Ever done a too many people in the boat type of hypothetical situation? The kind where you’re with a group of people, and then you have to pretend that you’re in a lifeboat. Then comes the catch: There’s not enough room for everyone in the lifeboat! Who to dump out?

Kids come up with the most creative answers. I remember having an idea to have people take turns on the outside. There is almost never enough limiting factors, so you just have to end up pretending that there are no other options for the hypothetical situation to work.

This way of thinking is incorrect. We should encourage the creative answers to save everyone. The hypothetical situation is ridiculous.

Here’s another one: You’re in your home. You have a gun. A thief is in your house, and it’s either his life or yours.

Logical fallacy: False dilemma

Just as with the lifeboat situation, you are not allowed to come up with creative answers. But if you were placed in that situation, why would the choice be to kill? The situation kills a myriad of other factors. A thief does not come to kill you. A thief comes to thieve. Often, they do not want to be involved in killing. It’s much messier to cover up. And, you with the gun, you don’t necessarily have to shoot to kill.

Ah, but what if the person intends to kill you. The water is freezing cold so you can’t have people swimming outside the lifeboat. Well, maybe if there were more lifeboats, we wouldn’t be in this situation! And maybe if you or others hadn’t chosen certain actions, you wouldn’t be in that situation, either! A hypothetical situation often disregards the past in order to create its false dilemmas.

In real, non-hypothetical, life, there are always other choices. Perhaps you don’t have the time, or training, to think of them, but they are out there. Maybe if you had taken the time to figure out the other choices, the situation wouldn’t feel so pathetically, and paradoxically… hypothetical.

I’m really pushing it with the renewal of my webhosting, and I had some problems with the renewal process, so my weblog could be down on the 11th until who knows when (hopefully not that long).

Why does Opus get half a page on Sunday?! Is it really that much funnier than other comics (or even funny at all) to deserve more space? No. Actually, I like half-page Sunday comics, I’m just objecting to the fact that only Opus gets half a page (at least in the San Jose Mercury News). I’d love it if other comics got that much space, especially Monty.

Nonlethal weapons have a lower “use threshold,” meaning that they are more likely to be used more often. Could a war be waged with weapons that don’t kill? The logistics of taking that many prisoners would be horribly unfeasible. It’d be hard to secure any places.

Weapons of mass nonlethal destruction would have different problems. I’m envisioning a weapon that could perhaps put an entire city to sleep, or temporarily paralyze them. This would be especially effective in towns where weapons are produced. Imagine infrastructure temporarily completely shut down. Scary. Though, to be most effective, the weapon would be used simultaneously in multiple cities. Then, one could conceivably just waltz in and capture the leaders.

It’d be just like having nuclear weapons go off, only no one gets killed.

Yet, what happens when these weapons proliferate? Entire economies devastated because people in all the big cities in many countries are temporarily incapacitated. Couldn’t a whole small country be held at bay?

After the success in wars, smaller ones will be developed for civil unrest. Dictators will hold their populations hostage. First, they can be incapacitated, and the later killing is optional. Then, these same populations will be incapacitated again when they are quickly “liberated” by new forces.

Nonlethal weapons are still violent and still carry some of the same consequences as lethal violence.

Browse the Library of Congress’s Selected Civil War Photographs Collection. I had to look at it for a history assignment, but I actually found them to be rather interesting (unlike some other unusable sites I’ve been directed to before). Then again, the Civil War has fascinated me for a long time.

I will eventually get back to writing about weapons…

If cigarette companies successfully combatted the information that smoking causes cancer for years, why can’t we do the same with Osama bin Laden’s purported tapes? Produce propaganda that outright lies, denying that bin Laden ever made any tapes after the war in Afghanistan. There only needs to be a few “scientists” to claim this, in order to produce controversy. As long as there is a perceived debate, people will be apt to believe that bin Laden is dead. It takes some of the “oomph” out of the War on Terror, but, oh well. Actually, if your goal is what’s in the previous sentence, there’s your ticket.

Advantages? Helps calm the American public. Sending out the propaganda now would go along nicely with Saddam’s recent capture. It could also put doubt in the minds of the international community, taking away from his message.

Just a wild idea I had: Develop weapons that can temporarily incapacitate hundreds (thousands?) of people, without killing them. How would that affect warfare? I’ll try continuing this thread tomorrow.

Lucid dreaming is when you’re dreaming and you are aware that you’re dreaming. There are various levels of lucidity. When you know you’re dreaming, you’re more likely to have the ability to control that dream. You can do what you want, since it has no consequences. There are certain signs that can tip you off as to whether you’re having a dream or not. Here’s my current list:

• Deja vu – I have never experienced deja vu when I’m awake. I think it comes from previous dream experiences which are only remembered vaguely.
• Wondering whether this is a dream or not – If I have to ask yourself if I’m dreaming, then I am dreaming. When things are real, I have no problem identifying that they are real.
• Flying – This isn’t just restricted to flying, actually. It also applies to when gravity is not working properly.
• Eyes not opening properly – Sometimes I have problems with my eyelids when I’m dreaming.
• Changing scenery/Unstable environment – This is a sign I have in my head, but it’s almost never the one that manages to tip me off.
• Being lost in a place I know well – This isn’t quite the same as the previous item. This environment is relatively stable while I dream, but the place is way off from what it should be while awake. Sometimes, this manages to produce deja vu.

There are more, but I’ve yet to actually use them.

I added kausfiles to my weblog links on the side. It’s “a mostly political Weblog.”

Campell’s Chunky: Tackling Hunger is just the kind of thing Jesus preached against. Jesus was against charity? No, Jesus was against turning charity into publicity events. Okay, I’m not religious, but you don’t have to be to see the inherent hypocrisy of this.

Take a look at their tagline: “Campbell’s® Chunky™ soup and the NFL™ are teaming up and Tackling Hunger!™” Really, can you have enough trademark symbols? This isn’t charity; it’s corporate whoring.

I find it hypocritical that so many football stars endorse Nike yet still believe they’re charitable by doing publicity stunts like this. Will you help more people by giving them some cans of soup that only last so long, or by helping people earn a living wage?

Do you really need to be a proper, trained marketing expert to figure out which words to use? Words not to use: middle class, working class, average people. These convey meanings of mediocrity. People don’t want to be mediocre. They also can convey a sense of class conflict. Many people don’t like to be aware of class conflict and think too much of communism. Words to use: real people. Real is more positive, and also portrays the upper class as phony. I need to think of more words to use and not use.

What’s the relevance of this? It relates to propaganda. I believe that to combat opposing propaganda, you must be successful with your own propaganda. Propaganda isn’t necessarily negative. That’s why I brought up the idea of ads in another entry. So, if I want to help the middle class, and the workers, I need to think of the correct words to use, those which would look more appealing in ads.

The roots of some of our societal problems today can be traced to the deification of corporations. This is deification as defined as promoting to the status of a deity. Not all deities are benevolent.

We see corporations as these noncorporeal entities seeking to devour all in their path. The deity must feed and grow. It feeds on money. All else does not matter. And yet, we rationalize it. What can you do? It’s a corporation.

I read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, recently. There’s a passage in there about the people taking the land away, and they blame it on the bank. The people losing their farms can’t attack the people taking it away, because they only represent the bank. The people don’t know who to fight.

We still don’t know who to fight. You can try to blame it on the CEOs, but propaganda has turned them into victims. They are victims of the corporation. This new deity that must be fed. What can they do?

The problem arises from apathy. We think we can do nothing. We think these corporations are evil monsters that we can’t fight because what is there to physically fight?

But a corporation is made up of people. It is made of CEOs and other board members. It is made of many employees. It is made of the stockholders. It is made up of people.

The corporation isn’t fueled by money. It is fueled by the consumers. The consumers are people.

These people have choices. They should be held accountable for their choices. They can’t blame it on these new undefeatable deities. They can’t explain away their problems from new mythology based on these deities. They can’t pretend that if they appease the deity, it will grant them miracles. Because a corporation isn’t a deity…

A corporation is created and maintained by people.

Not going to directly talk about them, but the anti-smoking ads do exist. I just wonder if the same type of thing can be done for other issues. You smoke, it’s a vice, and it isn’t guaranteed to kill you. Sweatshops on the other hand…

I doubt states would ever do this, but perhaps if someone had enough capital, they could buy up ad space.

Or maybe, many people could contribute to help buy the ad space — maybe during the next Superbowl.

The first step toward action is awareness.

My comments got spammed sometime last week. Luckily it wasn’t too many entries, so I deleted them. I hope this doesn’t become a bigger problem for me. Hopefully, MT will come out with bulk deletions for comments sometime. I don’t even want to waste any hatred on spam.

Things I Need to Write About in this Weblog in October… a list…

• prayer
• propaganda as an American tradition
• republic vs. democracy
• control and how it relates to the value of objects
• control and how it relates to people
• more about Catcher in the Rye

Human beings are funny. We make up all these aliens and heroes and give them one major flaw. One weakness. Aliens that always seem invincible except for one weakness. Superman’s only weakness was kryptonite.

I don’t know why we come up with those things when we don’t have only one weakness. Practically every part of a human being is weak. You can get hit on the head, leg, arm, torso, and it hurts. Every part of the body is a target. Many places can deliver a killing blow, or incapacitate you easily. We only wish we were near invincible beings.

I don’t learn by normal methods… I operate on the principle of Knowlege Diffusion. The information contained in a book is a high pressure area, a source. My brain doesn’t have that information. It is a low pressure area, a sink. So, I just read a book, or listen to the teacher, and I just absorb the information. Then, when it comes time for a test, Knowledge Diffusion prevails again. The test paper is a sink, and my brain is the source. So, I just let the knowledge diffuse out onto the paper. It’s very simple.

The opposite of diffusion is active transport (as I learned in AP Bio… bad memories). Active transport involves energy. I don’t like using up energy. It makes me tired, and it burns me out. And then, I have to make sure the knowledge doesn’t diffuse out when it’s not supposed to, meaning I have to work hard to remember.

For me, that energy used in active transport often comes in units of worry. Worrying is useless because it doesn’t change anything. Stress is another unit. Stress is not good for the mind or the body. Knowledge Diffusion does not involve stress or worry. I just know the information.

Tomorrow: Commentary on the recall debate that I actually watched parts of, this time. Still to come: More on prayer.

Remember.

I’m working on a new archive based on categories. MoveableType is so handy. So, at the bottom of some entries is a Category link. I’ll be adding more categories over the week, changing some of them, and putting all the entries under one category or another.

The title says “and More.” Well, these latest entries about television aren’t working out too well, and I need to do something about it. So, I’m going to take a break from the television entries, then come back when I can look at things a little more in depth.

Too tired tonight to write, but I’ll be doing stuff on television over tomorrow and part of next week. By the way, Bad Boys II is a spectacular movie.

I didn’t update. But here’s something along the lines of what I was thinking of putting:

And that’s why I don’t write about what I do. Because it’s all crap. It’s boring; I don’t do anything exciting. And, very often, neither do a lot of people. That’s why I write about what I’m thinking instead, because my mind is more interesting.

One could blame the (intentionally) dry writing style, but I still don’t see any point to what I wrote. It’s worse than reality TV. Now, all I have to do is add in some spelling and grammatical errors, take out most of the periods and paragraph breaks, add a few cryptic in-jokes, and, voila, there’s your average weblogger’s entry.

Reciprocating a link to Lloyd. “I found your dry recitation of yesterday’s events rather interesting, actually…” As always, Lloyd makes a good point. Whenever I find things interesting about what people have done, it nearly always contains something unique that piques my interest. Ironically, it’s the dry style that is what’s unique in my writing. Haha.

Coincidentally, Stevie has something related. “What is WITH people and their “trendy” blog-type sites? It amazes me how many people maintain a blogger, xanga, AND livejournal, filling all three with the same pointless chatter…”

AH! It’s almost half-way through July! Where, o where, has my summer gone?

Continuity is a good thing in stories. As funny as randomness can be, continuity is the glue that holds the audiences eyes to the TV screen, or whatever the medium may be. Stories are only stories when they tell a story; that means there needs to be continuity.

[Update coming later today, I just wanted to get a little glimpse of how it looks to have a month with a link for everyday. Also, this is my 100th entry.]

What makes the Internet what it is? This! No, not my website. The concept of a hyperlink. What defines the internet and makes it different from any other medium is the hyperlink. With a book, you can look at the Further Reading list in the back, but you still got to go out, find, and buy or borrow the books. Meanwhile on the internet, you just clicky the little blue underlined thing (or any other color or text decoration it happens to have). Relatively instantly, it can take you anywhere, relevant or irrelevant.

People can write a little diary, and even show it to people. But with a weblog, you truly have the power to share. Sharing doesn’t mean sharing your stuff with others, but others sharing their things with you. It’s also you sharing other people’s work, and them in turn sharing yours with other people. And even me sharing myself, and you sharing yourself.

It’s that amazing little concept of the hyperlink that lets you create something with multiple pages, that you can view in any order. Hyperlinks create a non-linear environment.Take away almost anything else and the internet still works. Take away e-mail. Take away instant messenger. Heck, even take away search engines. The internet still works. But take away the hyperlink, and there’s no more internet. All you have is a bunch of unconnected works.

It’s all about being connected. You connected to me. Me connected to you. Everyone connected to everyone. And once we’ve gone forward, we can’t go back. We’re stuck being connected to each other, whether we like it or not.

That being said, I should make it a goal to link more often. This is the internet. I should embrace what defines the internet. I should embrace sharing and being connected. If I expect others to (eventually) read what I write, I should expect myself to read what they write. And the only way they know that I’ve read, is to respond when I see fit.

[Oh and why not start now! Coming soon…]

Religion, etc.

Been browsing links on Lloyd’s weblog, and looking over those kids’ entries reminds me of when I went through similar stages. Glad I didn’t have a weblog then. Now, I’m comfortable with my atheism. I don’t need to go out to prove anything because my atheism derives from the fact that there is no proof for any religion. No proof for religion, so I don’t follow any religion. That simple, as I said a while back.

Even though I understand their angle, it still makes me cringe. Since I go to a Catholic school, I probably know more about Christianity than a lot of Christians. And next year, I’m taking a World Religions course.

Look at this entry by Dianne, who I’ll assume is from Lloyd’s AIC class. The most important thing to Jesus was love. (Look at which commandment he said was the greatest of them all.) Now, that doesn’t mean you have to be nice to everyone, but it means you should be constructive. There’s one story in there when they bring in a lady who committed adultery and ask Jesus what they should do with her. He says something like, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Think of how different this would have turned out if Jesus simply said, “Fuck all you all.”

Hey Stevie, a lack of belief in god is still atheism. But you say you could be wrong, so that could make you agnostic. Some people think an agnostic is an atheist without guts. That’s what I was when I was agnostic. I know you’re not into religion, but this is just a general shout-out. It’s okay to take a position, as long as you know you’re comfortable with it. And, it’s okay to be wrong. If new facts come along, then take them into consideration and change your viewpoint.

Oh, and here’s one of my fun adventures with a proselytizer, for anyone that’s interested.

I really don’t have that much against proselytizers. Everyone has their own views. Everyone thinks that they’re right. So, naturally, other people are wrong, and something must be done to rectify this. It’s human nature. It’s just that people should know themselves just what they’re trying to convince people to do or believe. A lot of times with religion, they don’t, so that’s why it seems so annoying a lot of times, at least to me.

Changed the colors a little bit, and some formatting all around to make this blog a little more personalized. I’ve got it almost the way I want it; there’s still a little bit of messing around I have to do with the archive pages.

Going with a little shades of grey theme here… It could be symbolic. Shades of grey. Grey area in philosophy. I don’t know. I just think it looks rather nice.

After this, and once summer starts, I’ll be working on the design for agnoiology.com, which is not up yet.

This is actually the first time I’ve missed updating for two days in a row. I’m still rather tired, so I’m only going to talk about the meaning of life today.

Quite simply, according to my worldview, there is no meaning of life. Life is just a natural product of the universe. It serves no superior purpose.

One could make an argument that the purpose of life is to reproduce. That’s what evolution has programmed us to do. However, I don’t view that as a purpose. It’s a natural happening that occured because it allows life to continue. It’s almost like saying that the purpose of life is to live.

Maybe the meaning of life being to live is not so ridiculous a statement. Even the religious can agree with this. Christians think that life is precious because it is God’s creation. So would the meaning of life be to live in order to use the most precious gift?

Still, I want to go deeper than this semi-circular meaning. Why do I want to continue to live? Once death occurs, I can’t do anything anymore. So, I want to continue living in order to experience things. What sort of things? Everything, perhaps.

If you had to choose only one emotion to experience for the rest of your life, what would you choose? Chances are, you chose happiness. There are some more creative answers, such as surprise or comfort, but these are derivatives of happiness. And those who chose surprise (or who are now thinking it’s a cool choice) should be more specific. Embarrased surprise, angry surprise (such as that of discovery a spouse cheating), or maybe… happy surprise? Could someone possibly choose to be sad or angry for the rest of their lives?

What’s the point of living if you’re not happy? Going back to what I said earlier about experiencing everything, I think experiencing other emotions allows you to appreciate happiness more, just as tragedies can teach us to value human lives more.

Thus, I think the meaning of life is to be happy. Now it’s only a question of what makes people happy.