Monthly Archives: December 2004

Thinking about God makes you crazy

Saturday, December 11, 2004
I was just reading this story about how famed British atheist Antony Flew (who incidentally is near death) has changed his mind — maybe God does exist after all! He concludes this because of how amazingly complicated we are, surmising it must be intelligent design and thus some version of God.

He's only partially right (in my opinion).

I've mentioned before that what we perceive as human contains only 9% actual human cells (cells built around human DNA), with the remaining 91% being symbiotic microbial life which is interconnected deeply with the rest of the ecosystem. That 91%, when you add it up in its entirety (ie. all the microbial life everywhere, not just in a single person) makes up 98% of all the biomass on the planet, and that biomass is arguably a single entity (and we're a part of it as well, every one of us). Does a single one of your cells comprehend the words you're reading right now or even have consciousness? Of course not. But the collection of cells is conscious, even though not a single one is independently.

So is it so hard to believe that you are a part of a single larger being? You can see all the pieces around you and understand it metaphorically at least. Those of you (or at least some of you) who have suspended have broken through and gotten a momentary glimpse of that larger being. Others get it at the bottom of a k-hole I suppose. But it's that being which is responsible for the creation of things like sexually reproducing life, and it's that being that is what most religions perceive of as God (although they add all sorts of politics and heirarchy to it and generally overcomplicate the matter).

Where it gets even more interesting is when you realize that humans aren't really the brain of this being. Not at all… We're the reproductive organs. The singular purpose of humanity is to spread this organism to other planets, just as it was once spread to our own planet.

Yeah, I know, you're laughing at me right now, saying “and you had the nerve to make fun of Bucky Fuller for saying we devolved from dolphins!”

That's the view out my window right now.
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Bladder piercing

Saturday, December 11, 2004

You know, these deep catheterizations always freak me out (so does Samppa's gut skewer act; more), but they really do win the award for “world's deepest PA piercing”

Other than that I have a couple things to mention:
  • END OF THE YEAR AWARDS - I wanted to remind people that the deadline for this year on images is December 14th (next Tuesday), and to ensure your experience is in as well… not that I'm expecting anyone to take out Uberkitty, but other than the top few slots there's still tons of competition. Prizes will be posted soon!
  • BME, A PRINT MAGAZINE? - You haven't heard it here, but it is something that a majority of job applicants said BME should consider. So I've posed it as the current front cover poll. If I were to do it, it would subscription only (no newsstands) and be a collectable expansion on BME with fully unique content (ie. not just reprinted stuff).
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Dimebag

Saturday, December 11, 2004

As a general note to everyone bellyaching about Darrell Abbott being shot, I'll remind you that a few nights before he was killed he was on the streets of Toronto making a very bad impression due to his shouting about “niggers” (anyone want to buy a signed Darrel Abbott pick from that night?). Anyway, I have trouble getting particularly sad when there's one less bigot on the streets.

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New Tattoo, Injured Troops, FTP tool

Saturday, December 11, 2004

First a picture of some of the tattooing that I had done yesterday; just some foreground touchup; making the landscape brighter, whitening the smoke around the souls, and so on.

I've decided not to write the funmail story I mentioned earlier. Basically Beckham's tattoo artist accused me of (and threatened me with a lawsuit for) publishing knockoffs of the work he'd done for Beckham. It wasn't true though — the piece I was being accused on was only similar in that it was the same subject matter, a male angel or an Icarus figure, rather than an actual copy.

So a general conceptual claim (ownership of the male angel concept) was being made, which I felt was utterly unreasonable so I told him he was a jackass, especially since he not only had copies of other people's designs on his page (Marvin the Martian, Tinkerbell, and so on), but that he'd actually had the gall to sign these pieces in tattoo ink as his own. So then he threatened to deal with me in person (oooh), and I told him he should apologize or I could play his game as well… So he apologized and I'm not going to publish the letters or article.

Anyway… As I'm sure you know, at a recent Rumsfeld “town hall” meeting in Kuwait, a soldier asked a rather direct question:

Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they're not needed, to a place here where they are needed. I'm told that they are being — the Army is — I think it's something like 400 a month are being done. And it's essentially a matter of physics. It isn't a matter of money. It isn't a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it.

Problem is, the companies actually making the armor say that there are no “production and capability” issues — they'd be happy to make more if the Army asked them to (more). To be really clear: Rumsfeld is (again) demonstrably lying and there is another reason for the troops not being fully armored. I'll tell you again what I said a few days ago about body armor: it increases injury rates, and thus the cost of running a war.

I believe Rumsfeld has made a cost-benefit analysis and has decided that the longer he can stall getting full armor to US troops, the better, as horrific and inhumane a scenario as that is. But let's be honest — we already know Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the rest of them have zero issues with significant civilian casualties (let alone combat casualties) of the darker skinned sort if it suits their plans… do you really think they care about Americans dying if it puts a dollar in the right pocket?

Code Update

The particularly astute may have noticed that there's an entry search link a couple paragraphs up. These links, if you're using FTP mode, assuming they're links to your own page, are now being converted into links to your FTP'd archive when working on your remote site, so non-members reading your remote site won't find themselves redirected to an “access required” page on IAM.

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Gay Invasion

Thursday, December 9, 2004

Not that there was much doubt it would pass, but now that Canada's Supreme Court has given the final approval to gay marriage, it's pretty much inevitable that the pre-emptive first strike from America will come soon. After all, if they don't nuke us now, they might catch teh gay.

Seriously though, I'm really happy about this.

The real mark of a civilized society is an excess of love. Having a love deficit… not so good.

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Dances Sacred and Profane Redux

Wednesday, December 8, 2004

Dinner last night was really nice; it was a good group of people who were there.

Mark Jury, the filmmaker responsible for Dances Sacred and Profane is gearing up to do a DVD re-release of this classic. He was kind enough to send me a preview copy (and a couple cool shirts, which he really should put online for sale) which I've used to finally revamp the encyclopedia entry. Click the photo of Fakir to jump to the encylopedia entry, and the photo of the shirt to jump to the film's page (if you want to bookmark it to stay updated; it's not available quite yet).

I've managed to reduce the intern list now from almost sixty applicants down to ten — already I'm cutting people from the list who I know could do a good job. Seriously, this is so much harder than I could ever have imagined! I can't imagine how they do it in jobs where there are thousands of applicants — it must almost be luck-of-the-draw in those cases.
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