Iraq War? Put in on Plastic!

Tue, Feb 12, 2008  Permanent link

Sir Richard Branson reveals Virgin spaceship

From Telegraph.co.uk:

Sir Richard Branson unveiled the final design of the spaceship he hopes will take fare-paying passengers into space.

Sir Richard, whose Virgin Galactic is one of several commercial enterprises competing in the nascent space tourism market, said SpaceShipTwo will start test flights later this year.

Speaking at a launch at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, he said: "Two thousand eight is going to be the year of the spaceship. We're excited about this, and everything it will do."

He described the designs of both the mothership and the new spaceship as "absolutely beautiful" and beyond anything he had expected for commercial space flight when his company registered the Virgin Galactic name in 1999.

...

He added: "I think it's very important that we make a genuine commercial success of this project. If we do, I believe we'll unlock a wall of private sector money into both space launch systems and space technology."

I absolutely love it! The private sector is doing what the government can't do: build affordable, reliable space transportation vehicles for the everyman. When government sends something into space, it costs us a billion dollars. When the private sector does it, we make a billion dollars.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I hope that Sir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan make NASA obsolete, and soon. Space is a trasure trove, not a money pit. Let's utilize it properly.

Fri, Jan 25, 2008  Permanent link

Free at Last 2008

Mon, Jan 21, 2008  Permanent link

Inflation, Legos, and Ron Paul

Mon, Jan 7, 2008  Permanent link

Explore - Dream - Discover

Thu, Jan 3, 2008  Permanent link

What Your Brain Looks Like on Faith

Sam Harris, Neuroscience researcher and author of "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation," recently co-authored a study entitled "Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief and Uncertainty." And Time.com has an interesting article about it:

Harris tested how the brain responded to assertions in seven categories: mathematical, geographic, semantic, factual, autobiographical, ethical and religious. All seven provided some useful data, but only the ones relating to math and ethics produced results clear enough to give a vivid picture of the way the simple and the complex, the subjective and the objective intertwine. Regardless of their content, statements that the subjects believed lit up the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a location in the brain best known for processing reward, emotion and taste. Equally "primitive" areas associated with taste, pain perception and disgust determined disbelief. "False propositions may actually disgust us," Harris writes.

Is there a practical application here? He speculates that if belief brain scanning were sufficiently refined it could act as an accurate lie detector and help control for the placebo effect in drug design.

Harris says there is no critique of faith hidden somewhere in his brief paper. But his next neurological enterprise may be another matter. He is planning an fMRI run that will concentrate specifically on religious faith, which Harris thinks he now knows how to plumb more deeply. He also plans to set up two different subject groups — the faithful and non-believers. "That way," among other things, he says, "you can ask, 'Do believers believe that Jesus was born of a virgin the same way that nonbelievers believe that Chevrolet makes cars and trucks?'" It may turn out that the brain treats religious faith as its own special category of belief unlike ethics and math.

But that is not what Harris expects to find. He suspects the machines will show that "belief is belief is belief." And that conclusion, he admits, may put him at loggerheads with familiar foes. No one, he says, could accuse him or anyone else of trying to disprove God's existence on the basis of an fMRI. But faith is more vulnerable. "People who feel that religious faith is a singular operation of the brain — if they admit that it's an operation of the brain at all — would object to what I'm doing, since it may show that faith is essentially the same as other kinds of knowing or thinking. The whole thing will seem fishy to anyone who thinks we have immaterial souls running around in our bodies."

Wed, Dec 26, 2007  Permanent link

Space Collective and Anarchy: A Perfect Match

I recently had an email exchange about Space Collective with our well-known friend, Obviously Subtle . In the email, he said something that really stuck with me. Referring to what Space Collective is all about, he called it "post religion and post politics."

Of course, I already knew what Space Collective was about before I read Obviously Subtle's remark. But not until that moment had I ever heard it phrased that way. It was such a direct, honest, and inspiring description for this community that I had to write about it.

The reason his description of Space Collective affected me so deeply is because it is exactly in line with the beliefs and goals that I have held since long before I joined this community:

You see, I am an atheist and an anarchist. This means that I do not believe in God, nor do I believe in the legitimacy of government. Furthermore, I have dedicated a large part of my time and energy toward promoting and developing these ideas. Popularizing godlessness and statelessness is a major, major goal in my life.

For the moment, let's set aside the "post religion" part of Obviously Subtle's statement, and focus on the "post politics" part. What does post politics mean? It seems obvious enough: it means a world without politics or politicians. But what kind of world would that be, exactly?

The answer is that it would be an anarchistic world. Now I know that to most people, the word "anarchy" brings about strong emotions and opinions. When people hear the word "anarchy" they tend to think molitov cocktails, society run amok, and general chaos. But how many of these people know what the actual definition of "anarchy" really is?

The definition of anarchy is conceptually very similar to the definition of atheism. Both words are negative statements. To put it another way, both of these words are descriptors of what is not, and not what is. "Archy" means an entity that rules over society, like a government. "An-" is a prefix that means the negation of something. So "anarchy" is the lack of a ruling body.

Anarchy is the very definition of "post politics." Anarchy is the elimination of politicians, politics, and the entire government from society. When one imagines a world without politics, one is imagining an anarchy.

Anarchy is not violent; it is the champion of peace. Anarchy is not chaos; it is the foundation of order. Anarchy is not regressive; it is a catalyst for human progress.

Conversely, government is not the keeper of peace; it is the cause of war. Government is not the bringer of order; it is the creator of chaos. Government is not progressive; it is a hindrance to progress.

These are bold assertions to be sure. But can I back them up? Yes I can, and I can do it with one word: consent.

Consent is the difference between right and wrong. It is the dividing line between peace and war, between order and chaos, between progress and regress. When two or more humans consent to a given interaction, there is peace, order, and progress.

But when an interaction occurs that all involved parties did not consent to, inevitably it breeds violence, chaos, and destruction. Consent is the difference between charity and theft, between making love and rape, between profit and loss.

A government (politics/politicians) by definition is coercive. That is, it violates consent by its very nature. For example, a democracy is a force-based monopoly that subjugates the minority vote. Democracy has been described as "two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner," and with good reason. Regardless of the good intentions of a government's action, it always violates another person's self-determination, disregards their consent (or lack thereof), and retards their progress.

An anarchy would be a world without the legitimization of coercion precisely because it would not have a government. It would not have a coercive monopoly spreading violence and chaos among its citizens. In an anarchy, the only interactions between people that would be sanctioned as legitimate would be those interactions that are mutually consensual.

Post politics is one of Space Collective's goals. And post politics is anarchy. Progress, peace, exploration, experimentation, and cooperation are goals that anarchy and Space Collective share. I sincerely believe that anarchy and Space Collective are a perfect match.

There is much more about anarchy that I want to get into, but I fear this post is already too long. Perhaps I will make a follow up post where I can elaborate further on these ideas.

For further reading on anarchy and why it is the post-politics social framework, give these sites a try:

http://www.marketanarchy.com/

http://www.simplyanarchy.com/

http://www.perbylund.com/

http://www.strike-the-root.com/

http://www.mises.org/

http://www.lysanderspooner.org/

 http://www.podfeed.net/category_item.asp?id=3476 

Thu, Nov 22, 2007  Permanent link

Zeitgeist - The Movie

Zeitgeist is an absolutely mind blowing experience. They are having a remastered version of it showing in Los Angeles sometime in early November. Check their official website for details.

Sat, Nov 3, 2007  Permanent link

Pirates and Emperors

They are really the same thing...

Thu, Oct 25, 2007  Permanent link

A New Meme: Your Daily Principles

My good friend Olly from Without Hyphens has meme-tagged me. This particular meme-tag is of Olly's own creation, and it's a pretty good one too! Check it out:

I got to thinking recently about the idea that all of us, as humans, have principles we live by daily. These aren’t your over-arching beliefs necessarily, but rather the things that you do daily as a part of those beliefs. So, for example, it’s not that I’m an anarchist, but things I do daily in line with that. I’ve kept it to 5 on my own, but there’s no hard rules on this meme; name as few or as many as you’d like! Likewise, no limits on how few or how many (if any) people you tag… do whatever is comfortable!

I think I'll make a slightly shorter list of three daily habits, and list them in order of importance. While my list is a bit more abstract than Olly's I do feel that they meet the qualifications of his meme-tag in that they are daily life practices that are derived from actual principles that I hold. I have found much satisfaction, success, understanding, and happiness by applying these three practices to my life, and I think that everyone else can benefit from them as well. Here we go!

1) Apply universality to all social interactions. When I am interacting with other people I check the fairness or rightness of the situation in part by turning the tables, or putting the involved parties in each other's shoes. I ask myself how I would feel about the situation if the roles were reversed. This helps me understand the other person's perspective, the equality of the interaction, and helps me to determine what corrective action to apply if needed.

2) Regularly question and test your own beliefs. The merit of a belief is not found in how fiercely one believes it, but in how well it stands up to scrutiny. Similarly, the confidence and security one has in their belief is found not in how passionately they defend it, but in how willing they are to let it stand on its own merit.

3) Win by converting your opponent, not attacking him. While this principle is not my most important one, it is certainly my favorite. Kill 'em with kindness. Hide your sword with a smile. You attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. Build bridges, not walls. It can be stated many different ways, but the idea is the same. When facing an opponent, the strategy is to paint both of you as being on the same side, while painting his position or ideology as actually being against the both of you. Framing the situation as you and your opponent vs. the ideology/argument in question, and not simply as you vs. your opponent, paves the way for your opponent's conversion.

Tue, Oct 16, 2007  Permanent link