Anthropomorphic Global Warming? Sure, Why Not.

     This is a conversation I've had with my father way too many times:

Me: Yes, Dad, the ten hottest years on record all occurred since 1990.

Dad: Well how do you know we are causing it? The sun is getting hotter right? Besides the earth        goes through natural warm and cold periods.

Me: I can't tell you exactly how we know, but I trust the experts on the issue, the scientists who                dedicate their lives to this sort of thing, not the politicians who deny or exploit it for political gain.

Dad: Well they haven't proven it yet have they? They keep changing their minds. First it was global warming, then it was climate change, and now its global warming again. 

     That's enough, you get the point. Some people will not accept the reality of anthropomorphic climate change (I myself prefer this term better actually, not because it downplays the problem at hand but because I think it does quite the opposite). More info on whats in a name here. I don't know why we have all these scientists when we don't use them, except, of course, when its convenient. What I also find interesting is that there is a distinct pattern of people who accept man-made global warming. Its overwhelmingly conservatives who deny it, and liberals who accept it, and I'm assuming moderates are somewhat mixed. As much as I know about the psychological differences between cons and libs,  I can't really think of a reason why there is such a chasm in the case of global warming. Maybe it speaks to the power that politicians can have over their followers. We ought to influence them in my opinion, not the other way around. After all, the electorate wields the power doesn't it? 

     In my opinion, it doesn't matter if we are really causing global warming. "Blasphemy!" shouts Al Gore. But that also does not mean I think we shouldn't do something about it. I think of the whole global warming scenario like being sick, but instead of a person being sick, its the planet. Let me demonstrate: If I go to the doctor, that is to say, a medical expert, with some bodily warming, aka a fever, I expect him to try his best to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. He tells me that it is either caused by A, of it is caused by B. In the case of A, there is no cure. But in the case of B, there is a cure, but it will inconvenience me greatly, and still might not work. I think of this as a no brainer, regardless of the odds that it will work, or even how slight the chances are that it is caused by B, I am definitely going to undergo said treatment. And I don't think I'm alone on this one.

     In the case of climate change, I find my argument to hold up even stronger. There is a scientific consensus on the cause of climate change, and we know exactly how to reverse it. So even if there are still many people who still deny it, why don't we err on the side of great caution and do something about global warming. 

To the American Atheists

 In response to the recent billboards the the American Atheists put up, i have sent them this message. I am repeating it on the blog because i think it a lot of people can identify with my sentiment:

   I am an adamant atheist. I admire the work of this organization and I support everything you guys do. I don't however, see how your recent billboards are helping. WE NEED PEOPLE TO LIKE US. You don't get people to like you by attacking them. Come on guys, really? We need billboards that show admirable, and well known and liked atheists, like Einstein, Hemmingway, Jefferson, et al. YOU KNOW WHO IM TALKING ABOUT. How about something like, "what do these people all have in common? Atheists" or "Atheist? welcome to the club." We want people who are on the fence to look at us and say, "thats a really great bunch of people there, maybe its not so bad to think like them." What we dont want them to say is, "wow those guys are a bunch of assholes, even if Mormonism is stupid as hell."
     We need to help our brand guys! How do you think that a hateful religion such as Christianity can be so revered? cause they have branded themselves as nice! if they can fake their way into being nice, we sure as hell can, seeing as we are oredominantly a loving group of people. But with Billboards like this you do nothing to increase the standing of atheists anywhere. It just reinforces the stereotype that you need religion to be a good person. We need to build up, not tear down. We need to become a group that politicians aren't afraid to associate with. What sane politician can defend those signs? none, thats who. Lets change things the way MLK did: with love and compassion. We need to preach love, because you get more bees with honey. Please get your act together and stop impeding the progress that so many of us are out on the front lines fighting for.    

Paper Plato

Do Time Machines Already Exist?

     The most storied of all futuristic devices is of course the time machine. They allow us to visit the past, or to see what the future has in store. According to Einstein's theories, they should be possible. This would open up a new door to human progress. We could go back in time, for example, and kill Hitler while he was a child. The proposal also invites the famous Grandfather Paradox, where you go back in time and kill your grandfather, which leads to you never being born, and unable to kill him in the first place, which in turn leads you to be born, ad infinitum. The prospect of being able to visit the past is certainly exciting, but at least in my opinion, not as exciting as being able to peer into the future. We already know what the past was like (at least we think we do), and although the history of humans, and earth in general, is extremely interesting, I am more intrigued by a more ultimate unknown, the fate of humans, and of the planet. And I think that this form of time travel is possible. In the VERY near future.

     There are a few methods by which we could travel into the future that are based on Einsteins relativity. In fact we, and by we I mean most of us, have already traveled into the future a tiny bit using the first method I'll talk about. It exploits the fact that time moves more slowly for an object moving at a high velocity. If you want to understand how this works, here is a video. Essentially, its a result of the speed of light being constant, and if you understand how vectors work, you know that if light is moving at the speed of light in the Y direction, and it is moving at all in the X direction, then the light will be actually moving faster than light. To compensate for this, time is slowed down. Ok, so we can slow time down by moving fast, but how does that help us move into the future? We just more really REALLY fast. For example, (more info here) if you took a rocket ship flight at near the speed of light for about ten years, you would come back to the earth and it would be some 1000 years later (this is not the actual amount but you get the idea). So now you have essentially moved into the future 990 years. But this method sort of sucks. First of all, any self respecting time machine is instant. I don't want to wait ten years for my time machine to work, I want to press a button and be in the future. Also, this sounds extremely expensive an impractical. So lets discard this method. 

     The next method by which you can travel into the future is by occupying a point in space near a massive object. Einstein taught us that time slows in the presence of a gravitational field. How strong does this need to be to amount to a noticeable difference? Black hole strong. So we would have to fly around a black hole, careful not to fall past the event horizon, and hang out for a while. This method sucks for all the same reasons the first one does.

     There is however a final method, one which would be relatively inexpensive, and that has nothing to do with relativity (thank god), although to demonstrate why I consider it time travel, I will exploit one of Einsteins most insightful principles. First let me define what I consider time travel into the future. I'll tell it as if I am the time traveler. I walk into a room, or some machine. I am probably hooked up to some biofeedback machines, to monitor my vitals. I possibly am put asleep, so that I don't notice the loudness/unpleasant side effects of traveling in time. I disappear from the rest of humanity and then I wake up, exit the room/machine and I am in the future. I honestly don't care what method they used to transport me into the future, so long as what I described above happens, and this is why I believe we already have/are approaching the age of time machines. 

     Lets back up a few steps first. Today I had an upper endoscopy done and I was put asleep. I was talking to the doctor, and the next thing I knew I was finished. It felt like I had been transported 10 minutes into the future. Of course this is not the case, my body had aged those ten minutes, so I did not really travel in time. However, what if I could somehow preserve the state of my body? What if I could be put to sleep for 1000 years and wake up in the same body I have now? would I have traveled in time? Not in the really cool science fictiony way that we usually associate with time travel, but for all intents and purposes, yes. I could follow the exact same narrative I outlined above with this method. In fact, it even loosely follows Einstein's Equivalence Principle. The Equivalence principle basically states that if something, for example, feels like gravity and behaves like gravity, such as acceleration, then we can assume that it is gravity, and has all the properties of it. While this principle doesn't strictly apply to my argument, I dont think its a stretch. If it looks like time travel, feels like time travel, has all the effects of time travel, then for all intents and purposes, it is time travel. 

     How, though, do we go about preserving someone's body, (and their mind) for 1000 years? Walt Disney might know something about that actually. The process of vitrification promises that we can basically freeze ourselves and be thawed out in a later point in time. If this actually works, then we could use this process for my version of time travel. Who would have thought that Walt Disney would be a pioneer of the 4th dimention?! Also there is another process, which is far more promising, less expensive, and within out technological reach called "gorking." Its rather involved, so follow that link to a TED Talk about the subject. Basically, they can put organisms into a state of suspended animation, where they slow all metabolic activity to a standstill, essentially preserving the bodies. If they can perfect this technique, and be able to keep something in suspended animation indefinitely, then we will be able to use this to travel forward in time. 

     So do time machines exist? yes and no. There is no machine, but techniques to move you forward in time theoretically do exist, and their reality is approaching. Would I be interested in trying it? Of course! I'd kill to see where we are even 100 years from now. Fortunately, I don't think I'll have to travel in time to see the distant future, but that is another topic for another post. 

The secret to iProducts? Apple Sauce.

     Unless you're my grandmother, you know that the tech world is abuzz with iPhone 5 rumors, some likely, some unlikely. As for the likely, if not confirmed, we know that the iPhone will feature a 4 inch screen, give or take a few hundredths of an inch. We also know that it will be slightly thinner due to a new process that  allows them to embed the touch sensors into the lcd itself (looks like we will not see a super amoled+ screen anytime soon from cupertino). There are many more, however this is not an iPhone rumor roundup, but this is: iPhone rumor roundup. Now that you've read about all the new fancy features that the iPhone may or may not have, its time to talk about why the iPhone's supremacy isnt going to fade anytime soon.

     First off, regardless of how many other rival smartphones there are, everything still is compared to the iPhone. The retarded amount of buildup for the iPhone (or iAnything for that matter) is evidence enough for that. Read c|net: the number one ranked phone, tablet, and laptop are all Apple products, even a year into their life cycle. Do I think they are the best products on the market right now? Hell no. Were they the best products when they were released? debatable. What apple possesses, however, that no other tech company does, is what I like to call Apple Sauce. Apple has style, they really do. All the products look like they belong together in some futuristic art project. They are clean, and despite being metal and glass, look amazingly organic. All the praise in the world to Jonathan Ives, the brain behind the design of everything that begins with a lower case i. Samsung has no continuity, Motorola is also lacking, does Nokia exist in my mind? no. Apple has Apple Sauce, and everything they make drips the shit. 

     I read a lot of tech news. A LOT. And I read a lot of comments as well. I hear a lot of people saying that the iPhone is constantly playing catch up to the latest Android phones, but I also hear the exact opposite. Who is right? well...neither really. They are different type of racers. Think of the 800 meter. There are sprinter types and distance types of racers. Same race, different strategy. Likewise, there are Android phones and the iPhone. They are both awesome and both are competing for the same market. The android phones are superior in terms of tech specs and software capabilities. I can do things with my year and a half old Droid Incredible 2 that people with iPhones dont even know are possible. The software is more flexible and overall a more diverse and powerful tool. This is the strength of Android. What the iPhone lacks in tech specs it makes up for in Apple Sauce. This is the combination of being easy to use, great (great) touch screen, smooth transitions, higher quality apps, amazing aesthetics, a million peripherals, and a whole lot of other things I'm sure you already know about. These things make the iPhone a very valuable commodity. And if all the rumors are to be believed, the iPhone will now match the best android handsets in terms of screen size, processor speed, and a lot of previously android specific functions (im forgetting there are any other smartphone platforms for the moment), like turn by turn GPS, and a host of others that will be covered by the upgrades that come along with iOS 6. Oh, and it will probably be waterproof thanks to Zagg. 

     So when the iPhone 5 comes out we will see a device that offers a lot of what Android cannot, and that also offers a lot of what previously only Android could. And its going to be up to Google and company to make up for lost ground, and I'm sure they will. All in all, the average consumer doesn't decide which phone they want based on tech specs and software features. They buy them based on price, what their friends have, what looks nice, and what straight up works best. It depends in who you are. But in the end, the iPhones offers a hell of a lot, and with a contract isn't absurdly pricey. And with all that Apple Sauce its hard to resist. 

On My Disdain for Liberal Fluff

     I hate the GOP. Just getting that out there. I also hate Fox News. I hate when the media lies, distorts, misrepresents, or takes out of context. And its not just Fox, although they are the most blatant, and least apologetic offender. But both sides do it. Here is an article by Mollie Riley of the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/19/kevin-yoder_n_1808537.html. Now that you've read it, I'm sure you are as embarrassed as I am, but let me start from the beginning...
     Huff Post is unabashedly liberal, and I like it that way. I check it every day because it aggregates a whole lot of content and a good deal of it has substance, most notably the op-eds. However, is also contains some of the fluffiest fluff on the net, and occasionally it makes it onto the front page. At the time of this posting, the article I've linked to is THE FUCKING FRONT PAGE ARTICLE. Its not that its merely unsubstantial, given the gravity of some of the events of today, but also that the article represents everything I hate about the liberal media. There, I said it, right from the mouth of Bill O. I hate the liberal media. Wait what!? Yes, I'm a liberal. But don't see being a liberal as some form of opinion. Its more of an apparent truth (dare I say "truthiness"). I believe that reality validates my standpoint. And this being the case, I also believe that if a news source were to cover the news in a non biased way, it would seem to have an inherent "liberal bias," which is in fact, just thetrue nature of things. And that is why I hate these stupid GOP bashing articles. Its a non issue for christ's sake! The man went skinny dipping in a river! sounds to me like a hell of a fucking time, especially when its the river Jesus supposedly walked on. I'd do that in a heartbeat and tell everyone and their grandmother about it. However, Huff Post used the story as a pointless attack, and the only thing this does is give Fox and the GOP an argument they can win.
     If you watch Fox, you'll notice a hell of a lot liberal media bashing, and some of it for good reason. They deserve to be vilified for this type of journalism just as much as Fox does, if not more, because in my opinion, they could right true, substance filled articles to prove their point instead of this shit, whereas Fox must spin to survive. Every time the liberal media, and I really do admire their conviction, makes this big of a deal about a story this idiotic, they are throwing gasoline directly in the conservative media engine. If you watch Fox and see O'reilly say, "Here goes the liberal media pointlessly attacking a Republican." You are gonna think that this is the sort of stuff they need to resort to. Because they are resorting to it! And this is the problem, because they needn't. Please Huff Post and other liberal media outlets, refrain from publishing this type of  bullshit. When politics are concerned, people are going to side with those who win the most arguments, not the most important. If you constantly hear about the Huff Post bashing Republicans for stupid shit, you're not gonna give as much thought to the thoughtful articles, because it makes the whole site look bad, and it undoes everything good that it has going for it. Lets keep the BS out of the discourse, and lets win every argument, even if that means waiting for them to come at us.

What to expect

     I hope to use this blog in a number of ways. Most importantly I'd like to document the evolution of my own beliefs on the relevant subjects of this blog. I have many thoughts ranging a number of subjects on any given day, but I often fail to remember them, so this is my archive, a journal if you will. Also, I'd like to reach an intelligent audience.
     This blog is not for everyone. I will more often than not assume that you have the internet at your disposal (safe assumption), so you can both fact check and research background information on whatever subject I'm writing about. I will provide links if I can.
      I have an unhealthy obsession with politics and philosophy alike, because I believe the two cannot be separated, although you would never know that given the current political climate here in the US. I routinely browbeat my friends and family, preaching my own flavor of liberalism and condemning all that impedes progress. Even to those who agree with me I can annoy, and that is why I'm creating this blog. I can reach an audience that wants to listen, and even if nobody reads it, I still have a place to collect my thoughts.