Suspension of Disbelief

Look at the Crusades, Armenian genocide, Hitler's final solution, Stalin's genocide, Pol Pot, every person who starves to death while nations throw out food, multinational corporations paying starvation wages while raking in billions, rape, war, child abuse... No one's god has solved those problems, or any number of them. Humanity needs to come to terms that we are alone in the deity sense, whether completely or effectually. We are responsible for enabling justice or inhibiting justice. Pain, suffering, hate, death, destruction, they all happen because WE let them. So long as we pass the burden of justice fulfillment off on one's god, we will not have solutions to these problems.

Ok so companies have spent millions of dollars trying to block and subsequently removed parts or all of the Affordable Care Act. The reason being, providing health care to full time employees is going to cut some into corporate profits. Let's put aside the reality that happy and healthy workers are better workers and ALL data shows that better paid / better supported workers produce more for the company. The talking heads of these companies don't care about that. They only care about short term profit. Why? Because that is what the American economy is built on. Short term, giant gains. Then you cut and run with your big severance bonus. So, what's going to happen? This: The Affordable Care Act requires companies to provide health care to employees who work more than 30 hours a week, i.e. "full time". So: Companies will employ workers for 27, 28, and 29 hrs a week. Why? Because if the employee averages over 30 a week, and the company d...

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...