Unbelievably believable

I just learned about a study on how people think. It wasn't about the mechanics of thinking,  but rather they were looking at how people reacted to thinking without any outside distractions. What they learned both amazed and disgusted me.

It turns out that twenty-five percent of women and two-thirds of men would rather administer electrical shocks to themselves than "suffer" their own quiet reflections. That's right, given the option of sitting quietly and thinking to themselves or pressing a button to receive a jolt of electricity a significant portion of the human population would rather get a shock than think.

If you are one of the ones who can handle thinking, consider what this means. Two-thirds of the men you meet are so uncomfortable using their own brain they would rather get an electrical shock than think. Two-thirds! How the fuck can I respect a person who is afraid of their own brain? I certainly can't treat them as an equal. I guess there's more hope for women since only twenty-five percent of them wish they were retarded.

What are the ramifications for society when a huge block of the population refuses to think? Refuses to think! What the hell separates you from the chimps at the zoo if you don't think? Is it any wonder the world is so fucked up?

Here's the article I read if you want to check it out yourself.

The movie that wasn't there

I just finished watching "The God Who Wasn't There" on Netflix. I was hoping for an in-depth look at the historical evidence, or lack thereof, for the existence of Jesus. What I got instead was pathetic christophobia.

I've been an atheist for decades. I'm no fan of what the Abrahamic religions have done to this world. But why is it that the "enlightened" few who seek to counter these philosophical abominations always resort to the same tactics as the philosophies they despise? You can't claim the moral high ground and wallow in the mud at the same time. You can't claim dominion over the realm of reason while resorting to hyperbole and fear-mongering.

Easily the most despicable part of the movie, the part that destroyed it for me, was in the opening segment. The director took pains to lump the victims of the Mt. Carmel slaughter in with the likes of Charles Manson. He called the 86 men, women, and children who died at the hands of a secular, leftist regime "crispy fans" of the same dogma as Manson and other fundamentalists. I can't comprehend the utter disregard for human life, the lack of compassion that it takes to dismiss such a heinous crime simply because the victims didn't believe what you believe. The Branch Davidians had lived peacefully in their own little world since 1935. They may have read the same bible as the more vitriol-spewing fundamentalists. But they lived as peacefully as Buddhists. They did nothing to deserve what was wrought upon them. And they certainly deserve better than to be called "crispy fans" by some pseudo-intellectual filmmaker.

I can't recommend this film to any critical thinker. It offers nothing new. It's the same "aren't we atheists so smart!" nonsense that has been repackaged time and again. We see little evidence to support the claim made by the title of the movie. It would have been most helpful if he had explored why none of the contemporary Greek, Roman, or Egyptian scribes ever mentioned Jesus. But that never happened. Aside from briefly discussing the gap between Jesus' alleged lifetime and the first appearance of the gospels we get no mention of the lack of historical evidence. The entire movie is dedicated to the narrator/director/producer driving home the point that Christians believe what the believe based on pure faith and that the bible says some decidedly evil things. Boring. Pointless. Trite.

Robin Hood the anarchist

Certain folks are fond of citing Robin Hood as some form of moral or ethical support for the idea of wealth redistribution. After all, who doesn't like the story of Robin rushing around and returning stolen gold to the poor peasants of Sherwood?

What these folks fail to mention is exactly who it was that Robin was robbing. In those days, the only wealthy people were the nobles... also known as the ruling class... aka, the government. People ignore the fact that the villain of the story was a government employee, the sheriff. People ignore the fact that the gold Robin was stealing back was first stolen in the form of various taxes.

Robin Hood was not the prototypical socialist expropriating wealth from honest merchants who had managed to do well for themselves. Robin Hood was an anarchist actively working to bankrupt the government and return the wealth to those who had earned it.

An open letter to Verizon

When my current contract ends you will be losing me as a customer. Now that other providers carry phones that suit my needs I no longer have any reason to remain with Verizon. But I do have reason to leave.

I know you hear the same complaint regularly, quit cluttering up my phone. I live three-hundred miles from the nearest ocean. So a tide monitor is rather useless to me. I could not care less about the spoiled crybabies in the NFL. So why must I have the NFL app on my phone? I don't listen to music, I don't watch videos, I don't Skype... yet I have all these apps on my phone. These apps take up valuable space that I cannot use for the apps that I do want.

I don't mind that these apps come pre-installed. I understand marketing and the need to provide a spectrum of generic content to try and please a broad group of people. What I mind is that it is impossible to remove these apps. What fucking moron thought it was a good idea to make the NFL part of the operating system? Do you really think that is something the majority of your customers actually want? I doubt it. And just because I bought a ruggedized phone does not mean I need "adventure" apps like a compass and tide monitor. But the only way for me to remove this useless clutter from my phone is to void the warranty and risk breaking the phone by rooting it.

Or I could simply switch to another company that understands that customers are individuals with unique desires.

An honest question

If it is righteous and legal for one country to attack another when the latter uses poison gas against its own citizens, including children...


...then why didn't somebody righteously attack the US when the evil dictator Bill Clinton sent agents to use poison gas against children in Waco, Texas?

All for none and none for all

Every so often somebody says something that I find so utterly revolting that I find it difficult to remain civil about it. This time around it is author Stephen King who has roused my ire.

I realize there is no shortage of anti-gun nuts in the Hollywood crowd. But it's the attitude that Mr. King displayed in the interview I just watched which really has me seeing red. Mr. King claims he has "no patience" for people like Mr. Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. What people would that be, exactly, Mr. King? People who believe that freedom is an absolute and not open for debate? Well count me among that group.

I believe absolutely that gays should have the freedom to marry. I believe absolutely that women should have the freedom to get an abortion. And I believe absolutely that everybody should be free to own guns.

I believe absolutely that my freedoms are not dependent on the behavior of others. I don't have to license my bathtub because a number of women drown their children in a bathtub. I don't have to be chemically neutered because some men insist on raping women. And I don't have to give up my guns because a handful of sociopaths flip out and kill people.

Liberals don't believe in freedom. They talk about freedom. They rant about freedom. They write songs about freedom. But they only believe people should have a certain set of freedoms as prescribed by the Socialati*. Liberals believe that people should be free to use words like "hick", "redneck", and "hillbilly" to describe rural folks, but words like "faggot", "nigger", and "wetback" are signs of small-minded bigotry and must be eradicated. Liberals believe people should be free to bash Christians as much as they want, but anybody who bashes Muslims is an "Islamophobe" who needs to be re-educated. Liberals believe a woman who gorges herself and then deliberately vomits to avoid gaining weight is the unfortunate victim of a disorder, but a woman who just gorges herself and skips the vomiting is merely a lazy fatass who needs to learn self-control. Liberals think it's an abomination to tax the working man to pay for the "war on terror", but it's perfectly fine to tax the working man to pay for the "war on poverty". Liberals think that Tipper Gore and her PMRC were somehow different from the book-burning, right-wing censoristas* so often vilified in movies. They see the flawed right-wing attempt to eradicate crime by prohibiting alcohol as being somehow different from the flawed left-wing attempt to eradicate crime by prohibiting guns. Liberals are quick to trot out clever quips like, "if you don't like abortion, don't get one." But they get flustered if you use the exact same logic on them and tell them, "if you don't like guns, don't get one." Liberals are fond of attacking corporations by saying, "corporations can't be treated like individuals" while out the other side of their mouth they are talking about "Society" and "The Greater Good" as though they are real, live beings whose rights supersede the rights of the individuals. Liberals don't see that they are just the flip side of the same fascist, totalitarian coin occupied by conservatives.

Enough rambling. I'll get to the point. Mr. King; if you, Mr. Michael Moore, and the rest of the Socialati think this "one" is going to stand and defend the rights of those you support while you are actively trying to take away my rights then you definitely have another thing coming. You are the same sort of small-minded vermin who burned innocent young girls to death to "protect" the community from evil witches. You seek to punish those who have hurt no-one. You seek to turn honest people into criminals simply because you do not approve of their lifestyle. I have had enough of you liberals telling me how I should think, what I should eat, how I should live my life, and then expecting me to be thrilled with the situation. I have had enough of you liberals telling me that I am a second-class person unworthy of being treated with the same respect as others. I will remain silent no longer. Fuck you, Mr. King. Fuck Mr. Moore. Fuck Mr. George Soros. Fuck every single socialist. Fuck every socialist sympathizer. I am a sovereign individual. My life is mine to live, not yours to control. I have no more respect for you than I have for the inbred bible-thumpers who try to control me. Birds of a feather, you and they.

Good day, sir.

*Socialati is a portmanteau I coined because "socialist" just doesn't convey the insidiousness of the socialist movement.

*Censorista probably doesn't need an explanation.

Brief thoughts on linux

I'm a huge fan of linux. I love the flexibility and speed of it. And it's hard to be angry about the price. But mostly I like the fact I can tinker with it and adapt it to my specific needs.

I've tried some thirty different versions of linux since I first "discovered" it several years ago. One thing I've learned the hard way is that Ubuntu is to linux what Budweiser is to beer, wildly popular despite being absolute shit.