RantMaster Perry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That so many people have somehow been convinced that science is a matter of religious and political ideology and is only a “belief” has become surrealistically absurd. It effectively makes it almost impossible to prove to people that there are steps that could be taken right now to try to begin to alleviate catastrophic climate change, assuming that it’s even possible at this point. The convergence of different factors that work to prevent facing the  political, social, economic and engineering problems that are largely of our own creation make any realistic solutions stubbornly difficult to implement.

There has at the same time been a breathtakingly brilliant but ultimately suicidal capitalist propaganda program to obscure the reality we find ourselves facing. If there are people around to discuss this period in the world’s history some decades hence, the results of this present day de-secularization of facticity will certainly be seen as one of humanity’s darkest hours, which could easily outstrip the orgy of death the 20th century will no doubt be remembered as being.

Until enough people really understand that this truly trumps everything, including their religions, their politics, that it is indeed actually the totality of human life we are talking about, and really comprehend that it could mean the end of human history, this era will certainly be known as the time that humanity signed it’s own death warrant.

We’re running out of time. Two centuries of damage cannot be undone in two decades. Repairing the climate must become our all-important task as a species and will require a herculean amount of effort locally, nationally and ultimately globally. But changing the mindsets distorted by religion and the other self destructive ideologies that led us to this juncture and blithely deny the need for such remedial efforts will be much, much more difficult.

How do you talk people out of stupid?

End of  Today’s Sermonette.

As it seems that Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yahoo will not participate in Wednesday’s blackout, I am calling for a User boycott of all four in support of the sites that will be silent.

 

Update: it seems that Google will support the blackout but will not actively participate:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71545.html

If you want to contact your senators and representatives to urge them to oppose SOPA/PIPA, these are the links to do so:

http://house.gov/htbin/findrep
for the House,

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
for the Senate

 

It seems SOPA is dead or close to it, but we have to kill it completely. PIPA is alive and well and it’s virtually identical, it must be stopped.

 

I’ve added more links at the bottom of the page as well.

The latest updates:

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/17/internet_censorship_affects_everybody_rebecca_mackinnon     good one.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/17/announcement-raw-story-to-go-dark-on-january-18-to-protest-sopapipa/

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/16/sopa-is-dead-its-evil-senate.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/16/wikipedia-blackout-jimmy-wales-sopa_n_1208947.html

There’s a bunch of good links on Craigslist: http://www.craigslist.org/about/SOPA

 

Update: According to AlterNet, key GOP figures in congress have put the SOPA hearings on hold.  Daryl Issa called it “flawed legislation”. From the article:

“These announcements come after cyber-activist group Anonymous released the personal information of media executives who were pushing for the legislation. Major websites also continue to oppose the bills; among them is Craigslist, which has devoted part of its homepage to an anti-SOPA/PIPA message.”

Another background story from Forbes.

And this.

This from an article in Truthout Saturday:

“On Tuesday, news aggregator Reddit.com confirmed it would blackout from 8 AM to 8 PM Eastern time on January 18. Visitors to Reddit.com will find links to resources on taking action to oppose SOPA and streaming video of the House committee hearing, where Reddit.com co-founder Alexis Ohanian will be testifying.”

However: 

 

• Why not do more? Why not have everyone, and I mean EVERYONE not go on Facebook, Google+, Reddit, whatever other social networks you’re on. Why not suspend all transactions on Amazon, E-Bay, online games and wherever else, buy or sell Nothing online next Wednesday? Let your emails sit for a day. They’ll be fine, and be there Thursday. Don’t go online at all.

Just Do Nothing.

A sudden and deliberate cessation of internet usage will be noticed if enough people participate. There’s already been enough internet “buzz” from Reddit and others that the reason behind an additional boycott should be apparent.

 

So why can’t we all simply NOT turn our computers on for 12 hours? Will 12 hours this coming Wednesday with no internet kill you?

 

WE are the internet.

 

WE can shut it off for a day.

 

Because WE #Occupy the Internet.

 

I would prefer the thing be truly dead and forgotten, but considering how they always manage to slip a draconian bill in hidden within a larger one, it makes it difficult to trust them.

Why not stage a user boycott as I have proposed, We, the users, not only occupy the internet, in a very real way we are the internet and we still supposedly live in a Democracy. I don’t think this is over yet, far from it. They may have retreated, but if history is any indication, they have not given up on this.

Bear in mind that it’s only SOPA that is off the table. PIPA, which is virtually identical is alive and well and will be voted on by the Senate on the 24th.

Our vigilance is still necessary to keep an open internet.

Besides, can’t you live without the internet for 12 measly hours?

 More links:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/unless-facebook-google-blackout-sopa-will-succeed-heres-what-you-can-do/66875?tag=content;feature-roto

http://www.geekosystem.com/wikipedia-sopa-blackout-on/

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/81-web-general/3622-web-blackout-as-sopa-protest-.html

http://ohmygov.com/blogs/general_news/archive/2012/01/15/7-ways-citizens-can-use-social-media-to-improve-government.aspx

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/16/wikipedia-blackout-jimmy-wales-sopa_n_1208947.html

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/16/sopa-is-dead-its-evil-senate.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/technology/web-piracy-bills-invite-a-protracted-battle.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

http://lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski283.html

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2139321/bets-sopa-web-site-shutdowns

 

 

The following is a list of every fact about the science of creationism:

I wonder how many adults, new to computing and the Internet, share any of my frustrations?

For instance:  have you ever felt there is something volitional about the way the machine resists so many of your requests?  Of course I realize that anthropomorphism is absurd, it’s just there are some things that should seem obviously simple to accomplish, and yet no matter what you try, the computer seems to render a resounding  “No” to your requests, without telling you exactly why.    It almost seems as though it doesn’t want to let you into the inner sanctum of its electronic machinations until you have passed  through some secret initiation rite of userdom.  And it gives no hint as to what said initiation might entail.

Doesn’t it at times to seem like more than just a machine you don’t know how operate very well?  Does the realization that it is only a machine seem elusive?

There is no denying there are cult-like aspects of being an “advanced” computer user.  I have a provisional hypothesis about that:

If you are of a certain age, say at least 50, generally you will remember from high-school computers were these sort of teletype machines that seemed to serve no useful purpose whatsoever, that were operated by the same guys(usually) that set up the projectors in class, that seemed to spend a little too much time alone, all in the math club, played chess a lot…….you know the stereotype.  It turns out of course that these people are the ones responsible for creating the machinery you are reading this on now.  (I should know, I was almost one of them, from a rather different perspective)  Doesn’t all this incredibly elaborate infrastructure that’s grown to accommodate this electronic behemoth we are so utterly dependent on resemble nothing so much as a non-fictional version of  “revenge of the nerds”?

I am well aware that this assertion is not breaking any new ground.  But it is nonetheless comforting to repeat it.  Or talk yourself into.

It’s just something to remember the next time you’re about to hurl your computer into the wall in a frustrated rage over it’s apparent recalcitrance to cooperate with your wishes.

I have discovered to my dismay that the intellectual level of discussions regarding atheism I have found on-line are abysmally juvenile(Facebook people, that means You!).   One would have thought that at least a clearer understanding of the concept would be in evidence.

The following is a partial list of what atheism is Not:

1.   It is not a substitute belief system.

2.   It is not a subject that is rationally debatable with vituperative exchanges of scripture.

3.   It is not a religion.

4.   It is not permission for ethical irresponsibility.

5.   It isn’t something you have to think about in secret because you have that sneaky suspicion that “god might be listening”.

6.   It doesn’t require a question mark.

7.   It doesn’t require faith.

8.   It isn’t a story “about” anything.

9.   It isn’t something you turn to because you screwed up your life.

10.  It is not a fetish(look up the original meaning of the word).

11.   It is not a topic amenable to philosophical dialectic, which requires both subject and object.

12.   It is not a commodity.

13.   It is not a seminar subject in comparative religion 101.

14.   It is not something you put on like a new pair of sneakers.

15.   It is not intrinsically ideological.

16.   It is not an absolute. (the philosophy majors can chew on that one for a while)

17.   It is not agnosticism.*

18.   It is not an act of renunciation.

Recognizing the damage Religion has done to civilization, and the appalling wreckage it still leaves in it’s wake ,  makes  the struggle against it  an utterly necessary one.   Which  is,  like it or not,  a political confrontation,  not simply a matter  of  faith versus faith.

It’s time for humanity to grow up.

Atheism does not require defense.  It is self defeating to engage in debate if your starting  point  seems  somehow only  a  hypothetical possibility.  Atheism is no more than the absence of irrational belief.

It needs to be taken for granted that the existence of a god is neither necessary or desirable.

All else is folly.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*Secular Humanists?

by Perry on Jun.28, 2010, under religion must die

A bunch of pussies. Reservations are for dinner, not the philosophical foundations of one’s life. A respect for those of faith? Why should anybody have respect for institutionalized stupidity? My imaginary friend disappeared when I was about three or four. How about your’s?

Did you see Senator(Orangeman)Boehner on Meet the Press last Sunday(8/8/10)? Many questions were asked,  and as usual, the answers were consistent with questions as though they were asked from a different show.
Then quite simply, “Are the Republican tax cuts paid for?”
All he came up with is repeats of  the same disingenuous  bullshit about keeping money in the hands of the people, the usual party line nonsense,(watch the video; he might as well have been actually saying-” blahblah blah………..because his answers had only a tangential relationship with any of the questions actually asked).  All of which was visibly frustrating the host:  David Gregory.

What the Republicans refer to as “Obama’s tax increases”  are actually just the required termination of the Bush era tax cuts, which were passed without Democratic cooperation under the Senate rules of reconciliation 10 years ago because the Republicans knew they couldn’t(and likely wouldn’t) be paid for even then.  The present economic crisis that many economists think will be a long time waning(if not a permanent condition as many fear)  are part of the down payment for those irresponsible cuts instead.  Even the GOP god of the economy,  Alan Greenspan, is on public record saying that these tax cuts for the wealthy did not pay for themselves the way the Republicans insist all budget spending must.

Enough of that.  It’s a topic for another time.
Is it too much to ask these politicians to just answer the questions they get asked, and not blather on repeating only what they want heard regardless of it’s relevance.
Granted, these Sunday morning talk shows like Meet the Press and This Week are little more than DC beltway circle jerks, with very little meaningful discussion about the given issues. So  shouldn’t we demand more from the people  ostensibly elected to serve the interests of their constituents, our interests that is, and not regurgitate the same self indulgent party line nonsense to every question they get asked?
Of course this is a painfully naive hope. In this era of increasingly lowered expectations, it has become absurd to expect the largest elected criminal class of people ever collected to do anything that doesn’t immediately propagate their own self interests.
When coupled with a narrow, inflexible ideology, that only equates dissent with dismissal, is it then surprising that the only word on the GOP agenda is “No”? (Save of course when they want to tell you what you can do in your bedroom, whom you can marry, where you should go to church((you can’t NOT go to church of course, isn’t atheism a sin?)), what your doctor can tell you………………………….)
Just answer the fucking questions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OBAMA RESIGNS!

Bowing to increasingly uncomfortable political pressure from the far right, President Obama is set to announce his resignation from the oval office later today. When asked for the reason for this surprising decision, he was heard to mutter to himself, “I’ve had enough of this shit already”.

A spokesman for the GOP, reacting to this latest  surprise from the administration said: “We had to get rid of him one way or another.  The American people wouldn’t stand for another Kennedy sort of thing, and him getting all uppity and quitting just beats us to the punch. And quite honestly, too many people miss a Presidency run with a recklessly boorish stupidity and having a Vice-President with a palpable malevolence surrounding him. We can live with Biden for a couple of years, but we dare not do anything that might risk getting us stuck with Hillary in the Oval Office.”

Vice President Biden will be sworn in next week at an undisclosed location.

What is the one thing that FoxNews is completely bereft of?

They must if they think alot of people are buying their idiotological party line about Elena Kagan. Yeah……… Harvard routinely makes radicals Dean of the law school. Give us a fucking break from the fusillade of utter bullshit. The real kick in the head is that they’re well aware of her qualifications, therefore everything spewing forth from their festering gobs is a lie. Who the fuck are they trying to impress, Limbaugh? These morons make me nostalgic for the good old days of Richard Nixon, his disingenuousness was merely self-serving. This constant barrage of republican bullshit is wearing my gaping jaw out, they get an ‘A’ for bullminded effort, and a hard brutal kick in the balls for the contempt they seem to hold for the majority of the American people.

A bunch of pussies. Reservations are for dinner, not the philosophical foundations of one’s life. A respect for those of faith? Why should anybody have respect for institutionalized stupidity? My imaginary friend disappeared when I was about three or four. How about your’s?