Man, there are some days where you just feel lousy.

A verbatim conversation.

Man, there are some days where you just feel lousy.

Look on the bright side, at least you aren't an exploited Filipino girl.

Actually, it's because of shit like that. That's why I feel lousy.

I feel lousy because people don't give two shits about an exploited Filipino girl. Given the opportunity, they'll simply use her for their own pleasure. People don't care about foreigners who aren't incredibly familiar--even those who vaugely are. People can die in other countries, what do us Californians, us Americans care? We're not being actively exploited. We may be being spied on, but surprisingly, we're somewhat okay with that.

I know I don't speak for everyone. I know my point of view may warp the actual truth of the matter. But damnit there has to be something real about it.

People don't get reality anymore. It's an unworkable concept, flailing about in a mind duller than dirt. About 20 people were killed in Iraq by a mercenary army without provocation. That's murder, on a huge scale. Are people wandering about, feeling the pain for those who were needlessly destroyed? No. Even the most liberal people I have heard, those who are dead-set on leaving Iraq--they shake it off like it's nothing. "No surprise", they say. Totally anesthetized to any sort of real connection to any sort of physical event.

It's still castles in the sky. Still etheral. And that's always intractable.

I know our generation. I know how we think, what we feel, how impressionable we are and how stupid we can become. And frankly, with that kind of a population, you aren't going to get anything done to stop shit like this. The only people that do anything real anymore are those who want to do it for their own self-interest. No one does anything real out of morality. Or love. Perhaps false morality. Or leading emotions. But never something that comes from the deep, rooted need to keep all of us together and all okay. I don't think we have it in ourselves anymore.

It's just been stripped out.

Sorry.

If you've gone back and read some of my older material on Intelligent Design, or my attacks on "Darwinian Evolution", I'd like to take this opporutnity to apologize. Sincerely.

I don't really know what I was thinking when I wrote that. Looking back, I have recognized a lot of the paragraphs in those posts about spirituality to be coherent and well-informed. But whenever I brought up Intelligent Design, I snapped back to an unreasonably defensive and aggressive state of mind. My statements and emotions were without any real introspection, and mostly unjustifiable. Nearly all of them were drawn from a one-sided Catholic High School religion course. I've sinced learned how stupid this behavior was.

So I'd like to say right now that there is *plenty* of evidence for evolution of all kinds. Those religious jerks were just trying to perform damage control. They don't care that evolution's based upon totally empirical principles, and that models and observations of this process have constantly backed up the theory. All they care about is keeping their thin-air dogma from evaporating into the nothingness it has always been.

It sucks to find out that you were once a pawn.

if(incumbentVote == S_3930) vote(!incumbent);

Please. Make it unanimous.

Check your congressional representative and senate member's voting record (vote-smart.org). If they have supported the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which allows the executive branch to classify any individual it damn well chooses as an "enemy combatant", exempt from the writ of habeas corpus (right to trial by peers), do NOT support that representative or senator in the upcoming election.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 allows the US government to hold persons without any civilian oversight. The writ of habeus corpus has been an essential part of not only American democracy, but even the more restricted contsitutional monarchies of other countries, such as Britain's. There are few Republicans that had the integrity to reject this bill: only representatives Jerry Moran of Kansas' 1st District, Wayne T. Gilchrest of Maryland's 1st District, Roscoe G. Bartlett of Maryland's 6th Disrict, Walter Beaman Jones of North Carolina's 3rd District, Steven C. LaTourette of Ohio's 14th District, and Ronald E. 'Ron' Paul of Texas' 14th District stood up and firmly said "Nay!" to this abomination. Still, it passed the House of Representatives and traveled on to the Senate. Once there, only _one_ Republican senator voted against the bill (Lincoln D. Chafee of Rhode Island). It passed with little effort and had now been signed into law by the President.

Keep in mind that many Democrats also voted for this bill. Make no mistake about it; their behavior is appalling. They are simply warm bodies who seem to follow the political current, as long as it leads them to re-election. Let's us, as a people, correct that by changing the political climate in congress to one that _does_ think rationally before acting; _does_ truly care about our future as a nation; and _does not_ want to treat its citizenry like criminals. We can do this by electing a majority that will favor those who share these views: the Democrats and Independents.

Please, if your representative or senator up for election is a Republican who blindly follows the will of the president and/or his/her party, vote them out NOW. It is clearly not in our best interest to allow so few to make the choices that will affect so many. Thank you.

Phooom?! You son of a bitch.

This post, like the many others I have put up online, is specifically written for those who live in the United States.

80 Eyes on 2,400 People: Please click here so that you may ignore your TV set and take time to think about this article.

Excerpt:

Thompson, with the blessing of the City Council, applied for the Homeland Security grant last year. He is 51, wiry, with a slightly harried air about him. He has spent 22 years in the Dillingham Police Department, starting as dispatcher and becoming chief a year and a half ago.

It's his department. He and his six officers take the oath to protect very seriously. He bristles at any reference to Big Brother.

"Tokyo is that way," says Thompson, extending his arm to the left. He's standing near the spot in the harbor where Roberts stood the previous day.

"Russia is about 800 miles that way," he says, arm extending right.

"Seattle is about 1,200 miles back that way." He points behind him.

"So if I have the math right, we're closer to Russia than we are to Seattle."

Now imagine, he says: What if the bad guys, whoever they are, manage to obtain a nuclear device in Russia, where some weapons are believed to be poorly guarded. They put the device in a container and then hire organized criminals, "maybe Mafiosi," to arrange a tramp steamer to pick it up. The steamer drops off the container at the Dillingham harbor, complete with forged paperwork to ship it to Seattle. The container is picked up by a barge.

"Ten days later," the chief says, "the barge pulls into the Port of Seattle."

Thompson pauses for effect.

"Phoooom," he says, his hands blooming like a flower.

"Farfetched? My view is we pay people like me to think of the 'what ifs,' " Thompson says. The cameras would help authorities monitor who is entering and leaving the port. If something bad happens, the cameras at the very least could help identify suspects.

"I'd be willing to bet that's a good reason why we got the grant," Thompson says. "The government, I think, understands the potential."

The Department of Homeland Security, which gave Alaska more than $16 million in grants last year, takes seriously the threat of terrorists infiltrating the country through remote border areas.

"Once a terrorist is inside Alaska, that person is inside the United States," says David Liebersbach, director of the Alaska Division of Homeland Security.

"Phoooom," Thompson says again.

The town has a population of 2400 people. It's Alaska; 1200 miles from Seattle. The cameras blanket the entire town. All told, they cost the federal government over 200,000 dollars.

You know, it's Bushshit like this that makes me hate this goddamn stupid fucking piece of shit country for encouraging this kind of thinking. This son of a bitch Thompson just linked "some" bad guy in Russia to "some" town in Alaska who would "probably" use it as a point of entry to Seattle. It's more complicated than the plotline for a freakin' season of 24! By acting on this sorry excuse for a scenario, he's destroyed the security of individuals on the streets and on the roads -- the security of their personal privacy.

Nearly all of these types of people need to realize an undeniable truth: very little can be done to improve our safety. Look at Israel and Palestine: terrorism has become the norm, and neither country can defend its citizens against the nutjobs from the other -- it's just not possible. Do you really think 80 security cameras in a port city on the Mediterranian would stop terrorists from transporting a weapon/bomb onto land? Hell no! It's in a container for Christ's sake!

We have to make the right decision: we have to uphold our free society, even though it opens us up to the possibility of terrorism. It is simply a matter of circumstance, as there is no intelligent way to limit freedom and maintain our country's ideals. (George W. Bush has proven that.)

We cannot -- we must not -- invade the lives of non-criminals if we wish to call ourselves the land of the free. If we do, then I hope you all enjoy living in fear and allegiance to a bastard of a country.

No Refunds? Screw That.

No refunds? Screw That. I want my country back.

I could go on and on just as wanna-be activists have, but I won't. I'm just going to put it plainly and calmly: get off my phone, get off my network, get out of my life. Your snooping yields nothing but further confusion. In addition, respect the intended purpose of Congress and the Constitution. You are ironically hailing the fall of the Iraqui dictatorship whilst creating your very own. Stop it. And lastly, respect other's religions--including your own. Use common sense and a relatively even-handed ideology when making decisions regarding policy. Note that I did not say "use Christian Fundamentalism when making decisions regarding policy." It's just as absurd as saying, "use Muslim Fundamentalism", or, "use Jewish Fundamentalism". Get that through your head if you have the capacity.

Exclusive privilege power of the Executive branch? Not in my country.

(Phew, avoided the obvious Nazi Germany reference.)

Sayings...Demystified

Ever wonder what people really mean when say they're "tooting their own horn"? I did, until I started to literally illustrate said sayings. So let's begin.

God. Again.

Preface: I wrote this piece for a personal journal on July 18th, 2005. I'd like to share it with you today.

There has never been any subject that has eluded the grasp of mankind more than the divine. Perhaps this is simply because that is what the divine is in its most basic principle: unfathomable. Certainly, it is part of its draw. To have access to a reality that is untouched by the work of human intervention is an escape, a refreshing vacation from the many quagmires we have placed ourselves in over the passage of time.

However, as awe-inspiring as God is, I have not taken the traditional route in getting to know its reality. Organized religion is inherently flawed, as it is 1) contradictory on both logical and emotional levels and 2) a product of humanity. With so many religions marketing themselves as the “one true faith”, there must be millions of people who are mistaken in assuming they are infallible. Faith, in this regard, is utterly absurd (however, I do maintain that faith is necessary and a vital component of spirituality outside of faith in the context of religious correctness).

Secondly, organized belief calls for the unification behind the masterwork of many human hands. This brings in a large societal aspect, which seems to completely contradict the main focus of spirituality: connection with the divine. How can a large group of people dictate the correct methods of worship and communication with our creator without mucking it up somewhere in the process? Again, human intervention can spoil the divine source of the message.

I have come to the conclusion that, in order to get the complete message and to get to know God, one must access Him as unobtrusively as possible--through the self. I do not think that God inhabits the priest in confession; I think that God inhabits the confessor during confession.

This is a closed-loop system. If God is perfection, then in a spatial-temporal sense, this would conceptually be the most efficient method of influencing human events on earth. It eliminates the “middle man”, if you will. It removes all excess and ensures the purest communication possible.

That’s why I’m listening. I’m looking for and pondering for answers--not picking up a book and infusing its contents into my brain as absolute truth. One has to find a more intelligent route to the truths and the rules of our world. This route is not found by those of the “brainy” kind, but rather those of the spiritual kind. It calls for an emotional review of one’s experiences and their implications in the world; their connections with the divine.

However, this is not to say that intelligence hurts this pathfinding experience. It can open up many new avenues of thought which could lead to further solutions, and real answers. One must simply be careful what (s)he assumes to be fact, and to maintain utmost spirituality during their journey.

Science can provide a wealth of answers to very large, abstract concepts that border on information about the identity of the divine. Recent physics, especially, can completely humble one’s own dated conception of what God is. As physics continues its research, we have found that the world is much stranger than the average person might anticipate. Even today, ideas such as Special Relativity and Quantum Physics have completely rewritten the truths of our universe. They propose drastic ideas that may seem foolish and imaginary, yet many are real, tested concepts that have proven themselves through experimentation time and time again. They allow for a God creating our universe, a God interacting in real-time, and make us rethink the traditional conceptions of the Soul, the Mind, and the Self. Physics is not the enemy of spirituality. Physics is merely the enemy of stick-in-the-mud religion.

I know that “physics” doesn’t sound as catchy as “science”, but I’ll tell you why: biology. Charles Darwin has completely mucked up biology for ages to come. It’s amazing that people have stuck to his radical conceptions, even when evidence comes up that is quite contrary. And I’m not talking evolution in general -- there’s plenty of evidence for it -- I’m talking Darwinian evolution. Biology has a tendency to be reductionist, which completely devalues the living being to a mere cluster of cells, proteins, molecules, and atoms. Physics takes a look at this aspect, but it also investigates a greater level: the whole being of a thing. Everything does seem to have a natural place, and biology is forcing the abstract concept of creation and life to a place where it just shouldn’t be. The search for truth should be the search for meaning: if there are two levels to investigate, take the one where there would yield a sensible outcome. Taking the other would simply lead to more muck-ups and human defamation of the divine truth that persists.

You might be wondering where I got all these ideas about this science and God. Well, firstly from my last religion class in high school, Science and Religion, and secondly from one of my father’s books that’s been sitting on the shelf for years, God and the New Physics. They’ve both had their ups and downs in accuracy (mostly downs on account of the High School class), but I take it as a good thing -- it means I’m discerning what I know myself to be reasonable and what I know to be borderline crock.

All that I hope I get out of this is further spirituality and a wider sense of what’s going on. Anything that can lead me towards rationalization or rejection of what has already been established by those before me will help tremendously in how I live my life the way I have discerned to be most appropriate.

Darwinian Evoloution... Intelligent Design...

Darwinian Evoloution...Intelligent Design...

...you're both fucking crazy.

You know what? When I first learned of it, I never understood Intelligent Design to be what it truly was. As I was championing the phrase and all I thought it stood for in my last at Don Bosco Tech, I had no clue that the term was synonymous Creationist bullshit.

You know what I believe? Factual evidence. And the class I was in did make some good points. But they weren't the points of the Intelligent Designers. Creationists have leeched onto that term already--any separation it may have had from either side is now tainted. The man-in-the-middle ideology, the one I believe in, has to move soemwhere else.

Anyway, the class did make a damn good case against Darwinian Evolutionists. These materialist fucks have ballooned their Darwinian ideologies into something that does not agree with the fossil record. They don't get that there's no proof of the creation of vastly different species--only slight variations within relatively similar ones. That's all we have at this point aside from further thought experiments. The only guy that seems to have his head halfway straight was the late Jay Gould, who believed in punctuated evolution. There's a theory I can accept. It highlighted slow, sexual selection punctuated with quick species transitions inbetween. The great thing about it is that it doesn't disprove God. In fact, hey, there's even a chance for Him to have intervened even more times than the Intelligent Designers/Creationists thought He did!

Darwinian Evolution is also troubling in that it suggests that we're all just blind, random assemblages of things running around. It gets to the level where it's making a philisophical point. I call foul. Science shouoldn't say a damn thing about the meaning of our existence. All it should accomplish is finding out further theories on what might be correct about our world. That's it.

And hey, while we're at it, ever hear of holism? Not that creepy Eastern kind, but the real kind. Ever think that our entire existence might be recursive? Go past the quantum level, go further than the very elements that we know are the most basic in the universe, and hey, you might find more. You can't assume that reductionism is all there is to life. Biologists who bleed by Darwin's work have no way to assert their claim as a scientific theory.

Yes. I now realize that the banner of "Intelligent Design" is now bad science--it's Creationism. Who the hell starts finding scientific conclusions based on the predispositon of supernatural influence? Try testing something that can't be physically observed. Ever.

These "Intelligent Design" idiots make the point that all scientists of the Renaissance and Enlightenment were Christians and were deeply religious. Sure, that's true and that's great. But Newton never tried to explain gravitational force by looking to supernatural forces. He never consulted the Bible on why bodies are drawn to one another. He just took some measurements, saw some similarities, and came up with a general case that made it easy for us to understand how large objects might behave. His only religious influence was his motivation to find the true nature of creation. If Newton were to quote Einstein, it'd probably be, "I want to know God's thoughts." Religion motivates the soul and science finds further physical revelation. Sounds so simple, doesn't it?

Truth is, there is no definitive truth to anything. All we have are the findings of serious tests. We can't go galavanting off on our own personal crusade for our own worldview. Fine, believe that the world is useless. Believe that it's totally planned and useful. But don't go wedging those dispositions into your goddamn work. The supernatural cannot relate to the natural world through science, and science cannot relate to the supernatural world. End of freakin' story.

Kwong Is Going DOWN.

You know that old saw about a plane flying from California to Hawaii being off course 99% of the time—but constantly correcting? The same is true of successful startups—except they may start out heading toward Alaska. Many dot-com bubble companies that died could have eventually been successful had they been able to adjust and change their plans instead of running as fast as they could until they burned out, based on their initial assumptions. Pyra was started to build a project-management app, not Blogger. Flickr's company was building a game. Ebay was going to sell auction software. Initial assumptions are almost always wrong. That's why the waterfall approach to building software is obsolete in favor agile techniques.

Hey, Kwong? You just got fucking owned. Take that, asshole.

This Is Where We're Going, Folks

Oh Dear God...

Elliot Carver Bond Villian Tomorrow Never Dies

Steve Jobs Apple CEO Real Life

The turtleneck. The glasses. The omnipresent media conglomerate.
Coincidence? I think not. Run, children.

The Hacker: A New Perspective

Feature Article

The Hacker: A New Perspective

November 15, 2005
By MIKE POWERS
Senior Staff Writer

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (The Times) - Kevin Smith sat in front of his computer monitor, typing wildly, jumping from window to window to get the job done. After ten minutes, he was finished. He undocked a USB thumbdrive and gave it to me.

“Just plug it into your Powerbook. See what happens.”

I obliged, and as soon as the computer realized the drive was there, an application window popped up. In seconds, it started copying a slew files to my hard drive. I started panicking--what if it was a virus? I didn’t trust him yet. He could be compromising my machine! When it finally finished, I received one final prompt from Kevin: “Now hit F8.”

I heard a beautiful, glassy sound as the desktop receded from me and faded to black. I saw four icons parade around in elegant circles as they emerged from the bottom of the screen: Music, Photos, Video, DVD.

“This is Front Row!”, I said in astonishment. “You can’t buy this! You’re only supposed to get this with new iMacs!”

His response was resonant. “Why limit this beautiful app to the new iMac? Why not let it run on every single computer you own? People have a right to do what they want with their stuff.”

Misconceptions

As a journalist, I can be quick to make judgments on how to approach a particular issue. After all, I deal with fast-breaking news on a daily basis. However, I must also try to rid my reports of personal bias.

I talked to Kevin based on his response to my previous article, “Hackers Responsible For $2 Billion Loss In DVD Sales”. He sent me a well-mannered e-mail stating that, contrary to my report, he was not to blame for lagging Hollywood revenues:

Dear Sir:

My name is Kevin Smith. You mentioned in your article that my workaround for encrypted DVDs, DeCSS, was responsible for billions of dollars of lost revenue in the motion picture industry. I will admit that many people have been using my software to illegally share DVDs with peers. However, this was not my intent: I created the software so that people could enjoy the peace of mind of having a backup copy of their movies. I do not wish to be associated with criminal acts simply because I made a product that can be used maliciously. Ford makes cars with the intent that most people will use them to go to work or school--not use them as murder weapons.

Sincerely,
Kevin Smith

Prior to reading this letter, I thought of a hacker as a criminal pulling confidential information off the internet for his own financial gain. This is a very common archetype in film and television: the rouge nerd helps the rest of his cronies by taking over the victim’s computer system. I see similar real-world stories come through the Times quite often.

However, I discovered that these accounts aren’t terribly representative. According to Kevin, these “black hackers” do exist, but there are very few of them: “I don’t like the negative connotation people give to the word ‘hacker’. Most of the hackers you see in the paper commit their crimes in countries where the economy is so poor they can’t find a legitimate source of income.”

He’s right: individuals impoverished by poor post-Soviet economies are notorious for developing some of the worst spyware, worms, and viruses. Instead of picking pockets, they turn to an affluent American’s Paypal account or a hole in an online banking system. They have nothing better to do than learn how to steal people’s information.

I was shocked when I asked Kevin to describe the most common kind of hacker:

“These are people who work on free applications, report bugs to commercial software publishers, tweak existing programs and, like me, work around annoying digital rights management systems.”

Unlike the archetype seen in media, a hacker’s work is not done for individual gain, but rather for the greater good of the computing community.

The Hacker’s Nature

It is clear that from Kevin’s response to the lock-down of Front Row that hackers hate restrictions. They want to be able to take apart or modify a piece of software just like they can take apart or modify their cars. Before computing became mainstream, this was a relatively easy task; most digital data was simple and open for introspection. However, as time went on, software became constrained in nature. Business administrators were worried that they day they released their product would be they day it fell out of their control.

This overprotective disposition is responsible for one of the main restrictions facing hackers today: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This law, passed in 1999, makes it illegal to tamper with digital data in a way that breaks content-protection mechanisms.

Now, hackers find themselves in a predicament. It is their nature to tinker with the things they purchase. If hackers like Kevin can’t modify protected digital code, they are denied thousands of opportunities to innovate and share useful modifications with one another. It has led him to calling lobbyists for data-protection schemes “the hacker’s greatest oppressor”.

Hackers have not lost the ability to fiddle with all protected code. If a modification is not done for commercial gain, and kept to a relatively private community, then it is dismissed as a harmless abnormality by the content owner. However, if code is changed and the alteration distributed to a wide audience, the hacker is open to litigation.

Kevin likens this to “someone suing you for putting third-party parts in your car. It’s ridiculous. It keeps you from doing what you want to do with something you have already paid for.”

A New Perspective

I have reevaluated myself in writing this followup article. I was once biased towards the traditional view of the hacker community as being thieves and self-centered loners. Kevin was an unfortunate victim of this misunderstanding in my first article.

This bias could have come from any number of influences, but I am almost certain that some of it came from my own profession. It is my job to create content. This newspaper is owned by AOL Time-Warner, a major media conglomerate that manages both print and electronic properties. The atmosphere this newspaper creates in is inherently opposed to third-party modification.

However, Kevin makes a good point: “you already paid for this newspaper. You can cross out phrases, tear out snippets, do the jumble, or make it into a boat to float down a river. It’s your paper now. You should be able to do what you want with it.”

The Nature of Writing

I'm going to do something a little different with this post. As you might have come to know, Smooth Stop's format has been quite varied, and generally tends to reflect my thoughts in whatever way I find appropriate. Well, this time I'm going to be putting up a short essay on my thoughts about the written word in general. it's almost self-referential to the content of the blog itself. Kinda intersting. Oh, well, enough chit-chat. Enjoy.

There are very few organic things that we do anymore. We garden with power tools, we eat processed food, and our waste travels to a centralized facility. However, there is still one thing that we do that is completely organic: we converse.

Our vocal chords shoot vibrations out into the air, open to anyone who wants to listen in. Usually, though, these waveforms are only intended for a single person. We say something, they listen with their ears and process the language in their minds, and they respond. The result of this discourse can be anything from a friendly exchange of pleasantries to a polarized debate.

Today, live, vocal conversation as one's main source of information is a rarity. We gain the majority of our knowledge from mechanically reproduced sound and written material (1). Both of these concepts are totally inorganic. As such, their permanence can be all but assured. This gives the material more clout, but it also removes some of the human work that goes into a project. However, audio does give us a reasonable representation of a human being; it is similar to a simple one-on-one conversation. Writing, though, is quite different. It has many odd qualities that separate it from verbal discourse.

Writing is an abstraction. When we read an author's work, we do not immediately imagine the author. We imagine people, places, concepts, and things as they come. There is no anchor, no definitive information towards the writer's identity--only a vague style. Writing is one of the most isolated forms of communication as it only acknowledges the existence of the reader; the author is merely implied by the presence of new ideas. While audio can spur the same kind of imaginative thinking, we still encounter a voice. We still have concrete, semi-organic information to work with.

Writing is not temporal. When we read, we can take a book and read it up to a certain page, put it down, and resume days later without missing a thing. If we have trouble with a word, we can look it up. If we are slow thinkers, we can dial back the rate at which we read. Conversations, audio and video are meant to be consumed at a set pace. It would be very difficult to leave in the middle of a conversation, or slow down an audio track to half speed and try to listen to it properly.

Writing is one-sided. When we converse, we are expected to respond immediately, and to continually determine the direction of the dialog. When we read another's work, we may respond to a group of other readers or to ourselves, but never directly to the author. We rarely have the opportunity to change the way the author thinks.

Writing, therefore, is an odd anomaly. It does have its advantages; however, it also has qualities that make it foreign to our normal biological experience. If one were to choose an inorganic medium to deem as the most human, yet expandable, it would be audio. I believe people are beginning to realize this with podcasting and the like. We're pretty holed up in a world where living things aren't cherished much. If we can at least move towards a more aural environment, I think we could be a little bit happier.

(1) We also gain information from video, but I omitted it from this essay as it is an incredibly concrete medium that is very far distanced from the written word.

The Coast of the Gulf

It is a sad, sad time we live in when the government cannot respond to a crisis in its own backyard. As the mayor of New Orleans said, "I don't want to see any more goddamn press conferences." Our public officials should not be sitting on their asses, only momentarily standing up to try and fail to "cheerlead" agency heads who also screwed up big. I don't want to see any more goddamn medals awarded for ignorance that might have cost hundreds, if not thousands of lives. I want our executive branch, and hell, most of the state legislatures and governors, out on their fat asses. It's the least we could do for the people who starved to death in their attics, contracted a terminal case of chlorea, or were shot by a frightened looter. It was their poor decision-making that brought about this human disaster, not the hurricane on its own. I've had it with George Bush's imbecillic presidency, Homeland "Security", and the general lack of readiness. We have proved to ourselves that we are incapable of handling standing water. What a sad, sad time for a nation of almost three hundred million. We're being screwed; don't stand for it, you fucking idiotic NeoCon supporters.

What's The Deal, People?

If you want to take a look at my previous post regarding "I Believe In Nothing I'm Told By Authority Figures", I've discussed that some pretty horrible people in power make decent decisions sometimes. Not everything they produce is utter crap. Case in point: President Bush's recent highlight of Intelligent Design.

Far too many people have immediately attacked the argument, calling it "bad science" or "not science at all", but I think their actions are a bit premature. Darwinian evolution has permeated far too deeply into our culture--so far that any challenging theory that might have credence is immediately shunned. Imagine the harsh reactions to Special Relativity or the Quantum Theory, and multiply them by at least ten. You'd think a fundamental challenge to the nature of time and reality would be presented with more criticism than the operation of life.

Intelligent Design is all about how organisms are irreducibly complex. That's it. Some attatch religious connotation to it, but I would assume that by the time it would reach the classroom, the theory would be boiled down to its truest identity. It says that scientific observation implies living things have a complex design that could not be simpler. It begs further observation and analysis of biological entities, and theories as to how their designs may have surfaced. Just because a God could be a designer doesn't make ID religious. It simply opens up that option. Intelligent Design is evolution expanded. It does not limit the researcher to purely materialist or by-chance creation as Darwinian evolution does.

I think that Intelligent Design is only in competition with evolution on the grounds that it is not as limiting. It encourages further exploration into the nature of species and the complex structures they possess. It looks for a better way of explaining things. I don't know about you, but that sounds like good science to me.