Thursday, November 30, 2017

Predatory Practices

Predatory Practices.

I don't know who came up with or whence it came from but quite frankly I don't care. It's a term generally used by populists and leftists looking to demonize or 'regulate' unfettered capitalism and the free-enterprise system. "Unfettered" capitalism. There's another good for nothing meaningless Marxist phrase.

It's a terrible way of thinking presupposing an all too popular belief among the left that businesses exist for profit strictly by exploiting and gouging.

To think this way is to not understand business and concepts like 'economies of scale' and the idea that prices generally tend to come down over time thanks to efficiencies in production and rising demand.

No company wants to keep prices up for its own sake. They try and follow price signals and go where the demand takes them. If they price themselves out they're out of business because of competitive forces.

Regulation aiming to cap and manage prices only worsen things since it generally slows down entrepreneurial process and natural competition by way of new entrants into a market.- http://friendlymisanthropist.blogspot.com/2017/11/phrases-i-hate_26.html

A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the Women's Movement Has Been Disastrous

Guests: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, Helen Alvare, Betty Friedan, Karen S. Burstein, Camille Paglia, Kathryn Kolbert

Recorded on December 7, 1994

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Thank You For Not Breeding

"A short film by Nina Paley that explores the topic of human population growth and how it is affecting life on the planet. Using humor and some great clips featuring Les Knight of VHEMT.org, and Chris Korda of the Church of Euthanasia, Paley brings light to a topic that gets little attention in the traditional media." -from the YouTube video description.

Potoo Bird of Brazil

The Potoo bird of Brazil is nocturnal and hunts from a wooden perch. If it believes a threat is nearby it will freeze in place to avoid detection.

Do we have free will? Debate between Stephen Kershnar and John Keller

A debate between philosophers Stephen Kershnar and John Keller on October 22, 2015, at the University of Buffalo.

Q&A portion of Do we have free will? Debate between Stephen Kershnar and John Keller

1970 Pontiac GTO Judge

President of Coker Tires Wade Kawasaki stops by the garage to show Jay his 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge that was named after a popular character from the 60's Television show Laugh-In.

I'm posting this because I was randomly going through my blog and came across this old post: http://www.skepticaleye.com/2009/04/ponti-whacked.html. I featured an old GTO "The Judge" commercial in that post, and though I can't say I'm particular taken with that particular automobile, I do like old cars in general, and old muscle cars are really cool.

The one featured in the Jay Leno video above is a nice example of a near original. The car was in a garage for a couple of decades and only had 40-50,000 original miles. The interior is orignal, and in great condition, it just required a little cleaning. The body had no rust, so really, once the exterior and engine were restored, you have a Judge as it must have come from the factory when new.

More on Coker Tire:

Though Coker's products retain the appearance of the old tires by using the original, refurbished molds, or new molds built from original drawings, the tires are made with modern materials. Coker Tire was given manufacturing rights by the original tire brands, and also has acquired many different tire molds of the original obsolete tires they manufacture. Coker Tire also offers wheels for collector vehicles.- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coker_Tire

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: Bill Buckley and Firing Line Get Roasted with John Kenneth Galbraith, Harriet F. Pilpel, Henry Kissinger, Eugene J. McCarthy, Tom Wolfe, Jeff Greenfield

Recorded on January 14, 1986. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the show, which first aired in 1966.

How the Grammys Became the R&B/Hip Hop Awards

The Grammys in New York took a weird turn this morning as the nominations were a shocker: Ed Sheeran’s best selling “Divide” did not get an Album of the Year nod, neither did albums by Lady Gaga or Kesha. Instead, the Grammys went mostly for R&B and rap: Jay Z, Bruno Mars, Kendrick Lamar and Childish Gambino, who is really the actor Donald Glover.-Grammy Awards Shocker for CBS as Top Pop Stars Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga Snubbed, No Country Acts in Main Cateogories

"I don't see what the problem is. If the television advertisers are to be believed, white people like nothing better than advertisements featuring black people. Especially if those black people are implied to be having sex with white people."-Vox Day

Monday, November 27, 2017

Chesterton on Miracles

The historic case against miracles is also rather simple. It consists of calling miracles impossible, then saying that no one but a fool believes impossibilities: then declaring that there is no wise evidence on behalf of the miraculous. The whole trick is done by means of leaning alternately on the philosophical and historical objection. If we say miracles are theoretically possible, they say, “Yes, but there is no evidence for them.” When we take all the records of the human race and say, “Here is your evidence,” they say, “But these people were superstitious, they believed in impossible things."
--G.K. Chesterton

Hispanics Vote Left, What Else Is New?

Leftist challenger leads in Honduras presidential vote count

Look at the once great state of California. Since the mass invasion from south of the border, the state has become a left-wing Hell.

How To Design A Comic Book Page

"The ‘words & pictures’ that make up the comics language are often described as prose and illustration combined. A bad metaphor: poetry and graphic design seems more apt. Poetry for the rhythm and condensing; graphic design because cartooning is more about moving shapes around — designing — then it is about drawing."

Rap Sheets of Rappers

Rappers and Their Rap Sheets

The End of the Old World Order

The Church of Sweden has voted to adopt a controversial new handbook which says masculine references to God, such as “He” and “Lord” should be scrapped so as to be more “inclusive”

The following story is an interesting follow up to the last video I posted. Has Christianity gone to Hell?

Sofia Camnerin, the deputy chair of Sweden’s Equmenia Church, defended “inclusive language” in the church, stating that the need for it “is based on an awareness of different types of discrimination and inequality in our society.”

“Referring to God as ‘Lord’ consolidates [gender] hierarchies and the subordination of women in a white, Western feminist context,” she argued in a blog.- Church of Sweden Officially Drops Calling God ‘Lord’, ‘He’ to be More Inclusive

Below I've quoted Dr. Edward Feser on the issues of God's gender, which I think are relevant to the idiocy coming out of the Church of Sweden and many other converged "Christian" churches infected with SJW values.

Is God Male?

Being immaterial and incorporeal, God is not an animal, and thus he is not a rational animal or human being. And since he is not a human being, he is not literally either a man or a woman. He is sexless. Nevertheless, the traditional practice has been to characterize God in masculine terms...Some contemporary writers object to such usage, dismissing it as "sexist" and lacking in rational justification. Hence they often adopt the "politically correct" and clumsy practice of referring to God as "he/she/it". But in fact there are good philosophical reasons for the traditional usage.

Consider first of all that as we have seen, there is in God intellect and will, and these attributes are definitive of personality. Accordingly, God cannot appropriately be characterized in impersonal terms, as an "it". But then, why "he" and "him", rather than "she" and "her"?

The reason is that God's relationship to the world is much more like a paternal relationship than it is like a maternal relationship. biologically speaking, a father's role in procreation is active insofar as he impregnates, and a mother's role is passive insofar as she is impregnated. There is no change to a father's physiology as a consequence of impregnation, whereas there is a radical change in the mother's physiology. The mother becomes more physically dependent on the father, who must provide for his mate and for their unborn child-even if, unfortunately, some fathers do not do their duty in this regard. As that sad fact indicates, the father is in no way physically dependent on his mate or their child, which is why he can (even if he shouldn't) leave the scene. There is also a literal physiological connection between the child and its mother that doesn't exist between the child and its father, whi is literally more distant during the whole process of gestation.

Now, there are obvious analogies here to God's relationship to the world. God is active insofar as he creates the world, whereas the world is passive insofar as it is created by God. As pure actuality, God is entirely unchangeable, whereas the world is a mixture of actuality and potentiality that is continuously changing. The world depends entirely on God at every instant, whereas God in no way depends on the world. The world could not exist without God even though he could exist without it. God is also utterly distinct from the world rather than being identical to it (as in pantheism) or even continuous with it (as in panentheism).

So, given the key elements of classical theism...the most natural and least misleading way of characterizing God is in paternal and thus masculine terms. Maternal imagery would suggest that God is changeable or continuous with the world, which would in turn suggest a panentheist conception of God, or a pantheist conception, or a conception which in some other way is at odds with God's immutability, immateriality, eternity, and pure actuality. - Dr. Edward Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Jordan Peterson: Advice for Hyper-Intellectual People

Famous Cardiac Surgeon's Stories of Near Death Experiences in Surgery

Dr. Lloyd Rudy, a pioneer of cardiac surgery, tells stories of two patients who came back to life after being declared dead, and what they told him.

https://youtu.be/JL1oDuvQR08

A Liverpudlian on the Brexit Vote

Liverpool born and bred I still cannot believe that MY City voted REMAIN. It is beyond me. Liverpool was once a magnificent (deep water) port where huge ships and liners left it to travel around the world to places like Hong Kong, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Russia etc. - carrying people and importing, exporting goods. It was a hub of activity and then came EUROPE and everything went South, literally. Those who voted REMAIN do not know their history. History is being negated, slung into dark corners by the putrid PC brigade to decay, and become dust before being blown away by the winds of lies and oblivion. - Hannah Thompson

Taste Test French Survival Ration from 1996 (Rare**)

Here I'm opening a French survival ration from 1996. What a cool and fun ration to get to see and open. This particular ration set me back about $30 US. So I hope you all enjoyed checking this one out as much as I did. I really enjoy finding these cool hard to find things and even the everyday things and sharing them with you.

DANGER of a WorldView Driven by EMPATHY

Friday, November 24, 2017

Even More Quotes of the Day

"The lowliest, indigent, white redneck who lives in a rusted-out old school bus down by the river in Tennessee is 'privileged,' by definition, whereas the children of multimillionaire Barack Obama or multimillionaire Tiger Woods are 'not privileged.'  In fact, since they are black they are, by definition, 'oppressed' by the white redneck who lives in the rusted-out old school bus down by the river."
Tom DiLorenzo

"Everyone once took for granted that the goal was to seize the federal apparatus and impose their vision on the country.
How about just abandoning this crazy, inhumane task?
Why not admit the differences are irreconcilable, and simply go our separate ways?
Is this not obviously the most humane solution?
Or is there some expectation that somehow, down the road, we'll all be reconciled?
How?
To the contrary, it's only going to get worse.
Forcing these irreconcilable parties to continue along in this way is what normal people would call 'extremist.'
Radical decentralization and secession, on the other hand, are the obvious and necessary solution.
And you know it's the sensible solution, because no one is allowed to discuss it."
Tom Woods

"If the pro-gun control people want to blame someone besides the man in there pulling the trigger, the man who illegally got a weapon, maybe they should look in the mirror. Maybe they should consider their own complicity in making guns more difficult for law-abiding citizens to carry. Maybe they should look at their part in this war on guns and gun owners. Perhaps their derision played a part in seeing to it that no one in that church had the means to stop that killer."
Daisy Luther

"If the national anthem is of such importance, why do we not perform it in everything we do? Is breakfast, or the start of our workday, or going to a grocery store, or undergoing root-canal work at the dentist’s, to be preceded by this tune? Do we refrain from extending such collective foolishness into our daily lives because the numbers of persons are not sufficient to convert individuals into fungible components of a mob?"
Butler Shaffer

"National borders have never really been about how nations self-identify. They have always been about access to resources and the ability to impose taxes. Politics is about how, and on whom, those revenues are spent. The larger a country, the more people it can tax. The larger a government, the more professional politicians and civil servants it can employ."
Ivo Vegter

"Those who are determined to be ‘offended’ will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt."
Christopher Hitchens

"If the flag is symbolic of government and that government lies at every turn, enslaves its people, steals from their labor, passes laws that are an execration to their Christian faith, takes from them their liberty, mandates the murder of 1 million babies a year, imports tens of thousands of immigrants to replace American workers and drive down wages, and that makes war on other countries that have not threatened us, why should any acknowledge its presence with more than a sneer?"
Bob Livingston

"The claim that 'diversity is America’s greatest strength' is the biggest of all lies.  The truth is that diversity is America’s greatest weakness.  We see this not only in America, but in countries like Germany, France, and Belgium, where far-left leaders have destroyed their once proud cultures with immigration policies that ignore the wants and needs of their own citizens.
As is always the case, when I use the term diversity, I am not referring to a person’s skin color, be he white, brown, yellow, or other.  Diversity is about a person’s cultural beliefs and practices.
The hard truth is that tribalism, which has been around since the dawn of civilization, is the underpinning of a civilized and peaceful society.  The reality that those on the Radical Left (and many in the RINO camp) refuse to accept is that people prefer to be around others who are culturally most like them and, the corollary, they have little desire to be in close proximity to those who are culturally different.
When those in power try to force tribes with different cultural values to live together, it tends to engender hatred and violence, which is why the government should remove itself from the social-experimentation business and let tribes live separately and in peace with other tribes."
Robert Ringer

“'Social justice' can only be achieved through voluntary interactions among individuals within a given social unit. Stealing from some and giving to others through a concept of forced redistribution only creates control and therefore injustice; an unjustly created permanent victim group and an unjustly created permanent dependent group.
That’s not social justice, that’s social control."
Garry Reed

"Stalemate in Korea? Perpetual trouble in Korea? Loss in Vietnam? Continual war in the Middle East and Afghanistan? Confrontation with Iran, Russia and China? Turmoil in Libya and Africa? Worldwide American commitments and possibilities for warfare? Where exactly are the just compensations to taxpayers for the vast takings devoted to the U.S. military establishment? Where is this mythical 'national security' that has been the object?"
Michael Rozeff

"To be blunt about it, in 1954 Armistice Day was hijacked by a militaristic US congress and renamed Veterans Day. Today few Americans understand the original purpose of Armistice Day, or even remember it. The message of peace seeking has been all but erased. Worst of all, Veterans Day has devolved into a hyper-nationalistic quasi-religious celebration of war and the putatively valiant warriors who wage it. We no longer have a national day to recognize or reflect upon international peace."
Arnold Oliver

MRE Pizza Tasting

Yep, another MRE video. I can't seem to get enough of these. I love cold pizza, but not sure this cold MRE pizza would make the grade.

Ok everyone this is the review of the first real MRE pizza on YouTube. This was such a cool item to get to check out. I hope you all enjoyed watching as much as did making the video. Thank you again Shawker71 and Sniip3r for hooking me up. So I had my son try it out he said it taste like pizza, a little sweet, and it needs more bacon he said. Overall he liked it though, and said he'd be happy to have that to eat in a ration. We also heated it up and it really brought the flavors out. it made the sauce taste better and the cheese had more flavor after heating also.- Oldsmokey

Eating Rudolph - Norwegian Reindeer Sausage

Santa doesn't waste anything. When his reindeer become too old, he makes them into delicious Christmas presents...

Bret Alan's Corner: Grope Plan

"If you plan to grope women and have liberals defend you, be a Democrat and grab 'em by the ass, not the pussy."

Thanksgiving MRE Review | Turkey Breast with Gravy and Potatoes Menu #18 From 2001

Awesome frozen for 15 years MRE Menu #18 Turkey Breast with Gravy and Potatoes. This was just like opening a true time capsule from 2001.

I stumbled on these MRE review videos quite by accident, sort of how I stumble on everything. There seem to be lots of YouTube channels dedicated to these, the best actually being Steve1989MREInfo. That guy reviews EVERYTHING, I mean, we're talking rations from World War II even. And he'll often even eat the "food" out of those ancient "MREs". I'll review Steve in detail soon (though that's soon in Skeptical Eye time, which might mean by next Thanksgiving).

Thursday, November 23, 2017

The Real First Thanksgiving

Whether we realize it or not, we all have an image of the first Thanksgiving that’s more or less a cartoon we were taught in grade school. In the autumn of 1621, a plucky group of black-clad, buckle-shoed Pilgrims and stoic yet friendly Indians feasted together after a successful autumn harvest, heralding a promising new friendship between their two peoples. The actual history of the first Thanksgiving is of course nothing like the grade-school story—it’s far more interesting and complex. While it undermines the bowdlerized, multicultural narrative of peaceful Indians and well-meaning Puritans living together in harmony, it also informs a radically more nuanced understanding of the world the Pilgrims found when they landed at Plymouth in December 1620. - The First Thanksgiving Was Nothing Like What You Were Taught

Were the native tribes really doing much of anything with America?

Serious question: were the native tribes really doing much of anything with America? Don't get me wrong, it's sad that so many died from disease, but they didn't even have basic metal working before outsiders showed up. The most advanced civilization in the Americas was still practicing human sacrifice and cannibalism. Is it really so wrong to have ended all that in favor of building a civilization with the industriousness to reach the moon? - Bret Alan

And let's not forget all the species Natives drove to extinction, so don't give me this "They're more in tune with nature" crap when they wiped out mammoths, mastadons, sabre-toothed cats, horses...


Paul Harvey - Pilgrims Thanksgiving

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

You almost never see DISABLED people in China

Does this say something about the superiority of Western, Christian culture and values over the East?

During the video, you'll see a visit to In-N-Out Burger. I thought I saw a "protein style" lettuce wrapped (without the bun) burger. That's the way to go. I'll post more on that subject later.

Pork Chili Recipe

Chili ingredients:
1 yellow onion
2 bulbs, garlic
Avocado oil
4 oz. fresh basil
15 Serrano peppers
3 lbs. cubed pork, ~ 1 cm sides
30 oz. canned whole tomatoes
12 oz. sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil
29 oz. frijoles pintos
29 oz. frijoles negros

 Purée peeled garlic & peeled onion in "processor".
Pour from processor into sauce pan & sauté them in avocado oil until onion starts to caramelize.
Don't clean processor.

Shred basil from stems into processor; add tomatoes and liquefy.
Add to sauce.
Divide pork into halves:
Brown half on gas grille; other half sauté in (another) pan.
Steam peppers on grille, drenched in olive oil, until skin bursts.
Slice open to expose seeds.
Fold both, all meat & peppers, into sauce, bring to simmer.
Add pinto beans; bring to simmer.
Add black beans, bring to simmer.
Simmer all night.

Paul Harvey News Nov 22, 1963 | The Death of JFK

A special edition of Paul Harvey News & Comment, broadcast on the early evening of Friday, November 22, 1963 on the ABC Radio Network. It is one of the few times Harvey had altered his famous "Good Day" sign off.

Still More Quotes of the Day

"Any segment of a population who finds that their values and governmental goals are not being pursued in their present country — who are forced to remain under that nation’s regime — are hostages. As humans, it is our inherited right to create governments, create confederacies, create coalitions, and it is our right to abrogate those things as well."
Joe Wolverton

"If ‘society’—whoever that’s supposed to be—were to push for any values, equality shouldn’t be among them. Equality only exists before the law. People are unique, and therefore naturally unequal. We’re not like ants or blades of grass. Equality is not only impossible, it’s not even desirable. A proper goal to strive for is freedom, which is possible and desirable."
Doug Casey

"I am not being facetious when I tell you 'don’t expect to live much longer.' We are ruled by mindless, insane, psychopaths who believe that the US is invulnerable. These dumbshits are likely to get us all blown off the face of the earth. If you are not concerned that the US government is picking a fight with Russia (and China, North Korea, and Iran as well), something is wrong with you."
Paul Craig Roberts

"Remember that Big Government is a masterpiece of corporate cynicism, propaganda perfection and people control. It was not created for the people, by the people nor of the people. It was created, or at least evolved, for the power and benefit of the elite and their politicians and bureaucrats."
Bob Livingston

"Governments have had a long history of claiming, 'If we don’t all stick together, we’ll be doomed.' However, historically, the aggressors, more often than not, have been the empires. The smaller a country, the more likely it is to mind its own business."
Jeff Thomas

"The Radical Left’s argument is that illegal immigrants do not commit any more crimes than legal citizens, which is irrelevant.  Just because some citizens in the United States are criminals is no reason to bring in more criminals."
Robert Ringer

"Without a doubt, the U.S. military establishment is the largest enterprise in the world. It’s also the recipient of the largest single government taking in the world. The language in the 5th Amendment is powerful. If there is to be a government and if it takes (taxes), then there must be just compensation for the force that has been employed in the taking. This is missing in this case, and it’s missing because the government is the judge. No operable check exists to constrain it from extending its takings far, far beyond what it provides in return. The 5th Amendment’s provision on takings by taxes is not enforced by the government, and there is no reason to expect that it would be. The government doesn’t face competition in the supply of defense. The election of nationalists and militarists like Trump certainly can’t rectify this situation. They get their kicks from beautiful weapons, from the power to threaten and browbeat, and from the unleashing of missiles and force. We who want peace are not compensated in the slightest from these aggressions and potential for aggressions."
Michael Rozeff

"If politics was really about the good of the people, it would matter what those people want. Governments make a show of democracy, but all people are really allowed to do is choose who they want to rule them. No national constitution anywhere in the world (except for St. Kitts and Nevis, and Ethiopia) permits secession. It would remove a part of the tax base, which threatens the prosperity of either the government’s corrupt cronies, or the ruling party’s constituents, or both."
Ivo Vegter

"The bottom line is that each of us is grossly ignorant about the world in which we live. Nothing’s wrong with that ignorance, but we are stupid if we believe that a politician can produce a better life than that which is obtained through peaceable, voluntary exchange with our fellow man anywhere on earth."
Walter Williams

Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell

How Atheists "Win" Debates

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

The Family Holiday Season Debates

Wendy McElroy on Bitcoin

The blockchain is an immutable, transparent ledger of every transaction that has occurred since the Genesis block. The distributed ledger is not only open to those who transact but also to anyone who takes the time to search it. No withholding can harm the user because nothing can be withheld. Bitcoin provides the same service as a competent and honest third party, as well as offering other advantages. It allows greater anonymity, with the individual user remaining in control; it enables micropayments and speedier transactions. Increasingly, however, users are joining exchanges that resemble traditional banks, including sharing customers’ personal data with the government. It is ironic. Bitcoin’s success as a substitute for trusted third parties seems to be leading it back into the embrace of the problem it was created to solve. - The Satoshi Revolution – Chapter 2: Satoshi’s White Paper Breaks Your Economic Chains (Part 5)

Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: The Failure of Organized Religion with Philosopher Paul Weiss

As a philosopher, Weiss is mainly known for his metaphysical writings such as Being and Other Realities. His other philosophical works include books and articles on epistemology and cosmology. He even published eleven volumes under the title Philosophy in Process, detailing his continuing and sometimes daily reflections over the years 1955–1987. A seminal point of Weiss's philosophy is that Being consists of a plurality of individuals that are unified by universality, which gives a structure to all there is, but that is also irreducible in four distinct ways.[4] During his prime, Weiss maintained a style of philosophy that was considered by many to be out-of-date. In fact, Weiss opposed the philosophies of the analytics, the logical positivists and the Marxists. His was a philosophy on the grand scale-philosophical system-building in the style of Kant, Hegel, or Peirce.- Paul Weiss (philosopher)

Recorded on November 14, 1966

Monday, November 20, 2017

Sam Harris and Lawrence Krauss talk Science and Quantum Mechanics

Offering nihilism packaged as "hope" doesn't sell too well to the masses

"It's a great shame there's a lack of interest," said Jensen. "I say that as someone who believes in God and thinks that it is the most reasonable thing to believe. ... But I also think that the full and frank discussion of fundamental ideas is part of what a healthy culture promotes and enjoys. A Global Atheist Convention is to be welcomed, because every time people think about God and about the meaning of life is a time we more deeply consider the value and purpose of human life. It makes us better citizens."-Global Atheist Convention Called 'Reason To Hope' Cancelled Because No One Wants To Go

The Pseudo-Science of Atheists

Atheist Ronald De Sousa makes the outrageous claim that virtual particles that come from the quantum vacuum is an example of something coming into existence out of nothing. When a student corrected him about the quantum vacuum (that it' actually energy and NOT nothing), De Sousa completely dodged the correction and attacked religion instead! However, William Lane Craig explains that atheists (like De Sousa) resort to pseudo-science when the scientific evidence supports theism and not atheism. Contrary to the belief that science supports naturaism and atheism, that's been found to be incorrect.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

24 Hour French MRE Menu 9 Beans w/ Sausage & Duck (Complete MRE Review of all 3 Meals)

3 in 1 Thanksgiving Pie

With rows of caramel apple, maple walnut and chocolate crumb on a brown sugar base.

Triple Topping Slab Pie Recipe

Are Chinese Watches Better Than Swiss Watches?

Better Burgers for Britian!

The rise of the burger from a scapegoat for the obesity crisis to the symbol of a dining revolution was fuelled by a combination of social media and recession-era economics, and it established a whole new class of restaurant: inspired by simple street food, led by untrained chefs and advertised via Twitter. The gourmet burger has certainly dented the dominance of the old fast-food giants. But it has also disrupted the entire restaurant food chain.- Ten years of posh burgers – how they changed Britain's dining habits

Sam Harris & Lawrence Krauss talk Nuclear Weapons & Donald Trump

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Normal people perceive a loss due to theft far more acutely than they would the same loss due to accident or any other cause

This can only likely be true in a world where people don't come to this conclusion. If everyone is like "meh, whatever, he probably needed it more..." Then it almost certainly won't be true, because why limit your theft and parasitism at all? Just take whatever, no matter how feeble and transitory your desire for it. But if there is resistance and retaliation for parasitism and theft then it is much more likely to be true, because people are less likely to engage in them unless some more compelling value is on offer.-Eli Harmon

Additional reactions:

(And it's still only ever going to be true for liberals, who derive positive satisfaction from virtue signaling their cuckoldry. Normal people perceive a loss due to theft far more acutely than they would the same loss due to accident or any other cause, with good reason. A thief is a threat not only to this possession or that, but to the entire normative fabric upon which all good things depend.)

People who justify others theft of their stuff also tend to justify their political attempt to steal from you by that same logic that you won't miss your stuff as much as those in need who want your stuff. Solution: encourage the poor to feast on the wealth of rich liberals who will put up the least fight.

Someone should make a comic like this, but replace the guy with a stolen bike with a woman who's been raped. Then, perhaps, the absurdity of this reasoning would be more apparent.

Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: The Warren Report: Fact or Fiction?

From December 1, 1966 with Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist Mark Lane

The Nazi Roots of the American Left

Identity Politics

Monday, November 13, 2017

What advances has materialism (naturalism) made in the last decade?

Primate studies is based on a simple principle: Humans share 98% of our genes with the chimpanzee, and therefore the 100% chimpanzee can help us understand ourselves. Hmmm. As British rabbi Harvey Belovski has pointed out, we share perhaps 30% of our genes with a banana. So can the banana help us 30% toward understanding ourselves? Maybe the chimp and the banana would make a better pair than the chimp and the human. The chimp would certainly think so. Seriously, what have primate studies really shown us? As anthropologist Jonathan Marks says, despite the public interest in efforts to teach apes to communicate with humans, “Unfortunately, they have nothing to say.” If so, the trail ends here.

Then there was artificial intelligence (AI). Remember, this is supposed to be the “age of spiritual machines,” when computers are becoming indistinguishable from humans. In reality, the human mind works quite differently from a computer, and simply increasing computing power does not produce characteristic human qualities. AI enthusiast Kenneth Silber complains, “This is a disappointing state of affairs.” It sure is, if you are HAL or Deeper Blue. [No computer has become inherently smarter than its programmers, for the same reasons as characters in a novel do not have more insight than the author. ] Notice the pattern? Ominously, all three media-darling disciplines fail at the same point: precisely the point at which, if materialism were true, they should succeed: Evolutionary psychology can’t explain uniquely human qualities. The 100 percent chimpanzee has nothing to say to the 98 percent chimpanzee. And the human brain is not enough like a computer that AI studies are even particularly relevant, great as their future achievements may be.

The end of promissory materialism?

Jimmy Page | Full Address and Q&A at The Oxford Union

$4.99 Big Box Warehouse Rotisserie Chicken

I used to buy these all the time from my local Costco. Now, since I moved over a year ago, I have no Costco. A good thing? It would appear that perhaps these "chickens" are not so healthy after all. I mean, if it's true that the warehouse giant sells 60 million of these mass produced, factory farmed birds a year, there's got to be something unhealthy with them. Below, a comment on the video:

Wow. If ever there was a visual indication that something has gone wrong with the world, selling a cooked, bloated, chemically enhanced chicken for $5 is it. It's ridiculous to suggest this thing is healthy - with or without skin. They have to coat and inject these things with massive amounts of salt because the breeding process removes all actual taste from the meat. If you want to enjoy the delicious flavor of real meat, do NOT buy this crap.

I would get my Costco chicken home, rip off the legs, put those drums on a paper plate, and make my own coleslaw to go with it. That was my dinner many a night after work. Yeah it was a good deal, just like their $1.50 hot dog and soda, which I also would often buy, though if the stupid winding line at the Costco snack bar (is that what they call it?) was too long, I'd avoid the trouble of waiting and just go through a drive-thru. But price and convenience have proven fatal to our health.

Gobble, gobble, gobble? Isn't that turkey talk? I guess not:

Bart Ehrman's Personal Beliefs Interview

Sunday, November 12, 2017

False Assumptions

False assumption 1. The left isn't going anywhere.

In principle, it could. It could go to hell. It could go to prison. It could go back to the third world. It could go back to the kitchen. It could go back in the closet. All of these are options.

False Assumption 2: moderates will fight radicals.

Yeah. Just not seeing this. You have a few, new, moderate firebrands out there. But that's just not a message you can get people fired up about. Moderation is basically just status quo bias. That's not a terrible thing, normally. And if you have a status quo worth fighting for, maybe enough people will fight for it. But more and more are fed up with this one.

The moderates will get used to the new status quo we give them, and in time, come to defend it, as they have come to defend the status quo supplied by the left.

False Assumption 3: We have to find common ground and cooperate.

Nah. We can conflict too. And it's possible to win a conflict.

We're done cooperating with the left. They have never demonstrated consistency, honesty, good faith, reciprocity, or any other preconditions of durable, mutually-beneficial, cooperation; only malice, duplicity, treachery​, slander, parasitism, and lies.

We can cooperate through exchange WITHOUT common ground. But again, there are conditions, and the left won't meet those. They just want to get their way. And they want to get our stuff. And they don't care how or what they have to do or say to achieve that.

So no deals. No compromise. No concession. No mercy.-Eli Harmon

AR-15 Upgrades! Before You Buy That Little Cute Pink Pistol!

Larry King on JFK assassination theories

Charles Schulz Drawing Peanuts

Charles Monroe Schulz (1922 – 2000), nicknamed Sparky, was an American cartoonist best known for the comic strip Peanuts (which featured the characters Charlie Brown and Snoopy, among others). He is widely regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists of all time, cited as a major influence by many later cartoonists.

He insisted on doing the entire strip, daily and the larger, color Sunday strips, himself. Other famous cartoonists, such as Al Capp, had assistants, who would do things like the lettering, but Schulz would have none of it, he wanted Peanuts (a name he never liked, he wanted to call the strip simply "Charlie Brown") to be completely his own, even down to doing the lettering for the dialogue balloons himself as well. He did it for 50 years, and its success and cultural impact surely proves he was right.

PHILOSOPHY - Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas deserves to be remembered for reconciling faith with reason, thereby saving Western civilisation from turning its back on science and Greek and Roman wisdom.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Atheist Fool John W. Loftus

"Being insulted by the pop atheist writer John Loftus is, to borrow Denis Healey’s famous line, like being savaged by a dead sheep. It is hard to imagine that a human being could be more devoid of argumentative or polemical skill." - Edward Feser

Quote: Coincidence

“Coincidence is the word we use when we can’t see the levers and pulleys.“ —Emma Bull

Friday, November 10, 2017

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Communism and National Socialism, cut from the same cloth...

Scientism vs Real Science

Physicist Steven Weinberg- "One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious."

Nanoscientist James Tour- "Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith.  If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God."

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Quote: Scientific Truth

“Scientific truth is characterized by its precision and the certainty of its predictions. But science achieves these admirable qualities at the cost of remaining on the level of secondary concerns, leaving ultimate and decisive questions untouched.” - José Ortega y Gasset

The gift of near death: Lewis Brown Griggs

Why do so many of us focus on the story of our shortcomings? How can our uniqueness be recognized as the greatest gift we bring to one another? Through his lives and near deaths, Lewis Brown Griggs shares transformational perspectives on how our weaknesses can become our greatest strengths.

Near-Death Experiences in the ICU

Near-Death Experiences in the Intensive Care Unit -- Laurin Bellg

The Unremittingly Cynical Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens took on matters of profound importance, and he did it with a fierce passion. But when I think of the rhetoric he deployed, and the vehemence with which he deployed it, I can’t help but see him as a demagogue and a charlatan. One of his most oft-repeated quotes is “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” This is, from the perspective of both science and philosophy, a recipe for obscurantism and intellectual irresponsibility, and a disastrous idea for anyone with an interest in truth to take to heart. Its appeal is the same as much of Hitchens’ rhetoric: when invoked it provides the intoxicating pleasure of putting your foot down in an argument. It’s a flashy rhetorical gambit that says, “I need say no more.” Though happy to present himself as a champion of science, Hitchens was clearly ignorant of the philosophy of science and its most important developments in the twentieth century; otherwise, he would not have uttered a remark so redolent of verificationism. Popperians must shudder when they hear that quote.-The Cult of Christopher Hitchens

Quote of the Day: Psychological Bombardment

“This psychological bombardment is waged primarily via the mainstream media which assaults the viewer by the hour with images of violence, war, emotions and conflict. Because the human nervous system is hard wired to focus on immediate threats accompanied by depictions of violence, mainstream media viewers have their attention and mental resources funneled into the never-ending ‘crisis of the NOW’ from which they can never have the mental breathing room to apply logic, reason or historical context.” - Mike Adams

Scientism: An Interview with Dr. Edward Feser

...science cannot in principle provide a complete explanation of the phenomena it describes. Science explains things by tracing them down to ever deeper laws of nature. But what it cannot tell you is what a “law of nature” is in the first place and why it operates. It really is amazing how unreflectively atheists and advocates of scientism appeal to the notion of “laws,” given how deeply philosophically problematic the very notion is. Earlier generations of scientists were aware of the philosophical puzzles raised by the nature of scientific explanation, and some contemporary scientists (such as Paul Davies) are also sensitive to the puzzles raised by the very idea of a “law of nature” (which is actually a holdover from an idiosyncratic theology to which Descartes and Newton were committed, but which Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophers reject just as much as atheists do).

But most contemporary scientists tend not to have the general education that figures of the generation of Einstein, Schrödinger, and Heisenberg did. They don’t know philosophy well, and they also don’t know what they don’t know. This goes double for the more aggressively atheistic ones among them -- people like Lawrence Krauss, Peter Atkins, Richard Dawkins, and Jerry Coyne. Hence they repeatedly commit very crude philosophical mistakes but also refuse to listen or respond when these mistakes are pointed out to them.

Anyway, the main reason scientism has the following it does is probably that people are, quite rightly, impressed with the technological and predictive successes of modern science. The trouble is that this simply gives us no reason whatsoever to believe scientism -- that is to say, it gives us no reason to believe that science alone gives us knowledge. To draw that conclusion you need to assume that if something is real, then it will be susceptible of a precise mathematical description that will make strict prediction and technological application possible. Now that is itself a philosophical or metaphysical assumption, not a scientific one. But it is also an assumption that there is not only no reason to believe, but decisive reason to reject, as I argue in the book.

What the mathematically-oriented methods of modern physics do is to focus on those aspects of nature which can be strictly predicted and controlled and to ignore anything that doesn’t fit that method. As a result, physics tends brilliantly to uncover those aspects of reality that fit that method, and which can therefore be exploited technologically. But it simply does not follow that there are no other aspects of reality. To think otherwise is like the drunk’s fallacy of assuming that his lost car keys must be under the street lamp somewhere, because that is where the light is. - Read More:Scholasticism vs. Scientism: An Interview with Dr. Edward Feser

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Fastest Way to Lose Belly Fat

Battle Of the PBS Stars

Fred Rogers! William F. Buckley Jr.! Julia Child! Carl Sagan! Sort of a live action MTV Deathmatch...

The Fred Rogers clone looks like a combo of Rogers and the insane, creepy, Burger King "King" character.

How to Protect Your Church from Violent Attacks

26 innocent people were killed yesterday in one of the deadliest church shootings to date. This can happen anywhere and is a dark reminder of the violent world we live in. As with the NYC terrorist attack we saw last week, these types of attacks are near impossible to predict, but they can, and should, be planned for.

We’ve talked before about what to do in the wake of violent attacks like this, which a majority of the time deals with massive physical and mental trauma afterwards. In addition to getting off the "X" and making decisions immediately to move to safety and cover; here is what I personally discussed with the church leadership where my family attends.

Concealed Carry – We have several guys that do have their concealed carry permits, but prefer not to carry, or leave their firearms inside their vehicles so that they don’t offend anyone. Although they are all good men, I don’t agree with that mindset. We identified a small group of guys that were willing to carry, practiced at the range regularly and carried in a low vis way as not to alarm anybody who is sensitive to the subject of guns. I personally carry a tourniquet, a concealed Glock 26 with spare magazine, a partially serrated Emerson knife, and handheld flashlight.

Medical – We identified several locations within the church to stage first aid and trauma supplies. Those are the main church office, kitchen and a few of the classrooms. This puts first aid and trauma gear close by almost every location within the church to deal with everything from a cut to traumatic bleeding.

Unattended doors – Our church has doors at both the front (main entrance) and rear. Once the service starts we lock the doors at the rear of the church, preventing any visitors from sneaking in through the back. This forces people to use the main front doors if coming in after the start of the service. Generally we have 1 or 2 guys walking the church during the service and keeping an eye on the front doors.

Use these basic considerations to start building a plan with the leadership of your local church in order to be prepared ahead of time for a violent attack. -From an email I received from Crate Club a monthly survival gear subscription service.

Democrat Control?

Ted Cruz on Calls for Gun Control: ‘Unfortunate’ That the Media Keeps Politicizing Tragedies

What Goes Around Comes Around

Monday, November 6, 2017

How The Troll Stole YouTube!

Every Tube down in TubeVille liked YouTube a lot. But the Troll, who lived outside of TubeVille, did NOT!

Don't feed the trolls!

Are Americans Crazier?

US Mental Illness ~ 20-30% Differing by Region. The serious mental illness ranges in the 3-5% range. Prisons are largely warehouses for the mentally ill - that make them worse. But the cause is excessive individualism, excessive permissiveness, excessive optimism, closure of the mental institutions and churchs, and destruction of the family, and possibly an artifact of the gene pool that migrated to the states - "a dumping ground for misfits and failures."
The problem in america is mental illness and mental illness is the result of birth defect, or hopelessness.-Curt Doolittle

PILPUL: THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE FEMININE - THE INVENTION OF LYING

What Is Pilpul , And Why On Earth Should I Care About It?
By David Shasha
For those who have any concern with the Middle East conflict or with Judaism, what you know — or do not know — about pilpul is something upon which your well-being could depend. Ignorance of pilpul is a very dangerous thing, something that would allow your interlocutor to have the upper hand in ways that you could not begin to even imagine.
Pilpul is the Talmudic term used to describe a rhetorical process that the Sages used to formulate their legal decisions. The word is used as a verb: one engages in the process of pilpul in order to formulate a legal point. It marks the process of understanding legal ideas, texts, and interpretations. It is a catch-all term that in English is translated as “Casuistry.”
In order to better understand the term pilpul as it functions today, we must define the way in which that term has been understood in the classical Sephardic tradition and how that understanding has been transformed by the Ashkenazi tradition.
As I was taught by my Rabbi Jose Faur, the Sephardic tradition, emerging out of the Babylonian academies and finding its definitive form in the many legal works of Moses Maimonides, held the Talmudic texts to be oral literature. Using mnemonics, technical terms, and other rhetorical devices to aid memorization and transmission, Sephardim understood the Talmud to be a colloquy of discussions that were drawn from the proceedings of the great rabbinical Academies of Babylonia. The Babylonian Talmud became the basis upon which the Jewish law would be constructed.
This was a process grounded, as it was in the Muslim Hadith and Shari’a, in tradition and the chain of transmission. Laws were transmitted in the name of rabbinical authorities. It was this chain of tradition, known to Muslims by the Arabic term Isnad, that drew clear lines between the formal authority of what has been passed down to us and the process of codifying these laws. The ultimate purpose of the legal process was to elevate the Law above personal and political concerns so that members of the community would be completely equal and not live at the whim of arbitrary judges.
In order to maintain the distinction between the Written Torah — the Hebrew Bible — and the Oral Law, the Talmudic Sages conceived of the idea of pilpul as a means to join each Law to its Biblical prooftext. Rabbis would debate what in legal terms would be the formal “title” of each law. Differences would arise regarding these legal titles that a court must use in a criminal charge.
The Talmudic formalism of Maimonides in his encyclopedic legal compendium, the Mishneh Torah, was strongly contested by the Ashkenazi rabbis of France and Germany. In the Mishneh Torah Maimonides famously eliminated the rhetorical discussions of the Talmud and simply presented the final ruling — a process that replicated the methodology of Rabbi Isaac Alfasi, Maimonides’ precursor in Lucena.
The Ashkenazi rabbis saw pilpul as a substantive debate over the content of the Law rather than as a simple rhetorical matter. Their understanding of Talmudic pilpul took the form of a radical reinterpretation of the Law.
The scholar Haym Soloveitchik discusses this matter in his 1987 article “Religious Change: The Medieval Ashkenazic Example”:
Many have inferred, and reasonably so, that the Tosafists were not only scholars but communal leaders ... like all true leaders they molded the law to fit the needs of their people ... What legitimized, in the eyes of the Tosafists, this radical reinterpretation?
“Reinterpretation” is actually a misleading term. More accurately one should ask what led them to read the Talmud, to perceive the Talmud, in a fashion which could be construed as a justification of the status quo.
In this discussion we have the key that will unlock much of the content of contemporary Jewish discourse.
As Soloveitchik states, the Ashkenazi rabbis were less concerned with promulgating the Law transmitted in the Talmud than they were with molding it to suit their own needs. Pilpul was a means to justify practices already fixed in the behaviors of the community by re-reading the Talmud to justify those practices.
There were two ways in which the Ashkenazi rabbis effected this radical reinterpretation of the Talmud:
In Rashi’s Talmud commentary — a required text in every Jewish school in the world — he uses the Aramaic term Hakhi Garsinan, meaning, “This is how the text is to be read.” Whenever this term is used, it indicates that Rashi has amended the text. His emendations were necessitated by the need to bring actual practice in line with the text.
Rashi’s emendations are not a theoretical proposition; the actual editions of the Talmud that we use today reflect the changes. The text of the Talmud was forever remade according to the dictates of Rashi and his school.
As if this was not enough, the Tosafists instituted one more pilpul principle into Talmudic discourse. This was called the Lav Davqa method. In English we might call it the “Not Quite” way of reading a text. When a text appeared to be saying one thing, the Tosafot — in order to conform to the already-existing custom — would re-interpret it by saying that what it seemed to mean is not what it really meant!
In absolute contrast to the Ashkenazi method, the Sephardic tradition, grounded in textual reality and scientific principles, carefully parsed every term in the Talmud; a concern that often led the most prominent scholars to look for the most accurate version of the Talmudic text.
Rashi’s method of emendation and the Tosafist reading based on the Lav Davqa method completely transformed Judaism; the Ashkenazi tradition was the one that ultimately triumphed.
What this means for contemporary Jewish discourse is critical: Even though many contemporary Jews are not observant, pilpul continues to be deployed. Pilpul occurs any time the speaker is committed to “prove” his point regardless of the evidence in front of him. The casuistic aspect of this hair-splitting leads to a labyrinthine form of argument where the speaker blows enough rhetorical smoke to make his interlocutor submit. Reason is not an issue when pilpul takes over: what counts is the establishment of a fixed, immutable point that can never truly be disputed.
In this context, the Law is not primary; it is the status of the jurist. Justice is extra-legal, thus denying social equality under the rubric of a horizontal system. Law is in the hands of the privileged rather than the mass.
What is thought to be the Jewish “genius” is often a mark of how pilpul is deployed. The rhetorical tricks of pilpul make true rational discussion impossible; any “discussion” is about trying to “prove” a point that has already been established. There is little use trying to argue in this context, because any points being made will be twisted and turned to validate the already-fixed position.
Pilpul is the rhetorical means to mark as “true” that which cannot ever be disputed by rational means.
The contentiousness of the Middle East conflict is intimately informed by pilpul. Whether it is Alan Dershowitz or Noam Chomsky, both of them Ashkenazim who had traditional Jewish educations, the terms of the debate are consistently framed by pilpul. What is most unfortunate about pilpul — and this is something that will be familiar to anyone who has followed the controversies involving Israel and Palestine — is that, since the rational has been removed from the process, all that is left is yelling, irrational emotionalism, and, ultimately, the threat of violence.
It is this agitation that continues to mar a political process that has long abandoned the rational understanding of the issues involved in its construction.
David Shasha
Director, Center for Sephardic Heritage

Quotes on writing

"If the Muse is late to work, you start without her."-Peter Beagle

I have mastered the Muse, being able to summon inspiration at need. So I don't wait for inspiration, I make it wait on me.-Piers Anthony

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Message to Horror Movie Buffs

Original French version. "Martyrs". I'm not a fan of this kind of film (or any slashy film), but Interesting use of iterations, and more of what I'd expect from the future of plot lines necessary for movies to compete with serial movies from HBO/Netflix etc. When wow-tech runs cold ( as it is doing) then the only solution is plot density. And I think that's what we saw in novels, what we saw in serials, and what we're going to have to see in films. - Curt Doolittle

Something Smells Rotten...Wait, It's Russia!

Is Islam a Religion of Peace?

Is Islam a religion of peace? Is it compatible with Western liberalism? Or does Islam need a reformation, just as Christianity had the Protestant Reformation? Somali-born author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains.

Still Waiting

Elvis Presley - Glory Glory Hallelujah

That Was It?

The Lost Dialogue Of Wilson The Volleyball

Saturday, November 4, 2017

God v the Multi Verse

Quotes: Natural Law Monarchy

---"Any political order other than natural law (christian) monarchy is left wing by definition. So if you aren't a monarchist, you're a leftist. It's simple." -- Danny Cassidy

 Actually, Natural Law Monarchy is the best system of government ever invented. Democracy is just an incremental road to communism.--Curt Doolittle

No Wonder

William Lane Craig on Daniel Dennett

His response to the Kalam cosmological argument which says that whatever begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause, he agrees with the first premise that anything that begins to exist must have a cause that brings it into being. He agrees with the second premise that the universe began to exist and the big bang gives good evidence of that. So, he agrees with the conclusion, the universe has a cause. But, here's his answer to the argument; yes, the universe has a cause, but the universe caused itself, the universe brought itself into being. He says it's the ultimate bootstrapping trick, the universe pulled itself up by its own bootstraps, it brought itself into existence. And I pointed out to him in order for the universe to bring itself into existence, it would have to exist before it existed, otherwise, it's not self caused, it would be uncaused, it would come out of nothing.

So, his view would be that the universe had to exist before it existed, which is a self-contradiction. it's logicality incoherent, and yet this was his response to the cosmological argument.

Crazy Showdown

The Islamic Vision of Humanity

In Islam, man is little more than a slave of Allah. He can achieve paradise, but paradise is essentially a heavenly harem. According to the Christian vision, man’s destiny is union with God. According to the Islamic vision, man’s destiny is to copulate.

 Theologically and humanly, Islam represents a giant step backwards. It would take us back to a time when the idea of human dignity was considered laughable—to a time when slavery was unremarkable and women were valued less than men and sometimes less than animals.

Islam: A Giant Step Backwards for Humanity

Friday, November 3, 2017

Ed Feser on The Michael Medved Show with Skeptic Magazine’s Michael Shermer: The Existence of God

Medved started things off in an unusual and, I think, very interesting way.  His first question to me was about what I thought was the weakest of the five arguments I defend in the book.  Now, naturally I don’t think any of the proofs is weak.  But some of them require more in the way of background argumentation for their key premises, and thus are bound to be less convincing to a determined skeptic.  Based on that criterion, I cited the Augustinian proof, though perhaps on further reflection I’d opt for one of the others. 


Anyway, Medved then asked Shermer what he thought was the argument from my book that is the most challenging to his own, skeptical position.  His answer was the Aristotelian argument.

I don’t want to make too much of this, and I don’t know exactly how challenging or weak Shermer thinks the argument is at the end of the day.  But it is an interesting response nonetheless.  Aristotle’s argument for an Unmoved Mover is often quickly dismissed or ignored altogether on the grounds that it rests on archaic physics.  But it doesn’t, as I show in the book.  When people come to see this and consider more carefully the basic idea of the argument, I find that they often find it much more interesting than they had initially realized it was. 
Aristotle on Medved see link below for the radio discussion:

Michael Medved Show - Debate about the Proof of God

Dan Dennett: Responding to Pastor Rick Warren

Piers Anthony on The Shack

I watched The Shack, which is not at all what you might think. This is a kind of study in Good and Evil and the ways of God. As a nonbeliever I found it fascinating. Mack's little girl gets abducted and killed, devastating the family. Mack can't move on. Then he receives an invitation to go to an abandoned shack, signed “Papa,” their pet name for God. A joke? Not funny. He goes, and suffers an extended vision. There, in a setting suddenly transformed to summer—it had been snowy winter—he meets three strangers, all manifestations of God. So why didn't God save his little girl? That's his problem; he remains bitter. Elouisa is a middle aged black woman. Sarayu is a young white woman. She clarifies that there are billions of people deciding for themselves what is good and what is evil, as he helps her work in her garden. It's a mess, and she says “This mess is you.” Then when he goes out on the river in the bout, it starts to leak and sink, but the man, who is the third aspect of God, walks on the water to him and enables him to walk on water back to shore. He then takes a separate path into and through a mountain—I mean the rock becomes porous—and meets a woman called Wisdom. She invites him to sit on her throne, to judge others. To choose which of his remaining children to send ho Heaven, and which to Hell. He can't choose. Similarly God can't always choose. As long as there is free will, there is evil, not God's doing. Then comes the most difficult challenge of all: to forgive the man who killed his daughter. Only then is he whole again. He returns—and collides with a truck. He wakes in the hospital. They tell him that he never made it to the shack. But he knows what happened. Now he is mending relations with his wife and children, helping them heal as he heals. Their life is improving, thanks to the revelations he gained at the shack. I recommend this movie to all, believers and unbelievers; it really makes you think. So this is all a vision, but what a vision!

Yoann Bourgeois "La mécanique de l'histoire" (Energie) - Le Panthéon Paris

Time Travel in Fiction

Through the Boredom Day Dreams Come to Life

We’ve all been that kid sitting in the back seat of our family car, wishing we were somewhere else. Through the boredom, the driveway snow piles, sidewalk handrails and stair sets start to tease our inner skier. Watch day dreams come to life as Tom Wallisch shreds the snowy streets of Nelson, British Columbia.

Daniel Dennett on William Lane Craig

Piers Anthony on the Brain

"I matched the Discover video The Brain. The amygdala controls emotion, such as fear. The military trains recruits to control their fear reaction, because otherwise they can make lethal mistakes when panicked. The frontal lobes are the most recently developed part of the brain, and they interact with the amygdala; they can moderate the panic. Suffocating under water is another problem; the amygdala presses the panic button. Training shows them how to handle this. Most SEAL candidates wash out because of panic. Practice in your mind and it helps you get through. Replace bad thoughts with good thoughts. Breathing control. Reproduction is another powerful drive, and orgasm is potent ecstasy also triggered by the amygdala. The brain stem generates dopamine, the pleasure hormone, but the male and female brains react differently. The female orgasm shuts down most of the woman's brain, sometimes rendering her unconscious, while the male remains conscious, perhaps to be ready to defend them in case of danger. Handling danger brings exhilaration, so taking risks is tempting. Some people seek risk more than others. But what of those who don't have these reactions, who lack a conscience, like psychopaths or serial killers? (I think they mean sociopaths, but never mind.) What makes some brains evil? Psychopaths are not bothered as much by their mistakes. They have smaller amygdalas. Less capacity for empathy. And memory: Thanks to that, the brain is constantly traveling through time. What about photographic memory? A person with that is an artistic savant, with incredible visual memory, but lacking in other respects. Memory forms throughout the brain, but the hippocampus is critical; without it, new memories can't form. Memory is essential to just about everything we do. The cerebellum helps with practice. It takes 10,000 hours to get really proficient, and the muscles develop some memory within themselves. There can be performance anxiety. The brain can help a person win, or help him lose. You need to be in the zone, everything just right. Could there be a sixth sense, tuning into the minds of others? Can some people respond to images before the images appear? Is ESP—ExtraSensory Perception—possible? They are connecting people's heads to computers and checking. There are so many questions to answer!"

Can We Talk?

Brazile, the first Black woman to direct a major presidential campaign, took the helm of the DNC after former chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned in July 2016. Donna Brazile explained how she had to make a difficult phone call to Bernie Sanders to explain if and why Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the Democratic nomination process as revealed in the emails. “I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.” Brazile used the piece as an opportunity to trash Debbie Wasserman Schultz as a bad manager and terrible fundraiser who was not interested in her position and let the Clinton campaign take full reign over the DNC. - Donna Brazile Reveals How The Clinton Campaign Took Control Of The DNC In New Book

George Orwell: A Life in Pictures

Edward Feser Reviews Daniel Dennett's New Stupidity "From Bacteria to Bach and Back"

The master fallacy that underlies Dennett's entire book, however, is enshrined in the conceit that "many of the puzzles...of human consciousness evaporate once you ask how they could possibly have arisen-and actually try to answer the question!"  What this means, the reader discovers, is that whenever Dennett  finds some aspect of the mind that materialism cannot account for-design or purpose in the literal sense, the self, free will, meaning, subjective conscious experience-he concludes, not that materialism is false, but that the aspect in question must not be real after all.

For Daniel Dennett, what is real is only what materialism can explain. Materialism is true, he reasons, because it can explain everything there is to explain about the mind; and what it cannot explain must not really be there, he concludes, because materialism is true. From Bacteria to Bach and Back is Dennett's demonstration that he can stay on this merry-go-round for hundreds of pages without getting dizzy.

Darwin famously described On the Origin of Species as “one long argument.” Dennett’s bloated tome is essentially one long circular argument.- http://www.claremont.org/download_pdf.php?file_name=3115Feser.pdf
          

Thoughts on Racism

""Racism" is one of those elusive concepts being made ever more broad and ambiguous by the Left, so for the sake of clarity I'm going to attempt to provide all the different meanings and senses of the word based on how it has been applied. I will also also provide my own assessment for each variant.

Racism:

1. Believing the races are different. [Reasonable]

2. Believing a distinct and prevailing culture tends to be associated with each race. (Of course the same may be applied towards religion, geography, etc.) [Reasonable]

3. Believing certain cultures tend to yield greater material prosperity, lower crime, and scientific progress. That, by the transitive property, certain races as a whole tend to excel in these areas with respect to others. [Reasonable]

4. Believing culture has an impact on IQ, thus certain races have a higher/lower average IQ than others owing, in part, to cultural differences. [Reasonable]

5. Believing biology has *an* impact on one's propensity to adopt certain cultural norms, and has a likewise impact on IQ. Believing the biological differences between races aren't limited to mere skin color or physical body shape/structure, but that such biological differences tend to also include variations in mental capacity and testosterone levels. [Reasonable]

6. Thus, having a professional or personal preference for the company of a certain race or races of people over others, *other things being equal*. [Reasonable]

7. (Subjectively) valuing a particular race of people over all others, *other things being equal*. [Reasonable]

8. Believing *every member* of a particular races shares the same set of cultural, political, moral, or religious beliefs. [Unreasonable and absurd]

9. Preferring the company or valuing *every member* of one race, over *every member* of another [Unreasonable]

10. Believing *every member* of one race is mentally/physically superior to *every member of another* [Unreasonable and absurd]" -
Christopher Chase Rachels

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

On the other hand, it ain't over til it's over.

The West may be finished, and my preaching useless. The barbarians are at the gates and the destructive Left is eager to let them in. The authorities are in abdication. The Pope is a fool: a leftist first, a Catholic second. Leftist termites have rotted out the foundations of the universities.
On the other hand, it ain't over til it's over. So we battle on. - Bill Vallicella

NIGHT OF THE BAHFEEMUS aka EL LAGARTO TERRIBLE aka I WAS A TEENAGE BAHFEEMUS (TV Edit) Full movie!

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