Best. Writing. Ever.

Seriously.

This site is likely breaking some kind of copyright law, but as far as I know reading it isn't. I hope someone enjoys it as much as I do.

I Want Too Many Instruments

This one has got to be the coolest, though:

Worst. Lyrics. Ever.

To this list, I submit:

Jessica Simpson: "I don't know what's come over me, but I think I know what it is"

Choclair: "If she's wid it"
"You know I'm wid it"
"I'ma hit it"

and the ever-beloved Sisqo: "She had dumps like a truck, truck, truck
Guys like what, what, what
Baby move your butt, butt, butt
I think I'll sing it again
She had..."

EDIT: Steve Schaming accurately points out that I've overlooked Lil' Jon with this gem:
"To the window (TO THE WINDOW), to the wall, (TO THE WALL)
To the sweat drop down my balls (MY BALLS)"

That particular song also contains gems like... Oh hell, the whole thing is tremendously terrible, just click here if you dare.

What It Should Take

It is often asked of atheists what it would take to make them believe in God. Well, obviously I can't answer for all atheists, and although I might even believe given less than this, let me give you my opinion of what it SHOULD take to make someone believe: A Teleporter. That operates entirely on prayer, and is demonstrable on request.

Seriously.

See, the thing is, if a worldview is correct, it should... well... explain the world as we view it. And if I want to know how why the sky appears blue, or why electrons appear to act as a wave sometimes, a worldview that could answer this would be doing better than one that couldn't. Or if I want to create a system to broadcast information, or a vehicle to travel to the moon, a worldview that can explain how to do this would be doing better than one that couldn't.

And last time I checked, it was scientists, not priests, that gave us Rayleigh scattering, Quantum Mechanics, the Internet, the Space Shuttle, and every other viable explanation of nature or working device that I've cared to look into. In other words, until you can make your prayer reliably do something, nobody should be interested in your alleged explanation.



Also, this political tidbit is brilliant.

For the love of...

...well, something. Does anyone actually believe this?

Sadly, yes they do.

Stay tuned for next week's episode where they use paprika and toilet paper to prove that the Holocaust didn't happen. Oh right, the hardcore Christians love Israel for some reason. Okay, in that case they'll use paprika and toilet paper to... uh... create images of Mohammed? That could work...

RIP My Keyboard

I suppose now is where I'm supposed to tell you that I regret drinking iced tea near my computer. I am further supposed to apologize for attempting to rectify the situation by giving the keyboard a shower and apparently destroying it.* Even Windows now gives me a message along the lines of "this device is seriously fucked up" when I so much as plug it in.

But I'm not going to repent. One spill in some 7 years of eating and drinking by the computer isn't too bad. Plus, I wasn't using it to its fullest. Maybe in computer component heaven, someone will actually enjoy its LCD screen and macro keys rather than just using it for its backlight like I did. That is assuming that its LCD screen and macro keys somehow magically work again...

Anyway, G15, I'm sorry I killed you, and I will mourn your loss until the new keyboard I ordered off eBay arrives, and maybe longer if that one sucks.

*For the record, I did once successfully shower a keyboard, though not one with an LCD in it.

Why Prostitution Should Be Legal

Pornography is legal. So, the law is currently stating "It's okay to have sex for money, but only if you film it and sell it." Does that really seem sensible to anyone?

Now, one might reasonably argue that I could just as easily say that pornography should be illegal, so far. But consider my previous argument that feminists shouldn't hate porn, and realize that it applies equally to prostitution. The point is, prostitution or pornography need to start harming a non-willing participant before they should become illegal. And when that happens, it makes far more sense to deal with it under existing rape or abuse laws than anti-porn or anti-prostitution laws. Making porn or prostitution illegal because a rape occurred would be like making fast food restaurants illegal because someone poisoned a McD's burger. Making porn or prostitution illegal because someone forced someone else to do it would be like making housekeepers illegal because of that case where a woman was forced to be a family's servant.

Note: I have heard rumours that prostitution in Canada is technically legal provided that you don't solicit on street corners. That makes me wonder:
a) what's wrong with soliciting on street corners?
b) could all those crazy sex ads in free newspapers actually be real?
c) how does an ordinary citizen find out the law?

I suspect that the answers are:
a) nothing really, but puritanical idiots hate it so this has become a largely unknown and unspoken compromise
b) yes
c) looks it up online, but finds out that the wording and magnitude make it a ridiculously large amount of work, gives up in disgust, and maybe concludes that many laws in obscure wording are really a tool to subjugate the masses

Okay, I don't know how I got from legalizing prostitution to the Communist Manifesto so fast either, but it happened.

Why Real Feminists Don't Hate Porn

Some would say men desire porn more than women. Some would say they desire it equally. Very few would say women desire it more.

Assuming that men desire it more, what is the effect? Women have an opportunity that men don't. What group loses out here? Men.

Assuming that men and women desire porn equally, then it has nothing to do with feminism.

Why Free Will Sucks

First off, what do I mean by "free will"? I DO NOT mean "having options to pick between". I DO mean "having the ability to influence your own selection of one of those options". For example, Joe can choose to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or go out for dinner. Simply having these options does not mean he can influence his own selection of an option. Joe might be a robot that is programmed to always select going out, for instance.

Often, religious people will tell me that free will is a gift from God. Aside from denial or confusing true free will with the idea of having options as explained above, I can't come up with a reason why they would say so. Let's look at what goes into a choice.

I will divide this into the following categories:
1. Desires
2. Prediction of outcome
2a. Knowledge of situation
2b. Logic
3. Free will?

1. So, generally speaking, whenever we are given options to select between, we first have the question of "What do we want?". The answer to this is beyond our control. This can be shown by realizing that if I could control what I wanted, I would pick "I want whatever I have right now", and then I would have everything I wanted all the time.
2. The next question becomes "What will likely happen if I choose X?" Accurate prediction requires a) knowledge, and b) predictive abilities (logic).
2a. We can't control how much we know about a situation directly. I mean, sure, maybe we can read some books or ask some people or do some experiments, but the point is that we don't get to choose what books are out there, how much other people know, or how good we are at doing experiments.
2b. We can't control where logic leads. Nor can we control how good we are at applying it, so we might make mistakes.
3. Up to this point, I have tacitly assumed that we're trying to accomplish whatever it is that we want. I can't really prove that, so here I am allowing for free will to exist. The point is that everything up to this point, i.e. everything about what we want and what we think will happen, is not up to us. So then, free will is the ability to ignore all of this and influence your own choice for no reason. As soon as you have a reason for your action, it's not really free anymore.

As a specific example, say I am offered a grilled cheese sandwich or a tuna sandwich.
1. I hate the taste and smell of tuna. Not sure why, and I'd prefer it if I didn't, but it's not up to me.
2. If I eat the grilled cheese, I'll probably enjoy it. It might be a little unhealthy, but I don't really care too much about that. If I eat the tuna sandwich, I'll suffer greatly, and probably vomit, and then have to clean up the vomit. I don't know any of the health implications.
3. I have every reason to eat the grilled cheese. If I am not exercising free will, I will definitely eat the grilled cheese. If I am exercising free will, who knows? I might get lucky and choose the grilled cheese, but if it's really free will I couldn't have been doing that because I wanted it or thought it was a good idea. Or I might get unlucky and choose the tuna.

The end result is that free will can only help in the following situation: If we think a choice is good, and are wrong. In all other situations, free will either ties or does worse than slavishly following our desires and predictions.

In other words, if I'm not a robot, I wish I was.

What? For who?

Who knew that uniting Pat Robertson and the ACLU was as simple as uttering the beautiful phrase "Bong hits 4 Jesus"?

What a glorious world we live in.

Why Law is Morally Useless

Well, I guess it's about time I got off my ass and started posting. I happen to be in a preachy mood and not an introductory one, so I'll get right into it. If you're reading this, you probably already know who I am anyway.

Anyway...

If you'll permit the Godwin-ing for a moment, consider Nazi-era Germany. No doubt some individuals were faced with the unpleasant choice of:
a) killing Jews, or
b) breaking the law (and presumably facing consequences if caught)

Now, whether or not we harshly judge those who selected a, it is fairly likely that we can all agree that those who select b are "doing the right thing" (well, those of us that aren't anti-Semitic, anyway). The point is, we are saying that they SHOULD break the law. Presumably, we feel that they should do this based on their own sense of morality. That their morality should transcend the law.

This is where it gets interesting. Fundamentally, what we're saying is that they should break the law simply because they disagree with it. So, what is law if we believe that people should break it when they disagree with it?