⛧ First Church of Hypocrisy, Blasphemy, and Self-Righteousness ⛧

Just as I judge the people on my friendslist for signs of stupidity such as anti-vaxxer, anti-science, conservative, or bigoted beliefs, so too do I judge the people my friends have as their friends. If I see stupid people or bigots on your friendslist, I think less of you for tolerating them in your life. I won't unfriend you over it, probably, but know that I'm side-eyeing you, keeping a closer eye on you, and wondering why someone supposedly intelligent would tolerate such nonsense in their friends and associates. Because I for one have zero tolerance for anti-science idiots and/or bigots. To the point that I stopped talking to my own mother over her anti-mask BS that she wouldn't shut up about.

The teleporter from The Fly would never work properly, at least not without a very advanced AI filtering the information. Even with mosquito netting, it's impossible to guarantee you won't still accidentally let in an insect while going through the netting. Also even if you did manage it, humans are not a single organism. Humans have more bacteria on and in us than human cells. We also have microscopic insects we're host to; one eats the gunk from our sebaceous glands, the other is dust mites who eat our dead skin cells. And then what if someone has a tick on them? Or a tapeworm or flatworm or other parasite inside them?

Actually now that I think about it, the teleporter shouldn't have been able to work at all, if the system can't tell the difference between a fly's cells and a human's cells. Because it would have to be able to tell different kinds of human cells apart. If it can't tell the difference between a human and a fly, it shouldn't have been able to tell a brain cell from a sperm cell, and thus should have liquefied anything it tried to transport.

Thus, if it could tell different human cells apart, it would also have the ability to tell the difference between different species. Not to mention the fact that it would also have to be able to put all those cells back in the right place. So even if if thought the fly was part of the same data stream as the human, the most that should've happened was teleporting both of them independently by virtue of putting the fly's cells in the same place and configuration they were in when the teleporter activated. Thus if the fly had been flying around when it got teleported, it would still be in the air when it was reconstructed. If it was sitting on his skin when the teleporter activated, it would still have been sitting on his skin when it was reconstructed. If the teleporter can't manage that, how could it possibly know how to put his brain back together properly? Or for that matter, keep from blurring all his organs into one large coagulated lump?

My verdict: if it were real, the teleporter from The Fly would either have worked perfectly, or not at all. There's no middle ground.

I think the funniest/stupidest thing about vegans is that they're all like "we're trying to be like herbivores." Setting aside for the moment that you're opting to be a prey animal, science is finding more and more every day that there's really no such thing as a vegan herbivore in nature. Literally all herbivores on Earth are actually omnivores because they can and do eat meat, eggs, or bones whenever they have the opportunity. They just prefer plants because it's easier than hunting or scavenging.

So when you vegan nutters are like "I can get all the nutrients I need from plants," you're wrong. Not even herbivores can get everything they need from plants. You're an idiot to think humans -- a proven obligate omnivore species -- is somehow an exception.

Something just occurred to me. Science says that old age happens because our cells can no longer replicate themselves, because the replication process damages DNA, and eventually that DNA gets so damaged it can't replicate anymore.

But if that's true, then how did life get to this point to begin with? How do bacteria replicate, again and again, without suffering the same fate? If our cells are doomed to this fate, then why not bacteria? Judging by the fact that bacteria get along just fine replicating forever without ever dying of replication failure (if they did, life wouldn’t have lasted more than a century before going completely extinct), then we can safely say it's not necessary for us and should not be happening.

My point is, old age is clearly a mistake. Clearly, evolution fucked up somewhere along the way, and if it hadn't, we would all be immortal and eternally youthful.

And don't tell me it's not a mistake, and that we need to grow old and die of old age replication failure for some sciencey reason, because judging by the fact that bacteria don't have those problems and manage just fine without them, we clearly shouldn't be dying of old age either.

Some fool on Quora: sex is not an arbitrary label. Sex is a biological descriptor. One is free to say that gender is a social construct, and therefore arbitrary and fluid. Sex is not a social construct, neither is it arbitrary or fluid, anymore than eye color is.

Me: Ask a scientist who specializes in intersex conditions whether sex is an arbitrary label or not. There are sooooo many different ways to be intersex, there are cis females with XY chromosomes, and some of them can even get pregnant! There are XYYY males, XYY males, I believe there are people who are just X (not XX or XY but just X), and there are hundreds maybe thousands of ways for genitalia and secondary sex characteristics to differ.

And then there are other species. There are species where the female has something like a penis and uses it on the male. There are bees, who technically have three sexes: Male, Female, and Neuter. But so many people, even scientists, are so hung up on these meaningless human sex labels that they say BS like “All bees are females except for the drones, and only the queen can reproduce” which is patently false.

Male and female are human labels, humans are social animals, and humans developed male/female labels for social reasons regardless of why scientists use them, thus male/female ARE social constructs. And the fact that intersex people and animals exist, transgender people and animals exist (which could be considered a form of Intersex, given findings about transgender people’s brains), and the fact that even non-intersex cisgender vary so greatly that nobody can really define gender or even sex without basically going “I’ll know it when I see it” means that yes, sex IS fluid and largely arbitrary.

It’s just that almost nobody really talks about how weird this whole sex/gender thing is unless they happen to be a scientist or a doctor or learning to be one of the two, or if they happen to be intersex or know someone who is. Also, Intersex people almost always get genital mutilation (sorry, “correction”) surgery as infants without the doctors even having to INFORM the parents, and heaven forbid they should have to actually ASK PERMISSION before mutilating a baby’s genitals! People have this ridiculous notion that there’s just male and female, and it’s always clear and obvious, but it’s all just BS.

It’s all very weird and confusing, but it gets a lot less confusing when you finally sit back and admit to yourself that sex and gender are human labels, largely arbitrary, mostly meaningless, and Nature’s response to such labels is going to be a whole lot of “Eff you and your arbitrary BS labels.”

I was walking home today, which is always a great time for me to start thinking things through, and somehow I got on the subject of water fluoridation, and how my GF and I can't even discuss it without fighting, because she's opposed to it. I'll be honest and say I don't remember why she's against it, as the very fact of being against it fills me with incoherent rage most of the time. And it occurred to me to wonder *why* I'm so vehement about it. For most other things I'm vehement about, I know the reasons. So I examined it. And I figured out why, at last.

Let's start out with me mentioning that I do understand part of her point of view, there ARE an awful lot of contradictory scientific studies out there. But she seems to think this is an inherent flaw of science. It is not. Most of the studies you hear about in the news, that contradict one another all the time, are really BAD science mostly run by corporations with an agenda, who are deliberately fudging the results to say what they want the results to say. You may also have some genuine, unbiased studies in there, too, trying to shout over all the noise. So I understand being wary of believing something just because a scientist says so.

The problem she has, though, is that she's not applying that same wariness to the people whose "evidence" supports what she believes about water fluoridation. I'll admit I don't recall the reasons she gave for being against it, as I was basically so angry to find out that this normally very intelligent person who does seem to have a pretty good grasp of scientific method has a position that not only has NO objective evidence to support it, but actually has hundreds of studies by reputable sources that actively DISPROVE it.

Now see, that there is where we start to see where my vehemence comes from. I don't give a shit how illogical a belief is, if there's no way to either prove OR disprove it. Believe in God, believe in Zarflox the Magnificent, believe in the tooth fairy, whatever; I don't care. Just don't be an asshole about. Don't try to convert me, don't judge me for being a nonbeliever, and I'm cool with you. Hell, believe that Satan whispers secrets about the universe to you in your sleep for all I care. Unless you're being an asshole or trying to hurt somebody because of your beliefs, I don't care. (Which is why I despise the Scientologists, since that is a cult that sucks it's non-celebrity believers completely bankrupt, and is therefore harming people.)

However, when something has a fuckton of evidence actively disproving it, I start to get irritated. But this is still only part of my vehemence, because while I think flat-earthers, hollow earthers, concave hollow earthers, and other weirdos like that are crazy, I generally just roll my eyes at them.

So why do I get so mental with frustrated anger at the anti-fluoride bullshit? Well first of all, as I said, there is not a single study by any reputable scientist to support the anti-fluoridation movement. What's more, all supposed "evidence" that supports the anti-fluoridation movement has been proven time and time again to be complete bullshit made up by people who already had their minds made up before they made their "studies." Most of these people don't know the first fucking thing about science, and the ones that do are even more dangerous, because they know how to make complete bullshit look believable.

But why does this bother me so much? Well, I'll tell you why: because this is the exact kind of bullshit that started the whole anti-vaccine movement. ONE GUY, just ONE fucking guy, made up some fake "evidence" saying vaccines were bad for you, and now over 50 years later there are still a fuckton of gullable people out there who still believe it. Never mind the fact that that guy was sued AND went to prison for faking his results, the meme is out there and will apparently not die.

Oh yeah, and what's more is, the anti-vaccine people think vaccines cause autism. And they also think that autism is something to be cured. Never mind the fact that autistic people have existed since the dawn of time, never mind the fact that the rise in the number of people diagnosed is because there's more awareness of the condition and we're better able to diagnose it now. No, none of that matters to the anti-vaxxers. Because they have the (proven to be bullshit) studies of one scientist (who faked the results and went to prison for it) to support their claim. It's one of the biggest cases of "don't confuse me with the facts" ever.

And guess what? They use all this shit to get away with stuff like saying they wish their autistic kid was dead, since there's no cure. They even use this bullshit to *get away with murder* when they DO finally kill their autistic kids, and they use this shit to justify supporting people who murder their autistic children. In short, they use this shit to justify ATTEMPTED GENOCIDE.

So gee, who knows what kind of hateful, genocidal bullshit will some day be excused by invoking the pseudoscience the anti-fluoridation people keep touting as "evidence" despite the fact that the rest of the scientific community has proven time and again that they're full of shit?

That, there, is why I am so vehement against the anti-fluoridation movement; because it's fake studies done by fake scientists to justify something they've already made their mind up about, and goodness only knows what kind of hateful crap that pseudoscience will someday support.

PS: It's not like I'm completely unreasonable on this subject; if someone presents a valid, logical argument against water fluoridation, I will objectively consider it. In fact, I *have* heard one such argument, from a friend of mine whose teeth were stripped of their enamel by the fact that both the town she lived in AND the school were putting fluoride in the water, and *that* was a case of *too much* fluoride in the water. Which is a good point, but doesn't really refute the fact that in proper doses, fluoridated water is *good* for your teeth.

When pure cesium meets water, it goes BOOM. So I just had a thought: if you make a bullet of cesium, would it survive long enough to penetrate a person's body? And would it then go BOOM when it meets the water in their body?

Originally posted on Tumblr.

It's kinda funny that the link about the idiocy of the Paleolithic Diet came up, because I was going to rant about the "raw food" idiots anyway. Well, not so much rant as point out that the raw food diet is supremely idiotic. I keep hearing insinuations that cooking food destroys nutrients. Well, if that were true, then we wouldn't have stopped eating raw food. If cooking food destroyed nutrients, there would be no evolutionary advantage to cooking food. In fact, it would be an evolutionary DISadvantage if it were true. So anyone who cooked their food would have died off and we'd all be eating raw food now. On top of that, we'd probably still be cavemen.

It really irritates me when people go on about their dietary choices as though they're superior. If you want to eat raw food, or nothing but vegetables, or even dirt, I don't care. I just don't want to hear how "amazing" the diet is and how "superior" it is. If veganism were truly superior in any meaningful way, EVERYONE would be a vegan, because then it would be evolutionarily adventitious to be a vegan. If raw food diet was truly superior, the same would hold true.

But the simple fact of the matter is, we humans got our big brains and our place as the dominant mammalian predator on Earth because we cook our food and eat meat. And it's also a simple, inalienable fact that these fad diets like veganism and the paleolithic diet and the raw food diet, all of them will go out the fucking window if civilization ever crumbles or even gets a significant enough jolt. Because the ONLY reason you're able to get away with these fad diets is because you live in a civilization that makes it easy to be on those diets. If you had to find or grow your own goddamn food, you'd soon find that nuts and berries and vegetables are insufficient. Your body will demand more protein than a vegan diet can provide, more calories than a paleolithic diet can provide. The ONLY reason these fad diets give you enough calories is because you live in a society where someone else grows and gathers and packages your food for you; a society where your lazy rich ass can afford to buy expensive, inefficient protein sources.

Because here are the facts: veganism is a diet for rich snobs, or poor snobs who are extremely delusional and especially determined to fuck themselves over. It's almost like a fucking drug habit, in that it takes a lot more money to support than poor people can afford without pouring more money into it than they can really afford. It's not quite as bad as a drug habit, in that it doesn't cost SO much that poor vegans have to resort to crime, but if it were much more expensive than it is, who knows?

Which of course means that once your privileged ass finds itself in a situation where you have to get your own damned food, you're going to find that nuts and other high protein veggies are not always easy to find or get at. You will begin to starve, and then those fwuffy wittle amnimals you love so much will start looking more and more delicious, until you either die from your stubbornness or you start killing Bambi's mom for her delicious venison in order to stay alive.

So just keep that in mind, all you fad dieters. Hope and pray that society doesn't change significantly enough that you have to give up your precious, snobbish fad diet in order to survive. Because if it does, you will. It's in our blood. You can piss and moan all you like about how much like people animals are, but in the end you're a fucking predator at heart, too. We all are. It is an unavoidable fact of existence.

Okay, so that DID kind of become a rant after all.

And yea gods, don't even get me STARTED on freegans. Digging your food out of the garbage is for homeless people. Don't be stealing their food, you snobbish privileged FUCKS!

Anonymous asked: “Can you help me create an argument against the Flat Earth Society? Thanks!”

Me:

That’s a tough one. Robert Anton Wilson found that, if you’re looking for evidence that the earth is round, you’ll find it. But if you’re looking for evidence that it’s flat, you’ll find that as well. Hell, it goes further: if you’re looking for evidence that the surface of the earth is actually the inside surface of a concave hollow sphere in some giant cave, you’ll find it. So you can’t trust the human nervous system.

To be entirely honest, there’s no real proof - beyond a doubt - that the Earth is round. But here is some good evidence:

• The shadow the earth casts on the moon is round.


• If the earth were flat, we would be able to see, from a high enough mountain, the entire world. There would be no horizon.


• Edited to add: There are pictures from space of the round earth.


• Astronauts have reported that the earth appears round from orbit.


• The “round earth” model works best for getting satellites and other stuff into orbit. With some models, like quantum physics, all the actual proof we have is the fact that the model works, and seems to contain no massive flaws. If there were any real flaws in quantum theory, there are many technologies that wouldn’t work at all or would have exploded horribly by now. The same goes for the round earth model: if there were a flaw in the round earth model, we would have found it by now, because gravity, orbital dynamics, and so on would work so differently if it were wrong, that we wouldn’t have Internet, or satellite TV, the ability to phone people across the planet, etc. A scientist could explain better the details of how things would be different if the earth really were flat, but that’s a good gist. And the theory that the earth is a concave hollow sphere is so absurd it makes flat earthers look reasonable. The gravity in a hollow sphere cancels itself out; if the earth were a hollow sphere, there would be no gravity: we would float away. (This, by the way, debunks the “hollow earth” theory as well. Even more so, because a hollow earth would have fallen apart billions of years ago.)


• Keep in mind that the earth is not *perfectly* round.


• Nature always takes the path of least resistance when it comes to anything. The mathematical models for how gravity, orbital dynamics, etc works tells us that the path of least resistance in planetary formation results in solid or semi-solid rock spheres, or in gaseous spheres. Only some great technological civilization, or a God, could make a flat earth happen in the real world. (And for most flat earthers, that’s all the evidence they need to support their theory.)


• Ask them “if the earth is flat, how come nobody has fallen off the edge of the world yet? Or uploaded proof of the edge of the world on YouTube?” With the prevalence of cell phone cameras and so on, and the expanding coverage for data transfer on cell phones, if the world were flat then there would be video proof of it by now. The fact that there isn’t, is very telling.


• If you want to see what life on a flat planet would be like, read the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett.

I hope this answers your question. There may be other arguments, but those are all I can think of for now.

And here I thought Richard Dawkins was bad. This guy sounds even worse:

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