Games of Winter

Well, it's officially the last day of the 2010 Winter Olympics(TM/MC), so this should be the perfect time to post my wrap up of the events of the last 16 days, and my final thoughts on this year's Olympics(TM/MC). Unfortunately, I cannot do this because I did not watch a single event, as the Olympics(TM/MC) are dreadful boring.

Seriously, what is up with the Olympics(TM/MC)? Who the hell watches the Olympics(TM/MC)? A lot of people, actually. Or at least, a lot of people follow it. But all it amounts to in the end is a sort of "my dad can beat up your dad" affair, with nations standing in for the parental units. Everyone's all a twitter(tm) about how many medals their country has, and how many golds, or silvers (bronze is for losers, nobody cares about bronze). The thing is, after all is said and done, and the epic pissing contest is over, nobody actually cares. Quick, how many gold medals did the US take in 1984? If you answered anything but, "I have no fucking idea," then I hate you.

So it is that every couple years, Olympic Fever(TM/MC/R/TFTP) absolutely sweeps the nation (I can't really speak for the world on this one. It's entirely possible that they have the same policy of going out of the heads for two weeks and then never speaking of it again, which would leave me with absolutely no point of reference for this sort of thing). We hear names of past champions, spoken with reverence, and then their names are sealed into a jar, and placed into a dark cellar, the door carefully locked from the outside, remaining unheard and un-uttered for four years until we once again steal into the cellar and excitedly pry all the jars open to bask in the raw blinding light of the names of these kings of athletes, like being in the presence of God(TM) himself for two glorious weeks!

Perhaps the Olympics(TM/MC) simply aren't my thing, you might say. Well, I might say, why don't you go cram some dicks into your mouth? Seriously, go eat a dick, and another dick, and another, until you have a thousand dicks in your mouth, and you choke to death on dicks. Or, to put it another way, shut up. Show me someone for whom the Olympics(TM/MC) are their thing. And don't tell me some athlete, that's like saying that the world paste eating championships are important because people train day and night so they can someday swallow gallons of paste in a single sitting and finally earn the recognition that they are exceptional at what they do. And if you have a problem with that example because I just made it up, then here is my rebuttal: dog shows. Just because you can fill a stadium doesn't mean that what you are doing is noteworthy.

And finally, lest you suggest that I am simply not classy enough to appreciate the Olympics, I shall remind you that I am hella classy. Of this there can be no doubt. Take, for example, this comic:











See? I totally could have had the ass holding the gun between its cheeks. But I didn't. Because I'm classy.

In conclusion, fuck the Olympics(TM/I-don't-even-care-about-this-joke-anymore).

The New Version of Itunes Has a Problem

You know what it is? It doesn't play songs. Isn't that just wonderful, how it fails to do the one thing it's programmed to do? It's like if a company was making a blender, and when it got to the testing department, there was the following exchange:

Dickless Manager: So, does it blend?
Worthless Employee: Nope, I press this button and nothing happens.
Dickless Manager: Well, let's ship it out anyway, we can always patch it later.

Seriously Apple, that is some outstanding quality assurance. You should really branch out, just think of all the good you could do outside the field of computers. You could make a pair of scissors that can sing the alphabet backwards, but can't cut paper. Or a shoehorn that slices off your heel and attaches it to your ankle. Or you could make a staple remover that rather than removing the staples, makes your documents 50 times more stapled than than they were before you interfered.



What really makes me mad is that I just got the Beatles remastered stereo box set, and I decided it would be peachy keen if I could encode it in a lossless format. After some research, I figured the Apple lossless format would be the simplest without installing new software to learn, test, and obsess over. So now all my sweet, sweet Beatles albums are locked away in the oppressive .m4a format, and I'm to fucking tired to figure out how to get at them right now. I guess I should just learn not to update apple products, but they were doing so well for a while there. Maybe I'm foolish, and I just can't change the laws of the universe. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Apple will fuck you over if you give them a chance.

Um, I guess this is the part of the rant where I vent about what horrible things I want to happen to them.

Um... hang on a minute...

Okay, I've got one. Apple, I hope whoever is in charge of your quality service department has to eat 52 beer bottles, shit them out, light them on fire, and then eat the flaming shit with the glass shards in it. I hope his legs fall off, and his eyeballs turn inside out, and everyone laughs at him and calls him fat. Then just for good measure you should blow up the department and kill anyone who has ever had contact with him. After that, you should probably start fixing your horribly broken program.

So Apple, until next time you decide to fuck me, hugs and kisses.

Proud Parent of an Accelerated Reader

That's what I saw on a bumper sticker on the back of a car today. “Proud Parent of an Accelerated Reader.” I actually had to think about that for a second, because at first those words didn't seem to have any meaning. Obviously in this context, “accelerated” means at a level above some sort of national average, but then that's not the word that confused me. It was the word “proud.” I just don't see how that would be a matter of pride.

Now, I'm all for reading, I think reading is kick ass. You're reading right now, and for that, I love you. Seriously, reading is totally great, and being good at reading is important. But is it really something to be proud of? It seems to me that as a kid I was only peripherally aware of so-called reading levels. I guess people made kind of a big deal out of it, but I just really didn't care. I never knew what level I read at, because I was more concerned with what I was reading.

After all, who cares how well a child can read if he goes on to read is fucking terrible? What if that little fucker goes on to read Twilight? Or anything by Dan Brown? Are you still going to be proud of that little dipshit? Your skill at reading is completely meaningless unless you can read something fucking decent.

It's all part of a very disturbing and disgusting trend developing in places of learning. Primary education has always been and will always be an utter waste of time, but this goes to something deeper. It seems the further we go, the more our schools want to do their best to protect children from accidentally learning something. The objective becomes not to actually learn, but to be able to pretend well enough to fake it. Lessons are not an experience, but an outline for what will be on the test. SAT training consists mostly of pattern recognition, even going so far as to identify what is statistically the most likely response should the student be completely stumped and need to outright guess. All of this to then find out that all these skills you've developed for beating the system you will never get a chance to use again. It's a bit like training to play basketball by memorizing the specifications of the court.

Not to mention how these supposed halls of knowledge consistently reward ignorance. You have grades where you either get a check, a check plus, or a check minus, and they're all pretty much the same thing. You put in some amount of effort, and no matter how small, it will be acknowledged. You have participation trophies, where everyone involved is a winner. You have student of the month awards that everybody has to win at least once. I remember they had this policy when I was in fifth grade, and because I was so rebellious against their bullshit, they almost didn't even give me one. Almost. The bastards didn't even have the balls to withhold their own meaningless award from me. And believe me, I made life hell for the administrators of that school, though that is a story for a different time.

And then we come to tonight, when I almost stormed out of my research methods class at ITT. The teacher was yelling at us because we hadn't managed to correctly interpret the cryptic syntax of his crazy description on the syllabus. We had each done the assignment to the best of the ability using common sense, but because it was missing one insignificant formatting element, he had a fucking conniption. So I started yelling back, that he didn't have a right to talk to us, a room full of adults who were in his class of our own agency, like we were naughty children. I would have walked out too, except that then he kind of relented, and tried to defuse the situation with a joke, and though it didn't really satisfy my complaint it made it kind of awkward for me to leave.

Then while driving home and still kind of seething about it, I saw that stupid fucking bumper sticker, and it seemed to sort of encapsulate everything. Because even though I hate that class and everything it stands for, I am still acing it effortlessly. I suppose when you set the bar so low that a one-legged dog could roll right over it, you feel justified in treating your students like children. I come from the first generation to witness the society-destroying horror of the participation trophy, but at least back then it was confined to the education system. Now it's starting to seep through into the real world, and that's scary. Are we setting ourselves up for a world where it doesn't matter whether or not you try, as long as you put in the time? I suppose you can argue that for most corporate workers, we're already there.

Damn it, trying matters! Don't you see that without doing our best, we're just going to have to settle for mediocre in every aspect of our lives? We're training an entire generation to just give up on what they believe in!

Oh, whatever. I don't care anymore.

How to Save an Industry

So, I was just watching the Daily Show, and as the guest they had on the show one Walter Isaacson, who wrote the cover story on this month’s Time Magazine. It’s about how print journalism is dying because everyone gets their news for free on the web (if you want to read this article, you can easily find it for free on the web). In it, he lays out that the problem is that people have come to expect free news, and that internet advertising no longer is a viable business plan. And what is the solution? According to Mr. Isaacson, it’s that most hated of business models, micropayments.

Here’s the thing about micropayments. Even though they seem to actually work, this is largely because they’re the only game in town for digital distribution. Nobody actually like buying songs one at a time on Itunes, but that’s the only legal way to buy digital music. And besides that, it’s a completely different industry. Mr. Isaacson, you cannot simply steal an idea from another field and call it innovation, it doesn’t work that way. A song at least is a complete product; could you imagine someone selling individual pages from a magazine or newspaper? And how much do you charge for a single story? A newspaper costs 50 cents, so how much does that make one story worth? Some fraction of a cent? Do you have to pay one penny for every three stories you access? In that case, can’t you just keep creating new accounts every two stories and never have to pay for your super-premium content? And perhaps the biggest question of all: why would I bother with any of this when there will always be people willing to provide your service for free?

You see, Mr. Isaacson, the problem isn’t people’s browsing habits, or flashy new business schemes. As a journalist, you would think that you would already know what matters the most in this business: content. Ever heard the saying, “content is king?” If you can provide something people can’t get elsewhere, then people will be willing to pay for it. If you can’t get people to subscribe, that says more about your publication than it does about the general public. If you were at a bake sale, and someone was selling bags of dog shit marked “candy,” and another stand was giving away free muffins, and they were delicious, which one would you give your patronage to? The fact is, the internet is providing better coverage, better journalism than you, and they’re doing it all for free.

The problem is the print journalism industry itself. These days most publications just take a few stories off the Associated Press, change a few words, and if they can be bothered make a couple phone calls for some pull quotes. It’s become tired and bored, and much like the recording industry instead of trying to provide a more meaningful service when its very existence becomes called into question, it instead seeks to railroad the people who care enough about their profession to take their passion directly to the people. Instead of complaining or grasping at straws, why not reinvigorate yourselves? You have more resources than the bloggers do, you could very easily do a better job than them. That they are reporting circles around you with no press passes or foreign correspondents is absolutely pathetic.

Mr. Isaacson, while bringing up your article, I was subjected to no less than six spaces reserved for advertising, and a very large pop-up, as well as four separate links to subscribe to the print version of the magazine. Also, the article is cleverly split into four parts, so every page turn pulls up a new set of ads. Of the entire page that your article appears on, about 30% of it is content. Not that I am complaining, this is the price we pay for free journalism (though in Time’s case, it is a bit ridiculous), but if you can’t make money with 28 separate revenue streams per article, per reader, plus the cost of print subscriptions, then you have no business running a company. You probably shouldn’t even be running a lemonade stand, because you would be spending six million dollars for every lemon you squeeze. You say that online publishing cannot be supported by advertising dollars, yet the people who are driving you out of business don’t seem to have any trouble doing so.

In your article, you mention how the Wall Street Journal has been successful with an online subscription model. This is because the Wall Street Journal actually has content. Which is exactly my point. In fact, it’s kind of odd that you bother to mention it since its success flies in the face of the argument you are trying to make. The Wall Street Journal is absolutely essential to people in business. They use their resources to find facts and figures that most people don’t have access to, and they provide worthwhile expert analysis. Publications that can’t manage to stay relevant will die off. Sorry, but it’s a competitive industry.

So, to Walter Isaacson and every one else trying to defend the print industry by whining and stamping your foot, please shut the hell up. Pull yourselves together, you work in the single most important field in the world, the one that the founders of the United States of America thought so essential that they guaranteed it as the first enumerated freedom of our Constitution. You have an incredible responsibility to the public, and the fact that someone snatched the torch away from you means that you weren’t fulfilling our expectations. Stop acting like children, and start acting like fucking journalists.

Proposition Hate

Let’s talk about lies for a moment. Specifically, let’s talk about liars. When I say liars, I don’t mean people who have told a lie, or even people who lie often. A lie does not a liar make, just as a theft does not create a thief. I don’t even mean people who habitually lie, and have only told the truth maybe once or twice in their entire lives, so long as they do it for entirely selfish reasons. No, a true liar, a filthy, goddamn, piece of shit liar is someone who lies to impose their will on others.

I can understand the people who lie for self-serving purposes, their true motives are clear, but the fucking Liars-with-a-capital-fucking-L, who knows what the hell they’re thinking. The idea that someone can see another person and think, “I need to protect this person from themselves,” simply confounds and repulses me. It’s an entirely new level of self-serving attitude, and it’s evil on a level that even puts most murderers to shame. After all, most murderers act out of passion or for personal gain. But deliberately misleading people to try to bring about your own vision of an ideal world, it’s social manipulation at its most twisted.

This past election day, a ballot measure was passed in the State of California revoking certain rights to a certain group of people. This measure was backed, in secret(note: see Addendum below), almost in total by the Mormon Church. While it’s despicable enough that they hid behind a token list of other names despite being the driving force behind the campaign, the campaign itself also hid behind wall of lies. Ironically, they portrayed their campaign to take away civil liberties as a defense of their own civil liberties. Their case was, of course, entirely made up.

The Mormons spent 80 million dollars to cover the state with lies. And it worked. Of course it worked, because how do you counter such a thing? Who could ever imagine that someone would spend 80 million dollars promoting hate? You simply can’t match that figure to oppose it, because in sane society people don’t go around spending millions of dollars to destroy something that offends them and causes them no harm whatsoever. I’d like to think that people would spend a good deal more than 80 million dollars promoting love, but that’s a far different animal than opposing hate. People just can’t conceive of that amount of hate, because it’s an inconceivable amount. It’s crazy. It’s something only a sociopath would do. It’s Nazi-like in its conception, though admittedly much smaller in scope. But at least Hitler was upfront about what he was doing.

This tears me up inside, not least of all because I was raised by people who to this day continue to count themselves as Mormons. Betrayal is perhaps the wrong word, as I didn’t have any faith in the Mormon church to begin with, but on some level I do feel betrayed. For good or for ill, Mormonism remains a large part of my childhood, and much as I’d like to I can’t just shut it off. That church gave me some wonderful friends, and it did much to help me find my identity, to shape me as a person, even though the shape that took form was in opposition to everything the church stood for. So when it goes out of its way to stomp on the dreams of people I care about, and thousands more, I guess that does in fact read something like betrayal.

Joseph Smith started a religion so he could have sex with teenage girls. That’s bad, but it doesn’t make me hate the religion. He led a bloody coup against the United States, but that doesn’t make me hate the Mormons. Brigham Young ordered THE MASS MURDER OF OVER A HUNDRED UNARMED INNOCENT PEOPLE, yet I still cannot hate him for it, because it was done out of ignorance and fear. But this, this is too much. This is enough for me to finally say, I hate the Mormon church.

I hate the Mormon church. Earlier I mentioned how the majority of murderers are better than this breed of liars, but I left out one class of murderer. The final type of people who kill are those that think that their victims would be much better off dead. And that’s what it boils down to, that the logic of these people who are out to save the world from itself is the logic of a psychopath. And there’s really no defense against that. In the same way that a serial killer can terrorize a city for years without being caught, organizations like the Mormon church can continue to pour money into deceptive campaigns for whatever stupid, crazy act of intolerance takes their fancy. Because there is no motive, no good reason for them to be doing what they are doing. You cannot outmaneuver them because they are not maneuvering. It’s a mental illness, and there is no logical way to counter it.

Usually, I like to end these with an idea to change something, to bring about some glimmer of hope. But I honestly see no solution here. You can’t win an argument with a crazy person, you can only hope that eventually everyone else will see that your opponent is crazy. And since everyone is so worried about trampling on anyone else’s feelings, it could be a long time before people start to see that. So instead of trying to find the good in this situation, because damned if I can see any, I’m just going to say one final thing to make myself feel better.

Fuck you, Mormon church.


ADDENDUM: Since writing this, someone has made the point to me that their stupid fucking church wasn't acting in secret. I disagree. The Mormon church never issued any sort of public statement backing the proposition, and the despite encouraging their members to dig deep for donations, not a single cent was donated by the leaders at the top. They obviously didn't want their role to be known because the church would be flooded with bad press, like it is right now. Just because they failed completely and utterly at covering it up does not mean that they didn't intend to keep their influence in the matter a secret.

Cynicism Redux, Plus a Bonus Treat

If the Pope’s blatant, self serving game of Pass-the-Blame™ was the straw that broke the camel’s back, then this is the fiery four foot dildo that raped the camel to death and left it lying there in a pile of charred flesh and various bodily fluids. What I am referring to is a commercial by Amnesty International on why you shouldn’t tie a person down and force water down their nose and throat.

In a desperate and tasteless attempt at being clever, the ad begins on a beauty shot of water being poured. The camera then pans downward, and we get a several seconds of high speed footage of a man being waterboarded. Yes, actually waterboarded, as in not a special effect or other type of trickery. That’s right, Amnesty-Goddamn-Motherfucking-International tortured someone to make a commercial denouncing the use of torture.

Okay, so Amnesty International decided that their message of anti-torture was so important that they tortured some guy to get it out there, but the question going through my mind is, why? Who are they trying to convince? Are they sending this tape directly to the White House? No, they are releasing it to theaters to run before the trailers. Meaning its intended audience is us, the general public. To say this caused me to sigh would be an understatement. To say it caused me to throw a pipe through the front windshield of my car would be an overstatement, but closer. Let’s just say it caused me to sigh so hard I might have changed the tides.

I’m guessing whoever came up with this idea doesn’t live in America. In fact, I find it hard to believe they live anywhere near the human race. I resent the idea that we need to be told that torture is wrong. I don’t know a single person who thinks waterboarding is all shits and giggles, and then everyone goes home happy. Even if you’re rabidly pro-torture, you still aren’t going to think it’s pleasant. Because that’s the whole point of torture, and every single goddamn person on the planet knows it. Releasing this for public consumption makes a very clear statement, and that statement is “you’re allowing this to happen.” Which is a heartless, terrible thing to insinuate.

You will notice that nowhere in here have I linked to the video. Don’t expect me to. In all honesty, I wish I hadn’t seen it myself. The idea of this running in movie theaters across the country is disgusting and insulting. If someone made me the offer that no one would ever see this ad again, but that Two Girls One Cup would run before every single children’s television program, I would take that deal. Because Two Girls One Cup at least appeals to somebody.

There is, however, another movie I will link to:



Make sure you watch it all the way to the end. Seriously. You won’t regret it.























Did you watch it?

Fuckers?

Ok, good. While my hat goes off to James Rolfe, aka the Angry Video Game Nerd, for restoring my faith in humanity, his latest video brings to the surface a dark secret, one which I can carry no longer. I just don’t see what the big deal with Super Mario Bros 3 is.

Sure, it’s inspired one of the best things I’ve ever read, but I still don’t get the appeal. It doesn’t feel anything like the original Super Mario Bros I fell in love with, and it’s way too long, especially since it has no save system. Super Mario World managed to capture every good point of SMB3, but also retain the tight, crunchy physics of the original. Plus the feather kicks the leaf’s ass any day of the week. The flying in that game is so deep, it’s amazing what a good player can do with it. It’s funny, the way people felt about SMB3, how it was a return to form after the weird experiment that was 2, is exactly how I felt about Super Mario World.

So to those of you who think SMB3 is better than World, you’ve got it backward. Sure, 3 did it first, but world did it better. You’re being blinded by nostalgia. Also, don’t look now, but all those licensed NES games you thought were so awesome when you were a kid are absolute garbage.

Final thought:
My DVR just updated its software, and during that process it decided to download the movie “Wild Hogs.” I don’t think I’ve ever hated DIRECTV more than I do right now.

On ‘Losing’ Faith

Pity. Ask any religious person what they feel for atheists, and in more, or sometimes even less words, this is the answer you will receive. That person has ‘lost’ their faith. They’re ‘struggling’ with their faith. They make it sound as if we’re toiling away in darkness, completely hopeless and alone. Well, I’ve got news, I’m not struggling at all.

After all, how can you struggle with something that was never really there? When you discover that the shadowy figure that has been intimidating you all these years is actually just a pile of paper bags, would you describe that moment as a struggle? I looked God in the eye and saw he was just a harmless puppy, and decided to no longer pay him any more mind: which worked for a while.

I’m a pretty upfront guy. If someone asks me a question, I’m going to honestly answer it to best of my ability, because that’s what we do in a society, we help each other and communicate. And because religion is such a huge part of most people’s lives, the topic of what you believe is going to come up. And when religious people find out you’re an atheist, they can’t seem to stop asking you questions.

Which is why I’m here, writing this blog post: because people keep bothering me about it and then getting increasingly upset at my answers, and this frustrates the Hell, Michigan out of me. Why does this keep happening? Because of the stereotype of the person who has ‘lost’ their faith. Because when the faithful find out about me, they are surprised that I am not the person they imagined, who sits alone at night, weeping and blubbering about ‘why couldn’t I just have been more faithful?’ That person does not exist outside of Sunday School indoctrination sessions. ‘Wait,’ you persons of faith out there may say, ‘That can’t possibly be true. I’ve heard first hand accounts of such things.’ I dare all of you to challenge that hand. Ask for specific details about this mysterious person, ask to meet them. Suddenly the hand will no doubt admit that it is not the first, but rather the second, or third hand, and that to arrange this would be terribly inexpedient and socially unacceptable. Go ahead, try it and come back, so that we’re all on the same page here.

So, a person of faith has just found out that you are a dirty heathen (side note: in the interest of correctness please encourage your religious friends to use this term in lieu of infidel or pagan, as we are not fooling around with some other god and we certainly aren’t polytheists) and you’ve just turned their world upside down by not being a sad sack of shit wallowing in some basement eating rat turds. First question: why did you abandon the faith you were raised in? There is absolutely no answer you can give that will satisfy them, and don’t bother stealing my paper bag analogy, because I know for a fact that doesn’t work. The reason for this is because this question is a trap in the sand. They don’t actually want to hear your view, they want to help you get back on the right path. They want you to raise some niggling concern, so they can say, ‘Pray about it,’ or ‘Just have faith.’ Even with all the bending over backwards they do to accommodate flawed logic, they can't see that neither of these is an adequate response to ‘Besides being incredibly unlikely, the concept of god is not the least bit useful to me.’

Religion is a train that travels all day in a tiny little circle. You can get on at whatever point appeals to you most, but once you do, you’ve got to follow the path all the way around again, over and over. And that moment of doubt is a cow that’s wandered onto the tracks. Everything grinds to a halt for several minutes while it gets sorted out. For me, it was the moment I decided that the train was stupid, and I could really do with a nice walk. For those committed to the train, this just annoys the crap out of them. And for most of them, this is where they get devious.

At this point, their honor is on the line, because you’ve just dismissed their entire belief system, which is not something I take pleasure in, it’s just the truth. And if you’re like me you’ve got some pretty strong statements to support your position, so they’ve taken a defensive position. This is where you will hear all the same pathetic arguments over and over, time and time again. ‘So you don’t believe in an afterlife? Isn’t that sad? What’s the point of being good if there’s no god? Isn’t it better to be wrong than spend an eternity in hell? You know, Hitler and Stalin were atheists. Every culture on Earth has some sort of religion, don’t you think there’s something to that?’

When those shriveled old chestnuts fail to impress you, they break out the testimonials. Talking about how they believe because they’ve felt Jesus or some such thing. At this point both of you are just going through the motions. I don’t even know why they do this, some sort of sense of duty or something, maybe? It’s not particularly convincing. If I don’t like asparagus, you could have thirty people come in and gush for hours about how asparagus is the best thing since sexual intercourse, and afterward I wouldn’t be any less convinced. You’re just wasting my time.

Finally, we come to the end. ‘Well, it works for me.’ Finally a sentiment I can get behind. Except that in this case, it’s full of shit. If you actually believed that was a valid statement, we wouldn’t have had the last two thirds of this conversation. This is a point I always make clear pretty early on, that I don’t give a shit what you believe. Sure, I think it’s great when people become atheists, and I’m a bit more likely to take your opinions seriously if you are; but as long as you’re not a twattering gasbag, I don’t care.

So from now on, I think I am going to carry around business cards with the permalink URL for this post written on the back, so that this has to be the last time I have this conversation. I really am that sick of it.

And for all those who are just skimming this article, a quick recap of my key points in answer to the question of my ‘loss’ of faith:

1. I don’t believe in any god because there is need in this universe for a god.


2. I have already seen, and rejected as weak every logical argument for the existence of god there is out there; and even if you think you’ve got a new one, it has been said before.


3. Your own faith is not going to persuade me.


4. You are free to believe what you like, so long as you afford me the same privilege. I will not think any less of you as long as you also respect me.

A Broken Mind Part 2: Playing Dress-Up

As should be readily apparent, I am a great admirer of science. I think the scientific method is THE crowning achievement of mankind (sorry to disappoint you, figure skating, but you’re just kind of lame). But I also think science is one of the most misunderstood concepts in today’s society. To most people, the word conjures up some sort of image of people standing around in lab coats, fiddling with test tubes, and figuring out how much an atom of beryllium weighs, and other information which couldn’t possibly be of interest to them. Others see it as something not unlike voodoo, all the while standing around cursing the bureaucratic bean counters for holding back production of their flying automobiles.

It is this second group which the charlatans feed off. People who wouldn’t know true science if it punched them in the face and shat on their tuna fish sandwich. These people are fair game for psychics, chiropractors, mediums, new age anythings, messiahs, alien abductees, missionaries, ghost hunters, gypsies, tramps, and thieves. These people, who hold up science as some sort of treat, enticing the hoodwinkable with hard to understand concepts like energy, and dazzling them with big ten dollar words (adjusted for inflation), are just making speed bumps on the road of our cultural evolution by confusing people with fake science.

Now, I’m not faulting them for being opportunistic. I see nothing wrong with attempting to make a quick buck. I’m just saying that if you have to lie to sell your product or service, you shouldn’t be selling it in the first place. Anything you have to offer society must stand on its own or not at all. You can’t pack your excrement into bars and then tell me it’s chocolate, that’s immoral. If you want to sell it with a big ol’ sign that says, “Feces for Sale, RIGHT HERE!” I’m okay with that. It’s when someone not only resorts to dishonesty, but also drags the good name of science through the mud that makes me want to pull out my switchblade, snap my fingers, and get ready to rumble.

Claiming to play in the realm of science when you obviously don’t is a serious offense. It’s like printing a fake review on the back of your book, and attributing it to a real critic. It’s utterly dishonest, and you just shouldn’t be able to get away with it. Science is very clearly defined, it’s never vague, and you can’t make statements without supporting them. Science is also peer reviewed, so on the off chance someone’s judgment is clouded on a particular issue, it can be caught and corrected. Those are some big shoes to fill, and that’s the reason I’m not a scientist, merely a cheerleader for science. The amount of responsibility required to enter that arena is substantial, unlike the claims of the aforementioned charlatans.

Okay, fine, not all of them are charlatans. Some actually do believe in the shit they’re selling. But that’s only because somebody else sold it to them first, and that’s part of the problem. You’ve got otherwise trustworthy people spreading disinformation simply because someone gave them a good price on a fake bridge. Since not everybody peddling this shit is a fraud, it becomes harder and harder to figure out what’s true and what isn’t. And that’s exactly what the dishonest people want.

They want fact and fiction to mingle together into an inseparable mess. This legitimizes them, which is an attractive quality for the consumer. In no uncertain terms, they seek to destroy science in order to make money. Not only does this mean they’re stepping on the customers, and the people they con into propagating their spurious claims, by weakening the position of science they are diminishing the quality of your life, the lives of your family, the lives of your friends, the lives of your neighbors, of your countrymen, of the entire population of the world and every generation yet to come. They are fucking over billions of people, and for what? To make a few bucks? That is utterly repulsive.

There will always be repulsive people in the world, people who will have more power than they should. There will always exist people who will lie and swindle, and get away with it; but these people don’t have to get away with it. It is so incredibly easy to catch them in their lie, yet they maintain power because most people don’t even try. They always come up with excuses, like “I can’t make this distinction, I’m not an expert!” or “science is too complicated for me to understand.” These are, of course, untrue. I mean, it’s not like you have to do the research yourself, there are plenty of other people willing to do that for you. All you have to do is recognize the signs of true science, which is why I’ve taken the time to create the following list to help you out. If the claim you’re examining is missing any of these elements, chances are you’re holding a big old vial of snake oil:

Observation
This is pretty basic, if there’s something you want to understand, you first have to observe some kind of result that doesn’t have an adequate explanation. If your claim is based on a theory instead of an observation, you’ve probably been flim-flammed. For example, holistic medicine is based on some kind of theory about vibrating particles, which is currently untestable and thus, unobservable. Where the supposed good effects come into play, I have never seen.

Prediction
This is perhaps the most misunderstood part of the scientific method, because what it isn’t is a wild guess about what is going on. This stage involves taking what we do know about the world around us and combining it with what we think we know, in order to form a way to move the latter category into the former. The way the fakers usually twist this one is to move things between the two categories before they’ve been proven, they make the effect into the cause and the cause into the effect. Unless a hypothesis is founded upon hard fact, it’s just a guess.

Control
This is the big one. It’s where most psuedosciences fuck it up, because this is a difficult one to fake. This is a group of experimental subjects who are exposed to all the same conditions as the others, except for the one you’re testing for. It doesn’t weed out all inaccuracy, as some conditions can be difficult to separate, but it’s considered a requirement because it eliminates a huge group of possible alternative explanations in one fell swoop. If the only results you see are from people who received the so-called treatment, then I absolutely guarantee it’s a con job.

Falsifiability
If something can be proven to be true, it follows that there should also be a test that can prove it false. Now, if the scientist left out one or two possible explanations, then it’s possible you’re simply dealing with a lazy scientist. But if other possibilities never even come up, then that person is trying to take your money. Because when you’re scamming people, you don’t ever want the possibility of you being wrong to ever come up, because doubt hurts the bottom line. In the pursuit of truth though, assumptions have to be questioned every step of the way.

Experimentation
That’s right, once you’ve worked out a theory, and where the weak points in it are, you’ve got to test the damn thing. And testing means data, completely quantifiable and measurable. The tricky thing about data though, is since it doesn’t exist in the physical world, it’s so easy to fake. Bad data can be hard to spot, but a good rule of thumb is if it’s too good to be true, it’s probably not true. If your study does have data though, and it fails on any of these other counts, then at least you know they just pulled it out of their ass, and now you know the magnitude of the malfeasance being performed on you.

Repeatability
Repetition builds a theories strength, especially when performed by others. In order to allow others to reproduce your experiment though, you have to very clearly outline your method. If something about the method seems unclear or slightly off somehow, chances are they’re covering their tracks, because they don’t want people to verify their lies.

Explanation
Time to wrap it up, and for the real scientist, this is where you have to go all in. You have to form a conclusion, but not just any conclusion. Your conclusion has to be supported by every single one of the steps outlined above. If you come up short in any single area, everything you’ve just attempted is all for nothing. As you can see, this is no small task, and this is the reason I could never be a scientist. You could devote years of your life to something only to find out one day that everything you’ve accomplished has been refuted because of some tiny concept that you failed to observe. And if you go into that field, this IS going to happen to you, and probably more than once. Is it cruel? Without a doubt. But it is also the fastest and most reliable way of attaining accurate knowledge. And if you claim to be a scientist but don’t allow yourself to be exposed to that, then you’re just a kid stuffing your little feet into a parent’s enormous shoes. Science is about bravery, valor, and humility. And to undermine it is to undermine all those things.

I beg all who would listen, to stop letting people get away with this kind of cockery. Use this guide, and learn to tell real science from the money-grubbing schemers. Because if you’re not a part of the solution, you’re a part of the precipitate.

Fucking Fuck Apple, and Their Shoddy Ass Products

I'm going to start off this post with a confession. I'm a big fucking hypocrite. I wrote this huge review completely blasting Apple Computers, particularly their marketing, and a few weeks ago, I bought an Ipod (no, I shall not lowercase that "I" because I won't give them the satisfaction). I bought it because I wanted a portable video playing device, and theirs was the cheapest one with all the features I wanted. I also bought it because I now subscribe to a number of podcasts, and I wanted a device with better organization for those. Which brings me to my complaint.

I fucking hate Itunes (again, note the "I"). And with good reason, because it sucks at organizing my music, and it likes to fuck around with my painstakingly organized tag information. But now that I have a fucking Ipod, I need to use fucking Itunes to transfer my stuff to it. Which is bad enough, but as I'm subscribing to all my podcasts over again in Itunes, something interesting is happening. Occasionally, a big group of podcast files decides to just disappear into the ether. Now, longtime Itunes users, I know what you're thinking; you're thinking that I just have it set to delete my old episodes. This is not the case, because I know where to find the settings, I know what they are set on, and I know what happens when you set them that way, and it isn't this. I can tell, because Itunes continues to look for the files, going so far as to ask me if I want to locate them. So I go into the folder, and to my surprise, the file that was there just two hours ago has now vanished without a trace. And no file bearing its name exists anywhere on my computer. And of course there's no way to re-download just that one file, oh no, that would be too convenient. You have to unsubscribe from the podcast, and re-download EVERY SINGLE EPISODE over again. And if you like to keep your old episodes like I do, this is a huge pain in the ass.

So, Apple, if you're reading this (you're probably not, so luckily I sent you an email stating the same thing but saying the word "fuck" a few less times), you're officially on my list of people who I wouldn't mind if they got sodomized by bears (sadly, the bears can only manage to sodomize six people per year, or at least six who will report it). If this is the type of product you put your name behind, and the type of customer service you offer (where the fuck is your damned telephone number?), then I deeply regret giving you money. And keep in mind you were already on my shit list when I did. If I had it to do over again, I would have spent the extra money and gone with a brand that doesn't treat people like shit and act all fucking haughty over it. Your corporation is garbage, and I hope that someday your legacy is regarded as a puke-stain on the carpet in the hall of history.

Also, bears, if you're reading this, I would be eternally grateful if you would place these guys at the top of your anal rape list. Seriously, I'll buy you guys dinner and everything.


ADDENDUM:

Easter Sunday

Easter has come and gone, and to this atheist's examination, it seemed like any other day. Of course, even as a child, the day never held any deeper significance than a day adults give you candy. Seriously, it was even better than Halloween, because you didn't have to actually go out and earn the candy, they just gave it to you. But did we care at all about some dude named Jesus whose actions did something or other for our eternal souls?

Fuck no.

Of course, as you get older, nobody wants to give you free candy anymore. Instead, they want you to give thanks to Jesus, for saving your ass for eternity.

Actually, why the fuck do we need saving in the first place? Apparently because our supposed ancestors ate some apples, and that pissed God off so much that he doomed all mankind to suffering and misfortune. Kinda seems like you overreacted, big guy. And the solution is even worse, in order for us to escape eternal damnation because of some bitch who was just fucking hungry, some guy has to be brutally tortured and killed. Setting aside the fact that this hardly seems like it solves anything, why the hell is God such a fucking prick?

People ask me why I'm an atheist, and I'd have to say it's because of shit like this. Yes, I have no proof that such a God doesn't exist, but even if he did, I would never in a million years worship this heartless fuck. Even setting doctrine aside, I've made the following observation: For a majority of the people in the world life is miserable. Terrible things happen to good people, and wonderful things happen to bad people. Believers always counter this with some sort of quote, usually containing the word "adversity." Fuck that, there are people who are starving to death, whose entire existence is nothing but pain. What fucking adversity are they supposed to overcome? The desire to eat? Gee, I guess you're right, those starving kids are all just a bunch of pussies, they just need to have more faith.

This leaves us with the following options regarding God:

1. God doesn't exist.


2. God doesn't care.


3. God is a sadist.


4. God is benevolent, but also retarded.

Call me an optimist, but option "a" seems the most palatable to me.

But if I'm wrong, looks like I'm pretty fucked now, doesn't it? After all, all throughout this post I've said some rather nasty things about our good buddy God, haven't I? Well, if Christianity does hold all the truth it claims to, then I think I'll be okay. Yes, I'm going to hell, but don't forget, who's in charge of hell? That's right, Satan, and that's one guy who hates God as much as I do. I think we'll get along just fine, we'll just watch some R-rated movies while we smoke some marijuana. In fact, why don't we throw a party?

In recognition of this day of salvation, on the almost nothing chance that the Bible actually is the word of God, I'm issuing an open invitation to a kickass party in hell. All you have to do to RSVP is commit some kind of blasphemy sometime between now and your death. There will be amazing acts of wanton carnality unlike anything you've ever seen before. We'll have loud music that promotes unsavory lifestyles. And best of all, that bastard God isn't invited.

See you there!

Horsing Around

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
--A popular children's rhyme

My entire life, I've always had a problem with this passage. Apparently this anthropomorphic egg man is the king's favorite son, and when he's hurt, the king sends all kinds of aid to attempt to reassemble the poor guy. Including horses.

...

What the fuck?

Why horses? What the fuck can horses do in this situation, besides stomp on the fragments in futility? No wonder he couldn't be put back together, if your A-team consists of fucking horses. Obviously, this guy completely ignored the First Law that governs the universe:

Horses are no good for anything.

You gonna trust horses to perform open heart surgery? To cure polio? To save millions of starving people, Norman Borlaug style? Of course not, because horses are terrible.









Don't believe me? Fine, just take a look at these Horse Facts:

• First and foremost, horses suck ass.
  
• Machines are better than horses in every category except shitting.
  
• Horses caused the Holocaust(look it up, Hitler was just trying to please his horse).
  
• Horse farts cause more pollution than cars(believe it or not, they actually do).
  
• They're ugly, and they smell bad.
  
• Seriously, the smell, it's fucking terrible.
  

Why do we bother to keep around something that's been made obsolete by bicycles and the combustion engine? Because if we let them go, they're too dumb to survive on their own. That's right, horses only exist because we're too fucking nice to let them die. What do we call an organism that needs another organism to sustain it? That's right, HORSES ARE A PARASITE ON HUMANITY.

Seriously, fuck those equine bastards.