Ahh! No Computer!
My computer has failed me, and I wasn’t able to repair it. So it’s gone for an indeterminant amount of time, and so will be my updates. Sorry.
The Idiocy of Ignorance
These days, people seem to cling to ignorance like a shield, cowering in fear behind it to deflect away those uncomfortable truths that so damage their own egos. Ignorance is never something that should be encouraged, but there does seem to be a disturbing trend of anti-intellectualism in America.
Ignorance is not strength. Fear and hatred of knowledge is bullshit.
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Grammar comic! I know that there are plenty of images out there advising on how to properly use these words, but I still see them misused everywhere, and it annoys me. So use them right so that the puppy won’t get beheaded.
Sorry about the lateness of the update, was working on Quantum Mechanics stuff last night (studying for today’s final and working on a project).
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I spent a while on getting the faces right. But looking at it now, I don’t like the first panel. Oh, well.
This is something I actually said today (word for word) in my Modern World class, when asked which century I liked better. I claimed the 18th was better than the 19th, and that was my justification. Because FUCK YEAH, SCIENCE. And Newton was crazy brilliant. Also actually crazy. It was pointed out by my neighbor just after I answered that Oscar Wilde lived in the 19th century. So I had to revise my answer. Because there is nothing about Oscar Wilde that wasn’t awesome.
Oops, Did I Offend You?
People take offence at things far too easily. It’s all kinds of ridiculous when people decide to be offended for other people, or offended by things that aren’t even spoken of seriously (i.e. jokes). Basically, it’s bullshit.
The Arts are Important
So, I found out this week that apparently my school is making major cuts to the arts department, despite being in the process of constructing a new building for business majors. Let me just take a moment here to say:
What.
The.
Fuck.
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Storytime! I spent the past several weeks, but names the last weekend, working on a project for Electrodynamics. Basically, I had to write a research overview of pulsars. Now, this seemed not bad to me, because I already understood the basic idea of what a pulsar was (a highly magnetized rapidly spinning neutron star). Oh, how wrong I was. The actual physics governing pulsars is (a) a nightmare, and (b) severely lacking. I read so many papers that summed to “it should be like this, but many pulsars aren’t. Man, pulsars are weird, aren’t they?”
On the other hand, I now know a lot more than I did about pulsars. I just feel like I know so much less.
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This happened today/yesterday in class. I haven’t learned so much about something in so little time since the last pharmaceutical commercial I saw.
In other news, I’ve been playing too much minecraft. I’ve built a cobblestone highway in the nether with fortified outposts that have portals, and I call it “The Persephone Highway”. And yes, I thought that was exceedingly clever (because of Persephone visiting hades every year). Other than that, no real news to share.
The Watchmaker Analogy
So, in his 1802 book Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature, William Paley made the following teleological argument for the existence of God as a designer, and evolution as being flat-out wrong:
“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. (…) There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. (…) Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.” (Wikipedia)
It’s funny, because this argument is bullshit.
Paley was more wrong than he seemed to realize. In fact, I’ve gone and shown how Paley’s argument is actually an argument in favor of evolution.
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I was bored and sketching portraits (to work on my faces) when one started looking like The Doctor (tenth, obviously). So I colored it and put it up here for you lovely folks. Because Doctor Who is awesome, and Tennant remains the best Doctor. True story.
