Suspension of Disbelief

Now and then I'll go back and read some of the things that I've posted in the past and, as you may have noticed by the lack of posts and the general tone I've taken in the past few years, I frequently feel tapped out of material to talk about.  It's not true that I don't have new ideas or concepts.  Insights abound, but frequently, especially as of late I feel like there are breakwaters holding back exactly what I want to say.  Sometimes it feels like no matter what words I use, it doesn't completely adequately express what I'm trying to say.  Language fails me and it never used to.  Perhaps it's confidence; perhaps it's practice.  As I sit here and type I think, as I always do as I post.  There's an internal monologue going on reflecting on how what I'm saying comes across and gauging how well what I've said is illuminating my thoughts.  And, I've just been well off the mark for a long time.  That makes me want to post less and les...

No really.  What IS life?  Not your life and my life, but life in general.  What is the determining factor between life and non-life?  And I'm not talking in a pro-choice / anti-abortion argument.  I mean what constitutes something living.  Near as I can see, life as I define it seems to be the point when someone or something realizes that it's alive.  Think about it.  There was a point where you weren't alive.  Focus on memories you have from long ago.  Think back as far as you can to your earliest memories.  And try to push back just one more day into your past.  Just one more memory further.  Are you really alive before you remember? Take for instance a video recording of you as a baby.  Coo coo... yes very cute.  But is that you?  Think about you and everything that makes you... you.  Focus on you, the you that's inside your body.  Your mind, your heart, your soul.  What ever you call it...

Just a little project I'm working on in my spare time.

I've spoken before about the cosmic see-saw of the universe between energy and matter and I've come to a few new conclusions.  Energy is simultaneously repellant and attracted to itself.  This explains and is seen in the idea of universal expansion.  If given enough room, energy will space out far enough to limit as much contact with itself as possible.  Like the light from a lamp, energy dissipates as quickly as possible into the lowest energy-density the volume allows.  A room with no obstructions does not have an area that is brighter than any other if the light source is uniform.  Like light, when there is no where for energy to go it becomes forced into contact with itself.  This changes energy's properties.  It creates matter.  Energy that is forced to come into contact with itself overcomes its repellant properties and forms matter.  Look at the skeleton of the universe and how stars and galaxies form along it.  These ar...

I got to thinking, as I tend to do between periods of arduous labor.  It tends to fill the gaps nicely.  I was thinking about success and more specifically successful people.  There's a famous quotation by Bertrand Russell:  ""The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt".  That idea annoys me.  Evolutionarily it seems like a negative on the species.  That is, the quotation does seem pretty true. A thought occurs to me now though, one of two actually which may be key to this.  The first is that intelligence may not be evolutionarily useful beyond a certain point and the second is that what we define as intelligence may be evolutionarily useless. In the end though, I think I've answered my own musing.  I think that we as a species do in fact move forward and that the intelligent are not necessarily full of doubt, but the people who are full of doubt may fin...

First and foremost, I will state that I am supposing that the creation of habitable environments on the large and small scale are achievable and that the human species will desire and succeed to achieve this.  That is, we currently are not able to spread our species out amongst the stars, primarily due to the fact that we are currently unable to meet the challenges of long-duration interstellar travel. There are three limiting factors to man's ability to extend out into the universe and they are:  time, technology, and physiology. In regards to time, human expansion into the universe is particularly limited currently.  Outer space is huge.  Colossally huge.  I'd suggest that it is indeed the biggest thing possible.  And in addition, space is for the most part completely empty.  And I don't mean that there isn't discernible matter, but that those quantities of matter over the microscopic level, are quite few and far between.  People don't even ...

This goes exponentially true about gay guys.  I don't even think gay guys know how to date anymore.  I think that they were robbed of this ability when they were shunned from society.  Many even believe that to date is to betray their gayness and enter into a "heteronormative" pattern of behavior.  I see this very frequently in the unattractive as well.  Straight or gay.  Those who are unattractive cling to the fringes of society and seek out increasingly risky and dangerous ways of finding sexual pleasure.  Both groups become needy and sex-crazed. Being shunned from society has a lot of negative effects on the ability of gay men to commit to relationships.  Even those most unaffected by these negative effects (ie, generally those who seem straight or else those who can stick up for themselves or have others to stick up for them very well) still seem to slip into these patterns as most of the people they look to date follow these patterns and it...