June 29, 2014

Time to sleep on this.

Why does it happen? Why does it keep happening?

Maybe people are mostly irrational. But maybe I'm wrong

No worries, I've survived many existential conflicts far worse.

You:

Safely eat, drink, sleep, be happy.

It's not over until it's over.

June 17, 2014

Personality dictates social spiders' roles

Yep. I do believe humans are remarkable for the complexity of our social interactions, but not "exceptional" in the sense of having something other animals lack. There's a continuum of "personality" stretching from animals like humans, dolphins, elephants, parrots, ravens, dogs... all the way out to animals like spiders.

For all we know plants have personalities too but we animals generally live too fast to perceive those patterns.

Like it or not, every living thing is an automaton or none of us are. I myself wouldn't want to be an automaton, so I do my best to extend that same consideration to my fellow living beings, respecting even the food I eat.

June 16, 2014

The Bible twisted my thinking in a big way too, Hillary.

I read The Book cover-to-cover when I was seven years old. Bad, bad shit and my young inexperienced somewhat autistic mind missed most of the metaphors. I was a very early reader of everything and the child of a religiously insane mom. Maybe you know how it goes.

Ezekiel's guys with giant schlongs spewing semen like stallions, that was real man. (Ezekiel 23:20; some translations more explicit than others.)

My mom eventually found home with the Quakers and family life got better. No more getting kicked out of churches (or once an entire nation...) just because my mom had God's private phone number and the preacher, bishop, or authorities didn't. My mom is still the sort who would get into a fist fight with a Pope, and he would lose. God save Peter when my mom is in line at the Pearly Gates. There will be a riot. I suspect she'll pass, she is impeccably (sometimes horrifyingly and inappropriately) honest, but there will be many trap doors in the heavenly-clouds-before-the-gates opening up to hell that day.

Sigh. Alas I am a simpleton. The biggest influence on my thinking ever was the National Semiconductor-CMOS Databook.

Or perhaps the Boys' Second Book of Radio and Electronics which a subversive third grade teacher let me keep at home for an entire semester.