Underlore

Pissing you off since 2005

Not Even Wrong and the Logic Checker

Jul 12

Posted by Innomen in Logic

I originally started publishing my work to use the power of the crowd to check for errors. Before that I was doing it in persons so to speak via debates on irc.

My first topic was religion. It was easy, I learned a lot about being right and being wrong and rhetoric.

Now however no one reads my work as far as I can tell and I have no staff or funding to even access to research materials to test my data thanks to a global problem of information management issues coupled with greed.

Something that AI could help with is logical assessments of bodies of text.

Maybe some time in the future along with spell check and grammar check the computer will be able to logic check. To cross reference definitions and illuminate unfalsifiability and logical fallacies.

Not determine whether or not a piece is factually correct, but at least that is it logically consistent and makes a statement that could conceivably be tested at least in theory.

I personally would find such a tool of immense value.

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Book Review: Breath After Drowning by Cao Marsh

Jul 12

Posted by Innomen in None

Tormented by his meaningless life, Flint searches for answers to the questions of Love, Faith, and Wisdom, but as he searches, he stumbles into a world with no boundaries, and terrified, he faces torturous situations night after night when he closes his eyes to sleep.

Having already exhausted the path of doctors and shrinks, Flint attempts to solve his problem through some research, all the while tolerating his powerlessness in The Dream, until he can figure out a way to defeat the thing that continues to haunt him.
Alone and afraid, Flint attempts to defeat the negative aspects that plague his existence, both in The Dream and in The Wake, finding he has no real chance but to live his life and seek answers, and hopefully, liberate himself from the pain he keeps experiencing.

This book was interesting. I particularly liked the abrupt and therefor realistic ending.

The book is ultimately a commercial for western Buddhism in the form of fiction. But it’s obviously heartfelt and it is very honestly written.

It styles itself as philosophical fiction but I don’t that is a fair descriptor, given the narrow range of philosophy presented.

The book’s treatment of women is also somewhat odd, while again the intentions I think are good, namely to have women in an attempted realistic and intellectually respectful role, it seems their presence at all was somewhat contrived, as if a narrative without females would have been unacceptable.I wonder about the motivations behind this.

I like that some characters are presented only for their impact on the main character. In movies and mainstream books there is a tendency for the author to “do something” plot wise with everyone in the book not explicitly present as transient and an extra, and this creates a staged feeling. Like, Movie Physics dictates that if you see something, it never just happened to be there, its probably part of the plot because they had to take time to film it and edit it in.

Now writing is the same way to an extent. But this author chose to break that convention and it made the whole thing feel more real. In real life people can have moderate impact, they aren’t always either plot points or extras.

I like the nearly seamless integration of what readers would probably consider fantasy elements into the rather down to earth tone established to that point. And here again we have the break with convention since the antagonist of the book isn’t really explored, much less confronted or defeated.

For those interested in integrating mediation into their life this book probably has some useful nuggets but it’s a strange way to deliver them, it’s like picking up the newspaper and finding a nice poem. It’s cool but it’s not what you expected.

Bottom line is the book is good but not great, it was pretty well worth my time, though I must admit I probably wouldn’t have finished it had I not promised to just because I’m a huge SciFi fan and I’ve got some issues with the whole Buddhism/meditation fad. (http://underlore.com/TBA/?p=1053)

To read this book for free go here or just search the title from your device. (I read on the iPhone via Stanza.)

http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/8907

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Laziness as Pathology

Jul 12

Posted by Innomen in Psychology

Ever notice how excessive affective conditions of all kinds are disorders except laziness?

I was originally going to publish a list of emotions from Wiki and note the jargon associated with each entries extreme. In doing so I discovered that apparently laziness is not considered an emotion. That’s fascinating in and of itself. What is laziness if not an emotion? Is it an action?

As of this writing the Wiki on laziness contains the following

Feelings of laziness may be a symptom of mental illness, or a medical condition. Chronic laziness may be an underlying psychological condition. [citation needed]

Indeed citation is needed. I’m going to ask Wiki answers.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_recognized_medical_conditions_either_psychological_or_physical_have_laziness_or_indolence_as_symptoms&waAn=2

Hell even excessive happiness is labeled unipolar hypo-mania. It seems to me that pathological laziness is a pathology just like every other emotional extreme a person can be immersed in.

Laziness is the drive for efficiency and ease while cleanliness is the drive for order and sterility. Now since excessive cleanliness can be obsessive compulsive disorder, could excessive laziness manifest as an obsessive desire for efficiency and ease?

I think such a recognition would corrode the work force and put medicine directly at odds with the interests of the state. In light of that it is not at all surprising to find that the government is blocking a study which could show that a condition formerly dismissed as whining by the lazy has a biological basis and is therefor incontrovertibly “real.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/study-that-solves-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-blocked-2022195.html

Since when does the government block studies it disagrees with? I think it’s clear there is more to this than raw science.

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A Futurist Fearing for the Future on the Fourth

Jul 4

Posted by Innomen in None

I see delicious depictions of high technology in concept art, movies, and games and it breaks my heart.

Because they are so beautiful and I’m starting to worry if maybe the damage is done. If maybe The Company has won.

My whole life the problem was one of ability, that is, people didn’t have the option of escape, of exit, of altering the system to suit humanity. But now I’m concerned that its a problem of will.

I’m starting to worry that people will abandon the way out by default, and in their standing around and business as usual, I’ll be trapped behind a wall of fools when the door finally closes.

Look at what we do with wonder and beauty now. Am I naive to think that even if the option is costless and beneficial people will take it?

Perhaps the propaganda war has progressed so far that even if the backpack were to go on sale tomorrow people would still live in their cities, still hand their children to the state, still put simply, live and die as slaves.

Today is the fourth of July and the slaves around me had their brief state apportioned moment of regulated revelry, but the sounds of fireworks are over now, time for all good drones to retreat indoors and begin readying themselves for the next shift, be is school or work or both.

I feel more than ever like hiding. And I know I am not remotely alone, and yet I am by myself. Convinced of introversion when the truth is closer to a rat surrounded by traps. Sure, I can go somewhere but I see what awaits me, and so I sit, and I am to the outside world, insane.

The things which used to give me the greatest pleasure, vision of the future, now are starting to scare me. Because look what we’ve done with the high technology. New product. More advanced lies. And a whole generation of complacent grinning morons. Just smart enough to run the machine, and just dumb enough to try and guide it.

And why? Because the people at the top ignore their nature and actually try to acquire their way to happiness knowing full well that no amount of things will help.

Their greed sets the bar and their children try and push it ever higher until we have 5000$ a kilogram fish eggs and shows about just how much money can be wasted on a musicians house. While at the same time the poorest of people die trying to steal gasoline from burning tanker trucks because as the ultra rich climb, so to do the ultra poor dig past what we could have considered real poverty.

We’ve had the technology to fix many of these problems, and yet we fabricate more. The Internet is showing us whats really going on and instead of doing something about it we’ve drowned ourselves in warcraft and lolcats, fantasy football and front row seats, panties and power.

I look at depictions of the future and it brakes my heart because I’m starting to lose faith in our willingness, to realize them.

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Steam Hilarity

Jun 30

Posted by Innomen in None

So I start a thread called “No more money for Steam.” Bitching about steam being a ripoff for reasons explained in the post I’m about to link to.

It’s starts a huge debate.

Steam not liking such a caustic and yet orderly thread being the very top of the root page, renamed it to “Extra Copies Policy” and buried it in the suggestions section.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1322795

This didn’t happen instantly, for a while the thread was simply closed.

This killed the conversation as I’m sure it broke subscription notices, and of course people give up on a closed thread. I think that was the intention.

During this period of the thread being closed I began a new thread very simply asking about censorship on steam.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15699378

Before I could even respond, the thread was spectacularly closed.

And thus was born a bouncing baby demotivational.

I Cracked Up.

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Black Market Medical

Jun 24

Posted by Innomen in Economics

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19056-death-revives-warnings-about-rogue-stem-cell-clinics.html?page=1

“It’s a dreadful reminder reinforcing the absolute necessity for robust safety data in animal models before entering regulated clinical trials,” says Chris Mason, director of regenerative medicine at University College London.

Shut, The Fuck, Up. If you assholes would actually accomplish something, by say allowing anyone who wants into dangerous clinical trials so long as there is money and they fit the study parameters, maybe we’d learn something from a virtually inexhaustible supply of volunteers that you currently tell to go home and die quietly. God forbid we should actually make a rank and file death MEAN something.

And then maybe if you’d put your fucking results in the public domain instead of sitting on them for another decade while the FDA drags its ass with approvals or bury them in arcane language in the middle of a journal server that I have pay 400$ a month to see, just so some fucking corporation can patent the shit out of every step making sure they can either charge 20k$ per kilogram when it finally is released or bury the shit altogether so that treatments can continue to be sold.

Until this shit no longer happens, expect people to seek out alternative medicine. After all, if mainstream medicine says you’re going to die anyway, and since there IS no place for people willing to risk their lives in a study, expect more deaths and countless more secret cures.

I say bring on the black market medical. You idiots actually think the likes of Monsanto or Halliburton would release a cure for something if they were profiting from treatment? You think for a SECOND the pharmaceutical companies don’t have off the books research facilities?

They outsource the fucking phones, what kind of idiot do you have to be to think they aren’t going to outsource clinical trials to countries where life is cheap? And what would they do if they found a cure under those conditions? Rush to tell the world what they found and how they found it? Would they innovate themselves out of a job out of the goodness of their hearts? Really?

I read about high tech solutions to problems every day that I know won’t hit the street for 50 years and I know for a fact it has fuck all to do with ability. Its about lawsuits and money and paranoia and most importantly flat out not giving a shit about sick people or progress generally.

If I’m allowed to jump out of a plane for fun, if I’m allowed to drink ethanol for fun, if I’m allowed to sign up to be shot at, if I’m allowed to climb into a car every day, if I’m allowed to pray instead of getting dialysis, then I should damn well be allowed to gamble with my life and my money when the mainstream tells me I’m fucked.

Seriously, what kind of moron tells someone NOT to gamble when a gamble is sometimes all you have left? A greedy heartless moron, that’s what kind. Lets see how silly you think all this shit is when your doctor tells you that you aren’t going to see christmas.

I think this woman is a hero. The data from her death will help people. And if you think this is the first time data from a crime has gone on to save lives, you’re not a big student of history and I suggest you look into it.

For the record: We need to legalize the treatment of patients by unlicensed professionals so long as that status is made clear prior to treatment.

There are countless medical procedures that are described as “routine.” I should be allowed to master one, and sell it. If my customers don’t feel they need a “real” doctor they can come to me. See what I mean? Then all of the sudden it doesn’t cost 400$ to get a cold in this country.

Greed kills people every second. Support Rogue Science. The truth answers to no committee.

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Aspartame

Jun 23

Posted by Innomen in None

http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/Innomen/review/43325772/

This is basic chemistry people.

“Aspartame is the methyl ester of the dipeptide of the natural amino acids L-aspartic acid and L-phenylalanine. Under strongly acidic or alkaline conditions, aspartame first generates methanol by hydrolysis. Under more severe conditions, the peptide bonds are also hydrolyzed, resulting in the free amino acids.”

http://www.edinformatics.com/math_science/science_of_cooking/aspartame.htm

Stomach acid: “(A)n acid solution with a pH of 1 to 2 in the stomach lumen, consisting mainly of hydrochloric acid (HCl) (around 0.5%, or 5000 parts per million), and large quantities of potassium chloride (KCl) and sodium chloride (NaCl).”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastric_acid

So, these two undisputed facts establish that Aspartame breaks down into methanol in the stomach, generally.

Aspartame + Stomach acid = Wood Alcohol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol#Toxicity

“(I)t is metabolized to formic acid (which is present as the formate ion) via formaldehyde in a process initiated by the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver.”

Every step of that process is cited or universally agreed on. The ONLY room for debate is quibbling about what “harm” means, what “mean” means and how much is too much.

Well color me paranoid but I try to avoid drinking wood alcohol as a general rule, right along with paint thinner and antifreeze.

This is related to one of my earliest posts.

http://underlore.com/TBA/?p=63

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Automated Insect Death

Jun 22

Posted by Innomen in None

Wasp sucking machine.

http://www.sentex.ca/~mwandel/built/wasp-sucker.html

My genius father did something far better to a colony of carpenter bees. He wired a shopvac to a motion detector and positioned the sensor at the opening of the hose and the colony. Adding two inches of water to the vac made it lethal. We knew its job was done when the shop vac stopped coming on at random. We let it sit for an additional day, just to be sure, and then we poured the contents out. Problem solved. And for the record, wasps are our enemy, they slaughter our already limited supply of honey bees. Correct me if I’m wrong. Carpenter bees are not, in fact they are excellent pollinators I know, but they were coming inside the house.

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Dysfunction For Dollars – NYTimes.com

Jun 17

Posted by Innomen in Psychology

Dysfunction For Dollars – NYTimes.com.

People love a good torture show. Especially if there are children and sex. We are creatures of extremes, it’s a survival trait, its extremes that let you live or make you die in unusual situations. Children are holy in this society, and powerless. And we like them that way. (This is the real reason why children’s suffrage will not happen pre-singularity. After all we let adult morons vote based on which looked better in a suit, why not let children vote? The vision of the informed voter is a myth anyway between government lies and secrets and Corporate censorship and exaggeration. And that assumes passionate interest in the truth and a brain made for research.

Voting exists to pacify the public and to enact near unanimous decisions not enacted by default through mass action. That’s why we elect people instead of laws, because if we elected laws, our ignorance and apathy and ease of manipulation would cause the country to disintegrate.

That’s why serial killer books crime novels and cop shows are so popular mainly. Some of us are so specific that it effected rating and the corporations noticed. Now we have cop shows full of nothing but sex crimes, or cop shows centered on specific cities marketed to the residents of those cities.

It like a real life horror show, we want to be scared, but then we want to be told its all going to be ok.

“The criminals would tear you apart, but don’t worry so long as you’re a good obedient citizen we’ll protect you.” Ever notice how cop shows are like the WORST for peddling normalcy no matter how obviously destructive it is the fakers in question? I highly doubt cop shows are realistic to any significant degree except in the worst possible ways. For example I have no doubt at all that cops routinely lie about the law in an attempt to manipulate suspects, but I suspect in real life everyone knows that and so never falls for it unless they are children or mentally ill or beaten into lying about themselves. Which I’d say explains about 90% of criminals now, at best.

We just love peering into our own abyss. We want to see the innocent stomped on and burnt, but only in such a way that assuages our insecurity and assures our control. That’s why we don’t want to see little blown up Iraqi babies, but we absolutely want to read about the child called it. We don’t want to see horror produced by the “good” guys, that would put us at risk. And we absolutely don’t want to see accidents, unless we were there and up close. Because there is no one to punish with an accident and if we are close then the feeling is the horror missed us, what are the odds of us having an accident right here right beside the first one?

We want to see poor innocent little children (insert back lit white toddler makeuped angel doll Ramsey clone here) strangled and crushed and burnt and stabbed. That way we can vent some truly righteous hatred at the people we just know are responsible, those people that we hate already, people different from us. We get to talk about all the yummy torture they’ve earned for themselves now, and we can guiltlessly indulge that urge to power which can only be expressed with a pair of pliers and a blow torch.

We imagine ourselves behind the executioner hood and the beatific haughty stare, smiled on by our gods for our obvious righteousness while our enemies scream and beg for mercy that is not given and a reprieve that isn’t coming.

And on the other side of that bloody little fantasy is the fact that these horrific abuses remind us that hopefully life is graded on a curve and the petty torments I inflict on my children, subordinates, and customers are nothing compared to the systematic torture I just saw on TV or just read about. I paddled little Sarah till she could hardly breath from crying because she wouldn’t do what I TOLD her to do or because she didn’t finish her homework, that’s not torture that’s “parenting”… at least I didn’t make her eat her own vomit and stab her, right?

It also lets us convince ourselves that we weren’t abused. “Well my parents treated me like a robot but at least they didn’t STAB me and make me eat dog shit.” And in this way we can justify the everyday torture the TV demands. Every child needs “discipline,” you can’t be a friend and a parent at the same time, they tell us. Bullshit.

Pelzer begins his talk, saying, ”Kids read my books and clean up their room because they’re afraid Mrs. Pelzer will baby-sit them.” The audience laughs.

That’s actually not too far from the truth. What kid is going to report spanking and slapping as the abuse it is when he’s aware of other kids being burnt on the stove? Count your blessings we tell them, and it keeps them in line. If they even get a chance to make that decision. We isolate them So much, and we censor their contact with an already censored media reporting on a secretive world and we act surprised when they make it clear that they just graduated high school and still don’t know SHIT.

What we do to children as a matter of course is JUST as bad as any abuse because it kills who they are and we repeat our tiny abuses across millions of children thousands of times to the point that they grow up thinking this shit is normal. They turn into adults who do the same shit and have the guts to DEFEND it. If you’ve EVER struck your child and felt it was the right thing to do and it wasn’t about knowing them out of the way of a car or something, I’m talking to you.

You people are as transparent to me as the stereotypical balding fat white guy with glasses and a camera at the girls soccer game, you think lurks in every parked van and in every hedge, just waiting to jump out and molest your little princess. I don’t think you care who’s winning no matter how much you can rattle off about the semi-finals, I think you care about the hotpants.

You’re a whole culture sweating and staring and squirming straightening your tie crowded around a centerfold telling me that its all about the articles.

Well I call bullshit.

You people would love to bring back public execution and the inquisition. You want MORE blood you want MORE righteous indignation you want CREATIVE LASTING pain.

That’s why Seven was popular. The whole movie was about torture. And if it was too complicated to understand, since much of the pain was mental, and we don’t like thinking about what other people feel because that makes them harder to destroy for profit and fun, there are always the raw physical torture movies. Hostel and Saw for example.

Should I even bring up the God of torture porn movies? The Passion Of The Christ. The WHOLE MOVIE is a torture scene. Setting aside the frothing psychotics that love this movie, do the rest of you not see it as BLATANT emotional pandering of the worst sort? Can you not draw some parallels between it and the cops shows and hostel and the child called it?

The bottom line is we are fearful violent chimps more apt to circle a fight than to break it up. And until we face up to that (or change it), the people that already have will be able to manipulate us with ease.

Great article, but basically all it is doing is setting the stage for the other shows to be accepted. Dave is pushing it, and now he’s being called. The next one will be more believable. Sadly there are no shortage of abused children with torture tales to hold up.

Basically the whole thing is an “It could be worse, shut up.” Yeah well it could be worse, but it could also be a whole lot better. So YOU shut up.

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BlueGrassPolitico Guest Spot

Jun 13

Posted by Innomen in None

ENTRIES.BLUEGRASSPOLITICO.COM: The Podcast: Part 2.

I’m a guest speaker in this podcast, so if you ever wanted to hear my voice, now’s your chance.

BlueGrassPolitico.com is the brain child of a friend of mine, it’s a political blog but it’s goal is to be a little more light hearted than most.

To my understanding he takes the bar in a month or so and we should know if he’s a slimy lawyer by the first of October.

Let’s hope he’ll take his responsibilities seriously and defend a few little people from the system.

I expect to be doing some guest writing for the place, I’ll link to the work here, and probably reproduce it here, just in case.

Anyway enjoy it. I believe it’s completely unedited.

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