Ah, once thriving communities reduced to what…

buzzComix: It’s been having problems due to coding issues that eat up bandwith. Today, and for a while, this has been the buzzComix website: “Forbidden. You don’t have permission to access / on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.” The toplist that replaced TWC seems to be no more.

Speaking of TWC, it was eventually owned by new people. I checked on it periodically a while back, and noticed it had assimilated some of buzzComix’s special features. Check out the state of it today: “Over a year ago, we lost the codebehind files for TWC. This was due to migrating between many offices, and it was a lack of proper backup procedures. We’ve known we were operating on borrowed time, as eventually we would need to restore the site and lack the ability. It finally happened on May 10th, 2005. During a regular update, a critical assembly file was lost. The site you are reading right now, was only 40% finished, and very little had been tested.” Hooray for responsibility!

It’s a small world. The next list I mention is by the guy who used to own TWC. This is the state of the semi-recently made Webcomics List: “Friday 13th, eh… I accidently erased some files of WCL and lost changes I’ve made since January (like the customizable voting). I’ll code it back in eventually but yea… that’s about it.”

I find it interesting that they’re all having problems at the same time. I wonder if buzzComix will survive.

In developing my philosophy of self, I’m beginning to make broad connections, starting to build a framework. However, I’ve discovered that what I’ve begun exploring is dependent upon the existence of free will. It seems if free will doesn’t exist, all my conclusions are moot. (What conclusions? I can’t tell you yet, they’re raw and unrefined. When I’ve coalesced more information, then it’ll be suitable for public consumption.) I look back to a giant list of big questions I made one day, and one of them is: “Is there free will?” I wonder if I should just forge forward or address this seemingly unanswerable question. Moreover: Does it matter if we actually have free will or not, as long as we have the illusion of free will? And what of democracy, freedom, and capitalism? Is that dependent upon free will, as well? Hm.

So, I stood in line for hours to see the 12:10 AM showing of “Kicking and Screaming” starring Will Ferrell.

Naw, just kidding. Instead, I saw a movie with marginally better acting. I saw the 12:10 AM showing of Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith today. I showed up at the theater sometime between 8 and 9, meaning I waited in line for a helluva long time. And part of that time in line involved rain.

However, it was all worth it! I loved the movie! Way better than the first two! (Don’t worry, no spoilers here.)

[listlog later this weekend]

If at any point you must say, “anyway, my point is…”, you’ve made a mistake. What one says should be relevant to the point. If it’s not all too relevant, why did you say it in the first place? Meandering about without a purpose merely makes people bored, at least in terms of what people are hearing or reading. People ignore everything up to those magic words, wondering, “What’s the point?” If people won’t listen to it, it shouldn’t be said. If people will skip over that portion when reading, it shouldn’t be written. That’s a note to self to keep things focused and to the point.

Saletan on Intelligent Design, May 11, 2005: What Matters in Kansas – The evolution of Creationism.

Saletan on Intelligent Design, February 13, 2002: Unintelligible Redesign – This is the way creationism ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

I don’t understand at all how Saletan can say that Intelligent Design has “evolved” in any way. The arguments they’re peddling in Kansas are exactly the same arguments they were peddling in Ohio. Pluralism, what he calls a more evolved monster (or “creationism’s more advanced Homo erectus phase”) in 2005, is exactly what the supporters of ID were promoting in Ohio, in 2002 — “According to ID proponents, the committee in charge of Ohio’s science curriculum is too ‘homogenous’ and lacks ‘diversity.’ It marginalizes alternative ‘points of view’ to which students should be ‘exposed.'” We even see the same actors: John Calvert was at Kansas and Ohio.

In 2002, Saletan informs us that ID is “non-living, non-breathing proof that religion has surrendered its war against science.” That is hardly the cry to arms he advises in 2005, for scientists to go on the offensive in disproving ID. But why should evolutionists take ID seriously now if there has been no change since 2002?

However, that’s not the real question. The real question is why have Saletan’s views changed on ID. How come “it’s too bad [scientists and liberals] go around sneering, as censors of science often have, that the new theory is too radical, offensive, or embarrassing to be taken seriously,” when in 2002, he criticized these same people for being “hysterical” in their response to ID, for taking it too seriously, in essence?

The two titles of his articles sum it up perfectly. How could Creationism be evolving now if it ended in a whimper in 2002?

I’ve decided that I really, really don’t like lies. And liars.

I posted yesterday’s entry, Saletan Misunderstands Falsification, with some minor edits, as Misunderstanding Falsification in the Fray, Slate‘s reader discussion forum.

See that little blue check mark by it? That means it’s an Editor’s Pick! Ah good, so I haven’t regressed to writing complete drivel these days.

falsifiable adj: capable of being tested (verified or falsified) by experiment or observation.

In What Matters in Kansas, Saletan plays the anti-intellectual line to a tee, portraying scientists as “sneering” know-it-all’s. Really, Mr. Saletan, ain’t that a little cliche?

Saletan says creationism has evolved, implying that its current incarnation as Intelligent Design is scientific because it “abandons Biblical literalism, embraces open-minded inquiry, and accepts falsification, not authority, as the ultimate test.” [emphasis mine] Yet, then, he goes on to say, “All you’re left with is an assortment of gaps in evolutionary theory—how did DNA emerge, what happened between this and that fossil—and the vague default assumption that an ‘intelligence’ might fill in those gaps. Calvert and Harris call this assumption a big tent. But guess what happens to a tent without poles.”

This is precisely why evolutionists do not “facilitate this collapse.” Using his analogy against him, one cannot knock down a tent with no poles because there are no poles to knock down. ID cannot be taken seriously because it is not scientific, and it is not scientific because it is not falsifiable. It’s not that the “new theory is too radical, offensive, or embarrassing to be taken seriously.” ID is not even a theory in the first place; it’s an assumption, as Saletan himself asserts.

That’s not a sneer on their faces… that’s exasperation.

Anyone remember my axiom of self? That line of thinking didn’t go far. However, I’ve been working lately at separate pieces of thoughts, hoping to bring it together into what I like to call an “internal consistent philosophy.” Today, I had a breakthrough — my personal corollary to Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” It is as follows: “How I think determines who I am.”

Now, you may not think it particularly brilliant, but it’s actually a very important step in creating an all-encompassing “internal consistent philosophy.” This will be what allows me to connect my axiom of self to how I should live, when I start to think about what determines how I think. Of course, I have no answers to that question yet (How I should live, I mean), but I should be on my way.

How can cheating be hilarious when some people do it, but despicable when others do it?

I found this incomplete entry from 9/18/04. I started it, saved the draft, and never finished it. Take a look, maybe I’ll pick up where it left off in another entry:

At the end of the school year, practically everyone remarks, “Wow, I can’t believe the year went by so fast!”

Of course, I would scoff at this exclamation. The year did not go by very fast: The ridiculous amount of work made the year creep by.

I remember distinctly at the end of eighth grade that I felt time was moving just right. I didn’t need it to speed up, so I could get to drive and then grow up; I didn’t need it to slow down, because I was getting ready to at least start growing up. That summer, I attended the Advanced Internet Classroom at ATDP, and the pace of that class drifted at just the right velocity.

Ninth grade messed up my perception of time, and I can trace it to one specific date: 9/11, 2001. No matter how many months we progressed through, I still felt as if I could just peek over my shoulder, and 9/11 would be right behind me. Now, I live in California, about as far away as you can get from New York, in the continental US, and I didn’t know anyone who died in 9/11 — nonetheless, it affected me that greatly…

I used a gerund instead of a noun for a reason: I’m talking about the act of ignoring, not the uninformed state of ignorance. I’m beginning to think that part of success hinges upon the ability to skillfully discard unnecessary information.

Ironically, the way I’m going to explain this is through roundabout reasoning. I’ll start with what I can think of, and we’ll see if I eventually get back to my argument.

There is something I like to call The Opposites Game. Ever chase someone in looping-type path (like around a house) and then pause at a corner? Begin to wonder which side they’ll come from next? Take that kind of feeling, and now pretend you’re playing poker. Your opponent is over-acting, as if he has bad cards. Now, he could be doing the obvious and actually have bad cards, but he’s got to be more crafty than that. He probably actually has bad cards and wants the overacting to trick you. Or, he’s planning on you thinking that, and he actually has good cards. Or… you’re too busy playing The Opposites Game to know what’s really going on anymore. Round and round the corner, which way will he come from next?

There’s a paralyzing effect when you get into that infinite spiral of reasoning. Too many choices, too much information prevents us from thinking efficiently. Just look at a menu with lots of choices. Often, I’ll spend a lot of time just looking at it, but never registering any of the information. There’s just too much there. I don’t know what I want. Thank goodness for headings. I gravitate towards the bold print and decide if I want pasta or beef, or something else. One should cultivate the ability to narrow choices down.

Don’t believe that too many choices are bad? Do you think too few choices are bad? Look at In-n-Out’s menu. The menu is so small, yet it’s still successful. Sure, one may chide the lack of choices before ordering, but rarely does one say so after eating. The truth is, who really needs an endless array of variation-burgers?

A glut of information is unnecessary. Let’s think about memorization. You have a test where there are multiple equations to memorize. First of all, the amount of information is paralyzing. Next, it’s hard to recall which equation to use when you have too many of them. Too many because let’s say, hypothetically, that you can easily derive some equations from other ones. Why memorize two equations and the combined equation? What use is that combined equation when you can just solve for things logically?

There’s an advantage in concept-based learning. You learn how to solve variations on problems, rather than problems specific to a certain method. Application v. memorization. Sure, there’s always need for some memorization, but one should learn how to minimize memorization. You can memorize lots of parts and figure out the whole, or you can memorize the whole and derive the parts. Think hard every time about which steps you’ve memorized in a progression, or think about the end product and work backwards using logic? Life becomes easier when you figure out which information is useless and which information is useful. Some people tend to overthink things and read too much into things, and that hurts them.

Let’s go back to the card game, where you’re playing The Opposites Game. Simplify things. You’re not trying to figure out what crazy logic the person is using. You don’t have to completely read his mind and his reasoning. The question is simple: Does he have good cards or bad cards? Overthinking it makes it impossible to answer. When you’re trying to read the person, just take the overall initial impression. Decide whether they have the cards or not, not what they’re thinking about doing. Extra things they do often throw you off. And believe it or not, if they’re playing The Opposites Game too, they probably don’t even know what they’re thinking themselves. How can you read the mind of a person who doesn’t know what he’s thinking? Concentrate on the issue at hand rather than trying playing The Opposites Game.

Could you have done without all my roundabout musings? Yes, of course. And is there more that I should have said? Yes. Could I have clarified things better? Yes. But I’ll leave it to you to do the proper sifting to receive the proper message. Good luck.

… just 4 more ap exams… only 4 more… I can make it…

Hey everyone, just have to inform you that I started a new comic: The Chalkboard Manifesto. It’ll be updated every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.

It’s only 8:23 AM (Hey, I’m a teenager, that’s a very, very early time to get up on a weekend), but today has already been awesome. The coolest thing I did today was jam in the Denny’s parking lot at around 1:00 in the morning with Richard — me on trombone, him on flute. I thought they were gonna shut us down a few times, but they didn’t.

We played for a while. I think we did about 5 songs. We started with some Latin thing. I had figured out the piano riff in Spill the Wine… well, at least the basic notes. Anyway, I was playing that, but I didn’t know the exact melody; so, I played whatever. Then, we did the funk chart. (Yes, I said “the” because there’s a funk melody that we came up with before.) Next, we played… I don’t know how to describe it, other than it was in Bb major… I think. Then, came another song that I have a better grasp of conceptually, but it’s hard to explain in words. Basically, the bass line, you play C-G-(up octave)-C-(back down)-G, and the notes are on 1 and the and of 2. It’s something we were jamming on before one of the musical rehearsals, only I was on piano. Finally, I remember initially thinking about some kind of circus thing. Then, I started playing and it turned into some 6/8 G minor thing. (Yeah, I keep using the word “thing”, sorry.) Eventually, it morphed out of 6/8. I don’t know how that happened.

While we were playing that, Frannie and Sara and some other people came out of Denny’s. Richard and I played “Yeah” for about 10 seconds. Then, we went home.

Just downloaded Opera 8. Don’t know yet if I like it better. However, I have high hopes for the Voice options.

I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. I scheduled it last week. That was the only time they had open! Hooray for HMO’s!

Wow! The Virgin Mary appears! People of faith rejoice! This freaking water stain is proof that the new pope will be a really cool guy.

Oh geeze. Why are people so dumb? That’s our brain looking for patterns… a pleasant byproduct not unlike seeing images in clouds (or the devil’s face in smoke). How can you flock to this? How can you pray to this? AND YOU WONDER WHY ATHEISTS MOCK RELIGION? All you have to do is change your angle and it doesn’t even look like anything.

“Delgado said she had been praying to the Virgin Mary to help her pass a final in culinary school when she saw the image.” You know, maybe it might help you better if instead of praying, you were studying? Hm?

“A Canadian woman also said she saw the Blessed Mother and baby Jesus on a Lay’s Smokey Bacon Chip.” Behold the Almighty’s power! He can make images appear on potato chips!

“That’s the image that’s portrayed in the Bible. Many miracles have happened, but this is one that just appeared.” I dunno, for me, a miracle is little more miraculous…. And besides, lady, my Bible don’t got any pictures in it. (Unless you consider maps to be pictures.)

I can’t recall a time when acting on a random whim has ever worked for me. Perhaps I should play life more like how I play poker.

Although I lean a bit towards the right, I am extremely against the so-called nuclear option. The filibuster is an important part of democracy and tradition. We need it to protect our republic against things like civil rights legislation.