"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
Very cool tool from visualizing data from NASA satellites in 3d in a web browser.
What I’m interested in is not just the visualization aspect but the actual data behind the visualizations since as we know from the Climategate confirmations of scientific fraud in climate science visual images can be highly misleading towards the alleged scientists point of view. Raw data please. All manipulations MUST be FULLY documented with the software source code that made the changes and detailed reasons listed for all adjustments.
If we are to raise our knowledge, skills and competence in using the scientific method to study the Earth, Moon, Sol and other relevant systems we must do some basic learning. Hard science requires making use of hard data without cheating and with showing ones data and any adjustments with justifications and open source code for auditing and proper open peer reviews!
Now let’s see what we can learn from this 3d puppy. My favorite is the GRACE Gravity satellites.
I’ve often wondered what impact the uneven gravity has on the Earth’s climate systems and if the gravity effects are taken into account in the so called climate models. As you can see from the above video the Earth isn’t even an oblate spheroid, it’s a really bumpy place when it comes to gravity. This must impact the weather and thus the climate systems as the atmosphere and water and ice move about.
Over a period of 28 hours or so this long weekend I had a conversation with someone, CK, I met on Face Book who shared a common technical interest. We had a number of other exchanges with each other over the past few months but this one was different partly for it’s brutal honesty and partly since CK choose to jump out of what was likely the most important conversation of his life.
I managed to save a copy of the conversation moments before CK deleted my access (it was on his wall) and thus ending the conversation with us two. Likely he’s busy gathering agreement with his friends that I’m an evil no good person when in fact it’s likely that I’m one of his best new friends he’s ever had. Be that as it may, here is a non edited transcript (spelling corrections were made). Oh, from what I can tell CK is a young adult male with a gay lover and a roman catholic upbringing.
I hope this helps when talking with religious delusionals of all sorts but christians in particular since we deal with dispensing the christian miracle mythologies here.
I’ll add comments and expand my responses and even critique my own responses over the next few weeks or so as I have time to reread the transcript below and think longer it.
All the best and live long and prosper in peace. Your feed back and comments are appreciated.
PWL
ps. This Jesus and Mo comic is appropriate since CK’s solution for “resolving the incompatibilities” between science and religion is to become insane by fully embracing “cognitive dissonance” and not working to resolve the conflict even though he claims to work towards that end. More on this in the conversation. He also, as you will see, negotiates his way between these two incompatibilities by accepting part of Objectivism (it’s basic three axioms of existence, identity and consciousness) while maintaining his “faithful belief” in his invisible super friends even though acknowledging that objectivism provides “proof” that there are no gods other than those in human minds. Thus CK’s religious driven insanity.
CK: just wants to find SOMEONE who shares his philosophies… lol
PWL: What philosophy are yours?
CK: Except for the stance on matters of sexuality and religion, I’m a staunch objectivist. Go Ayn Rand!
I believe cognitive dissonance is the greatest evil in the universe.
That’s a good start to the summary. In essence, I believe you must accept a small set of axioms as true, and then use inductive logic based on that. If only I could put my axioms in words… lol
PWL: I am also a big fan of Ayn Rand.
People do work well together and can in many circumstances work towards their mutual benefit.
What do you mean by cognitive dissonance?
I’m confused by your sexuality considering you seem to be very catholic… seems mutually incompatible to me.
I’m confused by your religious stance and Ayn Rand, objectivism proves that your mythical god doesn’t exist and is just an artifact of your mind wanting comfort or what not. So you’re not a staunch objectivist if you believe in the mythical invisible super beings and thus the supernatural realm.
The real world doesn’t care about our philosophies since it doesn’t care about anything.
They are not axioms if they are not in words…
BUT then Leaps of Faith know no boundaries or limits and ignore any that are pointed out. That is the essential nature of a leap of faith, it destroys actual rational thinking with the emotional non-rational leap of faith.
“Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The “ideas” or “cognitions” in question may include attitudes and beliefs, the awareness of one’s behavior, and facts. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.[1] Cognitive dissonance theory is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.” – Cognitive Dissonance.
So if you believe “cognitive dissonance” is the greatest evil in the universe why do you practice it?
Why do you consider it evil?
MD: wow :{
CK: Sexuality: Rand didn’t exactly believe they should wait until they found the right one, and then stay with them the rest of their life. Yes, objectivism does reject the almighty.
When I say cognitive dissonance, I mean holding two apparently exclusive beliefs wihout batting an eye — it’s an offense to reason. In my case (objectivist Catholic), although you’d think they are exclusive, but the reason I believe they are not is that I do not blindly believe — I observe the positive effects of faith, I observe the evidence of miracles, and I make judgments for myself. I consider the beliefs and try to reason and justify them.
If I were to just say, “well, it is” THEN faith and reason would be exclusive. But to examine faith and try to reason about it, why you believe it even when you know science, then you have used reason. You just use inductive logic rather than deductive logic.
PWL: Actually you must use actual repeatable verifiable evidence not logic or some belief stricken dogma system…
As the saying goes you are mistaken about a great many things CK.
There are no real positive effects of faith that are not available without faith!
Finally the real cause of Global Warming is Revealed!!! It’s ALIENS! Yes, ALIENS are TerrorFroming Earth for their liking! It’s V all over again (oh they are remaking V too which is too cool…)!
She’s an ex-model. He’s an elite commando. They’re going to solve global warming – by stopping the aliens who are causing it!
The most important question: Is Al Gore a Lizard creature hell bent on terrorforming Earth? Yes, inquiring minds want to know!
Al Gore on a terrorforming rampage!
This, ahem, theory of “Global Warming as Caused By Aliens” (Alien Global Warming AGW) has about as much credence as the Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW)! Oh, wait, the above video is indisputable proof of the Alien caused Global Warming! So now the science is settled as in the Aliens have Settled on Earth terrorformed by Global Warming!!!
Has anyone noticed Gore’s red eyes?
All in good fun… the only reason I poke fun at the AGW crowd is that they think the science is settled… science is just about never settled in the sense that asking questions is at the core of science… asking questions and VERIFYING the answers with EXPERIMENTS to confirm or refute the hypothesis! For example, new particles are being discovered which upset the standard model… or at least require it to be rethought at regular intervals. Were are the experiments that “settle the science” of “anthropomorphic global warming”? Lacking basic methods of science isn’t having the science settled. Anyway it’s a fun little movie that provides more evidence for Alien caused Global Warming that I’ve ever seen for Anthropomorphic Global Warming and you’ve gotta love that!!!
Inglorious Bastards is a 2009 epic ensemble war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, it has the largest number of speaking roles of any Tarantino film to date and was filmed in several locations, among them Germany and France.[2] Filming began in October 2008.[3] The title (and partial premise) of the upcoming film are inspired by Italian director Enzo Castellari’s 1978 movie Inglorious Bastards, but it is not a remake of that film.
The director has repeatedly stressed that despite it being a war film, the movie will be his “spaghetti-western but with World War II iconography”.[4] In addition to spaghetti-westerns, the film also pays homage to the World War II “macaroni-combat” sub-genre (itself heavily influenced by spaghetti-westerns), as well as films by Jean-Luc Godard.
Inglorious Basterds is Tarantino at his absolute best! I highly recommend this film although it’s not for the squeamish. Surprisingly a higher percentage of women then they expected are going to see Brad, so it’s a great date movie too. Get those juices flowing!
Quel maledetto treno blindato (literally translated as That damned armored train and released as Inglorious Bastards in the USA) is a 1978 Italian war movie directed by Enzo G. Castellari, written by Sandro Continenza, Sergio Grieco, Franco Marotta, Romano Migliorini, & Laura Toscano, and starring Bo Svenson, Peter Hooten, Fred Williamson, Michael Pergolani, and Jackie Basehart. It was released in 1977. The film score was written by Francesco De Masi.
Many of the sentences in the bible and beliefs uttered at church are in fact designed to be rules that the congregation – aka cult members – can use to identify members of the cult and to more importantly identify those who are not members of the cult and to whom they can treat differently, often harshly differently with torture, murder, rape, death and nasty killing methods. The koran does this with us heathen atheists and anti-theists. The bible does it with the quote above and many others.
Actually what it is giving is a practical and effective rule for keeping members of a cult, any cult, in the cult when their family comes to attempt to save them from their doom as a member of the cult. The cult makes it ok to murder your own family members if they try to extract you out of the cult or to not follow the leadership of the cult “lord”, whomever that might be: jesus, hitler, stalin, bush, jones, the pope, … the list is essentially endless although groups without this don’t count.
Thanks, I’ll be using to in a very important letter to my evangelical young earth creationist zombie jesus death cult focused preacher sister to put into her own “literal” taking of the bible how and why she obliterated my relationships with over eighteen people in my family. It’s her faith that destroyed our family of eight siblings, a still living mother, and all the inlaws and their offspring. Very sad situation which this passage clarifies directly to the heart of it. Thanks. Peace.
If you like history this is an awesome documentary of the battle of Crete and the insurgent resistance that took hold during the Nazi occupation of the island. Nasty stuff which shows that the invaders are never in the right from the perspective of those they occupy. A lesson the USA should learn before it bites them hard again.
These photos and video where taken in Vancouver, BC, Canada a few weeks ago. Yes, it is a real surveillance helicopter… just don’t know who’s they are flying it for… Vancouver Police? CSIS (Canada’s spy agency)? RCMP? News? Someone else?
The chopper was flying near Vancouver General Hospital however it’s NOT a medical chopper as it didn’t land on the hospital like many choppers do. No, it circled for a while, maybe five to ten minutes… My Cannon G9 camera wasn’t going to get any better shots… need an SLR with a telephoto lens for that… besides I wanted closeups with the photo function of the camera. Anyway these are max optical zoom with digital zoom due to cropping and image magnification… otherwise no filters or touch ups… I tried a sharpen but it didn’t really help as the G9 is a bit grainy when you zoom in lots.
Here are some close up shots taken with the same camera in photo mode.
Can anyone tell what kind of chopper this is? What kind of camera is that? What are it’s capabilities? Whose chopper is it?
The problem with conspiracies is that there can be truth to them even while they are stitched together in paranoid delusions. How do you tell if they are really occurring or not? Hmmm…
“In an effort to transition to a sustainable economy the planetary skin concept proposes a unifying approach to monitoring, measuring, and managing rural environments, rural to urban interconnects, and urban environments. Planetary Skin unifies a distributed nervous system of networked ground, sea, air and space based sensors, machines, and humans all into a cognitive decision space for trusted communities.” – Planetary Skin Promo Video
Yeah, and just who is in that “trusted community”? Not you or I that is for sure.
“Yikes! Their video is corporate government enviro-mental double speak gone wild and crazy! Big Brother will be implemented to enforce the bogus climate change politics of the likes of Al Gore! Yikes!!! Run for the hills, oh wait, Cisco is there with their planetary skin sensors monitoring you! The holier than thou crowd can control swarm after you to correct your 4% exhale of Carbon Dioxide in your breath foot print! They are after you since you didn’t get your lungs downgraded to 1% carbon exhales!
Planetary Skin is no less that the Total Information Awareness Grid/Matrix needed for the USA to combine with their Flying Death Machines to Control the World with the Threat of Death at Any Moment From the SkyNet.
Let’s hope the skin gets a rash.”
Very Scary: “Plantetary skin plays an active role…” in controlling the planet! Yikes.
NASA and Cisco Systems Inc. are developing “Planetary Skin” — a marriage of satellites, land sensors and the Internet — to capture, analyze and interpret global environmental data. Under terms of an agreement announced during a Capitol Hill climate summit today, NASA and Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) will develop the online collaborative platform to process data from satellite, airborne and sea- and land-based sensors around the globe.
The goal is to translate the data into information that governments and businesses can use to mitigate and adapt to climate change and manage energy and natural resources more effectively, NASA and Cisco officials explained in interviews.
“There are a lot of data out there, but we have to turn that into information,” explained S. Pete Worden, director of NASA’s Ames Research Center. “What we are trying to do is use Cisco’s expertise in data handling, put our data in there and explain what’s really going on in the rainforests.”
