I thought it said: Bush to announce new sanctions for Satan



That must be how The Onion gets its ideas.

I was googling something and found an article written by... me. (Haha!) I don't like some of it, so I edited it. (Haha!)

Cherish Your Rights

The USA PATRIOT Act (literally: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) is about to expire. But not if your congress has anything to do about it.

For some reason, the American purveyors of peace and serenity still insist on their email and phone taps and sneak-and-peak searches without your knowledge or a judge's consent. These days you can even be arrested and held indefinitely while they turn your house inside out and probe your computer's sensitive nether-regions.

Question: "Well, what's wrong with that? I have nothing to hide. Why all the fuss? I'm innocent!"

Answer: Panopticism.

Panopticism is a subversive control theory cirticized by Foucault. The name is derived from a prison design with a system of dark windows which allowed guards to monitor inmates. It was called "the panopticon," meaning "to view or survey a wide space."

The inmates never know who's watching them. There could be fifty guards behind the glass; there could be none. The idea is to use your own fear against you and keep you in line. Panopticism creates a will-weakening environment, in which power is freely abandoned in exchange for obscurity. This tends to give executors of panopticism a lot of power. Works well for a prison. Works well for North Korea, too.

According to the U.S. constitution, the courts balance the cops because the framers wisely understood that cops will beat you if given the chance. That's the nature of power. If we allow domestic policy like the Patriot Act to go unchecked it could become a more destructive weapon against the American people than the terrorists it seeks to Intercept and Obstruct.

Nearly 3,000 years ago, Laozi, one of China's greatest philosophers wrote: "Laws are written to bring about justice. To insist upon enforcing outdated laws that create injustice is to take care of your hat and shoes while forgetting the head and feet they were designed to protect."

And now a quote from a Nazi: "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -Herman Goering, Nazi

You can read about the Patriot Act and its problems at ACLU.org.

If you want to buy me a present to go with my rose, you can buy me this book (by Jack Huberman):

Michael Shermer wrote Why People Believe Weird Things. I read it last year. Loved it. Here is an interview with the author (provided by Skeptoid.com):

Exerpt:

Q. In all of history, what is your favorite invention?
A. The invention of inventing--the creative process as witnessed in science and technology, and the organized process of inventing as something humans can do to improve life.

Q. What do you hope will be invented next?
A. A process to eliminate errors in cell division (e.g., those that lead to cancer), and a process to eliminate the limits to cell division (that lead to aging).

Q. What do you hope will never be invented?
A. A machine that would replace sex.

Q. What would you un-invent if you could?
A. The televangelist.

Did you know that if you get an idea for a book, play, or movie, particularly a specific scene, that information is copyrighted the moment you write it down? Any original piece of information you write is yours. You don't have to register it. You don't have to send it off. It's copyrighted. (Proving it in court, of course, is another matter. But "copyright" and "proof of" are not the same. I am talking about copyright.)

If you post something online—as a comment on this blog, for example, or a comment on a forum, or a newspaper—who owns the information? Some say: "I would imagine that most societies privilege the rights of the publisher over the rights of the non-professional who freely chooses to submit a piece for publication." These people are probably right. This is the way things are now. But this trend is wrong. Does Bic own whatever you write with their ball point pens? No. Does Apple own whatever you type while using their computers? No.

People who willfully submit their comments to a site should be able to willfully remove their comments. Copyright law needs to be changed to grant the author of any comment the right to remove his or her comment. Currently, the only way to do this on many sites is to petition the webmaster to agree to your request. But with a new copyright law, granting individual authors the right to freely post and remove their information, most blogs and sites will then become equipped with features for posting and deleting at will.

There is no sense in being greedy about this. There is a greater good involved that we are only beginning to understand. The internet was only popularized within the past decade. Our countries and cultures are still adapting to it, still considering its implications. If we don't have a law now extending copyright privileges to individual authors, then I predict that we will within in the next decade. Why?

I don't have to prove who I am to type these words. I am totally anonymous. I could be 80. I could be 8. I could be a pre-teen posting things about myself, what city I live in, what neighborhood I live in, what my phone number is, what my email address is. It's not hard to dig up information on people. You type in their name, their hometown, then you get a little information. You find an email address and search for that. Then you are led to forums where people used that email address to register, and you have discovered a cache of information -- just like leading a vein in the ground to a cache of gold deposits.

You might be saying, "Why would I be searching up someone online? And why would someone be searching for me?" You may well die before ever searching for someone online. And you might live out your whole life never having been searched for. All I am saying is there are people who do it. And the longer our world and our societies continue in this information age, the more our personal lives will become digitized and uploaded -- a never ending cache of searchable info. And it only takes 0.2 seconds or less.

Some might say, "Well, if they put all that information online willfuly, then they need to live with the consequences." But I'm not buying it. Such people, who rushed to put all their information on MySpace.com, or this or that site or forum, need to be granted amnesty. We are all playing with fire, here. We are all learning about this new technology as we go. What Bob writes carelessly today, he may regret tomorrow or ten years from now.

I don't mean to paint a portrait of a dark and sinister world. I am not trying to alarm anyone, or appeal to anyone's emotions. I'm not calling foul, or crying wolf. All I'm saying is this: people ought to have the right to post and delete their information freely. That's it. That's all I'm saying. The author of a post should have a copyright license for what he or she chooses to post. That license should allow him or her to post or delete at will.

We simply can't anticipate what will or won't happen this year, or next year, or ten years from now. We don't know what sort of information will be dangerous. Therefore, we can't possibly envision laws and rules that will take into account all the different scenarious for determining whether or not a poster should or shouldn't be able to remove or delete his or her personal information. We cannot foresee all the impending issues with certainty.

Therefore, I feel it best to simply do this: 1) grant an automatic copyright to everyone who puts personally-authored information online; 2) require hosting companies and site publishers to technologically-enable their users to post and delete information; 3) clean up spurious Terms and Conditions accordingly. We are in an information age, but we are also in a democratized age (power transfers to the people). We ought to democratize people's ability to make themselves known or unknown online. The power to post and delete comments should be in the hands of the people. Not the hands of politicians or corporations.

Sports is the new religion.

Some guy named Brownback lost a lot of Wisconsin votes when he offended the finer sensibilities of the good people of Green Bay by comparing the Beatles to Jesus... er, Peyton Manning to Brett Favre.

LAKE GENEVA, Wisconsin (AP) -- Note to Sen. Sam Brownback: In Packerland, it's not cool to diss Brett Favre

The GOP presidential hopeful drew boos and groans Friday at the Wisconsin Republican Party convention when he used a football analogy to talk about the need to focus on families.

"This is fundamental blocking and tackling," he said. "This is your line in football. If you don't have a line, how many passes can Peyton Manning complete? Greatest quarterback, maybe, in NFL history."

Realizing what he had said, the Kansas Republican slumped at the podium and put his head in his hands.

"That's really bad," he said. "That will go down in history. I apologize."

His apology brought a smattering of applause and laughter. He tried to recover, saying former Packer Bart Starr may be the greatest of all time, but the crowd was still restless.

"Let's take Favre then," Brownback said. "The Packers are great. I'm sorry. How many passes does he complete without a line?"

"All of them!" more than one person yelled from the back.

"I'm not sure how I recover from this," Brownback said. "My point is we've got to rebuild the family. I'll get off this."

Moms, don't let your kids grow up to be politicians if they're going to shoot metaphors like that from their hips. (That's what you get for skipping out on poetry class and attending secret political societies, Bonehead!) Never hurt the ever-eloquent George W. Bush, MBA, Bonehead, Pres., Esq., though, who will go down in history as one of America's winningest presidents (at least in terms of "elections").

I liked Spider-Man 3. It's pretty good, it's entertaining. For the most part, it makes sense and doesn't have any major plot holes or logic problems (though it does have minor ones). Spider-Man 3's major weakness is that it suffers from the Hulk Fallacy: the tendency to believe, especially among ancient man and makers of Marvel Comics films, that bigger is better (see Ang Li's Hulk).

It's a well-known fact that ancient man, trying to out-do his ancient neighbors, used to display large objects in and around his living area, such as: spears, arrows, rifles, deer and buffalo head. This left no room for other items such a dishwashers, laundry dryers, and bathtubs, which were subsequently relegated to the front porch, the roof, and, when necessary, the lawn, variously staggered among truck and motorcycle carcasses. Ancient man did this because ancient man had a Hulk Complex, and believed that bigger was better.

When ancient man grew up, ancient man put away childish things and dragged the home appliances back into their kitchens and bathrooms (a phenomenon known as "evolution," as described with flowcharts and pictures by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Jeff Foxworthy in a their forthcoming book: "Breaking the Redneck Gene"). Trumping "bigger" as a measuring stick (quantity), modern man soon became equipped with the new superpowers of superlatorial discrimination (quality). But unfortunately, certain echoes of a lapsed species still pop up unawares in society from time to time, such as those found in Alabama, or in the third acts of the screenplays of The Hulk (2003), X-Men 3 (2006), and Spider-Man 3 (2007).

While Spider-Man 3 1) over-punctuates itself with sentimentality (undeserved emotion); 2) needlessly moralizes in its conclusion (if you need to tell the audience the moral of the story, you've failed as a screenwriter); and 3) pushes its plot like an illegal war agenda (the butler assuages Harry's rage with unsupported, circumstantial evidence); it's biggest flaw in my book is 4) the way it hulks itself as bigger, better, and—ultimately—badder.

Now for a little repeat: I liked Spider-Man 3. It's pretty good, it's entertaining. For the most part it makes sense and doesn't have any major plot holes or logic problems. And for my final thoughts and the movie (and last thousand words), a picture (if you've seen the movie, you'll know what I mean):

confuse KON.fyooz (not to be confused with confuse ken.FYOOZ)

Confuse is a mixture of con, conjoin, influence, and infuse, but connotes an action wherein: a 1) person puts two things together that don't correlate, in order to 2) unnecessarily confuse a situation. (Ex. Husband: "Honey, why did you buy that alarm system!?" Wife: "The salesman confused me by confusing the part about the free equipment and the 36-month contract!") The word is best put to use when the two or more parts being slapped together create irony or oxymorirony.

So, here's today's confuscation for you (an obfuscation acheived through means of confusubtlety):


In this example, money and God have been confused into one. Does "In God We Trust" remind us that money can't replace god, or does it teach us that money is god?

"Train up a child in the way he should make money; and when he is old he will not be on welfare."

"Blessed are the rich, for in a world of compound interest, their children shall inherit moneys as numerable as the sands of the sea."

"I say unto you it is easier for a rich man to get into heaven, for behold, poverty is the number one statistic correlating with crime, and I hate criminals. I send them all to hell, even every one. Don't much care for illegal immigrants either. Hello! Illegal! Jesus, people!"

Maybe the guy who first designed the coins and stuff was supposed to write: "In Gold We Trust," or maybe "Ingot We Trust," and he just got confused?

Seen on an RSS feed: "Texas Crowd Jeers Yankees Fan Giuliani"

Isn't it funny (ironic, really) how royally injected American politics is with religion? For all the talk anyone wants to make about what the framers did or did not believe in, you can't argue the fact that they fought hard to establish a separation between church and state.

There are some who say, "That's not true. What they really meant to say is that you can't keep church and state separated." Huh? No, sorry. They did not mean to say that. If they had meant to say that, they would have said, "The church and the state shall not be separated." They weren't fools. They knew how to express themselves without the interpolation of subsequent generations.

There are some who say, "Well, the reason why they said that was because in Europe the kings and churches were all the same and had so much power. They weren't really saying that we couldn't have prayers in school, or that we couldn't put the 10 commandments in a courtroom." Wrong again. The only way to protect the free practice of religion long-term is to keep it out of the government. (And you're just going to have to trust me and the framers on this one.)

If I ever won the Miss America pageant (not bloody likely) and they asked me whether or not I think the 10 commandments should be in a courtroom, I'd say, "Call me crazy, but I think the Bill of Rights would be a better thing to put in a courtroom. I mean it is a legal document. And we want our laws to reflect the rights guaranteed in the first ten amendments. I say let's keep the 10 commandments out. Let's also leave out the Seven Roman Catholic Sacraments, the Buddhist Eightfold Path to Enlightenment, and various Allahu Akhbar Sutrahs. A better place for those things might be, hm, let me think: a cathedral, a monasteray, and a mosque." (Joke: So, a cathedral, a monastery, and a mosque all walk into a bar... oh, nevermind.)

Some people further say, "Before there was the Bill of Rights, there was the BIBLE (emphasis theirs). The framers were raised on the BIBLE and the BIBLE taught them what was right and wrong. And God saw that they were good, and so he said, 'Let there be the United States of America, and let them be one nation under me, and let all their money remind them that I am the Lord their God, and they shall be called my people, even AMERICANS (emphasis Lord God's), the most free and prosperous and pure and delightsome upon the face of the whole earth. For behold, the Jews, I have forgotten. And the Muslims? Verily they vex me. And all of those Eastern religions? Meh, I never much cared for them. And only these righteous, red-blooded, gun-toting, capitalisit, non-flag-burning PATRIOTS remain upon the land. And if it so be that they shall succeed in establishing an imperial Neo-Christservantive kingdom, then I will rain down nuclear fire upon other lands; yet upon their land, even U.S. and A., I will I join them again in mine own due time, to reign, and rule, and party.'"

Anyway... back the RSS feed that inpsired this post. Many Americans don't realize how infused religion and politics are. They need to take a vacation. ["A vacation from my PROBLEMS!" (emphasis Bob Wyley's).]


Who knows but what one day sports will be the new religion.

"How can you vote for a Charger, Margaret! You're a Packer, goddamnit!"

"Stop cursin', Earl! You're 'ffendin' my Buccaneers!"

Reminds me of the Jerry Seinfeld skit: We cheer for Karl Malone until he's traded to L.A. Then, when he comes back to Salt Lake, we boo him. "It's like we're just rooting for the clothes. 'Go, clothes! Go!'"

Have the Jews been picked on throughout history? Yes. Have Mormons been picked on? Yes. Christians? Yes. Muslims? Yes. But they've also done their fair share of picking.

The people who have really been picked on over the years are the atheists. There are many definitions of so-called "hard" atheists, "soft" atheists, agnostics, etc. But one definition of atheist that I like is that we are all atheistic by degrees.

If you don't believe in Jupiter, Zeus, or Apollo, then you are atheistic towards them. If you beleive in Alla, but not Jesus, you are atheistic towards Jesus as a god. We are all "theistic" about our own point of view, and "atheisitc" toward others' points of view.

And it's that category of "atheist" that's been picked on throughout history: the people who didn't believe in the same god as someone else. Thus, the Lord told the Israelites to completely destroy the Amorites from off the face of the earth. And today, Jews and Christians can justify this slaughter amongst themselves, saying, "Well, the Amorites were completely, completely wicked. God said it was okay." Which is just bullshit. It's essentially like saying, "They are so culturally apart from us, they are essentially not even human. Therefore: kill."

In my group of theoretical atheists, I can include Jews (being picked on by Catholics, Christians); I can included Cathotlics and Protestants (picking on each other); I can include Mormons (being picked on by the rest of Christianity); I can include Jehovah's Witnesses (being picked on by Mormons). In this theoretical group, I'm including anyone who has been picked on as a group, by a group.

Some people look at Hitler (Catholic), Stalin (nationalist), Mao (nationalist), and Polpot (nationalist) as some of the world's worst dictators, responsible for the deaths of millions. They attribute all this death to atheism. But this attribution is false. As Richard Dawkins points out to Bill O'Reilly: Hitler and Stalin also had mustaches. Does that mean the mustache was responsible for all the deaths? (Duh. Of course not.)

Many theists take an overly simplistic and fundamentalist view of atheists and assume: "Atheists have no moral center. They believe in nothing. They stand for nothing." This is not true. "Atheist" does not mean "amoral," nor does it mean "without belief." It merely means that one does not believe in supernatural gods, such as Jesus, Santa, Zeus, Casper, or who or what have you. One does not need a religion to have a moral center. In fact, what's more moral and ethical? Doing good and being good for its own sake? Or doing good and being good because you are afraid that your god will be mad at you?

Lawrence Kohlberg studied morality and discovered six degrees of moral reasoning: what's moral, and what are our reasons for being moral? Kohlberg's lowest level of morality is doing good for fear of punishment or want of reward. This is nothing more than Santa Claus Ethics. ("He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.") Listen and learn: if you're being good because you think you're being watched, that's not being good "for goodness' sake"; that's being good for toys.

And now, I present to you a short film of some of modern history's atheists. I hope you enjoy it.

Quite possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life today.

Rediscovering this clip again. :)

The more I watch this video of the Color Changing Card Trick the cooler I think it is.