May

21

The Precipice of a New Era

May 21, 2010 by Brandon | 4 Comments

God just got a little bit more useless as scientists have announced a stunning, and long anticipated breakthrough. Artificial life.

That may not mean to some what it technically means. No, scientists did not breed some Frankensteinian creature in lab. Instead, they pieced together some DNA to make a synthetic gene sequence, then used it to create a synthetic chromosome, which they then inserted into a host cell. The host cell took that genetic information and began to replicate, creating millions of copies.

Doesn’t sound like much, but trust me, we stand on the precipice of a new era with this discovery. Some people are concerned that we’ve overstepped our boundaries, and again we hear the cries of “Playing God.” But there is no God to play. We do as we will, and true, we must do so cautiously, but we are facing a future where synthetic cells can be created to produce vaccines, to eat cancer, and even create biofuels.

Detractors claim that in the hands of terrorists and the military, deadly new bioweapons can be created using this technology. But let’s face it, we’ve been in the business of killing each other ever since two tribes of sapiens existed. With or without this, we’re going to continue to kill each other through whatever means possible. We might as well surge forward with our technology and glean what benefits we can from it.



Dec

10

Mars Attacks! Or Russia. Which Ever.

December 10, 2009 by Brandon | 1 Comment

Some of you may have seen tales of a strange, spiral light that hovered in the skies of Norway on the 9th. It was a truly epic light show, indeed, and it was witnessed possibly by thousands of people.

It wasn’t long before the tinfoil hats were secured to people’s heads and the claims of aliens and UFOs began to fly. It’s important to note that I consider myself a skeptic, not just an atheist; you can bet there are many atheists out there who aren’t very skeptical of other claims, such as ghosts, UFOs, and Bigfoot. So while I honestly had absolutely no idea what was depicted in the videos and photos I saw of the event, I certainly wasn’t about to leap to the conclusion that extraterrestrials were making themselves known to humanity with a fireworks show.

I didn’t have to wait very long for my skepticism to pay off. It took just one day for an explanation to emerge. A Russian submarine in the White Sea, called the Dmitry Donskoi, apparently test-fired a Bulava missile on Wednesday, which malfunctioned before hitting its third stage. The Russian military has since confirmed this, and a British engineer named Doug Ellison put together a computer simulation of exactly what happened to the missile. It began to spiral out of control while leaking fuel, and the ejecta caused the interesting shape in the sky.

Science: 1, Tinfoil Hats: 0



Oct

12

Think Or Be Damned

October 12, 2009 by Brandon | 3 Comments

I came across a site that has a bunch of political cartoons dating back to the 1860’s through the turn of the century that discuss evolution.

A specific cartoon amazed me because it seems as though it could have been produced today rather than in 1899.

In the picture, men of science waving a flag reading “THINK OR BE DAMNED” aim a gatling gun titled “Enlightenment” toward a mob of pasters, priests, monks, and other religious folk, who are armed with primitive, dark age weapons and carry a flag reading “BELIEVE OR BE DAMNED.”

The barrels of the gun are individually named “History,” “Archaeology,” “Evolution,” and “Geology,” while the boxes of ammunition lying around are labled “Historical Facts,” “Scientific Facts,” and “Rational Religion.”

The religious mob ignorantly charges forward, but ultimately they’ll be mowed down by scientific progress. They don’t even stand a chance.

Again, this is a cartoon that was made back in 1899 and was depicting a battle between science and religion then, where scientists were killing superstition with the most devastating weapon of the day, yet we have people trying to tell us that this conflict is new.

Anyway, I thought it was amusing so I figured I’d share it.



Sep

17

Pics Or It Didn’t Happen

September 17, 2009 by Brandon | 7 Comments

The Planck Telescope, sent out by the European Space Agency to survey radiation dating back from just 380,000 years after the Big Bang, has returned. And it has pics to prove it. Of course, we’re not really going to get to see very much of for a few years until it’s all analyzed, and it’s not going to be impressive, high resolution images of deep space nebula and all that fancy stuff we love seeing from Hubble. Instead it’ll look more like that colored band in the image to the left.

We are once again presented with undeniable proof of the age of the universe, and further evidence that confirms the Big Bang theory.

Oh wait, what am I thinking? This is only opinion. Please, if you simply disagree with this because it doesn’t conform to your ignorance, just wave your hand and disregard it. I wouldn’t want to offend you.



Apr

20

There’s a report that theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has been hospitalized with a serious chest infection.

I know that he was due to attend a conference a couple weeks ago but wasn’t able to make it due to being ill…

Anyway, hopefully he’ll make it through and be released. I’d hate to see the world lose this man.



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What is Fractal Wrongness?

The state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person's worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person's worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.

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