Only Stupid People Win The Lottery

BACKGROUND:

The NYTimes philosophy blog has a piece called Philosophy and Faith, offering the following as a "philosophical argument" for the validity of faith:  "An answer may lie in work by philosophers as different as David Hume, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Alvin Plantinga.  In various ways, they have shown that everyday life is based on “basic” beliefs for which we have no good arguments. There are, for example, no more basic truths from which we can prove that the past is often a good guide to the future, that our memories are reliable, or that other people have a conscious inner life."

SUBSTANCE:

Comparing religious faith to other commonly held faiths, such as faith in one's wife, or faith in humanity, doesn't show that it's rational to believe in God; it simply demonstrates the near universality of irrational thinking, meaning religion is no stupider than the other bullshit around which people base their lives.  This means that the most intellectually sophisticated comeback against an agnostic is, "well I think you're stupid too" - a statement that, while usually true, is a bit of an ad hominem non sequitur.  Sort of like when you have a couple of hideous gorgons arguing by calling each other ugly:  the fact that the one is disgusting doesn't make the other more attractive, and seeing the two of them together, debating as though it does, might actually compound the laughable heinousness of their appearance.

As a devout agnostic in all things, I have no absolute faith in humanity, in inductive reason, or in any sort of God.  However, I'm willing to go through the motions, pretending I believe wholeheartedly in the goodness of man and acting as though the laws of physics will undoubtedly hold, just because they're the best percentage bets available.  When you do the same thing with God, it's called Pascal's Wager, but I've heard He doesn't honor your winnings when you make that play.  As is often the case, the first step is to lie to yourself, so that you're being "honest" with everyone else; for some, this is easier said than done.

More Dirty Apes

BACKGROUND:
This article in Wired talks about how controlling soot might be an easy, effective way to curtail a significant amount of global warming.  Supposedly, the unforgivable blackness of soot causes it to absorb the sun's rays, heating up the atmosphere.  When soot falls onto glaciers, the increased absorption melts the snow, exposing the darker colored ground, causing a vicious cycle of increasing warmth.  Some estimates said that soot accounts for a quarter of the warming trend.

Soot only stays in the atmosphere for a few weeks, so theoretically, if we could get everyone to curtail their soot emissions (which is supposedly feasible using filters and the like), the trend could begin reversing very quickly, possibly dropping temperatures by a full degree Fahrenheit within 15 years.  That would erase half the warming that's occurred since the Industrial Revolution.

SUBSTANCE:
It's hard to get any one country to agree to limit CO2 because CO2 is almost entirely an externality:  the benefits of emitting it are enjoyed primarily by the polluting country, while the destructive costs are shared equally by people all around the world.  Soot, while contributing to global warming, also shits up the polluting country by making everything look like Pittsburgh. This means a given country will be more willing to acquiesce on soot than CO2.  No one really wants to live in Pittsburgh, so common selfishness will save the day.   But seriously, quit shitting up the planet with your motherfucking soot.

The Pittsburgh skyline, like Pittsburgh women, is best viewed in a haze.

The Other Brain

When I hear them talk about how apes attack their enemies, when they describe how the first thing the ape does is tear the person's genitals off, my cock and balls experience psychosomatic sympathy pains.  This only seems to happen with the gonads; when I hear about a guy getting hit in the head with a tire iron, I don't all of a sudden get a migraine.  This is because, like the ape, my cock and balls instinctively know what's important in life.

Deal With The Devil

A scientist Christian attempts to create an artificial womb using cow parts and spare tires, to allow fetuses to survive after being removed from their mothers.  The scientist hopes this will prevent abortions, not by keeping the babies alive, but because the legal reasoning behind Roe v. Wade dictates that you can only abort a fetus if it would die outside of the mother.  The cow womb would make fetuses technically viable without the mother within the first week of pregnancy, meaning almost no babies could legally be aborted.

The scientist Christian hates abortion because he hates when people try to "play God"; being only semi-retarded, he realizes that his artificial womb is also playing God, so his intention is to invent the womb, use it once to prove that it works, then destroy the machine after abortion is outlawed.  His plan works perfectly, until he discovers the unintended consequences of his passion:  the scientist, a fun-loving bachelor living fast in the big city, has to raise the baby he grew in the cow machine.

Will he learn to live with this little demon, or will he end up changing his mind about abortion?  One thing's for sure:  he'll find out what it means to deal with the devil!

Starring Eddie Murphy and Jonathan Lipnicki.  Directed by Tyler Perry.  Rated PG.

"That kid is gonna end up killing me..."

A Place To Call Home

I'm watching "Get It Sold", which is one of those dumbass real estate shows on HGTV.  These realty experts keep telling various home-sellers that there's not enough closet space in the master bedrooms.  These are all walk-in closets, but apparently they need to have to have enough room for your cato kaelin.

As a society, where have we been storing this guy for the last 15 years?

I suppose it makes sense though, because the precise demographic that overpays for high-sheen polished-turd real estate is the exact same group of superficial, materialistic doucherags that blow half their money on clothes.  It's interesting when the demographic for one phenomenon almost perfectly overlaps with that of another.  You often hear warnings that you can get crabs from tanning beds; fortunately, most of the people who use tanning beds already have crabs anyway.

Where will Lebron land?

I'm going to admit to having only recently purchased Empire State of Mind.  Jay-Z's verses are pretty half-assed, but I had a hankering to hear Alicia Keys on the hook, one part in particular.  Basically, I payed $1.29 to hear a hot chick say to me "There's nothing you can't do".  What's pathetic is that it's not even a sex thing.

 Not sure why she does this weird half-squat thing.  It may be a sign that she's amassed too much power, and that she's surrounded by people who are afraid to tell her the truth.

I Want My Money Back

If some sheister was selling people a product by claiming it would give them infinite happiness and eternal life, wouldn't the FDA or some sort of consumer protection agency step in and shut those fuckers down? 

Yet you never see this happen to religion.  Maybe that's because those particular con-men also claim they don't want to get laid, which is somehow supposed to make them more believable and trustworthy.

Why the fuck is this thing made out of gold?  If there was some homeless guy shaking an extravegant pimp cup encrusted with diamonds, I'd ask him to buy me lunch.

Fuck Iowa

Christopher Hitchens has an interesting article in Slate about how a lot of ethnic hatred is between groups that are very similar to each other, and that it's the tiny discrepancies between the groups that spark the bigotry.  He says that Sigmund Freud called this "the narcissism of the small difference".

If this is narcissism, it's probably of the self-loathing variety.  As a Wisconsinite, I gotta say I fucking hate those dumb Iowa hicks.  Every time the Badgers lose to the Hawkeyes, it's a disgrace to the entire state, because as far as I'm concerned, Iowa shouldn't even have college.  Instead, someone from the government should just go in and tell them not to fuck the livestock.  Being good at football and basketball is sort of a proxy for "urban-ness", so it's pathetic to lose to them.  I don't know how those fucking racists convince black guys to play for their teams, it makes less sense than Alan Keyes. 

One thing that really pisses me off though is that our football coach is a former Hawkeye; knowing that fact, it's impossible to look at the guy without noticing what a redneck moron he is.  Of course, I forget he's from Iowa whenever the team is winning.

He's not one of us, at the moment.

To someone from the coasts, hearing a Wisconsinite call all Iowans dumb hicks is probably like when the average (white) American finds out that Peurto Ricans hate Mexicans:  "What!?  You mean there's a difference?  We treat them all like shit!"  Maybe I should feel solidarity with the Iowans, maybe we should band together and overthrow the condescending coastal elite, but that will never happen, because I can't stand being lumped in with those fucking hayseeds.  As the GZA once said, "you break the mirror that reminds you of the ugliness."

Our state motto is forward, unfortunately our idea of progress is a cow, a cheese wheel, and an ear of corn.

Always Bet On Black

White supremacists think blacks are less intelligent because, back during the caveman days, life in Africa was like lying on a couch next to a giant fruit basket, whereas survival in the cold, harsh, Darwinian struggle of Europe demanded foresight and ingenuity.

Well, supposedly Europeans of today are descended from the same Central Asian ancestors as the Native Americans.  The Native Americans walked to America through the Arctic Circle across a gigantic sheet of ice, which sounds like a pretty cold, harsh struggle, yet you never hear these white supremacists talk about the guile and intelligence of the old redman.  Instead, they usually talk about how Indians are all drunk, gullible morons; sometimes they say this on their way to the Native American Casino, where they blow their racist-ass paychecks on Miller High Life and slot machines.

 

Remember when Hitler thought whites were better athletes than blacks?  Now, this is a pretty bold statement, but Hitler may have been wrong about some things.

The Right to do Wrong

Conservatives love to advocate for "states' rights".  Of course, you probably know that "states' rights" is just a half-clever, Big Brother-style rhetorical trick they use to front as champions of freedom, when if fact they're trying to restrict civil liberties.  For example, when they defend a state's right to ban gay marriage or to ban abortion; they're saying they believe in the freedom to be oppressive.  Back in the olden days, the "states' rights" argument was used to defend the Southern states' liberty to enslave the Blacks; later, it was used in support of Jim Crow. 

Today, the Supreme Court ruled against states' rights, and you might assume that it was the liberals who were responsible.  Oh wait, I forgot to mention, this case was about gun control, specifically, the right of Chicago to ban the ownership of handguns; predictably, all five conservative justices voted to prohibit gun control by states and cities, with the four liberal justices dissenting.  Yeah, so I guess states' rights don't extend to blue states and Democratic cities.  Oh well, we already knew it was bullshit.

I'm ambivalent about banning handguns.  Some say they their sole purpose is to kill human beings, I say their sole purpose is to be awesome and bad-ass.  This means they should probably be outlawed, because being illegal makes just about anything cooler.  After all, if drugs were legal, drug dealers would be middle-aged dorks wearing smocks at Walgreen's, and the only bad-asses left would be guys who say "cunt" in public.

Accounting For Taste

It's like, hey man, how do we know that the orange that you see is the same as the orange that I see, what if what's orange to you is more like green to me?  Maybe we can solve the problem of the qualia by asking some color-sound synesthesiacs what orange sounds like; if they all say that orange sounds like a middle C on a Hammond Organ, then maybe orange is the same for everyone.  Bad poets love to use a good simile to convey their subjective mind-states, why can't scientists do the same?

We could take it one step further and ask some sound-taste synesthesiacs what different musics taste like, perhaps you'd hear them say, "yes, Ke$ha's voice tastes like shit, then again, I like the taste of shit."

Even her handwriting is deliberately awful.

Could it be...

As a speaker, Mike Hukcabee is incredibly facile (in every sense of the word);  I can tell what he's saying is illogical and counterfactual, but at the same time, he's smart enough and slick enough that I can imagine, "Damn, if I were just a little bit stupider, I might actually fall for this shit." 

This raises the terrifying possibility that there might exist somewhere, some guy who might be able to trick me into becoming a Christian; however, I take solace in the idea that this guy might be The Devil himself.  This Devil fellow is supposed to be the greatest trickster of them all, and what greater trick than to create a whole sham religion and present it as benevolent force of good, when in fact it worships a vindictive tyrant who (supposedly) condemns dissenters to eternal suffering.

In the invention of Christianity, it was inevitable that The Devil, as a trickster, would ironically include in the mythology a trickster devil character; it's sort of like how Matt Groening always hides his initials in his drawings, or how Alfred Hitchcock always makes a cameo, but it's also a clever way of "demonizing" the actual forces of good, which doubles as a hilarious prank on the gullible followers.  Just to show how stupid these people are, he would brazenly call the great deceiver Lucifer, which is Latin for "Bringer of Light", and say he supposedly tricked some broad into eating from the "Tree of Knowledge".  The Devil would tell people that this light-bringing, knowledge-spreading guy (who tried to dissent from the doctrine of "God") was actually a huge liar, so, like, don't listen to him or you'll go to Hell.

Just something to think about while Mike Huckabee is talking about the evils of "enlightened thinking" and the dangers of science.

 Why does this guy so often have such a fiendish look in his eyes?

Pros

Vanessa Bryant

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Kobe Bryant's wife, ever since the Lakers won the title and she was on TV, at center court, taking part in the celebration.  Some people say it's kind of weird that Kobe married her when he was just 21, that he should have stayed a "free agent" and "played the field" for awhile, but I can sort of see why he'd feel like they were soul mates. 

They both went pro straight out of high school, he as a basketball player, she as a layabout.  Also, they're both arguably the best in the world at what they do, although they're probably each on the downside of their respective primes.  That is all.

Perfect Match

Nicolas Mahut (France) and John Isner (USA) played a match at Wimbledon that lasted for 11 hours and 5 minutes.  Wimbledon does not have 5th set tiebreakers, and you have to win by two, so they ended up playing 138 games in the fifth set before Isner finally established himself as the winner. The match started two days ago, and actually had to be suspended due to darkness twice.  Commentators have called it an epic battle, and have lauded the two for their incredible competitiveness and sportsmanship. 

This is a case in point that sports aren't always a zero-sum game; sometimes, like with Ali and Frasier, the two competitors elevate each other such that even the loser is remembered as having the heart of a champion.  In the case of Mahut and Isner, the match was historic not because they both possessed an incredible will to win, but because neither had the willingness to finish the fucking match.  I watched some of this thing, and in terms of quality, it was the tennis equivalent of buffet food.  It seemed like neither of them was trying, at all, when the other was serving.

But then again, can you blame them?  They had every perverse incentive to drag this thing on hour after hour; neither of these guys is a real contender at Wimbledon- Isner had only won one match on grass prior to this - but now, by refusing to win, they'll be remembered by the record books as having legendary grit and determination.  The record will only be broken by the chance meeting of two guys with an even greater willingness to debase the sport.  This match was incredible in the same sense as those Guinness entries for "Most Hours Spent Square Dancing", only those square dancers probably went about ten days on their feet.  Mahut and Isner have been rewarded for dicking around on the lawn for 11 hours, with numerous breaks for water, and they actually twice went home to sleep.

Of course, ESPN is broadcasting Wimbledon, so no one on that network questioned whether the whole thing was a sham.

Your proudest moment was your lack of shame.

Too Hot For TV

On Slate's doublex blog for womyn, an individual named Lauren Bans clucks about the Daily Show's "woman problem", and how, until just now, they hadn't hired a new female correspondent since Samantha Bee came on staff in 2001.   Bans is of course correct that this dry spell is pathetic and possibly sexist, but in the second half of the post, it becomes clear that the only reason she even brought this up was so she could make bitchy comments about Olivia Munn, the woman the Daily Show actually just hired as a new correspondent.

Maybe the problem isn't that men are misogynist, but that women fucking hate each other. 

Now why might the doublex blog have an instinctual dislike of Olivia Munn?

This Billboard Must Be a Sign

In his book, "I Drink For A Reason", David Cross talks about seeing a cop car with a bumper sticker that read "DON'T ABANDON YOUR BABY".  Crossy says how ridiculous and unnecessary this seems, and on one level, he's right.  However, this bumper sticker might be so absurd that it actually becomes effective.

Actual logo of babysafela.org.

If you were a pregnant teenager, thinking about dumping your baby in a trash can, and you just happened to see this message, you would almost have to assume it was a sign from God.  What else could possibly explain such a random, specific, and seemingly pointless bumper sticker?  If you also consider that the key baby-abandoning demo is precisely the type of stupid, self-centered audience that believes God would address them personally, you have to admit that perhaps more PSA's should take the specific approach to reach their idiotic, narcissistic targets. 

A billboard with the common-sense message of "Don't Drink And Drive" can be seen by a million drunks, and it'll be ignored by every one of them.  Meanwhile, you might actually get through to somebody if it says "Brian, you're too drunk to drive, you stupid Irish sack of shit".   If nothing else, he'll pull over long enough to wonder if he didn't take any acid.  Then again, that one might be a little too broad.

Held Responsible For Your Crimes

Utah recently executed a guy by firing squad, and they used that old technique where one of the five shooters was randomly loaded with a blank; that way, none of the shooters will know for sure if they fired a lethal bullet.  This underscores the moral evasiveness of the death penalty:  even the executioner gets to avoid the visceral guilt of having killed a man.  

If society were honest with itself, the executioners would know for a fact they'd killed someone, and those executioners would not be professionals, they'd be regular citizens randomly selected from the voting rolls (in the manner of jury duty).  That way, none of the voters will know for sure if they'll have to physically kill someone, reintroducing the visceral conscience into the voters' decision.  

According to the justice system, hiring a hit-man is just as bad as (or worse than) killing someone yourself, and not that legality always equates with morality, but most people agree that, in this case, the equivalency makes sense.  By that standard, sanctioning a man's execution by supporting the death penalty is morally equivalent to (or worse than) actually shooting the man yourself.  If your visceral conscience tells you that you can't pull the trigger, it should also tell you that you can't support the death penalty; if there's any discrepancy, it's because you're evading your conscience. 

This probably calls to mind the idea that meat-eaters should be willing to, at least once, kill the animal themselves.  When people object to this idea, they usually say "But I love bacon..."  Well at least they're admitting that they're full of shit.

In Utah, the sex dungeon is used for executions.

Slip of the tongue

ESPN Commentator John Harkes during the US-Slovenia match:  "Well it's mouthwatering to see that opening..."

Go and get them.

Tiger Woods got a lot of guff for sleeping with average looking women who had normal day-jobs; why would he bother with them when he could be getting models and porn stars?  Well, maybe what Tiger was doing was just the champion's version of amateur porn.

Keepin' It Real

Fake tits should be illegal.

Libertarians will protest, saying a person should have the right to do stupid things to their own body, as long as they're not harming anyone else.  I couldn't agree with them more:  fake tits should be illegal because they ruin real tits for everyone else.

There's no such thing as a perfect pair, because a perfect pair immediately falls under suspicion of being fake.  The better a set of tits, the more tainted they become, and the victims are not just the woman who has them, but society as a whole.

Meanwhile, women with small tits also fall victim, as the inflated size of fake breasts create artificial standards that the small-titted women cannot live up to (unless they themselves want to get breast implants).  Fake tits have created a cold-war escalation, with rivals wasting valuable resources (and taking unnecessary risks) just to keep up with one another.

In this way, fake tits are like steroids in baseball.  Back before PEDs became outlawed, players were under enormous pressure to pump themselves up with these drugs, so they were forced to spend money and take major health risks in order to compete.  As a result, it will be a long time before someone can have a miracle, 62-home run season without clouds of suspicion shading its glory.  This is a tragedy, but at least baseball has moved towards a solution; its time for tits to do the same, and get back on the right rack.

This is the woman who sued Citibank, saying they fired her for being too hot.  She should sue fake-tits for defamation; either that or real tits should sue her for the same.