messiestobjects

In Another Universe, This Post Is About This Universe. (Where This Post Is About Another Universe, Where This Post Is About This Universe...∞

I want to do a book report on Brian Greene's new publication in the worst way, but I'm not sure that I am capable of it. I used to read popular science books quite regularly, and I'd realized that it's been years since those days at about the same time that 'The Hidden Reality' caught my eye. As I was going through it I realized that reading, and keeping pace with, popular science texts is a skill which must be practiced, especially if one is not particularly well trained in physics.

That's not to say that he doesn't do a great job of explaining the concept behind 9 different types of multiple/parallel Universes quite engagingly; he does. It's more that, once I put the book down for a few minutes after every couple of pages to think about the implications of whatever mind-blowing concept he's introduced, the particulars begin to drain away because my poor little head is not lately used to holding on to the strange and complicated concepts behind Infinity, Relativity, Quantum physics, and String Theory.

However I'm going to try because I feel that my motive in writing about this book is more an effort to hang on as best as I am able to the understanding of a beautiful dream that fades quickly after waking than an attempt to convince anyone else to read it. Of course after completing that last sentence, I've sat and stared at the book cover for about ten minutes trying to figure out how to start. Sigh.

So here then; let's begin with the apology. Mr. Greene himself goes to great lengths in the book to make the reader understand that, at the moment, no versions of the multiverse which he posits are actually provable with hard data, and therefore may fall slightly outside the boundary of science. I say slightly, because though their detection may currently lie beyond our best detectors, they are in fact unavoidable outcomes of certain aspects of science which ARE scientifically sound, mathematically speaking.

As a comparison, when Einstein published his theory of General Relativity the technology available at the time was not capable of disproving his math. He came up with that theory using creative visualization, math and perspiration. And whatever other tools of genius he had at his disposal. But he himself did not go out and measure the Cosmic Background Radiation which ultimately helped to prove his theory correct. Now I'm not comparing Brian Greene or any other String Theorist to Einstein, (and neither was Greene in his book) merely the scientific process itself which is at work here. If you follow the math it leads to amazing places which, more often than you might think, describes the cosmos as it is in reality, even though it may also lead beyond all common sense. So this exploration of the side effects and the possibilities of infinity, string theory and math is extremely valid science, even if in the end it turns out that they've missed something and there are other things at work. You have to explore every avenue if you want to find out what's actually out there.

So why bother getting all excited over Parallel Universes if there's a chance it's inaccurate? Because it's exciting. And because, all things being equal, it's probably not inaccurate. It is currently science's best guess, much as Relativity and Evolution once were, and therefore worth a lengthy consideration.

So I'll start with the multiverse which I understand the most clearly, naturally. He calls it the Quilted Multiverse and here is how it works: There is some question in the cosmologist community whether the space that we inhabit is either very, very, very freaking large but ultimately finite, or whether it is in fact infinite. It all depends on the overall shape of the universe, which we don't yet know. (It's important to have a good grasp of the concept of infinity for this one, which I am lucky to have in some finite degree thanks to Rudy Rucker. His book 'White Light' is a rollicking exploration of infinity, and with extremely visual storytelling really helped me to glimpse what mathematicians actually mean when they use the term infinity. I highly recommend it.)

At any rate, If our Universe in fact turns out to be infinite (as the current trend of thought among cosmologists apparently believe is the likeliest scenario) then there is almost certainly another messiestobjects out there, writing up a book report about a publication by Brian Browne, (the last name of the author perhaps being the only difference between that Earth and this one) and positing some strange world where a version of himself is typing up a book report on a publication by a Brian Greene. In fact, there would be an infinite amount of Earths out there, that look just like ours. And there would be an infinite amount of other possible Earths as well. One, perhaps, that was solely inhabited by shrimp. Or one with no shrimp. Let your imagination go wild, like mine!

The reason why this would be so is simply statistical. Matter is evenly distributed throughout the visible Universe on very large scales. What that means is, you can take a really big box, say about 100 million light years cubed and chunk it down here, then weigh all of the matter in it. Then pick it up and chunk it down over there, again weighing all of the matter. Do this in several locations throughout the Universe and you will find that each box-full of matter will weigh in at about equal amounts, and it will be so all throughout the Universe. The idea here is that while matter may be evenly spread throughout an infinite Universe, there is a finite amount of forms that matter can take.

So the implication of this is that matter, as much of it as there is, can only arrange itself in so many ways. It's like a deck of cards; there are 52 cards in a deck, and 52 cards can be arranged in 10⁶⁷ unique ways. That number fully written out is 80,658,175,170,943, 878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000  which is obviously a really huge number. However, once you have arranged those 52 cards in that many unique ways, the cycle will repeat and you will start to get duplicate arrangements. Of course, some arrangements are more likely than others, so you will have odd random assortments of cards duplicate more often than you will see the deck fall out completely arranged from aces to Kings in all four suits, but as unlikely as that is, it will happen eventually.

The same is true for the arrangement of matter. In the entirety of our visible Universe, there are about 10¹⁰¹²² possible particle configurations. Which again, is a totally inconceivable number yet is definitely a finite number. Once you've reached every possible unique combination, the patterns will begin to repeat, and repeat infinitely. Thus, messyobjects is out there, messierobjects, and even an evenmoremessiestobjects, all trying to say hi to me right now. Since our brains and life experiences are nearly completely identical and in some cases absolutely identical, I can say hi to them and they've received the message! I know this because I've received their message, having sent one myself. We're totally braintext messaging across the infinite light years right now. They say hi back, and ask how's the wife and pets and I say oh, the same as yours, pretty much. ad infinitum. (Of course it's not a very interesting conversation, having identical thoughts and all, but there's always a downside.)

Whew. That was the first and easiest version of a multiverse in this book, and believe me they get far more difficult to grasp. The existence of the Quilted Multiverse depends only on discovering the shape of the Universe we currently reside in without calling any of the more unproven forms of science into the matter, but it is important here to note that Brian Greene and other String Theorists did not go out looking for multiverses. They did not read some ridiculous New Age drama and say "Oy, how can we finagle the math to come up with parallel dimensional portal-thingies in order to dazzle the public?" No, the attempt to understand actual observed phenomena through the framework of String Theory led them mathematically all on its own to many other different types of possible multiverses.

The Inflationary Multiverse, which better fits the definition of a multiverse in my extremely humble opinion, is one in which bits of our universe break off and inflate into bubble universes of their own, our Universe having broken off from another "larger" one at its own birth. There are also the Brane, Cyclic, Landscape, and Quantum types of multiverses. I like the Quantum Multiverse; it basically goes back to the Schrödinger's Cat thing, and Quantum uncertainty.

(jpeg of a print by Jie Qi) In case you are not familiar with Schrödinger's Cat, it is a Thought Experiment designed to help one visualize how Quantum Particles behave. The way it goes is, you put a cat in a box, close the lid, and have a radioactive atom timed to decay and open a flask of poison. In the quantum world, there is an equal possibility of the decay happening and causing the cat to be dead or alive when you open the lid. Until you open the lid, the cat is actually in an uncertain state, being both alive and dead at the same time which would be an unsettling thing to witness, I'm sure. The traditional outcome of this little game is that when you open the box, the probability wave collapses and the cat becomes one or the other. Thus the very act of observation determines the ultimate quantum state. (For a more accurate and less confused rundown of the thought experiment in mid-twentieth century science nerd jargon, visit the wikipedia page on the subject)

This is weird. But this type of behavior has been observed in quantum particle physics, hence the Quantum Uncertainty Principle and it does not apply to the world of things of our size, only to the realm of the very, very small. There is a gap between the quantum scale and ours where Quantum Theory breaks down and reality then becomes guided by Newtonian physics and Relativity. If you add String Theory math to this experiment, you can bridge the gap and in fact the cat is actually both alive and dead for realsies, in two different universes! Long, complex, nearly-incomprehensible-to-a-non-String-Theorist story short, the reason that Quantum particles behave so oddly is that we are seeing them play out every possible state of existence across a multiverse.

As an interesting aside, that particular multiverse explanation is where the idea comes from that every time one makes a choice, universes diverge and a separate reality for each choice carries on it's course. It may sound a bit hippie or New Age-ish, but if String Theory turns out to be correct, this in fact may actually be happening, right now, right next to you.

Another multiverse is the Holographic Multiverse, which is conceptually easy, but also very hard to explain the whys and wherefores of. This one is due to the nature of information and how it is stored in the universe, and when looked at closely begins to look a bit as though all matter as we see it is actually a projection of another type of matter on a distant quantum dimensional surface. In this multiverse all of our actions, in fact all interaction between all forms of matter everywhere is a shadow play. We're hand puppets. Don't ask me to explain the science though. It has something to do with Black Holes, very tall drinking straws, and math. Beyond that, I haven't retained a thing. Damn it.

The final multiverse of the book is the so-called Ultimate Multiverse, a distinction earned due to a new twist on the Anthropic Principle, which is the idea that asking the question "How is it possible that our planet, our very universe have the conditions necessary to bring forth life?" is meaningless because life evolves in the place to which it is suited. In other words, we are here both to ask the question and be the answer. I like this one for purely philosophical reasons, as it's an (yet another) answer of sorts in the debate between religion and science, at least for a certain set of debate points. The religious often like to point out that the Universe, Life, and Everything are far too complex to have "just happened" which is about as far as their understanding of the sciences of Cosmology and Evolution usually go. A very sad, limited viewpoint indeed.

At any rate, the Ultimate Multiverse answers the question of why the Physical Laws of our particular Universe are just right in order for galaxy, star, planet, and life formation to "just happen". Because in an infinite multiverse, where every possible Universe that can exist does exist, one with our physical laws and conditions for life merely becomes an inevitability, not a miracle. Therefore there is no "why" of existence, merely the statistical likelihood of it. You'll note that the Ultimate Multiverse differs from the Quilted Multiverse in the sense that, with the latter, there may be an infinite set of volumes with repeating particle configurations, allowing for infinite versions of themselves, however they are all still set in the same Universe as we are and subject to the same physical laws, merely separated by distances too large for any technology to ever cross. The Quilted version answers the question of why there is life on Earth, but does not answer the why of the overall conditions in our Goldilocks Universe and its particular laws of physics being just right in order to allow life to come about in the first place. The Ultimate Multiverse does, however. It states that while there are Universes like ours with just the right amount of density for galaxies, stars, and planets to form, there are also an infinite amount of stillborn ones. Our Universe is the Royal Flush that comes along once in a blue moon... or rather once in a Blue Iteration.

There are solid mathematical underpinnings to the Ultimate Multiverse, as well as for all of the others, but I'm not going there. If you want to try to understand them, or any of the other concepts, I suggest that you pick up a few popular science books and get cracking. 'The Hidden Reality' is wonderful, but unless you've already attempted to come to grips with the ideas behind Relativity, Infinity, or Quantum Physics, you might want to get a more basic picture of the Universe first. 'Cosmos' by Carl Sagan is an excellent place to start for basic Cosmology, that Rucker book I already pimped for Infinity, and Brian Greene's earlier work 'The Elegant Universe' is a great introduction to String Theory. So get busy with the head scratching, braniac!

Another great way to contemplate infinity, by the way, is to obsessively-compulsively watch fractal zoom videos. I've posted about fractals before, here and here. I don't know how, but I'm sure that fractal math figures in to multiverses somehow. This one magnifies the Mandelbrot set 10²⁷⁵ times, and ends up at a copy of itself. Apropos.

 

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Good Night, I Hate To Go And Leave This Pretty Sight

And now... we have arrived. I want to sing poetry for Munich, that's how gay for it I am. My favorite city in the whole wide world. We got off the train from Nürnberg and I was able to begin extolling about the pure awesomeness of the city to Julie right there in the best train station in the world (The München Hauptbahnhof). They serve a slow-roasted half-chicken there, fondly referred to by the old AFRC-E gang (Armed Forces Recreation Centers-Europe. Sorry, I'll try not to parenthesize too often) as cheap chicken. Because it's the most delicious thing you've ever eaten and it only cost like 5 bucks. As we'd planned all year, we met a friend from Chiemsee for some cheap chicken there. Well and for Krampus, but cheap chicken first. Jeff Nimmer brought along his girlfriend Beth and his friend John, and we began our traditional meeting day. Cheap chicken at the bahnhof, then a walk down to the Marienplatz.

The last two pictures are of the New Town Hall, because it's only just over 100 years old. It faces the Marienplatz, which is what they call the main square of Munich, but it seems like every town and city in Bavaria has a Marienplatz also. But the one in Munich is definitely special. I love that building. From there we hit a few other of our favorite spots; Dahlmyer's, the tomb of Bavaria's unknown soldier, the Viktualienmarkt. Stop for a Gluhwein here and there. We skipped the traditional bacon cheeseburger at the Irish Pub as this time around as we were all coming from the States and no one was craving one. This year it's delicious, comforting German food all the way. Then it was back to the Hostel for a nap before the evening festivities.

Munich is the best city in which to begin any European travel in order to beat jet or train lag right off the bat. Arrive, stay awake as long as you can before napping for no more than two hours, at which time it's easy to make yourself get moving again because you do not want to miss an evening out at one of Munich's many awesome beer halls, (if you've only got time for one beer hall, it of course has to be the Hofbrauhaus) and a liter of beer (called a mass , pronounced moss) or three. I've heard Americans say that they don't like the Hofbrauhaus because it's too touristy, that they'd rather hit the Augustiner Haus or the Paulaner Haus, but I say that just goes to show you how little they understand Munich. You'll hear many different opinions of course, but from years and years of careful research I believe that I understand something about Bavarians; The social life of a Bavarian is all about Beer, good food, Beer, good cheer, Beer, and a big crowd of people to drink beer, eat good food, and sing good cheers with. They're like Hobbits that way. The Hofbrauhaus is full of tourists, but it is also full of Bavarian regulars who enjoy their tourists and are happy when guests come to visit. Not all Bavarians like tourists of course, but would you rather sit in a beer hall where the locals are ignoring you, or would you rather get drunk with a cheerful Bavarian? It's all personal preference, I suppose.

One of the great things about Bavarian beer halls is that tables are not private. If there's an empty space on the bench, expect for it to be filled by almost anyone. A drunken lederhosen-garbed Bavarian, a group of drunk Australian girls, a group of drunk Spanish guys, a North Carolinan matron and her daughter just off the plane, or a Bavarian gangster rapper. And you can also expect to be super best drunken friends with all of them before they leave the table. At any rate, by the time you leave, you will have no problem staggering back to your hostel and getting a good night's sleep, to awaken refreshed and on German time! You probably won't even be all that hung over either thanks to the Bavarian beer purity laws of 1516. Julie took this picture on our "walk" home from the Hofbrauhaus.

So that morning, we met another friend at the München Hauptbahnhof. I'm always trying to convince people about the awesomeness of Germany and how much fun Krampus is, and it's the rare individual who both believes me and takes me up on the invitation. Gerald had just flown in and he'd missed the traditional Munich meeting day, but was just in time to catch a regional bahn with us down to the town of Bernau, which is on lake Chiemsee where Nimmer and I onced lived and worked. Here's a shot which will likely only mean something to any Chiemseers who happen to be reading.

We froze our asses off on the ferry ride out to the Fraueninsel, a small island on the lake which has a convent founded in 782 and the tiniest, cutest little town you ever did see. Here's a stock postcard I'd pulled off the internet a while back; I never did get any aerial shots of my own.

We ate many sausage sandwiches and drank much gluhwein there at the tiniest, cutest little christkindlemarkt there that you ever did see. That tiny little island was packed though; I was afraid the weight of the crowd would sink it. We went back to the mainland and met an old Bavarian friend, Florian, at the bar he owns (the above pictured Bernauer Stub'n) for a few drinks, and then back to our rooms at Frau Hermann's place.

Our view from the rear balcony in our room at Frau Hermann's the next morning.

It's always bittersweet to tour the old stomping grounds. I love it there so much and I love to revisit, but it never lasts long enough and far too soon it's time to leave again. That morning we hopped on the train down to Berchtesgaden, where the Krampus festivites were to begin that afternoon. I love riding on trains through Bavaria... it's the most magical place on Earth. This is what the train ride usually looks like.

Passing by countless picturesque Bavarian towns which make you wish you'd been born and raised in such simple beauty. (If you're gay for Munich, then you're gay for Bavaria. That's just how it goes, I'm afraid.)

Berchtesgaden is the most amazing place though. A mountain village, nestled deep in the Bavarian Alps. You've already seen my shot of the Watzmann, but have you seen Berchtesgaden building art? It's magnificent. Did you know there were Bavarians at the crucifixion? I bet you didn't. We call him Helmut. Paying our respects to him is one of the first things we do upon arrival in Berchtesgaden. Say hello to Helmut. Hallo!

Here's the Hotel we stayed at. It's called The Hotel Bavaria, and is under new management since the last time we came. It is now run by a super awesome Bavarian couple, Wolfgang and Pietra, and their son Andre.

They didn't know that we'd been in town many many times before, and upon our arrival they warned us with very concerned looks on their faces to be careful if we went up the hill into town because there was this crazy local festival going on and it gets a bit rowdy. We grinned merrily amongst ourselves. Once we assured them that we knew all about Krampus, they let us in on a secret; a group of very special Krampus demons would be hitting the courtyard at the Hotel Bavaria early in the evening. A group of one of the oldest Krampus packs in the area were apparently hiking all the way down from some tiny mountaintop hamlet and making their first stop there, so we were welcome to join them in the courtyard for gluhwein mit schuss and cakes! So as my final Krampus teaser before the actual Krampus post, here are three shots of the beginning of the festivities. Here a Krampus demon asks a terrified littled boy if he's been good this year, as St. Nick and a little angel look on approvingly.

Krampus demons are especially fond of terrorizing young ladies. They were sort of passing this girl around like a football as she was screaming bloody Deutsche murder, but later when I looked at the pictures I had snapped she appears to be, um, enjoying the attention. Ah, Krampus.

And finally, the leader of the pack howls to the air, calling his demons to battle. The battle for the souls of wicked little children and young girls, and any man, woman, child or animal who stands in the way. Let the bell ringing and the whippings begin!

And to help with the anticipation, perhaps a teaser video of a Krampus demon bell-ringing pow wow behind the Goldener Bär restaurant.

Jesus Struck By Lightning: Initial Response, Hilarity In Appreciation Of Irony Finer Than Wine. Then, Anti-Religious Philosophy.

So God Jr. was recently struck by lightning. Jesus H. Christ. If you haven’t heard about it, the article is here. This is a very important event in world history, in the history of philosophy, and of religion. You may scoff, but I believe that future scholars will refer to the burning of fiberglass Jesus as a major turning point in the mental evolution of mankind. Here’s why: It disproves everything that Christians hold dear, no matter how you look at it. And before the outrage takes hold of you, if you’re a Christian, I will allow that it only disproves everything that fundamentalist Christians hold dear, and not necessarily the other, more middle of the road Christians. And my argument for this case is thus:

God is sick of hearing about Jesus already. If you believe that everything is controlled by God, and things such as Hurricane Katrina are a sign that God hates Fags, then the striking of a statue of Jesus by lightning is the clearest sign you can get that God hates Jesus. Don’t like that conclusion? Well try this one:

2)      There is no God, or God doesn’t talk to you. Why would a God who exists send such a confusing message? If you believe that God is in charge of everything, and sends messages via lighting, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes, why would he confuse his followers in such a crucial time in history? Well, he didn’t. Lightning strikes, i.e. Acts of God, are random and purposeless in nature. At the very least, if this doesn’t prove that there is no God to you, it should prove that he takes no hand in things and lets the chips fall where they may. Therefore, fags, dikes, and liberals are not to blame for Katrina. But wait, you still believe he sends you messages through, not random acts of kindness but of destructive nature? Idiot. Well, here’s really the only possible message:

        God doesn’t like your rhetoric. If you insist on believing in a God who controls everything, then this can only mean that He hates your ugly religion, and is accusing you of worshiping false idols. Stop pretending to know what he wants of you already. Perhaps instead of trying to browbeat the world with Jesus, you should just try and be a good person. Live and let live. So he struck down your false idol, i.e. your false image of who and what Jesus was, in order to get you to consider the falseness of your damned religion.

 Whichever way it goes, it’s a sure sign that the Universe is not what you think.

BlahBlahBlahddyShut Up + Read My Blog!BlahBlah... Did It Work? Are You Hypnotized?

This is freaking crazy. I can't believe that in the world of YouTube where anyone can record anything and slow it down, FOX was dumb enough to try and pull this 1984 crap. But it kind of shows their hand, which is nice.

Bizarre, right? Don't Deny what, exactly? Don't Deny all reality? That doesn't seem so crazy, unless they're trying to say not to deny the pleasures of watching their reality channel. The images don't make me feel better about it, that's for sure. It was fairly amusing until I saw this one:

Holy SCARY 1984, FoxMan! No You Shut up! No YOU! And what's with the teeth? I think seeing a skull in that noise is reaching a bit, but even so, there is definitely some weird shit going on there. I found this stuff over at What Is Hidden? Which is a weirdly incomplete site. What's even crazier over there is that in the forum, people are talking about how awesome one of the reality shows is! Don't they get it? They've been told to think it's awesome!

So if you're one of those crazy people who still think that the spin stops at FOX, clearly it's time to reevaluate. Not just your viewing choices, but probably your life. Because everything you think, all of your opinions and all of your beliefs may have been implanted into your brain by scary little blue men!

Sunday Blues Make A Nice Mash

This is the first in a series of my new favorite comic strip. Go here to read all of the Adventures of Confessions of Saint Augustine Bear online. It's done by David Rees, who also does Get Your War On, which is especially hilarious and painful to read. (GoDrex turned me on to GYWO; thanks again for like the hundredth time)

Oh, it's also occasionally animated.

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Awesome. And now for something completely silly.

 

The West Is Big And Full Of Holes And Rocks

As promised, here are a few more pictures of the Trona Pinnacles. I know it's been a while; it's been a very busy few weeks here. But Christmas is over, I'm finally getting settled in to the new place, and my routines are slowly renewing their control over my life, so here we go. The picture above isn't really a scary-ass man with a halo, it's just a rock with the sun placed conveniently behind it. But you can see why maybe some location scout thought this might be a good place to film a Forbidden Zone or two.

As I didn't get a chance to explain last time, the Trona Pinnacles were once formations at the bottom of an inland sea in southern California. Now they are formations in the middle of a desert in southern California. Geology is quirky that way. I took the following photo from the top of one of the pinnacles. There was absolutely no one and nothing for as far as I could see (except for the borax mining company we passed on the way in; much of the ground on the way out to the pinnacles is white with borax. Pretty neat looking) and there were no signs telling us we couldn't climb them, so of course one is obligated to do so.

I put up many many more very forbidding shots over at my smugmug page, as usual. The Trona gallery is here. And now for...

Meteor Crater Arizona! After our 2 days at that really large canyon, we headed down to Flagstaff Arizona to see what was what. The first thing I wanted to do, naturally enough, was to blow right past town and head out to Winslow where a meteor crashed into our dear home not too long ago, around 42,000 B.C. and made yet another really really big hole in the ground. It's hard to get an idea of the size of this thing from the photo... hell it was kind of hard to get a good perspective on it standing right at its rim! Granted, it's not even close to the immensity of the Grand Canyon, but this is a very different beast and equally as cool for different reasons. So here's a gauging aid:

That itty bitty pebble on the top of the rim, directly above the viewing scope is indeed the size of a house. Big crater. Small meteor. Makes one really hope that we figure out a way to blast bigger rocks out of the Earth's path jackrabbit quick. I mean, an even better way than sending oil rig drillers into space. (That would be an Armageddon reference, by the by. What's the opposite of creative genius? Michael Bay, that's what) It was so windy the day we were here that I was actually picked up off my feet slightly when I tried to go up past an area they had roped off so I could get a better shot. That was neat. I of course have my Meteor Crater gallery with more photos over at smugmug. Anyway, back in Flagstaff...

We visited the Lowell Observatory! Percival Lowell thought he'd discovered canals on Mars back in like 1895 with this very telescope! What a maroon. I'd loved that story since hearing about it from Carl Sagan in Cosmos, which I'd read long before seeing the TV series. Because of his mistake, he fired up many a young boy's imagination with thoughts of Mars and Martians, culminating in HG Wells' War of the Worlds. Pluto was discovered here, as well as the observation that the galaxies were receding from us very very fast which lead to the discovery that the Universe is expanding. Good scientific history. The telescope was also awesome to visit because it just looks so damn cool. Very Steampunk. Those are truck tires which rotate the roof of the observatory so that the telescope can be pointed at any direction in the sky. Here's a quick video I took:

The only other thing notable in Flagstaff was the hotel we stayed at, the Monte Vista. It has a bunch of hokey ghost stories about it which Miss Luongo posted about already. Parts of Casablanca were filmed there, and it's one of those places where movie stars love to check in. We stayed in the room in which Lee Marvin resided while filming some western or other. Wicked. Flagstaff Gallery is here.

So I actually have more stuff, but I'm tired of this post. I'll save it for the next one. I took way too many pictures this trip and had way too much free time, causing me to visit way too many Arizona attractions. Ugh. Work is hell.

Why I Love 3 Quarks Daily; An Ode To Best-Of Episodes

Here are some items which I've liberated from one of my favorite websites, 3 Quarks Daily, in order to avoid having to come up with/find original stuff on my own. First up is an awesome table-turn on those damn African email scammers:

Scammer scammed

No doubt you are aware of what are known as "419" scams. Emails that begin with things like "I am the widow of the former President of Nigeria," and then promise you a fee of millions of dollars for arranging some transaction. [Read here about a woman who lost $400,000 to a Nigerian scammer!] There is also a whole cadre of devoted people who spend inordinate amounts of time and energy scamming the scammers back. This is a particularly hilarious account of one such scheme, where a man named Arthur Dent manages to convince the scammer to copy all of a Harry Potter book out in longhand and send the scanned pages to him. It is particularly gratifying to read the exchange as the scammer becomes more and more desperate.

Full email exchange is here.

Next up is a YouTube that compiles a few interviews with a guy back in early 2007 saying how a huge financial crisis is on the way... and he gets laughed at. Mostly by FOX commentators, but also by Ben Stein! Priceless. Wish I'd known about Peter Shiff and how smart he was way back then.

And now for a pretty messed up YouTube about how some scientists totally destroyed a city and murdered all of it's inhabitants for the purely selfish gain of really awesome knowledge. I'm not being tongue in cheek; I'm totally ambivalent about the terrible coolness of these sociopathic scientists.

It's like Ant Pompeii.

So okay I'm a bit YouTube heavy today, but this is the best thing ever, and by the best I mean dumbest: A video trying to ensnare potential investors to buy into the dumbest piece of fitness equipment of all time... A moving treadmill, so, you know, if you don't feel like really running, you can run on a treadmill, and then if you don't feel like running inside in place, you can run on a treadmill outside that moves. I wonder if this is the same company that invented powdered water. You know; just add water.

And finally, 50 Facts about Obama that you might not know:

• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics

• He was known as "O'Bomber" at high school for his skill at basketball

• His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili

• His favorite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini

• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father

• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed

• He has read every Harry Potter book

• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali

• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can't stand ice cream

• His favorite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars

• He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia

• He can speak Spanish

• While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead

• His favorite drink is black forest berry iced tea

• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president – he didn't

• He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia

• He can bench press an impressive 200lbs

• He was known as Barry until university when he asked to be addressed by his full name

• His favorite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

• He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister's fiancé, but left when a stripper arrived

• His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy

• He and Michelle made $4.2 million (£2.7 million) last year, with much coming from sales of his books

• His favorite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

• He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck

• He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.

• His favorite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and The Fugees

• He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing on their first date

• He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker

• He doesn't drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol

• He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician

• As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine

• His daughters' ambitions are to go to Yale before becoming an actress (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha, 7)

• He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside

• He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal

• His house in Chicago has four fire places

• Daughter Malia's godmother is Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita

• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry

• He uses an Apple Mac laptop

• He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling Chrysler 300

• He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx suits

• He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes

• He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21 (£13)

• His favorite fictional television programs are Mash and The Wire

• He was given the code name "Renegade" by his Secret Service handlers

• He was nicknamed "Bar" by his late grandmother

• He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds

• His favorite artist is Pablo Picasso

• His specialty as a cook is chili

• He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were "street urchins"

• He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life

• His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan government

McCain Is A Liar Er Misspeaker!

I know, I know. You're sick of my political ranting already. But after seeing this YouTube video of a short clip of John McCain mentioning JFK and Goldwater on his way to criticizing Obama for not meeting with him anyplace anytime as previously agreed, I couldn't help myself. Partway through the video, McCain refers back to the Kennedy assassination as "The intervention er the tragedy in Dallas". Now.

As the word 'intervention' is escaping his lips, his hand is coming up to his mouth, his eyes widen, and then his hand takes a miss on his mouth and rubs his nose as he says "er tragedy". This gesture, the hand to mouth/nose and wide eyes, is a classic tell among those who read body language as a sign of someone who is lying. More specifically, to break it down, what happens with this gesture is that something has escaped your lips which you didn't mean to say, were trying to keep hidden. The hand coming up to the mouth is the involuntary and unconscious act of trying to keep your mouth closed; trying to force the words back in your mouth, and the wide eyes are the realization that you messed up. The quick switch from a mouth cover to a nose rub is the more conscious grown-up gesture of realizing that if you clap your hand over your mouth, it's a dead giveaway that you're lying, and so it turns into the nose rub in order to try and obscure the fact that you were just trying to clamp your mouth shut.

It's classic. Classic. There's no getting around it. That gesture means what it means. Many times when people are lying, we've trained ourselves not to give ourselves away by not being all shifty-eyed, not stuttering, not being all nervy with your hands, trying not to sweat. So that tell doesn't often happen. But when you've said something without thinking about it, without having thought in the seconds beforehand that you needed to not say what you're really thinking, that involuntary tell can happen before you've realized you've done it. When John McCain thinks of the Kennedy assassination, he considers it to be an intervention. Period. I have no doubt in my mind.

Now, is it possible he was just scratching his nose? Yes, of course. People get itchy noses all the time while they're speaking. But taken in combination with such an egregious misstatement... well, someone who studies body language would say that the odds are thin. Very thin. But I'll go further away from certainty and mention how McCain is prone to such unfortunate misstatements though. And his eyes are often all wide, blinky and twitchy anyway. Everybody slips up, right? But McCain's slips are painful. He's caught flack for saying he desires to be a dictator, calling citizens "prisoners," and saying how he wants the US to be energy independent so we won't have to go to war for oil anymore. [John, supporters of the war aren't calling it that.] So you know, he's already prone to saying the wrong thing. We shouldn't judge him too harshly since he does it often. The more a person makes the same mistake, the less it means anything, right? Right guys?

Does he personally know something about the Kennedy assassination? Who knows, but probably not. Paranoid as I am about McCain now, even I'm not prepared to go that far. McCain wasn't really anybody back then; he was busy being a young naval aviator, flying ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers at the time. Regardless, someone who likely thinks of one of the most tragic moments in American history, our loss of innocence, as an intervention, is to be handled with care. The fact of the matter is, I think a lot of people fear that the reason Kennedy was killed was because he was being made an example of by some powerful people who did not like his liberal policies, and a Republican Presidential hopeful putting a word to that fear over 45 years later is chilling.

EDIT: Just had to add in the "My fellow Prisoners" YouTube that Gary linked me to (the silence at the end of the video when he pauses for applause, seemingly unaware of his gaffe, is deafening) and then I saw the Colin Powell interview where he endorses Obama and I had to post that too. Clear, rational thinking turns me on, what can I say?

The Fact Of These People's Existence Makes Me Want To Be A Cutter

So okay, GoDrex posted this YouTube, and then Julie did, and I commented on it, and now I have to post the video, because I can't stop thinking about it and it inspires a constant state of weird otherworldly incredulity in me, because I think it accurately represents the thought processes of most people who actually think another Republican administration is a good idea, and because this was a convention in Bethlehem, PA, near where we live, and it's embarrassing and I can't wrap my head around the fact of these people's existence.

I'm re-posting my commentary from Julie's page on it here and expanding on it, because I need to get it off my brain before it freezes in this expression forever.

Does that first guy know that 25 out of the 43 American Presidents were lawyers? And that it's actually sort of an advantage to understand law if you're going to be in a political field? Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams. Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, James Polk and Millard Fillmore. Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley. William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and William Clinton. (I know that's only 23, I can't find the other 2.)

European socialist is a buzzword with these people. (Instead of buzzwords, I’m going to start calling them FOXwords) Like Terrorist. Why is European Socialism bad, exactly? Because of all the free health care? I particularly find the “I think you’re stupid” guy quite illuminating.

Why am I stupid?
“… uh… because… that guy gets elected, he hangs around with terrorists.”

Who’re the terrorists?
“Obama”

So… Obama hangs out with himself?
No just kidding, I get it. I know what he means, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to speak properly, or form a logical or coherent thought. What he means is, Obama is a terrorist because some guy he sort of knows did some crazy shit when Obama was 8. And that's a more accurate understanding of the situation than even FOX news was able to tell him to think.

As cogent and insightful a point as this guy makes, I have to wonder, with all of the black men in prison, and all of the “suspected terrorists” at Guantanamo Bay, is it very likely that had any politician or policeman or spook at any time throughout Obama’s life even had the tiniest shred of real proof that Obama might have actual terror affiliations, isn’t it likely that he would never ever ever ever nerver never nev been allowed anywhere near any sort of elected office in the USA ever?

Or maybe FOX news and every dumb piece of crap that believes this Rhepublican Rhetoric has proof in a shoebox under their beds that Obama really is a terrorist that the guys over at the CIA doing his background check somehow missed.

“Get a Job!”

What does that even mean?! How do you know they don’t have jobs? Because they’re exercising their political right to protest? If you’re basing the fact that someone is at a political rally because they don’t have a job, then what are you doing there? Maybe you should get a job yourself? But oh wait, you can’t because Bush screwed up the economy so badly that the jobless rate is skyrocketing and competition for work is heavier, and you’re about to attend a rally for the guy who wants to continue the same policies.

“Go to Russia!”

Go to Russia? Because… people aren’t allowed to politically dissent in Russia (which isn’t exactly true anymore, but we’ll let that one slide because you obviously haven’t thought out your statement anyway) and you think that people who dare to dissent with your Republican knee-jerk non-views deserve to get shipped off to Siberia… which would kind of make you more like a Communist than an Obama supporter/McCain protester could ever dream to be? And as far as the whole "Commie/Faggott!" slur goes, I think we all know which political party has had more of those types outed from it. Plus, Joe McCarthy was a Republican Commie hunter, and I think it's probably widely agreed now that he was the biggest Commie of them all. I mean sure, not technically, but his tactics certainly were not American nor were they Democratic.

I think that by telling someone who disagrees with you at an American political rally to go to Russia, you’ve officially chased your own tail and deserve to be impounded for being dumb as a dog and not on a leash.

And ACORN? How the FRICK is ACORN, a community-based organization that advocates for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, health care and other social issues, responsible for our current economic crisis? Hey check out this picture and story of McCain with... that's right. ACORN.

And for God's sake people! Obama is NOT a Muslim, (not that being a Muslim is automatically terror-worthy) nor is he a terrorist, or affiliated with terrorists! Again, CIA background checks! They're pretty thorough. They'd have caught it by now, and Obama would be in Guantanamo. Palin, on the other hand, had the hands of a Witch hunter laid on her. Now, Olbermann is a tad histrionic, but if you're not one of those finger-in-your-ears Republicans, singing "God Bless America" to block out opposing viewpoints and spouting party FOXwords as substitutes for logical argument using fact and proof, this is something you need to watch. I mean, those types need to watch and understand it more than anybody, but they've got their fingers in their ears, you see.

 And I could go on and on, but the fact of the matter is, people like those in the YouTube video believe what they believe because they want FOX news to tell them what to think and say so that they don't have to hurt their little brains trying too hard to think about it themselves. No amount of logical argument or fact checking or proof is going to sway them. God, I hope America is smarter than I give it credit for this election day.

Cape Cod Is So Pretty That I'm About To Choke You With Pictures

So I went to Cape Cod last week for a nice relaxing vacation from my stressful job. You know, I had to get away from all that constant work travel. Right. That's a picture of me and a hermit crab during low tide in Provincetown. Anyway, my family on my Dad's side is from the Cape. My Grandfather owned a grocery store in Osterville until it burned down and then afterwards moved to Cedarville, which is right by the Cape Canal. I have many hazy and fond memories of visiting Cedarville as a kid, including Christmas Eves with my cousin Karen gleefully listening for Santa on the roof and lazy Summer days at the lake down the road. At the time, we lived in New England ourselves, in Connecticut in the really early days, and in Brockton, Massachusetts for several of the later years. In fact, until we moved to PA, I sported that thick Massachusetts accent in which 'R's are ignored if not dropped entirely, and Pee Wee's Big Adventure was a wicked awesome movie. Sadly, I lost it pretty quick after moving to Ligonier, PA, where I had to learn to wrap my tongue around such western PA oddities as 'Y'uns' and pierogies... ah, the lost treasures of our youth.

So anyway, it was really nice to drive up the cape... Eastern Massachusetts has that incredible mix of smells of cedar pine and sea salty air blown in from the ocean. There is some truly invigorating air there. I stopped at Plymouth and saw the Mayflower! Well, the Mayflower II, actually. It's a replica, but a really good one.

Right around the corner from the Mayflower II was Plymouth Rock, but I didn't get to see it because they were renovating it. Yes, you read correctly; they're renovating a ROCK. Sheesh. I did see the rock as a child at least, but it's as hazy as all my other memories. Probably because it's just a rock and not actually particularly interesting. But I did get a picture of a nice Asian family who had come all the way to see it and were similarly disappointed yet determined to come away with something:

The worst part is, the Pilgrims didn't actually even land here first. They first arrived in Provincetown, and got into some skirmishes with Indians. So they upped anchor and made for Plymouth instead.

Apropos of not much, I snapped this shot of a screaming hawk not far outside of Plymouth:

I also took a drive through Cedarville and tripped out when I found the street my Grandparents used to live on... thanks to a call to Dad to help me out with directions. Everything is exactly as I remember it, only it's gotten smaller. The lake beach that I used to play on, which was enormous when I was six, seemed rather cramped this time around. I also took a drive through Osterville after crossing over onto the Cape; and although I never really was there much, it was nice to see where we came from, and where I'd probably be living had Williams' Grocery Store never burned down. Ah, the lost alternate realities of our youths.

Here's a sea snail, trolling about under water during low tide.

At any rate, I spent the majority of my time on the Cape in Provincetown... turns out, it's somewhat of a Gay Haven up there. Didn't know that when I booked my hotel... ah well. I figured it out when I got up my first morning there to go get some food at a nearby bakery, which turned out to be a Gaykery. They had teddy bear cookies decorated with icing leather chaps and candy button nipple clamps. Of course, I didn't notice that right off, I was just feeling like Provincetown was a very nice place, and everybody was so friendly and the large bearded man that seemed to run the shop gave me a free container of cherries to go with my food and I was thinking, "Wicked awesome! What a friendly place! Everybody here seems happy and genuinely nice! Is that supposed to be two guy teddy bear cookies?! Holding hands...? Oh..."

Well, suffice it to say that during my two day stay there, I received more attention than I generally feel comfortable with from men, but about the same amount as usual from women, which is to say, very little. But it's a thoroughly enjoyable town nonetheless. It's an odd mash-up of things: An old fishing and whaling village on the most venerable area of land in the US, which also has quite a history of participation in the Arts. Here's a harbor picture of the town:

I got this picture on the way in from going out on a Whale Watch. I had gone on a Whale Watch with my family many years ago when I was really young, but this is one of those times where it was even better than my childhood memory of it. I'm going to show you too many pictures of whales now.

Totally sweet. It was like we hit the motherload of whale towns.They were jumping and bouncing around all over the place. In fact, for those of you not too sick of whales by now, I took a video. I apologize in advance for it though; There was so much going on, and I kept trying to move the camera to catch stuff and the boat was rocking quite a bit, so that in essence I wound up missing a lot. Sorry. But there are still one or two good things to see here:

It was the 'Sunset Whale Watch', which meant that we came back in to town in the evening, allowing for a few gratuitous Cape Cod shots. This is the actual very tippiest tip of the Cape itself.

And here's another shot I like of Provincetown. The tall thing there is the Pilgrim monument. I believe that the residents like it so much because of the Phallusy of the thing.

And that's pretty much it. I mean, I spent some time on the beach, but even in June the Cape Cod water is BRRRRRR Cold! I braved it for a little while, and you do get acclimated to the frigid temperature after a bit, but even so. I did see a seal having lunch from a school of fish right off of the shore... that was pretty cool. You don't see that too often off of other beach towns. The big dark spot is the school of fish, and that's a seal head poking up there.

And here's my parting shot; the wake of the Whale Watch.

**I've uploaded the rest of the pictures from this trip over on my smugmug site in two new galleries; Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA, and Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA. Also, I uploaded a bunch of Frank Lloyd Wright pictures in my Chicago, Illinois, USA gallery which I'd inexplicably forgotten to add before.

I Haven't Done This In A While, But I Really Enjoyed This Special Comment

PART ONE

PART TWO

I'm Crushing Your Head!!

I saw The Kids In The Hall last night! They came to the State Theater in Easton, and of course, as any truly rabid KITH fan, I'd had my tickets since they first went on sale a month or so ago. Julie and I rode my awesome new fun machine (i.e. motorcycle) out on route 611 to go see them.

Let me start out, right off the bat, by saying that they were awesome. They are, of course, among the greatest comedy troupes of all time. They had a TV show which lasted for four glorious seasons, and a fifth merely great one. For the last decade or so they've done various things on their own, NOT as a group, which always seemed insane to me. Their particular brand of comedy never seemed like it could function apart from each other, and their checkered solo careers bear that sentiment out, I believe. Dave Foley was the most successful of them, having a leading role in the sitcom News Radio and I think he's hosted Celebrity Poker as well (actually, the Head Crusher made fun of him for that in a very funny encore skit), and the others have had various degrees of success themselves... Scott Thompson had a bit part in Mickey Blue Eyes and a stint on Larry Sanders' show, Bruce McCulloch directed a few movies and had a couple of guest appearances on the Gilmore Girls, Mark McKinney was in Saturday Night Live for a bit and starred in some movie with Isabella Rossellini, and Kevin McDonald had four measly lines in Galaxy Quest, and has done various cartoon voices and other guest appearances.

They are all very funny people, but together, they're gold. I'm extremely happy that they finally figured that out. They got back together and wrote a bunch of new material, and last night's show was fucking hilarious. Pardon my potty mouth, but that's how funny they were. Here's a video which they used to open their show:

The part where Bruce mouths something and then Mark is like "Oh yeah those guys are crazy", they voiced over in a very Price-Is-Right announcer-like voice; "Easton, Pennsylvania!" It was funny live, in an easy joke kind of way. Then at the end when they all run out, they all run on stage chasing Kevin in his underwear with an apple in his mouth. They did some really funny new material, including a sketch about two men fighting over an imaginary girlfriend, Bruce as a superhero called Superdrunk, a great Hitler/beer/blowjob/time machine bit, and even one with an evil soul-sucking baby. Of course they brought out some of their beloved favorites, Chicken Lady, Gavin, Head Crusher, and the two Kathies, (with one of them on a new diet plan called "tweaking on crystal meth") but they used new punchlines for them, so it was all good. No, brilliant. Anyway, guess you had to be there.

Okay okay, I'm done now. I'd post them all, if I could. They're so awesome.

When Weird Personalities Create

[EDIT: Thought I'd add a scan of a postcard I'd picked up at the Coral Castle of what the place looked like in the 1940's.]

Man, what a week. This two week trip to Seattle and then Fort Lauderdale is finally over! I mean Seattle was fun, no doubt, but this place. Ugh. All there is to do around here is to go to the beach. BO-ring. I'm sitting in the airport right now, very much looking forward to getting out of here... I just got here after spending my third morning in a row laying around the beach, swimming and collecting shells and whatnot. Ugh, who needs it?

There is one cool thing in the area though; The Coral Castle. It's south of here about an hour in the town of Homestead. Some wackjob named Edward Leedskalnin built it for his lost love. The Billy Idol song, Sweet Sixteen, is totally based on his story, and the video was shot there. The thing about the coral castle is that nobody saw him build it, and he built it by himself. It's one of those weird mystery kinds of things. Some people think he rediscovered the secrets of the Egyptian construction guys, although apparently it's not really a secret anymore how they built the pyramids. I can't verify that, it's just something I heard. I'd go into more detail, but you know, the wikipedia page on it that I linked to up there probably tells it better than I could. I'll just show you my pictures from my little day trip down there, how does that sound, dearie? [Granny voice]

This is Ed. And Ed's bed.

This is a nice overview of the Castle... as you can sort of see, it's not really a proper castle, more of a coral wall enclosing a courtyard filled with fanciful tables, chairs, and statues made of coral.

Ed's peni... I mean, obelisk.

Ed's repentance corner. Ed never married, but he built the castle in the hopes that one day he would, and this, repentance corner, is where he planned to punish his kid when he got out of hand. See the two slots in the wall? Notice the rounded hole at the top? The left slot was for his non-existent kid. He could stick the kid's head through the rounded hole and slide his head down, keeping it in place with a wooden board. Then the plan was for Ed to sit on the little stone bench to the right of the slots and lecture him for an hour. The slightly taller slot on the right was in case his wife "got sassy"... it's really no wonder he never got a mate.

Ed's 9-ton coral gate and well. He designed the gate so that a child could open it... apparently, for those who are into architecture, Ed was pretty ingenious.

Left to Right: The crown, the planets (Mars, Saturn, and um, two moons for some reason) which are over his throne. Ed believed in life on Mars. Despite his weird scary-ass desire to punish people that didn't yet exist, Ed was my kinda guy. And then the 9-ton gate again.

Ed's lizard. Colorful little dude, huh? There were a ton of these awesome looking little reptiles running around the place.

A 1959 movie, The Wild Women of Wongo, was filmed in the Coral Castle. I totally added this to my Netflix queue. It's about an island of beautiful women and ugly men who discover another nearby island of beautiful men and ugly women. I'm not really sure how it all turns out, but something tells me that the hotties are all going to get together and work it out in the end. Ah, Hollywood.

And of course, Billy Idol, ladies and gentlemen.

I Bring You The TEN [CRASH!] Um, FIFTEEN Commandments!

"There is in every village a torch and an extinguisher: the schoolteacher and the priest."
-Victor Hugo

The Athiest’s Commandments from ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins. The first ten are from a website he found while researching his book, then XI through XIV are his own additions, and XV is mine, as well as the comments in brackets.

 I. Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.

 II. In all things, strive to cause no harm.

III. Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.

 IV. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.

 V. Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.

 VI. Always seek to be learning something new.

 VII. Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.

 VIII. Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you. [But don’t let them get away with faulty reasoning without a fight. Besides, maybe they’ll prove you wrong and that’s good too.]

 IX. Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.

 X. Question everything.

 XI. Enjoy your own sex life (so long as it damages nobody else) and leave others to enjoy theirs in private whatever their inclinations, which are none of your business.

 XII. Do not discriminate or oppress on the on the basis of sex, race or (as far as possible) species.

 XIII. Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.

 XIV. Value the future on a timescale longer than your own.

 XV.  Patriotism is a lie. Religion is a lie. God is an unknown. [Patriotism and Religion are not even compatible, and yet most Patriotic Americans are Religious too. Here, I’ll prove it:

 a) Patriotism = My country is #1, above and beyond all others, right or wrong.

  b) My Country is run by old rich cowards who want our young idealistic men to kill for their comforts

c) Religion says thou shall not kill. [even if that commandment is the only part of the Old Testament which actually says that, because otherwise God sanctioned quite a lot of killin’ and rapin’ in those days.]

  d) Therefore, Patriotism & Religion can not go hand in hand. Yet somehow, when combined in the mind of deeply uncritical people, they do.

I’m not saying I'm an atheist. But I am saying that I share a lot more in common with an atheist than with religious thinkers these days. And here's the reason. One time in Church, I remember my pastor doing that whole thing where he says that a lot of people out there in the world will try to tell good Christians that the Bible is full of lies and contradictions. His response to the congregation? "Well I'm here to tell you that the Bible is NOT full of lies!" Brilliant, carry on, Pastor. What? That's all you got? Huh. Anyway I think I related this story in somewhat more detail once before, here.

But the realization that I eventually came to is that belief in God is fundamentally, in the mind of religion at any rate, an insidious and lazy way of avoiding the issue of Life, The Universe, and Everything. What I mean is, one thing that many religious types use to try to convince people that evolution is bunk is the idea that the world is too complicated, too amazing, too wonderful to have all just happened by random chance, it must have been created. (Here's a YouTube I will NEVER get tired of, which is a prime example of that sort of reasoning. If, of all horrors, you find the banana argument compelling, please watch this one also. Thanks again, GoDrex! )

First off, anyone who has taken the time to attempt to understand evolution would never say that. Evolution is anything but random, which is part of its beauty and power. Secondly, all they've done by this argument is show a lack of logical thought. SO, you're saying that the Universe is too complicated and "well designed" to have just happened? So, there must be a Creator. Well then, logically, any possible Creator has to be larger and more well designed than the object of his creation. A hammer and anvil do not forge a blacksmith, for instance. Therefore essentially all that this argument has done is to push the question back a step and in reality, magnify it. Rather than believe in the apparent existence of a complicated and evolved Universe (based on verifiable fact), you'd rather believe in the apparent existence of an even larger and more complicated, magical Creator.

I'm not saying that definitively there's no God, which is why I'm not an atheist. (Although according to Dawkins' scale of atheism, I am a 5th or 6th degree atheist, with a 7th degree atheist believing absolutely %100 in the non-existence of God. I will always leave room for the possibility, if not the probability.) I'm just pointing out the weakness of logic in the Religious mind. And I AM saying that IF there's a God, he's not the God of that great work of fiction, the Bible. I think that IF there is a Creator, the only thing that he really gave us are our hearts and our minds, which are very effective tools when reason and logic are applied, and I think he'd be very disappointed in Religion.

For anybody who has read 'The God Delusion', it's apparent that I've used much of Dawkins' material here. In my own idiosyncratic way, of course. But I feel that it's a book which has provided me with a clear way of thinking about ideas which I've held for a while.

Basically what it all boils down to for me is this: Religious apologists have NEVER been able to prove the existence of God or the veracity of the Bible through either Science, logic, or reason. Which makes sense according to the Fundamental Religious version of "logic" anyway; it's all about faith, regardless of the facts. (Dinosaur bones were purposefully planted there to test our faith.) So why do they keep trying? Why do they want Creationism, sorry, Intelligent Design, taught in science classes? Science is about verifiable fact, religion is about faith. You don't see scientists banging on the doors of churches, trying to force Sunday school teachers to teach evolution. Although, the inevitable backlash has already begun with the likes of Dawkins. He's tired of Religion's interference in the world of reality, hence the book. It's time for the Religious to accept that faith is based on nothing verifiable, and that they are welcome to it. 

And his main points are good ones; You don't need Religion to be moral, brainwashing children with religion is immoral (Christians don't call it brainwashing when they do it, but what else would you call it when, in a different religion such as Islam for example, brainwashed children grow up to steer planes into buildings in the name of their faith?), and he (and I) would be the first one to believe in the existence of God should there ever be proof of his existence. In the meantime, people should stop fighting, brainwashing, and killing each other over minor differences in opinion as to his nature. Something tells me that should your particular version of God turn out to be the real one, he'd still be very pissed at you for adhering to such nonsense and calamity. Unless of course you're Jewish. The Old Testament God was an asshole.

On a final note, I want to reiterate what I believe to be Dawkins' most imperative point in his book: There is no such thing as a Christian child, a Muslim child, an atheist child, or a Buddhist child etc. There are only Children of Christian parents, Children of Muslim parents, Children of atheist parents, and Children of Buddhist parents etc. Until children are mature enough to have weighed all the facts and decide for themselves, they are only children. After all, no one says that their child is a Marxist, or a Democrat, or a Communist. It's ok to wait until the child is of age to decide for itself what its political leanings are, and the same needs to be true of religion.

Dean & Britta At The Black Cat In D.C. Feb. 26, 2008

I just got back from another exciting week in Virginia. Obviously I was there for work again, and I had several days of free time this time around, so I got to go into D.C. a couple of times. I didn't really do much though; I spent some time in the Georgetown area, which is always nice, and ate a delicious meal at Martin's Tavern, which is where JFK proposed to Jackie O, and where loads of other big high politicos have always hung out apparently. So that was interesting. I kept my eye out for Obama, but no luck. I really want to ask him what his definition of "change" is, because he often says it's time for it, but rarely spells out exactly what kind of change it's time for.

On Wednesday though, I got to see Dean & Britta in concert! I'd checked concert listings for the DC area for this past week and was extremely pleased to see that they were going to be playing at The Black Cat club. Dean & Britta are Dean Wareham & Britta Phillips, formerly of the band Luna, who I'm a huge fan of. And Luna was composed of members from Dean's previous legendary underground band (underground is what they used to call what we now use the blanket label indie music for) Galaxie 500 (also the original shoegazer band), and another seminal NYC band, The Feelies. Anyway, I got to see Luna in concert about five years ago in Munich when I was living there... It was a small club and a small crowd, so it was really awesome. See that T-Shirt Dean is wearing?

It's a Deutsche Bahn logo! Deutsche Bahn is the awesome German train system, and if you ever travel in Germany, you will come to love Deutsche Bahn more than you ever thought you could or should love a train.

Dean & Britta... get it?!

Anyway, the show was beautiful. I really love Dean's voice; it's one of the most tonal and interesting I've ever heard. I made my way up real close to the front by the stage so that I could get a couple of band shots, but I wasn't going to stay there because I had a beer waiting for me in back where I'd planned on chilling out and enjoying the music, but once I got up front I found myself mesmerized and unable to move. They sound so good, and Britta is so pretty. Especially when she's singing You Turn My Head Around off of their latest album, here:

So so nice. Dean & Britta are recently married, and are obviously in love, and it's clear who she's singing to.

Anyway, I experienced a moment of outrage when they finished playing, because I realized that this legendary musician, Dean Wareham, was the opening act! I couldn't believe it; I'd assumed that they were the main show, but nope. They opened for some young newcomer named Keren Ann. Her band actually wound up being very good and I quickly realized that a lot of people at the show were there to see her rather than Dean & Britta, and I felt old. I understand though, because Dean & Britta are not Galaxie 500, nor are they even Luna, and Keren Ann is young, hot, from Israel, sings many of her songs in French and is a rising star. Dean & Britta are a swan song, still magnificent, but older generation. Ah well.

When the show was over and many people had left, D & B were on the floor hanging out and talking to people. At the merchandise kiosk they were selling a CD titled Dean & Britta Variations, which is a concert only EP, meaning it's not going to be sold in stores. So I bought one and worked up my courage to go say hey to them. I said hello and he sort of took the CD in my hand without me even having to say anything and he signed it and passed it over to Britta to sign. I told him I really enjoyed the show and that I'd had the chance to see Luna in Munich a few years back and he went off on this tangent about which club that must have been at. I said it was probably the Orange Cafe but he insisted that it was at the Atomic Cafe. I told him I was pretty sure it was the Orange Cafe, but he wasn't familiar with that name and kept blabbing on about the Atomic Cafe. It took forever to get away from him, but you know how those chatty annoying rock stars can be. It's like I mean come on, who's a fan of whom, here?

Right. So anyway I'm going to leave three YouTubes of the Dean Wareham bands in case you're curious. The first one is 'Fourth of July' by Galaxie 500, 2nd is "Lovedust' by Luna, and last is 'Knives From Bavaria' by Dean & Britta, the remix version by Sonic Boom from Spacemen 3.

Bitter, Bitter Taste

EDIT: The above YouTube has been removed due to copyright violation... It was a clip from a film named Downfall, a German movie about the last few days in Hitler's life in a bunker under Berlin. For the YouTube version, they cleverly replaced the original subtitles for a conversation between Hitler and his cronies discussing their defeat as HD DVD supporters by Blu-Ray.

Well, that's the problem with simply having a YouTube as a post, I guess. I've been punished for my lack of posting creativity.

And Now For Something Completely Different... From All The Other Stuff That Is Also Also Different.

I saw this movie years ago, and just re-visited it. It's still awesome. It made me happy, and I'm afraid I won't make my post quota for November, so here's some YouTube clips from it.

Zoom A Little Zoom, Fractally Parlez Vou

I found an even better fractal program! I made this YouTube video with it. It only took like 15 minutes, too. Nyah nyah, Gary!

And here's another one I did today... This one is called Fractal Party Goin' On. I'm kind of obsessing over this program. I may add more fractal videos to this post from time to time.

This one is called The Pink Fractal Room. Man, I can't get enough of these. Somebody help me.

I can't stop. They're so awesome. This one is called Holiday Of Fractal.

Fractally Speaking, Of Course

Fractals freak me out a little bit. If you start with the mother of all fractals, the Mandelbrot Set:

and you zoom in, and keep zooming in, you can get to a point where if the portion that is viewable on your screen were actual size, then the rest of the Mandelbrot which you've zoomed past would be larger than the universe itself. And you can keep going, and going, and going, and always there will be more richly detailed fractal vistas. THAT'S infinity.

I think what freaks me out is how... familiar... it feels. It's like watching your brain operate from the manager's factory overlook. What's completely strange is that while the Mandelbrot Set was discovered in 1980, the mathematical formula is really simple. No calculus, no trigonometry. It's some algebra. Adding and multiplying. The mathematical formula known as the Mandelbrot set could have been discovered at any time in the history of math... technically. What was required to make the realization that the Mandelbrot set is actually infinite complexity generated by a simple formula was computers, because zooming down into a fractal requires constant calculation, and a computer screen which visually details the results. It's almost as though the Mandelbrot was always there, waiting until we were ready to find it, a living, breathing concept. A universal theorem equivalent to the obelisks of 2001:A Space Odyssey.

Fractals have always made my head spin a little bit. Sometimes, I actually aurally hallucinate while watching them. It's one of those sounds that could be children laughing and playing on a playground far off in the distance, or screams from a slaughterhouse, or a tinkly waterfall, but you can't really tell which. Sometimes they move on their own... even the jpegs, not just the YouTubes. I have to literally force myself to stop thinking about them when I start getting into a fractal kick. Today's fractal head trip was inspired by this video, which someone over on MySpace sent out in a mass bulletin. I've even downloaded a fractal generating program. It's awesome, but I've only just begun to figure out how it works. It's slightly technical. They're so pretty.

Fractal math is quite probably the mathematical function used to calculate the Universe, whether by design or by nature, whichever your bent. It's sort of amazing that we can even comprehend such a thing, see the edges of it in reality, and wonder about it. Here's one that is Universe scale.

The Space Coast Is The Most

I just got back from Orlando and I think I have to eat some crow and say that it's not so bad a place as I may have thought after my first trip there. Actually, on this trip I had a really great time and the reason is because on this job, I had a lot more free time. On regular jobs, such as my aforementioned first trip to Orlando, you have to pretty much stay near the hotel where the students are staying because on top of being their computer test proctor, you're also their concierge during their week of intense computer training. But this last job was an Onsite, which means that a company has paid us to train their own employees at their own facilities, so all I have to do is show up on testing days, which gave me 3 full free days to find something fun to do. I really like the onsite jobs. My trip to Wyoming was an onsite.

Anyway, I hit the Kennedy Space Center, which was the awesomest place ever. I'd actually been there once before; when I was packing oranges at Vero Beach one year right after my first summer in Alaska, a couple of the guys I was working with and I took a ride up there. That was around 11 years ago though and my memories of it are fuzzy. Anyway I didn't have a camera then and this time I could afford to take the big tour, which is kind of expensive. I got to see the rockets from the Mercury and Gemini missions,

walk around one of the space shuttle launch pads up close,

and see a Saturn V rocket from the Apollo missions.

Awesome. The other really cool thing they had was a Shuttle launch simulator. It was basically a tube with seats that goes from horizontal to a vertical sitting position and shakes around a lot while making really loud noises while an astronaut yammers at you from the video screen in front of footage of the view from a real shuttle taking off into space, but if you suspend your disbelief sufficiently it's easy enough to imagine that you're on your way up there. It even does a passable job of simulating zero gravity when you're "in space" by tipping you on a forward angle so that you're slightly out of your seat and only being held in by your shoulder straps. The Zero-gravity I experienced on my flight in a Mig-25 to the edge of space was a bit better, though.

See? Even the pigeons want to go.

Anyway, I believe that the 60s NASA missions comprised one of the most exciting times in human history, and I really loved getting a sense of what it must have felt like to be a part of that. When I got home yesterday I immediately popped in that movie The Right Stuff. It's really fantastic. I can't believe there's no big movie about the first moonwalk; If you want to see something about the Apollo missions, you're pretty much stuck with Apollo 13, which is great, but it's no moonwalk. There are documentaries I suppose, of which I have several, but they don't really capture the excitement quite the same way a good NASA drama does. The Dish comes closest to that for the Neil Armstrong walk, but it's not actually about the mission itself.

Well I do carry on so. But Space is the Place, man.

On my second free day, I hit Cocoa Beach. It's kind of a famous beach because that's where a lot of the crowds would gather back in the day to watch the Rockets lift off, and I think that's where the astronaut bars were, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I didn't see any of that, but it's a fairly nice beach anyway. Good waves. The next day I had to work in the morning, but in the afternoon I went for an airboat ride on St. John's river and saw loads of alligators and birds and crazy cypress trees with Spanish moss. It was pretty damn cool. Those airboats are pretty zippy.

On that last photo you can see the head and back of an alligator kind of just peeking up from the water by the base of that tree.

On my third free day... well, I did it. I went to the Magic Kingdom. I'd never been there before... I always wanted to go as a child, of course, but when I got older I got cynical and realized how evil Disney is and sort of decided I didn't really want to go as all things Disney tend to be shallow and banal, and they destroy the stories they tell. BUT, I did have this extra day with nothing to do and I couldn't figure anything else out, and also my brother and sister were taken there by my family when they were kids and I never was, so, I figured it was something I had an opportunity to get out of my system. Believe me, that whole morning I was filled with a bizarre emotion consisting of dread, bittersweet, shamefaced excitement. The approach to that saccharine hell-hole did nothing to alleviate it, and neither did almost anything I did there.

The coolest part was Space Mountain. I'd been dying to do that ride all my childhood, when friends would come back from there and tell me about it. And you know what? It's still fairly cool. A roller coaster ride in the dark, only feebly lit up by stars, planets, and galaxies? Punctuated by terrified screams coming from all directions, some of them possibly but not definitely from my own mouth? What's not to like? The Haunted Mansion was also pretty wild, although not scary at all. But the special effects were sweet.

But the rest of it? Everything I ever hated and feared about that place. Every time I saw a parade of some Disney freaks grinning and dancing about, I wanted to smack them and ask them what the hell they thought they were doing, prancing about like happy little idiots. There was one ride that, while being horrendous, was nonetheless quite interesting. The so-named "Silly Jungle Cruise." It's a boat ride through a mock jungle river, filled with plastic animals. It's not a kiddie ride, either. It was all adults on my boat. It looks like, once upon a time, maybe back in the 50s or 60s, it was possibly a high class Disney ride. But I think that fake plastic jungle cruises likely don't have much staying power in this day and age, so what they've done is to turn it into a joke. The boat guide makes fun of everything you see for ten full minutes. A large orange fiber glass snake hangs from a tree, and pretending to be frightened, the tour guide asks what is large, orange, begins with a 'P' and can kill you? "Python!" shouts out one of the, um, adult, cruisers. "That's right," says the guide, "Plastic."

Oh, he had a ton of 'em. But what's interesting to me is that that ride is probably the most honest Disney has ever been with it's customers. A fake plastic safari is set up to give a cheap thrill, which is kind of Disney's over-all philosophy actually, and instead of trying to get you to go along with it, in this case they are forced to cop to how phony and silly it is, because it's really a horrendous ride and there's no hiding it as they do with everything else. Quite illuminating. It's like when Big Tobacco was finally forced to admit that smoking is unhealthy.

I even had a personal moment of clarity on that ride. As we were passing all the plastic, immobile animals, I was thinking to myself how I'd seen these kinds of animals for real in the semi-wild at South Africa Kruger national game park. And then: we came to a plastic temple and the guide announced that we were now passing a Cambodian jungle temple. My mind kind of froze because I've actually been to Angkor Wat and explored tens of actual Cambodian jungle temples, and here I was at Disney, the phoniest place on Earth, passing by a phony temple.

I love this:

Virtual Magic Kingdom? What, that's in case your mind is so jelly that you can't walk down the street here to the actual Magic Kingdom?

Well anyway.

The Kennedy Space Center. Wicked cool.

The Shock Doctrine by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein

Found this over on 3 Quarks Daily... Very thought provoking.

Alfonso Cuarón, by the by, is the director of Y tu mamá también, the third Harry Potter movie, and Children of Men. He's relatively mainstream, is what I'm saying.

An Ode To Having Nothing To Say, Deuce

And... I love this video and have a jealous hatred of this guy.

Where the Hell Is Matt

An Ode To Having Nothing To Say

Bag Hutch Redux

This is a nice companion piece to my last post. Caution: Much foul language and much hilarity ensue. One of the things that cracks me up most are the Mondrians on the wall. Corporate art rules.

Steve Taylor Rides Again

In the interview, this guy says that when he was growing up, they taught "Values Clarification" and played this game in his school. I want to know what kind of scary ass school he went to, and was it in Nazi Germany?

Anecdotal Evidence To Support My Claim Of Superior Knowledge... You'd Eat It Up If I Performed It Live To A Catchy Gospel, Rock Or Rap Tune!

While I'm waiting for inspiration on the eternally boring question of what to do next with my life to strike, as it has been so kind to do in the past, I am always on the lookout for new things to blog about. It helps keep my sanity, you see. In that rather pitiable spirit, here is something I woke up thinking about this morning; the why and wherefore of religion. So yes, if you are not in the mood for another rant on messiestobjects' tired, banal views on religion and why it's bad for you, feel free to bail now.

I often worry about publicly talking about my views on religion, because I know that my family, who are devout Christians, care about me and therefore worry that my soul is condemned to a fiery eternity for saying such brash things as I tend to do. The problem is that I know that no amount of discourse will ever bridge the gap between what they believe and what I believe, and so I tend to keep my mouth shut and avoid the topic. The fact of the matter is that people, once they reach a certain stage in their lives, and have given the matter serious thought and/or credence in their lives, are almost never capable of changing their minds. There's actually scientific evidence somewhere out there about the hardening of our minds as we get older, although don't look to me for details as it's something I read a long time ago. Something about our neural pathways being wide open when we're babies, gradually becoming more solidified or defined as we apply words to objects, and later becoming downright jungle elephant paths in our brains as we ascribe our beliefs to ideas. In other words, the more times you tread a path, the easier it is to follow that same path the next time you go that way. It's very hard for even the most open minded person keeping pre-set personal beliefs or perceived truths out of our rational observations as we get older. But that's really not the point of this.

I thought that this time, rather than expounding on why I think religion (Not God! I think I've been rather clear on the difference in my mind in the past.) is not only false but unhealthy, I would rather explain how I came to these ideas in the first place. Not that I'm special in regards to my beliefs; lots of people share them. I just feel I have a unique perspective, being a reformed religious type rather than the offspring of godless academics.

I was born and raised a Christian, and generally speaking I think that in some ways it did me good. Or at least, I believe I have a highly sensitive view of Good Vs. Evil, and I think that's a good thing. I also don't believe it's unhealthy to walk around with the constant feeling that somebody is looking over my shoulder, whether it's true or not. It can be a valuable mental trick. The first time I started doubting was at a Christian rock concert I went to with a church youth group. The performer was a guy that went by the name of Carmen, whose stuff I actually liked. I had a tape of his; I was probably 13 or 14 years old at the time. Anyway, we were at this concert and he had been singing his tunes, with no band... lip synching. But whatever; at the time I didn't know that was cheesy and nobody seemed to care anyway. But he would stop every once in a while and preach a little bit, and there were two things in particular that he said at one point that just kind of made me go, "ummm, really?"

The first was minor, as indicators often are, but it made me think a little bit. Apparently The Grateful Dead were playing that same night at another venue up the street, and Carmen was all like "Let me tell you, The Grateful Dead may be sinners who think it's cool to be dead, but tonight we here are grateful to be alive in Jesus!!" Much cheering ensued. But I was kind of like, and I didn't even know all that much about them, but I knew enough to know that they didn't actually want to be dead, at least not in the sense that Carmen was saying. He was saying it like they were willful emissaries of Satan or something. In their Wikipedia entry, it says that they chose the name in this manner:

The name "Grateful Dead" was chosen from a dictionary. Some claim it was a Funk & Wagnalls, others, the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book Of the Dead), but according to Phil Lesh, in his biography (pp. 62), "...Jer (Garcia)  picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary...(and)...In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'" The definition there was "A song meant to show a lost soul to the other side."

So, it was really pure hippie bullshit, but hardly Satanic. This statement of Carmen's, when I thought about it later, made me begin paying attention to preachers and to begin the realization that most of what they say is off the cuff and full of assumptions. They often, especially at that time in the 80s, called things Satanic which they merely didn't understand or was associated with things which they found personally distasteful. It made me realize that they often didn't really know what they were talking about, which is a shattering blow to a religion that claims to have knowledge of the truth of the way of things. If you can't back up simple statements of fact, why should I take it on faith that you know what you're doing in other areas? Faith belongs to God anyway, supposedly, not preachers.

The second thing he said, later that night, was a larger issue for me. Towards the end of the show, when he'd just played his biggest hit to a crowd of young screaming christian rock idolators, (And I admit, I was one of them. I loved that song.) he bellowed out, "I can feel the spirit of Jesus here with us tonight! Can you feel the holy spirit in the room? He's speaking to all of us, can you feel his love, right here right now!!?" And, as my fist was in the air and everyone around me, tears of joy in their eyes and answering with a heartfelt "Yes! I feel him! I feel Jesus!", and I, about to join in and add my agreeing sentiment, had an odd sensation. I was still for a moment, and kind of quietly thought to myself, (and I'm paraphrasing, of course; it was a long time ago in a mindset far, far away. But I remember very well what was going through my head in spirit. Snicker.) "Jesus? Huh. Actually, what I'm feeling is awe for the rock star that just lip synched that awesome song and got my fist pumping and adrenaline rushing, and has even made me feel good about being a Christian since I'm in a large group of people that feels the same way and we're all cheering for Jesus, but one thing I don't feel, and have never felt, actually, is anything spiritual. It actually feels a lot like that time I got all excited and heart-full when Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star. That made me SO happy, and that's the kind of elation I'm feeling right now, so, unless Jesus had something to do with the destruction of the Death Star, and said destruction was a spiritual event, I don't think that what I'm feeling right now is him in the room."

Now that I'm slightly wiser, I can add even more significance to that event. It was a rally, pure and simple. The theatrics and speeches that those guys use is no different than, say, Hitler's Nazi rallies. Or the Republican party rallies. It's a leader taking advantage of the psychology of mob mentality, and getting the crowd all worked up into a frenzy, and directing that energy in a desired direction. Jesus is not actually in the room, folks. The emperor is wearing no clothes. This doesn't in and of itself mean that what is being preached is bunk, (The Reverend Horton Heat, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, The actual message of love preached by Jesus himself, (which you can hear if you you read closely between the lines) for some examples) but I think it's important to be aware when age-old crowd control techniques are being used on you. In other words, if the leader is being honest with his agenda in such a rally, he's trying to passionately convince you of the logic of his argument, not passionately trying to beat you over the head with a scary dogma.

Anyway, for some reason, that night my mind opened up a little bit to more rational thought and always afterwards I applied a much more critical eye to what was going on around me. It's not like all of a sudden I ceased being a Christian. In some ways I always will be; you can't really escape your roots, and anyway I have never confused the sins of men, even self-proclaimed spiritual men, with a failing on God's part. One of the facts of nature that I will always hold dear, in my slowly hardening neural pathways, is that men are quite capable of committing acts of good and decency without invoking God, and men are capable of choosing to commit the most heinous evils without needing Satan as a scapegoat. People make their own choices, plain and simple. Blaming Satan or thanking God, or vice versa, is a cheap and easy way of avoiding responsibility.

I remember, one time in church, I was listening to the pastor give his sunday sermon; He was addressing a germaine issue: "Some people say that the Bible contradicts itself. They say that the Bible was written by men, and is not the true word of God. Well folks, I'm here today to tell you that those people have been misled by Satan, and that they are liars! The Bible does not contradict itself! It is God's word, handed down to us by his prophets, and it is the truth!" I kept waiting for him to expand his argument, but that was all he had; a bald statement containing bold word stresses. I kept thinking to myself, That's it!? That's Christianity's argument for itself?! And for the record, there was no paraphrasing there. I remember very clearly that day, and what he said. It felt like an extremely disingenuous thing to say... basically he was saying, believe that the Bible is the literal truth and word of God, because I say so, AND so does the Bible itself. So there. Which struck me as rather circular and unproductive logic... That's pretty much what all the religious leaders are saying, all the time.

Another extremely revealing experience I had, I've already blogged about here.

Anyway, this is a conversation I've been having with myself for a very long time now, and I could go on and on, but those are a few of the more important moments which made me switch gears a little bit. Basically, I've come to the conclusion that in order to come to grips with God, the Universe, and Everything, one has to distance oneself from the religions of men, because they are a framework for misdirection, power, and corruption. If there is a God, then love and understanding come from him, not religion, and not men's inane preachings. If there is not a God, then love and understanding come from chemicals and neural pathways. If there is a God, then there is only one thing which he gave me in order to understand him. Not the Bible, not Pat Robertson, not even Jesus. Men took control of those things, and handed them down to me the way they wanted me to see them. No, what He gave me is my mind. We have this amazing tool which is capable of rational thought, and the application of that tool has yielded more knowledge about the nature of the Universe than any preacher or prophet ever has. If there is no God, well, thank evolution for my mind. If there is a God, He invented evolution. Either way, it's all good.

Now that I'm done preaching, for the moment, I'll leave you with a YouLube that I found of that Carmen song I used to love so much, as performed via Lipsynch by some church kids. I'm kind of cringing about the fact that I used to like this song... I remembered it as being much cooler. I can only offer extreme brainwashing as an excuse. Anyway, in this video, God is a bearded girl, so, enjoy! ... or not. I myself had to stop it just a few minutes in, or I was going to cringe myself into a fetal position.

Mr. Williams Goes To Washington And Has A Splendid Time Complaining About Nearly Everything, As Is His Wont.

So I finally caved and went to Washington D.C. I met with GBG's lawyers and we discussed what I knew about the work we performed for a former client, DynCorp, whom GBG wants to take to court for money owed. Very distasteful all around, but, I have rather a skewed sense of obligation about these things, and anyway it afforded me the chance to have a look around our nation's Capital city. I took a few pictures, but forgot to bring my card reader. Anyway, I was rather lackluster with the photos. You're not allowed to take any in the Smithsonian museums, (not that museum photos are really ever worth it) and D.C. architecture is, (how to put this so as not to offend Patriotic Americans that have never left their country in order to see superior architecture anywhere else) well, uninspiring. Dull. Unimaginative. BORING AS BLOODY HELL.

It's bizarre, actually. Because whoever designed the Washington Monument was obviously going for the Egyptian obelisk design. Because that's exactly all it is, except that they were satisfied by just making it really really big (for any foreigners reading who are unaccustomed to American culture, bigger is always better) and devoid of any actual creativity. An Egyptian obelisk is usually covered in hieroglyphics, perhaps depicting an event or honoring the person or God in whose honor it was erected. Ours is just a large unadorned phallic symbol, with bleeping red lights at the tip so planes don't crash into it at night. Thousands of years from now, when whichever Empire will be in vogue has come to tour the ruins of Ancient America, they're going to say that Washington D.C. was a large city with many unfinished monuments, and that they may never understand the meaning behind any of them, due to a severe lack of clues. Or, they may even be mistaken into thinking that the Roman empire never actually died out; It just moved it's main operation overseas and got really boring. Another case in point is the Lincoln Memorial. It's exactly what you think it is. A really really big sculpture (see American culture rules above) of President Lincoln sitting in a chair in a big empty room devoid of anything else of interest, save Lincoln's speech carved on the wall in big letters in Roman font. I could have been totally satisfied with only ever having seen it on TV. Actually being there really didn't add much to it.

So, generally speaking, American Federal architechture is the retarded red-headed stepchild of Roman design. Seriously, it's like whoever designed this stuff went to drafting school, and only got halfway through that period in the history of Roman style. Far enough to get the basic gist, but then had to drop out during the more detailed sections on the Roman's creativity because he had to go learn his father's trade as a sorting clerk at his firm, Berman, Berman & Boredom. On this one building in particular, I don't remember which one because of the blandness, it's all big stony blocks and Roman columns, without any more detail. They did carve some distinctly Roman-looking faces into the side of the building, but, there is absolutely no indication of who they're supposed to be. Romans would have included a motif, or more distinctive features so that you'd know whose visage you were dealing with, and perhaps a lovely floral pattern or twenty, but the hero of our architectual story seems to have just gone "Eh... good enough. Time to go sort the mail, anyway" after making only two bland faces, one male and one female, and replicating them one after the other around the circumference of the building. Pathetic and dull, and sort of embarassing for us, really.

But The Holocaust museum was really well done, actually. I'd heard of the Holocaust museum from way back and that it was excellent, and have always wanted to check it out, so that was good. I spent several hours in there, and I've been to alot of that type of thing. My favorite part was the wall of Heroes; a long list of names of people that in one way or another helped to save lives during the Holocaust, with brief descriptions of some of the more interesting stories. Good 'ol Oskar was there of course. There were also some other really well thought out displays, weeping people, and apathetic teenagers on school field trips. Ah to be so young, stupid, and bovinely unconcerned again. I was totally there with the teenagers who were nearly dropping dead from ennui at the various outdoor monuments, however not being affected by the holocaust takes some very practiced detatchment. Well good for them, I say. The real world and all it's horrors will come crashing in on them soon enough. Enjoy not being a part of it all while you still can.

The other part of D.C. that I really enjoy is the towniness of the regular parts of the city. I guess that there is some sort of zoning law which limits the height of buildings, (I think that nothing can be taller than the Capital Building, or the Great Phallus, or something. It's just a rumor I heard out of the corner of my ear, so to speak, but it seems to hold up. No high-risers.) so it's sort of a sprawly affair with lots of charming old style housing and vibrant shopping and restaraunt areas. I ate some really good food, and that always makes for a pleasant excursion. The law firm I had to go to was actually a quick hop across the border into Alexandria, Virginia, and that was a sickeningly charming little area, all colonial and junk. It snowed pretty heavily that evening, so as I left the law offices it got even more grotesquely traditional looking. I kept expecting to hear a town cryer wander by. Well you know not really, but it would have felt appropriate had one done so.

Since I don't have any pictures of Washington to paste just yet, I'm going to post my current most favoritest YouLube video ever, which I've appropriated from GoDrex. He always finds the best stuff. Be warned, though; Typical Gen-X irony and foul language abound. Not to mention serious offences to prim and proper George Washington fans. But I think George himself would be proud.

Also, apologies to members of the Gen-X for actual usage of the term Gen-X. It had to be done, it's the only way outsiders will understand. When you say something is Gen-X, people like to nod their heads knowingly and go, oh those crazy slackers. Of course, it's entirely possible that this video was created by a non-member, but if so, they totally get it, man.

Whispering Little Nothings In Your Ears

All of my pictures from Thailand are up. Krabi, which was dull but had a neat forest monastery, Ko Lanta, in which I have many many pictures of tiny little crabs, and Bangkok with many many incomprehensible Wat pictures. Enter at your own risk.

Scott is leaving today for China... which makes me sad because now I want to travel again. And I have to figure out a bunch of stuff I don't feel like figuring out. Again.

Anyway, that's really all I have. I'm very happy I got to see it snow yesterday. Here's a YouLube video I took in Ko Lanta of a Thai fire thrower on my hotel beach one night.

Centralia's Got What Ails Ya

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day, as we all know, and to celebrate this day in honor of one of America's greatest citizens, Scott, Miss Luongo, Creepy Christy and I got up unnaturally early to drive two and a half hours or so to Centralia, Pennsylvania. We'd been up the night before sharing a tipple of the last of Creepy Christy's New Year's absinthe, and that night we all had dreams, too. Absinthe often causes some off-the-hook dreams, and waking up with images of 30 rampaging tornadoes and two-legged puppies dancing in my head was a hell of a way to start this day. Not quite the same type of dream MLK was talking about, but I had to start this post somewhere.
Centralia, for those few out there who haven't heard of it by now, is a Ghost Town (well, mostly) not far from Hazleton, PA, and it's an ode to it's allure that all four of us were able to actually get up and be on the road by 9:30 am to go see it. It is the inspiration for the video game and subsequent horror film known as 'Silent Hill'. It was once a thriving coal mining town, until one day in 1962, some iidjit set fire to a pile of trash in a poorly located landfill... right on top of an exposed vein of anthracite coal. Well, anthracite coal is highly flammable, and fwooom! The vein lit up and started a massive underground coal fire. Over the next couple of years, after failed attempts at putting the fire out, things for the town started looking bleak... the extent of the problem began to be understood in the 70s when a gas-station owner inserted a stick into one of his underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he withdrew it, it seemed hot, so he lowered a thermometer down on a string and discovered that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was at a dangerous 180 degrees Fahrenheit! Well, long story short, the fire is still burning today. Most of the residents have died or left town long ago, but there are still some people living there; the Wikipedia Centralia entry lists the population of Centralia at 12, making it the least populated municipality in Pennsylvania. Their houses seem to mostly be the only buildings left standing. We saw streets overgrown by grass leading nowhere, and two or three houses.

I don't know if this is true of all of the remaining Centralia residents, but the Wikipedia entry states that the reason people refuse to leave, despite the health hazards of remaining, is that they believe that the government wants to clear the town so that they can claim the rights to Centralia coal, which was at one point valued in the billions of dollars. They say that there is enough coal underground to keep the fires burning for another 250 years...
There is a section of PA Route 61 that runs right into town which has been blocked off by large mounds of dirt and this sign:

Of course we ignored the sign completely and walked the length of what is locally referred to as the "Highway to Hell". I only know this because of all of the graffiti painted on the abandoned stretch of highway, but it's a moniker that seems to fit.

The reason the road is blocked is that the underground fires have caused severe weakening of the ground, and sinkholes have been appearing all over town. Some pretty large cracks, holes, and other warpage have appeared along Ghost Highway 61 as a result, with smoke and noxious gasses continuously pouring out of them giving the whole thing a deliciously spooky atmosphere.

The blocked section of 61 terminates right on the outskirts of Centralia, where there is an old town graveyard. It was sufficiently foggy, gassy, and iconic looking enough that we all took far too many pictures of decrepit old tombstones and eerie trees fading into the mist.

On the other side of the graveyard is an area that appears to be a landfill, and there are vents all over the place there spewing crazy amounts of coalsmoke and sulfur. After about 5 minutes there, poor Miss Luongo had to leave because the fumes were so noxious. Scott, Creepy, and I stayed far too much longer, killing our lungs so we could take a stupid amount of photos of smoke coming up out of the ground.

I've uploaded all of the day's pictures on my smugmug page in my Centralia, Pennsylvania gallery, and some of them are pretty cool, though they're all along the lines of the ones I've posted here.
For further reading, I highly suggest the wikipedia page already mentioned, as well as the entry over at Damn Interesting, and this page also.
Finally, in honor of my newfound superhero-like ability to upload my videos onto YouTube and post them here, I leave you with my pièce de résistance, which I call 'Smoking Crack'.

Low Quality Videos Of High Quality Times

I've finally figured out how to get some videos on here that I've taken on my travels that I've been wanting to show people for a while now: I uploaded a bunch of stuff to YouTube! The video quality is not even as good as the low-quality video they were originally captured by my digital camera with, but it's better than nothing, I suppose.
I'll start out with a video I took of the Whirling Dervishes at Mevlevi Monastery in Istanbul.

This next one is a nice little old communist lady waving commie flags and dancing to some old Songs of the Republic in Red Square, Moscow on November 7th, 2005.

And this one is from my trip to Petra, in Jordan, where I caught them filming a very silly looking dance in front of the famous Treasury building for an Indian commercial.

This one is also from Jordan; it is in the ruined Roman city of Jerash, and involves an Arabic marching band... an Arabic marching BAGPIPE band, to be more precise, performing, oh my god, 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' See it to believe it.

This one is less exciting, but it's from my Blackhawk ride in Iraq; it shows us taking off from the Washington Heliport in the Interzone in Baghdad and a few minutes of the view of my ride over the city of Baghdad.

Now, this last one was not taken by me. I found it on an unmarked CD along with all those found photos that I've posted on my smugmug page. After watching it you're going to think that I'm a bad person for putting it up, but believe me I don't find this video funny. I put it up to remind one of how cruel and stupid people can be.