liars

ok, so israel bombed an apartment building in qana in southern lebanon, killing at least 55 innocent people, including 37 children and 12 women, and at least 15 of the children were physically or mentally handicapped. then after international outrage, israel promised secretary of state condoleezza rice that they would stop all air attacks on southern lebanon for 48 hours unless they had explicit knowledge that a rocket was about to be launched. so then hezbollah stopped attacking israel with rockets, trying to show a little goodwill, that they would be able to hold to a cease-fire, right? and then what does israel do? just a few hours later, the liars in israel go back on their promise, and start the bombing campaign in southern lebanon again, pretending that they never made a promise to stop. and even the promise they made had too many caveats; it was just ridiculous. it was only for 48 hours, only in southern lebanon and not all of lebanon, and only covered air bombings, and even with all those caveats, they also had to say that if they received intelligence of a rocket about to be launched, they would bomb the rocket launcher. i have been trying hard to give israel the benefit of the doubt and not think of them as having moral equivalency with the terrorists. but, i am afraid it is no longer possible to consider anything the israeli government says to be true. they have proven themselves to be boldfaced liars. and they have not only undermined lebanon’s peaceful, democratically elected government, but also undermined u.s. secretary of state condoleezza rice, who already has very serious credibility problems. we in the united states supply israel with all of their weaponry, and our government gives ridiculous amounts of foreign aid to israel, much more than to palestine or lebanon. we gave them precision laser-guided bombs, and the most advanced military technology in the world, and what do they do with it? they use it to kill innocent people! you can say all you want to try to justify what the israelis have done, but they should have verified the target was a military target and not a civilian one prior to attacking. period. the israelis keep making the dishonest claim that they do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties. bullshit. i don’t think we should listen to the israelis or anything they have to say, until they stop being such remorseless liars. i mean, i tried to give them the benefit of the doubt after they killed all those civilians yesterday. but now that they have shown themselves to be complete and utter liars, i do not think there is any more doubt about whether the statements of the israeli government can be trusted to be honest anymore. announcing this half-assed 48-hour ceasefire was just their way of giving condi rice at least something she accomplished when she was there, and then they pulled that rug out from under her less than a day later. it is making the united states look bad too, for taking israel’s side in this, and for handling the crisis so incompetently. and this war in lebanon is creating more terrorism, not less. president bush needs to tell israel to stop doing this shit.

the real mel gibson, just like in south park

well the real mel gibson turns out to be just like the mel gibson that appeared in south park. the crazy, jew-hating, complete lunatic mel gibson that appeared in south park. check out the story. so he thinks the jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. wow. i wonder if that includes world war 2. the jewish banker elite sure was brilliant when it engineered world war 2 for its own enrichment. oh wait? 6 million jews died in the holocaust? well don’t worry, mel gibson’s dad said that none of that ever happened, and mel gibson still looks up to his nazi daddy. and he tried to unzip his pants in the middle of a jail cell to pee in the middle of the floor right in front of a bunch of cops. he called a female cop “sugar tits”. he tried to escape from the police when they were getting him into the police car. and he slammed a telephone so hard it almost broke. and he treated the cops arresting him like dirt, and said he owned malibu and would ruin their lives. and he kept telling one of the cops he would “fuck” her (that was his word, not mine). and of course he was drunk driving. not just a little drunk, but very, very drunk. is this guy a role model? is this the type of person our youth should look up to? is his ultra-violent, anti-semitic movie “the passion” something anybody should ever watch? what is wrong with this dude?

now mel gibson is not a partisan republican, by any means, although he is a far-right-wing christian fundamentalist fanatic. on foreign policy, he is actually opposed to the war in iraq, and he opposes the neocons, since he thinks it is all a jewish conspiracy. he blames everything on the jews. so, when i criticize mel gibson, please note i am not criticizing some guy who is a loyal republican. this dude agrees with me that the war in iraq is a bad thing, and he and i both hate the neocons. it’s just that we hate the neocons for different reasons. i hate them for being stupid warmongers who go around starting wars and can’t ever get anything right, who waste all of our nation’s money on reconstruction projects that fail miserably, with all the money being embezzled by private contractors with no oversight. the war in iraq is basically a giant get-rich-quick scheme to defraud the american taxpayers and funnel the money to a small number of wealthy executives in defense contractors and the oil industry. but, then again, the medicare prescription drug benefit that the republicans enacted is similarly a giant get-rich-quick scheme to funnel taxpayer dollars to enrich the executives of phamaceuticals and hmo’s. now, conspiracies are secretive, and this stuff is all out in the open and publicly known, so i would not exactly call what the republicans are doing a conspiracy. everyone knows they are a bunch of crooks, except that by definition whatever they do is legal, since they write the laws. it is just that everything they do is highly unethical, but since they write the laws and enforce them, they can hold themselves to a much lower ethical standard than they hold anybody else to. anyway, none of this has anything to do with a few people at the top happening to be jewish, or with our alliance with israel, a peaceful, democratic country in the middle east. recently howard dean called the president of iraq an anti-semite for failing to condemn hezbollah as other arab leaders did. and really, everyone should condemn hezbollah, because they are using the lebanese people as human shields to protect themselves from israeli attack. by choosing to locate their military operations in areas which are full of innocent civilians, hezbollah makes it impossible for anyone to attack them without inflicting massive civilian casualties. they always shoot their rockets out of highly populated areas, for instance. now while it is certainly legitimate for people to criticize israel for having a disproportionate response, for killing 10 times as many lebanese as the israelis that are killed, criticism is simply an expression of free speech, and in no way should criticism of israel be interpreted as support for hezbollah, or as anti-semitism. on the other hand, when someone like mel gibson makes broad accusations against the whole of world jewry, this is the same sort of unconstrained anti-semitism that adolf hitler engaged in. when hitler denounced the jews, he denounced all jews, without any ifs, ands, or buts. he did not say “there are certain elements among the jewish population that are destroying germany,” he just went all out and said things like “the jews are destroying germany.” criticism of jews is legitimate only if there is enough nuance present to limit the criticism to only apply it to those individuals guilty of whatever they are accused of. for example, if a person were to denounce certain jews such as paul wolfowitz and joseph lieberman as being ultra-zionist warmongers hell-bent on completely reshaping the middle east, that is a legitimate criticism, as long as you limit it to only those individuals responsible, and do not generalize it to include millions of ordinary civilian jews who had nothing to do with starting the war in iraq. and it is intellectually dishonest to claim that solely the jews are responsible for the war in iraq, when it is evident that there are actually many other non-jewish people who also had a hand in it. for example, condoleezza rice and colin powell both had a hand in starting the war in iraq, but can we really blame black people for starting the war? no. and even pointing out that they are both black is not something worthwhile, because that should not matter. so i say, let us forget about who is jewish and who is not, and instead focus on who wants peace and who wants war, who wants human rights and who wants torture, who wants western civilization to set higher standards for itself than the terrorists, and who wants to fight fire with fire and get down dirty with the terrorists and do everything they do right back to them. the main problem in the war on terror is, we have to try and stop ourselves and our nations and our militaries from becoming as awful and bad as the terrorists we are fighting. we can legitimize attacks against terrorists, even if some innocent civilians are killed. we can come up with moral justifications for torture, if it saves lives of innocent people by finding out about future terrorist actions. the more we legitimize awful things like killing and torture, the more we become like the terrorists. the terrorists also legitimize and justify everything they do, and they think everything they do is morally right. for us to be morally superior, we have to be morally humble, and acknowledge that none of us is a supreme authority on morality, and that sometimes we do make mistakes or do things that are wrong. mel gibson has apologized for his anti-semitic comments, which is good. there is another mel in hollywood who is well known for his anti-semitism, but he gets away with it. the other mel is mel brooks. mel brooks is jewish, so he gets away with insulting jews and writing plays like “the producers” that feature hitler and giant nazi flags. that is because people can tell that mel brooks does not really mean it if he makes fun of jews, because he is one himself. mel gibson, on the other hand, practices the same religion adolf hitler practiced. so, he has a little more explaining to do. perhaps his ideas are more nuanced when he is not drunk, and he does not really hate all of the jews, just the few neocons who got us into iraq. if that is the case, then i forgive him. i just wish he were a little less crazy. and i hope he has not donated any money to hezbollah. maybe the irs should audit him just to make sure he has not donated any money to islamic terrorist organizations. just to be on the safe side, because ya never know who might be supporting terrorists. i mean, heck, your neighbor next door might be a terrorist sympathizer or an al qaeda fundraiser or even a future suicide bomber. anything is possible these days.

and as for whether mel gibson will work in show business again, don’t worry. the jews don’t control show business, and neither do the communists. nowadays, everybody knows that the scientologists control show business. as long as mel gibson does not defame the memory of l. ron hubbard, his hollywood career is fine. but i doubt he will keep many allies on the right wing now that his anti-semitism has been revealed, because the right wing in the united states is trying to seduce the american jewry into becoming republicans, and mel gibson could undermine this whole plan. i hope none of my fellow leftists are foolish enough to embrace mel gibson and his anti-semitism, which might be a temptation to those who oppose the israeli invasion of lebanon. although i disagree with the tactics used by the israelis, i agree with their objective of getting rid of hezbollah. but we would all do well to heed the words of ignignokt, one of the infamous mooninites from aqua teen hunger force: “the innocent shall suffer... big time.” truer words hath never been spaken. ignignokt and err are two of the greatest 2-dimensional philosophers the moon has ever produced. we must all bow before their ineffable wisdom.

opera, harnessing blog power

the opera browser recently came out with version 9.0, and is working towards the release of a 9.01 updated release. they are using this blog i link to, to test new beta versions every week. they have been employing this strategy since february 13th of this year, about 5 months ago. and their browser is not only the only browser that runs on windows and passes the acid2 test, but it is now working on the vast majority of websites. i have been trying it out. of course, firefox and internet explorer still both work on more web sites than opera, but it used to be that like, half the websites on the internet didn’t work in opera. that fraction is steadily decreasing. and practically everything works in firefox now, as well as internet explorer 7. and it would be ridiculous for something to not work in internet explorer 6, since that is what the majority of people still use. anyway, all of the websites i regularly use work perfectly in opera now, except for one, which is a real dramatic turnaround from a year or two ago. and since opera is the fastest browser, that is another selling point. but what is really amazing now is how fast they are innovating, because of this new blog. of course, the people working on internet explorer 7 have had a blog longer, but do they post new beta versions every week? nope. they only post one every few months, and they are not at all as good at responding to user feedback as the folks at opera. the folks at opera actually listen to their customers and what people comment, and do what the people ask. what do the folks making internet explorer do? see for yourself. people complain about the same things again and again, and they never get fixed. like the new-looking user interface that nobody likes, and its inability to be customized at all. nothing but complaints about it, but do they fix it? hell no. that is not the way to do software development. i just wish blogger.com worked in opera... writing this blog in opera is such a pain, since nothing works right. this is really more the fault of the people who run blogger.com than the opera browser’s software developers. i think perhaps this is because google has chosen the side of mozilla firefox in the latest round of the browser wars, and google might not want opera to be undermining firefox, perhaps. who knows? but it is a shame opera still cannot be used for blogger.com, because blogger.com still uses browser-specific code (though, in their defense, at least they support both internet explorer and mozilla firefox, instead of just 1). i would really like to be able to use opera as a general-purpose browser. oh, and i have uninstalled internet explorer 7 beta 3, and am back to internet explorer 6 sp2, which i never use. it turns out internet explorer is very tightly integrated into the operating system, with some .dll files used by both internet explorer and the rest of the operating system, and a part of both of them. so if you upgrade internet explorer, it upgrades those .dll files. which is kind of bad, because then your system is unstable and it can break other applications. and it messes up stuff in the registry. i found out how messed up this was when i tried to run a standalone version of internet explorer 6. internet explorer 7 beta 3 had screwed up all the settings so prior versions don’t work anymore! so i got rid of that crap. it simply does not make any sense to have any part of your operating system be a beta version. that shit is too important to leave to chance. and as for internet explorer 6? it’s almost as ancient as internet explorer 5, or netscape 4. does anyone use netscape 4 anymore? no, so why should anyone use internet explorer 6? seriously... we just need to get these blogger.com folks on the team. i would like to have a viable alternative to firefox, but it seems opera is not quite there yet. not because it is opera’s fault... it is the webmasters’. but opera is doing its best to catch up, with this blog. and when it comes to features, of course opera is ahead of the pack, and everyone else is copying features opera had for years. opera needed those features to compensate for the fact that it could not display a large percentage of webpages correctly. now, everyone is starting to have the same features, in all the different browsers, and the webpages are starting to all be made to work in any of the modern browsers. so these web browsers, which were once so completely different, are now converging towards something similar. all of the old oddities about opera’s font rendering that i used to notice are now gone, and the websites that used to look totally messed up because of this are now finally working! i don’t know exactly when they fixed that stuff, but i think it might have to do with the fact that my computer and my parents’ computer both have over a thousand fonts, including many that were converted from mac fonts to pc fonts. the ones that were converted from mac fonts to pc fonts looked messed up in opera, but not in internet explorer or firefox, until recently. now they are working just as well in opera. pretty amazing stuff. the reason i converted all the mac fonts to pc fonts was, my dad wanted a font called palatino on all the pc’s he used, but that font only comes with macs, so i got a program to convert fonts, and i figured, i might as well go for it and convert all of them, since some of those mac fonts are pretty neat and might be cool to use on a pc. and they worked in every program except opera... well, they mostly worked... actually they do not work too well in microsoft word, at least not on the screen, but they print out correctly at least. microsoft word was the only other program besides opera to screw these mac fonts up, and it still screws them up, but i am not expecting anything to change in that regard. i mean come on, it’s microsoft. microsoft is releasing a whole lot of beta software to the public these days, and having blogs and such, and trying to be hip to the new changes, and they are even getting totally serious about security and stuff. but like, ok... they are still way too big and corporate to really innovate efficiently, like small companies such as opera software can do. microsoft has just become too big for its own good, and found out how economies of scale do not really apply to the software industry. they just get to stay #1 because of market rigidity, caused by practical concerns about backwards compatibility, as well as the stubbornness of consumers who only know one thing (windows/internet explorer/ms office/etc.). but ok... who uses napster, now that it is the new corporate sellout napster that costs money to get downloads? nobody. who uses netscape 8, aol’s corporate knockoff of mozilla firefox? nobody. see, nobody is interested in using inferior products. now maybe there is an exception for norton antivirus... but that is because norton antivirus used to be the best, back in the day, and developed quite a good reputation, and it takes awhile to lose a good reputation and get a bad one. microsoft is mainly just coasting along on the inertia of being #1 for so long, and they delayed the release of windows vista for 3 years, doubling the amount of time, while only getting half the work done that they originally said they were going to do. a good portion of that delay had to do with making windows xp service pack 2, which proved to be quite a diversion for microsoft, but something which they actually did remarkably well, almost perfectly. but why? why pour new life into windows xp, 3 years after it comes out, with better security, even though everybody already has it? and not even charge money for the update? and this new windows vista will have very high system requirements, and not run on most existing computers. how do they plan on making money? meanwhile, ubuntu linux is like, the next big thing, and maybe everyone with old computers might end up using it instead of windows xp. yeah, microsoft still makes money by selling a new copy of windows on every new pc, but for how long will that last? there are already lots of computers being sold without windows by major companies, and even dell is doing it now. and if mit succeeds with its $100 laptop initiative, this would weaken microsoft more than anything. but opera is there to show that there is a real alternative to large corporate software producers and to the open-source community, and that small companies can be quite competitive as well. i think that is a very powerful lesson, and perhaps if a company like microsoft became more decentralized and operated more like a coalition of small businesses that are strategic partners, rather than like a giant behemoth, maybe it could be more efficient. until that day, opera will catch up with firefox in terms of website compatibility, while firefox catches up with internet explorer. all 3 will continue to try to copy each others’ features. firefox will copy opera to pass acid2, and internet explorer will do that last of all. opera and internet explorer will both develop alternatives to firefox extensions, and internet explorer will develop something akin to opera skins or firefox themes. opera will copy internet explorer and firefox to have a phishing filter, and firefox will try to pack as many awesome new features into version 3.0 as possible, having been unable to do so with version 2.0. and firefox will have to do something about its excessive memory usage, while internet explorer will need to finish fixing its implementations of xhtml and css. and, the developers of all the browsers will probably eventually all be using blogs to put out new beta versions all the time. and what about safari, apple’s browser for macs, which was first to pass the acid2 test? it will keep up with firefox and opera for the mac, as they get better. but new versions of safari will require new versions of mac os x. so, less and less people will want to use web browsers that are integrated with their operating systems. and more and more people will use opera and firefox.

why so one-sided?

people may wonder why this blog, or for that matter, any blog, or other forms of verbal (written or spoken) content by human beings is so one-sided and biased. i have a very simple explanation for that: i am a human being, and we human beings, by nature, are one-sided and biased. a person cannot really hold two contradictory opinions at once; if someone does, then they do not really have an opinion, since they cannot make up their mind, and therefore they are not really ready to say much of anything coherent on the issue they are ambivalent about. in order to talk coherently about something, you have to understand it to at least the point where you have formed an opinion on it. we human beings are, by nature, fallible, and none of our opinions is ever infallible or unquestionable. so does this mean, opinions are worthless, and nobody should waste their time spouting their opinions, or reading or listening to other people’s opinions? no!

opinions are the product of human intuition (which we have because we are complex biological organisms). computers cannot form opinions on their own; they can only use logic and deal with facts, which is quite limiting, in terms of their ability to reason about complicated topics where not all of the information is known. human intuition, unlike the mechanical deterministic logic that computers do, is nondeterministic, and there are multiple possible outcomes for what decision a person might make. on the other hand, everything a computer does is completely predetermined ahead of time, if you do not allow any nondeterministic user input to muck things up. so even the smartest person has some probability of arriving at an incorrect opinion, even after thinking things through a lot, because opinions are quite different from facts.

thus, you have this blog, among other things. you may disagree with things i say sometimes, which is entirely natural and appropriate. obviously, i feel that my point of view is much closer to the truth than the point of view of anyone who disagrees with me, if we are just talking about a single issue. like gay marriage. i think there is nothing wrong with it and it is not a threat to anybody so it should be legal. and if you disagree with me, i think you are wrong and totally out of touch with reality. you may disagree with me on that or any other specific issue i have addressed. and obviously, since i am a fallible human, i am almost certainly wrong about a certain percentage of things i have opinions on, just like everybody else. so the probability i am right about all of the things i have opinions on is minutely small, even if you assume i have a 95% chance of being right on any given particular issue, since there are so many issues i have opinions on. but i think the most important thing is what is the most likely percentage of issues on which i am correct, i.e., closest to the truth? i think that for me, this percentage is much higher than for most people. but, then again, this is simply the bias of the ego, and my thinking on this is typical.

so, let us say you disagree with me about religion, or about israel, or about men and women, or about which political party to support (if any), or about any other subject. you may, at times, strongly disagree with some of what i say, and perhaps it may make you angry or think i am an idiot or crazy or something. these are, of course, emotional responses, precipitated by the fact that you have different biases than i do, and our points of view are mutually incompatible. ultimately, of course, most such disagreements on matters of opinion are actually based, in part, on a disagreement about fundamental facts. therefore, if humanity were able to establish an unquestionably objective source of information, which everyone universally agreed was factual and correct, most of these disagreements would be resolved with one side conceding it is wrong, and agreeing with the other side. i, for one, am intellectually honest, meaning, if i realize that i am incorrect about something, i am actually willing to admit to being incorrect, rather than continuing to defend a position which i actually know is wrong. so, under normal circumstances, i only advocate a position i agree with, unless i am doing a satire/parody such as what stephen colbert does, or the famous short essay “a modest proposal” by jonathan swift. but when i am writing satirically, i try to make this as obvious as possible, so that only a blithering idiot could miss it. this is also quite similar to my honesty. i am a very honest person, except when i lie. but when i lie, i tell completely ridiculous, outrageous lies, ones that are so obviously false, nobody would ever believe them. and then if someone says i am lying, i am honest, and immediately admit to it; i do not continue lying at all after that point. if someone does not get it that i am lying, i continue, with lies that are more and more outrageous, until they get the point.

my ultimate concern, though, is for the truth. i believe the truth is too often overlooked or ignored or even outright contradicted by people, because it is too inconvenient for them to deal with. reality is a very unforgiving thing, and the truth does not change because we wish it to. the truth does not change to match our opinions if we get too far off base. but i think, there are very many people in this world who have long ago abandoned the truth, and gotten very far off into never-never land. and when i discuss issues, whether i am direct and honest, or use satire to show the absurdity of another point of view, it is all for this one purpose, to help people get a better sense of the truth, a better sense of reality. i am not sure if this endeavor makes me have a better understanding of reality, since perhaps i may simply reinforce my own bias, but i am certain it is helpful to those whose bias conflicts with mine. when you read something you disagree with, it makes you think a lot more than something you agree with. you look through it, try to pick holes in the arguments to refute them. it helps you develop critical thinking skills. so even if i were wrong about everything, this blog would still be a useful thing for people to read to help understand reality a little better, since by deconstructing my bias, they would also be deconstructing their own bias too. i often find it rewarding to read things written by people i strongly disagree with. it helps me keep a handle on reality and not go overboard with my bias. if i simply read stuff by people who agree with me, it would not help very much with this. that is why i like reading the huffington post much better than the daily kos, because the huffington post is full of conflicting opinions and bitter arguments, while in the daily kos, pretty much everyone agrees on most things. nobody gets banned from the huffington post for having unpopular opinions, which is why i love to read it. but i never post on it, or on other sites like that. i think having this one blog is enough. there are enough people out there who agree with me that are already arguing in favor of what i believe in, that i am really not all that necessary, although every bit helps, in shaping public opinion. and why am i so concerned with shaping public opinion? because i believe the public is completely misinformed about a great deal of things, and it requires a lot of effort from a lot of people to change that and help humanity become more realistic and stop having so many people off in never-never land, believing things that are untrue.

like for example, saddam hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. there is no such thing as ghosts. there is a rational scientific explanation for every ufo ever seen in the sky, and none of those rational explanations involve space aliens, because they simply live too far away, according to the drake equation. raising the minimum wage means a higher standard of living for the vast majority of people. tax cuts do not increase government revenue, they decrease it. global terrorist networks cannot be defeated through unilateral wars; in fact, unilateral wars are almost guaranteed to strengthen them, because worldwide cooperation is needed to defeat terrorists, and unilateralism undermines global cooperation more than anything else can. the scientific theories of evolution and global warming have both been proven, and there is not any dispute about this in the mainstream scientific community. although jesus christ preached a message of peace, christians later became warlike and used violence and intimidation to force everyone to be christian, by burning heretics and “witches”, and sending missionaries to accompany colonial conquerors in subjugating the peoples of most of the world outside europe. these are all simple truths, but so many people out there are misinformed about them. if a person’s religion is almost entirely determined by the religion of their parents and what country they live in, what basis does someone have for claiming that the religion they were raised with is correct, and the religion somebody else was raised with is incorrect? or, more importantly, what is the basis for the claim that people of one religion go to heaven while those of another go to hell, given these demographic facts about how your parents and what country you are in are the primary factors determining your religion? how can mel gibson claim that only roman catholics get into heaven, and that his own wife, a protestant who he admits is a good person, is nevertheless going to be damned to hell for all eternity? people need to think about things a little more carefully, and not cavalierly assume that they are right, without even making sure that their beliefs are not self-contradictory or in contradiction of the facts. as i said, i for one make no claims of infallibility, and i wish nobody else would make such claims either, because it is absolutely ridiculous.

still, i will continue to express my opinions despite the fact i know they cannot all possibly correct, because of the statistical improbability of such an outcome. i hope people will continue to read what i write here, despite the fact that, statistically speaking, it is almost certain that i will get things wrong from time to time. i do try to hold myself to a higher standard than most other people hold themselves to, in terms of thinking about things thoroughly and evaluating all possibilities as impartially as possible. but despite it all, my bias remains, because to be human is to have bias. which is why the idea of having a mainstream media which is unbiased, or a centrist political affiliation which is unbiased, is completely laughable. any attempt to eradicate bias will simply succeed in covering it up and making it harder to see directly, but it will still be there, stronger than ever. i believe people ought to admit to being biased, and not try to hide it, because that is the only intellectually honest approach. thus, i think most news anchors are intellectually dishonest, because, in pretending not to have bias, or hiding their bias, they subvert the ability of the public to evaluate the validity of what they say, in the full context of knowing what the speaker’s bias is. i applaud the new trend of how some journalists like lou dobbs are abandoning the pretense of impartiality, and are showing their cards, so we no longer have to wonder at what they really think. now obviously, journalists should never abandon their regard for the truth, as pundits like bill o’reilly and rush limbaugh have done. for a real journalist, truth is paramount, and trumps opinion. but without knowing the reporter’s opinion, the audience is not getting the full story, and something is missing; the viewer cannot put things in their proper context. i think this is really one of the main factors behind the public being so misinformed. but i cannot misinform you on this blog, because it is obvious that i am one-sided and you are not seeing the other side of the story here, so if you consider everything i say within that context, you can never go wrong. although, of course, it is self-evident that my point of view is indeed correct, and my side of the story is closest to the truth. that is, if you agree with me, which i personally believe would be a good idea.

computer fixed

i got my motherboard in the mail, re-assembled my computer in about 15 minutes, and got it fixed perfectly! it was easy! now i finally have a working computer again! and i applied at lots of temp agencies. my sister came home to visit the parents and me for a few days, and our nuclear family was finally whole once again. however, the lawnmower is acting up, and not working right. but it is so great to have a working computer again!

now sometimes people might read some of my blog posts where i am down on religion, and wonder, why do i hate religion so much? well, just about everything i have ever heard about religion is bad. especially in history books. or in the news. and religion does not even make sense. i think it distorts people’s reasoning and keeps them from thinking logically, and makes them come to the wrong moral judgements on a very consistent basis. so, what is so wrong with religion? here is a little summary:

the crusades. the spanish inquisition. european colonialists, imperialists, and missionaries, who went out and conquered the world, and taught its people they were inferior to and subservient to white people. all of the great religious leaders being men (jesus, muhammad, buddha, moses, abraham, l. ron hubbard, j.r. “bob” dobbs, etc.). cults like scientology, or crazy suicide cults like heaven’s gate, or david koresh, or jim jones, or sun myung moon. the dark ages in europe, when people were kept illiterate, uneducated, and enslaved as serfs, and religion was used to keep people down. the israeli-palestinian conflict, where both sides are motivated by religion to kill and destroy, because they think the same land belongs to them, because their god told them so. pat robertson and jerry falwell saying that 9/11 happened because of gays, feminists, and the aclu. islamic terrorists, who kill us because their religion tells them to. the destruction of the great scientific knowledge of past civilizations, by monks in the dark ages. the persecution of great scientists like galileo. the salem witch burnings. abortion clinic bombings. people who oppose saving the environment because they think that the rapture is coming and that god gave mankind domain to exploit the earth. the “promise keepers”, who think women should be like slaves to men. how back in the 1800s and earlier, religion was used all the time to justify slavery. you see, if you study history, and if you look at how religion is used today, it is very very clear that religion is an evil force in this world. it is a force of destruction and violence, a force of hate and oppression, a force of irrational disregard for logic and reason. how can you possibly trust the judgement of a person who cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality? you see, i see no difference between an obscure ufo cult and a major world religion. i see no difference between the infamous preacher fred phelps of topeka, kansas, and any other preacher. to me, all religion is the same. to me, all religion is dangerous and evil. i cannot believe anything unless i have proof that it is true. to me, it seems like insanity for someone to believe something without proof. the very concept of god is self-contradictory, as i have often discussed. i think, even if a religious person is the most nonviolent pacifist in the world, they are still a dangerous force, because they base their beliefs on something that is unproven and almost certainly untrue. there is simply no way to verify that a person who is religious is able to act in their own enlightened self-interest, since religion can delude people into thinking things like “slavery is right” or “we should burn her because she is a witch” or “the end of the world will happen within 5 years so it does not matter if we destroy the planet”. in today’s world of weapons of mass destruction, where there are enough nuclear weapons to end all human life many times over, i feel tremendously unsafe having religious people in charge of nuclear weapons. what if they actually believe they will go to heaven when they die and that the end of the world is going to happen soon anyway, and think they are a part of fulfilling some ancient prophecy? what if they think god will protect us from our enemy’s nuclear weapons, even as we nuke our enemy to smithereens? there is simply no way “mutual assured destruction” can work if either side seriously believes in religion. i think that religion is basically the #1 threat to the continued survival of humanity. now maybe there is good religion and bad religion. i don’t know. i do not understand religion one iota; it seems like complete nonsense to me. i think someone can only really be trusted if they do not believe in religion, because then, they are likely to act in their own self-interest, and if they are smart enough, it will be their enlightened self-interest. and if someone is acting in their enlightened self-interest, their behavior is fairly predictable, and they will certainly not go around killing people for no reason, or doing other crazy things that religious people do. you see, how is the religion of a typical american different from the religion of an islamic suicide bomber? sure, they would worship jesus instead of allah, but really, does christianity have a better track record than islam, in historical terms? what about the great religious wars of europe, crusades, inquisitions, witch burnings, etc.? and why do people claim that only members of their own religion go to heaven, and everyone else is damned for all eternity? i cannot see how that would be a justifiable, since there are good people and bad people in all belief systems. the problem with religion is, it turns good people bad, and makes violence and killing happen unnecessarily. the most religious people in the world are the terrorists. the least religious people in the world never cause any problems for anybody. because, if someone is so non-religious that they do not believe anything strongly, they are certainly not going to believe in a cause strongly enough to be willing to die for it... they are more likely to just go along with things and try not to get in the way, or offer some mild resistance to things they think are probably bad, until things get too unpleasant for them to continue their opposition. of course, nobody is 100% non-religious, certainly not me, for instance. i still believe in some things. i know, it is bad, to believe things without proof. but, for some reason, it seems to be inescapable, part of the human condition, to find yourself adopting certain viewpoints and positions and beliefs. it is not something that i wished would happen to me, but it did happen, and i am sort of a pawn in this game. my beliefs are a result of things i have heard or read, things said or written by other people, and really they are not an original product of my mind. they have thus been corrupted through repeated imperfect communication from one person to another, just as a religion gets corrupted because beliefs cannot be taught, as they come from within. a religion can be wonderful and benevolent, like the religion that jesus christ tried to teach his followers, but then become a horrible malignant force, oppressing humanity, setting back scientific advances a thousand years, and generally causing more problems than it solves. i do not think it is good to have an outlook based on unthinking devotion to a certain set of beliefs. so, for example, although i believe in evolution and global warming and the promise of embryonic stem cell research, this is simply because i have heard time and time again that the vast majority of scientists believe in these things, and all of the peer-reviewed papers in those fields also uphold those viewpoints, and i believe that the scientific method produces superior factual results than any other method of human inquiry. this does not by any means mean that i think any of those things is infallible, as i think nothing is infallible. but, i think those ideas are inherently superior to anything faith-based like creationism. i simply do not believe that religious fundamentalists have anything even remotely similar to a realistic viewpoint about any subject where they disagree with the scientific consensus. on what do they base their claims? some book that is full of contradictions that was used to justify slavery and war and oppression? or actual impartial objective reproducible experiments where people actually observe how things really work in the world around us? religion and science have such a long history of being at odds that i think religion has thoroughly discredited itself. and that is why i dislike it so much.