We have previously posted regarding the latest reprint of Darwin’s “The Origin of Species”, by Ray Comfort. If you don’t know about it, it has a 50 page forward full of untruths, confusion, and misdirection in an attempt to discredit the original text that follows. Yes, he’s trying to use Darwin to discredit 200 years of thoroughly tested evolutionary biology.
Unfortunately, Amazon.com reviews and ratings confuse it with another (reputable) reprint by the same name, as discussed in detail here:
Youtube was supposed to be one of Web 2.0’s shining examples of user-generated original content. In a world (in 2005) when everything worthwhile was already online and fully consumed, Youtube was supposed to provide us with a new outlet to both create and consume. I know it is hard to recall Youtube’s original intent as a creative landscape, but keep in mind that the site’s slogan was and is “Broadcast Yourself”.
Most of us don’t broadcast ourselves, or watch broadcasts of other selves. The last time I fired up Youtube, I was looking for a free way to stream James and the Giant Peach. Any cute skits or beautiful shorts I discovered thereafter were barely bonuses; they were just tasty little incidentals to be quickly forgotten. Most people go to Youtube to view unoriginal creations- movie, TV and music clips or mashups thereof.
Youtube’s most viewed videos of all time are music videos like “7 Things” by Miley Cyrus and Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music”. My little sister uses Youtube as a combination DVR-Itunes-Pandora player. Nothing original seeps in unless I send it to her myself- and then it’s usually just a video of a cute animal, not a creative work.
Ah, but Youtube does have some high-caliber producers of original goodies! People who put on elaborate comedy skits with costumes, professional lighting and substantial editing. People who pull in millions of views. People with whom Youtube has formed profitable, advertising-driven partnerships. These people are broadcasting themselves. But they aren’t like “us”. They are all from Hollywood.
Dale McGowan of the Meming of Life and other literary outlets has a new video out. In his latest, he questions the title question in detail before addressing the answer. Mainly he takes on “become” and “religious”, before addressing “What if”. Very reasonable and persuasive.
I met the man earlier this year, and identify with his position on dealing with an over-religious culture from an a-religious world view.
Whether you consume rap and hip-hop or not, you know the genres have dingy reputations. I believe the hate for hip-hop and rap blossomed in the 90’s. Rappers were actually cold-blooded gangsters at the time, people who occasionally shot one another. The music reflected the turmoil that its creators had experienced- growing up in crack-infused ghettos, resorting to crime to scrape by, and dying in a swarm of bullets even if they did finally make it out and become famous.
“I’m twenty-three now but will I live to see twenty-four/ the way things is going I don’t know,” Coolio said in “Gangster’s Paradise”, and he was by no means a Tu-pac; he was gangster-rap-lite. The depression of 90’s rappers manifested itself in loud, brash talk of guns and glory; no wonder white outsiders were scared. The violent content of 90’s rap inspired Tipper Gore and their ilk to censor and criticize with fervor, cementing rap’s image as a crude, violent genre for future gang-bangers.
Hip-hop and rap also have the reputation of being degrading to women. This present stereotype was also inspired by past trends. After 90’s gangster rap subsided, it was replaced with a money-cash-hoes mentality. In the early aughts, Jay-Z, 50 Cent and others spat mainly about their wealth, their rise from the streets, and the women that their amassed wealth could attract (Jay-Z wrote a song called “Money, Cash, Hoes”).
Women were called hoes and bitches in earlier rap and hip-hop songs, it’s true, but in the early 00’s the music seemed more intently focused on the subject. Rap and hip-hop from this period was all about the ascent into fame, and the amassing of expensive objects. One of these objects happened to be attractive women. “I’m into having sex, I’m not into making love,” 50 Cent reminds listeners in one of his most popular singles. Thus rap and hip-hop received another nasty label: it was degrading and shallow.
Many conservatives are still yapping that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. when an official Hawaiian birth certificate and a Hawaiian newspaper birth announcement clearly prove otherwise. The believers are ignoring evidence that disproves their claim, and bonding over what is thus an absurd claim. Maybe they’ll be soon start building a new church dedicated to their article of faith that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. I do wonder whether we are seeing the mechanism by which religions are born? Check out the video below for some especially surreal moments by some desperate fringe conservatives who are clearly annoying the hell out of conservatives that still have their brains engaged. Rick Sanchez calls it right. And check out the need to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Creepy. I really don’t get it. Is there buried racism at work?
Onion Network News is reporting that President Barack Obama is already in the process of sitting down with each and every American worker to review his or her job performance. Not that there aren’t some glitches in the process. Here’s the Onion’s report:
One obsession among fundamentalists is the question of who, exactly, qualifies for heaven. Basically, the answer comes down to “us”. I.E: Christians. Not all 2Bn of them, but only those who are “true” Christians. If you question an American fundamentalist individually about who gets to go, denomination by denomination, then you learn that a fraction of a percent of those they claim as Christian (when boasting of how many they are) actually qualify. (List of Christian denominations)
Catholics, the vast majority of Christians, are not eligible according to fundamentalist thought. Here’s an excerpt from a recent youth Mexico Mission blog:
“Later we were sitting outside and I asked her how long she had been a Christian. She told us that when she was seven she wanted to be a Christian but her parents wouldn’t let her and made her go to a Catholic church.
I guess when her parents died, she was able to actually actively follow God.”
I’ve been to her church, and this is what they are taught: Most forms of Christianity are heretical cults.
But what of, “All dogs go to heaven”? What is a cat’s incentive for goodness?
How about Bees?
As the video implies, that any human may expect to go to a particular heaven is an artifact of the heaven having been invented by humans. If such a place existed, why would any innocent organism be kept out?
Hot for Words has been a Youtube success since 2007, but I’ve just recently become a big fan. For those of you who have not become, erm, intimately familiar, Hot for Words is a high-quality youtube show about word origins by the gorgeous Russian philologist Marina Orlova. In the show, which is updated several times a week, Marina discusses the history of a word or colloquial expression requested by viewers. The presentation, while informative, is also peppered with great-looking transitions and editing, as well as a little…something extra from Marina. The show’s motto is “Intelligence is sexy!”, after all.
I’ve watched dozens of Hot for Words episodes, and it took me a long time to believe that Marina is real. Here we have an absurdly hot Los Angeles resident with flowing golden locks and an exotic accent (and plenty of professional photo-shoot pin ups)…who has a brain? In addition to her frequent high-quality videos, Marina also describes word origins on her blog, tweets several times a day (with photos) and produces other content, such as pin-up calendars and an upcoming book. She even sends Christmas cards to her Youtube subscribers. How could she really be a one-woman show?
The Guardian calls the military occupation in Afghanistan "Groundhog Day," indicating that "Afghanistan is a political failure, a fact over which the international community continue to be in denial." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/04/afghanistan-political-failure-kim-howells »
I've never read any of Hubbard's books, but I have seen the movie version of "Battlefield Earth" with John Travolta as the lead villain. If the film was anywhere true to the story, (and I suspect is was), it wasn't bad in the beginning. It started off by setting up mankind being treated as semi-intelligent beasts of burden by an occupying alien ar... »
Dan,This is probably a matter of taste, but that Hubbard was "engaging page turners, light burners, wage earners. They show a keen grasp of storytelling" is hardly the same as saying he was a good writer---the same can be said of Dan Brown and I think he's little better than a hack.Hubbard was, however, popular in the 30s and part of the 40s, at on... »
I disagree with Mark about L Ron Hubbard's quality of writing. His stories are all engaging page turners, light burners, wage earners. They show a keen grasp of storytelling. They also show a near total ignorance of science and math, and only the faintest grasp of the distinction between magic and technology.In fact, his instinct for storytelling i... »
Rev. Claude needs to read some actual history. The diameter of the Earth was known (within a few percent) hundreds of years before Jesus. This knowledge was not lost to navigators or intellectuals, even if the uneducated public might have missed it. After all, the Bible itself misleads on this point: Inerrant Biblical Geology Falls FlatThe Bible is... »
Rev,Just because Atlanta is depicted in "Gone With The Wind" and there was something called the Civil War, does that change that book from fiction to history?Also, people in ancient Greece knew the world is round, hundreds of years B.C.E. People here and there, from time to time, have lost that knowledge and regained it, usually because someone in... »
Paul: If Congress had given Elizabeth Warren the power to issue subpoenas and enforce them, I might agree with you that she is "partially culpable." But they've tied her hands. Further, it has become increasingly clear that there was not any accounting method in place when the money was doled out. None of this is Ms. Warren's fault. Give her ... »
Mark...Just because you don't believe or understand the good book, doesn't mean it's fiction. A couple of 100 years ago people believed the world was flat, and to say the world was round was considered fiction.Every cities or civilizations mentioned in the good book have been documented to have existed exactly where it said it did. But also, artifa... »
Ms. Warren has been an entertaining figure to see interviewed, and she appears very competent. When, though, will be begin accepting responsibility for her job? It is great to go around the country talking about how you don't know where the money is, and getting a good laugh from the crowd. But... umm..... isn't it her job to figure this stuff o... »
Erich, Much recognition software employs an artificial intelligence programming technique known as a neural net simulation. Neural net simulations run many parallel sub-programs, called nodes, that independently analyze the input and produce a list of possible results. Each node starts with a different list of possible results. Each node votes ... »
one thing I found scary was the mega-dosing on niacin. B vitamins have long been used in detoxification programs for drug and alcohol abuse. Niacin has several effects in moderate to high doses. It temporarily increased blood flow throughout the body, has an anti-inflammatory effect, and in many people causes a "flush", a prickly heat sensation t... »
Erich, there is a basic difference between what any software does, and what it shows a user. Internally, Dragon knows its own confidence level, the sound levels, the sound distinction levels, the frequency distributions of each sound, and the frequency distribution and volume of the background noise.For a consumer dictation program, all it displays... »
On DemocracyNow, Amy Goodman speaks to McClatchy reporter Greg Gordon:In 2006 and 2007, the bank reportedly peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in US housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting. See, Go... »
Dan: That is often not my experience. When I use Dragon, it spits out the closest fit to the words I utter, and they can sometimes be dramatically different than what I utter. It doesn't display any sort of confidence level--Dragon is ALWAYS confident! The exception would be if I were to cough, at which point Dragon doesn't recognize any te... »
Dragon may not yet be perfect in transcription, but it could easily tell when it is having trouble, as in mumbling, indistinct word separations, and overall volume (the causes of "speak up"). »
