Duck Goes Moo!

Writer Noami Wolf writes about ten steps needed to close down an open, democratic society:

Ten Steps To Close Down an Open Society

Is this happening in America or the world on a global scale? I will say one thing: I am concerned about the erosion of the middle class, something that I view as one of the requirements for a functional democracy. Actually, here is my list of what is needed to maintain an open democracy:

1.) Literate, Educated Middle Class
2.) Unrestricted, Uncensored Press
3.) Equal Enforcement of the Law

There’s of course much more to it, but I think these are the three most important.

I generally declare myself to be an agnostic, but I sometimes waver between quantum animism and straight-up meat and potatoes atheism.

I find myself very lax to accept the idea of a god creating the universe… and yet I am quick to agree that our universe could indeed be a simulation run inside some kind of futuristic computer.

In the end… what is the difference between those two viewpoints, that our universe was created by a divine being or a computer programmer? What makes one of these concepts more palatable than the other?

It could be that one is a scientific explanation and the other is not. Also, if the universe was a program created by a programmer (Will Wright, perhaps?) there really wouldn’t be any need to worship this entity as he would have no special powers in the world outside our faux reality.

But what if this programmer, or a just some entity that just simply bought the program from someone else and is just running it for amusement, is not above fiddling with reality or outright changing things for fun or experimentation? Then would it not make sense to try to get the attention of said being to perhaps be granted special favor?

So here I am suddenly finding myself in a position where I might find praying to the creator of the universe a plausible idea.

Or would it be praying? Perhaps whining is a better term for it:

“Hey, dude playing this game, could you do something about increasing my life span?”

“I’m bored, make a giant dinosaur appear in the middle of Ohio.”

“Yeah, could you get my local sports team beat some other sports team so that I could be happier while you make them sadder?”

I just hope he/she/it doesn’t get bored and decide to get a life, never running any new iterations of our virtual domain again.

Hmm…. maybe I’ll never play The Sims again.

Scientists now say that there is an identifiable difference in the functioning of the brain of liberals and conservatives:

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/11/0215210

A new tape from Bin Laden has surfaced that supposedly proves he is alive and kicking. In the speech he claims to know that Kennedy was killed by the Military-Industrial Complex, that Noam Chomsky is an alright dude, and that those who want to stop the war in Iraq should adopt Islam.

I just got done reading the transcript, which I assume has been translated from Farsi, and it was fascinating to say the least. Here is a copy of it for anyone else who wants a read:

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/transcript2.pdf

I might be more moved by it if Osama said that Al-Queda would call a ceasefire and there would be a time of peace and reflection, but no such luck.

Could be worse, Osama could be asking us all to convert to Scientology.

I recently had a talk with a conservative friend of mine about how conservatives seem to have missed the boat when it comes to this new fangled internet thing… not that I really want more conservative voices on the web, just that I have noticed that they seem less inclined to blog and engage in other forms of electro-elocution.

Well… after a little bit of a search online I can see I was completely wrong about all that. There are plenty of conservative voices online; in fact, they have their own version of Wikipedia, the Conservapedia.

NOTE: I do not support or advocate anything on this site. I just found it a bit humorous, especially the “Breaking News” at the top:

Alberto Gonzales resigns, after months of political witch-hunts on the part of deceitful liberals. President Bush said he reluctantly accepted the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose “good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.”

from Conservapedia

Well, I admit I do not agree with their views, but more power to them for getting themselves heard on the web.

Check out the differences between these two different articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush
http://www.conservapedia.com/George_W._Bush

or these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton
http://www.conservapedia.com/Bill_Clinton

And this page on Evolution is a must read:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Theory_of_evolution

I wonder if Stephan Colbert knows about the Conservapedia yet?

I am watching the CNN and YouTube Democratic Presidential Candidate Debate, and I have to say it is a very interesting experiment I would not mind seeing again.

In case you have never heard of this before, it is a joint venture between CNN and YouTube where they asked people to record videos where they ask the candidates questions and post them online. CNN filtered through the thousands of videos and is using 50 or so of them to ask the eight presidential hopefuls some tough questions.

So far it is better than I expected. Some of the questions are a little personal and in some cases the people who asked the question turn out to be sitting in the audience and get to ask follow up questions to make sure they’ve answered their question properly.

It’s really helping me get a better grip on the candidates, especially the curmudgeony Senator Mike Gravel. I have lost some interest in Edwards due to some of his comments about gay marriage and how he feels personally opposed to it. Kucinich and Biden are doing a good job at making good points and standing out from the crowd, but I don’t think it will make that much difference in the end.

There is still a lot of time left in the debate. Perhaps we will see Clinton or Obama say something embarrassing and they’ll be taken down in the polls.

This clip first shows Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s take on SiCKO, followed by Micheal Moore’s response.

Political cartoonist David Horsey made these rather interesting series of political cartoons that set the rise of the Bush administration in Roman times:

Empire Rising: A Satirical History

I heard an interesting theory on NPR today about why Bush did not give “Scooter” Libby a full pardon: because now Libby can still go to appeals court to get fully acquitted of the charges. This way the Bush administration can simply remain quiet and state that they “cannot give any information which might interfere with the appeal case”.

Note, this was a theory given by one of the guests, and not the opinion of NPR, so please no accusations of reporters having a liberal bias.

After all, the “liberal-run-media” idea is a myth put forward by the conservative run media.

It’s official, Anthony Blair is no longer the prime minister of Britain. Now is the time of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, which I think is a type of Chief Treasurer.

More Here

Atheist in St. Louis and looking for fellow free-thinkers?

Check out the Rationalist Society of St. Louis. It’s the oldest autonomous Freethought organization in the United States.

Many would say that Micheal Moore is closely tied to the liberals of this nation, but in his new movie “SiCKO” he reveals that Hillary Clinton takes in a lot of money from the health care industries and that people in Hollywood want him to take the scene out:

Moore said after the premiere that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, a personal friend and supporter of the Clintons whose company financed the film, “begged” him to remove a scene exposing Hillary Clinton as the second-highest recipient of campaign donations from the health-care industry.

from The Washington Post

Will this bad press do anything to stop the Clinton political machine? Probably not, we are most likely still on our way to having the first woman president and first black vice-president, or such in my prediction for 2008. I still would prefer an Edwards/Obama ticket, but Edwards still continues to trail by quite a bit.

Now, if only Gore would drop 50 pounds and hit the campaign trail…

Here’s an interesting idea: Compare the kids from the Powerpuff Girls to the three major religions in the world.

More Here

Where are our atheist or agnostic presidential candidates? Why is having an imaginary friend a prerequisite for running the free world?

Okay, that was unnecessarily harsh, but it seems to me that the democratic candidates for president are going far out of their way to prove they have a personal relationship with a higher power. I guess it’s part of the new democratic strategy, trying to become the party of “faith” even more so than the GOP.

I admit I have spiritual tendencies and times, I believe it is possible there is a divine being (though even that entity would be bound by the laws of physics), and I even at times quickly run out of the room to avoid monsters when I turn out the light.

But there is more to this “revival of faith” than meets the eye. It’s not really about just having faith that both republican and democratic presidential candidates are trying to prove, it’s all about showing they have faith in Christianity.

So… I ask, where are our Buddhist presidential candidates? What about Muslim presidential candidates?

This new drive towards a “culture of faith” is nothing more than pandering to those in our country who are intolerant and/or frightened of other religions. When politicians say “faith” they mean “faith in Christianity in defiance of Muslim radicals”, just like how when Bush said “Culture of Life” he meant “Let’s Reverse Roe Vs. Wade”.

Am I going out on a limb on this one? It’s possible, and my harsh comments about “imaginary friends” is meant more to be humorous than defacing. I am just worried that our reaction to a handful of Islamic militants attacking our country is going to be to drop our rational faculties for our own version of religious militism, and the gateway to that is “faith” instead of real faith in ourselves and our personal beliefs.

In case you don’t get the joke, here is an article on the real lost whales.