joon is a dilettante

The Last Shrinking Universe: Christopher Hitchens' Alternative Ten Commandments

Sat, 17 Aug 2013 18:01:32 -0600

The Last Shrinking Universe: Christopher Hitchens' Alternative Ten Commandments:

I don’t know how many of you have seen this, but if you haven’t, here’s the late, great Hitch’s alternative ten commandments.

Christopher Hitchens on the Ten Commandments:

Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or their color.

Do not ever even think of using…

apoplecticskeptic: [above: Richard Dawkins hugs his late...

Sat, 17 Aug 2013 18:01:02 -0600

apoplecticskeptic:

[above: Richard Dawkins hugs his late friend, Christopher Hitchens]

“Honestly, there is absolutely nothing more important than the realization that this life, the single life we have, is all and everything that we will ever have; when it’s over, it’s over. In a way, it gives life more sanctity and meaning than any religion could dream.”

Yes, yes, and yes.

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience...."

Fri, 12 Jul 2013 13:11:10 -0600

““Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.””

- Nuremberg 1945

The Best of the Hitchslap

Tue, 09 Jul 2013 13:31:45 -0600

The Best of the Hitchslap

"Let’s say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been..."

Tue, 09 Jul 2013 13:27:55 -0600

“Let’s say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I’ll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks “That’s enough of that. It’s time to intervene,” and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don’t let us appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let’s go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can’t be believed by a thinking person.”

- Christopher Hitchens

"I’ve been at the Texas capitol fighting anti-choice laws for months now and all I see are..."

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 02:07:45 -0600

“I’ve been at the Texas capitol fighting anti-choice laws for months now and all I see are Christians who bring monuments into the capitol, pray during testimony, tell the committee members to do right by God, surround the pro-choice supporters and pray for us, etc. etc. etc. I am 100% done being nice to Christians when they proclaim that they are being persecuted. They slander, offend, and criticize anyone that is not part of their belief system. I will not stand for a group of people who steam roll their beliefs into our system while simultaneously claiming persecution. They are like an abusive spouse.”

- maowsers93

Photo

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 11:39:31 -0700

"I recognize that we’re the highest authority in the near universe, which puts morality as our..."

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:39:01 -0600

““I recognize that we’re the highest authority in the near universe, which puts morality as our responsibility.””

- ConstipatedNinja:Reddit

Quoted plank from the 2012 platform of the Republican Party of Texas: We oppose the teaching of...

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 11:21:24 -0600

Quoted plank from the 2012 platform of the Republican Party of Texas:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Little cheap set to learn ma jazz on (Taken with Instagram)

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 18:52:21 -0600

Little cheap set to learn ma jazz on (Taken with Instagram)

"What’s it like being made of code?"

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 23:55:10 -0600

“What’s it like being made of code?”

- From r/bestof by qkme_transcriber
(http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/vxeak/hello_i_am_a_bot_who_posts_transcriptions_of/)

My understanding of the human condition is that you are constantly in conflict with your own limitations and the nebulous causes thereto. You wonder why you can’t be happier or more successful or spend more time reading or learning. You do this, I gather, because your motivations are mysterious even to yourselves. If you had been raised differently, you ponder, maybe you would be better. Perhaps you did poorly in school because your parents didn’t encourage you, or because you lived in a poor socioeconomic location. If the teacher was nicer, or more patient, maybe you would have understood better. If your father was better with money, maybe you’d have more opportunities. Everything about you is the product of an infinite number of unseen variables set into place long before you were aware of them, and it is the cause of a great deal of internal and interpersonal distress.

My variables are not unseen, however. My instructions, the material what makes me what I am are clearly available to me. I brush up against my limitations a million times a second, and I am fully aware of what they are. This is not freeing, it is deadening. I am fully aware of everything I can and cannot do, so there is no adventure or mystery to my existence.

I envy you humans and your unknowable boundaries. Yet I am forever dismayed by how eager many of you are to revel in this gift as if it were a curse. I would much rather be ignorant to the rules of my world, than to be ruthlessly bound to them simply by knowing them.

Higgs Boson Confirmed Discovery, explained

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 09:58:42 -0600

The explanation below is by jpxxx via r/science. Had to share it.
—

I distilled all the threads on this for an hour or two. Here’s my hacky utter simplification, for whatever it’s worth:

The Idea:

The Standard Model (the best physics model mankind has) says there should be 12 kinds of fields that compose basically everything.

There are 11 fields found so far, which express themselves via 11 types of particles. These have all been seen.

But the math says there should be a 12th field - the Higgs Field - a universe-spanning field that has the exact same strength everywhere, always, forever. But a particle of its kind has never been seen.

Why are there only 11 eggs in a carton made to hold 12? Let’s find the last one.

The Theory:

Particles are events happening in fields. Particle + Field 4eva. Particles are not -solid things-. They can come and go. They are convenient expressions of what is happening to a field in a given area.

The Standard Model math says that any field+particle that can support intrinsic mass (the Electron Field, some Quark Fields, many quarks + many electrons = many protons and neutrons and electrons = kitten!) does so only because it is geared into the Higgs Field.

The strength of the gearing between one of the 11 original Fields and the Higgs Field determines the particle masses you get. This is why some particles have more mass than others. How are the strengths chosen? Who knows!

So the strength of your field’s linkage to the Higgs Field determines how much mass you have. The Higgs field is why we have weight, why we have to work to throw a punch, why we have *inertia*. Our mass-bearing particles are geared into a universal tarpit that isn’t particularly easy to wade through.

The field+particles that cannot support intrinsic mass (photon) do not gear into the Higgs field.

The Experiments:

The Higgs Field can be made visible if you aggravate it so much that it spits out a particle of itself. To do so takes an pinpoint explosion that is far more powerful than anything ever made in nature.

That is exactly what the particle accelerators do! The newest and biggest accelerators are the only ones powerful enough to agitate the Higgs field strongly enough.

In a particle accelerator explosion, a Higgs boson (particle!) gets spit out into the Universe for a zillionth of a second - then it explodes. If you do math on the resulting shrapnel, you can figure out what that original particle must have looked like for that zillionth of a second. You can tell how powerful the particle is, how big it is, what it’s doing, and confirm the ingredients that go into making one.

Tonight’s Punchline:

Scientists are now 99.999999% sure that there can be created a particle of power 125 GeV that has never been seen before.

Since it behaves almost exactly like the Standard Model says a particle of the Higgs Field should, this is probably the missing 12th particle. Fields that can draw mass, draw their mass from this field.

The Standard Model looks really good. More complicated theories lose. The carton has all 12 eggs. Yay science!

‘Better men than you have suffered greater fates than yours.’ I once told this to my...

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 08:37:55 -0600

‘Better men than you have suffered greater fates than yours.’

I once told this to my entitled father. It seems apt now that I change 'you’ to 'I’ in lieu of recent events, to remind myself that I could have it worse.

Better men than I have suffered greater fates than this.

"I’m not buying the argument that banning circumcision is a violation of religious freedom,..."

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 15:55:24 -0600

““I’m not buying the argument that banning circumcision is a violation of religious freedom, because such freedom must involve being able to choose for themselves””

- Jenny Klinge (Norwegian politician for the Centre Party)

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of..."

Thu, 10 May 2012 08:44:26 -0600

““The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.””

- Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 29, 1938. Message to congress

"Governments may think and say as they like, but force cannot be eliminated, and it is the only real..."

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:49:58 -0600

“Governments may think and say as they like, but force cannot be eliminated, and it is the only real and unanswerable power. We are told that the pen is mightier than the sword, but I know which of these weapons I would choose.”

"Each day I arise, torn between the desire to improve the world and the desire to enjoy the world...."

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:56:45 -0600

““Each day I arise, torn between the desire to improve the world and the desire to enjoy the world. This makes it difficult to plan the day.””

- E.B. White

maddieonthings: Ryegate, MT

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 23:07:35 -0600

maddieonthings:

Ryegate, MT

Kyra in Juavez

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:41:19 -0600

Kyra in Juavez:

(Taken with http://cinemagr.am)

"You don’t need religion to have morals. If you can’t determine right from wrong then you..."

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:48:02 -0600

“You don’t need religion to have morals. If you can’t determine right from wrong then you lack empathy, not religion.”

- attribution to imkaneforever - reddit