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What A Truly God Awful Liberal Straw Man


I used to work across the street from the American Enterprise Institute. It made me unclean and I took two showers a day to try and wash the scent of war mongering and crony capitalism from my skin. But you never get truly clean after that. Not ever.

And Bill Kristol, who is not only a terribly columnist, but also a fellow at the Institute, used to get his coffee at the same place as me.

You probably remember Bill Kristol as being the son of respected thinker and essayist, Irving Kristol (Bill will never be remembered as either). You might also remember Bill Kristol for being a big ol’ sycophant and for generally being wrong about everything.

But all this is leading up to offering you a glimpse of this marvelously wrought bit of straw man ridiculousness.

Because you know who the real enemy of science is? California liberals.

They’re always in the street, demanding that evolution not be taught in schools and ignoring the overwhelming body of scientific evidence supporting both the existence of global climate change and humanity being a driving factor in its acceleration.

Or am I getting them confused with someone else?

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Dinosaurs Are Awesome


Giant African dinosaurs? Cool, right?

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Higgs Field


These are exciting days for people who like particles.

First there was the whol ‘neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light’ thing, which instantly made me think of building my own Millenium Falcon from part taken from a pair of fifteen year old Ford Escorts, immediately followed by thinking of ways to create a time machine using a french press and a toaster oven.

Now, we the Large Hardon Collider seems to finally be ready to experimentally confirm the presence of the Higgs Field, a field which theoretically permeates all space and that gives particles mass.

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The First Temple


Apparently, this is the oldest temple we yet know about.

There’s something so amazing about how neolithic cultures came together to create these structures and societies. It’s one of the many things I wish I had studied more of (my wishlist of books includes a couple on neolithic and copper/early bronze age Ireland). Also makes one a little sad to know that you’ll never become are proficient in one’s understanding of the era as one would like. Or, at least that such proficiency would come at the expense of spending that time with some other area of study. Life is a zero sum game sometimes.

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My Xbox 360 Died


This is a sad time because, yes, I do waste hours playing video games.

Not only did it die, but it’s out of warranty.

Not only that, but the first attempt at securing a replacement was a failure because the store only had the super deluxe packages, not the bare minimum package.

Also, I just received FIFA 2012 (that being a soccer game) and haven’t been able to play it yet.

And I’m very afraid of losing my saved games from Mass Effect 1 & 2.

Let me briefly justify myself. Mass Effect is a classic space opera as a video game. Straight from the golden age. The great E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith (of the Lensman series) would have been proud to have written this story.

It’s also a trilogy and my choices from the first game affects circumstances in the second game and choices from them both will affect the third game (which will be released next year). I’ve been a geeky completist, going through all the little side quests, playing the main character as both a man and a woman (the latter did, at least initially, make me feel a little uncomfortably, I’ll confess – what can I say? American men are not known for being enormously confident in their sexuality), choosing different characters to pursue romantically (which felt very awkward when playing as a woman), and playing as a ‘paragon’ (good guy) or a ‘renegade’ (kind of mean spirited, get the job done at all costs guy). This way, when Mass Effect 3 comes out, I can play it through a couple of times and see how those choices play out. Whatever. Make fun of me all you want. But you can see how I wouldn’t want to have go through all that again, right?

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I’m Building My Time Machine Now


Me and the Morlocks are going to throw down. It’s on like donkey kong.

Because a second experiment found neutrinos moving faster than light.

Oh yeah. It’s on beeyach.

Did I spell that right? Biyach? Beiyatch? I’m not sure.

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Jung


I went to Paris when I was eighteen. I met a guy there – a young man, though older than I – who was generally uneducated but with a weird autodidactic streak. He had read volume after volume of Carl Gustav Jung, but had no idea that ‘Jung’ was (approximately) pronounced ‘yung,’ instead pronouncing it with a hard ‘j.’

I thought of him when I saw this article on the meaning and place of Jung in contemporary thought.

While Freud, if also dismissed and sniffed at as a pervert of limited inspiration, is at least still placed within the realm of psychology as something approximating a science.

Meanwhile, Jung is relegated to the realm of spiritualists, mystics, and comparative religion.

Of course, I’m not sure that article helped matters much, but focusing on Jung’s religious beliefs (obsessions?).

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Why Coffee Is So Awesome


This little article describes how a good cup of coffee utilizes all five senses (technically six senses – and no, I’m not talking about ESP; everyone forgets about the inner ear and ability to sense changes in velocity, i.e., the directional sense that tells you that the elevator is moving) to entice and invigorate.

 

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Sigmund Freud


I like Freud. I understand his deep flaws and limitations as a thinker, to be sure, but he has definitely been an influence on my own thinking (make of that what you will.
The quote below gives me some ammunition, I feel, in defending that influence:
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The Windup Girl


I’ve been slammed at work, so not much time to say much of anything.

But I will offer a recommendation for The Windup Girl.

Not quite post-apocalyptic, but definitely a vivid and believable bit of world building (critical to any good sci fi or fantasy novel) for an earth after global climate change and made it suicidal to continue to use fossil fuels, coastal cities either used to be inland or are protected by high sea walls, and “calories” (as in both food calories, but also calorie meaning a measure of any form of energy) become the source of power.

It’s sort of like Neuromancer for the Audubon Society set.