Philibuster

Ah I like a good smack down of stupid claims. This one is a pretty good side by side of the 2012 garbage about the world ending. It lays out a few of the many unadvised claims about what will happen in 2012 and on the other side it shows actual information backed by evidence and facts. But you know don’t take my word for that or the chart’s either. Go look it up yourself, and if you go to any quack sites to find your information verify what they say.

Found via BadAstronomy.

The shuttle Atlantis is launching today at 2:28pm and everything looks good for launch. I’m watching at Night Sky Observer because Nasa TV is blocked.

I am sometimes asked why I dislike religion. I am asked why I feel the world would be a better place without it and I’m given all sorts of stupid arguments that say why it is a force for good and that the world would be hell if there wasn’t religion. All of that is easily dismissed. It’s not a good or strong argument. I don’t believe that religion makes a person who they are. I don’t believe for a second that it is the reason why they do good or evil. I think it’s nothing more than an excuse in both cases. Those people out there that were raised to care about others and help others out would do so without the teachings of dogma and old superstitions. They use religion to help justify their actions and give them more meaning. I personally think that gives it less meaning, that it takes away from a selfless action/good deed done by someone and reduces it to a “I’m only doing this because someone (God) told me to and I don’t want to go to hell” instead of the remarkable kindness that is really is.

Also I don’t think that it causes people to evil things. Those that use religion to justify killing is nothing new. Everyone has been doing it since the beginning of religion. Hell, I am willing to bet that it was one of the founding principals. “There’s a tribe over there, we worship this, they worship that, they deserve to die.” I do believe that people will happily use it to justify the things they do so they might have a clear conscious, making whatever repugnant thing they did even worse.

This vile article speaks massive volumes of the person that wrote it. To quickly sum it up it says that you shouldn’t lie, EVER, even if the Nazis were asking you were some jews were it would be best to just tell them the truth because a lie is a lie and god hates that.

It shows that they have compassion and no love. That their strict adherence to their old bull shit dogma has sucked out the life from their bodies. That they have driven their archaic rules into their heads for so long that there is no free thought or reason or even any emotion anymore. Nothing but their unwavering rules. What disgusts me the most is the fact that they will sit back and smugly claim that without god you have no morals and that I am a horrible person who should be avoided because (picks random atheist hating evil out of the hat) I’ll probably eat your babies. Yet with jaw dropping statements like

“But consider for a moment that we are all already sentenced to die because we are sinners (Romans 5:12). It is going to happen regardless. If a lie helps keep someone alive for a matter of moments compared to eternity, was the lie, which is high treason against the Creator, worth it?”

Yes, they are basically saying so what those Jews are going to die anyways so what if I tell the Nazis were they are. god will judge me favorably because I didn’t lie. I’m surprised the article didn’t just state well they’re only Jews you know who cares what happens to them. So what that by my actions human beings will be round up and tortured and beaten and most likely have a miserable, horrific, slow death. But you know maybe it will just be the gas chambers those aren’t that bad.

I really have no words to describe how this makes me feel. My jaw just dropped when I read that. Religious nuts will never cease to surprise me and that honestly scares the shit out of me. Here they are happily removing all personal responsibility from themselves. A common trait and function of religion I’ve found. Probably why it caught on so well and has stayed around as long as it has. You don’t have be a good person or do anything good in order to be sure of your eternal soul just have to follow these rules and we’ll use magic away guilt to remove all the pesky moral problems and paint them the way we want them to be painted.

Bah. Sickening.

The LHC has started up again after the problems last year. Nothing crazy so far and they haven’t really started doing any science in it yet. They’ve just inject beams and then dumped them shortly thereafter. By mid November they hope to have the first full pass of the beams around the whole ring and shortly after that starting collisions. There will be a burn in process where they calibrate the sensors and get used to the various quirks of the equipment but hopefully we’ll get something interesting by the time the shut down next fall.

So yeah I just got wind that a new A-team movie is going to be made. I pity the fool that has to play B.A.

Actually no I don’t because it’s Qinton Rampage Jackson and he would kill me.

Liam Neeson = Hannibal

Sharlto Copley = Murdock

Quinton Rampage Jackson = B.A. Baracus

Bradley Cooper = Face

Yay thank you weather for delaying the test flight to a time that I can watch it.

Today Nasa launches a dummy Ares 1 rocket to test various components. Currently the launch time is marching along the day getting latter every few minutes. I’m watching the broadcast online at Night Sky.

Wait scratch that the launch is scrubbed. I had to take a call (I am at work) and right after that I flipped back to the broadcast and saw dark clouds everywhere and thought to myself hah there’s no way they are launching in that and sure enough that’s the case.

Yeah so more than a year ago I lost my multi-tool. I lost at a party at my old house where I was using it to open up and shotgun beers. So yeah I was just a little bit drunk by the end of the night.

When I woke up the next day it was no where to be found and for the life of me I couldn’t remember where the last place I had it was. After looking everywhere in the house I figure someone had walked off with it and resigned myself to buy a new one. Last night I popped open a beer with my new one and sat down to watch some TV. After that beer I got up to grab another beer and couldn’t find the multi-tool. I knew it had to be in the house, I mean come on it was only one beer thus far. Ah, obvious idea it must have come off my belt loop while sitting down watching TV. I walk over and feel around and in about 3 seconds pull it out of the chair. I do a double take wait a minute this doesn’t look like my multi-tool but it was. Shaking off the confusion I suddenly realize that this is the one I lost more than a year ago.

A second wave of confusion hits me. Why would it just be sitting there pretty much sticking out between the cushions when I have since moved, lost many remotes, etc in the same recliner and successfully found them all by searching for it. Surely I would have found the lost multi-tool in the interim with all the digging in there I’ve done. But no there it was sitting right there more than a year later.  Then weird part of it number two, I couldn’t find the new one.  Nowhere to be found. Checked the recliner and now armed with the knowledge that if the one from a year ago could elude capture for that long the new one had to be in there somewhere and I was going to find it. I turned the thing over went at it from the bottom. Nothing. Tried from the top the sides felt everywhere I could get my hand/arm in, but nothing.

So I sat down to continue watching TV, drink my second beer and contemplate the existence of trans dimensional wormholes that eat and crap multi-tools. About an hour later or so and after several back and forths with the recliner I tried again and this time found the new one pretty easily.

Meh, weird. Still surprising that the old one stayed in there that long esp with all the hunting I do in my house for lost remotes and video game controllers.

Too bad that wormhole doesn’t take farts to a different universe.

So read this on io9 today. Russia plans on sending probes to Venus. Hell yeah. Nasa can’t be everywhere, esp with all the anti science clap trap that is in this country which isn’t helping them get funding. So this is cool news for me. Mars has been getting a lot of attention and it will be interesting to see what can be done/found on Venus.

Venus is pretty harsh and stuff doesn’t last long there so the missions will be short lived but hey if we can design something to live for a longer time on Venus just think about how that tech can be used here on Earth. People don’t understand that the knowledge we get from exploring space isn’t just in learning that Mars has water or whatever. It is also with the designing the equipment to do so. All of that filters down into our every day life. So when I see that they are wanting to build a craft that can fly around on Venus constantly for as long as it survives, I say HOLY CRAP AWESOME! for several different reasons. One: hey, duh they are going to build a plane, send it to a different planet 23 million miles away, and fly it around non stop while gathering all sorts of data. And two because designing something so outrageous like that is going to push the boundaries of what we are able to do as a whole. Possibly new light materials for aircraft making them more efficient, new and better and tougher solar panels, maybe better communication equipment seeing as they will have a delay between the planet and us. As better autopilot programs since well again that delay between us and it. And so on. Believe me I could go on for a lot longer.

Hell yeah space stuff is always interesting to me. A pity the first of the several probes will only be sent in 2016.

and BBC

Via io9 and BBC

Alright if you need gift ideas here you go. Buy me these, or at least make me some. I think they would fit right in at my house. They are coasters, although real ninja stars are always welcome too. Mine are getting a little old and beaten up.

Please?

via Cool Material

Researchers have found a gene that seems to remove pain from mice when they snip that gene out. The mice still react to heat and pressure though.

One of the biggest problems some people have with eating meat is how horrible the conditions are in the meat factories. Now I love me some meat, enough that regardless I’m going to keep eating it, but I do feel that there is a line that should not be crossed when getting me that meat. Animals do feel pain/fear and there is no question about that. Any method that goes overboard in the slaughter of animals for consumption should be curtailed as to not cause undue suffering.

I believe that slaughter should be quick and clean as possible. Of course however you do it there will be that little problem with the pain aspect. Cost vs efficiency is always a debate with any product or service. Which has lead some scientists to wonder if we are just approaching the subject the wrong way. How about we just bred the animals so they don’t feel pain? If the animal doesn’t feel any pain then it opens up a lot of options for slaughter. There is still the fear aspect but that’s a lot easier to control when the animal just doesn’t feel pain.

Now of course this brings up some interesting points to consider that will probably render this idea to the mental trash can before anything comes out of it. It’s all well and good to make it so the animals don’t feel pain when they die, but they have lives too. Pain, while annoying at best, is a useful tool. It tells us to get the hell out or stop whatever the hell you’re doing because whatever it is, it’s fucking shit up. The care for animals who will happily walk into whatever danger because of a lack of pain, will probably be complicated to say the least. There will be/is the concern about the life condition and mistreatment of the animals. Which is right now a large talking point already. The slaughter houses end up hiring people who don’t really care about the animals and with lacks policy enforcement there will be mistreatment, just like there is now, but with the added difference of the removal of guilt. “Hey I can beat the crap out of this animal because it doesn’t feel pain.” That is not the goal nor something that I would nor do endorse.

In the end I think that this is not really the best option at all. There are too many problems with it and it doesn’t really accomplish what can’t and isn’t already being done. Something that the holier than thou vegans don’t tell you is that not every plant is a hell hole. Most slaughter houses do a fine job on making sure the animals die humanely. I’ve seen videos on various different mass farming plants for many different types of animals and have been quite impressed with with what I’ve seen. I have also seen the bad stuff as well and yeah I agree that kind of stuff should not happen. Not every farmer is a dumb animal hater who just got into the business in order to torture.

Via Io9