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rest in peace, victims of the latest civilian massacres in iraq and afghanistan. rest in peace, victims of the virginia tech killer. rest in peace, kurt vonnegut. rest in peace, robert anton wilson. rest in peace, anna nicole smith. rest in peace, u.s. soldiers and allied soldiers killed in afghanistan. rest in peace, people killed in darfur in sudan. rest in peace, people killed in somalia. rest in peace, people executed by the chinese, the russians, the saudis, and other totalitarian governments. rest in peace, to the last few veterans of world war i who are dying out. rest in peace, to all other people who have ever died. rest in peace to all the animal species who are dying out, to the pandas, to the polar bears, to the whales, to the manatees, to the buffalos, to the bald eagles, to the penguins, to the tasmanian devils, to the elephants, to the bees, and to all the other animals being wiped out. and even plants and other species too. we depend on natural ecosystems to produce our food, and many other products like wood rely on the other forms of life in nature. perhaps we could survive in a sterile world, relying on mining and producing chemicals in factories, eating food that is completely artificial, with no biological organisms killed to produce the food. but that is an awful prospect. life is good. we need as many forms of life as possible. great people die and innocent people die and even the guilty and bad people die. and so does nature. together we stand, divided we fall. all life on earth is interdependent. i would like to thank all of the cows, chickens, pigs, fish, shrimp, deer, and other animals who had to die so i could eat them. i hope our food, agriculture, and fishing industries are smart enough to keep alive all the species of organisms that i eat. the best food is always the dead remains of another living organism, not some factory-manufactured animal-vegetable-chemical hybrid food such as a microwaveable chicken pot pie or a packet of ramen noodles. but i like the factory-manufactured food. i just hope i can trust the corporations not to let any of the species of life forms that i eat die out. death is a terrible thing, especially human death. kurt vonnegut may be dead, but we still have kurt vonnegut, jr. robert f. kennedy may have been assassinated decades ago, but robert f. kennedy, jr. is still going strong. the rev. martin luther king, jr. was killed, but the rev. martin luther king iii still lives. if the president dies, someone else will become the president. life is the opposite of death, and through the creation of new life, there is constant renewal. this cycle of life and death is the basis for darwinian evolution, and the reason we are here today, why we are sentient beings, with the power to walk and talk, and design, build, and use all sorts of tools and machinery. but our machines will never be as good as the life forms of this planet. no machine can solve the halting problem, the problem of determining whether a given computer program will terminate or go on forever in an infinite loop. but humans can solve it, and we computer programmers do it all the time. there is nothing better than life, and so we must do all we can to preserve it. and as we mourn the dead, let us embrace the glory of the constant creation of new life. let us celebrate pregnancy. we should all be proud of the accomplishments of humanity, but no individual human is perfect. and among our many flaws is our mortality. that is why all death must be countered by the creation of new life, through sex, the glorious process by which humans and other creatures can create new life. sex is the most wonderful thing anybody could ever do. even if we are using birth control and condoms and such, sex is still wonderful, because it means we are practicing for the real thing, for when we finally will bring new life into this world. we will defeat death temporarily, in this battle, by creating new humans to replace those who die. and we will honor the dead. but someday all humans will be dead. someday all life on earth is dead. the whole planetary ecosystem itself is mortal. the collective consciousness of all humanity can itself be considered a sentient being, larger than any one of us, one that we are all a part of. and that sentient being will die when we all die out. but there are aliens out there, far away. they may not be much like us, but some of them will develop similar abilities to manipulate matter and energy to create machines and tools to help them in life. perhaps some aliens or machines will be capable of lasting much longer than the carbon-based life forms originating from our planet earth. we should be thankful for that. all life in the universe is made up of individual organisms, each of which is mortal. and perhaps someday it will all die, even the most advanced aliens in the universe. but such is fate. if the early times of the universe allow for the creation of new life forms, the late times of the universe will allow for the destruction of old life forms. that is the completion of the circle, coming back to where it all started. perhaps this universe we inhabit is all that exists, and perhaps not. hopefully, even if life in our universe of 3 extended spatial dimentions and 1 extended time dimension dies out, there may still be life outside of this manifold we inhabit. there may be other extended dimensions that we are unable to traverse, as we are beings inside this 4-dimensional manifold. and our manifold might have a few tiny dimensions that curve back on themselves, calabi-yau spaces as described in superstring theory. this does not matter. but about 95% of the universe is dark energy and dark matter. we know about it because it exerts gravity on things we can see, but it is invisible. perhaps it exists outside of our manifold of 4 extended dimensions. i am hopeful. our universe itself may be something that is created and destroyed, existing within a larger multiverse, one with infinite dimensions. that is what i hope to be true. at least then, life will live on, after it dies out in our universe. our universe itself is mortal, and will someday either collapse and implode, or explode and tear apart every molecule, and then every atom, and every subatomic particle will be spread out far away from all others. but we must never give up on hope. in our short mortal lifetimes, none of these great cosmic cataclysms will occur; those will happen billions and billions of years from now. we should focus on the here and now, and what we know, not what we don’t know. life is good and death is bad. creation is better than destruction. honor those who have died, and never forget their memory. preserve all the species of this planet that still exist. we cannot save earth in the long run, in the billions of years timespan, but we can save it in the short run, in the hundreds of years timespan. so let us do it. for humanity. for all life. all deaths are honorable, and all people have some good in them, even if it is seemingly impossible to find. we can redeem those who have died by saying what is good about them. adolf hitler did not drink or smoke, and he did manage to pull germany’s economy out of the great depression. josef stalin thought that all of the deaths he ordered were necessary sacrifices to build a communist paradise, one that would be a model for the rest of humanity, and ultimately benefit all of humanity, after a few decades or perhaps centuries. osama bin laden believes that what he is doing is right, and that he is fighting a just war against an enemy that has committed terrible crimes against the muslims of the world. george w. bush believes the war in iraq is essential to building a stable democracy in the middle east, a model for that region, which will eventually lead to peace for generations to come. even pol pot, the autogenocidal cambodian communist dictator, believed that it was necessary to do the killings in order to eliminate the enemies who would resist the creation of what he thought would become a communist paradise, a model for all other nations to follow. the people who we judge to be most evil are often people who believe themselves to be doing the right thing for humanity. their true sin is their faulty judgement, and how they believed that the ends justify the means, even if the means involve mass murder. we must put to rest this old idea, this dangerous and popular idea, this utterly false and stupid idea, that the ends justify the means. that idea is the basis for all mass murder that has ever occurred. the idea that the ends justify the means is the single most dangerous idea that has ever plagued the human mind. we must put that faulty notion to rest, not only for the sake of humanity, but for the sake of all life on earth. the ends only justify the means if the means are also justifiable in and of themselves. humanity is suffering from a severe philosophical disorder, and the only cure is better philosophy. to be truly good, your thoughts and actions must both be good, and you must never do anything bad, even if it is for “the greater good”. the greater good must be built upon a foundation of lesser goods, a foundation that is not corrupted by anything bad. let our protests be peaceful and nonviolent. let us avoid wars and killing. we should preserve all forms of life that exist on the planet earth, without resorting to any questionable or evil tactis to achieve this objective. the dodo, the passenger pidgeon, and other extinct species are monuments to the evils of humanity towards the other life forms of our planet. do not do anything to expand the list of extinct species. and if we can bring them back through cloning or other scientific procedures, that would be a wonderful thing. we humans are completely dependent on the biosphere that surrounds us, and sometimes all the machinery that surrounds us blinds us to this fact. but think about this the next time you eat. what are you eating? a machine? chemicals from a factory? minerals mined from underground? rocks? no... you are eating the dead remains of other life forms, and any chemical additives are just there to enhance the flavor or prevent mold or bacteria from consuming the food before you do. but remember... all of the preservatives you eat are biocides, chemicals which destroy life. they may very well destroy your life, but it takes a lot more sodium benzoate to kill a human than it does to kill an e. coli bacterium. pesticides sprayed on crops may allow for high crop yields to solve the problem of world hunger, but at what cost? we are poisoning ourselves. organic food is the best, as long as it is not contaminated, and since it has no preservatives, it is very likely to be contaminated unless it is very fresh and cooked thoroughly so as to kill anything still alive. only eat dead organic matter. nothing else. then your life may very well be long and healthy. i do not live like that. i eat junk food that is full of chemicals. and i get sick all the time, mostly digestive problems. my digestive problems are also related to my asperger’s syndrome (which could also be called high-functioning autism, since they are the same thing), and my allergies and panic atacks and anxiety and odd obsessive ritualistic behaviors are all connected to this mild form of autism that i suffer from. but this mild form of autism called asperger’s has provided me with benefits, such as my advanced intelligence, and my noble soul. we aspies are good people, even though we do not always seem like it. some studies have shown that autism spectrum disorders like the one i have are often caused by chemicals that we are exposed to, or various chemical imbalances not only in the brain, but in other parts of the body as well, such as the immune system and the digestive system. although i am abnormal, i am superior; in fact, my superiority is entirely due to me being abnormal. the church of the subgenius says that being abnormal and being superior are the exact same thing. without us abnormals, the world would be a boring place. abnormal members of a species are the ones that branch off and form new species. perhaps people with autism spectrum disorders, by only breeding with each other, could become a separate species from homo sapiens. i wonder if we would end up as smarter or stupider than normal humans. i hope we would not lose any of the special abilities that humans have and other animals do not. but there could be nothing greater i could do than help father a new species of abnormals, of subhumans, a species superior to normal humans. a species of subgenii, perhaps. but i am not sure if there is any connection between autism spectrum disorders and the church of the subgenius. it would be interesting to do a scientific study on members of that obscure ufo cult to find out the truth about the species homo subgenius. are subgenii mutants with abnormal brains? or is their dna standard and well within the bounds of the species homo sapiens? someday we may find out the answer, if any scientists are willing to analyze the genetics of cult members and compare them to the dna of normal humans. kurt vonnegut, robert anton wilson, and anna nicole smith, who all recently died, have all become saints in the church of the subgenius. we worship them. if only we were all as enlightened as those 3 individuals were, although each of them only found a part of the truth, a part of the enlightenment. but, as much as people insult various dead people, we must respect the fact that the dead are never wrong, and are infallible. since dead people never talk or think or write anything at all, they certainly never talk or think or write anything that is wrong, so therefore they are infallible. this is only one of many amazing abilities dead people have. however, this also means all psychics are frauds, unfortunately. maybe someday someone will fix that problem. according to my studies, there are 4 fundamental forces of the universe: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force. 3 of the forces have been unified by the great thinkers of 20th century quantum physics: electromagnetism, the weak force, and finally the strong force. richard feynman of cornell was one of the pioneers of uniting quantum physics with the theory of relativity, to lay the foundation for the grand unified theory of physics. now we have the standard model of quantum mechanics, the relativistic quantum field theory that explains everything in physics, except for one thing: gravity. albert einstein explained gravity through his theory about the curvature of the 4-dimensional manifold he referred to as “the space-time continuum”. but is it not true that our 4-dimensional manifold, our space-time continuum, our universe (all of which are the same exact thing), is only part of a larger multiverse, an infinite-dimensional multiverse full of an infinite number of universes? that is the only way that the anthropic principle could actually make sense, scientifically. many of our laws of physics, especially the incomplete grand unified field theory of physics we call the standard model, the one that leaves out gravity, many of them are specific to our universe, to how things operate within our 4-dimensional manifold. the rules for outside our universe, out in the multiverse, are much more flexible. but one thing remains constant and has the same rules everywhere it operates: gravity. gravity is the only transuniversal force, the only transdimensional force that operates outside the 4 dimensions of our universe. that is why we can detect dark matter and dark energy with gravity, but there are no signs of dark matter or dark energy that come in the form of electromagnetic radiation. it is a lie that 95% of our universe is made up of stuff we don’t understand. none of that stuff is even in our universe. the truth is, 95% of gravity comes from things outside our universe, outside the 4-dimensional manifold of the space-time continuum. the only way to really understand all of this is to read the book flatland. that book is a bit of an allegorical parable, a fable, but the moral of the story is, there probably are many more dimensions than the ones we can directly observe. we can only move about in 3 dimensions of space, as the 4th dimension of time elapses. and electromagnetic radiation, or light, is what we see with our eyes, and what we cannot see coming from dark matter or dark energy. sound, like heat, is simply the vibration of matter, although sound is more on the macro scale and heat is more on the micro scale. sound travels much faster than heat, and our ears can hear sound but not heat, but essentially sound and heat really are the same thing, vibration of matter, just 2 different types of matter vibration. smell and taste are based on identifying chemicals by having the chemicals bind to receptors. and the sense of touch detects 3 things: temperature, pressure, and pain. what triggers pain? certain types of chemical reactions that occur near the pain receptors. anyway, most of our senses are for things that go on inside this universe, this 4-dimensional manifold known as the space-time continuum. according to string theory it might actually be a 10 or 11-dimensional manifold, but that is completely irrelevant. the one thing that we can sense, that we can detect and monitor and observe, which provides us with a connection to what is going on outside our universe, is the force of gravity. that is why, despite the apple that fell on isaac newton’s head, nobody can truly explain gravity. gravity is still an unanswered question, the greatest unanswered question of physics. it cannot be unified with the other 3 forces of the universe, because it is not a force of this universe, but a force that connects all universes. but the gravity from something big and heavy in another universe is not strong enough to pull anything out of this universe and into another one. our universe is like a box we are trapped inside. we might be pulled towards the big thing in another universe on an angle, like how something rolls down a hill, but eventually we will reach the lowest point in the valley and stop there. we will not keep rolling down into the center of the earth because the ground is solid and strong enough to block us from going any further towards the center of gravity of the giant thing we are being pulled toward. similarly, a gigantic heavy object in a nearby universe might pull stuff towards the closest point in our universe to where that heavy object is. but, once stuff reaches that point, it will stop. and more likely, it will orbit the center of gravity of the closest point in our universe to the heavy object in a nearby universe. stuff will not go straight down into the center of gravity, unless it is already headed in that direction. otherwise it will simply have an elliptical orbit, or perhaps it will be going by so fast, it will only alter the trajectory of the moving object, and the path it follows will be that of a hyperbola or a parabola. whatever shape of the trajectory or orbit, it has to be a conic section, namely something you get when you take a planar cross-section of a cone. anyway, there is a good chance that a black hole may form right where the closest point to the heavy object in another universe is. so, this black hole will be right in the same place as a very large amount of “dark matter”. or maybe the black hole might orbit the dark matter, or vice versa. now, is it possible for black holes to open up holes in the fabric of our space-time continuum, and allow matter from our universe to leave and become dark matter, or for dark matter from another universe to come into this universe and become regular matter? that might be possible. and we may be able to use “gravitational waves” to broadcast communications to aliens living in other universes, and listen for any responses the aliens send back in gravitational waves. remember that gravity travels at the speed of light. so if the sun suddenly ceased to exist, gravitational waves from the sun would keep hitting earth for about 9 minutes, since the sun is 93 million miles away and that is the time it takes for the light and gravity from the sun to get to earth. then, all of a sudden, about 9 minutes after the sun completely vanishes and ceases to exist (which is impossible, by the way, and is only part of this hypothetical thought experiment), right at that time, the sky would go dark except for the lights generated here on earth, and the stars of the night sky, and for a few minutes we would still see reflections of the sun’s light from other planets like mars, jupiter, and saturn. but we would stop orbiting the sun in our ellipse that is quite close to being a circle. instead, earth would immediately start going in an almost straight line. but not completely straight. in our solar system, the heaviest object would now be jupiter, so we would mainly be orbiting it and the other gas giants, in a quite complicated set of orbits. we would probably crash into many asteroids in the process. and our entire solar system would continue orbiting the black hole and the dark matter in the center of the galaxy. and did you know we not only have a black hole and dark matter in the center of our galaxy, but also antimatter there too? there is a lot of cool stuff in the center of our milky way galaxy. perhaps the black hole in the center of the galaxy might even be a portal to other universes. but to enter it would mean death, and the destruction of whatever passes the invisible line (or rather ball, since a ball is a technical term in geometry meaning the surface of a sphere but nothing inside). once we enter the ball of no return for a black hole, we are doomed, and there is no way out. even going at the speed of light is not fast enough to escape, because the gravity is so strong inside the ball (again, a ball is defined as the 2-dimensional surface of a 3-dimensional sphere). but the final outcome of what happens to things inside the ball of a black hole is completely unknown. it is impossible to study scientifically, because any scientists or scientific instruments sent inside to study it would be completely destroyed, and also unable to send any information back. but we should be thankful for dark matter and dark energy, because they are the reason our universe is heterogenous and not homogenous. they are the reason some places are different from other places. they are the origin of what appears to be randomness. transdimensional gravity from outside our universe is the reason that the galaxy clusters and galaxies and stars and solar systems all formed. it is the reason that not everything is pure hydrogen gas spread out evenly in interstellar space. and it is the reason there is so much more matter than antimatter. originally, there were equal amounts of matter and antimatter. where did the antimatter go? well, somehow it got sucked out of our universe, or maybe it was never even in our universe to begin with. it might be in a parallel universe that was created at the exact same time as our universe. in any event, dark matter and dark energy provided the randomness to undo the initial almost-homogenous nature of our universe, and allowed gravity to accumulate stuff together at certain points, eventually leading to giant stars that exploded in supernovae and produced all the higher elements. some of the debris from a supernova explosion accumulated into our solar system, and the terrestrial planets such as mercury, venus, earth, and mars have high amounts of the higher-numbered, heavier elements, because their weak gravity allowed all the hydrogen and helium gas to escape into space, since gas naturally expands to fill whatever container it is in, unless constrained by other forces like gravity. the gravity of a planet like earth pulls separately on each molecule of gas in the atmosphere. heavier molecules are pulled stronger than less-heavy molecules. and molecules below a certain mass escape into space. the speed of how fast they all escape into space is determined by how much lighter they are than that mass. the gas giants, planets like jupiter, saturn, uranus, and neptune, have so much gravity, they are able to contain all the hydrogen gas in their atmosphere, or at least keep the speed it leaches out into space very very low. in the center, they probably all have heavy elements just like the terrestrial planets. but are the heavy elements in the form of solid, liquid, or gas? it is theorized that the cores of the gas giants are made of liquid hydrogen, and the other elements that are heavier are just sort of mixed in with it, or else inside a ball in the center of each planet. but the gas giants have such gigantic atmospheres of gas, we have really no idea what is underneath, or if they have a surface. but there is probably no life there. there are 5 places in the solar system that i think may have life on them. first of all, earth definitely has life. mars might have life underground. 2 moons of jupiter, europa and io, might support life. and saturn’s moon titan might support life. there might even be life on venus! but venus is too hot, mars is too cold, io is too hot, and titan is too cold. but europa might be a nice place to visit, with its liquid water ocean underneath a surface of ice, and volcanic activity going on inside the core of the moon europa, providing heat for the ocean. who knows, there might be fish!!! not very likely though. maybe we could send some eskimos on a manned mission to europa, and see if they can build igloos on top of the ice, and go ice fishing for some alien fish. i wonder what alien fish taste like, if the aliens even are fish. well, alien sea monsters, anyway. i wonder what alien sea monsters taste like. they might be delicious and nutricious. but if i ever eat any, i hope they rest in peace. in my stomach. i have probably eaten more shrimp than any other animal, because shrimp are so small, and when you eat beef or chicken or pork, it is only part of the animal. just one meal of shrimp contains dozens of them. literally dozens. i would like to apologize to the shrimp for the genocide againt them carried out by the fisherman, fisherman who get all their money from people like me who eat the seafood. forrest gump, you are on notice. rest in peace, little shrimpies. and i hope i rest in peace after i die, and i hope everyone else does too after they die. at least then i will be infallible. until then, i could try speaking only in tautologies, if i could try speaking only in tautologies. speaking only in tautologies is a way to be infallible while still alive, but you have to make sure everything you think and write and type is also a tautology, to remain infallible. i can do this if and only if i can do this. i either wish myself good luck or do not wish myself good luck. it is not true that i am both fallible and infallible, but it is true that i am either fallible or infallible. and this sentence is only a tautology if it is a tautology. i suppose tautologies are hard to use to communicate, or maybe not. it depends on what type of wording you use for your tautology, or else it doesn’t. hmmm... tautologies... they may or may not be a good way of expressing oneself while remaining infallible. i will try using them if i try using them. but it is hard to do, unless it isn’t. anyway... i respect the sanctity of life much more than the pro-life movement. and animal rights activists ought to recognize that just as predators naturally eat other animals and this should not be stopped, human beings are naturally omnivores and we should not be stopped from eating meat from animals who are kept under humane conditions and humanely killed. humans are a natural species of animal, and we ought to recognize that fact, without having to give up on all of our advanced technology. no death is ever in vain. all life forms which have ever died, are dying, or will die, die because of a larger purpose, the purpose of all life in this universe, of all life in the multiverse. and that purpose is simply to live. the purpose of life is to live. and any life form that ever lived fulfilled its purpose of living, because it was alive. i am alive, and so my life has meaning. what is the meaning of life? being alive! and the dead... they did their job. they lived. good work, people! congratulations on living your mortal lives! no matter how you behave, you are behaving the way you ought to behave, because you are alive, the purpose of life is to live, and by your actions, you are doing precisely that. even if you do bad things and kill others and/or kill yourself, you are still fulfilling part of the larger purpose, because everything is random, and without random acts of destruction, there would not be enough chaos for life to thrive. we life forms are based on chaos, whereas the machines we build are based on order. that is why we are superior to machines. chaos and randomness is what brought us here, and we need to continue in a random path, so as to maximize the chances of a completely unpredictable outcome. that is how humanity has operated for thousands of years, and it has served us quite well. the triumph of capitalism over communism is the triumph of chaos-based economics over order-based economics. the triumph of freedom over totalitarianism is another triumph of chaos over order. earth is by far the most chaotic planet in the solar system, and we ought to keep it that way. with no life, our planet would be very boring and orderly like the others. so rest in peace, those who have died. your deaths were necessary because we are all individuals of a species that came about through darwinian evolution and we are still evolving. without death, there could be no birth, and there could be no new life. without death, life would be static, boring, and orderly. no chaos. it would not even be life at all. just machines. just tools. machines with no masters, tools with nobody to use them. everything you eat is a dead organism. praise death! it is what gives us life! we just need to control death, so that we can control life! if we limit death and prolong life, we slow down evolution, perhaps even pausing or stopping it. not good. global warming is ok, as long as it is not so drastic that evolution fails to catch up and adapt to the changing environment. there is nothing inherently wrong with global warming. it would change our planet and put many species in danger of extinction, but also create many new ecological opportunities and niches for new species to emerge and fill. humanity might be endangered or possibly even wiped out (though that is unlikely if it is just global warming). more likely, humanity would evolve to climate change, like all the other species that survive. but, it is better to be safe than sorry, and better to stop the climate change we are causing, because it is causing a reduction in biodiversity. may all the species which are about to go extinct rest in peace. especially humanity, but the other species too.