Coping with Climate Change

Have you confronted the consequences of climate change? Have you coped with the idea that your lifestyle may be harming the planet in ways that could have devastating repercussions? Even if you doubt the severity of it, is it worth the risk to test mother nature?

Mitt isn't alone in thinking it's all a big joke, and that's the philosophy of people who choose to avoid confrontation or change.

Who determines what measures of action we need to take, and how much apathy to tolerate? There's a trade-off between how much work we should put into something we aren't even sure is going to happen, but that's just a question of risk analysis:

The answer is probably government, not corporations. Time and time again government has needed to step in to regulate corporations that were harming the balance of ecosystems. Sometimes corporations step up to the task, but it's not always enough.

Germany vs. USA

I have been to Germany many times, spent about 2 years there total. On my recent trip to Germany (and then Denmark) I took note of the major differences in lifestyle and culture. Though some of these things only occur in Germany, many apply to most of Europe as well.

1. Toilets use a press-and-hold water feed, which can be very annoying and may not even save water.
2. In cities, people bicycle everywhere, even while wearing business casual attire.
3. Sales tax is already included in store price tags and restaurant menus.
4. Tips are also included in restaurant prices (though you may still tip additionally).
5. Gas costs about $7.50/gallon.
6. Cars are much smaller, nearly ALL manual transmissions, usually diesel, and speed limits don't exist on many highway stretches.
7. Obtaining a drivers license costs around $1000 and requires training courses/tests. Must be 18+.
8. Solar panels can be seen on houses in almost any direction you look.
9. Most people younger than 60 will speak English (as a 2nd language) pretty well.
10. Movie theaters have restaurants in them, offering a huge selection of food/drinks for the movie. They sometimes also have assigned seating like in an airplane.
11. Almost EVERY plastic/glass bottle has a deposit value on it. This encourages people to return empty bottles and/or rummage through trash to profit from recycling.
12. Usually bottles are purchased in a crate of a dozen, and returned to receive around $3 back. The bottles are then washed and reused (even better than recycling).
13. Garbage is collected only every other week, and the typical home only gets about a cubic foot of volume for trash (There are separate containers for compost and paper/plastic which are about 3 times in volume each.)
14. Their elected chancellor is female.
15. The average birth rate is 1.38 children per mother, one of the lowest in the world. They have huge incentives such as mandatory maternity leave for both parents.
16. No one drinks tap water, they drink bottled water instead (sometimes bubbled), and ordering tap water at a restaurant usually costs a small fee.
17. Smoking cigarettes is very common still.
18. Healthcare is centralized and regulated by the government, making prices very affordable and covering everyone.
19. High quality beer is almost always cheaper than soda/water.
20. The drinking age is 14 for beer/wine (with adult supervision), 16 without adult supervision, and 18 for hard liquor.
21. Prostitution is legal and regulated.
22. Free speech is not the same, i.e. holocaust denial is illegal.

Technology

I thought this was a joke when I first saw it, but nope. It's real. Religion is still managing to infiltrate new technology mediums. And here I was hoping it'd fade away in the near future along with many of its outdated methodologies.

That electronic tablet device represents everything that religion is not. Do you know how many centuries of scientific and engineering struggle it took to create this masterpiece? Testing and questioning our understanding of the laws of physics and chemistry to progress us out of the dark ages of religious stagnation? This is a slap in the face to some of the greatest minds who came before us, such as Galileo, who sacrificed and suffered from religious persecution just to point out some observable scientific truths.

War against the unknown

It's becoming appallingly clear to me that humans instinctively enjoy conflict. This is an evolutionary trait, because conflict/suffering improves us, and "builds character". War (tragic as it may be), can lead to prosperity and most definitely technological innovation. However, where we choose to go to war can either be detrimental or helpful to mankind. And thankfully we learn from the past, so we are not doomed to repeat it. I'll explain where we should be focusing our instinctive nature to conquer, and what the soldiers should be fighting against.

We create sports so that we can unleash our competitive nature (which also helps improve us) in a humane and entertaining way. Unfortunately, this instinct is often unleashed through war, where many lives are at stake. I often thought if we ever went to war with aliens, this would help unite all of mankind to a common goal, as we'd see just how much we earthlings have in common. This is a recurring trend: similarities unite, disparities divide. As perspectives broaden, what we once considered major disparities become "acceptable small differences". Gender, skin color, religion, culture, sexual preference, etc. these were once a basis for segregation (to some extent they still are). What we have in common with one another is MUCH greater than any of these differences. A Caucasian may have more in common with an African American DNA-wise than with another Caucasian, i.e. race doesn't exist (fact).

I would argue that being a life form, is the greatest similarity and we should all cherish it. LIFE IS VERY RARE IN THIS UNIVERSE. On earth's surface it may seem plentiful, but think about all the "dead" rock below our feet, or the sky above you. Think about how small earth is in this vastly void universe. Living organic matter constitutes a minute amount of the total mass of the universe, and yet we continue to divide ourselves by our differences, when we have so very much in common. We can get lost in our day-to-day perspectives.

When people say "life's not fair", they're usually referring to the random outside forces of nature beyond our control/perception. Unpredictable events can happen where no person is at fault. Some refer to this as "God's Will". A family member gets cancer, or dies in a tragic accident. Instinctively we become angry that something has been taken away from us, and we want to focus that anger and blame it on something (or in the worse case, someone or group of people). Many people cope with their feelings using religion and God. Tragically, religion is often twisted into justifying actions against other people who have been blamed for something that wasn't their fault either.

My point is this: living creatures have much in common (eyes, ears, legs, emotions, DNA, parents/children), and many outside forces are at work that we cannot perceive nor predict (yet). These often cause us pain and suffering. Our goal should be to reduce suffering by preemptively seeking to understand these outside forces. The solution is not directly apparent, and often times, the solutions will be found accidentally. But they won't be found unless we make an attempt. Pain, suffering, and sympathy are usually the driver for improvements/advancements, thus suffering is a necessity for change. Change is gradual. In a sense, scientists are the soldiers fighting the "unknown", constantly broadening mankind's horizons of understanding.

I want you to imagine that the universe is a giant cage that all sentient beings are trapped in, and instead of working together to figure out why we're here, why things happen the way they do, how to "get out", or understand it better; instead we fight amongst one another, spend $ trillions on war, let millions of people starve, and place blame on each other. The real enemy is the unknown/randomness of the chaotic universe we live in. Our overarching goal should be to discover WHY we are here, help one another, and determine "randomness" by achieving an understanding of the complexity of the dynamic systems in our universe.

We are so easy to accept our existence in this universe, but HOW did we get here? We never had a choice to be brought into this world. Why are things the way they are? If you want the easy way out, religion will tell you not to worry about such things: be content and don't strive for deeper understandings, especially if they conflict with the "infallible" words of god, which just so happen to be very different in a variety of holy text versions.

In a deterministic universe, we have more control over events, we can enforce safeguards. Two centuries ago we didn't even know bacteria existed. People became sick and accepted that's how things were. Well... not everyone. A few scientists strove to understand the causes. To investigate and conquer the unknown, and that is just one example of how science has helped increase determinism in support of life forms (except maybe not for the bacteria and viruses).

It's long been a belief of mine that

"Nothing is random; the pattern/model is just exceedingly complex."

This is not to say that we will be able to comprehend the complexity of the universe overnight, but in the long term this must be our goal as a species life form.

Each time we determine an unknown, a new, more complex, unknown will take its place (is there an end to this trend?). If we ever do remove ALL unknown randomness from our lives, we will eliminate an ingredient that has shaped us from the beginning, so we must tread carefully toward reaching a more deterministic understanding of the universe.

If only it were easier to get everyone on the same page, imagine what the world could be like. We'd only need a "military" to defend us against any unpredictable outside forces as a safety precaution to account for any remaining uncertainty.
Mankind would celebrate life, help and love one another, while seeking to understand our origins and the inner-(and outer) workings of the universe. I dream of that kind of society.

Bible Storytime

This conversation took place on Skype:
Alsehr: Why do people think Jesus was white?
Alsehr: If he did exist (which there is no real proof of) why would he be white?
Me: Did you see that pic I posted yesterday?

Me: Thousands of years ago people probably had IQ's equivalent to a pretty dumb person by today's standards.
Me: considering they were also famished/fasting in a hot desert
Alsehr: Lol...
Me: They told stories, which were spread by word of mouth for a thousand years before anyone could write them down. Yup, I'm sure the story is perfectly accurate to actual events.
Alsehr: besides, most of the stories in the bible aren't even about jesus.
Alsehr: They're just allegories about moral lessons. And some asshole tried making a geneology of them.
Alsehr: like if you took red riding hood and tried to prove she was related to rapunzel.
Me: It's like merging the comic book heroes into the same fictional plotlines.
Alsehr: You get a ton of plotholes, and when it comes right down to it, none of them exist anyway.
Me: It's a perfect analogy
Alsehr: I wonder if in another 2000 years, if people will claim that spiderman was real
Me: Possibly, there'd be no eyewitnesses left.

Me: Spider man would leap around the city of New York with his webs, and fight evil!
Me: Nowhere in the comics does it say it's a fake story, it's supposed to be thought of as real, even if common sense shows it's not possible.
Me: I'm thoroughly convinced that the bible was basically a comic book
Alsehr: Then you'd have the Superman Saints of Latter Day Marvel
Me: LMAO
Alsehr: and the Southern Spideys
Alsehr: They'd all argue about whose plotline was true, because in 1978, the world was nearly destroyed by Lex Luthor, and we dont owe our lives to spiderman for that
Me: In the end, the stories might still have some useful lessons in them, but they should not be taken as fact.

And ironically I just saw this meme with Stan Lee today:

Gun Control

Source

Take a deeper look at what the 2nd amendment says:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Ok, so militia men may protect the security of our nation-state from threatening armies. Sounds great. How has this been misconstrued to allow anyone the right to carry weapons for any purpose?

I think most people who own guns keep them for their own personal protection (almost always from other citizens too). I'd like to point out that Switzerland requires all men between the age of 21 and 32 to enroll in military training, where they are given an M-57 assault rifle and sometimes a handgun as well. These government issued weapons are ONLY to be used during a national crisis/war. Since Switzerland has NO military, they rely solely on this standing army of militiamen, and it is "well regulated." However, Swiss gun control laws for recreational guns are even more strict than they are in the US, particularly laws regarding concealed handguns.

If you ask me, THAT is an identical representation of the rights our 2nd amendment should be granting. However, many Americans have misinterpreted it to simply "the right to bear arms" ignoring the condition preceding it.

Another useful tad of info: Under USC, Title 10, Chapter 13, Sect. 311, every male citizen of the US between 17 and 45 years old, is in the Militia whether they realize it or not.

In conclusion, firearms for personal protection or recreation should NOT be covered by the 2nd amendment. It clearly states "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state" and the context was in the sense of protection against armies (whether foreign or civil). Besides, if the Chinese did attack us, I'm not sure a concealed pistol would be very useful defense. If you wanted to be a REAL modernized militiaman, you'd need a Hummer or an AH64 Apache helicopter in your backyard.

That being said, I am not against the prospect of citizens bearing arms, but I don't believe the 2nd amendment covers that right. A new law would need to be enacted to allow private/recreational firearms for the public.
I also strongly agree that background checks should be performed during sales, to prevent felons and mentally unstable citizens from purchasing them. As it stands now, about 40% of gun transactions in America require no background check whatsoever. Furthermore, America has one of the leading gun homicide rates in the world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence, just under countries like Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe.

Banning guns would not prevent criminals from obtaining them, and it won't remove the desire to do harm either. The gun is just a tool which can be used for good or bad. I don't know what the best solution to decreasing violence is, maybe investing in mental health/ education, helping feed the poor, etc.

SMS Texting - One of the biggest scams

Just FYI, phone SMS texting prices are such a huge scam. It's ridiculous. It makes me angry. I want to sue the phone companies for allowing such an oligopoly. Why else would they all be raising their prices for something that should cost almost nothing?

An SMS text message can store a max of 150 characters, and they're not even 8-bit characters, they're 7-bit. So that's about 1050 bits, or just about 1kb (132 Bytes) in total per full-length message. If the message is longer than 150 characters, it's just spliced into multiple messages and sent in sequence. Voice calls, on the other, hand use around 28kbps I'm estimating...that's per second when you're talking to someone!!! So if I talk for just ONE minute, I'm sending 1680kb, which is equivalent to sending about 1600 text messages... To bring things into perspective, if I paid the same rate to send data for voice calls as I did for texting, that would be a price of $40 per minute to talk with someone!!

Here's the calculation if you pay $5/month for 200 texts:

($5/200texts)*(1600texts/minute) = $40/minute

So why does SMS texting even cost ANYTHING? It should maybe be $5 per month maximum, for UNLIMITED texting, if not FREE. Furthermore, when you receive an SMS, you have no control over whether you want to receive it or not. Plus, both the sender AND recipient are automatically charged. I believe it's possible to block entire phone numbers from sending you texts, but that's the only method. In India and many other countries, recipients of SMS texts are not charged.

Wow, with the 4G network it looks like you can download at 50-60Mbps. That is INSANE, that's wifi speeds. That's comparable to 50,000 text messages per second. I can only imagine the speeds will get faster in the future. Also, if you have one of those internet plans, and you text through an Instant Messaging app like yahoo, MSN, Skype, Google Voice, etc., you're saving yourself tons of money, because then you're being charged a much cheaper data rate to send those "text messages".

MSN for years now has let me send SMS text messages for FREE from my computer to someone's phone. I just have to pay for my home internet connection.

Remember a few years back when texts messages cost 10 cents each, then 20, now 30? Why is it going up?

Also here's an article claiming the same thing:
http://www.college-startup.com/rants/oligopoly-a-rant-against-the-cellphone-industry/
but there's plenty more of this to be found online with a quick google search.
I highly recommend reading this link http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/06/wireless-oligopoly-is-smother-of-invention/ we continue to allow the wireless carriers to limit us.

/end_rant

Republicans want less government?

I hear it all the time, usually from republican candidates and voters: "We need less government regulation and MORE freedoms"; but is this actually in general what republicans want?
No, actually they want deregulation in some things, and more regulation in other things... just like everyone else.

Where they stand when it comes to:
Taxes? Government should have LESS CONTROL.
Energy efficiency standards? Government should have LESS CONTROL.
EPA/pollution mandates? Government should have LESS CONTROL.
Gay Marriage? Government should ACTIVELY PROHIBIT IT.
Drug usage? Government should ACTIVELY PROHIBIT IT.
Abortions? Government should ACTIVELY PROHIBIT IT.
Creationism in schools? Government should ACTIVELY ENFORCE IT.
(and many more!)


Looking at that list, it would seem the republican agenda prefers government control when it's in their favor,

As a lesson to people need to STOP promoting "less government" when what they actually should be doing is vouching for what they DO or DO NOT want the government involved in. Just sayin'

Religion and "God"

Many people often ask me what my religious belief in "god" is. So here's my explanation of current views and its history of reasoning.

I wasn't raised with any specific religion, though my grandma in Germany taught me a prayer once that we'd say every night before bed. Interestingly, my grandparents married with different religions (Protestant and Catholic, I believe) and back in their time this was seen as heresy, but they were in love and determined. Today people could care less about "mixed marriages" (the topic today is same-sex marriage). This must've caused some difficulty between my grandparents deciding how to raise their children, because in fact, both of their children (my mom included) turned out to be non-religious. My dad had a pretty different experience. His father followed "Christian Science" and pushed those views pretty harshly (not allowing my dad to enroll in science classes in high school). Neither of my parents followed in the traditional footsteps of their own parents. And obviously, my parents didn't care what religion I chose, so I was free to believe whatever I wanted (though there was an influence toward logic and reason).

Most of my life I believed in some type of higher Being because so many others did too, it just seemed "normal", but wasn't very sure what it meant. During my mid-teens I began to question these things and wondered whether I was possibly an atheist. As I started solidifying my beliefs and aged into my early twenties, my stance changed into agnosticism. The main reason for doing so was in realizing that the claim that "NO god exists" is made with the same lack-of-proof as claiming "god exists". Even arguments like Occam's Razor cannot justify the claim that there is "no god" when lacking proof. Atheists tend to like ideas about proving negatives (see evidence of absence), but that's not very sound logic because it's omitting a possibility when

"some claims cannot be falsified because they are ultimately unverifiable"

It is these unverifiable claims that always seem to linger as humanity holds tightly onto them hoping they are true. Eventually I was left in a stage of not knowing whether "god" existed, but continuing the journey to search for logically sound ways of making progress and accepting that some things just may never be known during my lifetime.

Define "god"

Around age 24, I learned about Ignosticsm. This philosophy talked about how most current religions assume too much about what "god" is.

"God" lacks a clear definition; how do you define "god?"

If you're not really sure where to start, here's something to provoke your thoughts. In an attempt to answer the question myself, assume that one day a Being crosses your path claiming to be "god", and says,

I am god, and I can prove it to you by granting you any wish. What would you ask of me to prove myself to you?

How would you respond? Would you ask him to bring a relative or friend back from the dead? Teleport you to another galaxy? Show you an event from the past/present/future?
Think hard about this for a minute before reading on...



I've tried to think of many questions, but have never been able to pin one that WOULD ACTUALLY PROVE any Being was indeed a "god." This is mainly because any of those acts could plausibly be performed by a more advanced being of our universe, not necessarily a "god" that created it. An entity of higher intelligence could posses the advanced technological capabilities to manipulate space/time/matter far beyond our current scientific understandings or engineering capabilities (a being born in this universe just like us humans). If an intellectual alien species were to have just 1000-2000 years of advancement beyond ours, there's no telling what they could be capable of... NO idea, especially when considering that technology advances exponentially

NOTE:1000 years is a minuscule time frame in comparison to the age of the universe, there could be species out there which are orders of magnitudes more advanced than our tiny minds can even begin to comprehend.

To put this into perspective: if you showed a caveman a lighter, he'd think you were a "god" for being able to create fire in the palm of your hands. If you showed him a modern smart phone, he wouldn't even be able to comprehend its significance, let alone be able to predict its usefulness thousands of years later.

My point here is that it's difficult to distinguish between intra-universe technology and extra-universe "powers". In fact, "playing god" is something we humans do all the time. By farming plants we impose governing rules/restrictions on crops by seeding them in soil, watering them, exposing them to light, harvesting them, etc. for our own benefit/consumption. In a similar way, all of us must also adhere to the governing laws of physics; a cage we're all trapped in, but for what purpose? We can't see what is creating or enforcing these laws, maybe it's a higher intelligence manipulating us, but even if that were true, the Being need not be at the top of the command chain/pyramid to control us in our trapped environment.

Anyway, the definition of "god" (as most current religions define it), assumes too much knowledge about what "god" actually is. I think a major criterion people accept is that "god" is out-of-this-universe. Meaning any Beings that evolved within the universe (ourselves included), no matter how advanced and awesome, wouldn't be eligible as gods. A true "god" would have had to create the universe. But is that really a "god" or just another advanced species? Does it matter? Maybe a "god" is the one at the very top tier of ALL creators, but is that even possible? Who/what created "god" and when does it end? Maybe "god" is that which has always existed, never having been created. These questions may be the very last ones that science can ever possibly hope to answer!

As we humans discover more of the universe, our perspectives change greatly, but "god" will always be used to define the unknown.

THAT is probably the best definition of "god" you'll ever find if you were looking for one...

If in fact I believed the fairytale-esque religious writings/folklore of holy scriptures, I would still venture to say that the "god" in all of these stories is either completely bogus or was a very advanced and strange/irrational being of this universe.

The Greek gods have long since been moved into the category of "Mythology." Why? Because that belief system has no more followers. Thousands of mythological gods have been retired in this way. If you think about it,

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

We can reach the top of Mt. Olympus now and see no evidence of gods up there, but when we reached the "heavens" aka. the sky, people (instead of letting go) found ways to further their deep beliefs in heaven/hell. There are over 2000 man-made religions, all claiming to be correct. In essence, an atheist just believes in one less god than a theist, of which they commonly agree that the other 2000+ are all false gods.

Whenever strong evidence contradicts the original forms of a superstition, that superstition either dies-off (as an untold many previously have), or more likely is shifted to a new pocket of scientific ignorance where it cannot be tested/verified (yet).

Some choose to ignore altogether or demand overwhelming amounts of proof that contradict their beliefs, yet blindly have faith in things they wish to be true.

It's an interesting social dynamic because this shifting attempts to keep the old idea, even though it's now been transformed into a new one, so as not to fully admit the old one was wrong. Scientific ideas do this type of refining all the time, but science is allowed to -- no, required to -- by definition. Religion often wants to have it both ways: forcing people to hold onto archaic beliefs only when it's convenient and beneficial for some agenda/purpose. This type of manipulation is troubling.

One more thing that bothers me greatly is how willingly people will believe so-called "experts" from millenia ago, but not trust current actual experts who are vastly superior in outlook and knowledge.

On a side note, I've learned NOT to dismiss everything from religious texts as completely bogus either. There's definitely some interesting ideas and useful advice to be gained from some of the stories. If people actually followed Jesus' teachings of love, acceptance, empathy, and forgiveness, the world would be a better place, but often religion is interpreted to justify the opposite. And that's another gripe of mine, that religion is open to interpretation and can be used to justify almost anything (in the name of religion).

Fiction vs. Science-Fiction

I once laughed at the bible claiming the Earth was created in 1 week on the basis that it was impossible in general, but when I started to seriously consider it in terms of past/modern human technology and engineering capabilities, it seemed plausible with advanced technology. Don't get me wrong, enormous amounts of evidence suggest that the earth is indeed 4.5 Billion years old forming from after our sun went supernova. But don't take my word for it, just ask the <Sarcasm>  almighty omnipotent Google:

"how old is the earth"

Bam, there's your answer. Our current explanation is that Earth formed after our star went supernova and was brought together by natural physical processes which we understand pretty well. However, in general a planet COULD forcibly be created in 1 week with the proper technology; it's not impossible (it may seem like sci-fi to us presently). Looking at creating the Earth from an engineering perspective, a planet could be created in 1 week. I can imagine that in a few thousand years, great advancements beyond our current technology could grant us the ability to construct planets if we wanted to (and didn't destroy ourselves first).

With great power there must also come — great responsibility.
-Stan Lee

I can envision it now, it could be called "Planetary Engineering." Things like terraforming, creating/harvesting and heating/compressing massive amounts of matter, or crashing smaller planets together could all fit into this field of study. I go even further to imagine that we could produce non-spherical planets, say ellipsoid-shaped. We could have oceans just along the equator region. No atmosphere at the poles (which would be great for space docks because those endpoints of high elevation are already moving faster). Gravity would be oriented normal to the planet's surface only at the equator and poles (pretty cool huh?!), everywhere else on the planet would feel like living on a hillside with the varying slopes depending on your distance from the equator/poles.

Closing Statement

In conclusion, as long as unknowns exist, we will always have a place for the term "god". The definition may change over time as science pushes forward and reveals hidden truths, but I'm doubtful that "god" will ever be disproven entirely. I want to end with a closing statement from Carl Sagan, one of my heroes:

You may need to open this image in a new tab to see the text better.