Irritating Question (reasonable, though) Why science, why explore?

July 2, 2008

I love science, and I think it is weird when people ask why is one suppose to care. For example, space exploration. People say it is a waste of time and money (money? are you kidding me!? science is one of the least of things a government spends on). I say to them, do you not have any curiosity? Science is all about investigating the beauty of nature, and reality itself. If one digs far enough, one finds things like: gravity is a manifestation of the curvature of space-time created by matter, which is really cool. From what I hear, most scientists do science for fun or to find out things, not to see whether they can find a useful application or be famous. (science at cutting edge is rarely useful, and they become useful only later)

From what I have seen, most children loves science. Then, something inexplicable happens. When kids grow to teenagers, most lose the curiosity and it is replaced by indifference and fear. I blame the suckish science and math education in schools, scaring the heck out of them and sucking their curious souls like leeches at the same time. I think people must refind the coolness that is in science, and I believe outreach is really important. That way, the scientific community gets people supporting the big science stuffs, and at the same time, get governments fundings for them. Those who considers it as unnecessary should ask themselves whether art or music is necessary at all. If one doesn’t like the idea of science as just figuring out nature and how wonderful and cool it is, fine, remember the non-stick frying pan and the computers, jerks :) .


     Richard Dawkins (biologist), who took it from a former New Scientist mag editor

All Natural, Suckers

July 2, 2008

Have you ever heard of this argument? “Do it, it is all natural.” I did, and my parents say it a lot, making it one of the most detestable argument for me, and I am tired of it, which is why I am ranting on this post. I have been skeptical of this since I was a lad. They use the arguments in things like food and multi vitamins. They think because, lets say, orange juice from mom is natural, it is better for you. Now, let’s pick apart this argument, shall we?

So what?, don’t other companies use orange, so what if they do it in factories? Even if they use concentrates, if they add the right amount of nutrients, even though it can taste different, it can have the same nutritional values (except the extra fibers). When one evaluates whether something is healthy or not, one should look at ingredients like sugar and the processes, and one could add that they don’t like the taste of the factory produced juice. Now, there may be scary sounding ingredients that are say… preservatives. How can one discern whether such chemical is unhealthy without reaserching it and by pulling the “it is a chemical, so it is bad”? Certainly everything is chemical, but just because something sounds scary doesn’t mean it is.

See what kind of problems I have with “it is all natural.”? An argument should be able to stand up based on its own evidence, not by its origin. If the origin sounds good, but the evidence is bad, what point is there by saying it came from such and such place? By pulling the all natural gambit, it implies that one doesn’t have enough evidence for it, and therefore, one needs to apply it because there are no other good enough arguments. Not only that, some bad stuff are all natural like poison, so the argument doesn’t even make sense. Arguments without the all natural excuse should be like this: It is bad because it contains etc etc etc, and they do this and this and this (or replace bad with good, whatever you feel like defending).

Carnival of elitist bastards (Are you one?)

July 2, 2008

This is a link of carnival of elitist bastards: http://elitistbastardscarnival.blogspot.com/2008/06/carnival-of-elitist-bastards-2.html

So, you are wondering, what is carnival, elite, and bastards? I bet most of you know, but just in case… Carnival is like a collection of article of bloggers, elites are a special class of people. Now, why is it called that? Cause now a days, if you know more than anyone and try to crush their most cherished held belief, you are elitist, and therefore, arrogant.

Here is a good satire by Colbert: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/colbert-is-barack-obama-an-elitist/

The point of it is, because there is so much public disdain for intellect (I have heard people who are educated being called elite), they decided to set this carnival to celebrate intellectual bastards. And you know what? That means I must be an elitist bastard too, and I am proud of it. All you have to do to be one is to want to be educated. Even it means being arrogant (I am just playing along from the point of view of people who call smart people elitist), and I would rather be that kind of bastard than a crank and an ignoramus. With all sarcasm aside, what is up with people thinking knowing more is bad? If you ask me, not only have I found it useful, but it helped a bit with my popularity :) (I am known as the “smart kid”).

People must think more because not only does it help you choose better in real life and help you differentiate between real and hoax, I believe it is important for people to be educated for the sake of democratic process. The more educated a person is, the better will the person be able to decide on which side to support an issue and form good opinions about it. Not thinking is too easy, the truth is hard, and so much the couragious is the person who braves it. Perhaps why some disdain informed people, maybe they have some cherished values about something or thinks they know something for sure, and they want to retain in to it by ignoring information. I have seen creationists and vaccine denialists do it, they support their own position by ignoring the evidences. As I have heard one guy say, only ignorance fears knowledge.

Minesweeper Record (part 3)

July 2, 2008

After I came back to camp, I just rested and attempted minesweeper. After a while, I did a new record!

As a celebration, I give you two cool minesweeper videos and a secret

Back from Jebus camp

July 2, 2008

Whoo! Finally! I did not have a good time, and no, it is not because it was religious, but because it was boring. Especially Jesus praising and catholic mass (church in camp! camp! If you haven’t gone to catholic church, you have no idea how boring it is) The first praise was short, I fell asleep in the second one, and I recieved the full torture in the third one. I really missed the internet. Good thing I brought “Coming of Age in the Milky Way,” which I will be posting about soon. I didn’t like some of the games, but I liked chicken fight, the one where I had a bottle of 3 gal and 5 gal and had to have 4gal of water, and … yeah. I also enjoyed watching the woods being consumed by the fire, though I didn’t get to watch it till the end. I disliked eating time, since I had to wait forever so that everybody could get the food and pray. Wait all that just to talk to air! (what? I was really hungry) Nor did I like some of the food. I also had to eat with my team members, which  was a bit annoying. Once, we had to play at night where you had to “cheat” your partner, which was boring, though in the end, it turned very funny. We had to do a “race”, watch a really neat play based on A Bug’s Life (they ruined it when Flik prayed and they said some morality thingy after the play), some dancing suff, invent team name/flag/chant, skit (why dit it have to be about a parable?), and more. Now, you may be asking, how could I have been bored? Well, stuff like dancing and some group activities they did was not so fun for me. Or maybe it was my mental state, I expected to be bored, so  I was bored. I don’t know. I only enjoyed some things in the second day, the other two days were completely crap.

In the final day, I had to clean the bathroom along with other people. Nasty mud everywhere, with clogged toilet with poop in it. Sometimes, when I sat on a toilet, it felt like someone peed outside. Anyways, I hated it so much  that I modified a jesus song to reflect my feelings and sang to myself:It went like “Deep, deep down in your heart, you know you hate cleaning up.” and “Do you think clean up sucks! Yes I know clean up sucks!

Anyways, I am glad to be back.


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