One Man's Brain Washing Comment is the Pot Calling the Kettle Black

The following is my reply to a poster regarding his formulaic comments on the subject of fighting aging and ending death that he made in response to the article found here called: We Die Too Soon; Wise Methuselahs Could Save the World

The poster had the usual things to say, "we die for the benefit of future generations, so evolution can continue and improve", a gross misunderstanding of evolutionary theory in itself, and a host of other clap trap that apologizes for aging and death failed sentiments that always try to excuse both as good things. They are anything BUT good things! Here is an excerpt of Dr. Panda's comments:

comment:

We Die Too Soon

by Markandeswar Panda

[Comment posted:34:09]

When science has nearly accepted evolution and is not interested in any other theories on the emergence of life from non-life, its proponents, the scientists must rely upon this force and forget the rest. Death is inevitable for the propagation of new DNA or RNA based life forms No matter what we do can relieve us from the pains of old age and the peaceful death.

For the believers of prophetic religions it is eternal heaven or hell. For the philosophical believers of eastern religions, it is life, samsAra, and karma. ... [blah blah blah... yadda yadda...]

Please find the rest of Dr. Panda's comments here at the bottom of the page of comments.

For Dr. Markandeswar Panda, Ph.D.(BU);Ph.D.(UCSC)

I am sorry, and with all due respect, I feel you suffer from your own particular brand of brain washing that exceeds that we must do what nature (evolution) or god or karma has dictated. These sentiments could not be further from the truth.

What IS "natural" for human beings is to modify our selves and our environment for the maximum benefit of our lives. Of course this must be done carefully and with an eye to balance and that our needs are not inadvertently negated by mistaken imbalances caused in nature.

IF there indeed IS a god or gods then what right have they to deny us the maximum of improvement even if it means treading on their so called territory? But the truth is there are no such beings and indeed cannot be. Likewise there are no eternal souls that Karma or reincarnation may act upon. Non corporeal entities violate the laws of physics and information theory.

For there to be any information sufficient enough to entail the complete life and essence of a human being would require several teraflops of information storage space! Where is such a huge amount of information storage space to be found in the ethereal? Where is that to be found in energy when energy alone, without matter to form it or guide it, has no capability to hold information? Yes, radio waves and light pulses, etc. do transmit information but they do so only after having it imparted to them by the modulation of a device made of matter. To read the information again requires a demodulator also made of matter. For there to be the simplest of information, a simple binary bit -- a mere on/off statement, there would need to be some differentiation between one chunk of energy -- of these supposed non corporeal beings, souls, gods, etc. -- and another chunk... some dirtiness if you will. This is not possible when all chunks, so to speak, of any said energy must be identical to all other amounts of same. No sample of pure energy in and of itself could ever hold and regurgitate or act upon even the simplest of true/false or 0-1 binary statements.

All that we are is that which is recorded in the 'meat' (matter) of the connectivity of our neurons in our brains and the weights and potentials applied within their workings. This was clearly learned when Phineas Gage lost his personality and goodly nature when a tamping rod went through his frontal lobe when an explosion accident occurred while working on a length of railroad tracks. Why oh why are we more than one hundred years hence from Gage's accident still believing in spirits and ghosts? His accident proved that there could not be a non corporeal aspect to human essence because by the very description of such, being non corporeal, without form, it could not be acted upon by that which does have form. Souls should not be affected by mere accident. Or does god hold liable and consign to hell a man unlucky enough to merely have inadvertent brain damage by no fault of his own? It is a ludicrous situation to even ponder.

We should and we will do everything we can to conquer aging and indeed even make inroads into smiting death itself. Would anyone not figure that it would be long ago so conquered by say a non terrestrial civilization perhaps a million or even ten thousand only, years ahead of we in technology? Or even ourselves a few thousand years from now?

Well of course we expect such things of the constant march of science and technology. Why should it take so long then when while we here discuss our own future possibilities, nowadays tech and science are right now exponentially climbing the ramparts?! We ARE fast approaching a technological Singularity, named for the event horizon of black holes where beyond which we can not retrieve information, yet, in that in our soon to be future development is happening so fast we soon will be incapable predicting even the broad strokes of where it may lead... indeed if we in our present forms can understand at all the levels of technology we will soon collectively reach. I heartily recommend the book "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology" by Ray Kurzweil.

Human evolution naturally encompasses changing our environment and ourselves. we have already done this. We have altered natural selection merely by the advent of civilization and wealth procurement. We are on the verge of the safe and prudent ability to alter and perfect, repair mistakes in our own genome. Evolution is now and soon to be more so largely in our own hands from here on out. I for one rejoice in the possibilities.

Lament not the death of death and the same for its siblings disease and aging. Given the savings of knowledge and of verve by keeping our learned alive long enough to really make a difference with the knowledge and wisdom they gained over a hundred and more years of life, will without a doubt find all the necessary early answers needed to ease our transition to a truly mature and worthy species for the universe. We can do it, we have the technology... all we need is the will.

Onward!

FutureQ

Feed the Children vs Global Warming

Some people only think they are smart, like the author of this article, found on Fox News no less, and end up regaling the rest of us with their two cent drug store wisdom to the detriment of our collective intellect. It behooves one to learn the meaning of the word Meme, folks. The cost is far more than two cents though, if we do not employ critical thinking to discern truth from hyperbole and platitude.

To wit, the case here in point. My Dad thought this was plain and simply full of wisdom. He and I being on the opposite side of the Global Warming debate.

Warming Concerns

Thursday, February 22, 2007

By Steven Milloy

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” said famed 18th century British lexicographer Samuel Johnson. To update the quote for our current era you might substitute “children” for “patriotism” and “climate alarmist” for “scoundrel.”

Last week, outgoing United Nations World Food Program chief James Morris reminded us that 18,000 children die every day from hunger and malnutrition. Morris called the situation “a terrible indictment of the world in 2007.”

In contrast to our quixotic fixation with trying to fine-tune global climate by tweaking atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, the ongoing tragedy of starving children would seem to be a relatively easy problem to solve. After all, wealthy developed nations have plenty of surplus food and the wherewithal to deliver it to the world’s malnourished.

As usual find the rest of this glorious piece of shi.. er wisdom here.

Soooo, hmmm, we feed the starving children then Global Warming catches up because we neglected it for the starving children's sake and still kills them in various hideous ways. Yeah, good plan!

NOT!

Look, I'll give them their precious "Natural Cycle Only" bit for sake of argument. The issue still is we have dumped 30% more CO2 into the atmosphere than would be there without our addiction to fossil fuels. It HAS TO have an effect. Experiments, that we may repeat until we are blue in the face show over and over again that CO2 disallows the sun's radiation escaping back into space thus holding in more heat. This happens the same way the glazing on a hot house holds in warmth, hence the name "greenhouse gases".

Ok, the opposition says it's just a natural cycle, let us keep mainlining oil and coal, etc., we love it all so.... Nah, you see there are serious consequences to allowing the warming regardless of how little or great our addition to the problem. The fact is the planet is warming. I won't go over yet again the consequences, there is plenty of material out there for that. The issue is 'how many', not 'if or whether any', lives will be lost because of it. This mentions nothing of the financial losses.

I say one life lost is morally too many but that is of course and sadly not practical.

We blithely allow thousands per year to die in auto accidents, from diseases that could be cured if real concerted effort were put into it, aging alone kills 100k per day and yes the poor dear starving children die in the thousands per year. Oh yes I am getting to them. But what I am first getting to here is at what point is a few thousand suddenly a few million and is that enough to now pay attention?

Global Warming could easily kill a billion and more at it's worst and at least millions at the mildest. Now our friend from the article alludes we should let that slide and feed the snotty nosed faces of the world instead. My first inclination is to say, why split hairs? Why the choice either/or? Why not take care of both? If we just had the will we could find the way. I have a caveat that I will get to though for the little hungry brats. Oh but don't think I do not love them all, but it is tough love baby!

But first back to what should we do about the so called natural cycles. Does "natural" make them sacrosanct? Does it mean we shouldn't meddle? Of course not! We at the very least should remove our 30% addition to the problem, then argue about natural or not and should we then still sit by and let bad things happen to good people, all the people of Earth!

Oh but there's those starving children that we now let bad things happen to anyway, right? Well some of us. Then there's those that make a big noise and pull at your hearts strings on late night TV to help feed these lovely street urchins. Why are they always so damn cute, not an ugly one in the bunch?

Ok, this will sound heartless but I never will send a penny to any of the feed the children funds.

Why? Because it is tantamount to child abuse! You heard me.

Those starving children are starving for political reasons that most voters will not recognize and those that do and could change it won't lift a finger to. Most starving children are of course third or developing world. Well what do most all of those countries have in common? Answer: backwards customs that relish fertility and/or macho male virility attitudes plus religious superstition against contraception. Men there are often by custom proven more viral and macho by fathering more children including illegitimate ones. Women have little to zero rights or control over their own bodies. They often are virtual slaves if not slaves outright. They are sometimes treated little better in life than baby factories beasts of burden and play toys, traded, sold, bartered, abducted into slavery and worse.

Then you have the Catholic Church, usually prominent in many of these countries, that sticks their nose in the personal fertility business of these people telling them GAWD doesn't like contraception. The real reason the church is so concerned about this is it gets more power in having more numbers under their banner of belief regardless how impoverished it forces the poor people to stay so because they have more mouths to feed than they can afford.

Then you have our right wingers here in the good ole meddlesome USA that mistakenly believe that Planned Parenthood is about teaching abortion to these poor folks when in actuality contraception methods and women's rights are really the message. Oh but we can't have any of those women's rights bandied about when the bible says such demeaning things about women, can we now? Gotta keep them under thumb for Jesus sake! So they toeing the line with their blind religious leaders unthinking all the way support those that do their worst in Washington to remove any avenue Planned Parent Hood and like organizations have to go into these countries and really make a difference. For folk sake! The preznitwit's constituents don't even want condom use taught in Africa where people are dying by the droves of AIDS passed on by unprotected sex. Starving children? How about starving and born with AIDS?!

Mr. Patriot made a straw man argument but I see straight through it thank you very much. Now why is our sending food aid to these children the same as child abuse? Because, firstly they rarely get any of the aid to begin with. If they do it only means they get to live long enough to repeat the errors of their parents and also have too many children than they can feed passing their starvation circumstances right on to their children and so on.

We do not drop food willy nilly in the wild forest to feed wild animals because with that added unearned extra energy infused into the system they will breed out of control and soon have too many numbers than their local environment can support. I know how that sounds. It sounds clinical and overly scienced but like it or not humans are animals too. But we aren't held by "natural" yearly cycles for estrous. We can breed any damn ole time we please.

What those poor starving children need most is basic human rights and real education. Their mothers and the young girls growing up need the respect they deserve as equals, control over their own bodies and fertility and the right to say no and not have children they don't want or cannot support. Likewise the men need to learn that real men father only those children they can support and not leave it to the women they've abused to on their own handle them and surely not expect other nations to pick up the tab for their excesses!

Education is key but it is not just the third world in need of it.

We already know that as countries become more affluent, educated and democratic their population rates of birth plummet. However, many of our right wing friends have little to no interest in helping Global Warming or the starving children in any truly meaningful ways because after all this world is about to end right? Why make an effort when you expect to be spirited away in the Rapture any day now, hallelujah brothers and sisters can I get an AMEN!? Just make a pile of money to stay comfortable and support your pet political projects such as oh maybe supporting anything Israel does so they get the right to rebuild their temple, of course pissing off all of Islamdom and kicking off World War III in the doing... but hey then JESUS can finally return!! Right? Wrong! As if Jesus, if he is really god, needs humans help to set up his alleged return.

Well it's their mad plan not mine. I think a better plan is to plan for the worst and help our brothers and sisters learn how to feed their own children and have the smarts to know when enough is enough.

FutureQ

Perfect Scape Goat, Perfect Patsy...

...to cover up the crimes of the Bush administration. Look he's not even convicted of the crime he was -- and by fiat the administration IS, under investigation for -- the leaking of Plame's identity. How better to place a wall of deniability between them and the crime? Any thinking individual not blinded by right wing ideology knows in their heart of hearts that Plame was purposely outed by this admin. Is anyone fool enough to think the idea self generated with Libby? C'mon! We ALL know it was from right at he top.

Libby Found Guilty in CIA Leak Case

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN and MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writers

1 hour ago

WASHINGTON - Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted Tuesday of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was accused of lying and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to reporters.

Complete article found here.

One just has to wonder how much Carlyse Group or Haliburton, Brown & Root, etc., stock Libby's family may on the sly acquire way down the road for his sacrificial falling on the G. W. Bush administration's collective swords?

FutureQ

I had a hunch this was coming...

...back in the 90's when I watched an archaeology documentary by John Romer. I still recall his words. He was lamenting the tendency for people, especially Christian apologist so called archaeologists, to presume their findings and see them through their preconceived notions that they assert must fit the Bible narrative. Romer said, "I once knew this bloke that said he'd found a tomb that said "Jesus Bar Joseph", 'Bar something' means son of. Cole'blimey says I, did you dig into it, that might be THE Jesus? No, said the bloke, It couldn't have been him, we know he rose to heaven. [sic]..."

It has been a while so of course I am paraphrasing. I seriously believe this to be the exact same tomb and that "bloke" to possibly be this Kloner fellow. He found it years ago and did nothing with it, why? His personal bias of course... well maybe. At any rate it stayed largely hidden from public knowledge all this time until James Cameron and his partners had the courage to bring it to our attention. Much hay is being made of their lack of scientific method in presenting it, as opposed to oh say letting it stay hidden for dozens more years while painstakingly studied ad nauseum making sure every politically correct bugaboo is well sanitized as to not harm the ever fragile faithful..

James Cameron Finds Jesus, Controversy

Wed Feb 28, 2:11 AM

He hasn't cracked the Da Vinci code, but religious groups are annoyed at James Cameron all the same.

The Titanic Oscar winner's latest project, the Discovery Channel documentary The Last Tomb of Jesus, has been called an attack on Christianity by some who are none too pleased with the film's so-called revelatory findings.

Last Tomb, produced by Cameron and written and directed by Simcha Jacobovi, chronicles the 1980 discovery of a 2,000-year-old tomb in Jerusalem's East Talpiot neighborhood that, the film argues, was the final resting place of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Mary Magdalene and a boy who could have been her and Jesus' son.

As always find the continued article here.

Will this shake the faith of the faithful? Not on your life. At last it won't shake the faith of the most devout. They need not nor heed any science to prove or disprove their faith. It doesn't matter how much fact you pile on them they won't let one single bit dissuade them from their irrational beliefs. Evidence now is overwhelming that 'the Christ' was an amalgam made up from dozens of man god constructs from those times. I recommend the book "The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man" by Dr. Robert Price.

Close study of the gospels themselves clearly indicates the authors had no consensus at all on the nature, divinity, nor flesh person hood of Jesus. Mythras, Dionysus and a host of other deified humans also were killed on trees or crosses, were born of virgins and rose from the dead.

How do the faithful handle these damning facts that should end these beliefs in any rational human being? Well the Devil, of course, is Omniscient, you see, having the same power as their God, which should be impossible but this is their fantasy after all -- so he saw the future and so influenced people to make these other myths long before Jesus as counterfeits to twist up the truth. Ummm, yeah, right. Occam's Razor says the simplest answer is best and that the best answer is Jesus is the copy not the other way around. By the way, Omniscience is impossible. It would mean the holder of such a power would be powerless to change their mind since they already know what future decisions they will make.

I have now since beginning this post had the privilege of watching the documentary "The Lost Tomb of Jesus". I have to say I am impressed. I do lean toward it being true. However, some serious real science still needs to be done. They must, for instance, prove that all the ossuaries actually were found together and were that way from antiquity. Now if that can be proven, then it will be a huge blow to the apologist now crying foul with unscientific arguments such as, "those names (found on the ossuaries) were common at the time". Yes, on the surface that seems a general valid argument. The problem is we are not dealing with the general here. For instance, to that group of people, as it was pointed out, Mary the alleged virgin mother of Jesus, was known by the Latinized version of the Hebrew Marriame, which is Maria. That is the name found. The so called common Hebrew name for the time would rather have been Marriame or remotely maybe but not likely Mary. It was NOT common except to this special small group of people surrounding Jesus, providing he is a real person even, to call her Mary, the English translation but instead "Maria".

Then is the same group of graves they found one of Jesus' lesser know brothers that was known by the nickname Jose' (pronounced Yosay) or in English today Josey or today Hebrew Yosie, not the common then Joseph. Again unique to this small group and mentioned in one obscure gospel. More examples like this were stated in the documentary basically making the odds overwhelming that it could not be the Jesus family.

Now put on your Critical Thinking caps and ponder, which is more likely, the all too human story that the man named Jesus and attributed, actually after the fact, all the miracles and also historically mythologized as rising, not bodily but spiritually, to heaven, was in fact truly buried or the supernatural resurrected to physical life magical woowoo man made into god Jesus? I'll take the more rational every day. Don't forget as mentioned above there were simply dozens of mythological dying an rising man gods at the time.

Think More Critically people. These Judaic Torah based religions, Judaism, Christianity & Islam, have held this world hostage for far too long. Stop letting your religious friends just slide on faith and not face the facts. Their faith has killed billions and now we have brand new Crusades, or do we really think Iraq was truly about getting Osama bin Laden?

FutureQ

I support the right to keep and bare arms but...

...this is just plain stupid. Surely he has a paranoid personality disorder and allowed to do this is danger to everyone around him. How long would it have been before reading of him taking out 30 people at a McDonald's? Is he a postal worker? *joke*

Southern California officials find million rounds of ammo in house fire

NORCO, Calif. Firefighters in Southern California have uncovered a cache of more than one (m) million rounds of ammunition, along with 20 guns and 75 pounds of black gunpowder.

They found the stash yesterday while responding to a reported fire at a single-story house in Norco, east of Los Angeles.

Investigators don't know yet what it was doing there. But they do not think it's connected to organized crime.

The ammunition for shotguns, handguns and assault rifles was found tucked away in metal and wooden boxes in the house and garage.

Firefighters called in sheriffs and hazardous materials teams after having to forcibly keep a resident from running back inside the house.

He's now in custody.

[Not mentioned here but mentioned in a separate video news article is that several illegal weapons were also discovered, hence his incarceration.]

I support the spirit of the 2nd amendment, to keep the citizenry on par with the government in order to prevent governmental tyranny by assumed threat of armed insurrection, but really can the citizenry today TRULY stay on par with the government in this technologically advanced day?

Anyone for their neighbor owning a howitzer or a fully loaded Abrahms tank, F-16 or how about a tactical nuclear (nook-lee-ur) weapon?

It is obvious that the letter of the amendment cannot be now sustained. I do not propose a new amendment or a revision f the original. I do propose a return to the "spirit" of the law again in that we form an armed citizen militia owing no allegiance to the government but solely to their respective communities.

No attempt would be made to disarm individual's legitimate weapon ownership. However, egregious violations of the public welfare such as this guy would be regulated. I doubt someone like this could have passed a psych test and he should not have been allowed to amass as many weapons without passing such a test.

The formation of a local citizen militia might even pacify the paranoid leanings of some individuals that fear the government so badly they feel it necessary to stockpile arms for the ever on the horizon "coming revolution", whatever that means. If people felt that their friends and neighbors that usually have their best interests at heart and together were en masse armed against government or even terrorist violations of personal safety and autonomy, they might relax a little and not seek so much a personal armory.

Would anyone really want it legal for their neighbor to keep a stockpile of grenades, RPG's, mortars and Claymore mines in his garage? Imagine the boom that would make and the lives threatened when a fire, statistically quite likely to occur, consumes your uber armed neighbor's garage. Fires happen all the time and are made even more likely in the presence of chemicals the likes of those in explosives.

We require people to have a license to drive a car. Now I know the difference between a right and a privilege, the car driving being a privilege. However, a car can kill as easily as a weapon so why not some common sense and have people go to classes to learn the proper care and use of guns just as they do for automobiles? A bonus being completion of which allows them to carry them anywhere except perhaps alcohol imbibing establishments. It is silly to not allow honest citizens to carry their own concealed weapons into a bank. An outlaw won't mind the law anyway. But if a bank robber had to worry that any one of 20 to 30 other patrons in a bank could draw down on him/her and not being able to watch everyone, would this not deter such crimes? At the same time the properly licensed and trained citizenry will mean fewer gun accidents caused by people not knowing which end the bullets go in, or having irrational fears of guns that cause shaky handling and often mistaken discharge.

Soon technology will allow for personalized weapons that only fire when they recognize the DNA of the owner. This technology alone will enable easier government control of weapon ownership and especially tracking down of owners when their weapon has been used to cause an unwarranted fatality or injury.

Would it not be better to have in place regulations that enable more citizen autonomy and thwart government excess? Government, whether right or left oriented, will take every inch of latitude allowed them. Will the Democrats for instance, that lambasted certain parts of the Patriot Act -- now that they are controlling congress, roll back some of the most egregious abuses to American freedoms in the Patriot Act? Not bloody likely. Once government has gained a power tool they are not likely to give it up regardless of how some might have chastised their opponents for seeking it in the first place. Therefore it is better to now ahead of time form citizen militias beholding only to their communities, selves and families and perhaps enacting some self regulation at the state level before the federal government, in the name of terrorism, finds another excuse to curtail our freedom.

FutureQ