youtube

[tufty]

Utterly, utterly unrelated to pulsejets.

One of my favourite bands, Austria's "bulbul", have released a video of their last single "Daddy was a girl I liked".

It's on youtube. It's awesome. And yes, they *do* play gigs in chicken suits.

[Mark]

I like the instant on effect. ha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7lUqXoCpKw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf63jbhc ... re=related

[Mark]

Looks like 7 grams of thrust at one point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BnUyPLQ ... re=related

[metiz]

The meaning of life. It starts of great but at 10-13 minutes, everything goes bonkers and they completely miss the bigger picture. And it's so obvious.

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v567477299d8YNX

[Mark]

Metiz, I've seen that program before and I watched it again. I'm always eager to read all the comments others make on youtube or any blog, it's like having way more insight than what would occur to you initially on your own. What was your angle on the bigger picture in the clip? Or what did they neglect to observe or miss do you think?
I'm reading a book now, and it's funny to me, the hindu myth that the world rests on an elephant and the elephant on a tortoise. When asked about the tortoise, the Hindu replies, "Suppose we change the subject."
Another funny part someone asks what was God doing before he made the world.
Why we are here is a pretty big question, I think too big to answer, like trying to explain where everything came from.

[metiz]

This video explains that animals hunt for resources. It discusses evolution, reproducing and "the strong will live" Then it switches to humans and why we are different. It starts of great. "Humans are survival machines" but the video goes to- "but we are different, be can build things, we do other thing then animals do, we can go to space" and generally speaks about how this has nothing to do with survival. (The host even mentioned he would hate to live in a world like that. needles to say, I lol 'ed)

This is just wrong. Look at the main difference that seperates humans from other animals - it's the massive brain. everything else around you, the fact that we use tools, build stuff etc all comes from the fact that we have massive brains.

Now look at other animals. A peakock with the prettiest feathers gets the best mate. The wolf who is the strongest gets to be the alfa male of the pack - and consequently gets the best females (who fight for him). The lion with the biggest manes, the bird with the nicest song etc. Remeber, the only difference between man and other animals is our brain. We can't overcome the natural urge to do the same things as those animals - we just use the tools we have, our brain

Why do we build things, why do we go to space, try to get a career, get a hobby and be good at it. Individualising. Why do we individualise - to be "the alpha male" to "strut our feathers" to "sing" look at me. This is not something anyone can escape. Even me typing this is an example. I could go on and on about this and I have, on a philosophy forum.:

http://www.theforumsite.com/forum/topic ... /198398/75

That's a link to page 6 of the discussion. I'm the user "metiz", obviously

I challege anyone to find a SINGLE exeption for these rules, and ill buy a hat and eat it.

[Mike Everman]

A notable other exception for us is that we protect and provide for our infirm. Natural selection is dead among humans, though the pretty sure do get more action. I like your jag about the things we do to attract the opposite sex, though what we do here can hardly be categorized as that on the face of it, but looking deeper, our need to help or write a good post, or make a great jet goes to increasing our overall confidence and self image, which is ultimately attractive to the opposite sex when our prettyness isn't up to it. ha

[metiz]

A notable other exception for us is that we protect and provide for our infirm. Natural selection is dead among humans, though the pretty sure do get more action. I like your jag about the things we do to attract the opposite sex, though what we do here can hardly be categorized as that on the face of it, but looking deeper, our need to help or write a good post, or make a great jet goes to increasing our overall confidence and self image, which is ultimately attractive to the opposite sex when our prettyness isn't up to it. ha

Correct. Human males, however, are not nearly as dependend on the appearance as females (although it helps). Males try to get to the top with a career, building stuff, (top of the wolf pack) and pretty much anything else that doesn't require good looks. Females do not have this (not being sexist here, I know that woman can be capable of the same thing as males, just as a general rule). The "dumb blond" might be dumb, but she's still realy realy hot. Ever wondered why females spend more time on their looks? now you know. It's even so that the "Hollywood standard" of a female is a sign of evolutionairy good health, thats why men are attrackted to that kind of woman. Same with men. A good looking male actually smells better then a ugly man to woman.

Ok its late and the grammar of this post probably sucks but you get the idea.

About protecting others

If I were to protect a good friend, say help him out in a fight, our bond would grow stronger and this would benefit me. Also, say your best friend is hanging from a cliff. You have 2 options: 1 leave him to die and 2nd: pull him up. You obviously pull him up. If you don't pull him up and he dies, you could't live with yourself; your conscious would knaw at you, because you lost a great asset in your life. It's a advanced mechanism for your own protection (you can thank your massive brain for that one) If you see 2 man die - your friend and a stranger. You'd feel worse about your friend, because he is your friend. Why is he your friend? because he does stuff for you, be it vaporial or not

And why do we make "a great jet" do you think (and post it on a forum for others to see) "this is MY engine and it is better then yours." or "this is my engine, I'm part of a select group (pack) of people who do the same, they will protect me"

think of the brain as a operating system. It has 2 major components: the subconscious (kernel) and the conscious (user interface) also, for the sake of this example, the "kernel" is read-only.

You do all the work on the conscious level (user interface). you could compare this with how we live, the life around us, what we do, the disicions we take. However, under the user interface lies the kernel. Something every OS has (and in this case, read only). Everything you do on the user interface level would be impossible without the kernel. They are intertwined. A good part of the code in this kernel is also very old. It has been used since the 70's (nerd alarm) or the basic components have been unchanged since thousands of years. It's at the heart of the kernel and all the code lying above should abide by this code. It does not matter what you do on the user interface level (conscious), it is ALL governed by the basic kernel code (subconscious) and remember, you can't change any of it. The conscious (UI) does not have the capabillities to change anything, just "mold" to it and add all sort of things we don't need (like widgets...friggin vista.....or in our case, a stupidly complex sociaty (GRAPHICAL user interface!) it's just a cloak to hide it's true nature underneath. Questions? class dismissed! HA!

[Mark]

"For many years we had an older eel and grouper team who not only hunted together but lived together in a over hang on the top of Punta Tunish wall. It was a favorite photo site for our dive groups. The Green Moray had a head bigger than a basketball and was about three meters long. Towards the end of her life she had lost all of her teeth and we witnessed the grouper bringing her food. This went on for a couple of years until the grouper disappeared . We figured that she (the grouper) finally ended up someone's meal. After that we (the dive masters on the island) brought food daily to the eel. This only lasted for a few months until the eel also disappeared."
http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1204-moray.html

I recall a legless lizard, almost as long as a Dynajet, living in a hole near a tree with a toad at the library. I always wondered if they felt a routine developing, sort of grew accustomed to having the other one around, what might they have thought of each other down in that hole on cold nights, if they helped each other in some way to get through this world. A few times I saw the toad sitting down in the entrance of the hole on a drizzly evening, perhaps keeping the rain out of their home. Mr. Toad was a tight fit. Other times I would see him sitting just outside the hole, a few hops away, sitting there like some chess piece, motionless. Then of course there were many times I would see the legless lizard half in or half out of the hole, sunning himself in the morning. After the landscapers cleared all the plants, there was nary a place for them to hide, and finally one day I never saw my legless friend again, their one hole was blanketed with sod. I lifted the area around the hole when the library reopended from renovations, but I was too late.

Today at work a woman was talking about a book/movie called Twilight I believe. Apparently there are these good vampires that only drink animal blood. I brought up that the Maasai use these blunt arrows and shoot their cattle in the neck and then drink the blood with milk. I stated that they are mostly good vampires too. ha
http://www.shoortravel.com/maratribe.html

In a way we all are vampires, taking the life away from living things in order to transfer their energy into our own. I suppose a really, really, good vampire would drink carrot juice, don't you think? Yes, we have these "big" brains, but for the most part we, just like the animals are almost forced to be gladiators in the ring, by the conditions set forth in nature. The thing is animals don't have much choice, but "we" sometimes do.
Perhaps one day, a new life form will develop, a perfect vampire that drinks only sunlight and minerals. But then maybe it's all one big joke.
Maybe we are more than vampires, maybe we are cannibals. I found this, I plucked it from a youtube comment on New Guinea cannibals.
"I say ole chap. Do you have any Grey Poupon?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTRvcROcWHg

In this book I am reading, "Irrelligion" the author states, "I was scufffling with my brother when I was about ten and had an epiphany that the stuff of our two heads wasn't different in kind from the stuff of the rough rug on which I'd just burned my elbow or the stuff of the chair on which he'd just banged his shoulder. The realization that everything was ultimately made out of the same matter, that there was no essential difference between the material compositions of me and not-me, was clean, clear, and bracing."

Tune in again next week for "Milk Vampires and Milk Cannibals, a true account of infant formulas." ha

PS Now we are getting to the point way beyond blood transfusions, cannibalizing used parts, transfering arms, hands, etc. and even working on plant/animal hybrid cells. It gets confusing. Human brain cells firing in mouse brains, what a riot.
"Does the repugnance reflect an understanding of an important natural law? Or is it just another cultural bias, like the once widespread rejection of interracial marriage?" ha
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6534243/

[Mark]

"The effects of sampling rate and aliasing are also discussed."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5LS6scAL3E

[larry cottrill]

"The effects of sampling rate and aliasing are also discussed."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5LS6scAL3E

One time on Ask Doctor Science someone wrote in the question "Why do I need to have my tires rotated? I thought they rotate every time I drive my car." Dr Science's humorous answer involved many observations about wheels, including the observable fact that "wagon wheels rotate backwards, as you can clearly see in any Bonanza re-run."

L Cottrill

[larry cottrill]

In this book I am reading, "Irrelligion" the author states, "I was scufffling with my brother when I was about ten and had an epiphany that the stuff of our two heads wasn't different in kind from the stuff of the rough rug on which I'd just burned my elbow or the stuff of the chair on which he'd just banged his shoulder. The realization that everything was ultimately made out of the same matter, that there was no essential difference between the material compositions of me and not-me, was clean, clear, and bracing."

That must be why we don't think the deaths of 50 million unborn babies in 35 years means all that much. There's no "essential" difference between that and, say, mowing down a wheat field. I guess it just depends on what you think is "essential' and where you "draw the line".

PS Now we are getting to the point way beyond blood transfusions, cannibalizing used parts, transfering arms, hands, etc. and even working on plant/animal hybrid cells. It gets confusing. Human brain cells firing in mouse brains, what a riot.

The thing that really bothers us Christians isn't that a lot of scientists don't believe in a Creator (at least, not one that is in some sense a "person") but rather that the predominating philosophical position seems to be that science obviates moral concerns. Do all "real" scientists believe that if something is possible and even remotely construed as potentially "beneficial", we should try to do it? Any good scientist will believe that it's arrogant to try to "impose" my morality on what he wants to do -- but there is also a great arrogance in believing that his work is "above" the moral law that is accepted by the society he lives in and benefits from. I guess you would argue that we all draw the line at different places. The Jehovah's Witness draws the line short of accepting blood transfusions to save the life of a loved one, which is not where I would draw it. But does that mean that everyone should have the right to draw the line wherever they think best in terms of their own interests?

What's funny (in a macabre sense) about it is that we have the same callousness about this stuff as Hitler's experimental physicians had, but we excuse it because it isn't particularly directed toward one race or group of people. Or is it? Margaret Sanger wrote that non-whites are "weeds" that should gradually be eliminated. Today, roughly as many black people are killed in abortion clinincs in a single year as died in the whole history of racist lynchings in the US. This is deemed an acceptable part of medical "science" because we teach ordinary people to "choose" it for themselves, rather than be railed in by unacceptable "moral" constraints. On the other hand, we are expected to take the "moral high ground" against killing a convicted mass murderer as a form of punishment. This double standard is not considered "hypocrisy" of course, because it isn't the tenet of some religious sect we can easily point a finger at.

When facts like these were pointed out by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, he was publicly booed. That didn't make his observations wrong, though. Doctors used to take an oath that began, "First, do no harm." That doesn't even enter the discussion today.

L Cottrill

[larry cottrill]

About protecting others

If I were to protect a good friend, say help him out in a fight, our bond would grow stronger and this would benefit me. Also, say your best friend is hanging from a cliff. You have 2 options: 1 leave him to die and 2nd: pull him up. You obviously pull him up. If you don't pull him up and he dies, you could't live with yourself; your conscious would knaw at you, because you lost a great asset in your life. It's a advanced mechanism for your own protection (you can thank your massive brain for that one) If you see 2 man die - your friend and a stranger. You'd feel worse about your friend, because he is your friend. Why is he your friend? because he does stuff for you, be it vaporial or not

And why do we make "a great jet" do you think (and post it on a forum for others to see) "this is MY engine and it is better then yours." or "this is my engine, I'm part of a select group (pack) of people who do the same, they will protect me"

think of the brain as a operating system. It has 2 major components: the subconscious (kernel) and the conscious (user interface) also, for the sake of this example, the "kernel" is read-only.

You do all the work on the conscious level (user interface). you could compare this with how we live, the life around us, what we do, the disicions we take. However, under the user interface lies the kernel. Something every OS has (and in this case, read only). Everything you do on the user interface level would be impossible without the kernel. They are intertwined. A good part of the code in this kernel is also very old. It has been used since the 70's (nerd alarm) or the basic components have been unchanged since thousands of years. It's at the heart of the kernel and all the code lying above should abide by this code. It does not matter what you do on the user interface level (conscious), it is ALL governed by the basic kernel code (subconscious) and remember, you can't change any of it. The conscious (UI) does not have the capabillities to change anything, just "mold" to it and add all sort of things we don't need (like widgets...friggin vista.....or in our case, a stupidly complex sociaty (GRAPHICAL user interface!) it's just a cloak to hide it's true nature underneath. Questions? class dismissed! HA!

metiz -

What you are describing, of course, is (in the classical sense) the "natural man". This is exactly what Jesus teaches we MUST NOT be. Of course, you can argue pretty successfully that we all fall short of getting (much less living!) beyond that level. But that doesn't mean it isn't a valid standard to aspire to and to work toward. You cannot square away the natural man with the teaching of "Bless those who curse you" and "If your enemy thirsts, give him water to drink."

For humans, there is something beyond "looking out for number one" and "working to preserve the species". Interestingly, almost everyone intuitively recognizes and (usually) appreciates examples of going beyond the standard of merely insuring survival of the fittest. Of course, you can argue that the subconscious motivations you describe are still there as the real driving forces. But there are plenty of cases historically where the easy path for someone would be self-preservation and yet they refused to take it, opting for self-sacrifice for the sake of someone else (possibly, someone totally unrelated) instead. I realize that this doesn't completely challenge your argument for the hidden motivations at the deepest psychological level, but what it does show is that there is another level where we can make choices that override basic instinct. That is the real playing field of morality, faith, ideals, etc.

The issue isn't really whether people are basically animals. The issue is that we are the one kind of animal that can make sense out of trying to be something more.

L Cottrill

[metiz]

About protecting others

If I were to protect a good friend, say help him out in a fight, our bond would grow stronger and this would benefit me. Also, say your best friend is hanging from a cliff. You have 2 options: 1 leave him to die and 2nd: pull him up. You obviously pull him up. If you don't pull him up and he dies, you could't live with yourself; your conscious would knaw at you, because you lost a great asset in your life. It's a advanced mechanism for your own protection (you can thank your massive brain for that one) If you see 2 man die - your friend and a stranger. You'd feel worse about your friend, because he is your friend. Why is he your friend? because he does stuff for you, be it vaporial or not

And why do we make "a great jet" do you think (and post it on a forum for others to see) "this is MY engine and it is better then yours." or "this is my engine, I'm part of a select group (pack) of people who do the same, they will protect me"

think of the brain as a operating system. It has 2 major components: the subconscious (kernel) and the conscious (user interface) also, for the sake of this example, the "kernel" is read-only.

You do all the work on the conscious level (user interface). you could compare this with how we live, the life around us, what we do, the disicions we take. However, under the user interface lies the kernel. Something every OS has (and in this case, read only). Everything you do on the user interface level would be impossible without the kernel. They are intertwined. A good part of the code in this kernel is also very old. It has been used since the 70's (nerd alarm) or the basic components have been unchanged since thousands of years. It's at the heart of the kernel and all the code lying above should abide by this code. It does not matter what you do on the user interface level (conscious), it is ALL governed by the basic kernel code (subconscious) and remember, you can't change any of it. The conscious (UI) does not have the capabillities to change anything, just "mold" to it and add all sort of things we don't need (like widgets...friggin vista.....or in our case, a stupidly complex sociaty (GRAPHICAL user interface!) it's just a cloak to hide it's true nature underneath. Questions? class dismissed! HA!

metiz -

What you are describing, of course, is (in the classical sense) the "natural man". This is exactly what Jesus teaches we MUST NOT be. Of course, you can argue pretty successfully that we all fall short of getting (much less living!) beyond that level. But that doesn't mean it isn't a valid standard to aspire to and to work toward. You cannot square away the natural man with the teaching of "Bless those who curse you" and "If your enemy thirsts, give him water to drink."

For humans, there is something beyond "looking out for number one" and "working to preserve the species". Interestingly, almost everyone intuitively recognizes and (usually) appreciates examples of going beyond the standard of merely insuring survival of the fittest. Of course, you can argue that the subconscious motivations you describe are still there as the real driving forces. But there are plenty of cases historically where the easy path for someone would be self-preservation and yet they refused to take it, opting for self-sacrifice for the sake of someone else (possibly, someone totally unrelated) instead. I realize that this doesn't completely challenge your argument for the hidden motivations at the deepest psychological level, but what it does show is that there is another level where we can make choices that override basic instinct. That is the real playing field of morality, faith, ideals, etc.

The issue isn't really whether people are basically animals. The issue is that we are the one kind of animal that can make sense out of trying to be something more.

L Cottrill

Sacrifice is just another part of the whole. before I continue, descibe death to me as good as you can in your own words.

[larry cottrill]

Death is the transition from existing in a bounded time and space to existing in an unbounded time and space.

Of course, that's really cooking it down

L Cottrill