Useless machines are impossible

 I got a kick out of watching this 34 second "Another Advanced Useless Machine" video on YouTube. It's worth a chuckle:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqk_nWAjBus   This got me to thinking: If I had the workshop and engineering know-how to build such a one-joke device, would I even be able to do it in my spare time? Can I build something that is pointless, isn't worth anything beyond making an occasional person chuckle for a few seconds? I don't think I can. This is a waste of time! my mind would be saying, over and over again. All this effort, my skills, my tools, my resources would be devoted to... this pointless, useless thing! Then I'd give up and do something else. What else? Doesn't matter. Hell, I'd be more comfortable wasting my time watching random videos than that. 

That is wrong. I think that is why I haven't written fiction, drawn pictures, or painted compositions for years. Is this the foundation of my creativity block? After all, it is rather pointless, isn't it? I'm not aspiring to be a famous painter, writer, artist. I'm just doing it for me. If others find meaning or entertainment in my work, fine, but that's just incidental. I'd be doing it because it satisfies my creative desires. I'd be doing it for me. 

That is wrong is what my mind keeps repeating, over and over again. Selfish!!! Not in words but in the silent background. That judgmental critic that is always there. 

I can't afford CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. There's no nearby Buddhist sangha that meets nearby that I can join for meditation practice, a form of CBT in its own right. I've been trying to build up my meditation practice but the best I can do is sit there listening to New Age music. I need to be with other people for that. 

This judgmental mindset has to leave. I have so much in my head that needs to get out there. My whole life it's been like this. I'm dying inside, it feels like. 

California wild-fire smoke

 If the wildfires in California we're ignited by the pyrotechnics from a gender-reveal party, then why isn't the resulting smoke either blue or pink? I think someone's been wrongly accused.

edit: if the baby is gender-neutral, then nevermind.  

Ryan Sutter's awakening. (mirror)

 http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/mar04.html

Awake for the First Time

Post of the Month: March 2004

by thelodger

Subject: you've changed my life. thanks, I think.

Date:       31 March 2004

I have had a most extraordinary last two weeks and I owe much of it to this group, or more accurately, the talkorigins.org website and I'm writing to say thanks.

I have been raised my whole life as a Jehovah's Witness and (therefore) an old-Earth creationist. I'll be the first to admit that I've not always been the world's best JW, but I had always felt that when I was being good I was at least standing on relatively firm ground. My upbringing and books like "Life - How Did it Get Here, By Evolution or Creation?" taught me the complete absurdity and hopelessness of the evolutionist, secular humanist view of how we got here. The arguments presented seemed to make sense and I was satisfied that my questions were being answered honestly and meaningfully. It's so strange then what has happened over the last few weeks.

It started simply enough. My wife and I were discussing the Flood and the promised Paradise Earth and we wound up postulating some rather difficult questions for ourselves. Questions like, "If all the animals were originally herbivores (as the Bible says they were before the flood and would again be in the future), wouldn't that have disastrous environmental consequences?" "Wouldn't one-celled life and insects continue to have a role to play in the food chain? If so, wouldn't at least some of it be carnivorous or parasitic?" Once I started thinking of questions I couldn't stop (and more importantly, I couldn't think of any rational answers). A few days later some friends came over and we all got to talking about the Ark and the Flood and pondering some of the same questions. Now, these friends are JW's and I have no reason to believe they have abandoned "The Truth" (as it's referred to in the organization) but one of them sent me a link to a document on TalkOrigins about the flood a few days later saying that he thought it was interesting. Interesting didn't even begin to describe it. I was blown away.

Now, I don't think I'm a stupid person. I am a 30-year-old professional software developer with a 142 IQ. I read a lot. I consider myself educated, open-minded and capable of recognizing fact versus fiction and yet there I found myself realizing for the very first time that I had been blindly accepting as a fact something that was completely impossible. Perhaps some sort of flood happened in pre-history, but a global flood, the Biblical flood of Noah as described by Jehovah's Witnesses, could not have happened the way they say. It was so obvious when all the issues were laid out in one document and yet I had never noticed it before. For once, I felt stupid. I felt like I had been believing in Santa Claus (JW's don't do the Christmas thing, BTW, so it's the closest I've ever come TO believing in Santa Claus). I could have left it at that, but I didn't. If the "logic" given to me to explain the flood was wrong, I had to know what else was wrong too. Oh boy.

I went back to the beginning. In Genesis 3:15 is the first Messianic prophecy. Everything Jehovah's Witness teach about why we are here, the purpose of life, the reason Jesus came to Earth, the hope for the future... all of it, is rooted in the Garden of Eden, the Genesis account. I decided to re-examine, with an actual open mind, the question of Creation vs. Evolution (as I pictured it, rather naively). Could the chronology of the Bible, the location of Eden, the Genesis creation account, any of it, be reconciled with science? Did any of it, in fact, happen?

Now, chronology is vitally important to Jehovah's Witnesses. It's how they calculate the "end times" and why they are sure we are living in them. If the entire basis for all Bible chronology was based on a fictional story, everything started to go out the window. It all broke down. I dug out my "Creation" book and dug in and what I discovered made me sick to my stomach. The last time I read it I was 15 and it was incredibly convincing. This time I did the actual research. I looked up the references. I checked the quotations and examined the lines of reasoning and found... pseudo-science. Fallacies. Misquotes. Deliberately misleading re-writes of quotes. Argument through incredulity. Appeals to authority. Ignorance of evidence. Selective presentation of facts. Outdated information. This was worse than determining that the flood story was impossible. This was evidence that the religion I have been raised in was actually resorting to outright deception and taking quotes out of context and presenting as science something that is really just propaganda... and that I'd fallen for it.

See, JW's pay a lot of lip-service to examining the scriptures, researching your faith, PROVING that it's THE TRUTH, keeping an open-mind. At the same time (and I'm not making this up) they have a song that has the following words:

"We must act together as one
independance wisely we shun
harmony and one-ness of mind
bring peace of rarest kind"

I never felt right singing those words. Regardless, I always believed that my religious beliefs would stand up to scrutiny. I took comfort in that. I thought I HAD scrutinized them. That is what we are supposed to do. This is supposed to be a religion based on reasons for faith. To see that book for what it really was... that hurt.

Anyhow, after being basically crushed over the empty shell that is the Creation book I decided to take a serious look at evolution for the first time in my life outside of the writings of Jehovah's Witnesses. Oh. My. God. I never knew. I just never knew. I have spent the last week absorbing everything I can. I have downloaded the entire TalkOrigins.org website onto my laptop to read offline. I stayed up all night watching the Discovery Science channel the night before last because of a program on hominid evolution and I just kept watching every show afterwards. I bought The Blind Watchmaker and I'm almost done reading it. I have researched radioactive dating methods, transitional fossils, creationist arguments, abiogenesis theories and lots more and over and over and over again I have found a mountain of evidence, a mountain of evidence I had been informed didn't exist. I have found intelligent people who think for themselves, who (yes) argue and change positions and interpret things differently but who are firmly grounded in reality. The actual study of the actual world as it is, not the study of how a book says it should be and an obsession with trying to make the world appear to fit that model.

I don't know what this means for me. I know this... I am now, and on some level have always been, a secular humanist. I am suddenly comfortable in my own skin, like my mind is clear for the first time. I no longer know what role, if any, the concept of God plays in my life. It's certainly not the role that was there two weeks ago. Now that I actually understand the theory of evolution to some extent I realize it's not just a bunch of wishful-thinking atheists working on some quack theory and calling it a fact. I have developed a whole new awe and appreciation for the world I see around me, like I'm really seeing it for the first time. The geese outside my office looked like little dinosaurs to me and I got the chills. I'm 30 years old, my entire family, my wife and all my friends are Jehovah's Witnesses. If they knew for even a minute that I've conclusively disproved (for myself) all the fundamental teachings that underlay their (and my former) theology, that I had come to realize the fact of evolution (still hard for me to type that sentence...) and rejected the chronology of the Bible as impossible... they would probably never speak to me again. I don't like the position I'm in now. I'm scared. I have no idea what to do. I have no idea how to proceed. I feel like I just opened my eyes for the first time and I don't know what the next step is.

I do, however, want to thank all you long-suffering rational folks out in Talk.Origins land. You've put together a resource that has radically changed my life in the blink of an eye and I am grateful.

lodger

RIP Jamey Rodemeyer

Last night I read about Zachary Quinto on Wikipedia. I'm a fan of NOS4A2, he's the actor portraying Charlie Manx. I learned he came out as gay in response to the 2011 suicide of gay teen Jamey Rodemeyer who couldn't take bullying at school and online. I woke up this morning with memories of middle school hell slamming through my brain. 

Somewhere in my mind I know those shits shouldn't be executed for inflicting torment on innocent victims. But they don't deserve to live. They grow up to be criminals or at least make their families, coworkers miserable. They don't deserve clemency.

I'm glad I don't drink. I've got my cats at home to help me get rid of those fuckers. I've got to socialize more, on Zoom if nothing else. The more people in my life the further away that part of childhood becomes. 

A Twisted, Ancient Take on Marraige

"She (Wilma Jerzcyck) believed in her heart that marriage was a lifetime adventure in aggression, and in such a long campaign, where ultimately no prisoners could be taken, no quarter given, no patch of marital landscape left unscorched, such easy victories might eventually lose their savor. But that time had not yet come..." Needful Things, novel by Stephen King, page 130. And yes, her husband Pete had been conquered, a pathetic and submissive simp. 

Does that accurately depict anyone you know? Even halfway? Another reason I'm glad to be single.   

Voices in my room vce727

Did I just experience a hypnopompic hallucination? I don't recall having experienced this before. I was woken up by sounds of people talking in my bedroom. Three or two individuals, I don't recall what they were saying, only that they spoke without mirth, in somber tones. I called out, getting no reply. I woke up very, very distressed. 

And to think some people actually experience this frequently…. I am so sorry. That is totally messed up and frightening. 

Clown Wanted! short story, part one

The white van chugged up the sodden hill, water pouring down from the sky, dripping and spilling down from the trees. A utility van, former fleet vehicle for some corporation, its number and insignias having long  ago been replaced by the maniac bright colors of a business owned and solely operated by its current and only driver, Gerald Simmons, aka, Jolly Jerry the Birthday Clown!

He slowly yielded to the stop sign at the end of Whitby road. In front, water rushed down the far side of Milford road, coursing its way from Mount Vernon to his right down to the direction of Londonderry township to his left, where he was heading home.  He should have stuck with his decision to cancel on his last client on account of rain; Eight-year-old Kay's birthday party depended on the wide-open back yard for the event he arranged, it couldn't be held indoors, even if less than ten kids showed up. But her parents insisted their house, a twelve-foot wide trailer with a built-on living-room addition would suffice. So he tried, he really tried. ----

It wasn't until his flourish-gesture hit poor little hyperkinetic Billy square in the face that Mr. and Mrs. Sanders decided that yes, this party should be cancelled. They didn't yell, having acknowledged Billy's uncontrolled running having been the major contributor to the accident, but the anger, the you goddamn fool! sentiment was simmering underneath.

The honking from behind broke his reverie. After looking both ways he turned left. He should head straight home and set aside this whole incident for now. Just keep driving. However, willpower couldn't stop Gerald from looking into this one matter. He pulled over in front of the abandoned Bolten mansion on the right, letting the impatient motorist pass. Then he pulled out his phone.

The smiley JollyJerry foam casing didn't elevate his mood one bit. It usually did as it was often accompanied by the memories of children laughing at its appearance, adults chuckling at its clever design. It was one of his two phones he had, the one he used for and at his parties. It had a very small contact list and of course, no naughty pictures or videos, no questionable browsing history. Anything like that had nothing to do with children, thank you very much. He looked up Jolly Jerry the Birthday Clown on Google. Just as he half-expected, the proud parent of Kay Sanders had down-rated him a one-star, providing a stormy review he didn't want to read but glanced at, stopping at the word ...violently!! Oh fuck this!

Gerald's husband may or may not be understanding about this incident. Spence, middle-aged elementary-school principle will point out, again, his dislike of being the sole means of providing Jerry with clients. His budget had been a little short on advert spending of late with him pleading with his husband to reach out to his large sphere of contacts for potential clients. Gerald understood his resistance to help out with his business and love of performance in this was, but lately Spence's talking to him as if he were a wayward son instead of his spouse angered him. The thought of being treated like that drove him to slam his fist on the steering wheel. In doing do he inadvertently released his hold on his phone. It bounced off his left knee, landing on the floor. 

As he started reaching down he glanced to his right at the grey three-story Bolton house. Thoughts of entertaining a large group of children there at least brought a small grin to his face. It's been a long time since he performed before over a hundred children and child-hearted grownups. He sat up, still looking at the house. His dream of performing beyond Londonderry had started slipping away of late, he didn't know why. Not anymore. He's going to rekindle that dream, he promised the old ruined mansion...

Then visions of screams, terror and blood slammed through his head. He quickly shook away those thoughts, then regarded the mansion. He recalled the horrific event his parent said had occurred there before even they were born. The contradictory tales of what actually happened to that large family decades ago were never sorted out. No one wanted to even mention the Bolton place, not even out-of-towners could be interested in its history. Weird.

Not taking his eyes off Bolton, he opened the door to give himself space to reach down to the floor for his phone.

It wasn't until he felt the metal floor instead of his phone that he peeled his eyes away from that accursed place. He saw with shock that it had fallen from the door into the rushing water, its JollyJerry foam casing keeping it afloat.