This is part of an ongoing series highlighting some of the best political commentary from Reddit. Content skews to the left, because — as they say — facts are inherently liberal. All credit for this content goes to the original author. For more great content like this, check out the Reddit category or tag.
Tag: science
I’m writing a book about a civilization so advanced that they no longer have disputes. However, they’ve also realized the need for warfare and now get to it every dozen or so years, for no other reason than that it’s jolly good exercise and allows for technological progress.
In the end, they realize that all of their scientific passions were in pursuit of destruction & devastation and the eradication of life, just seconds before blowing up the entire universe.
It’s going to be called either Oblivion Operations Protocol System or Automotivated Warfare: Syndicated Hostility Initiative Tokenization, with the title written out so you see the hidden message that reveals humanity’s final observation.
Originally published at jeremyjarratt.com. You can comment here or there.
I’m writing a book about a civilization so advanced that they no longer have disputes. However, they’ve also realized the need for warfare and now get to it every dozen or so years, for no other reason than that it’s jolly good exercise and allows for technological progress.
In the end, they realize that all of their scientific passions were in pursuit of destruction & devastation and the eradication of life, just seconds before blowing up the entire universe.
It’s going to be called either Oblivion Operations Protocol System or Automotivated Warfare: Syndicated Hostility Initiative Tokenization, with the title written out so you see the hidden message that reveals humanity’s final observation.
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You Are Here/Pale Blue Dot
I put together this YouTube playlist of Carl Sagan’s “You Are Here”/”Pale Blue Dot” speech. I highly recommend checking it out.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
“The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
“Ann Druyan suggest an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?”
– Carl Sagan
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You Are Here/Pale Blue Dot
Originally published at jeremyjarratt.com. You can comment here or there.
I put together this YouTube playlist of Carl Sagan’s “You Are Here”/”Pale Blue Dot” speech. I highly recommend checking it out.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ’superstar,’ every ’supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
“The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
“Ann Druyan suggest an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?”
– Carl Sagan
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Sarah Palin: unevolved
So… if Sarah Palin doesn’t believe in evolution… can we call her unevolved?? And nobody even gets upset??? Really?!
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Sarah Palin: unevolved
Originally published at jeremyjarratt.com. You can comment here or there.
So… if Sarah Palin doesn’t believe in evolution… can we call her unevolved?? And nobody even gets upset??? Really?!
Sarah Palin
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“Fanatical Ignorance”
Exploring The Creation Museum – America’s New Mecca of Fanatical Ignorance
Excellent article on religious super-fundamentalism!
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Quake!!!
I totally just felt an earthquake! In Dayton, Ohio! I have not experienced that since way back in the 80s!
The house vaguely shook, and i heard a slight rumble, followed by the house creaking and popping, woodly. My first thought was that we were being invaded by something [non-supernatural].
Wacky!
Ben Stein, who we no doubt all know and love from his appearances on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Win Ben Stein’s Money, has made a little movie. It’s called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (my thoughts exactly), and it’s a cute little rickroll of an adventure flick with Pro-Nazi Chuck Darwin leading the hoary brigades on a fell mission of genocide and eugenics. Only problem is, it’s a big fat fart-sucking lie. Unfortunately for Mister Stein, he got all of his facts wrong. Well, nearly all, as the credits (both opening and closing) do appear to be accurate.
Here, then, is Scientific American’s John Rennie and Steve Mirsky, reporting on the pitiful, outright lies perpetrated in this ridiculous movie.
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unholy thing
Oh my god. This creepy, unthinking mechanical thing is the precursor to the terrible things that will replace us. I, for one, welcome them with open arms.
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Space Void!
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religion is phony II
And old high school friend of mine has been posting a bunch of junk bulletins on MySpace about how evolution is a “lie.” I sent him a fairly nasty response, but i thought it worth posting here, at least for the links at the end. I have corrected it for capitalization to make it easier to read; and added emphasis, because adding HTML code in MySpace (the first time around) might have janky consequences.
I’m sorry dude, but that kind of idiocy is pure mind-pollution. Face it: religion has ruined history, and it’s threatening to destroy humanity even now.
You can not debunk so many fields of natural science with one broad swath of a very dull blade. Science is what it is: an exploration of truth. Sometimes science is wrong, and then it ceases to be science. It is science’s goal to continually reevaluate itself and update its data when better facts come into focus. Science’s entire agenda is based on questioning – gasp! – ITSELF in the search for more and more accurate answers! Can the same be said of religion?
Evolution, however, is testable, and its evidence is all around us. Natural selection is simply a process that happens, not unlike the semi-millennial phenomenon of millions of overzealous Christians propping up a mad buffoon in some leadership role because they’re sure he’ll help to bring about the so-called “end times.”
How about this one: if the world is only a few thousand years old, then how come we can see, with the naked eye, objects in space, such as galaxies, that are clearly millions of light-years away? Can light, originating from these objects, suddenly travel faster than itself? Or, if the universe was “created” whole (the distance between objects vast from the beginning), then why is it expanding, with everything rushing away from everything else at incredible speed?
If god is trying to “trick” us into thinking the world is more than a few thousand years old by planting evidence of creatures hundreds of thousands of years in the past (which we can easily verify by measuring the amount of atomic decay of carbon-14, which has already been proven to have a half life of 5730 years), then what kind of a sick bastard is this deity, anyway?
No, sir, the biggest lie ever told is that there is some mystical figure up in the sky who can (through his human – and presumably fallible – interpreter, of course) get you to DO anything and, even worse, BELIEVE any stupid idea, out of pure primal fear of some terrible “eternal” punishment.
Religion is phony. An outright lie – which has cost untold millions of lives throughout history. Think for yourself and you’ll see what i mean. It’s time to put the toys away and stop playing a sick game of pretend with the goal of destroying all of humanity. That’s just evil.
No one can save us but ourselves. If you think there is some god who, in the whole of the universe, would bother saving the practically infinitesimal inhabitants of a tiny speck floating in the inky black void of space from themselves, then ask yourself where this god was throughout all the genocides and holocausts, all the tragedies and disasters of human history. Testing our faith? That’s just fucked up. If that’s the Christian idea of “god,” then “god” is one seriously warped asshole and i don’t want anything to do with it.
Sorry, R***. Just THINK about it, man. Don’t be duped by hustlers and con-men making big promises about things they ultimately know nothing about.
And now, i present to you some recommended reading:
http://www.ex-christian.net/
http://www.exchristian.org/
http://www.christianism.com/
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html
http://www.losingmyreligion.com/Lookin’ out for you, friend,
~jer
Scientists Take Step Toward Invisibility
Dr. [David R.] Smith warned against getting ahead of the day’s announcement and envisioning the disappearing Romulan warbirds of “Star Trek†on the horizon. The work “is really a scientific explanation,†he said, adding, “Whether it’s useful is always a question.â€Creating a cloaking device in the visible spectrum would be vastly more complex, he said, since the device would have to warp all of the wavelengths of light. The chance of creating such a device is “dim,†he said, but, “The theory doesn’t prevent it from an electromagnetic point of view.â€
A real invisibility cloak? Wizard!
“Our cloak allows a concealed volume, plus the cloak, to appear to have properties similar to free space when viewed externally,†Professor David Smith, of Duke University, said. “The cloak deflects microwave beams so they flow around a ‘hidden’ object, making it appear almost as if nothing were there at all. The waves’ movement is similar to river water flowing around a smooth rock.â€
I have nothing to add to this.
Marijuana May Slow Alzheimer’s
THC, the key compound in marijuana… blocks the formation of brain-clogging Alzheimer‘s plaques better than current Alzheimer’s drugs.
Janda’s team found that THC blocks an enzyme called acetylcholinesterase, which speeds the formation of amyloid plaque in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.
The Alzheimer’s drugs Aricept and Cognex work by blocking acetylcholinesterase. When tested at double the concentration of THC, Aricept blocked plaque formation only 22% as well as THC, and Cognex blocked plaque formation only 7% as well as THC.
I’m not a marijuana smoker, but I do believe that it is just plain stupid to maintain its currently illegal status. We smoke cigarettes, which do nothing for us but kill us in the end, or at least reduce our life span; we drink alcohol, which makes us stupid and often violent, impairs our reflexes, and causes cirrhosis of the liver. Cannabis has shown time and time again that it is a valuable plant which should absolutely be legalized. Having had a great grandfather who had Alzheimer’s, I’ve seen first-hand what a truly horrifying thing that disease is (note: not “can be,” it simply “is”). If there’s a better-than-with-current-drugs chance that I may be able to stave off the potential onslaught of a slow, mind-reducing, soul-killing, life-crushing disease like that, I may just start toking myself. Better yet, I may start eating the stuff. Trust me, there are very few things worse than dying over a period of several years from a disease which eventually completely eradicates all memory and personality from a human being’s life.
Screw glaucoma (which I may one day develop as well), I want to see more research on this!
YouTube has an amazing video of RuBot II – The Rubik’s cube solving robot. I so want one. My birthday’s coming up, but the creator’s website isn’t, so I have no idea if they have a Wishlist feature. [UPDATE] I was typing in the wrong address; it’s http://mechatrons.com/.
[youtube]jkft2qaKv_o[/youtube]
This is the new version of RuBot by Pete Redmond from Dublin, Ireland. It’s very different to the prototype but it has to be the coolest looking robot solver ever. There are cameras in the eyes of the head that scan the cube before the pneumatic arms solve it. It usually solves the Cube in a max of about 50 seconds (not including the scan) no matter how much it is mixed up.
The solving algorithm is taken care of by Herbert Kociemba’s Cube Explorer software and usually solves the cube in a maximum of about 20 moves. In this video, the cube wasn’t mixed up too hard so RuBot was able to find the optimum solution.
Thanks to all of those who think it is too good to be true. That is a real compliment!
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Milky Way packed with planets*
We may be getting closer to ‘solving’ the [in]famous Drake equation. The only worrying variable is L, the lifespan of an intelligent civilization. Although, if other civilizations are as keen on self-destruction as are we, then that might also explain Fermi’s Paradox.
* However, the Nougat Quotient remains, sadly, unknown :(
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Teleportation
CNN reports that scientists in Denmark were able to successfully teleport a macroscopic object with billions of atoms. Forbløffende! What this means for the future of computing: Quantum computers will be able to transmit data absolutely securely. Let’s hope the government Big Brother allows us common people have privacy like that, and not just keep it all to themselves.
Don’t get your hopes up just yet, though. We still have a long, long way to go before we can teleport living matter without ending up with a pile of sticky goo at the other end.
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Global Warming Heats Up
Earth’s Temperatures Near Million-Year High
I know at least one moron who says that global warming isn’t real, and another who claims that humans bear no blame and therefore have no responsibility to fix the problem.
People who turn a blind eye to the coming age of fire will find themselves in hot water soon enough. If we don’t reduce carbon emissions drastically and quickly, we won’t have the opportunity to live to see what we humans could have accomplished as a civilization. We will fail and we will die out and humanity (and other forms of walking, flying, crawling, and swimming meat) will be extinct if action is not taken. This is a looming catastrophe, and history shows that catastrophies do not magically fix themselves.