…in the creativity of others, occasionally fixing computers, and never really accomplishing anything of value for myself. Something’s gotta give. (And thank the Invisible Pink Unicorn for my wife.)
Energy moves along the path of least resistance, and change is not an easy path.
As far as I know, it is not possible not to change. By the very definition of space and time, change happens all of the time. People get older. Some fight it with cosmetic surgery and creams, but in the end, it is a battle that can not be won. At some point, our state of existence will take a different form and convert itself in to different forms of energy, none of which will likely be the consciousness of who we think we are as individuals.
But back to Earth for a little bit. The bits of energy that are sitting before a computer screen reading this at the moment (you,) are part of a local area, which is part of a larger entity, which is part of a larger entity, which is part of a larger entity, which is a part of the solar system, which is a part of the Milky Way, which is a part…yes, yes, back to Earth.
Anyway, so much has changed with society (the global society of which we all belong) on Earth in the last fifty years that requires a sort of 21st Century period of enlightenment. While many have a feeling or a pretty good idea of how much is changing right before our lives, humanity, if we live through it, will look back on this period of our history with interest and amazement. The sheer volume of change can not be understood by anyone alive at this moment because the world is changing so fast and in so many ways that we simply cannot keep up with this change as individuals. It will take the 20/20 vision and understanding of these times from our descendants to look back and see just how much change is taking place.
However, here is what an individual living now can say for sure, “It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the way we are living as a society today will not suffice in the now, nor into the foreseeable future. The way we once lived, and the things that worked for us in the past, in large part, has already begun to fail us.”
Yes, it is true that society, like all things, is in a constant state of change, but it is also true that throughout history, there are major advancements (or regressions) in society that can easily compartmentalized into an era. For example; the Dark Ages, Ancient Greece, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Age, the Technological Revolution.
Who knows what this period in history will come to be known as, but I am pretty sure it has yet to be defined. We are sitting on a precipice that feels unstable. Very few people are comfortable in their current state of being and it seems as though most of the developed world is breaking up into two factions; 1. aggressive critical thinkers and 2. passive/status-quo denialists. At some point, something is going to give between these two types of people alive in our world today and it is the side that tips the society scale in their favor that will define the future of humanity.
Unfortunately, the last 100 years have dictated which path we should follow, whether or not modern day humanity chooses that path or not is yet to be determined. Our recent ancestors, and we ourselves, are in the midst of developing an untenable social and global environment for the well-being of all humanity, and space/time is running out…
RSA Animate is out with a new video that I believe summarizes this idea quite well. Enjoy:
- Image by Eat your greens! via Flickr
I typically don’t think much of writing about my nonsensical dreams because they are, well…nonsense, but I just had a flashback to a dream I had last night.
Nothing amazing really except that I was standing next to someone (no idea who) and we were looking at a star in the sky that I “named” after my wife one year for a gift. There were three stars in the vicinity. Two brighter stars were on the left, and the star I named for my wife was dim and to the right.
I tried to explain to whoever it was standing next to me that the star to the right was named after my wife, “My Baby,” but that I couldn’t remember the scientific name.
“Oh, but wait! Check this out!” I said excitedly.
I pulled out my Motorola Droid and loaded the Google Sky App and tried to explain to the person next to me as I lifted it to the sky that if I lined up the horizon line on the app with the actual horizon, we should be able to see the stars with their names. As I pointed it up I could see the stars themselves on the app matching up with the sky, but there were no names. ”Huh,” I heaved in disbelief. ”It’s not showing the names. I wonder what’s going on.”
I shook the phone a bit and put it back up in the sky, still no names.
One more time, voila! Now my stars had names. The screen was full of stars and names. Names I appear to have completely made up on the spot in my brain. ”See, this one is Olon. This one here, next to my wife’s star is Aolon. I still can’t see the scientific name of my wife’s star though.”
*Dream Over*
“I’m a god for Bob’s sake!”
Enjoy the latest installment of Mr. Deity…
YouTube – misterdeity’s Channel.
I added a sidebar widget on the bottom right hand side of the page so that readers of DaddyHogwash.com can easily follow my efforts in Tweeting Paine’s entire work titled ‘Age of Reason.’
The actual twitter feed can be found here: http://twitter.com/karlfrankjr
- Image via Wikipedia
As of late, the lunatic Glenn Beck has taken a liking to Thomas Paine, the American revolutionary who wrote Common Sense. Like most of our founding fathers, the revolutionaries were products of the Enlightenment. The most famous of these founders were deist at least and atheist at most. This includes James Madison, the father of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and Benjamin Franklin, the connector, maven, and salesman that made all of the pieces of our revolutionary spirit come together.
Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense which was the common language argument to the masses that persuaded the colonies that revolution was necessary. Knowing the puritan heritage of the colonies, Paine, “structured the book like a sermon and relied on Biblical references to make the case to the people.” – Wikipedia
Biblical references were the necessary way of the day to frame the argument. Enlightenment thinkers had no other way at the time to affect the masses in a way that was necessary to rally the revolutionary spirit.
Paine, however, was not a practicing Christian, although he was born in to a Quaker family, and later in his life finally “came out of the closet” with his book, Age of Reason. According to Wikipedia, Paine took a stance in favor of deism, promoting reason and freethinking, while admonishing organized religion and Christianity.
In honor of Thomas Paine’s book, I intend to Tweet Age of Reason. Tweets from this book will start with TPAoR for Thomas Paine, Age of Reason.
You can follow my twitter feed here:
http://twitter.com/karlfrankjr
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- The Age Of Paine (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
- ‘the age of reason’ by thomas paine (toomanytribbles.blogspot.com)
Why is it that beautiful white people want to make it so hard for everyone else to be an American? It’s so ugly!
Congress should think long and hard before tampering with this essential American principle embodied in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Approved by Congress in 1866 at the outset of Reconstruction and ratified two years later, the amendment establishes the principle of birthright citizenship. With minor exceptions, all persons born in this country are American citizens, whatever the status of their parents.
And for a special treat, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” live from 1985
via Born in the U.S.A. Is What Makes Someone American: Eric Foner – Bloomberg.
A grasshopper was always a grasshopper before it was a grasshopper to us. In our efforts to label and categorize this strange bug that hopped from piece of grass to piece of grass, it became a grasshopper – to us.
Without us, a grasshopper just…is, content hopping from piece of grass to piece of grass.
What is a grasshopper compared to it’s contentment? What is a piece of grass?
What is a bug?
What is hopping?
These are all things that just mean something to us.
What are we compared to a grasshopper?
This is a lot like the soundtrack from some kind of video montage in a movie…
What Happens When You Slow Down a Justin Bieber Song by 800%?.
J. BIEBZ – U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis
I am a slightly dizzy after watching this awe-inspiring video, but it was worth the ride. The seven minute video starts with a camera attached to the end of one of the two rocket boosters that NASA uses to launch shuttles in to space.
The first two minutes of the video is essentially a still shot with not much going on as the shuttle lifts off in to space, but once the rocket boosters burst off the shuttle and begin their descent back to Earth, the rest is just art in motion. Every second of the video is worth watching.
YouTube – STS-124 Launch w/ Sound.
There is a part of me that would love to live like this. It’s not my technology side. I feel the urge about once a day though…
Cabin Tour: 4 people and a dog in 180 square feet : SF – 180 Square Foot Cabin : Apartment Therapy.
Yes, I am ripping off yet another excellent post from PZ Myers over at the Pharyngula blog. You could save yourself some time and just RSS his feed instead of mine, but then you might miss out on all of my other mediocre insights.
I love this one:
“I do not understand evolution and I need to protect my kids from understanding it! We will not give in to the thinkers!” – Some Senator or something…
| Futurama | Thursdays 10pm / 9c | |||
| Evolution Under Attack | ||||
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Unfortunately I can not embed the video here because newgrounds.com does not allow it, but this is a humorous flash animation set in the future, some point after humans have gone extinct. One of the robots stumbles across a Kansas school building and the rest is, well, history…
We Are Science Probes. (via Pharyngula)
Yesterday I posted an interview from CNN’s Anderson Cooper on the subject of “Terror Babies” with the visually frustrated Texas representative Debbie Riddle. A friend of mine, Chris, sent me another Anderson Cooper interview with representative Louie Gohmert.
The lengths that these people will go to play on the ignorance of the populace is appalling. Actually, it’s not appalling. It’s to be expected…All Anderson Cooper is asking for is one shred of evidence…Two interviews from Gohmert and Riddle and not a single shred of evidence is offered. However, there is plenty of yelling and bouts of personal attacks on Anderson Cooper.
The more I watch these videos, the more I believe that Riddle and Gohmert don’t actually believe what they are saying. It’s all in their facial expressions…
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- Rep. Louie Gohmert Melts Down on AC360 Defending His ‘Terror Babies’ Conspiracy Theory (videocafe.crooksandliars.com)
- Watch: Rep. Louie Gohmert Assaults Anderson Cooper with ‘Terror Baby’ Nonsense (towleroad.com)
- Rep. Louie Gohmert’s “Terror Baby” Meltdown (motherjones.com)
- Rep. Gohmert’s Evidence-Free Terror Baby Fear Story (littlegreenfootballs.com)
- Attack Of The Terror Babies (outsidethebeltway.com)
- Wingnut Texas Rep. Debbie Riddle Pushes Louie Gohmert’s ‘Terror Babies’ Conspiracy Theory (videocafe.crooksandliars.com)
- Watch a Republican congressman go crazy (dailykos.com)
- Terror Babies (75.101.183.223)
- Tx. State Rep Debbie Riddle: Women Come Here To Have “Terror Babies” (alan.com)
An ad agency in Miami name Zubi thinks it’s a good idea to say you can “fix” your gay son by signing him up for Karate lessons.
Just when you think society has progressed a little…
New ad campaign says you can fix your gay son with karate lessons | Guyism.
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