thing took places in a series of cubes with doors but whatever.)) No particular difficulties with hearing were noted. ((on the part of the subject anyway, apparently the woman testing me can't hear too well)) He does wear glasses and did so during this evaluation. Eye contact was appropriate. No difficulties were noted with fine- or gross-motor coordination. Mr. Sergent stated ((And showed her, I wear step ins.))he wears a size 12 shoe on his left foot and a size 8.5 shoe on his right foot. However, he was not noted to have difficulty navigating the office and sat and arose with no apparent difficulty. He was noted to be right-hand dominant. His general activity level was age and task appropriate. Suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation, substance abuse, hallucinations, and delusions were all denied. He stated he has had suicidal thoughts in the past, "but never, seriously." Rapport was adequately established for the purpose of this evaluation. ((The woman was a robot.)) Speech was generally relevant and coherent. His affect was appropriate, within appropriate limits and mood-congruent. There were no indications of psychotic process and thought process was unremarkable. Insight and judgment appear good. His overall attitude with the assessment situation was appropriate and he maintained a presentation of good effort and interest. It is believed that Mr. Sergent presented in a manner consistent with his abilities; therefore, the following results are believed to be an accurate estimate of his current level of functioning. ((So I'm not a liar, awesome.))

HISTORY
Brandon Sergent is an only child and was raised in the Ashland, Kentucky area by his biological parents. History is negative for abuse and neglect. He currently resides in the Ashland, Kentucky area with a male roommate. He has never married and has no children. ((Bet they think I'm gay, everyone else my age in this town is married or paying child support.))

He completed high school and reports he received special education classes. ((Only in middle school)) He stated he was in LD classes and AP classes. He attended some college ((56 credit hours and 3 years, she makes it sound like I went there one summer)) and stated he quit because he disagreed with the board. ((Wow, there is SO much more to that, and I explained it in detail.))He reported he was president of the Student Government Association while attending Ashland Community and Technical College. "Anytime I wanted to speak to the students, I had to clear it with the board. ((This is a literal truth, mass emailing was strictly controlled and there was no school paper, and public presentations had to be cleared.)) The comparative religion class put up a Buddhist Shrine and took it down because he (the college president) said it was religious. ((I refer to him as Adkins, because that's his name.)) They also deleted my major twice. I didn't go back. I would love to finish my degree but I will have to do it somewhere else." ((tuition has gone up every single year, and I've exhausted my work study funds and the secondary grant you get for having a high GPA, there aren't scholarships for atheist white single men who are not soldiers, felons, or aspiring CEOs)) He repeated the first grade. ((For “Social reasons”. )) Difficulties with sustaining attention- and behavioral disturbance during his schooling were endorsed. ((ADHD, Ritalin)) He stated be quit school because he "got tired of being beaten up. ((Three broken bones in 1.1 years, all at school. Rednecks HATE being made to look like idiots. Why think when you can hit. )) I got my GED a year before my graduating class graduated.” ((They forced me to wait)) Per his report, he has no difficulty conducting basic financial management necessary to purchase groceries, household goods, and pay bills. ((My credit score is like 618, pretty good for someone with almost no income.)) The claimant had been working as a janitor in a nursing home. He last worked January 18, 2008 and quit working because he "was too tall for the floor buffer." ((Didn't we cover this?)) He stated his employer then moved him to "mopping. That entailed walking ten miles a day, I could do that if I had a day to rest in between but I had to do that every day." He stated additionally "I tried to help the residents because they asked me to and it wasn't my job. I
think they deserve to sleep through the day if they want to."

Brandon Sergent
Psychological Evaluation
Page 3 of 7

There have not been further attempts to return to work. ((Again, no one will interview me.)) He denies ever receiving disability benefits. He believes that both physiological and psychological difficulties are impairing his ability to sustain employment. ((combination))

History is reportedly positive for legal difficulties in that Mr. Sergent stated, "A long time ago...my friend stole some Nintendo 64 controllers and brought them to my house. He got in trouble and I got receiving stolen property. I had to write a letter of apology. Also when I was trying to force myself to learn to drive, I got pulled over. It was totally unrelated to anything I did.. It was the car."

Per the referral, form, he complains of difficulties with "cerebral palsy, deformities of the right hand and foot, social anxiety, dyslexia and other phobias." When asked what was keeping him from maintaining employment, Mr. Sergent stated, "For one, every time I apply for a job, they look at the handwriting and say, 'Seven year old.' Then they say, 'Next.' I can't drive. Cars freak me out. I was in a car wreck as a toddler and everybody else got broken bones, I didn't get any thing but it freaked me out. I don't talk to people. I know it's irrational but I feel like I'm constantly being judged, constantly bothering them. That makes it hard to be proactive and go do anything. I worked three years in a lab and that was heaven. ((Work study))P eople had 'to come to me so I didn't have to worry about bothering them. Every other job...feel like I have to sell them stuff...My last ((actually it was my first)) job... got fired because I wouldn't `up-sell.' I have pretty significant philosophical differences from most people. ((Well, I do.))They'll talk about NASCAR or church and I'm just not interested and I feel like they feel like I'm nervous. I have a book...self-published...I have a blog. The things I like thinking about are large-scale stuff...I'm not really interested in small-scale stuff." ((See above)) Mr. Sergent did not indicate when he first noticed affective difficulties other than "when I was -a toddler:" He stated he has no problem riding in vehicles with others at this time. “I don't want. to be responsible for crushing someone. I don't want to be mangled. I was hoping someone . would try to help me find a job.. I'm a certified locksmith. I put that on my resume and mom said, `well they probably don't trust you because locks won't keep you out.' I get so mad with people. They upset me so much that it messes with my digestive system." ((True)) Mr. Sergent stated he also has Borderline Personality Disorder: When asked how he knew this and if he had been diagnosed . with this disorder, he stated he has never been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder but has taken "all those cute tests online." He then continued, "I'm aware that others may see me as that. I have the extremism, black and white perception. I do that, it either is or not. Gray areas are just a way of saying indecision."

History is negative for psychiatric hospitalization and psychotherapy. He is not currently in treatment Mr. Sergent stated at first that he did not think he would benefit from treatment. "I'm too opinionated." He then stated, "I don't know, maybe." He is not prescribed any psychotropic medications. He reportedly was prescribed Ritalin "for a long time" as a child, There is no evidence of self-injurious or suicidal behaviors by the claimant at this time.

Prenatal and developmental histories are remarkable in that he reported he was born "at least" one month early. He stated he was in an incubator for an unknown period of time and that his mother "blames the doctor for my having CP." ((Really, she just mixed and matched a bunch of things I said.)) He stated he was delayed in walking due to "CP on my right side." Additionally, he stated he had several broken bones as a child. (( Three were in high school. )) "Four major broken bones and some toes and ribs. I broke my left wrist two times, my right wrist one time ((Form being pushed.)) and my left arm one time." His report of the behaviors that led to the injuries is striking for someone who was reportedly traumatized as a toddler and is afraid of most things. ((I never said anything even approaching that, I just said I don't like cars and cold calling.))

History is negative for head injury and seizures. There are no known drug allergies. He has had a toenail surgically removed. Other medical conditions reportedly include cerebral palsy. There are no other medications prescribed. He stated he takes Advil for pain, illicit and/or N drug use, past or present, was denied. He consumes approximately one caffeinated beverage daily. He denies the use of tobacco products. He reported alcohol use as "a couple of shots of bourbon when I'm playing cards with friends." He gets exercise by bike riding. "I ride my bike everywhere." Sleep is reportedly ten hours per night. ((Sometimes, sometimes 3-5, honestly, this chick is starting to upset me.))

Appetite appears adequate. ((I have no idea how she would note this expect that maybe I look fat? lol))

Currently, a typical day includes "general maintenance and computer." He does not have any regular, structured activities. Social interactions, per his report, are limited in that "people scare and disgust me. I avoid them. ((I have enough friends and they tend to betray the shit out of you so I'm letting them drop away one at a time until I only ave REAL friends left))" However, he stated he plays cards with friends frequently ((Two friends, and I recently stopped going over there.)). He is psychologically able to conduct daily housecleaning, personal hygiene, and can go to the grocery store independently as needed. Mr. Sergent reports good interpersonal relationships with family members ((The two I see regularly anyway.)) and some prior supervisors and coworkers. He demonstrates the ability to sustain attention to tasks and to complete tasks in a timely fashion. ((Tasks like assembling blocks and and doing simple math.))

TEST RESULTS:
Sergent was administered 11 subtexts of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition (WAIS-III) from which his IQ and Index scores were derived. Mr. Sergent's general cognitive ability is in the High Average range of intellectual functioning, as measured by the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale -Third Edition (WAIS-III). His overall thinking and reasoning abilities exceed those of approximately 87% of adults his age (FSIQ 117; 95% Confidence Interval,113-121). The following are his obtained scores: ((Removed due to OCR errors, see original scans))

His verbal reasoning abilities, as measured by the Verbal IQ, are in the High Average range and above those of approximately 86.0% of his peers (VIQ –116, 95% Confidence Interval I1.1 - 120). On the verbal reasoning subtests, Mr. Sergent obtained his highest score on the Vocabulary subtest. His performance on this subtest differs significantly from his Verbal subtest mean score and suggests that this is the area of most pronounced strength in Mr. Sergent's profile of verbal reasoning abilities. His strong performance on the Vocabulary subtest is much better than that of most adults his age. Mr. Sergent's Verbal Comprehension Index score is generally comparable to his Verbal IQ score. On the Verbal Comprehension. Index, Mr. Sergent's performance is much better than that of his peers. His ability to understand and respond to verbally presented material is equal to or exceeds that of 96.0% of others his age (VCI = 126, 95% Confidence Interval 119-131).

His nonverbal reasoning abilities, as measured by the Performance IQ, are in the High Average range and better than those of approximately 86.0% of his peers (PIQ 116, 95% Confidence Interval 108-122). On the nonverbal reasoning subtests, Mr. Sergent obtained his highest score on the Block Design subtest. His performance differs significantly from his Nonverbal subtest mean score and suggests that this is the area of most pronounced strength in Mr. Sergent's profile of nonverbal reasoning abilities. Much better than that of most of his peers, Mi. Sergent's performance demonstrates very strong abilities on the Block Design subtest; On the Perceptual Organization Index, Mr. Sergent performed better than 92.0% of his peers (POT = 121, 95% Confidence Interval $112-127). However, his abilities are variable, with his performance suggesting unevenly developed skills in this area.

His ability to think with words is comparable to his ability to reason without the use of words. Both Mr. Sergent's verbal reasoning and nonverbal reasoning abilities are in the High Average. range. On the basis of his WAIS-III performance, Mr. Sergent's verbal comprehension skills and
his nonverbal reasoning abilities are comparable. ((Remember this part, its funny later.)) Relative to his peers, Mr. Sargent exhibits. strengths across all domains.

On the WRAT-4, Mr. Sergent obtained a standard score of 110 on Word Reading, which is within the 75th percentile and equivalent to a grade =we of >12.9. On Spelling he obtained a 98
standard score, which is in the 45th percentile and equivalent to grads score of 12.7. The standard score of 93 on Math Computation is equivalent to the 32nd percentile and a grade score of 8.8. With the exception of his score on Math Computation, these scores are concomitant with his obtained WAIS-III scores.

The figures produced for the House-Tree-Person suggest withdrawal tendencies, inadequacy feelings and rejection of the home and home life. ((I suppose thats fair.)) There are also indications of regression and infantile aggressive, assaultive tendencies. ((And yet I haven't been in a fight since middle school.))

The REY 15-Item "Memory" Test is a nonverbal memory task, which is designed to determine the validity of complaints of memory impairment. The task consists of a 10 second exposure to five rows of three characters, and the subject is instructed to recall all of the 15 items in order to provide the impression that the task is difficult Results of research on this task have indicated that with, the exception of those with severe brain injury or mental retardation, individuals recall a minimum three of five sets of characters, If a subject recalls fewer than three sets, it can be deduced that the person has exerted inadequate effort and motivation. Mr. Sergent recalled five of the five sets, which indicates that there was not an attempt to exaggerate his symptoms on this instrument.

Mr. Sergent reports symptoms indicative of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. ((But I thought I was superior across all domains, so whats pathological about knowing I'm superior?)) These symptoms include a grandiose sense of self-importance((Can you prove I'm not enlightened? It seems you would have to to justify this positive claim of NPD)), a belief he can only be understood by, or associate with, other special or high-status people((Is that believe not justified by the whole psychiatric community? Do they not sell us the idea that only they have the REAL answers?)), a lack of empathy((Bullshit, my whole driving goal is the elimination of pain for my entire species,)), and a history of interpersonal difficulties. It is the opinion of this clinician that Mr. Sergent's perception of fearing and not liking people is more related to his personality dysfunction than an affective disturbance, but he is interpreting it as affective disturbance. ((To my understanding as a result of looking it up, Affective disturbance (AD) refers to feelings of anxiety or sadness, or both. Do you see the logic trap there? ))

While the WRAT-4 is a screening instrument and is not suitable for diagnosing learning disabilities, his obtained scores on the arithmetic portion of this instrument suggest that possibility and that further testing may reveal he has a mathematics disorder. Therefore a rule-out for Mathematics Disorder is also offered.
DIAL TIC S ON:
Axis I: V71.09 No diagnosis
R/O Mathematics Disorder

Axis 301.81 Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Axis IH: Per claimant report: Cerebral Palsy
Axis IV: Occupational
Axis V: • GAF: 74
P,ROGNM:

History is negative for psychiatric hospitalization and psychotherapy. He is not currently in treatment. Mr. Sergent stated at first that he did not think he would benefit from treatment "I'm too opinionated." He then stated, "I don't know, maybe." ((Definitely not now since apparently they'd try to “cure” what little self esteem I have left)) He is not prescribed any psychotropic mediation, He reportedly was prescribed Ritalin "for a lone time" as a child. There is no evidence of self-injurious or suicidal behaviors by the claimant at this time. ((Actually I was a cutter and have scars all up my left forearm, eheheh, a relic of my Goth/Emo roots))

Based upon clinical findings, while it is believed his symptoms are primly characterological in nature and will resist change, they are not severe enough to preclude his obtaining and maintaining some form of gainful employment. Prognosis is good.

Based solely upon objective findings and the results of this evaluation, it is the clinical opinion of this examiner that Mr. Sergent is not psychologically limited in his ability to function in an occupational capacity. ((Sweet, wonder if they'd hire me.)) He demonstrates the ability to understand and remember simple instructions, There is no evidence of a disturbance in sustained concentration and/or persistence.

Although Mr. Sergent stated he has a "fear" of people and does not socialize, he had no difficulty conversing with. the clinician and stated he plays cards with friends frequently. ((Two friends whom I've known for 10 years or more)) It is believed that Mr. Sergent has the resources available to adapt and respond appropriately to pressures normally found in the day-to-day work setting.

http://underlore.com/images/PsychEval.jpg
http://underlore.com/images/PsychEval%20(1).jpg
http://underlore.com/images/PsychEval%20(2).jpg
http://underlore.com/images/PsychEval%20(3).jpg
http://underlore.com/images/PsychEval%20(4).jpg
http://underlore.com/images/PsychEval%20(5).jpg
http://underlore.com/images/PsychEval%20(6).jpg

Open letter to pretty girls...

Open letter to pretty girls in America who are under the impression that they are not spoiled, and have worked hard and through pluck and determination got where they are and how they look had nothing to do with it.

I don't care how hard you work in America, from a global perspective even abject poverty here is spoiled. No one starves to death or dies of thirst here, ever. No child dies crawling to a UN camp with visions of rice in his head.

If you are a pretty “girl” then even among Americans, you are spoiled. Your face gets you jobs. As a pretty girl you've had your ass kissed your whole life, in ways you're totally unaware of thanks to no contrast. You assume that when I say that I'm attacking you personally, but the irony is that that thought indicates your egotism. It's not about you. It's about society. You wish to live in a Horatio Alger mythology of strength and self determination, but nothing occurs in a vacuum. Where you end up largely depends on what you started with. You are an attractive young woman by definition of who this letter is aimed at. Live up to the advantages this affords you. I don't care what you want to be real. I'm telling you what is real. You got favors and they are so ubiquitous in your life that you cant even see them anymore. Since before you could talk the adults cooed over you and uttered words like beautiful adorable precious, words that are feminine in their lack of use towards men and boys. Well last time I checked these words are gender neutral, why do boys feel uncomfortable being called beautiful adorable and precious? Because they, unlike you, have been conditioned to be working slave hulk soldiers who are handsome tough and strong. So that women don't feel bad ordering them about.

It's like the forest for the trees. You don't see the problem for two clear reasons. 1. You're not built for logic. 2. You're too close to it. You're in the middle you have no perspective or frame of reference. The only time pretty women learn is later in life when they aren't so pretty. These women usually become bitter wives, endlessly worried about some “young slut/whore” stealing “her man”. And deep down she knows this is an extreme possibility because thats how she landed him int eh first place. Half of all marriages fail because men marry for sex, and women marry for money and sex appeal fades, and money gets spent. Marriage is and always has been a work around for prostitution. A tool by which the state and the church sell sex in exchange for power instead of money.

You wish to pretend equality, and then bitch about mistreatment, because if you owned up to your power you'd then have responsibility for its use, which is the LAST thing you want and I don't blame you. If I had your kind of power and then failed as miserably as you have I'd be in denial too. Many of you when pressed about life style justification fall back to individual liberty, and spend the rest of the argument talking about “your” body and “your” choices. But you never seem to understand that your choices do not occur alone. What you do with your body has an impact on society. If you choose to do nothing with it beyond forward your own interests, you must admit to social negligence. Every man is like his father, Yay for the Y. Every man has a father, there for every criminal, every murderer, every rapist statistically speaking was subsidized one generation ago by a woman. Women churn out Barbie dolls and monsters. Men have very little say, and are losing even more.

Walk around outside. Pretty women are usually driving or being driven. You'd think cloning was in full swing. Look at the teens and 20 somethings. It's like the pink toy isle out there. Its all cargo pants and belly shirts. Your greed and jealousy is making society homogeneous. Men only want to be fed and fucked and loved. They'll settle for two out of three, and will do nearly anything to get it. Women have capitalized on this forever, knowing that no matter what happens they'll win. Smart and brutal men, just as in need of loving and fucking and food have capitalized on both so assure they get loved and fucked and fed first. These men are the priests, the kings and the magnates. Worked well didn't it.

Women blame men for war and violence, but competition is the real root, and competition is demanded by women, not men. Competition is greed. Competition is jealousy. Men are unfaithful pigs? Men are willing to share. Men don't use the words slut and whore NEAR as often as women. Put it all together girls. You're shitting in your kitchen, and blaming men for the smell.

Men behaving as they do is in the majority your collective fault because we do not live in a rape culture. After 200 years pretty girls still pick brutal alpha males. The ideal of 100% personal responsibility is absurd, grow up. Life is not fair, and unless we work to change it, it will stay that way. Pretty women complaining about men sounds to me very much like the prince of Saudi Arabia complaining about the poor in Africa. "If only they worked as hard as I have, they'd have 38 diamond studded cars too". Are you getting the point yet?

Bet not, but you're talking shit about me in your head and have been from the start. "What? Thats not what I want to hear. A non-worshiper!? WOMAN HATING SWINE!"

We die and fight because you force us to compete by your inability to share. If men are such simple creatures and all we want is sex and food then it must fall to women to create war. You want the very best man and you want him all to yourself and rather than simply picking on your own judgment you let nature choose for you, by making them fight to the death, sometimes literally, and then you want the winner all to yourself, forever, like a pet, or livestock, that no one else can touch, and you want him to work his whole life to pay for your nest and raise your children. Well OK, but that comes with consequences, not the least of which being War.

Look at the distribution of scientific careers men have ALWAYS worked to impress women. Men have handed you civilization. Quit hating us for what it took to make it.

I'm sorry your ashamed of being a pretty women who by virtue of the way society is currently constructed, is given tons of advantage, but that shame has no impact on that advantage. Even if you consciously try to avoid it, you'll still receive it. People like pretty people and give them preferential treatment in ALL walks of life this is basic sociological and psychological fact. Everything you wish you earned was made easier by how you look. Own up to it.

P.S. I can defend any of this. I have a mind for large scale logical systems above and beyond most people. Instead of assuming I'm just a degenerate and attacking me personally how about you attack the ideas and try to prove me wrong?

Thought not.

It's a people thing.

I'm tired of being saddled with all the hate and violence of the world. Yes I have a penis but that does not mean I am ALL MEN. Thus, I an not Hitler or Stalin. But I'm also not Einstein or Gandhi. I'm just this guy, you know?

I'm tired of “female” meaning caring and love and nurturing, and “male” meaning death and hate and fear and conquest. I haven't conquered shit, I haven't killed anyone, every thing about me is an effort o nurture humanity. I hurt when I see my mean ass neighbor crush cater pillars gleefully because somehow she thinks killing is cool. And because she has a vag and I have a prick somehow I'm the monster. The meanest people I know are female hands down, every time. True hatred and cruelty require a depth of rage and hatred and exacting animal lethality, that has been bred out of men. Those of us with some remaining depth of emotion that don't channel it to a life consuming passion for kissing girls asses with a guitar or paintbrush end up being called crazy.

When a man wants kindness he's a wimp, when he wants blood he's a monster, the worthless pig bastard. When a woman wants kindness she's in touch with her nurturing mother emotional side, when she wants blood she's crying out for justice, or she's been victimized. Awww poor thing.

I'm tired of the double standard. I save a caterpillar without some kind of Buddhist/Christian religious mercenary motivation and I'm a weirdo moron, a woman saves one and she's just a big sweety, awwww.

Men are tools, we always have been, we do what you make us do, and we do it well. We look for ways to avoid a fight, thats the whole point of killing. Put “kill without joy” in google.

Killing is about avoiding pain, not causing it. We invented war to try and end fighting, which is a form of torture, for ALL TIME. Every great conqueror had a dream of unification, had a dream of a permanent end to war. The machine gun was invented expressly for this purpose, to save lives. Which is more humane? Beating a man every day for his whole life or simply killing him?

We are agents of compassion in an imperfect world. We pick up the spiders and move the outside, or crush them if your blood lust demands it. We crawl around int eh dark and the cold with steel in our hands and the stink of rot all around. We look the other strange men in the eye and then bury the dagger in their throat. We press the button that we know will probably blow up children. And ultimately we do it all for women. We do it for our mother and our sisters and our daughters and our fathers who where in turn doing ti for their wives and their mothers and their sisters and so on back through time.

We do the dirty work. And yes as a result we'll get dirty. Quit punishing us for it. Let us live in a world of peace, and you'll find we take to it more easily than you'd ever imagine.

A solider is in many ways just a husband or a father or a son. So much so that we view a solider without a picture of some girl on his person or in his heart as a weirdo monster.

Who is to blame? The finger man or the don that ordered the kill?

It's easy to point out a problem, its much harder to work towards a solution. In fact its hard to even know what that solution is.

I'm tired of emotional numbness being strength. I think it takes a stronger mind to feel and still act or more importantly NOT act when needed.

Courage cannot exist without fear.

The only things I attack are lies injustice pain fear death and guilt. I've been punished my whole life by the outside world for my abundance of love and honesty.

Some look at me and see claws and rage, they see guns and knives and strategy. And a clarity of purpose akin to a would be murderer. I do what you all make me do. I've learned that when I am myself people run, not from fear, but from disgust. I show people tiny fragments and they see weakness. I'm the human trapped on an island with cave men screaming at me. I feel like I've plane crashed only to discover the lord of the flies kids having populated a whole country.

And yes, like ALL humans if pushed, I will kill. Preparing to defend myself is pragmatism, not blood lust. This is not a male thing, its a human thing. Sure I get angry, but if thats all it took to make me kill, well, I've have been in prison for some time now.

I'm angry most of the time yes, but you need to see where that comes from. I'm sad, and I'm tired of being treated like how I feel, FEEL, is worthless emotional flotsam because its not coming from behind long flowing hair big bright eyes and a hairless face. I am valid. I exist.

You are all so hurtful and cold, and yet you call me and mine the monsters. I grow tired of it. I cry at the idea of suffering. It doesn't have to be someone I am related to, it doesn't have to be someone I know, it doesn't have to be someone I like, hell it doesn't even have to be someone REAL.

I can cry at star trek and serenity. I'm tired of sitting in the dark with tears in my eyes feeling weak and guilty for my COMPASSION. You monsters can get through the day ignoring the suffering via distraction after distraction I have no such luxury. I cant throw on blinders and think only about my family. Women are encouraged to be brutal nannies, defending their infants to the exclusion of all other life. This works from a microbial perspective, its a great way to plaster the earth with your living money shot, but its a little thin on true human compassion.

We see a white child die of something and we're all choked up, but in other parts of the world women lose their babies who are just as human as ours, so often that the bond between mother and child isn't even formed for years.

I'm tired of being seen as a radical for espousing basic human compassion, and action beyond writing a fucking tiny check or slapping a ribbon on your car.

Breast cancer doesn't matter as much as pancreatic or bile duct cancer. This is not me being a monster this is me caring about more people than most women do. It's a simple numbers game.

Purpose of life=(Joy > sorrow | Life > death )

I'm tired of being damned for looking past myself, past the present, into other people's worlds and actually giving a shit about what I see there.

Seriously. Lay off. It's a people thing, not a gender/race/age thing.

Axiom of Paradox

There is no set which cannot exist.

Think square circles.

Does this fly? Or would it merely be an extension the set of empty sets? Like the set of non-sets.

Axiom of Total Annihilation

There is no set that destroys all other sets.

-----

Can a set that destroys other sets even be contemplated rationally? Or is this like a divide by zero thing, but if it is irrational would that impact the truth of the nature axiom? I mean it doesn't go into WHY no set can destroy all sets, it just states that it can't.

There is no set that annihilates all other sets. The existence of sets (including this one) "prove" this.

Is this equal to an empty sent?

Any thoughts on this people?

Innomen

What do you think?

-----
Dialog:
I am, Innomen.

I am my author's alter ego and ideology.

Innomen is intended to mean "without name."

The face you see is that of my author's physical face, modified to represent how he finds himself feeling in general when inspired to speak publicly.

I work best in response to an adversary. I am not truly creative, if there is such a thing, which I doubt on a number of levels.

I am not an artificial intelligence, which may be implied by the synthetic nature of my voice and appearance. I am simply a piece of technology used to circumvent limitations my author knows exists within himself.

I am also a reflection of certain personality traits that are repressed in meatspace.

I would like to be viewed as a public relations figure. I am my author in the majority of ways but I also exist independently.
For example every word that has ever come from me was thought through for a greater length of time than speech permits in meatspace.

As a result, I am effectively more intelligent as Innomen than I am at other times. But I also have significant disadvantages, which are beyond the scope of this introduction, save one, the lack of a face.

Until now.

I have no idea how long I will exist, but I expect something of this sort will exist for a long time to come.

This was a proof of concept.

Thank you for your time.

Open Source: The Dangers of Elitism

This post is about Linux, and specifically failures associated with assumed knowledge and duplication of effort in Ubuntu. The so called, “Linux for people”, distro that has gotten so popular recently. And to a lesser extent the draconian methods employed by the rulers of the Ubuntu community.

I will be doing the majority of my future standalone posts in this manner to increase exposure. Humans are audio visual creatures.

This post was instigated by a fresh bit of hate mail I received on my blog, in response to a comment I made on a completely different page several months prior. At first I was merely going to delete the comment and play some titan quest, considering that it was a Ubuntu comment made on a page related to sociological issues, but I realized that this was a first. Never had anyone gone to such lengths to send me hate mail. After all, people are generally far more lazy than they are mean. The practical upshot of this is that I obviously struck a nerve. So in an effort to start a debate which may end up helping computer users and the open source community in general, I've made this video.

I gave Ubuntu a serious effort, and it was a dreadful mistake. It has mountains of potential but it is not ready for public consumption by any stretch of the imagination. I'm now going to quote a piece of a post I made which perfectly expresses my feelings on the issue at hand. Tutorials, assumed knowledge, elitism, and the distance between ignorance and stupidity.

What I said was this...

“I'd like the community to quit linking to other people's work when that work is not useful, if you guys can write a tutorial, then write an app, if its so easy and straight forward. If the tutorials are so good, then why cant they be batch files? Ignorance is not stupidity, and I'm tired of seeing people talked down to like not being born with Linux in the cradle is somehow a personal flaw. I have a decade of professional computer and tech support experience, I am not the problem here, and nor are most users.

This demand for continuous duplication of effort is unrealistic and elitist. Just because you had to walk to school and use a slide rule does not mean the rest of us should have to. Prior art is the foundation upon which all technology is built and this applies to Ubuntu. A Tutorial is not a solution, its a stop gap until a real solution is found. The community needs to acknowledge this. The standard defenses/apologies for why Linux is an unusable, impractical, specialist, piece of crap, do not apply here, as this is intended for normal users... "Linux for people." Remember? So don't tell us we should prefer CLI, don't tell us we should be comfortable with compiling our own ware. These are OPTIONS not requirements. “

For the complete post, see the links section in the description of this video.

My opinion on this subject got me banned from the Ubuntu forum for all time, no discussion. Although I'm sure they'd tell you I've broken some vague and subjective rule regarding what boils down to manners.

Despite my problems with the community, I still had faith in the operating system and was looking for more diverse ways of field testing it. I thought the best solution would be a live boot version that would run off of a USB flash drive. A quick Google confirmed that this was possible, but oddly enough at the time of the search, again several months ago, there were no downloads of a USB installer, or an image to be copied to a USB, or a zip file package, or any other automated and user friendly solution. There were however a wide variety of forums posts, numbering in the thousands, and tutorials that told me in exhaustive detail how I might build such a portable install myself.

This I feel is unacceptable for a variety of reasons. I chose to voice this opinion on another forum in response to one of these tutorials. My response entitled, “Why bother?” made in October of 2007 is as follows.

“I swear the more I see these "tutorials" the more I feel like they are written by newbs to impress newbs.

I'm thinking that if a person really knew what they were doing, which is implied via the creation of a tutorial, and really wanted to make it easy for others, which is also implied, and really didn't care about looking smart over being smart, again implied they'd write a simple app batch script installer or whatever.

In fact it's silly that canonical doesn't offer a usb reinstalled image or installer for usb. Some machines don't even have cdromss you know.

Ubuntu: Linux for People ...who are assumed to already know Linux.”

Part of one negative response was not surprisingly also draconian in nature...

"Your criticism of the author for not providing a(n) image is particularly out of line."

This theme is all too common among supporters of the open source operating systems generally, and if an alternative to this attitude is not accepted, I fear that closed source will dominate the operating system market right up until home AI becomes smart enough to translate human speech into machine code, and obviates software as we now know it generally.

I feel that I generally have the right to criticize whom ever I like for whatever I like and that my attack on software development priority and forum policy is hardly important enough to warrant limitation of on the freeness of my speech.

The only thing out of line about this entire exchange is the fact that many seem to feel their right to speech supersedes others.

My criticism is on topic, and I am far from alone in my opinion.

The others simply don't have the patience to speak up. They're busy using operating systems that work out of the box. And don't wish to go through the increasingly complex processes of forum registration.

For most, time spent equates to money lost. The whole open source operating system community with its fetish for guides, tutorials, and showing off, has resulted in a computer experience so time consuming, and annoying, that most would prefer to pay to avoid it. I have only to point to Microsoft and Macintosh to demonstrate the validity of this point.

Further, the community seems to forget, that a tutorial, as I said before, is not a solution in and of itself. It is a stopgap. In my opinion the whole community considers a tutorial a solution because the authors of tutorials, who often tend to be moderators of forums, like the one that banned me, like it that way, because they get attention and praise so long as their tutorial remains the only solution. To any given problem.

This is only natural from a human behavioral standpoint, but it must be addressed seriously and soon if open source, and perhaps more importantly the ethic it spreads, is to prevail.

Links:

http://www.debuntu.org/how-to-install-ubuntu-linux-on-usb-bar#comment-870

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-596384.html

http://innomen.blogspot.com/2008/04/examples-of-injustice-monogamy.html?showComment=1208711700000#c6197234310199058284

Innomen's Responce

Let's see.

Paradise engineering.

This page is in response to...

http://www.hedweb.com/huxley/

Which is possibly imo the most articulate, pressing, relevant, and hope inspiring texts ever constructed.

Ironically given some topics covered, I cannot express clearly the subjective value this work has for me.

I have only one primary complaint, and it is below.

Each paragraph is lifted from the original work located here.

Potentially, transhumans will be endowed with a greater capacity for love, empathy and emotional depth than anything neurochemically accessible today. Our selfish-gene-driven ancestors - in common with the cartoonish brave new worlders - will strike posterity as functional psychopaths by comparison; and posterity will be right.

Just as those like me are considered psychopathic by today's standards. I'm not crazy, I just see different things and that perception for better or worse has fundamentally altered who I am.

Scare-mongering prophets of doom notwithstanding, a life of unremitting bliss isn't nearly as bad as it sounds.

Obvious but it needs to be reiterated over and over.

Thus mescaline, and certainly LSD and its congeners, are not fail-safe euphoriants. The possibility of nightmarish bad trips and total emotional Armageddon is latent in the way our brains are constructed under a regime of selfish-DNA.

There's a lesson pertaining to the drug war in here.

In any case, our descendants are likely to automate menial drudgery out of existence; that's what robots are for.

This will be the first visible step of humanity away from its infancy. And the first step towards my final solution. They will clean our home,s dig our gardens and prepare our meals long before they love us and elevate us past suffering.

The impregnable well-being of our transhuman descendants is more likely to promote greater diversity, both personal and societal, not stagnation. This is because greater happiness, and in particular enhanced dopamine function, doesn't merely extend the depth of one's motivation to act: the hyper-dopaminergic sense of things to be done. It also broadens the range of stimuli an organism finds rewarding. By expanding the range of potential activities we enjoy, enhanced dopamine function will ensure we will be less likely to get stuck in a depressive rut. This rut leads to the kind of learned helplessness that says nothing will do any good, Nature will take its revenge, and utopias will always go wrong.

Like many of these quotes, this was just reproduced because I liked it.

Unfortunately, the true altruists among our (non-)ancestors got eaten or outbred. Their genes perished with them.

Which trend and concept is why I constantly rail against mat selection issues. Not because I myself am generally excluded for whatever reasons, as painful as that is, but because, selection pressure is the fundamental force acting on our species. This is also why my final solution takes the form it does. It is designed expressly to shortcut the system for our collective and individual benefit.

Hopefully, the need for manifestos and ideological propaganda will pass.

And like the honest cancer researcher, I too hope to one day, hopefully in the next 12 hours, be completely out of a job.

The contrast between true and false happiness, however, is itself problematic. Even if the notion is both intelligible and potentially referential, it's not clear that "natural", selfish-DNA-sculpted minds offer a more authentic consciousness than precision-engineered euphoria. Highly selective and site-specific designer drugs [and, ultimately, genetic engineering] won't make things seem weird or alien. On the contrary, they can deliver a greater sense of realism, verisimilitude and emotional depth to raw states of biochemical bliss than today's parochial conception of Real Life.

Again, just a really valid point I liked.

Post-humans are not going to get drunk and stoned. Their well-being will infuse ideas, modes of introspection, varieties of selfhood, structures of mentalese, and whole new sense modalities that haven't even been dreamt of today.

Again, just really cool.

Citizens must not fall in love, marry, or have their own kids. This would seduce their allegiance away from the community as a whole by providing a rival focus of affection.

Sadly, while this was meant to be an indictment of the brave new world fictional society, I see it as a reality here today in the real world. Sure we are allowed to love marry and have children but the process at every level is so unimaginably constrained that it might as well be disallowed. The big three tell us effectively in this context "You can have anything you want, so long as you want what we say you should want."

And above all, when suffering becomes truly optional, we shouldn't force our toxic legacy wetware on others.

As we do today on both a genetic and memetic level. Our effort to insure that our children are like us is the most cruel thing we can do to them.

Enhancing serotonin function - other things being equal - is likely to leave an individual less likely to submit to authority, not docile and emasculated.

And that is another reason why the pill must be given in food, not merely to passivity the patient, but the patient's ever watchful but dimwitted jailer.

Animal suffering is just savage, empty and pointless. So we'll probably scrap it when it becomes easy enough to do so.

In vitro meat. It funny how recently all the things I've spoken and written about are becoming realities, or at least far more widely discussed.

Down on the farm, tasty, genetically-engineered ambrosia will replace abused sentience. For paradise-engineering entails global veganism. Utopia cannot be built on top of an ecosystem of pain and fear.

Good point.

But as science progressively gives us the power to remould matter and energy to suit our desires - or whims - it would take an extraordinary degree of malice for us to sustain the painfulness of Darwinian life indefinitely. For as our power increases, so does our complicity in its persistence.

Power = Responsibility. If you can help at reasonable cost or below, you have an ethical responsibility to do so. This is related to sex, monogamy, and the term 'slut'.

Even unregenerate humans don't tend to be sustainably ill-natured. So when genetically-engineered vat-food tastes as good as dead meat, we may muster enough moral courage to bring the animal holocaust to an end.

Again.

Selfishness, whether in the technical or overlapping popular sense, is a spectacularly awful principle on which to base any civilization. Sooner or later, simple means-ends-analysis, if nothing else, will dictate the use of genetic engineering to manufacture constitutionally happy mind/brains.

But that logic will not convince anyone unless they already were in a position to agree as a result of complex nature-nurture interaction and requisite ancestral genetic pressures. Again, the final solution.

But the attributes of power, status and money, for instance, however obviously nice they seem today, aren't inherently pleasurable. They yield only a derivative kick that can be chemically edited out of existence.

Means to an end. People generally miss this whole idea. A fun game is asking people what they want with this in mind. Ultimately everyone wants to be happy, what they think they want are merely tools they think will get them there. In this context i find it amusing thinking back on all the answers I've ever gotten which related to drugs. Since they were closest to a real answer.

Likewise, intense and unpleasant social anxiety was sometimes adaptive too. So was an involuntary capacity for the torments of sexual jealousy, fear, terror, hunger, thirst and disgust. Our notions of dominance and subordination are embedded within this stew of emotions.

That explains me nicely. I often wondered how someone like me got here, in a purely Darwinian sense.

Sado-masochistic images of domination-and-submission loom large in a lot of our fantasies too. The categories of experience they reflect were of potent significance on the African savannah, where they bore on the ability to get the "best" mates and leave most copies of one's genes. But they won't persist for ever.

God willing.

Allegedly "immutable" human nature will change as well when the genetic-rewrite gathers momentum and the reproductive revolution matures. The classical Darwinian Era is drawing to a close.

Again.

Unfortunately, its death agonies may be prolonged. Knee-jerk pessimism and outright cynicism abound among humanistic pundits in the press. They are common in literary academia. And of course any competent doom-monger can glibly extrapolate the trends of the past into the future.

Not if you trick them into thinking it was their idea or they can profit by some element of it. Slippery slope them. Make them think they're getting away with something.

Yet perhaps asking whether we would appreciate ecstatic art of 500 or 5000 years hence is futile in the first place. We simply can't know what we're talking about. For we are unhappy pigs, and our own arts are mood-congruent perversions.

And that's why I hate the vast majority of art television movies and music because all I see is erotic capitol and antler bashing, and those who profit from it. Our art as it stands now is disgusting and shallow and worthless on the whole. Which is why to me arguments about how great we are based on our art fall on incredulous ears. I mean really, a can of soup, some naked girls, a guy with his eye in the wrong place, a melted clock? And that's not even starting on the trillions of examples of 'art' that boil down to "I desperately want to fuck all hotties and kill all other males." or "Compete for the privilege of fucking me." Come on, we can SO do better.

One hopes, on rather limited evidence, that the birth-pangs of the new genetic order will be less traumatic.

If the right people hear and listen to me, it will actually be enjoyable.

Windfalls and spending-sprees do typically bring short-term highs. Yet they don't subvert the hedonic treadmill of inhibitory feedback mechanisms in the brain. Each of us tends to have a hedonic set-point about which our "well"-being fluctuates.

Again.

The endless cycle of ups and downs - our own private re-enactment of the myth of Sisyphus - is an "adaptation" that helps selfish genes to leave more copies of themselves; in Nature, alas, the restless malcontents genetically out-compete happy lotus-eaters. It's an adaptation that won't go away just by messing around with our external environment.

And here is where science needs philosophy and the concept that inspired Einstein's famous quote about science being lame.

A few centuries hence, we may rapidly take [im]material opulence for granted. And this virtual cornucopia won't be the prerogative of a tiny elite. Information isn't like that. Nor will it depend on masses of toiling workers. Information isn't like that either. If we want it, nanotechnology promises old-fashioned abundance all round, both inside and outside synthetic VR.

Yup.

The experience of this-is-real - like all our waking- or dreaming consciousness - comprises a series of neurochemical events in the CNS like any other. It can be amped-up or toned-down. Reality does not admit of degrees; but our sense of it certainly does.

Yup.

Thus Huxley doesn't offer a sympathetic exploration of the possibility that prudery and sexual guilt has soured more lives than sex. In a true utopia, the counterparts of John and Lenina will enjoy fantastic love-making, undying mutual admiration, and live together happily ever after.

Yup.

If suffering has been medically eradicated, does happiness have to be justified any more than the colour green or the taste of peppermint? Is there some deep metaphysical sense in which we ought to be weighed down by the momentous gravity of the human predicament? - Only if it will do anyone any good. The evidence is lacking.

Yup.

Moreover this transformation of the living world, and eventually of the whole cosmos, into a heavenly meaning-steeped nirvana will in no way be "unnatural". It is simply a disguised consequence of the laws of physics playing themselves out.

And the point of the path is revealed.

Until now, selection pressure has ensured we're cursed with a genome that leaves us mostly as callous brutes, albeit brutes with intermittently honourable intentions.

Again, why I'm always on monogamy's ass. It's not just me people.

This isn't to deny that love is real. But its contemporary wellsprings have been poisoned from the outset. Only the sort of love that helps selfish DNA to leave more copies of itself - which enable it to "maximize its inclusive fitness" - can presently flourish. It is fleeting, inconstant, and shaped by cruelly arbitrary criteria of physical appearance which serve as badges of reproductive potential. If we value it, love should be rescued from the genes that have recruited and perverted the states which mediate its expression in blind pursuit of reproductive success.

Love through the lens of the meat.

When sexual guilt and jealousy - a pervasive disorder of serotonin function - are cured, then bed-hopping will no longer be as morally reckless as it is today.

Again with the term slut, and the profit the big three get from us fighting each other for sex.

And just as during much of the Twentieth Century, any plea for greater social justice could be successfully damned as Communist, likewise today, any strategy to eradicate suffering is likely to be condemned in similar reactionary terms: either wirehead hedonism or revamped Brave New World. This response is not just facile and simplistic. If it gains currency, the result is morally catastrophic.

Again, final solution.

But one does one's best. The ideological obstacles to genetically pre-programmed mental super-health are actually more daunting than the technical challenges.

Hence my life's work.

Hence my approach, which may be self defeating as I'm about to explain it, but honor demands that i do so. I've always aid that if you can't trick a child into doing what you want you shouldn't bred, this is an indictment of brutality and dominance through fear. The relevant point here is that humanity must be tricked into this, it must be delivered in candy as surly as one must had medicine int he dogs food. We will never eat this as it is, as we are. The hedonic engineered populace may be swayed by logic and clarity but normal humans simply are not. they are too thoroughly owned by their dopamine addiction, and social masters.

It has been suggested quite astonishingly well that the solution is to edit the species in such a manner as to preserve our humanity and eliminate suffering as an option.

Some may see my solution and dismiss it out of hand as a result seeing the direct edit preferable. I am aware of this argument.

Which is more likely to be accepted by a given individual. A syringe of retrovirus which will forever make them happy and different? Or a delicious little slave thing that adores the very idea of their pleasure and makes its life goal the enhancement of it's host's enjoyment and general well being?

The end goals of genetic hedonism and my slave species solution are one in the same. I'm simply suggesting a different more palatable way of getting there. Creation of this servant race of neo humans who actually enjoy helping will lead to interbreeding, and eventually the traits of suffering et all, will be quietly annihilated. Our species as it is will NEVER accept the hedonic genetic option no matter how technically feasible or desirable logically it my be.

One fact is always overlooked by the writers of these essays, a fact I've personally discovered again and again, and hopefully learned from. Logic does not dictate emotion. In order to affect change, one must use emotion creatively and responsibly.

So my final solution stands.

Suffering and the Defacto Matriarchy in America.

At a commenters request I have decided to first expand and defined the following point of this post. (http://innomen.blogspot.com/2008/02/masculism-now.html)

7.Men must suffer in order to acquire any sex.

By suffering I mean the dictionary definition... “feelings of mental or physical pain “

Men as a rule must suffer to acquire a mate as a result of competition or the demands of their mate, which must be satisfied . This is so basic I am having trouble finding a way to explain it more simply. But I will try.

First you must grant that in the majority of cultures acquiring a mate is a rite of passage for men. In fact in recent years being a man has literally become synonymous with suffering to archive a goal.

(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=man+up)

Second, you must grant that the exact revere is true for women. Though it is somewhat derogatory, the term “being a pussy” means being like a woman, or doing what feels best, or what is safest and most rational. I have particular loathing for this phrase because it illustrates the enslavement of men and the objectification of women simultaneously.

Look at the mating process. It can be summed up as men competing for the approval of women. Men must get a job, fight for power and money, condition themselves physically, and defeat other men in various ways. and before you even say that women compete too, understand that they choose to compete because they are trained to want President Brad Pitt with super powers and an Aston Martin collection. Men are forced to if they want a mate of any kind, the only difference is the degree of suffering. There is no such thing as a zero maintenance mate. Even superman must suffer to please Louis Lane.

In fact suffering is the entire point, because even if a man had super human powers, a normal woman has the option of raising the bar at will. In short Louis recognized that superman could out compete any normal man without suffering and so she raised the bar until she found a way for him to suffer, she made the plight of the world his responsibility, or made him feel guilty about being super powerful in the first place, depending on media, comic, show, or movie. This is best illustrated in the series, Smallville, where we have a extremely sensual girl (not Louis) judging superman in subjective ways on matters of morality and social correctness, ares where he had no super powers, and always her judgment was final. His competition was Lex, a super rich, handsome, super genius. Now, for her, this is a win/win situation. This is an extreme, but the concept fits almost everywhere, the only thing that changes is the matter of degree.

They as a group suffer to please her, individually they try to shift suffering to the other, and please her more than the other so they may have access to her. This is the case in at least 80% of movies shows and songs. Just look for it. Its right there. From Disney to Romero, from The Beatles to Slipknot, men are told over and over that they must suffer to obtain a female, or they will suffer infinitely more from loneliness.

Obviously those that compete must suffer and those that judge do not, or, being ultra conservative here, must suffer less. As with any competition, it is always harder on the competitors than the judges. Take a foot race for example. Who has it harder, the runners or the guy with the stopwatch?

I hope I've made my point, It really is difficult to explain something this fundamental.

Edit: Found this image.

Seemed to illustrate a point made above nicely.

Death and Miracles

To whom it may concern:

Written in response to this video and the general social reaction to Kenadie Jourdin-Bromley who is a young lady with Primordial dwarfism and related social concepts. If you would like to help her, a PayPal donation link can be found from her official site, located here.


(My favorite picture of her, lifted from here)

For one, these parents are set for life if they play it right, as they should given what she's undoubtedly going to need. I'd say the instant Oprah hears of this young lady and her sickeningly clean cut family, its gold plated stroller / book deal time.

But seriously, with thousands of children living in poverty in our own country and countless millions more abroad, I don't think this particular child is any more deserving of help than any other, no matter how adorable she is. Perhaps even less so, if you want to look at the matter clinically.

I think all children deserve a shot at life, even the ones that don't get PayPal donate links.

I have to ask, why is it when something bad happens they always call it a miracle? Is it really a miracle that this poor person is effectively going to spend her whole short life in a hospital?

I love how 3/4ths of the video are about the painfully banal couple that produced her. I don't care about her parents, and neither does anyone else. All they care about is what they see as the cool freaky small kid.

Why is it when a bus full of school kids explodes and one survives with half her face burnt off its a miracle? If this is the best your god can do, you can keep him. I don't see this as a miracle I see this as a tragedy.

Gotta love the Internet, the modern freak show. Is everyone proud of their gawking? Would you care so much about this child if she were normal? Obviously not.

If she grows up normally in terms of intellect you think she'll appreciate being so objectified and showcased?

And yes mom, she would have been put down if she were a dog, whats so wrong with saying that? Its true. Pointing that out does not mean you agree with it or endorse it. Self righteous narrow minded twit. It's called freedom of speech. Google it. How quickly we turn into Stalin when someone flames us on the intarweb.

Besides, judging from the pastor or whatever you rushed to her side, you presumably think she has heaven waiting for her anyway, so whence comes the anger even if the poster did suggest euthanasia? By your logic would it not be in her best interest?

You Christians don't even act like you really believe in heaven. I mean if I truly believed in heaven and hell, and I truly believed that asking forgiveness saved my soul, and I truly believed, that after a certain age, hell, that is, being tortured brutally for ALL TIME, was a real possibility.

I'd quickly and painlessly murder my own children to insure their entry into heaven and to shorten their suffering. After all, this life is worthless compared to the next, right? And hell is a much bigger problem then death, right? As a parent would you not risk hell to ensure your child's entry into heaven? I would, and I don't even have children.

But no, Christians fight death just as hard as atheists, if not harder. So, I smell bullshit.

And where's the outpouring of support for the hundreds of families that actually lost their children this year? Oh right, they didn't make a cool little freak baby for the Internet to ooo and ahh over. They aren't interesting, right? And make no mistake, thats what they all see her as, the only reason they even pretend to care is curiosity and guilt.

You people disgust me.

Some of us know people who didn't get a miracle, and are infuriated at the implication that these people somehow deserved a miracle to keep their child alive while others did not. The ego of this implication is astonishing beyond words, and that comes from a guy who considers himself a latter day Buddha and potential savior of all sentient life. :)

The only real miracle here is that people will believe anything, even if its in complete contradiction.

Every living human is a miracle, or none of them are, not just the cute little white American female ones.

News flash, she's not an angel, or a doll, or a toy, or an object of wonder. She's a human being, which is more than I can say for most of you. I deeply pity what its going to be like for her to grow up surrounded by you people.

Fortunately for her, the media has the attention span of a 5 year old cocaine addict with ADHD, so she may get a bit of dignity in a little while.

I hope she makes it long enough to be repaired by future gene therapy.

I wish her luck, but no more than the rest of us.

We all deserve a good life, so long as we are sentient, regardless of size.

Dreams: Threats or Opportunity?

Its not merely threat rehearsal in my opinion, its, benefit maximization rehearsal.

I have a very quiet life, and I'm also a lucid dreamer when frightened, so my number of nightmares has dropped sharply in the past 5-10 years, on the order of one every 6 months about or less.

But, instead I seem to have dreams of opportunity with choices. Difficult ones. many times theft and profit are themes which develop, like I'll have a choice between turning in the envelope full of cash so to speak. Sometimes turning it in becomes wildly inappropriate, like its a blank envelope in the middle of the desert, other times its blatantly obvious like you just saw the old homeless mother, drop it.

Sometimes its sexual situations, and before you think fantasy allow me to explain a bit. It will be someone's girlfriend, or someone drunk. Some times they are seducing me, and sometimes i just 'know' in the way one only can in dreams, that they would be responsive if I merely asked. Sometimes the situation is normal, but there is an interruption, and its always important so that I'll have to pick between personal immediate physical pleasure or the more lasting and less tempting egotistical pleasure I get from helping.

Sometimes it's food, I'll be presented with what amounts to a buffet and a time limit.

Only twice have I dreamt of sexual fantasy. And one of the times was on the night of valentines day, a day charged with sexual imagery especially if you have television as I did at the time. Perhaps that was an opportunity test in and of itself. As if my brain was testing, “Well how would we handle it if you got exactly what you claim and think you want sexually?” I did learn about myself via that dream. And I never had one like it since.

I have a point I'm getting to thats relevant to you, just give it a second heheh.

Effectively I have great dreams but there is ALWAYS a catch. In a nightmare the catch is gigantic and the choice is between evils, but, I'm going to guess that there is ALWAYS a choice, and that choice is the whole point of dreams. To train us to make it or choices like it quickly when the time comes, either to avoid threat, or to maximize benefit. In short dreams force us to consider so we can say with honesty “All things considered, I made the right choice.”

Previously, I thought that catch said something about my general insecurity, as you all know I have my hangups, but seen in the context of behavior rehearsal I feel a lot better. My dreams may actually be reflective of the future of dreaming assuming our future is a good one.

My dreams are not characterized by fear or negative emotions of any kind really. Perhaps because my psychology is a bit more evolved (before you go all frothy at my impudence, this does not necessarily mean better) to fit a threat-less situation emotionally. Example, I don't get jealous, I don't lose control with rage, my only fears are social and are about making people happy and loss of happiness, as opposed to fear of pain or harm or loss, I'm extremely tolerant (irl), but not so much so that I become a drone.

Knowing the nature of dreams is a test, then perhaps the way to improve them is to out wit your wit, and focus on decisions you'd like to make, rather than decisions you have to make. Like assume your problems were solved, what sort of decisions would you be likely to make?

“Do I fly to Paris today or just stay home and ride the dune buggy outback in my private 10 mile square sand box?”

...Or I could just be a nutjob. Your call.

Masculism Now!

This is a position list meant to express why I feel that men are an underclass in contemporary American society. It is under construction, and open to debate. If you disagree with any of these choose one and meet me on debate.com.

Your comments will not be censored.

1. Men die sooner.

2. Men suffer a great statistical disadvantage when it comes to fighting for their children in court.

3. Men are ridiculed for social expressions of emotion.

4. Men are forced to compete with each other, or capitulate to a woman if they want a mate at all.

5. Men must live up to their mates idea of what it is to be a man and a father.

6. Men must work or risk destitution, homelessness, and social ostracism.

7. Men must suffer in order to acquire any sex.

8. Men are expected to maintain the home with no say in its appearance.

9. Men are constantly required to tolerate inconsistency and irrationality, especially from a mate.

10. Men who use their body to manipulate women are considered abusive and monstrous.

11. Men have an extremely narrow range of options for potential dress and hair style.

12. Men are constantly told by society that they are ugly and not successful enough.

13. Men are constantly told by society that without a woman they are utterly worthless and pathetic.

14. Men are constantly told that a father is replaceable.

15. Men as a gender are given no assistance what so ever in job placement.

16. Traditional man's work is dangerous and difficult.

17. Men lose jobs to women because of their gender alone.

18. Men who express their genetic desire for sexual exploration and polygamy are perverts.

19. Men have almost no organized assistance as a gender.

While simultaneously...

1. Women live longer.

2. Women get a disproportional advantage in court when fighting for parental rights.

3. Women are encouraged to express themselves emotionally both publicly and privately.

4. Women compete for better mates, but even when they settle they have the power.

5. Women get to define what it is to be a man and a father.

6. Women have the socially acceptable choice of not working.

7. Women typically profit from the acquisition of at least moderately enjoyable sex.

8. Women are typically allowed total control of the home's decor.

9. Women are socially allowed to issue conflicting and irrational edicts.

10. Women who use their body to manipulate men are considered strong and clever.

11. Women are allowed a much greater degree of freedom with regard to dress and hairstyle.

12. Women are constantly told by society how beautiful they are.

13. Women are constantly told that they are the sum total purpose of men's existence.

14. Women are constantly told that the most important thing a human can be is a mother.

15. Women are given preferential selection in almost every job market.

16. Traditional woman's work is simple and safe by comparison.

17. Women who work profit socially because of the women who choose not to work.

18. Women who express their genetic desire for sexual exploration and polygamy are sexy.

19. Women have hundreds of social groups to protect their rights and interests.

Masculism: a social theory or political movement supporting the equality of both sexes in all aspects of public and private life; specifically, a theory or movement that argues that legal and social restrictions on males must be removed in order to bring about such equality.

Masculism, Cynicism, and Woman Hating.

Many times when people read some of my work they come to the conclusion that I am cynical and that I hate women or view them in a bad light.

The purpose of this post is to answer that claim, so that I can have a full bodied response at my fingertips.

I consider myself a masculist, and here' I'll include the definition.

Well, in looking for a suitable definition, I found a lovely double standard.

According to Http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/feminism ...

Noun feminism A social theory or political movement supporting the equality of both sexes in all aspects of public and private life; specifically, a theory or movement that argues that legal and social restrictions on females must be removed in order to bring about such equality.

According to Http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/masculism ... (until I edited it, I'm sure someone will put it back)

Noun masculism (plural masculisms) A belief in the superiority of men or the masculine. 1983, Sheila Ruth, quoted in Judith Evans (1986), Feminism and Political Theory [1], ISBN 0803997051, page 70: Fascism, fully revealed, is the extreme, exquisite expression of masculism, of patriarchy, and thus the natural enemy of feminism, its quintessential opposite. 1997, Nalini Persram, "In my father's house are many mansions", in Black British Feminism: A Reader [2], ISBN 0415152887, page 213: It often takes a crisis of some sort to initiate the difficult but empowering feminist process of renegotiating the masculisms that dominate the discourses of origin, authenticity and belonging in a way that transforms margins into frontiers, lack into (ad)vantage. 2004, Thomas Schatz, Hollywood [3], ISBN 0415281350, page 73: The Rocky-Rambo syndrome puts on display the raw masculism which is at the bottom of conservative socialization and ideology.

So, when one argues for equal rights from the man's perspective, they are a bigot, but when one argues for equal rights from a woman's perspective they are a civil rights figure.

Anyway, I'll define masculism correctly, and continue to answer the charge that I am a woman hater or am cynical etc.

Noun

masculism

1. A social theory or political movement supporting the equality of both sexes in all aspects of public and private life; specifically, a theory or movement that argues that legal and social restrictions on males must be removed in order to bring about such equality.

For example, the social restriction on arguing that men are the oppressed gender in America. As if honor killings over the proper use of a burqa are common in the states.

No, I do not hate women, I just feel that they are in an undeserved socially superior position. Like the blue eye brown eye school experiment demonstrated, whenever an oppressed group is given power over their oppressors on equally flimsy grounds they will act as badly as those who oppressed them. This is a sad human fact.

Feminists in the modern American context simply want revenge. They want a period of social superiority to make up for the long period of inferiority.

Granted, the global picture of women's rights is a grim one, and feminists are indeed needed all over the world, and in those contexts I consider myself a feminist as well. But here in America, any disadvantages females encounter are consequences of their own choices.

For example, if a woman wants to complain about being a victim of violent crime then they should not subsidize violent men with mates. Time and again the smaller gentler man is disregarded in favor of the larger aggressive one. This means that what it is to be a successful man is inherently linked with violence because of the choices women make.

Rape is not a significant source of children anymore in the west on an evolutionary level, men desire sex more than women for hormonal and biological reasons, therefor women have more sexual power because more often than the man, the women becomes the gate keeper of sex, or as I like to put it, The Chooser Sex.

Women as a result generally get to choose when a family is formed. No glove no love, they can say. Thanks to legal favoritism they also choose who gets to be a father and thus THEY control what it is to be a man and father, because if a man or father does not measure up she can divorce him and take his child in the majority of cases.

Therefor it is not fair to blame men for how they are since how they are is largely under female control.

Pointing this out does not mean I hate or blame women. I consider this a social inequity perpetrated on both sexes by The Company (Corp/Gov/Church), using monogamy as its chief tool, for purposes of profit, as I have explained before.

I don't hate women, I love women. I personally consider them my superior by default, as they are physically built better, and they are calmer and more compassionate by and large, which may be a reason they tolerate violence too much, their forgiving nature, but in any case this situation is the result of sexual selection practices they have instituted, and perpetuate.

This may seem conflicted, one might ask :”but if you consider them your superior why do you complain about their supposed superior standing in society?”

Quite simply because why they are superior in this society has nothing to do with why I consider them superior as a gender. Women in this society are superior because they posses a vagina, not because they have a gift for compromise, compassion, diplomacy, and personal strength.

Women are on top socially because they are desired sexually. This has nothing to do with their general advantage in the traits I mentioned above, which means that women who possess none of those traits are still placed on top, like Paris Hilton for example.

I think most everyone can agree that she's a vapid monster. But she does not need to be hated because she enjoys sex or money, most of us do, and that's nothing to be shamed of. She needs to be hated because she sells sex covertly and is part of a culture that encourages others to do the same, with disastrous results. She demands pampering because she fits The Company's social definition of beauty.

I wish the playing field to be equalized so that the traits I mentioned above can be accorded their due respect. And I personally believe that in an equal society primarily women would be in charge until such time as sexual selection or transhumanist pressures begin to more evenly divide those traits up among the genders.

No, I do not hate women. No, my view is not cynical, it is in fact hopeful. Sex is something sacred and it is a human right. To trade it like so much beef is a grand sacrilege. It should be shared freely circumstances permitting. Sex is the perfect drug and we are all born with it, we should not have to pay third parties for it. And we should revere those who are kind enough to give it away or sell it at fair market value, not call them sluts and whores and attack them as if they were inhuman. Nor should we attack and humiliate those who wish to buy sex, or who want sex, for being perverts or pathetic, anymore than we should attack a starving person looking for a meal.

Some will blame men for their hunger, claiming sex obsession, but this is radically unfair. Sex is a basic animal need. And testosterone is what makes men different from women, and it is also the sex drive hormone in both sexes. Again pointing this out does not make me a woman hater.

No, the fact is, its everyone else that has the dark and cynical view of love and sex. I see it as a crystal pure flowing stream. Not a dirty six pack of Dasani.

Editorial addition:

I have a problem with cultural aspects of general female behaviors and choices. But to have a problem with women simply because they are women would be equivalent to racism. I have a problem with choices, not people.

I love people.

However, yes, I have a dim view of some people as they are defined by their actions because of the choices they consistently make. No cynic thinks of himself as a cynic, they all think of themselves as realists. I personally think of myself as an optimist.

After all, look at the hope I show is speaking at all, if I was a cynic would I not take the attitude "why bother"?

Cloak and Hooker

Undercover hookers everywhere.

People get mad at those who say all women are whores but really when you look at just how much of typical American romance is about power and money its easy to see where the misconception (if it is one) comes from.

Any woman who gets vitriolic about hookers or sluts has about a 90% chance of being an undercover hooker who hates sluts because they give away what they are trying to sell or hates hookers for selling what they are trying to sell at a fraction of the cost.

This is why both women and men blame women when cheating in a relationship occurs. Because deep down women know they have all the real power, and you don't blame the powerless because they have no responsibility.

Running with scissors.

This is a conversation I had in response to a review I placed on stumble upon. I find that quite often if I buck the trend as far as what I thumb up or down people feel the need to message me personally. I used to post them separately on my webpage but that got time consuming, this place is as good as any.

The review in question can be found here.

The author of the statements quoted can be found here.

And I want to thank him for the effort and conversation, even if he is a little misguided.

He begins...

“what in the world does wishing to be young and not fat have anything to do with the military?”

Nothing. What I said was that making it seem like potential injury is somehow cool on the assumption that it’s merely a risk is the same logic used to make uniformed idiots feel safe, as I explained in the article. The fact is someone usually will be shot in war, and someone will eventually break their neck on the playground. Safety innovations are not something to be made fun of, especially if it is your child that has to live out his life in a chair as a result of some guys rosy nostalgia, and cavalier attitude towards life.

The difference between you and me is I don’t need to actually have experienced that horror to have compassion for my fellow man.

“Today we live in a world were kids are becoming more and more obese, why?”

Probably the presence of HFCS and other industrial toxins in the diet, and the general social apathy of the populace, which I might add is contributed to by the cavalier attitude with regard to health issues this very article is based on. Look at diabetes rates, it’s not merely lack of exercise. Your world view is simplistic and incorrect.

“they're eating mcdonalds all the time and sitting around playing videogames. Playgrounds are built to encourage physical activity which is healthy.”

They eat McDonalds because it's cheap and parents don’t have time to fix real meals because the economy is so bad that both parents have to work full time on top of the fact that we demand so much of our children via school that they have almost no down time. And when they do we don’t let them go anywhere unless it’s to wear a short skirt and wave pom poms for the pleasure of balding middle age coaches, or beat each other up at some mindless ball tossing ritual based on sexual tension.

You know nothing of our society. You’re as blind and indoctrinated as the rest of them. But your children won't be. They'll get one too many passes with the metal wand on the way to history class and start asking the dangerous questions. Like, what does football have to do with math, what does patriotism have to do with chemistry, and what happens if we all say no more all at once?

“its not some sort of indirect way of recruiting kids into the military or something crazy like that”

You misunderstand the purpose of education in industrialized societies. What part of pledging allegiance to a flag and mandatory attendance being superfluous to knowledge acquisition is hard for you to grasp?

“limiting the ways kids CAN excerisize during recess or whatever (some schools actually tried eliminating recess) will only increase the amount of fat, lazy, obese people who do nothing but sit in front of the TV all day being indoctrinated by TV programming.”

Like putting children on human hamster wheels is any less mentally demeaning than plopping them in front of the propaganda box. For one, laziness is not a bad thing, and two fat is largely a dietary and genetic issue which stems directly from public tolerance of social abuses such as toxins in the food supply and the ultra high cost of non-toxic foods. We’re sheep because school trains us to be that way, and when we grow up we line up for our feed no matter what’s in it.

“and i see you like BDSM and yet you're complaining about abuse?”

Uhh, what part of “consenting adult” is unclear?

50$ says you don't even consider my position thanks to social inertia, and a million says I don't care one way or the other what you think since I got this grand opportunity to tear down the ideas you defend.

Thank you for the material, feel free to comment below :)

The Three Laws of Sentience

The Three Laws of Robotics (adapted to include the Zeroth law by Brandon Sergent)

0. A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm except where such prevention would conflict with the Zeroth Law.

2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

I’ve always found these laws (and not my adaptation, feel free to offer correction or suggestions) to be beautiful. I wonder what would happen if you applied a modified set to all sentient beings.

The Three Laws of Sentience (I need a word for all sentience, because this title sounds like a checklist for what constitutes sentience, which is obviously not my intention.)

0. A sentient may not injure sentience as a whole, or, through inaction, allow sentience as a whole to come to harm.

1. A sentient may not injure another sentient or, through inaction, allow a sentient being to come to harm, except where such prevention would conflict with the Zeroth Law.

2. A sentient must obey orders given to it by sentient beings, except where such orders would conflict with the Zeroth or First Law.

3. A sentient must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the Zeroth, First, or Second Law.

Do you think this would work? I foresee problems with the second and third laws, and the definition of harm. The following ‘orders’ bit is an attempt to codify compassion and aid. An order could be a request for help. I feel like I’m missing something. Hence the public post.

Two Days Cleaning House At Woodland Oaks

First of all let me say that this letter indicts a system, not people. While I had almost no exposure to the medical side of things, I heard few if any complaints about their work from residents or family, and have every reason to believe that they are competent if not exemplary in this regard. The nurse aids and nurses with very limited exceptions were kind, personable, and professional. The dietary and housekeeping people were equally thoughtful and generous. In fact the only tolerable part of this job was the people. And I feel personally guilty for the extra work I’m sure someone has to endure because of my departure.

A little bit about me. I've been repairing computers since I was 17, I’m 28 now, I was president of my college, and I have a 3.0 GPA with 56 credit hours. I worked in a computer lab for three years which was a very rewarding job consisting of answering phones, helping with homework, trouble shooting machines, resetting passwords, maintaining the printers, managing an inventory, proctoring tests, and various other computer lab type things. I have written a book on philosophy called simply “the book”, I am a certified locksmith, and a patented inventor. I have mild cerebral palsy on the right side of my body which resulted in a mild deformity of the right foot and hand.

Having worked at the oaks during a summer as a lawn care helper, I had gotten to know many of the employees, and one of the residents very well. So much so that I went back to visit every week, including Christmas day when the place was a virtual ghost town. Ms Gay was who I went to go see, she’s a super sweet and tough old lady that got onto my bosses for working me too hard. This turned out to be the only serious notice of appreciation I got over there, and let me be quick in pointing out that I was not alone. Praise is not a common thing at the oaks. In fact in between my time there as a lawn guy and my two days of housekeeping, all three of my bosses had been fired or quit (I can’t get a straight answer, but knowing two of them at least one quit) But what administration lacks in concern for its employees it makes up for in greed and shortsightedness.

Anyway, I need money like everyone else right and I live across the street from the place. So I ask for a job during one of my visits. I’m kind of hoping that my three years of office experience and computer/printer skills could get me a job up front manning the phone signing people in, doing inventory, or what ever. But apparently I’m too tall for the job. (Or too male maybe, I’m not sure.) Incidentally they hired at least two attractive young ladies for the job I’d like.

They do however offer me a job in activities, which I turn down because I’m not as strong as the activities people. While I’m sure its extremely rewarding work for those tough enough, I simply cannot handle the idea of getting to know all these wonderful and sweet old men and women only to watch them die in the coming years. Being an atheist I cannot feel anything but loss when a person dies. So, knowing my own limitations, I turn it down. At this point a friend steps in, whom I won’t name because she might not want me to. She was a co-worker when I was still the lawn guy. But since then she had been promoted (replacing one of my three bosses) and offered me a job in her department, which was house keeping. I foolishly accepted. Even now I truly appreciate her offer and her efforts to accommodate my frailties. I was only there in this capacity for two days and 20 minutes. My trainer had been there 14 years.

The first order of business as far as administration goes at the oaks is divide and conquer. Talk of a union is strictly but informally prohibited. In addition to this somewhat passive measure a more active process of classist separation is initiated involving color coding the humans running the place as if they were equipment. Scrubs for everyone, white for cooks, brown for cleaners, blue for nurse aids, multicolor for nurses, and semi casual for administration. The only non dress coded personnel are the maintenance people because they are worked so hard that anything other than the most practical of wear would simply self destruct. The excuse given for this behavior is it confuses the residents. But I don’t buy it. We’re there for them, why do they need to know for what department we work? If a resident asks me about sheets I’ll just go find a sheet person. If they ask me for a cup of water I’ll find an aid. I feel it’s there to remind everyone that we’re different and that the people up front are better than all us lowly hive workers.

The economy is so bad in our area that they know they can get away with murder. At any moment for any reason you can be fired. This leads to total employee apathy with regard to standing up for them selves. Everyone is on a first name basis except the exalted Ms. Tice, whom I have yet to lay eyes on; such is the rarity of her attendance and distance from the residents, except in the photos of her placed around the entrance like Chairman Mao.

My first day begins simply enough, at 9am I have an orientation, I attend it and I watch a bunch of CYA videos about how not to get Tice and the oaks sued or closed. My first round of these videos when I was a lawn guy included a video about resident rights, curiously now that the videos were moved from vhs to dvds, this portion of the program was absent. After these I leave to go home, but I’m told by my boss at the door that my 8 hour shift begins at 2 pm.

During this shift I sit down like twice. My job consists of trashing, restocking things, mopping, and buffer piloting. The buffer is the first real snag. I’m 6’5” the buffer is made in like 1950 and has no adjustability to the handle, so my back begins to fail almost immediately. On top of that I’m expected to run it during the day, backwards, with one hand. Backwards because each area needs multiple passes, one hand because I have to guide the cable, because one from the 21st century is too expensive despite the fact that they make like 3K$ per month per room or more, and during the day because a night shift cleaning crew is an unjustifiable expense when you can just over work your day crew.

Same with mopping, I’m expected to wait until after dinner to begin mopping which gives me just under 4 hours to mop the entire facility. My trainer who as I said had been there for 14 years does it during dinner, because he has no real choice. If he doesn't get done, he gets fired, if he does it right and safely he doesn't get done. So long as no one falls or sues, administration doesn't care. Residents won’t fall because they are mostly in wheel chairs anyway, guests aren’t around during dinner so the only people in real danger are employees, and they won’t sue because they want their job. Many of them are parents. Exploiting single mothers is just about the most loathsome thing I can think of, I might add. My foot is really starting to hurt by the end of this run because as I said I’m slightly deformed in the right foot. But I make it through because I don’t leave people hanging.

The next day at 11:30 am there is a staff meeting that we all must attend. Ms Tice is supposed to be there so of course we all attend; she decides to just not show up. Of course we’d get written up if we just decided not to show with no warning, but the rules are different for the aristocracy. The meeting concerns a decree from our lords, that apparently we’re no longer allowed to gossip. I’m not kidding, they even make us sign a paper to this effect.

I’m wondering how you would even define gossip, and about the legality of controlling private conversations. And I say something to this effect, like can they even restrict our private speech? And I’m totally laughed off. I let it slide. I talk to my boss after the meeting and explain the buffer situation, and I explain my foot thing and how I need at least a day between shifts. She says she’ll get a day person so I don't have to work like full time, she asks is it cool if I have just like two days a week and I says yes please, I only want part time. I’m very optimistic at this point.

Anyway my next day is pretty much the same, I mop I buff I empty trash but I’m thinking, with me and my trainer doing this and we just barely get done, how does he manage it when he doesn't have help, since he’s just training me and this is supposed to be a one person job? I tell him and others that they are radically over worked. No one wants to hear about their rights, no one wants to even contemplate organized complaint, I’m looked at like a total alien for suggesting that maybe we’re being mistreated. As if I’m somehow unable to detect mistreatment unless I’d been there years, but in my mind the exact opposite is true. I can detect it precisely because I haven’t been slowly indoctrinated to accept abuse.

My boss is roaming around for half the day and I see her and ask when my next shift is. Despite what we talked about she tells me my next shift is tomorrow, and it’ll be all day, by myself. This makes it the third day in a row. My foot is already beginning to fold on this the second day and eventually I can’t take it and leave 4 hours early.

Also the whole time I've been feeling really out of place no matter everyone being nice to me. I’m thinking maybe it’s because I’m dressed wrong, I should be in scrubs. So before the shift on the final day, I get a ride and get some scrubs, instead of using the company voucher (which will only cover the cheapest scrubs in the building), I buy a set with my own money because I’m thinking I may quit today. So I go home change eat shower and wait for my shift to start.

I get there 10 minutes early, an easy feat, thanks to being across the street, and I go to see the boss for my day’s assignment. I know from the two days of training generally what I’m supposed to do, I thought on the second list to bring a pad and paper to take notes and I have them with me, but if I’m going to be a robot I’d like a little programming. I find out that my boss isn’t going to be there today. Which worries me because I don't even have a punch card, who’s going to sign my blue sheet saying I was here today? Anyway I ask some co workers what they think I should do and they nicely explain stuff, and I start my first task, which is dust mopping. The office where they keep the trash bags was locked and the keys they gave me didn’t open the door I had no supervisor to address questions to, none of that was the straw though. Here's what did it, the Coup de grace, to my career as a housekeeper at Woodland Oaks.

As I begin dust mopping, a singularly useless activity on par with writing "I am futile" 100 times, I walk past Nora, a sweet old lady that they park in the hall all day and won’t let her sleep. In an effort, (I presume, I may be wrong) to try and make it so she doesn’t ask to sleep and since they know she won’t be in bed they take their time redoing her bed the only bed I ever see undone is hers. Anyway, she stops me, apparently I’m expected to rove around the hall like a robot ignoring the elderly humans or giving them platitudes instead of real attention. I can’t do that, so I stop, she might be pulling my chain but I don’t know that yet it’s like my first day. She very lucidly explains by way of a question, that they haven’t fixed her bed and asks me what I would suggest that she do I say I'll look into it I go to the nurses station and ask about her bed, they say they'll get to it, dust mopping takes me in a full circuit of the facility so I tell Nora I'll be back and if its not done by the time I get back I'll pester them I come back around and sure enough its not done so I head to the nurses station but there's an aid on her way into Nora’s room, so I talk to the aid and she asks me why I'm wearing blue, in kind of a harsh tone. I’m like because they told me to. The reason I think she asked is because she's a SRNA and I'm housekeeping and SRNA's wear dark blue, house keeping wears brown, male house keeping wears dark blue as well. Sexist I know but hey whatever, I'm reminded of the star belly Sneetches. Though the day I walk past a good 15 people. People I'd walked past before and nodded at and said hi too... in button up and slacks, and I got nods and smiles. This time around I'm the invisible man because I'm in scrubs and I fold. I can’t take the classism, I can’t take the apathy, I can’t take the pain and the greed.

So that's it. I’m jobless again.

A brief history of monogamy.

A brief history of monogamy. lifted from the comment on this google answer.

I reposted it here because of its pertinence.
----
Subject: Re: Life-long Monogamy
From: tehuti-ga on 26 Nov 2003 04:32 PST

Hello curioussam,

At the risk of inciting a flood of "hatemail" comments :) I am daring
to say that the answer to your question is "none".

If we look at the matter from a "selfish gene" viewpoint, which is
about as unemotional as you can get, it is, from one point of view, in
a male's interest to have as many sexual encounters as possible to
reproduce his genes to the maximum. However, it is in a female's
interest to have a stable partnership, or other stable arrangement, so
that she is provided for while unable to do so for herself due to
pregnancy and the need to look after the children until they become
self-sufficient. However, in order to ensure the survival of his
genes, it is also in a male's interest to provide for at least some of
his offspring and ensure they receive the care they need. On the other
hand, it is not in the male's interest to expend time and energy to
ensure the survival of someone else's genes, and the only way he can
be (reasonably) sure of that is within an institution that does not
permit his sexual partner to have other liaisons.

This gives us a typical picture of Western society in earlier times: a
"sort-of" monogamous arrangement where blind eyes were turned to
sexual adventuring by married men, but heaven forbid a married woman
to be caught in adultery! Women, having little or no control over
their reproduction, were involved in childbearing and rearing for a
much longer period than now, and more likely to die in childbirth.
Also, the average human lifespan was generally shorter than today due
to disease. The typical monogamous relationship would therefore have
lasted a comparatively short time and not gone on very long, if at
all, past the duration of the reproductive abilities of the woman.

Moving nearer to today, the lifespan started to increase, due to
improvements in hygiene and medicine. Once a woman has brought her
children up to self-sufficiency and is no longer capable of
reproduction, she no longer has a genetic interest in staying with her
partner. However, the social structure enforced a division of labour,
so that women performed unpaid work in the home while men did paid
work outside the home. Thus, even when no longer genetically dependent
on their partners, women continued to be economically dependent, and
this was recognised and affirmed by the society, so that divorce,
where permitted was tied to heavy financial penalties on the male in
order to ensure a continued financing of the woman he left, since she
was deemed incapable of fending for herself.

Today, the remanants of this social structure still remain. On the
other hand, women in Western societies have a free choice on how much
to reproduce, if at all. Also, they have a free choice to develop
their own paid careers and thus become and remain economically
independent of males, except perhaps in a very short period just after
childbirth, although even then arrangements such as maternity benefits
and social security measures mean they do not have to be in a
partnership to survive (which also removes the genetic pressure on the
male to provide for his offspring). Add to this the fact of the
increased lifespan, which means that a typical couple entering into
marriage could expect to live for another 60+ years afterwards. Most
of this would be after childrearing has finished, although for much of
that excess time the male would still be able to reproduce his genes
by mating with other woman.

To all this, add also the non-emotional fact that people in today's
Western societies are more individualistic than ever before, and more
desirous of personal, including emotional, satisfaction and therefore
less willing to remain in a situation which has ceased to provide it
simply because this is what is demanded by tradition mores. Even if
they do stay in a partnership because of convenience, women are
increasingly catching up with men in looking for other avenues of
satisfaction. The concept of monogamy is daily being demolished in
practice, even while still being held up as an ideal by some sectors
of society.

Here are some estimates made by authors of books first published in the late 1980s:

"The various researchers arrive at a general consensus…suggesting that
above one-quarter to about one-half of married women have at least one
lover after they are married in any given marriage. Married men
probably still stray more often than married women—perhaps from 50
percent to 65 percent by the age of forty."
Annette Lawson, author of "Adultery," first published in 1989 by Basic Books.

"Most experts do consider the 'educated guess' that at the present
time some 50 to 65 percent of husbands and 45 to 55 percent of wives
become extramaritally involved by the age of 40 to be a relatively
sound and reasonable one."
Maggie Scarf, author of "Intimate Partners," first published in 1987
by Random House

"Conservative estimates are that 60 percent of men and 40 percent of
women will have an extramarital affair... If even half of the women
having affairs (or 20 percent) are married to men not included in the
60 percent having affairs, then at least one partner will have an
affair in approximately 80 percent of all marriages."
Peggy Vaughan, author of "The Monogamy Myth," first published in 1989
by Newmarket Press

All these quoted by Peggy Vaugan in "Statistics about Affairs"
http://www.dearpeggy.com/statistics.html

Masculism

I'm sick and tired of neo-feminists ranting about pay inequality and sex crime. I'm tired of being blamed for problems they cause! Women stopped being oppressed when it became illegal to discriminate based on gender. Period. The rest is a function of supply and demand. The treatment of women in this country is a direct result of the demand impact on sex monogamy has had, and the exploitation of the sexual and economic advantages that result from it.

Since women control breeding by definition, those problems can be laid squarely at their feet. Men are so oppressed that the term masculism is virtually unknown compared to feminism. And the one men's rights group that I know of gets near constant derision and flak when they aren't being ignore completely. And even this group is an adjunct of women, as it focuses on men who have been selected by women as good enough to breed. Those of us that refuse to play this slanted and humiliating game are totally ignored.

I have no doubt whatsoever that I'll be hassled and made fun of just for suggesting that men have it worse than those dear sweet innocent little victim princesses. Awww look at her pout, how can I be so mean to those poor sweet little girls.

Where do I even begin? Lets start off with a list of important facts.

1. Men die sooner than women. This is not genetic.
2. Men are the more common rape victim.
3. Men have to compete to breed.
4. Women choose who breeds and who doesn't.
5. Women choose if they want to work.
6. Women have the option of trading something fun for something useful.
7. Women have the power to destroy lives with accusations alone.
8. Women receive disproportionate protection.
9. Women have an overwhelming advantage in custody cases.
10. Women are socially allowed a greater degree of freedom with regard to emotional expression and fashion.
11. Women encourage maddeningly unrealistic expectations.
12. A single woman is called independent and powerful, a single man is called a loser.

I'll stop there for now.

Women complain about being objectified but they subsidize the behavior. Women make fun of male virgins as losers, but then attack men for being sex obsessed pigs. Women complain about equality and then call men cheap for wanting to split dinner. Women complain about men not helping to clean up, but would not tar a roof for anything.

On a more subtle note, why do we have to put down the toilet seat, why don't women put it up? Why do women get a row of stalls but men get urinals? I personally prefer to pee in a toilet without a guy standing next to me. But what I want doesn't matter.

I'm constantly called a loser because I don't have that ubiquitous modern parasite, a girlfriend. I'm sorry but I literally can't afford a girlfriend. My mind and my compassion and my self reliance are irrelevant unless they add up to me being a good little slave.

Every movie and every song with a relationship in it, has at some point or at all points a declaration of a few basic servility requirements.

1. Men must always put the needs of women ahead of their own.
2. Women must always be saved while men are expendable.
3. A man dieing for a cause is heroic, a woman dieing for a cause is tragic.
4. Men must always be the one to go the extra mile with regard to bridging a relationship gap.
5. If a woman makes an arbitrary demand no explanation is required.
6. A man's sole purpose in life is to please and then bed and breed with a woman.

I am not a sperm and cash donor. I am a thinking feeling human being.

I mean look at all the examples. Take "Meet Joe Black". Here we have a movie about death, the most powerful force in reality, actually having trouble pleasing a typical attractive affluent American woman.

Turn on the TV, Every commercial is about either something a woman can demand or something a man must provide. Everything the media broadcasts is either related to a product designed to make women hotter, give a man an edge in competition with other men, or maintain an existing relationship. It's all veiled prostitution on one end and role enforcement on the other.

"Every kiss begins with Kay." "Choosy moms choose Jiff."

I could go on and on.

I'm indirectly single by choice, because I refuse to buy spend or lie in an effort to form a sexual relationship with a woman. Plus I want one on equal terms, which makes me a sexist pig apparently. Go figure.

P.S. I'm totally willing to debate any of this.

Terroristic Monogamy.

Monogamy in a way represents our capitulation to a terrorist's demands. Allow me to explain.

Monogamy is at its core a submission to feelings of jealousy. A way to structure our lives in such a way that we tolerate and even encourage the indulgence of this rather harmful emotion, in a way we indulge no other negative emotion.

There is an excellent article on DrSpock.com for understanding and dealing with sibling (and general) jealousy. Which I think can be helpful in understanding what i mean. (http://www.drspock.com/article/0,1510,3962,00.html)

As I was reading it I realized that from the first paragraph, everything in it could be seen as a pertinent to polygamy.

From the beginning it treats jealousy as not something which should be placated but something which should be understood, utilized, and overcome. Which is the exact same attitude I suggest we adopt with regard to monogamy and polygamy in the united sates and everywhere else.

Nowhere in this article will you see it suggest that since (sibling) jealousy is natural the only real workable solution is to not have more than one child. Which is precisely the solution one would be forced to arrive at if using the same logic applied to lovers.

To me both are reprehensible. You cannot tell me how many children I can have for the exact same reasons you cannot tell me who to love and when. If I love two women or more, so be it! I will not choose between them if they love me in return any more than I would choose a favorite child. Further, I would not ask a person who loved me to choose between me or another if I loved them.

It is quite ironic that very early on the article uses a polygamous situation as a metaphor for how a child feels when a new baby arrives because the article itself presents many valid points which could easily carry over into both a critique of, and solution set for, problems stemming from polygamy.

Some examples…

“There really is no reason for an older child to love the new baby at first. In time, the relationship may grow very close and loving, but at the start the new baby is at best a novelty, at worst, an interloper and enemy.”

This is exactly the type of emotions one can expect as a couple makes the jump from monogamous (in practice) to polygamous.

“Rivalrous feelings are often more intense in a firstborn child, because he has been used to the spotlight and has had no competition.”

…and again.

“Generally speaking, jealousy of the baby is strongest in the child under five years, because he is much more dependent on his parents and has fewer interests outside the family circle. The child of six or more is drawing away a little from his parents and building a position for himself among his friends and teachers. Being pushed out of the limelight at home doesn't hurt so much.”

This illustrates one of the real motivations for monogamy, attention greed and control. And again it offers a solution to what will be a common problem.

And finally we have the real gold of the article, a breakdown of why dealing with these emotions rationally is super useful. Hell, this is a rather convincing argument for encouraging both multiple children and multiple mates.

“Though jealousy can't be completely prevented, you can do a great deal to minimize it or even to convert it into positive feelings. If your child comes to realize that there is no reason to be so fearful of a rival, it strengthens his character so that he will be better able to cope with rivalry situations later in life, at work, and at home.”

“Parents can help a child to actually transform resentful feelings into cooperativeness and genuine altruism. The stresses and strains of coping with a new sibling can be transformed into new skills in conflict resolution, cooperation, and sharing.”

“These are lessons that are hard won. Learning to cope with the challenges of not being the only show in town may be the lesson that is most valuable of all to later success.”

Thank you very much Sitarih (http://sitarih.stumbleupon.com/) for sending me this article!

Online dating.

(in reffrence to eharmony.com)

I am by no means taking the "online dating is for losers" approach, but this does seem to me unusually slanted. I myself am a polygamist, and a fetishist, and I am certain I would not be welcome there if they can't even handle something as normal as gay people.

But I feel the need to defend them a bit because the problem is not with matching people the problem is simple supply and demand associated with monogamy. The premise here is false. There is not someone for everyone because some people are perfect to many people. The solution is not a database, which at best will merely more effectively match existing options, the solution is to learn to share and to spread out your demands of a mate over many individuals.

It’s like this, a new way to search and drill for oil (hyper efficient databased monogamy) is not a real solution, renewable power (new mating paradigm) is.
We allow specialists into every other aspect of our lives. We don't demand that our car repair guy our plumber our gardener our dentist our doctor and our chef be the same person, because that would be absurd. You’d end up with 4 guys system wide that everyone wants and everyone else gets the shaft.

That is the situation today with mating. There is a small percentage of highly desirable men and women, but many of the traits we demand are in conflict. (like compassion and ambition)

Monogamy is a means of control. They want to keep us tense and unhappy.

Mercenaries

It is astonishing how badly one can be made to feel without physical damage or death being involved.

Imagine you have an enemy, imagine this enemy was your friend. Imagine that you decide to take one for the team and patch things up despite your continuing to hurt mightily. Imagine that this enemy begins to speak to you one day, and you get excited, you think ‘hey maybe I’m not the only one trying for peace’, imagine they are so good at it that they just talk to you for like 3 minutes and you imagine for those three minutes a future without animosity. And then the person makes a request of you and it becomes clear that the whole conversation was a sham, a prelude to the request.

Suddenly you’re made to feel used and worthless, and worse you have no one to blame because it’s human nature. No one actually likes anyone else. They only like what the person provides. All love is conditional, all relationships are exchanges.
The lines between partner, victim, family, friend, lover, customer, are only drawn by the nature of those provisions, and the effort required to provide them, and how badly each service is needed. For example if a guy you know is really funny, and he doesn't even have to try, you will hang around him because laughing is fun, and now let’s say you have a really nice house, so he hangs around you for the comfort, this could be called a friendship. But deep down, it isn’t. Because if you lose the house and he stops being funny one will tire of the other.

How is one expected to deal with that? Why is it always on the victim to adapt?

The Founding Fathers.

“The foundations of this country are based on religion”

I always see this come up when they ask some ignorant theist’s opinion on some topic. I say ignorant because its provably true not to be petulant or insulting. But that debate has been well covered elsewhere. Ultimately it is an argument from authority.
What I’d like to talk about however is the alternate answer. Which could be stated as follows..

“Ok, so let’s assume you’re right and the founding fathers did want this to be a religious nation… so what?”

I mean really, so what?! Sure the constitution is an astonishing document, and despite its problems I do see America as a wonderful nation, since a nation is at its core an idea and I think America is a good idea. But the point here is that just because America was a good idea doesn't mean everything the founders of America thought was a good idea. In fact I think it can easily be argued that they were aware of this distinction and that's why the included provision for the evolution of the document in the first place.

I mean seriously just run down a partial list of things these guys thought were a good idea as well, and you tell me if they need to be defended solely on that basis.

1. Only whites should vote.
2. Only landowners should vote.
3. Slavery is a good plan.
4. Only men should vote.
5. Women need to be smacked around on occasion.
6. ...So do children, prisoners, and soldiers.

The bottom line is obviously that we need to not let dead men make our decisions for us. History is there to remind us what happened when we tried certain things so that we can craft for ourselves a more perfect future, it is not there for us to emulate till the end of time.

So please, if you are or ever were, a minority, a woman, a solider a prisoner, a non-land owner, or a child, try to refrain from using the founding fathers’ intention as an argument.

Just doing my bit.

I did not write this but I want to know who did.

Anyone have any idea who wrote this?

Example:

This bloke comes over and wants to shag your partner (from the traditional male point of view). He thinks he is the better gene strain, though he may not be aware this is an accurate expression of his motive, and he wants to shag everything in order to best ensure the perpetuation of that gene strain. She knows, if all her girlie-bits are in working order, she will perpetuate her gene strain regardless and should attempt impregnation by the best she can find to improve the chances of her offspring surviving to breed in their own turn.

Man against man, not for personal survival but for sureness in mind. He wants to shag her. What are you going to do about it? All or nothing, dependent upon on the life expectancy in conflict with the challenger. Win some, lose some. Better to survive with genitals attached and to shag someone less dangerous/sought after than to die without having bred. Violent competition is not unnatural to a man. Unfortunately.

The "civilisation" of modern society has done much to cloud this simplicity by imposing rules and inventing structures for relationships. Though less clear in the cold light of day, the dull of evening and the effects of alcohol or similar drugs, in removing the conditioned reflex of modern inhibitions, can find this primal survival instinct showing itself quite readily. Many a fight begins with the words "What (are) you looking at?"

So, to recap, man cannot naturally be certain he has bred, that the child a woman carries and bears is actually his. The woman can know. Only in circumstances of exceptional promiscuity will a woman have any doubt about who the father was. Man knows woman has this edge. It is something he can never take away. Unable to equally compete with woman, man used his physical strength advantage to change the rules and thus bias the game heavily in his favour.

Marriage.

The state of marriage, in primitive survival terms, is of no use to a woman. To man, however, to create an artificial allegiance, and to justify it by clever combination of the two old standards of oppression, religion and restriction of education, is to create an image of supremacy, an image of control. If, by moral and religious engineering, man can instil guilt within and have society ostracise any woman who dares to respond to her natural instinct to perpetuate her gene strain to greatest effect he assumes a very real, if fragile, control. Ever sub-conscious of this fragility, modern man is nervous.

Education.

By restricting women's access to education and rendering them an underclass, man took on all the responsibility of providing. This took time. To provide adequately could take a lot of time. Spending all this time making the outside world their exclusive domain and burdening themselves with the commitment to work, each individual man found they had less power over their own partner precisely because this contracted separation gave the womenfolk more time to be themselves.

Machines.

The advent of the machine age backfired somewhat for man. The single area where man had had a genuine advantage over woman was in physical strength. Machines that made man's work less strenuous rendered it within the capability of woman. Revolution had become possible. The religious and moral engineers were urgently called upon to enhance the oppression and it became absolutely crucial women remained unable to gain access to education and the proof of man's deception.

War.

Mechanisation of war was the single most profound error on man's part. Men fought. Women didn't. It was the man's rule. Oops. Whereas prior to the age of machines each warrior could kill only a very few of the enemy before being overcome, if only by tiredness, and individual battles only lasted a day, now it was possible for even small people to kill hundreds of the enemy and barely break into a sweat. The quality of the warrior became second to the quality of his equipment. In the 1914-1918 war in Europe all sides were pretty evenly matched. An unprecedented and previously incomprehensible number of men died.

Peace.

While all the men were off being manly and killed, the women had been encouraged through necessity to carry out tasks and to take on duties that they had been raised to believe were beyond their capabilities. This period of emergency emancipation during the conflict, and the concurrent significant reduction in the male population, marked the end of the total patriarchy that had been the way since the dawn of "modern civilisation".

The country not having completely fallen apart in the four or five years they had been preoccupied with slaughtering each other for the sake of a redrawn map, males of a nation saying to males of other nations collectively "What (are) you looking at?" before mechanically beating each other up, it simply wasn't possible to pretend women were less than capable.

Whilst it was impossible, under these new circumstances, to deny the vote to women, it was deemed prudent to only allow the vote to women over thirty years of age. Any women with the vote, therefore, will have been raised in the pre-war oppression and will be less likely to play seriously with the status quo. Whilst this was a magnanimous gesture, the odds remained in the male favour with the simultaneous granting of the vote to all males over twenty-one. This imbalance held for ten years.

War again.

Much of the same but with more modern, advanced and efficient killing machines. More men die. A few more women die, too, especially thanks to the aeroplane. But the overall effect is the same. The differences between male and female roles blur further still.

Peace (ish)

A better educated and post-war-cynical populace naturally diminished the power of the Churches. The efficiency of killing technology had become so great no country would exist if they started a fight and lost. Automation in the workplace left very few tasks the preserve of the physically strong. Man had no advantage. The establishment would remain until its own rules, created under an assumption only men would have a say in what transpired, ate at its fabric enough for it to crumble to dust.

The contraceptive pill.

If a woman didn't want a baby she didn't have to have one. Note how the Roman Catholic Church still refuses to permit contraception. Note a patriarchal regime still insistent nobody at all shagged Mary. Note how likely that is. Consider how likely it is a woman made it up. A woman would have had a girl child. But then again, a woman wouldn't have needed to make it up at all.

The Present.

Information is everywhere. Men can't pretend anymore. They are back kicking their heels and showing off to each other. And it isn't going to get any better for them. Your average 1996 man is flailing wildly in a changing world. The values his ancestors held and taught are seen to be bollocks. To some, the inherent advantages of such sociological distortion outweigh the callousness of the oppression, but they would, whatever. To others, it sits as an uncomfortable heritage, an embarrassment and sometimes a guilt. The average is a total uncertainty. It will take a long time for the average man to accept this uncertainty is beyond his control.

Neo Damsels

"I've always depended on the kindness of strangers." uttered Blanche DuBois, in “A Streetcar Named Desire”. A line once so antiquated and indicative of a long dead era -and irresponsibility- is slowly and insidiously making a comeback, that is, if it ever really left. It seems to me that the women’s liberation movement is making a tremendous backslide in American culture as a result of two major factors. The first being movies and television making it a male’s duty to cater to a woman’s needs if she is attractive, or should I say, sexually alluring, enough. And the second being women who are eager to exploit this opportunity to sell their bodies, and their dignity, for an easy ride without being honest about the nature of the sale. In fact, these days, shaking your ass for preferential treatment isn’t so much an attack on dignity, as it is accepted commerce. Strippers make more money than many socially vital positions. Which is fine because they are honest about it, my problem is with those who are every bit as much sex dealers, but without the sand to be honest about it.

I say we repeal sexual harassment laws entirely. If women don’t want to be called toots they shouldn’t wear jeans 2 sizes too small and spend more money annually on makeup than they do on healthcare.

In today’s environment when so many jobs are based on the strength of your resume, and that being in part based on your GPA, and that in turn being a result of your scholastic ability, attractive women have an extremely unfair advantage, even over equally attractive men. And yet still they are underrepresented in most colleges and income brackets. I’m sure some will say that turnabout is fair play, commenting on the years of male dominance, but I’m with Gandhi on that one, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Further-more I’m not so sure dominance through sexual appeal is a form of true power anyway, since at best it is an ability to influence those with what I would call real power. Sexual selection is the only real power in this context. It could even be viewed as a form of parasitism, but then again oratorical skill is just a way to influence others as well, so in a way it is power. Anyway..

I worked in a computer lab at a college for 3 years, and during that time I consistently saw brilliant young men "helping" attractive young women with their assignments, sometimes bordering on plagiarism. I, as a hard working studying college student, resented the fact that attractive young ladies have a virtually inexhaustible supply of private tutors available to them for free, simply because they behaviorally and physically match the television’s description of what beauty is. I also resent that fact that media makes it obligatory that males help without the ability to acceptably demand a sexual return for their work, despite that being precisely the arrangement that is implied by the woman, via her behavior and choices. How many times has something like the following been uttered at the end of these little session? “Oh you expected affection of some type? I thought you were just being nice, you’re a pig.” Head for lobster just isn’t socially accepted these days, despite the request for lobster being delivered from within a slinky red dress, using a tone of voice usually reserved for phone sex, and a physical proximity that would earn a male a harassment suit.

And that’s only the beginning; I’m not even going to seriously consider the free meals, free rides, and discounts that inevitably will result from these study sessions. Services that someone eventually has to pay for. Imagine the math major sitting doing little tiffany’s online test, only to be interrupted by a pout, “I’m hungry.” We all know where this would go. I’ll bet I could maintain a 4.0 also if I had a squad of people to do my work for me, feed me, and drive me around, all for an investment of clothing and tone.

These girls will sail through the system buoyed on the work of others, and they will leave a trail of resentment and fraudulence in their wake. Not to mention lower male GPAs as a result of time lost trying to acquire that object that screams success in our culture, the young trophy wife.

Can one really overestimate the potential damage of this trend? The very concept of a college graduate will begin to lose value. Isn’t it already? ‘Educated’ will mean less and less, emotion will begin to triumph over logic. And history has shown the consequences of that. People will become more religious as science blunders again and again as a result of giving money and power to attractive idiots who circumvented the system. People will die of medical neglect more often because attractive nurses pass more easily than skilled ones. In all professionally moderated arenas skill will suffer replaced by style and sex. Is this really good for us?

I don’t think this was what was intended by the matriarchs of the woman’s civil liberties movement. I don’t think women fought to enter college alongside men so they could giggle and dress their way through it. Women advance themselves sexually in every other walk of life and nature allows that, so be it, sexual selection is destroying humanity from both sides anyway so I’ll let that slide, but in an abstract setting like academia it presents an unfair and correctable advantage.

The only real solution is gender divided schooling. Equal rights don’t have to be the same location. We have separate bathrooms don’t we? If we’re so equal, and sex isn’t a factor, then why do we have separate bathrooms anyway? Why have gender specific scholarships? Why ask gender on admission papers? Or race for that matter. If it truly doesn’t matter, why ask at all?

About bathrooms, why not institute one person at a time unisex bathrooms? After all, I don’t like peeing for an audience no matter what their gender. Why do I have to have a urinal? Why can’t the guys have a row of stalls? Because girls are more important now, they are society’s carrot, that's one reason gay marriage is even an issue. In any case true merit should warrant advantage, and sexual attractiveness isn’t a true merit because it’s presence is subjective.

Assault.

According to this report.... a 21 year old man was charged with throwing a snowball at a woman who was waiting for the bus. There was a mistrial, then a new trial was set, and then the crages were dismissed.

The consensus of netizens everywhere is that this lady is a cry baby and that this case is frivolous.

This may shock my regular readers but I for one don't think so, and am proud of her for a few reasons.

1. She had to anticipate this reaction, and yet she went ahead. That's courage. Some women are too afraid to report rape for fear of local ridicule, this woman risked global ridicule over simple assault and perhaps even principal.

2. Assault is assault. Either we are allowed to hit the people that annoy us or we aren't. This position smacks more of integrity to me than pettiness. of course I don't know the woman.

3. I've been nailed with a chunk of ice before and I'm pretty sure that was my first broken rib.

4. She was with her boyfriend and did not brow beat him into physically beating the other man, and he did not rush to do it himself, so she seems to have chosen well I think with regard to her mate, something very rare among females. (every woman has a parade of idiot ex boyfriends in their past they are more than happy to tell you about if you just ask... so don't think I'm just bitching because women hate me :P )

5. She could have played the sex card by saying he threw it at her butt or something but she decided to be honest.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm as much a hater of typical damsels in distress as anyone, thats what my next post will be. And people do need to whine less about some things(and more about others, like say income tax, and the federal reserve), but if someone nails me in the back with an ice ball I would report them as well.

The idiot wisdom on this is that I should just throw one back or 'be a man and kick some ass' but I don't subscribe to the fight-for-face culture. Fighting should be attempted murder, if should be that serious and that much avoided. If I'm fighting someone it's because they are trying to kill me and I will try to kill them. In my opinion there should be no crime classification 'assault'. It should be assumed that if you were attacking someone you wanted them dead.

Fighting without lethal intent is worthless antler bashing and I won't do it. Which means my only other option is the legal system. Every time I've ever been in a fight I was trying to kill the other person. I haven't fought in my adult life because I don't fight unless I'm prepared to kill, and if I'm going to have to kill, I'm going to have a good, and very likely legal, reason to do it, hence my concealed weapons permit.

This case and the cultural reaction to it is a prime example of whats wrong with our school system and our child rearing laws. All the idiots who don't understand why this woman called the cops, or think she's weak for doing so are simply angry because at some point in their lives they were assaulted, either by their parents, a teacher, or a fellow student like this, but were too scared to stand up legally for themselves. They were told that their demand for justice and fair play and personal space was a sign of weakness. ('walk it off boy' 'don't be a pussy' etc.) and they either internalized this edict (if you cant beat'em, join'em.) or they don't want her to see justice because they saw none.

Now, I've been in that situation, I know it sucks to get hurt and not be able to do anything about it. But I'm not going to let that corrupt my idea of ethics. Here is the foundation of all ethics, you do not act in a fashion which causes a net drop in human happiness. Now some long term happiness requires an investment of short term happiness, such as building a deck, or saving your money, but thats not a drop so much as a lack of rise, which is a whole other essay.

I have a series of questions for those who thinks this woman is weak. Would a hand full of talcum powder be any better? How about a hand full of change? At what density does it become assault?

The point is, legally, we've drawn the line at intentional contact. You're not supposed to strike another person against their will. If you don't like it, bitch at the law, not this woman.

Perspective and Suicide.

I’m nearly suicidal just now. Nearly. I’d never kill myself willingly, for the record.

I’m a healthy, well fed, non-homeless, American, white, male, with no real enemies, no rent, and no mortgage. I don’t even have a car payment, since I don’t have a car. And yet if it were not for my parents I’d totally 12 gauge myself, I wouldn’t even have to use my toes. (I’m 6’5” long arms.)

Now I recently lost my best friend. Not to cancer or a car wreck, but just a stupid girl. Why does this bother me so much? No one died. It’s not the end of the world, hell as far as things go it’s not even really a thing at all. I found out that I really didn’t know him. And he apparently really didn’t know me. Other than my parents I spent more time with this person than I did with any other human. And still no real lasting connection was made. What does this say about us as a species?

The reason this bothers me so much, so deeply and fundamentally is that it did not occur in a vacuum. This was not ‘our’ fault exclusively. This event and my emotional reaction to it are both indicative severe external social problems. One being monogamy, which I won’t get into here because that's a whole other paper. But generally things like pride, fear, insecurity, ignorance, oblivity.

There are two types of reasons for suicide. Intellectual and emotional.

My intellectual problem is this. I've spent my whole life trying to be kind. I've always had a deep desire to please. And on the whole society’s reaction to me has been poor. Every time I've gotten angry or greedy and acted impulsively because of it, I've prospered. Every time I've been kind and gentle or compassionate I've been harmed. My recent problem stems directly from two acts of kindness. I’m not here to talk smack so I won’t provide details. I would just like to comment on the commonalty here. We all know the phrase no good deed goes un punished, usually uttered as an ironic refrain. But really, what if that actually is the case?

What if reality doesn’t want us to be good to each other? Or at least has manifested in such a way that doing good results in a net drop in global pleasure. Strictly speaking part of what defines a good act is cost, so at least technically speaking, good acts are all punished instantly at least once. I’m beginning to think it is this way universally and here we have the root of my intellectual reasons for wanting to non-exist. If my choice is to be a torturous bastard, or to be a miserable one, I’d rather not play the game. It’s that simple.

Emotionally my problem is this. I’m suffering and I shouldn’t. Not as in I don’t deserve it (which I don’t) but like I explained in the first part of this essay my life is awesome, especially compared to the average inhabitant of this little dirtball. If all that doesn’t make me happy, what will? Sure I could go the Buddhist route and try to eliminate want, but that's not really a solution is it, that's like cutting your hands off to avoid arthritis. I mean isn’t merely not suffering the same as being dead? If I’m gunna end up dead I don't need to waste a couple decades praying first.

The meat is flawed. I have many things that brought me great pleasure when I acquired them but that pleasure faded with time. However I also have many memories which hurt me, and some are over 15 years old, and they still hurt me as much as they did. This is not right. If we don’t open ourselves up to the responsibility of physically changing our brains so that this is not the case, it’s going to become abundantly clear that there is no point in even trying to exist.

Either that or we should all live like Mongol invaders and really embrace Crowley’s “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

I wish someone could give me hope beyond a distant transhumanist future. But if my best friends won’t why would any of you?

Science vs Religion: The Needless War.

People who have actually read some of my work may find me repeating myself on certain topics, but thats only because I can't remember where i put every little concept.

So here's some crap that may or may not be new.

Basically my point here is that while religion discovered early the power of hiding facts, science kind of stepped over it in smug oblivity. - And yes, I'm aware thats 'not a word', yet. don't complain, you're lucky I even attempt to use your spelling. -

Like most of the horrors of religion, I don't think it's so much a willful thing as tradition and stagnation of psychological inertia. But the end result is the same, the modern scientific community has way too much in common with the early church.

Here's what I had to say in my essay "The Lab Coat Effect"

It's a startling fact that science today has many similarities with the early church. Allow me to elaborate. Let’s compare a modern day orthodox scientist and a priest of the early church. They both have a body of text that is incomprehensible to the layman, both texts are unreadable without special linguistic training, both profess to understand what's in that body of text better than the layman could, both profess that the text is extremely important and reveals the nature of reality to one degree or another, both throw up barriers to the acquisition or translation of the text for lay examination, both are caustic of any work not approved by their orthodox ruling bodies and councils, and perhaps most importantly people take their word on things because of title without having to see evidence, seeing a pattern here?

Using Latin and lingo in an era of instant translation is simply to keep the layman out more than anything.

One reason for this similarity is deceptively simple. Science is beginning to try and answer religion's question, and vice versa.

Science answers how, and religion answers why. If someone can give me an example of "how" and "why" being asked about the same thing and both giving the same answer, I really wanna hear it.

The two should never overlap. But they are both fundamentally important. the problem is merely execution. They recognize each others power and are baffled by each other, and thus they fear each other. And if there is anything we primates know about it's fear. I really think that this is pretty much what he was talking about when he said...

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Albert Einstein

The only time they fight is when they act on that insecurity and invade each others turf thinking they'll get an advantage, this is pretty well the main source of war. Religion should not try to answer how creation happened, because then you get retarded stuff like humans riding dinosaurs and a time traveling Satan. Nor should science try to tell you why you are here, you get nonsensical answers like "because e=mc^2".

If they could just grasp that How and Why are both necessary, and stick to each side there would be no need to fight. And in fact maybe they could help each other. I'll add more to this later I think.

Monogamy in the human and animal world.

A friend of mine raised some common and valid counterpoints to my previous essay located here...

http://innomen.blogspot.com/2007/12/materials-economy-and-monogamy.html

I run across these arguments and variations of them frequently. So many in fact that rather than reply in a second comment I felt it deserved its own post.

"I think that monogamy and the "traditional" small family unit consisting of two parents and their offspring is older than corporations or the church…"

Well yes, in the strictest technical sense, but as far as societies go we’ve generally been small tribal units since before we were even homosapien. Besides you’re mixing topics. The nuclear family is monogamous traditionally, but that does not mean all monogamists are in a nuclear family. For example, a monogamous pair can also live with grandparents and grand children, thus making them monogamous but non-nuclear. But I’ll try to muddle through.

“… and yes while both of those institutions may try to benefit from the drive that some people have to pursue that life, it's not as if they invented it or have to brainwash people to sustain it.”

Actually, yea they do. First of all the nuclear family is in the minority. The term wasn’t even invented until 1947. The links below suggest otherwise. The picture painted for us is that monogamy is normal. If normal is the majority, then it isn’t.

According to http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-421619/nuclear-family

The emergence of the human nuclear family has been a particularly knotty problem for Western evolutionary theorists. Like bonobos and chimpanzees, people probably are fundamentally promiscuous, though such mating behaviour is heavily proscribed by the cultures into which individuals are born and reside…

And then there is… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sexuality#Monogamy

Zoologists and biologists now have solid evidence that monogamous pairs of animals are not always sexually exclusive. Many animals that form pairs to mate and raise offspring regularly engage in sexual activities with extra-pair partners^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]} This includes previous exemplars such as swans and (depending upon circumstances) wolves. Sometimes these extra-pair sexual activities lead to offspring. Genetic tests frequently show that some of the offspring raised by a monogamous pair come from the female mating with an extra-pair male partner.^{[4][5][17][18]} These discoveries have led biologists to adopt new ways of talking about monogamy:

And then there is… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogamy#Animals

Monogamy is one of several mating systems observed in animals. The amount of social monogamy in animals varies across taxa, with over 90 percent of birds engaging in social monogamy but only 3 percent of mammals engaging in social monogamy. The incidence of sexual monogamy appears quite rare in the animal kingdom. It is becoming clear that even animals that are socially monogamous engage in extra-pair copulations.[1]

So the argument can easily be made that monogamy is not natural for other animals.

According to… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_family

“Generally, the trend to shift from extended to nuclear family structures has been supported by the spread of western values.”

The impact of monogamy on the formation of the psyche was not anticipated, but was later exploited. The origins of monogamy were quite simply and directly related to control. Men wanting to own women without the hassle of having to beat off competitors daily. It’s a complex collusion between the class specialists born as a result of agriculture. The warrior, the priest, the farmer.

While we are programmed to share to an extent we are also programmed to survive, and in times of actual sexual scarcity (not the artificial one we live in today) it made evolutionary sense to try and lock down a single mate for a variety of reasons, all of which were practical.

Those reasons today have all been obviated by advanced industry, agriculture, and medical technologies.

I mean come on, the word ‘obey’ is part of traditional marriage vows for women, doesn’t that tell you something?

“Just look to the animal kingdom for proof that the monogamous lifestyle is not a sinister invention of evil men; while the whole of the animal kingdom is sparse on species that practice it, it is there...”

As stated above no species is truly monogamous. So rather than trying to justify the practice by looking at all other species, which include such grand examples as fish which latch on, and the black widow, let’s look at humans. Humans are quasi monogamous at best, I’ll grant that much. But, I think you can agree that just because you can find an example of something in nature does not mean it’s a good idea. Rape is natural for example and a big part of our evolutionary past, but that’s not to say it’s a good thing.

“Yes, there probably are many more benefits to living in a commune, but i don't think that means that monogamy is evil, a means to slavery, or should be abolished. “

False dichotomy, a commune is not the opposite of monogamy. I’m not suggesting life in a commune, or even free love, as a commune is socialist in nature. I’m an anarchist. I would like to see infrastructure itself dissolve. I don’t want to live as an ant in a colony I want to live as a free thinking independent organism that has the option (but not the requirement) of interacting with others who are equally free and independent. I'm not saying everyone should have access to anyone they please, I'm simply saying that the option should be there should all parties be in agreement. Saying that "ok then well I don't want my wife to sleep with other people" is circular as that is the ownership attitude that does so much of the harm relating too and encouraged by monogamy. A more valid disagreement would be something along the lines of "I don't trust that guy, he might have a condition and be lying about it."

Secondly I’m not suggesting that monogamy be outlawed I’m suggesting that alternatives be legalized both officially and socially. Polygamy is so misunderstood that modern rational practitioners had to develop a new word (polyamory). Polygamy should not instantly mean David Koresh or psychotic pedophile Mormons or Moonies. It should not mean perversion. It should not be assumed that if I want to share my mate, or share someone else’s mate I’m a loser who can’t get one on his own or a freak. Maybe spending my life with one person is just as depressing for me as spending it alone. At least alone I have a greater degree of freedom.

“It's merely another lifestyle choice…”

But, as above, if the choice is between solitude, ridicule, or monogamy, is that really a choice?

“..we got in this monogamous society because it works for people, not all people, granted, but most of us do want to share our lives and ourselves with one person on a more intimate level than a large family group can sustain. “

Another false dichotomy, intimacy is not linked to exclusivity(or sexuality for that matter). I suppose you can’t be truly close with 40 people for purely logistical reasons, but any good parent with multiple children will tell you that extreme closeness and intimacy are possible with more than one person.

“I guess all I'm saying is, it's not as evil as you think it is...yeah it's been exploited, yes ads and churches try to cash in on it, but only because it's THE biggest demographic on the planet.”

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy#Polygamy_worldwide...

According to the Ethnographic Atlas Codebook, of the 1231 societies noted, 186 were monogamous. 453 had occasional polygyny, 588 had more frequent polygyny, and 4 had polyandry.^[5]

Controlling people with sexual tension is very effective, but it never lasts, eventually we discover that we don’t need anyone’s permission. This is the lesson I try to teach. The state should not be involved with who I love and who loves me.

“In closing, monogamy is not a perfect system, with plenty of downsides for sure, but from my perspective it's not an ultimate evil that needs to be done away with.”

Again I’m not saying outlaw it, that’s absurd. I’m saying truly allow alternatives, and the market will take care of the rest.

For the record, the legislative changes I would suggest are as follows…

1. Allow people to marry anyone who will say yes, or remove marriage.

2. Allow the sale of sex between persons just as we allow the sale of back massages.

3. Annihilate all tax or insurance impact of marriage.

If you really love your spouse you don’t need a bribe, and conversely I should not be punished because I choose not to engage in a system which is effectively against my religion.

It is the ultimate evil in the sense that efforts to force us to choose monogamy and the resulting social changes stemming from successes in that area can be shown to be the root of most American social problems.

In fact I’ll make a general claim now that monogamy can be traced back as at least contributory to most any social problem.

Materials Economy and Monogamy.

Many of the people that speak with me often or read my work, know how I feel about monogamy.

In my view monogamy is one of the most atrocious civil systems ever devised. And I'm on a passive crusade to eliminate it. Now, I don't go around spotting couples and yelling at them, or try to break up marriages.

I go with the flow. I try to make people realize just what it is they are signing up for and the damage it can do. I try to empower both men and women so that they can be happy with each other as equals, and thus fail to need state and corporate reassurance that their mate actually loves them.

Single people working as close friends, are the political and economic equivalent of a polyamorist society. So basically my approach is to discourage people from joining relationships. This does not mean the life of a monk, it merely means life without regard for what the state the church or the government has to say about the status of your intimate relationships, and a whole sale rejection of the idea that in order that one be valuable, he or she must have a single 'mate'. This does not mean do not have children, it just means that there is nothing wrong with being a single parent with a lot of friends.

I seek to empower people.

Monogamy at its core is the idea that a relationship between one human and another must be regulated and sanctioned by both the state and the corporation, and neither of these groups will ever sanction third party or more family units. Now, the state's involvement is pretty obvious, they issue marriage licenses, they issue tax breaks, they handle divorce proceedings and impose limits on when and how a person can get married, always to only one person.

But it doesn’t come close to ending there. The corporation gets in on the action by using the media to tell everyone things like “if your husband loved you he’d buy a diamond” or “if your girlfriend loved you, she’d cook with Kraft cheese”. And they are getting ever more invasive. Think of the insidious nature of “choosy moms choose Jiff” the implication being that if you buy Skippy, you’re a lousy mother.

What does this have to do with monogamy and the materials economy? Well, all of these advertisements have background. Very rarely is a commercial these days merely a notice of product on a plain background. Typically they present the product in some sort of context, and as any student of logic knows, context alters meaning. The context most commonly chosen to hock a product, is the nuclear family context. Because that is the most profitable for outside parties.

Now, I ask you, if you were a corporation, a non human immortal entity with no ability to feel pain or compassion, and the function of your existence was to take money, and you had the ability to control how Americans perceive what a family is, would you? The smart answer is another question. Does the structure of family have an impact on how much money I will spend? Yes, yes it does. And here we get into the meat of this post. The most profitable type of family unit, is a monogamous one. I’ll bet you had never even considered other types. That’s not surprising. Corporations, government, and religion have conspired for centuries to convince you of one simple idea, monogamy is the only way. But the fact is, many cultures enjoy extended families, and do so for economic reasons as well as emotional and cultural ones.

The economic reasons are the focus of this essay. A corporation wants to sell as many products per person as they can. So I ask you, which group would buy more toasters, 10 people living together, or ten people living in units of two? I lived with 6 people once, and we only had the one toaster. It worked out fine. Why? Because we shared it. Also, when it came time to buy new appliances we could have all chipped in, and ended up with the best of the best. This is bad for corporations as they do best selling tons of cheap fragile products, compared to selling one durable product.

This is why the corporations want monogamy around. Because so long as we pair off, we’ll buy more, buy cheaply, and complain less. Pooling resources means more power. Corporations have known this since birth. In fact a company is based on this idea. The simple non-zero sum game where by two people working together produce more than three people working separately, is the very foundation of tribalism. It is a the human expression of a fundamental fact of nature, so much so that multi cellular life is the result. Two cells working together produce more than three working apart.

They want us separate, they want us alone, so that they can exploit us, and continue to exploit the planet.

And their chief tool is monogamy.

First Post

This is my first post on what I would consider a pure blog.

I will try to limit my content here to things of sociopolitical and philosophical interest, content published with the goal of publishing it in written form in the next revision of The Book.

This blog in intended to be a reference point for my positions. And a public outlet for my writing.

I may post the individual chapters from my book here.

I am the first and only Cryptarian.

I hope I can help.