Well I can understand where he’s coming from. I’d love the Discovery channel (one of the few channels that I will actually watch) to have more real science programing. There are a bunch of shows that I would cut down with a vengeance if they gave me control of its’ programing but as a whole the network isn’t that bad. I think the History channel as a whole has fallen a lot further down. TLC is a cesspool that has completely been cut off by me. The Science channel seems to be the best at the moment. Of course I don’t watch a lot of TV so my opinions here are mainly based on the few times I switch the TV on and flip through the channels.

I do not agree with his methods. Way to go jackass, now you’re just like all the crazy-ass religious nuts with guns. We do not need asshole, gun waving, nut jobs in the skeptic/scientific/atheist/agnostic/whatever groups thank you very much. Waving a gun around does not get your demands met. Also American public is mostly stupid and a good chunk are pretty anti science. They will not be watching these channels much, and if you put on real science then even less would. I am Ok with frivolous programs up to a point if it brings them more viewers. The History channel has pissed me off lately as every other week it seems to be adding a new reality show that has little to nothing to do with history. Please stop and fire the person adding these shows.

Looks like the guy just got shot by the cops. Gee didn’t see that one coming.

Update: Oh and I finally got a look at his demands. The website wasn’t working when I first hear about this. Yeah this guy was bat shit insane. He pretty much wanted everyone to stop having babies. Like seriously, not one more baby at all period, until the problems of the world are fixed. He also thought that a TV channel could bring about the massive culture, economic, and environment changes that would be required to meet his requirements. Here’s a copy of his demands after the jump.

The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY:

1. The Discovery Channel and it’s affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s “My Ishmael” pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!

2. All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.

3. All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease. There is no sense in advertising weapons of mass-destruction anymore. Instead, talk about ways to disassemble civilization and concentrate the message in finding SOLUTIONS to solving global military mechanized conflict. Again, solutions solutions instead of just repeating the same old wars with newer weapons. Also, keep out the fraudulent peace movements. They are liars and fakes and had no real intention of ending the wars. ALL OF THEM ARE FAKE! On one hand, they claim they want the wars to end, on the other, they are demanding the human population increase. World War II had 2 Billion humans and after that war, the people decided that tripling the population would assure peace. WTF??? STUPIDITY! MORE HUMANS EQUALS MORE WAR!

4. Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn’t, then get hell off the planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??

5. Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)

6. Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy. Find ways so that people don’t build more housing pollution which destroys the environment to make way for more human filth! Find solutions so that people stop breeding as well as stopping using Oil in order to REVERSE Global warming and the destruction of the planet!

7. Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people’s brains until they get it!!

8. Saving the Planet means saving what’s left of the non-human Wildlife by decreasing the Human population. That means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies! You’re the media, you can reach enough people. It’s your resposibility because you reach so many minds!!!

9. Develop shows that will correct and dismantle the dangerous US world economy. Find solutions for their disasterous Ponzi-Casino economy before they take the world to another nuclear war.

10. Stop all shows glorifying human birthing on all your channels and on TLC. Stop Future Weapons shows or replace the dialogue condemning the people behind these developments so that the shows become exposes rather than advertisements of Arms sales and development!

11. You’re also going to find solutions for unemployment and housing. All these unemployed people makes me think the US is headed toward more war.

Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture.

For every human born, ACRES of wildlife forests must be turned into farmland in order to feed that new addition over the course of 60 to 100 YEARS of that new human’s lifespan! THIS IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FOREST CREATURES!!!! All human procreation and farming must cease!

It is the responsiblity of everyone to preserve the planet they live on by not breeding any more children who will continue their filthy practices. Children represent FUTURE catastrophic pollution whereas their parents are current pollution. NO MORE BABIES! Population growth is a real crisis. Even one child born in the US will use 30 to a thousand times more resources than a Third World child. It’s like a couple are having 30 babies even though it’s just one! If the US goes in this direction maybe other countries will too!

Also, war must be halted. Not because it’s morally wrong, but because of the catastrophic environmental damage modern weapons cause to other creatures. FIND SOLUTIONS JUST LIKE THE BOOK SAYS! Humans are supposed to be inventive. INVENT, DAMN YOU!!

The world needs TV shows that DEVELOP solutions to the problems that humans are causing, not stupify the people into destroying the world. Not encouraging them to breed more environmentally harmful humans.

Saving the environment and the remaning species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.

The humans? The planet does not need humans.

You MUST KNOW the human population is behind all the pollution and problems in the world, and YET you encourage the exact opposite instead of discouraging human growth and procreation. Surely you MUST ALREADY KNOW this!

I want Discovery Communications to broadcast on their channels to the world their new program lineup and I want proof they are doing so. I want the new shows started by asking the public for inventive solution ideas to save the planet and the remaining wildlife on it.

These are the demands and sayings of Lee.

This concept intrigues me.

Some ideas that have been proposed are a little far out but make you think about what really defines life? It’s pretty easy to look at an animal or plant and say “that” but what about organic molecules that replicate themselves and can pass on chemical reaction “memories” to their “offspring.” Some of the articles I’ve read throw out some far fetched design of life that would be hard to recognize as life if we saw it, but most of the articles simply state “since we don’t know what’s out there, it’s possible that there’s life out there that we can’t even dream about or relate to in any shape or form.” That’s not really trying hard to give an example, but I understand the problem. Trying to brainstorm possible alien life in a way that’s so unlike us that it would be hard to consider it, is not the easiest problem to ponder. Most articles resort to throwing out the robotic life form. Some sort of sentient machine that was created by a biological entity that may or may not exist anymore.

I’ve also read a few interesting articles on the intelligence of plants. Yes, that’s right the intelligence of plant life. Go ahead and laugh because it doesn’t seem to make sense does it? They just sit there and do nothing but turn sunlight into energy to continue doing the same. At least that’s what you think when you aren’t really thinking about it. Take a step back and really look at how a plant goes about it’s life, it’s not really surprising that there’s a lot more going on.

First let’s talk a bit about what defines intelligence. Thoughts? Reaction to stimulation? Problem solving? How about memories? Awareness of surroundings? Pain?

As strange as it seemed plants are aware of their surroundings. It’s not the same way you and I are aware but they know their place in the world surprisingly well. Have you ever seen a plant grow towards the light? Ah but that’s simply the cells on the side of the plant that gets the sun growing like crazy you say. Maybe, but it’s not just that simple; there’s definitely a process going on inside the plant that adjusts the growth rate of the different cells and their positions in order to maximize sunlight gathering. It isn’t permanent either, the plant will track the sun as it moves across the sky.

Plants have some sort of memory as well. Plants remember the seasons and know when to increase or decrease their activity. This has been shown to function to more than just the seasons but also other environmental stresses or diseases. The plant needs to know when to flower in order to produce viable offspring and seed them at the best possible time. Seeds do not spring up overnight they must flower, pollinate and develop before being released and the plant needs to know when to start the process. There have been experiments using different colored lights and different periods of light in order to trigger different rates or times for flowering. The plants demonstrate the ability to learn the cycles and flower at different times based on the stimuli set in the experiments. Plant memory has also been shown to spread across to the the seeds and refine itself over the course of several generations/years.

Plants, like any other organism are subjected to many different challenging situations in the wild. In response they have also developed many different responses for solving these problems. Any gardener knows that plants can experience stress for many different reasons. For each problem that a plant encounters they have developed a response. Drought? Grow deeper roots and conserve water. Disease or stressful environment? Spark wild variations in the seeds to hopefully spur and develop offspring that can cope with the stresses.

One of the more recent things I found out about plants is there ability to cope with predators. Apparently researchers have discovered that when plants are cut or damaged by insects they release scents that attract other insects that eat the ones eating the plant. It’s basically a scream “Help I’m being eaten by ______! Come eat it!” It goes so far that it can be insect specific. If a caterpillar is chewing on a plant the chemicals in the caterpillar will react with the chemicals in the plant and put out a specific scent to attract caterpillar predators. When you mow your grass the smell of cut grass is basically the plant’s screams.

I picked up another interesting fact today but I haven’t done much research into it so I can’t be sure it is totally valid, but apparently there is some evidence that the plants can socially interact with each other. The article mentioned that if a certain plant is lacking a nutrient other plants can pick up on this and help produce the lacking supplement.

You might be sitting there saying that’s all very interesting Phillip but most of that can be explained with just simple chemical reactions and that it doesn’t show any intelligence, it’s just a bunch of predefined reactions to certain chemical interactions. Fair enough but then might another life form look at us and say that our interactions are nothing more than chemical and electrical interactions taking place? You also might be asking where I’m going with this. I’m just using it as a thoughtful look at how different alien lifeforms may be.

There might be lifeforms out there that work and live at a completely different pace than ourselves. Remember the ent moot in Lord of the rings and how long it took the ents to introduce each other? Well that may not be so far fetched. If the life forms are more on the scale of plants they may take weeks or months to do anything at all and have lifespans measured in centuries. If we came across them their scale may be so different from our own that interacting with them may be completely impossible. Imagine coming across an alien species that only talks in scent. The examples I’ve given about the plants show that it’s possible that plants have a form of “consciousness” that is so alien to our own that it defies our definitions of intelligence and consciousness. If so we may need to redefine those definitions. That and vegans should stop being so pompous.

I’m sure that there are some weird forms of life somewhere out there in the universe that dwarf the odd new look that into plants.

One more thing, I think it is incredibly amusing that there might be a civilization out there that if brought to the earth would pass over all of us apes and would sit down (or dig roots in) and have a nice conversation with our daffodils. They might even possibly speak of the incredible evils that these apes do in cutting, splicing, eating, or anything else we do to plants.

I’ll just ramble aimlessly for a bit then and call it an update I suppose.

If you had told me a few years ago that I would meet the most amazing chick I’ve ever met at a gay bar while they were throwing a “goth prom” and that I’d successfully get said girl’s number, I’d have stared at you blankly cause I wouldn’t know what to say. If you were to continue and say that I would call this girl and arrange the best date I’ve ever been on, one were even in the beginning we were talking so much that the waitress had to come back several times to ask us if we were ready because we forgot to look at the menu, one that after a dinner and a movie we went to a bar to talk and talked almost non stop for 4 or 5 hours, finding out that we have so much in common it would be creepy if it weren’t so awesome, I would have raised an eyebrow, told you were crazy, and to stop using such long run on sentences.

Well all that did happen and Christy and I had our one month this Monday. Things are great and I can’t be happier. She’s a weirdo like me and it’s great having a smart girlfriend who can use words I don’t know. Of course I might have to watch my writing here a little bit more since she’s going for her PhD in English.

My heat tolerance is now pushing up to the extreme. Habanero peppers are no longer cutting it. Now that I have found a couple sources of the insanely hot Ghost chili pepper I can create hot sauces and dishes that will burn your ear hair out. Last week’s spicyaki wings were epic in every sense of the word. Spicyaki is probably my signature dish at the moment and I’m Ok with that.

If you’re wondering what Spicyaki is, it’s simply really hot, homemade teriyaki sauce which we usually put on wings. It’s been getting hotter and hotter every time I make it. I made a “mild” batch for some friends that were coming over and couldn’t take heat. Well it turned out to be pretty spicy anyway. Darn my inability to feel heat, but wait, no don’t darn it at all. It made my girlfriend a believer in hot food. I have a theory that everyone could like spicy food if two condition are met. One, it has to be tasty. Which means the chef has to actually eat it and like it, none of this commerical let’s just make it as hot as possible without any regard for the taste. Two, you have to work people up to it. You can’t just be like this will melt your eyeballs out here you go right out the gate. You also can’t work them up too slow either. You have to challenge them a little. You need to get the endorphins rushing a little. I nailed both of those on the head for my girlfriend who could not stop eating them even though she couldn’t feel her face anymore. How awesome is that. I’m proud.

Pennsic. Pennsic. Pennsic. Well what can I say, too much for this little post. I have a ton of pictures from it and once I have them processed I’ll put them up here as well as a few on facebook too. Pennsic definitely gets it’s own post.

I instantly decided that I must have one. Please if you need to get me a present for any reason please buy me one of these. This is not a fail it is an epic win. Seriously if you buy me this I will love you forever.

via thereifixedit.com