The Ground Zero Mosque

I've finally formed an opinion on the "Ground Zero Mosque."  At first I was insulted and disgusted.  Then I thought that was hypocritical and was thinking I would have to support their right to build where they wanted, constitutionally there were no grounds to prevent it.  But then I realized it isn't the government trying to stop it, it is the Fearful Right who oppose it.  And making a bunch of noise in the process, causing a lot of division and strife.  Using it for political gain it appears.   Building the "we aren't soft on Islam" credibility for future elections.  So basically I think what I have to do is ignore it.  Ignore the Ranting Right and their "fears" about Islam.  Ignore the blithering of liberals about how the center is a place of peace or whatever.  I doubt that.  Contributing to the noise about it only contributes recruits to radical Islam, gives them ammunition for their cause.  It also gives the Fearful Right power and followers.  Ignoring both gives liberals nothing to say in return, nothing for the Ranting Right to howl about, and nothing for the radicals to recruit with.  Al-Qaeda doesn't want it built, it wants it to continue to tear at our society.  Our best response is to ignore it.  Quiet ridicule of the money wasted on it and those who go inside it is the most it deserves.

Spaceflight Now | Atlas Launch Report | Military satellite relying on backup plan to save itself

Well... it started out perfectly.

"A rescue plan is being implemented to salvage the U.S. military's pricy new communications satellite despite a serious malfunction that knocked out its main engine and stymied the craft's maneuvering ability."

 It will be next summer before it is up and ready for use.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

Brillant statement about freedom of speech and offense.

No one has the right to not be offended.

Would it be immoral to murder a malware author?

I submit that no, it would not be immoral to murder a malware author. If somehow convicted of the act conclusively that they did write and distribute malware, that person should be marked as fair game. Why? Because it is in our best rational self interest. It would be moral. Anyone who had spent hours or days trying to recover a computer from their product of malicious mischief would be morally in their rights to murder them. That is what I think right now after spending hours trying to (for at least the third time) recover a computer from a malware infestation.

South African reserve’s last rhino butchered for her horn - thestar.com

Fuck the impotent little pencil dick fuckers who buy into the "Traditional Chinese Medicine" that says that ground rhino horn makes you a big fucker. Fuck the motherfuckers who supply them and fuck the fucking motherfuckers who kill for them.



That felt kinda good. If I ever hear any crap about how good ancient medicines are, this will come up.

I hate working all night.

Left work after 4pm, got called back and made it back in by 5pm. Worked to 5am the next morning. On top of the 8 hours I had already worked on Friday. I am too old for this, I can't even think anymore.

The Moon Hoax - DARRYL CUNNINGHAM INVESTIGATES

If you ever thought or know someone who thinks that we didn't land on the moon, take a look at this comic. The ending applies to all kinds of conspiracies out there.

Celebrated Evan's 100th

Yesterday was grandpa Evan's 100th birthday. His daughters Jane, Harriet, and Catherine set up an open house reception for all of his family and friends to come wish him a happy birthday. The weather in Susanville was perfect, blue skies and cool dry temperatures not common for the high desert of Eastern California. Today I flew home with Allena after dad and Evan drove us out to the airport. He looks pretty good for someone who is 100 + 1 day.

Evan grew up on the Chappuis Ranch near Susanville, became a CPA and had his own accounting firm until he retired. He also, along with his brothers, operated the Chappuis Ranch until they all needed to retire. To service his customers all over Northern California and Oregon, he used his airplanes to get efficiently to them to do business and get home. He also used the planes to help spot cattle grazing on BLM and leased land so that he and his brothers could go out on horseback to move them. Evan first owned a Stinson, a Cessna 170B (my first airplane ride), and then finally a 1952 Beech C35 Bonanza. He totaled over 6000 flying hours, 4000 in the Bonanza. Besides business flying, he had many fishing trips to Baja California and to visit friends and family all over the west. In Susanville he was a School Board member and used his plane as an award to high performing kids at Lassen High School. When the EAA Young Eagles program started, he was one of the first to fly kids and has credit for flying 45 Young Eagles. A couple of these kids have gone on to become airline pilots. My daughter Allena was one of his last Young Eagles.

In 2005, I purchased Bonanza 44D from my Grandfather and am trying to carry on the traditions of education and community service that he has used it for. To say that grandpa Evan has been and is a large influence in my life would be an understatement.

WHY DID GOD CREATE ATHEISTS?

From Greta Christina. She lays it out pretty simply and straightforward.

"As an atheist, I have some really good answers for why people believe in God even though he doesn't exist. The human mind is prone to numerous cognitive errors -- and many of those cognitive errors make people susceptible to religion. We tend to see intention, even where no intention exists. We tend to see patterns, even where no pattern exists. We give excessive weight to personal emotional experience, and aren't good at applying critical thought to those experiences. We don't have a good intuitive understanding of probability, and tend to think events are more improbable than they really are. We tend to believe what authority figures tell us. We tend to believe what we're taught as children. We tend to believe what people we know and trust tell us. We're reluctant to question the things that everyone else in our social group believes. Etc., etc., etc. People believe all sort of things that aren't true... and from an atheist/ materialist viewpoint, that makes perfect sense. Atheism is not even a little inconsistent with the belief in gods who don't exist.

But the belief in God is very much inconsistent with the existence of atheists. I have yet to see a religious believer give a good answer for why God exists -- but not everyone experiences him or believes in him. I have yet to see a good answer for why God bestows the experience of his existence (however inconsistently and contradictorily) onto some people -- but not onto others. I have yet to see a good answer for why God is all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good -- or even anything close to all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good -- and still isn't perceived by everybody.

Does anybody have one?

(And if you say "Mysterious ways," I'm going to scream.)"

Sunday Sacrilege: So alone

Sunday Sacrilege: So alone

"But here's the wonderful revelation. If you're a well-adjusted person, once you've discarded the unhealthy fictitious relationship with a phantasm, you can look around and notice all those other people who are likewise alone, and you'll realize that we're all alone together. And that means you aren't alone at all — you're among friends. That's the next step in human progress, is getting away from the notion of minions living under a trail boss, and onwards to working as a cooperative community, with no gods and no masters, only autonomous agents free to think and act."

I've been seeing bad decisions being made with faith-based "reasoning" involved. Their need for a father figure and patriarchal social system drives decisions that seem to counter efficient social systems. The fear of socialized medicine is the prime example. That goes directly against the grain in a patriarchal system. God, nation, men take care of the family, not social systems where we work together. Republicans and tea-baggers are all about individualism and independence yet beg and pray to the imaginary father figure in the sky. Why not break the chains of subservience to masters? The chief master being the imaginary god?

Does the idea that there might be knowledge frighten you?

STORM, by Tim Minchen

Reluctance to Let Go

Reluctance to Let Go

"There’s a movement afoot to frame science/religion discussions in such a way that those of who believe that the two are incompatible are labeled as extremists who can be safely excluded from grownup discussions about the issue."

"What troubles me is how much our cultural conversation is being impoverished by a reluctance to face up to reality. In many ways the situation is parallel to the discussion about global climate change. In the real world, our climate is being affected in dramatic ways by things that human beings are doing. We really need to be talking about serious approaches to this problem; there are many factors to be taken into consideration, and the right course of action is far from obvious. Instead, it’s impossible to broach the subject in a public forum without being forced to deal with people who simply refuse to accept the data, and cling desperately to the idea that the Earth’s atmosphere isn’t getting any warmer, or it’s just sunspots, or warmth is a good thing, or whatever. Of course, the real questions are being addressed by some people; but in the public domain the discussion is blatantly distorted by the necessity of dealing with the deniers. As a result, the interested but non-expert public receives a wildly inaccurate impression of what the real issues are."

"Over the last four hundred or so years, human beings have achieved something truly amazing: we understand the basic rules governing the operation of the world around us. Everything we see in our everyday lives is simply a combination of three particles — protons, neutrons, and electrons — interacting through three forces — gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong nuclear force. That is it; there are no other forms of matter needed to describe what we see, and no other forces that affect how they interact in any noticeable way. And we know what those interactions are, and how they work. Of course there are plenty of things we don’t know — there are additional elementary particles, dark matter and dark energy, mysteries of quantum gravity, and so on. But none of those is relevant to our everyday lives (unless you happen to be a professional physicist). As far as our immediate world is concerned, we know what the rules are. A staggeringly impressive accomplishment, that somehow remains uncommunicated to the overwhelming majority of educated human beings."

"... understand the reluctance to let go of religion as the lens through which we view questions of meaning and morality. For thousands of years it was the best we could do; it provided social structures and a framework for thinking about our place in the world. But that framework turns out not to be right, and it’s time to move on.

Rather than opening our eyes and having the courage and clarity to accept the world as it is, and to tackle some of the real challenges it presents, as a society we insist on clinging to ideas that were once perfectly reasonable, but have long since outlived their usefulness. Nature obeys laws, we are part of nature, and our job is to understand our lives in the context of reality as it really is. Once that attitude goes from being “extremist” to being mainstream, we might start seeing some real progress."

We know so much now and can explain in many better ways how and why we are here. Religion fears being replaced by new facts and makes the noises necessary to keep itself relevant to the world. Keep the people ignorant of new truths and meanings, keep a wall between science and perceived non-science. If religion can't do that, then it will become irrelevant to the public.

Hedges: The Christian Fascists Are Growing Stronger

Shit...

The rise of this Christian fascism, a rise we ignore at our peril, is being fueled by an ineffectual and bankrupt liberal class that has proved to be unable to roll back surging unemployment, protect us from speculators on Wall Street, or save our dispossessed working class from foreclosures, bankruptcies and misery. The liberal class has proved useless in combating the largest environmental disaster in our history, ending costly and futile imperial wars or stopping the corporate plundering of the nation. And the gutlessness of the liberal class has left it, and the values it represents, reviled and hated.

and the Tea Baggers call Obama fascists. I need to spell out fascism and make a side by side comparison of what Tea Baggers represent and what the left represents. I am quite disappointed by what progress Congress and the President have achieved since 2006 when the left has started to take power.

Aides Taking Flight!

 

Liz and I took her classroom aides to the Watsonville airport and did some flying! Lots of smiles and no airsickness. :-)

Autism and the search for simple, direct answers

PZ Myers has a review of a paper on Autism that helped me better understand what the current thinking on what Autism is.

A large study of almost a thousand autistic individuals for genetic variations that make them different from control individuals has found that Autism Spectrum Disorder has many different genetic causes: there isn't one single gene responsible for ASD, but a constellation of hundreds, each with the potential to affect the development of the brain and cause the symptoms of autism. They don't know exactly how each of these genes contributes to the disorder, but they have found that many of them are involved in growth and cell communication and the formation of synapses in the brain.

The bottom line is that there are many different ways to cause the symptoms of autism, and it's a mistake to try to pin it all on single, simple causes. Any hope for amelioration lies in understanding the general functional processes that are disrupted by mutations in various pathways.

[amelioration: the act of relieving ills and changing for the better]