"The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact." - KURT GÖDEL
"According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".
A guiding principle for accepting claims of catastrophic global events, miracles, incredible healing, invisible friends, or fill in the blank is:
“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” - Carl Sagan
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - H. L. Mencken
I would add irrational and highly delusional to the mix when faith requires one to accept magical violations of the well known, well tested or easily demonstrated laws of Nature. - PWL
"Science is Progress and the Future. Faith is regression to the Dark Ages." - PWL
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” - Carl Sagan
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
"Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." - Alfred Korzybski
"Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence." - James Randi
"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch." - Novalis
"Nullius in verba. Take no one's word for it." - Motto of the Royal Society
"I'm trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS." - Richard Feynman
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley
“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein
"Science is empirical. Knowing the answer means nothing. Testing your knowledge means everything." - Lawrence Krauss
"Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism - and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency." - Stephen Jay Gould
"Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work." - James Randi
“Jesus Never Saved Anyone From Dying, Not Even Himself. Three Day Rotting Dead Corpses Shall Not Rise From The Dead, So Sayest Natural Biology! Sorry Zombie Fans.“
Well obviously it “Beg(ley)s the Question” (sorry I couldn’t resist) about why Ed Begley hasn’t read or seen the part of Climategate that shows that the so called “peer review” was hijacked and stacked and thus can’t be trusted! Oops! Obviously Ed’s not up on the latest developments or is choosing to ignore the evidence of the Very Serious Climategate Peer Review Process Corruption that has taken place!
Begging the question (or petitio principii, “assuming the initial point”) is a logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premise. Begging the question is related to circular argument, circulus in probando (Latin for “circle in proving”) or circular reasoning but they are considered absolutely different by Aristotle.[1] The first known definition in the West is by the Greek philosopher Aristotle around 350 BC, in his book Prior Analytics, where he classified it as a material fallacy.
Worse than “Begging the Question” Begley uses the “Appeal to Authority” argument for constructing his belief based view of reality. In the video Ed Begley goes on and on literally yelling to control the interviewer with intimidation spouting “peer review” repeatedly in so many ways thus making an appeal to authorities. Unfortunately it fails for him due to the fraudulent representations of the Climategate alleged scientists. Regardless appeals to authority are not substantive in science, what is substantive in science is the cold hard verifiable evidence that either proves or refutes a hypothesis!
For intelligent people who require actual factual evidence of a claim in question the appeal to authority holds no value. What hold value to evidence based people is the actual factual verifiable and repeatable evidence! Prove your hypothesis conclusively with review by anyone with the skills to peer review it! Basing one’s important decisions on appeals to authority in science is just asking for serious trouble and invites cult style belief systems of thought. Verifiable Open Evidence is the knife that separates the facts from the fiction in science.
Source A says that p.
Source A is authoritative.
Therefore, p is true.
This is a fallacy because the truth or falsity of the claim is not necessarily related to the personal qualities of the claimant, and because the premises can be true, and the conclusion false (an authoritative claim can turn out to be false). It is also known as argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect) or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it). [1]
The Journals must be quivering under the Climategate revelations of peer review corruption. I wonder how many will crumble as a result? Or will they get their footing back and survive? I wonder how peer review journals will adapt their policies to correct for this pernicious corruption of the scientific process?
“By Ed’s reasoning, excluding everyone who is “not a degreed climate scientist” that rather puts Dr. James Hansen out of the picture, and many others, including Al Gore.” – Anthony Watts
So yes, according to Ed Begley no one without a PhD in “climate science” can be trusted. Not even Al Gore!. Not even Ed Begley himself who is giving advice! Oh wait, if Ed Begley can’t be trusted then neither can his advice about people having a climate science PhD after their name! Oh the hypocrisy abounds as does the lack of understanding of the scientific process! Read the rest of this entry »
“It’s to give people an opportunity to think for themselves… what happens is that most of us think that our very strongly held beliefs, you know those things we hold, our opinions, that are very strong, we think that that is thinking for ourselves but it isn’t really. The ability to think for yourself really means the ability to think something that you haven’t thought before. To think outside the allowable range of thoughts rather than just inside the allowable range of thoughts.” – Werner Erhard, TV Interview
Learn to think for yourself out side of your allowable range of thoughts and especially outside the cage of your beliefs and opinions.
The Known Knowns.
The Known Unknowns.
The Unknown Knowns.
The Unknown Unknowns.
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.” – quote popularized globally by Donald Rumsfeld in justification of mass murder; quote popularized by Werner Erhard in the 1970′s and 80′s to make the world a better place one person at a time.
During the 1970′s and 1980′s Werner Ehard’s est Training Program used this quote (or a variant thereof that covers all four possibilities, known knowns, known unknowns, unknown knowns, unknown unknowns) as a part of the course material. Landmark Education’s The Landmark Forum course also uses it. One point of using it is to help people see the limits of their knowledge and the edges of the metaphorical box they live in. Where are our blind spots when it comes to our knowledge or lack there of? What are the risks of ignorance? The exploration of these four domains would be extensive and take many hours of these courses.
This time the Math of Zombies tells us like it is: basically were all doomed to either be eaten alive for our brains (highly nutritious component of the Zombie Diet not to mention very addictive) or be converted into a zombie and eat the brains of the rest of us. Take your pick: be the food or the eater of the food.
“A zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. “
“Zombies are … usually … brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions …. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection, determine equilibria and their stability, and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions. We then refine the model to introduce a latent period of zombification, whereby humans are infected, but not infectious, before becoming undead. We then modify the model to include the effects of possible quarantine or a cure. Finally, we examine the impact of regular, impulsive reductions in the number of zombies and derive conditions under which eradication can occur. We show that only quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario: the collapse of society as zombies overtake us all.” – Math of Zombies (pdf paper)!
First off you should note that there is a fundamental flaw in the paper: it assumes that Zombie Attacks are not real but just in the movies! This is a way of keeping the secret while discussing this serious problem in academic papers! Zombies are as real as Jesus Christ! The more real you think Jesus Christ to be the more real Zombies are! Fantasies come alive in our brains and that is why Zombies of all kinds including Sweet Zombie Jesus want your brain! Don’t let them have it, remain belief and faith free by embracing Nature and Rational Thought and Science. May your brains survive the Zombie Attacks of religion, faith and belief in the supernatural and may you avoid having the delusion of an invisible friend in the sky who will save you from death with the false promise of an everlasting life! Obliterate faith and belief in delusions that can’t be proven since that is how they get your live brains and then control you sucking the independence and life out of you! Face it, the only way to exist is to not have your brains eaten by the Zombie Virus and other mind eaters!
An outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead. While aggressive quarantine may eradicate the infection, this is unlikely to happen in practice. A cure would only result in some humans surviving the outbreak, although they will still coexist with zombies. Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time.
Furthermore, these results assumed that the timescale of the outbreak was short, so that the natural birth and death rates could be ignored. If the timescale of the outbreak increases, then the result is the doomsday scenario: an outbreak of zombies will result in the collapse of civilisation, with every human infected, or dead. This is because human births and deaths will provide the undead with a limitless supply of new bodies to infect, resurrect and convert. Thus, if [WHEN] zombies arrive, we must act quickly and decisively to eradicate them before they eradicate us.
The key difference between the models presented here and other models of infectious disease is that the dead can come back to life.
In summary, a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.
A giant mysterious blob is moving through Alaskan waters. The blob is made up of a gooey substance, and it has hair! Scientists don’t know what the blob is made up of, but the blob has already been found to have captured seabirds and jellyfish in its goo. Scientists have confirmed that the blob is neither algae nor oil.
Do you ever play with your food?
UPDATE: 20090722
“We got the results back from the lab today,” Ed Meggert of the state Department of Environmental Conservation told the Anchorage Daily News late last week. “It was marine algae.”
No one in the area — whether biologist, Inuit hunter or oil worker — had ever seen anything like the strange stuff, which moved slowly through the Chukchi Sea last week between the towns of Barrow and Wainwright.
It stank, trapped sea birds in its gooey mass and, perhaps most alarmingly, was pretty hairy. And most marine algae is green, yellow or red, not black.
Well, that’s too bad… the dreams of blobs sucking up people left right and center will have to await another day… however, the birds better be on the lookout!
The Thriller Zombie Attack Strikes Yet Again in it’s myriad of ways infecting the population with an insatiable desire to consume Michael Jackson content.
Some think that this phenomenon is because no one truly had a happy childhood and others speculate it’s because most people just haven’t become adults yet. Either way or yet another way it doesn’t matter… this could be the last time the wave of The Thriller Zombie Attacks occur and for that many of us will be grateful. Although we need to be prepared for yet another wave as soon as the test results from The Thriller Zombie corpse inspection(s) have been released.
And woe be to the world if foul play occurred. Well some do consider that “foul play” did occur and were paid off handsomely (sorry for the choice of that word). In any event is this the last time we’ll see The Thriller Zombie Attack or will it strike again?
Seriously the NET aka The Intertubes aka the Internet has come under what is now known as The Thriller Zombie Attack since Michael Jackson died last Thursday afternoon. Google’s network defenses classified the up swelling in Thriller Zombies searching for news about Michael Jackson as a coordinated Denial Of Service Attack against it’s services and shut down for a time! Yikes.
Google has confirmed that the surge of Michael Jackson-related searches on Google News Thursday was first interpreted as an attack on its service.
Google News was inaccessible for some people Thursday afternoon right as rumors of Jackson’s death began to circulate, replaced by an error message reading “We’re sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.“
Many news services also collapsed under the load of hordes of zombies with swelling Live Brains ripe for the plucking by The Thriller Zombie even and especially in His Death. Even the money grubbing advertisers servers couldn’t handle the volume of Zombies hitting their ad servers. Server defenses just can’t handle a good sized Zombie Horde!
He will return as all Zombie Overlords like Elvis, Jesus and Spike Lee… oh wait Spike is still kicking making awesome movies… there’s still time… they will return I’m told by the people who visit my door once a week with the Watch Towers of Doom!
A zombie computer (often shortened as zombie) is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, a computer virus, or a trojan horse. Generally, a compromised machine is only one of many in a botnet, and will be used to perform malicious tasks of one sort or another under remote direction. Most owners of zombie computers are unaware that their system is being used in this way. Because the owner tends to be unaware, these computers are metaphorically compared to zombies.
Even people who believe in Darwin can have delusional beliefs such as this Christian narrator of this BBC show “Did Darwin Kill God?”. Of course it does, it’s the last nail in the cross!
WARNING DELUSIONAL MATERIAL PRELEVANT IN THIS SERIES OF VIDEOS!!! DON’T LET YOUR BRAIN FALL OUT OF YOUR HEAD WITH THESE CRAZY DELUSIONAL BELIEFS OF GOD.
This evenings full feature entertainment. Enjoy. Get some popcorn, a drink. Sit back and press play and full screen and enjoy. The lines are beyond fantastic into the realm of classic. 72 minutes.
The Brain that Wouldn't Die
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, also known as The Head That Wouldn’t Die, is a 1962 science-fiction/horror film directed by Joseph Green and written by Green and Rex Carlton. The film was actually produced and completed in 1959, but was not released until three years later. A scientist develops a means to keep human body parts alive. When he unexpectedly must use his discovery on someone close to him, events do not go as planned.
This film has fallen into the public domain and can be freely downloaded from the Internet Archive. A gaffe during the end titles lists the film’s name as “The Head That Wouldn’t Die.”