socialy retarded

Carbon Foot this Al Gore

Posted on 18. Jun, 2008 by Derrick.

Most of you know that I ride my bike to work. Hike on my weekends, and Eat granola with my yogurt. For all intense and purposes, I am a modern tree hugger. That being said, this made me chuckle.

If you didn’t know, Sen. Joe Lieberman, and Sen. John Warner co-authored the Lieberman-Warner bill. The bill calls for imposed limits on U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions beginning in 2012. President Bush opposed the bill, saying it could create as much as $6 trillion in new costs on the American economy.

Al Gore is the ultimate libral-treehugging-limpdick-wienie and is strongly endorsing the bill. So the guys at Grassfire decided to have carbon belch day.

“We wanted to point out the absurdity of the climate alarmism of Al Gore and others who want to make us feel bad for just about everything we do and rally people for the battle over the carbon tax which is now underway in the Senate,” Grassfire president Steve Elliott told WND. “We really plan to engage lots of citizens who have been under carbon-footprint guilt for far too long and give citizens an opportunity to make a statement that we reject climate alarmism. We’re not going to stand for this carbon tax.”

“We wanted to time Carbon Belch Day around the debate of that bill so we could rally people and have a platform to talk about this issue.”

“It shows that there are many tens of thousands of citizens who don’t accept climate alarmism and who are not going to sit by quietly as Congress imposes another tax on the American people,” he said. “We just want to see this continue to grow as we rally people in opposition to what the climate alarmists are doing.”

So, just for the guys over at grassfire, I’m going to burn more shit this weekend. Smoke some stogies, and drink beer. Leave lights on. Watch more TV, and fart as much as I can.

- D

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Russians and thier flying penni

Posted on 17. Jun, 2008 by Derrick.

Garry Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster that famously battled IBM’s big blue in a match in 97. He then began a career in politics and recently ran in Russia’s 08 presidential election.

I doubt that he ever imagined a flying cock and balls in his future.

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If you lose a limb, I’m going to dump you.

Posted on 16. Jun, 2008 by Derrick.

I’m not entirely sure why I came across this. Its an article about Carol McCain. John McCains first wife.

But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.

When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons

had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter.

My first reaction to the article was “wow what a dick”. Then I realized that I was being a hypocrite. I at one time told Summer that if she ever lost a limb to a shark, I would dump her ass.

I think that most red blooded males in todays society would do the exact same thing that McCain did. Your partner needs to be an extension of your self. I’m active, and if my partner was not, I think I would lose interest.

Though I was young. At one time I had a girlfriend that went through a sever accident that left her mentally damaged. Her personality changed from a strong, artistic, ambitious woman, to something that was not. I was only 17 at the time, but it effected me.

Now that I’m 28, given the same situation, I’m not sure I could stay with Summer. Physically or mentally debilitating diseases, or accidents would change my perception.

- D

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Food stamps anyone?

Posted on 03. Jun, 2008 by Derrick.

So, I was reading our local rag the AZrepublic when I stumbled on an article about the food stamp use in our state.

With more than 203,000 households receiving food stamp benefits in February, Arizona’s program more than doubled, with a 108 percent participation jump in the past four years, according to a report released last month by an anti-hunger advocacy group.

Nationwide, participation in food stamps grew about 37 percent from 17.1 million people in January 2000 to 23.5 million in January 2004. During that time, Nevada ranked second to Arizona, with a 106 percent increase in its program.

Holy shit! and then I read this.

Torres, a mother of three, said she has been using the state’s Quest card, the food stamp program here, for about a year since the birth of her son Anthony Aguilar. She is looking for a customer service job and hopes to be off the program soon.

“I don’t plan to be on it all my life,” Torres said while shopping at a Food City. “But right now it is a lot of help for our family.”

RIGHT NOW? are you fucking kidding me? Bitch, you have been on food stamps for a year!

I see this kind of problem every day in my work. People making decisions like having children when the they KNOW they have no business taking the time off and adding another mouth to feed.

What further aggravates me. I know if given the chance to talk to Ms Torres that she wouldn’t just settle for any old job. She would demand a good job, with benefits. Why couldn’t she get a job at night while her husband looks after the children?

We as a society have turned our poorest into victims and given them a replacement to their own self sufficiency.

Every place that there is a concentration of people depending on government to feed and shelter them you will find the most uneducated, criminal, and irresponsible. When those people breed they teach their children to expect failure and the cycle doesn’t just repeat it spirals downward!

And what is governments response to the new class of pitiful citizens it creates? ‘Here, have some government cheese and a slum house! And don’t forget to vote for us this fall!’

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Cognitive dissonance

Posted on 29. Dec, 2006 by Derrick.

I want to start out this blog with some foreshadowing. For my first 8 scholastic years I went to a Baptist school and have had intensive bible thumping. So if you read this, please don’t respond with “you don’t understand the Christian religion”.

Too many people think that without God/Ala//Buddha, there are no values. These believes aggravate me. I would argue that basing morality on a deity makes the moral acts self-serving. People who do these acts are only trying to stay in the good graces of a god, rather than to serve your fellow man. My disagreement with religion is that, religious people believe morality has its genesis in religion, whereas I believe it begins in culture and is then assimilated into the religion. It’s my belief that certain moral truths reveal themselves to man over time simply through trial and error. Let me give you an example of what I mean. In the Old Testament, it was said to be appropriate to execute someone for cursing their parents. For that culture, such an act was perfectly reasonable. Over time, the cruelty of the act became evident and now I don’t think even the most fundamentalist Christian would say that’s an appropriate act, despite the fact that it says right there in the Bible that it is.

The cognitive dissonance that occurs when one accepts some forms of religion is what eventually led to my de-conversion from Christianity. I could find reason to reject other gods but mine. But, when I turned that same reasoning upon my own belief system it was shattered. Stephen F. Roberts wrote “We are all Atheists; some of us just believe in fewer gods than others. When you understand why you dismiss all other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours”

I have a hard time being partial to religions apparent damnation of non-believers. like agnostics are some sub-human culture that without the Bibles ten commandments, the Buddhist 8-fold path, or the Muslims 5 pillars of Islam, agnostics are sniveling rebellious Neanderthals. I trust that each one of those by-laws of religion is a superior way to live life, but the idea that religion has some measure of superior morals bothers me. Whether one is religious or agnostic requires the same amount of faith as neither belief can be proven. What I don’t understand is, religious fundamentalists (Christian mostly) look upon me with utter disgust. Like I go home and make pagan rituals on chickens all the while cutting myself with a razor.

Case in point, children have no concept of god. They don’t ask about fairies. They look up and see clouds and airplanes, birds and bugs. They don’t question their purpose in life. They know their purpose: to live, love and be happy.

To be precise, Children are BORN agnostic, and are TAUGHT religion. What child, by instinct, bends their knees at night and prays “Lord their soul to keep”? These are behaviors that are taught. Children don’t have the interpretation capacity to contemplate the unknown. Oftentimes this shortfall is filled by religious teachings. Fundamentally, children are sweet, innocent, and loving. They are taught to be self centered, egotistical, and loathing.

For example. A Palestinian homicide bomber admitted that he had no responsibility for the deaths of others. He attributed everything to Allah. In other words, he said that if 30 people had died, according to this fundamentalist, all of the deaths would have been the will of Allah. He accepted NO responsibility. It was NOT “he” who killed, but that Allah himself kills.

And this is the trouble that I see with religion. Given all the relevant data, a competent physicist could predict how many people would die in a sudden homicide bombing. The Palestinian didn’t attribute anything to natural law. He saw Allah’s hand in everything. The question is? Was he born with this notion? I don’t think so. Even he admitted that all these fundamentals had been planted in his head by others. Apparently, this is something that others have a hard time accepting when it comes to their particular brand of fundamentalism. “Oh yes,” Christians all agree, “Those Muslims are fanatics!” All the while they’re driving around their SUV’s with bumper stickers proclaiming, “Let Go and Let God!”

And finally to my main point. The major highlights of the 10 Commandments can be hit without any reference to a deity, can’t they? A person doesn’t need to believe in or even acknowledge a deity to be taught that killing another person for fun is wrong, Isn’t that true? I think I can make a compelling case for not cheating on your spouse without threatening a person with eternal damnation of hellfire and brimstone.

You see, the problem isn’t morality or ethics. The problem is that some people think that morality and ethics cannot be taught or even exist without reference to a deity. I wonder how many who profess such outrage at the removal of the 10 Commandments from the classroom would be equally outraged if the 8-Fold path or the Koran were to be inserted into the curriculum.

In illustration; I can say that it is wrong for the nation of Muslim men to suppress their women. Even if they thought its acceptable, there is a flaw in their rational thought. They fail to apply their maxim to themselves. That is to say, they fail to consider how they would feel if they were the ones subjugated. What clouds them from reaching this rational conclusion is that whatever their deity says is reasonable, is in fact ok, rationality be damned. Cognitive dissonance needs to be applied.

Again, the Bible says you can be executed for cursing your parents. This is ordained by God in Exodus. I don’t think that even the most Christian fanatic would claim this to be a moral act. Why? Because the maxim doesn’t hold up to morality thought out rationally. It’s a false promise.

An example Immanuel Kant gave of a false promise in which you imagine yourself borrowing money with no intention of paying it back. Kant argues that this is ethically wrong, and in particular it violates the lender’s right to repayment. It is his reasoning for his conclusion that deserves careful study. Since his argument makes no appeal to the word of God, it attempts to show how we can discover what is right without needing to interpret a (potentially wrong and controversial) holy text. Since it will attempt to establish that someone else has a right to be respected, it aims to show that ethical egoism is false.

“The most direct and infallible way, however, to answer the question as to whether a lying promise accords with duty is to ask myself whether I would really be content if my maxim (of extricating myself from difficulty by means of a false promise) were to hold as a universal law for myself as well as others, and could I really say to myself that everyone may promise falsely when he finds himself in a difficulty from which he can find no other way to extricate himself. Then I immediately become aware that I can indeed will the lie but can not at all will a universal law to lie. For by such a law there would really be no promises at all, since in vain would my willing future actions be professed to other people who would not believe what I professed, or if they over-hastily did believe, then they would pay me back in like coin. Therefore, my maxim would necessarily destroy itself just as soon as it was made a universal law.”

Kant believed that the average person is good at telling whether an action is wrong. When we want to know whether it would be right to do what we are tempted to do, we ask, what if everyone did that?

Kant’s basic premise was that everyone is governed by certain rules. These rules are discovered by rational beings because rational beings have the capacity to discover them. These rules are no more dependent upon a deity than the law of gravity. Rules, by their very nature are general, in the sense that they apply to certain other situations as well as whatever specific situation in which they were discovered. For example, if I steal something from a store because I feel like it, I am following a rule, applicable in all situations similar to my present one. My rule is, whenever I feel like stealing, it is ok to do so. If I find, on reflection, that I do not accept this rule, then I must admit that feeling like stealing is no good reason to do so. When we look for reasons to do something, we are always in effect setting precedents for doing the same sort of thing in the same sort of circumstances.

With that said, a moral person is concerned about whether something is right for right’s sake, and not simply because it appeases a deity. A moral person thinks about a rule he would be following if he were to perform a certain action and then he asks himself whether he is really willing to accept the precedent that he would be setting by following that rule. Then the moral person will realize that this precedent is universal, in the sense that it should apply to all people. So, if the moral person believes that giving a false promise is morally wrong, he will apply this not only to himself but expect it from others. This is called consistency, or the golden rule.

Cognitive dissonance. In other words, look outside of your personal box and ask “would I want that said, done, or contemplated about me”. There is no need for religion to regulate my moral compass when I have rational thought.

-D

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