Category: Enlightenment Warrior

My sister and I had some difficulty getting into the MoMa because the street was closed so the Pope could come down one of the adjacent roads. Luckily, my sister showed me how to get past the police barricade (you wait until their dealing with someone else and walk past them). Of course, a friend…

A recent study in the BMJ Suicide and the Internet, found that results for suicide-related search terms most frequently support or encourage suicide. I like to think of the Internet as one big ecosystem of ideas, or memes, where our minds naturally select out the good ones. Obviously, if most sites are pro-suicide, then we…

Lawrence Solomon of Energy Probe has an extremely whiney column in the National Post complaining about the refusal of Wikipedians (which he refers to as Wicked Pedia. Ho. Ho.) to let him edit articles based on his personal experience. The article in question was Wikipedia’s entry for Naomi Oreskes, whose very informative lecture on the…

I’m at a restaurant last night, and there are leftovers. Not much in the way of leftovers, but enough to make me feel guilty about wasting food. However, I’m not too keen on asking for a doggie bag because I know this restaurant uses non-biodegradable Styrofoam containers. It’s better to send the food to the…

Here Comes Everybody Clay Shirkyon, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, has an excellent post up, titled Gin, Television, and Social Surplus, where he calls television sitcoms a “cognitive heat sink,” which dissipate our thought potential, preventing us from putting our over-abundance of free time to use in intellectually-productive activities.…

I get funny looks when I admit to people I don’t own a TV. I get the impression they think I’m some kind of flaky activist. In fact, people have even told me as much. They seem to think it’s unnatural not to spend more than four hours a day on an activity that burns…

Dittoheads, having been thoroughly thrashed on every rational, scientific, and practical front in their war on the environment, are now turning to theology, in a last ditch effort to keep people from embracing the principles of conservation and sustainability. Most recently, they are attacking Nancy Pelosi for repeatedly stating that the principles of environmentalism are…

Last weekend I got to meet one of my favorite SF authors, David Brin, at a virtual talk in Second Life’s Extropia Community. David Brin in SL It was a packed house, avatars kept crashing, lag was evident, but surprisingly mild. Twice my SL interface got a memory error and crashed, meaning when I logged…

Considering the list of embarrassingly stupid questions ABC asked Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton last night (see also here, here, here, here, and here), one has to wonder why the candidates prefer such unproductive distractions to engaging the positive and enlightening Science Debate 2008. It was infuriating watching Barack Obama be questioned about his relationship…

When I had to learn SQABasic for automated testing, I downloaded and printed out the 902 page reference guide, three-hole punched it, and put it into a three-ring binder. The only nice thing about this otherwise idiotic and wasteful act of mine was that I printed it two-up and double-sided to conserve paper. Now I’m…

Dare County has made English its official language, and I say it’s about time somebody finally took a stand! They show up in our country in droves, usurping our traditional values, and turning our culture on its head. Studies show they are bringing down our children’s grammar skills. They don’t pay taxes, and their influx…

Religion has FREE FOOD: Free Food at the New Life Church One of the local Elizabeth City churches gives out free dinners every night of the week. This is a fantastic community service, crucial for our impoverished small town. This isn’t just good works, it’s good business. Of course, it was science that refined the…