interweaving ideas
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The Beauty and Innovation of Culture
Social Animals With a complex understanding of Evolution, one that goes beyond observable genetic traits, we find some deeper reasons for the human race’s success. Sure, we had some terrific genes. Those opposable thumbs were really handy (Get it, “Handy”?) and the subsequent tool use helped us to bonk the duller monkeys on the head…
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Universal Ethics, Virtues, and Vision
Ethics: The “Do Not’s” The following ideas were heavily influenced by the Theologian Dr. Huston Smith, who I saw give a talk on “The Enduring Truths of the Great Religions.” The word “Enduring” jumped out at me as the language of Science. There are not absolute truths, only enduring ones. While Huston Smith often laments…
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False Dichotomies: Poor VS Rich
“Class Warfare” is a term we often hear politicians evoke when attacking and when under attack by those who disagree with their economic viewpoints. Both liberals and conservatives charge the other with engaging in this tactic as a means of unfairly motivating the “poor” and the “wealthy” against one another. This rhetoric completely ignores the…
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Your Taxes as an Investment
Two and a half blocks down the street from my house stands a monument to the irrational enterprising spirit, the Old Dominion University Maglev train. “Maglev” is short for “Magnetic Levitation”. This is a train that would float on a cushion of air a half-inch thick above the track, shuttling students across campus. It would…
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Great Books: Principia Discordia
There is a point in Principa Discordia, where one of the many scribbles and stamps found in its margins reads, “If you think this book is just a Ha-Ha, then go back and read it again.” The older I get, the more truth I find in this statement. Discordia is a very free and liberating…
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Great Films: Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”
I recommend Fritz Lang’s Science Fiction adventure because it is such a spectacle for the eyes, with incredible costume designs, massive sets, cast of hundreds, incredible feats of choreography, brilliantly defined characters, all of which continue to rival the greatest films of the modern day. All this from a 1929 silent film with a full…
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Thought-Provoking, Fun, “Vision” Stuff
Fourmilab Switzerland A fun, mental playground, site based in Switzerland and maintained John Walker, founder of Autodesk, Inc and co-author of AutoCAD. The Discovery Channel Home of the many Discovery Channel networks, which make learning about your world fun and inspiring. Science Jokes A fun collection of science jokes. I don’t get most of them,…
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Establishing a Strong Foundation for Disputation
There are some things in life you can simply jump into without much preparation and simply learn through hands-on experience: dancing, socializing, many games and sports. There are other things you must learn the rules of before engaging. You don’t enter a chess match without knowing how the pieces move. Debate should fall into this…
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The Uncanny Valley: Issues in Computer Animation
The film Simone was a comedy about a computer-generated actress, but a live actress was used to play the part of the artificial. There was much speculation on this decision, from budget costs to Screen Actors Guild concerns influencing the decision, but the real answer was obvious. A computer-generated actress would scare the audience away.…
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Futurism: Scientific Prophecy
In the Old Testament’s book of Deuteronomy, God lays out a very simple method for determining if someone is a false prophet: Does what they predict come true? Science predicts that if you smoke, you are more likely to get cancer. Science predicts that the Earth will take 365.25 days to revolve around the sun.…
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The Commute
Spring Route 17 is a winding single lane road that spans the sixty-three miles between my home and work. The great Dismal Swamp lays to one side of it and endless farmland on the other. There’s a sign as you head south into North Carolina. It reads, “Warning: 25 People have died on this road…
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Scientism 2.0
What does all of this add up to? All of these observations of the world around us. All of these hypotheses we draw out of them. The ways we test these hypothesis, through experimentation and disputation. The theories that emerge from the Scientific Process. The Free Market of Ideas. Peer reviews. Egalitarianism. Pluralism. Predicting the…
