My Religion Part Three: And It Was Good

 There are a few things that I don’t have covered with my quasi-religion. Most of them have to do with my antisocial tendencies, and subjective beliefs. Let's take a look shall we.

To start, I don’t have a place where assistance can be summoned from outside of one’s self. I’ve got no one to pray to and no supernatural force from which strength can be pulled. This isn’t a problem because I feel that everything a person needs can be found within. If I need inspiration I can just look at all the accomplishments of humanity and know that I am a part of that. If humans can go into space, I think I can deal with any of my troubles. We’re all chocked full of potential, and belief in yourself is the best help a person can have. This system requires independence and personal responsibility and those are good traits to encourage in my opinion. If you do need a little extra help, hopefully other people can supply what you need.

Speaking of other people, I lack the community aspect that organized religions offer. I have no set place to go, ceremonies to perform, or group to associate with. A joiner I am not, so I don’t feel much of a loss. Individual and unique views are a good thing in my opinions, and I come to most of my conclusions through self-reflection and an ongoing quest to reduce my ignorance. Some may like to delegate these tasks out, but I like to keep it in house. Without a group it’s hard to develop an “us vs them” mentality, which can help reduce conflicts. I do get a little scandalized when I hear someone doesn’t believe in evolution or something like that, but I try not to hold it against them. A generally subjectivist philosophy helps here, since I believe there is no absolute right answer to any question. A variety of different opinions is just more interesting. I mean, it’s hard to have a good discussion about a topic in which everyone agrees.

On a bit of a side not, I dislike how grand many places of worship are. When your building is funded by charity, I would think it best to keep the cost down. I understand that the point is to inspire awe and a sense of grand scale, but I think that is a job for the ideas and not the buildings. I also have this objection to government buildings. 

This is why North Dakota has my favorite capital building

Nobody is imbued with any special status in my view. I have no priests, saints, martyrs, messiahs, castes, saved, or damned. There is no supernatural metric I hold to by which people can be judge as better or worse. Mental gifts of physical talents can separate people and everyone has developed different skills, but these can be surprisingly insubstantial. Money and social connections can also give advantage, but in the end all of these things are so often borrowed and traded that they aren’t that hard to come by. An individual’s past can also have causal effects on their future, but these are by no means always rational. Enlightenment is an idea I almost adopt, but it implies an endpoint which is something I don’t have. Collecting knowledge and answering questions are goals of mine, but this is a process that will always be ongoing. I can’t imagine there will be a point where science finishes its journey. I also have a near saint like regard for many great minds of the past, but this is limited. Isaac Newton is an idol of mine and I have tremendous respect for his ideas, but I also understand that he was kind of a jerk. People are always just people.

Smart guy, but he didn't always play well with others

No book or writings can be used to show or record my beliefs. You might think that these blog posts are meant to collect and hold my feelings, but I view it as more of a brief expression of my thoughts at one moment in time. Everything in here is subjective; both in the fact that I don’t expect everyone to agree and that I don’t even expect my own opinions to remain the same. The point is to inspire thought, not to answer questions. Making any idea solid seems like a mistake, because it might need to be changed when more perspective is gained. You never know when the next paradigm shift might happen and all that you believe gets thrown into a new light.

            That was enough self-indulgent introspection for now, so I’ll wrap things up. I’m probably guilty of just using religion as a convenient catchall to cram a bunch of my theories into one place, but it worked well enough (This all started as a parody of other religions call Peteism, where everything was done “for the love of Pete”, but I decided it wasn't very funny). Each idea probably could have been explored separately, but I’ll save that for my giant unreadable philosophical book that I will hopefully never write.

My Religion Part Two: Let There Be Infinite Alternate Universes

            I’m describing what I call my religion, and religions are usually about more than faith and a sense of awe, so I guess I’ll go in to some of my other beliefs that are commonly covered by religions.

First should probably be the origin of the universe. I support the Big Bang, but that is more of a description of how the universe started and not how it came into being. I use infinite parallel universes to explain the origin of everything. Most of the infinite universes are going to have a group of laws and conditions that can’t result in stability or even any physical existence at all (such as if there was an inverse cube law instead of our inverse square law, assume a three spatial dimension universe, obviously), but when you have an infinite number of tries to make a universe, a few of them are going to end up making sense. I also have room in this theory for of universes that exist in a stable way, but also have rules different from our own, which is fantastic. Imagine a universe just like ours, except the Pythagorean Theorem doesn’t work! Just try to think about that for a while without giving yourself an aneurism.

Stay classy geometry

For the end of the universe I have beliefs with a similar theme. I accept the scientific theory of a universal heat death as the progression of entropy reaches a conclusion, but with some extra bits of my own added on to make things interesting. The extra bits are the fact that I’m not certain than the Big Bang was a unique event. We could get another bang every few trillion years (give or take) due to some unknown spontaneous energy generation (I have faith that matter is energy). The whole idea of something happening once, and only once, makes me suspicious. Just because the Big Bang is the only such phenomenon that we know about doesn’t mean that it is the only one that can or will happen. This is an example of using skepticism to expand one’s worldview rather than contract it.

Next up should probably be the afterlife. I’m going to dip into my infinite alternate universe theory again and pull out something neat. I think it would be endlessly stupendous if every alternate version of a person collapsed into a semi-collective consciousness after death. Basically, you would because aware of every other life you could have lead depending on different choices or circumstances. You would get to know how your life would have progressed had you gathered the courage to ask your sweetie to prom, or had been born the son of an absolute monarch in the middle ages. Extended far enough this would end up giving you complete causal knowledge of the universe, since you would have witnessed everything and anything that is capable of happening (because technically everyone is an alternate version of you). You would get to become Laplace’s Demon upon death, which isn’t a paradox since you're no longer a causal agent. I like to maintain a sense of identity in this afterlife, because an exploration of all possible universes wouldn’t be as good without a solid origin.

You could meet your evil self!

Last, I’ll cover my source of morality. Earlier, I explained how I believed morals to be subjective depending on the social system in which they exist. A good act is one that benefits society, and evil the opposite. Assuming the society is one that benefits you and others anyway, or else the opposite is true (basically you can overthrow a cruel dictator and it would be good, baring the establishment of an even worse social system). This carries a bit of a utilitarian aspect to it, but I don’t get bogged down with trying to weigh alternatives against each other. I don’t think you can ever sum the pleasures and pains of yourself and everyone else and come up with a best action. For this reason I think that intension is more important to morals than consequences. One should just do one’s best to benefit themselves and those around them, while also trying to do as little harm as possible. In the end, all this boils down to is "try to be a jerk as little as possible". Things just go better that way. The golden rule is also a good thing to follow.

All in all, I think that does an okay (if extremely brief) job of answering some of the major questions typically covered by religions. I’m still not done with this self-adulating shenanigans, so next time I’ll talk about the aspects of religion that I don't have.

My Religion Part One: In the Beginning

            In the past I’ve been known to claim my religion is Norse. I was basically treating the whole idea of religion as a joke, which isn’t really all that useful. I’ve been doing some thinking and I’ve come up with some slightly more mature ideas on the subject. My new collection of beliefs have all of the aspects of religion that I view as positive, without some of the stuff I don’t think is so great. Let's talk about it.

            If I had to sum up my beliefs in one word it would be pantheism. Basically, I see God as being indistinguishable from the universe and its laws. God isn’t a great word since it implies an amount of anthropomorphization, so it would be more accurate to say that I feel the universe possesses a level of divinity. I’m awed by many aspects of the universe; the consistency and power of mathematics, the grace and opportune qualities of the physical laws, the beauty and efficiency of nature, and the seemingly endless breadth and depth of the universe. I wouldn’t say that I worship these things, because I don’t have any sort of rituals or observances, but my regard goes beyond a simple appreciation of science and nature. Close inspection or reflection on everything I perceive can cause simultaneous feelings of wonder, excitement, disbelief, and warmth. The ability of my mind to comprehend concepts from infinity to simple geometry (there is no such thing as a straight line in our physical reality, they exist only as an idea, which is fantastic), the way simple rules can be used to predict or achieve complex actions (like understanding the orbits of the planets, and then landing robots on those planets), the myriad of systems that work together in biological organisms (me for instance) to perform even simple operations (like closing my hand) or between organisms (like gut bacteria; I have an ecosystem inside me), and the fact that the universe simultaneously has no edge and has continued to produce ever smaller particles (wave-particles, or whatever they prefer to be called) as fast as we can find them (it’s turtles all the way down, but also all the way up) are just a few examples of things that fill me with amazement.

I love giant space cameras

My faith in the existence of these things (I’ve never seen an atom and haven’t personally dissected animals to see how their organs work) is very important to me. This faith isn’t just believing what scientists tell me. I also fully accept causality (that causes lead to effect), persistence (that the backs of objects are still there even if I can’t see them or that the laws of gravity will continue to function in the same way), and that my senses give me an accurate representation of the world. These may not seem like concepts that can be doubted to most people, but I’m not most people. I’m some sort of crappy pretend philosopher who writes rubbish on the internet. I’ve always had a strong skeptical streak (I once failed a true of false quiz about the Titanic, not because I didn’t know the answers, but because I was doubting our ability to site history as absolute fact), and I could easily fall into a solipsistic world view. My beliefs are an active choice, made because they make my universe more stupendous. They also have quite a bit of utility (it is hard to pursue pleasure if you don’t believe in the existence of your body).

This could be a fake picture and I would never know

This whole “religion” thing is based around my abnormal view of the world. I mean, I lost sleep the other night because I was so excited about a number series that I had thought up (numbers that are the least common multiple of sequential numbers: 1, 2, 6, 12, 60, 60, 420, 840…). Another good example is the fact that I write introspective essays and post them on the internet. Speaking of which, I think this is enough for one go, so, TO BE CONTINUED.

Crapsa Brand Comics

My comic is up and running. I've got it on a free hosting site so that it will hopefully be easy to find. I'm only three pages in, but my illustrations are beginning to be slightly less terrible. My writing is pretty much the same as it always is. The current update schedule is "whenever I finish a comic", since I'm not really able to forecast how long it will take me to draw a comic. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy them.

G’nite 2013

            Do you want to know who’s still great? My grandma, that's who! I already gave a summary of her general stupendousness last year, so I’ll just report on the things she accomplished over the last year. She sent 242 emails during the year, and I should admit that she became aware of my spread sheeting on February 26 so all my data is probably biased after that point. I didn’t really notice any obvious changes in the data, so like any crappy researcher, I’ll just ignore the problem. A good thing about having her read my statistical analysis was that she learned how much I love her homemade buns, so now she makes them especially for me (I can never say my writing never got me anything). I don’t have much information from the last three months of the year since she was on a marathon vacation, so my seasonal data is also skewed, but whatever. On with the analysis.

            The form of the emails remains mostly unchanged from last year’s, so the first thing reported is still the weather. Her descriptions of the local Rapid City weather break down as follows:

The worst description in there is probably Goofy, so it looks like Rapid City is a nice place to live (From my own experience, I’d say it is). Grandma is pretty stoic though, so her “Good” probably covers a broad range of weather. The “Ok?” days come from September when she wasn’t getting outside due to her sciatica (we also lost a whole month worth of card playing to that crap). Luckily my aunt healed her up so hopefully she feels better now. 

High temperatures were reported for 16 separate towns, from Wisconsin (Wicksconsin) to California, over 231 non-consecutive days. Gold Canyon, Arizona had the highest average temperature at 86.2°, they shared the highest temp of 109° with Dallas, Texas, and had the highest temperature of anyone in the family 173 days (that’s 74.9% of the time), and I will never forgive them for it. New Rockford, the origin point of the family, was consistently the coldest, with an average of 50.9° and the lowest recorded temperature of -16°. The average of all the local averages was 65.5°, which might be the most useless stat ever. Actually no, because I tracked the number of times my grandma’s friends had their hair done (23). More importantly (?), Rapid City had a mean error of 3.325° in the next day forecast, and was correct eight times out of 80.

Pierre (where I live) had an average of 60.5°, and a high of 99° and low of 1°, which has a nice symmetry to it. My temperature was only superlative in the family on September 22nd, and I still shared the high temperature (with friggin’ Gold Canyon). Let’s have a temperature graph to help me get over Gold Canyon and their warm weather.

Grandma is still going to her exercise class, and Robbie is still teaching it. She attended 74 times with an average of 20 old goats jumping around (her words, not mine). That’s about 74 more times than I made it to the gym last year. Robbie busted out some new moods this year including; wondering, hurting, crazy, remembering elvis, razzed, gonna party, bad at fishing, questioning, missed, and ok. Some of those might not technically be moods, but that’s what I wrote in my note so I’m counting them. He was still happy 35 times which is 48% of the time (down nine percent from last year). That just doesn’t have them same impact without the pie chart, so here goes.

On the days when grandma doesn’t exercise she goes to the communal coffee hour (she still brews the coffee on the days she doesn’t go, because she's great). The size of the bunch averaged 13.0 people on 85 occasions. Conversation covered many diverse topics, including; Vivian’s pet deer, Vivian’s 102 birthday, bootlegging and home brew, new apartment owners, unwanted phone calls, Vivian’s immigration (multiple times), Jack's supplied paper work, farming in the good ol’ days, Janice’s Montana ranch, foreigners getting our money, and weather. Everyone’s blood pressure was checked twice (that I hear about), and grandma was 140/68 and 130/68 (I don’t know enough about blood pressure to understand if that is good or not). Sunday mornings are spent at Mass. I was prayed and lit candle for on 30 reported occasions. 

Reported mid-day activities were baking 26 times (buns five of those times!), sewing 76 times, shopping 44 times, and eight trips to visit Grandpa in the graveyard. She entertained guests 27 times, which resulted in at least eight trips to Ruby Tuesday (her favorite restaurant). I think I can make an asinine graph from this.

Evenings are still spent playing cards with the occasional game of bingo on Mondays. Hand and Foot is still the most popular with 141 games played. I like it because it’s graph friendly. See:

Pinochle is another favorite with 76 games played. Grandma took all the tricks a total of 14 times and got double pinochle in 38 instances. She also had a winning year with a record of 88-87. Let’s celebrate with some pie.

Bingo winnings came in at $61.00 this year. With 27 games, that's $2.26 a game, which isn’t bad (keep in mind that Grandma gets excited when she makes $3 for mending her neighbors pants). Her friends were also winners. Maxine won 11.5 times (split once), Vivian six times, and Chuck 14.5 times (he even won a blackout).

I had to change the way I recorded the closing quotes this year because we were just getting way to many new quotes. I divide the quotes into seven categories that I think cover everything anyone can say about anything; Advice, Quip, Commentary on Life, Relationships, Religion, Metaphysics, and Virtue. Virtue was the winner with 119 appearances, but Relationships was in a close second with 105. And because it is basically the name of the game, here is a graph about quotes.

Don’t worry, we’re not done (you were worried right?). Catchphrases, all the greats have them, and my grandma is no different. I still don’t know what it means, but “so gates” showed up 321 last year, or 1.32 times per email (up 0.16 from last year!). The “vashislous” count was down to 18, and we had eight “yah voult”s (can you pluralize a quote like that?). Some of my other favorite Grandmaisms, as I call them, where questionable Rip Van Winkle references (did he have a little yellow pup?), Majic, falling into all caps when talking about Hand and Foot during the long losing streak, mentioning a lady with a baby bump in a tight t-shirt, Harold going bananas, calling her car a red hotrod, being fat and happy, plugging my aunt and uncles vegetables, and getting excited about watching Rudy on TV (a football game show).

            Grandma didn’t go to bed any earlier last year. The average time sent for the emails came out to 2:48 am. I think some were sent the next morning, but there were still plenty of legitimate 2 am sendings. I’m still not really comfortable with doing math using time in excel, but I converted everything into a 24 hour time with midnight being 12:00. It works alright I guess (I did figure out how to do math in stationing notation, which has nothing to do with my grandma’s emails and is also pointless since I don’t work in engineering anymore, but I’m still excited about it). Anyway, here’s a graph:

            Finally, I was only mentioned seven times last year. I guess I need to give grandma some more rides if I want to keep getting name dropped.

“If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.” Alfred Nobel

“Never was anything great achieved without danger.” Niccolo Machiavelli

Cosmic Questions

It’s time to definitively answer some questions that no one else seems to want to answer. Let’s do this.

First up: Can God create a stone so heavy even He can’t lift it?

           

Answer: No. To elaborate, omnipotence means that you can do anything, not create anything. The whole question is just a cleverly disguised contradiction. You could rephrase it as “Can God do so much that he does something that he can’t do?”, and that doesn’t make any sense. The dude can lift anything with finite mass, end of story. I say finite mass because an object of infinite mass would break the universe (infinite gravitational attraction to every other object sort of thing). I guess He could create something of infinite mass, destroy the universe, and then fail to lift it because it no longer exists. I want to change my answer.

Number Two: If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

Answer: First of all, apes. We evolved from apes. Secondly, the major evolutionary step between us and apes was moving out of the forests and into the plains. The difference in habitat meant that we were no longer competing or breeding between groups. All the species between us and apes that lived in the plains our ancestors either killed off or interbred with, so that’s why they aren’t around anymore. Apes meanwhile were having their own evolutionary history separated from ours by a bunch of trees.

Number Tree: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Answer: A tree can’t fall in the forest if no one is around to observer it. All the unobserved trees simply exist in state of superposition where they are both fallen and standing simultaneously. It's not until the trees are observed that their wave functions collapse and they exist in a specific state.

Question the Fourth: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Answer: This depends on whether you believe in creation or evolution. In creation, God made a chicken 6,000 odd years ago and it promptly started laying eggs, so chicken first. For evolution, something that wasn’t quite a chicken laid an egg that hatched into the first chicken, so egg first (I’m assuming the egg in questing is “egg that will hatch into a chicken).

V: How do we fix global warming?

Answer: Do nothing and just let the climate sort itself out. When the temperature rise due to greenhouse gases the icecaps will melt and raise the sea level. It’s not like anybody lives on the coast or anything. Increasing the surface area of the oceans will work as a heat sink helping to balance temperatures. Increased evaporation will result in increased rains (more surface area equals more evaporation right?), which is a natural way of scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere. Bonus points if the ocean currents change and Europe loses the Gulf Stream. All those new glacier in Northern Europe will be a good storage of water, helping keep sea level down (I’m sure no one would mind is France has the climate of North Dakota and Ireland is indistinguishable from Newfoundland). All that CO2 from the coal and oil is really just what was already in the air a few hundred million years ago. Sure the only terrestrial life supported back then was amphibians and arthropods, but that’s nothing that a few mass extinctions can’t fix. I think we can all stop worrying.

One that I already kind of covered: Zeno’s Paradox

Answer: Look at this math formula that is basically what Zeno is describing.

One is a number between zero and two. It’s also between 0.9 and 1.1. It is in no way infinity. If you can’t get to one from zero you have problems.

Last one: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

Answer: One hand can’t clap. Clapping is defined as “to strike the palms of (one's hands) against one another resoundingly. You need two hands to do that.

Well, I hope we all learned something today. Feel free to ask me more questions so that I can completely annihilate them with my logic and reasoning.

Another Ten (Twelve) Music Videos

            I’m doing another list of music videos because I just really like music videos and found more that should have been on my original list. I like some of these videos more than previously ranked ones, so I’m going to Dewey Decimal them into the old numbering.

1.5  Harden My Heart – Quarterflash

            I’m really ashamed that I missed this one on the first list. This is one of the most dream-like videos that I’ve ever seen. I just wish that my dreams were this good. Rindy Ross in a unitard, 80’s Peter Dinklage, running into younger versions of yourself, and saxophone solos (also featuring Rindy); what I wouldn’t give for a dream with any one of those. Don’t forget dudes in tuxedoes on dirt bikes and an ending where a bull dozer knocks over the set and then someone (also in a tux) lights it on fire with a flame thrower. This is probably the greatest thing that has ever been accomplished in a gravel pit.

2.5  Parking Lot Nights – Ghosthustler

            A Power Glove wearing misanthrope physically assaults people in a parking lot after dark. Beyond the Power Glove it has a lot of other nice 80’s touches; VHS quality, a NES set up on an 80’s TV, breakdancing, lasers, and great music. A hidden gem to be sure.

4.5  Music Is My Radar – Blur

            Synchronized dancing by people dressed to look kind of like robots (body suits and bike helmets) while everyone else doesn’t react to it. The dancing is just hypnotic and great. British talk shows look boring during the not commercial break parts. I like other Blur videos, but this is my favorite

6.5  Taking This Town – Icehouse

            I’ll just start out by saying that I prefer Iva Davies without the mullet. My favorite part of the video is probably the crazy dudes in the colored outfits riding motorcycles through whitewashed ruins, but the crowd rushing out to jam in front of the stage and the painted guys in underwear dancing on the scaffolding were good touches as well. This was the golden age of male homoeroticism right here. Featuring the Fairlight CMI is a nice 80’s touch.

7.5  Take on Me – A-ha

            I was tempted not to do this one because it’s just too obvious, but I think it still deserves recognition. The whole pencil sketches that come to life are great but there’s more than just that. There’s evil Fins, a romance story, cuts to Norwegians playing instruments, and an ending that might be ripping off Altered States.

12.5  Love is a Battlefield – Pat Benatar

            Pat is just such a rebel. She leaves home to strike out on her own on the mean street of City I Don’t Recognize, but when some sleazy dude is bothering a girl in a bar, she and all the other punked out chicks unite and intimidate him with some choreographed dancing (I would be freaked out too if a bunch of women spontaneously started doing that chest shake move at me). When he tries to dance back she throws a drink in his face and then all the chicks dance out of the bar and into the sunrise.

14.3  What Is Love – Haddaway

            Haddaway is being chased around a haunted mansion by some scantily clad, club dancing vampires. It has some decently cool backwards effects and snap zooms into people’s crotches. It’s got something for everyone!

14.7  Playing With the Boys – Kenny Loggins

            This one is special because I actually like two videos for this song. The official one is about a “battle of the sexs” volleyball game. It has lots of high fives, 80’s chicks, an underdog victory from behind, and Kenny Loggins jumping into frame to sing directly into the camera. It's pretty much an entire 80's sports movie in under five minutes. It's easy to read in all the necessary character; the main character who is basically perfect in every way but has confidence issues (red, white, and blue girl), her wise cracking best friend (pink and white), the one with unrestrained sexuality as a primary trait (blonde hair, white top), a quirky foreigner (dark blue top and pony tail, who I read as Swedish), a single black character (black girl), and the duchy/date-rapey bully (guy who does finger pistols). The other video I like is just a series of Top Gun clips, which is hard to beat. You could play any song with scenes from Top Gun and I would like it, but Kenny just takes it over the top. It’s true that “one of life’s simple joys is Playing with the Boys”.

15.5  Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go – Wham!

            Never has the mood of a video matched the song so perfectly. It’s basically the most cheerful thing ever, and that’s even before everyone gets into pastel clothes (which is before the black light scene!). The audience of young women ogling George Michael in his short shorts makes me feel kind of bad for George, but he’s just so happy in the video that this soon passes.

17.3  Physical – Olivia Newton-John

            It got classy 80’s fitness stuff to start out. Then Olivia antagonizes some fat dudes, but when she takes a shower they got really fit. Plot twist when the guys are so fit that they get turned on by each other and they forget about her. She end up playing tennis with another fat guy, so a happy ending I guess. Olivia just oozing sex the whole time is a plus too.

17.7  Ballad of Bilbo Baggins – Leonard Nemoy

            Words fail to describe, so you should probably just watch it. I will say that Leonard Nemoy can add dignity to literally anything. This song is set for a comeback with the new movies and all.

19.  Don’t Look Back – Fine Young Cannibals

            This is the epitome of an 80’s music video for me. I just imagine someone learning the new art of video effects, finding some stuff that looks cools, and making a music video out. The technology was so new that they had no choice but to be original. The video is basically just the band performing the song, but with some well used blurs, smudges, and flashing images they make something that’s fun to watch.

If anything is to be learned by this list it’s that I really love the 80’s, appreciate the 90’s, think the greatest thing you can do in a music video is have the vocalist jump into frame and sing directly into the camera, and enjoy videos with more creativity than budget. I cooled it a bit with the links on this one (I got a little carried away last time).