Ok lets teach the controversy

Ok, let’s teach the controversy and the evidence about everything, not just evolution as creationists demand. When times come for our children to learn about religion, we should bring up the inquisition, the fact that the church preached anti-semitism as doctrine until 1964, that the church tortured Galileo, burned people at the stake for owning a bible in their own language, have the opinion that AIDS is bad, but condoms are slightly worse.

How about we bring up the fact that god when he gave the people of Israel their land told them to just go ahead and massacre whoever was living there, taking only the women “who had not yet felt a man” to keep for themselves. How about we bring up the fact that H.L Mencken wrote a list of 3000 gods that are no longer worshipped? Or maybe the fact that Christianity served a prime role in the subjugation of most of South America through the Conquistadors, maybe the crusades or for those who say “Why do you only talk about ancient history, Christianity isn’t like that now!” perhaps I should bring up the numerous cases of child-rape and other atrocities committed in church run schools and orphanages. The fact that two of the bloodiest conflicts in modern European history were in large part religiously motivated; namely the war in Yugoslavia and the mess in Northern Ireland is hardly up for debate is it?

Perhaps you should teach the children about Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the other 3000 gods and goddesses that are no longer worshipped, they are after all equally plausible.

I’d feel a lot safer knowing that the leader of the country I live in will take into consideration that if I die when sent to war, there might be a possibility that those 72 virgin’s won’t be there, or if they are they might be playing World of Warcraft while waiting for their Battlestar galactic marathon?

I realize that to a believer this sounds absurd, that their church should be forced to have Muslim Monday or celebrate Chanukah, but so is it to want to remove evolution from the classroom. Evolution is not a matter of belief or faith; it’s a matter of facts and evidence, there clear as day for anyone looking at it.

The controversy is that when those of us who accept that evolution by natural selection is a fact, talking to someone who does not is frustrating because the people who are unable to accept the evidence or just plain too uneducated to do so are on a “lower level” so to speak. It’s a bit like when you try to explain something to a child, it requires us to not only simplify but adjust the terms we use to people who are usually unable to understand the terms we normally use.

This results in the “adult” bending over backwards to try and make up examples that the “child” might be able to understand, which again leads to prime hunting grounds for quote mining. It’s not that we do not want to discuss with you, it’s that doing so is as Richard Dawkins once said “Like a geologist debating a flat-earther”.

I’m fairly certain that even if I could lay fossils, DNA evidence, and a 100% detailed demonstration of how man evolved from the early primordial ooze it wouldn’t matter, because the evidence creationists and people who protest evolution are looking for is a half-man/half-ape creature out of a movie and even if they are shown this in the form of the gradual evolution from Homo habilis to Homo Ergaster to Homo Erectus to Homo heidelbergensis and then to Homo neanderthalensis and finally to Homo Sapiens refuse to accept it.

One would have to show a chart from the origin of life on this planet itself, with a complete “family tree” of the slow evolution of Homo Sapiens through its many small and larger changes and all this in order to refute a book written in the bronze age, by primitive barbarians (as exemplified in the opening paragraphs of this text and I can elaborate if needed) who didn’t know where the sun went at night.

Why MMORPG's can never be player friendly in their current incarnation.

Why MMORPG's can never be casual friendly in their current incarnation.

I'm a long time player of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games going all the way back to Everquest and to the latest incarnations of world of warcraft. What all MMO games except 1 of the ones I've played have in common, is that their mechanics alone make them unplayable unless you are willing to invest a certain amount of time.

The core experience of the "Pve Whoring" based games such as Everquest, Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, Vanguard and many more is the fact that you need a certain number of players, be it the old raids of everquest or the "small" 25 man raids world of warcraft offers. Now if the less intelligent developers and publishers behind these games could realize that basing a game off levels is a bad idea to start with, a lot of their problems would be solved. And it would also dawn on them that basing a players power on loot from PvE or PvP content encourages ostracism, elitism, and a host of other less desirable elements to become central to the game.

While I was raiding in world of warcraft (Naxx in vanilla, BT in TBC, and everything in naxx except the lol-king) I noticed that whenever I was in a raiding guild I automatically ostracized people, not because I wanted to really, but because I just did everything with my guildmates, so I basically hung out with the same 30 people on a server of thousands. Sure its multiplayer but its not massive is it?

In Star Wars Galaxies, to some the best MMO ever made, to some the spitting image of a broken game, ran by a company who didn't give a shit about its customers, to me a little of both. But the beauty of the game was that if nothing else its the most massive multiplayer game I have ever played to this day, because it was not working how the developers intended.

Pretty much all high end pve content was solable and myself and many others frequently did so. But since "Soulbinding" (An item cannot be traded to someone else) wasn't in game, quite a lot of the high end pve loot was available to buy in auctions. This meant that even if you personally happened to be unable to solo the "high end" content, you could make in-game money and buy the items from someone who could.

You could make money pretty much doing everything. I was a crafting buff myself, and as one of the top weaponsmiths on my server for over 2 years I made millions upon millions of credits since crafting was smack dab central to the game. Everything was made by crafters, from armor, to weapons, to vehicles, buff foods, buff packs (doctor made buffs), stim-packs (heals) and the beauty of it all was that you actually had to give up combat prowess in order to craft anything worth while.

This meant that your best equipped (yes equipment mattered but not that much) combat character, could also be a crafter, but this meant giving up combat skills. The game worked with "skill points" and each basic profession consisted of 4 trees requiring a combination of skill points (to train) and experience points (to be allowed to train) with a Master box set on top. The different levels of skill cost varying amounts of "skillpoints" depending on their placement in the trees. On top of every basic profession tree, a progression to the elite level for that tree.

Another fun aspect was the entertainers, these mostly non-combat characters often consisted of people who played the game to chat with other players rather than combat, and their role was very important as they could buff a players mind pool and heal battlefatigue and wounds to a targets mind pool.

Since a single player could go out and alone kill off quite a lot of the high end content, and because a lot of the non player characters who did drop good loot were spawns all over the galaxy with short respawn timers there was money to be made from selling loot. Which is how a lot of players made their money, enjoying pve and using their newly found toys in pvp, which was the end-game offered by the game. Now while I still believe it would be possible to make pvp the true end game in an mmo, provided you develop it well and continue to come up with interesting content for it, SWG failed quite badly offering worth while reasons to partake in pvp.

There was the base war but it never really had much of an impact on the game. Being a rebel in an Empire's world didn't really feel risky in any way, except the odd time getting popped overt rebel in the middle of a town full of imps, while alone... on a crafter....with no armor or weapon skills... and a bag full of uninsured weapons going up on a different vendor.

I know I talk about SWG a lot but I do believe that with Raph Koster at the helm, a star wars franchise, developers inspired by the original game, a publisher with funds and the patience to not rush release and the ability for the player to have a truly fulfilling experience with each and every skill and profession in game with the freedom and vision of the original SWG would make the playerbase of World of Warcraft look the population of Chernobyl (0)

Now back on topic. The idea of working together with other players only makes sense when its convenient, when one tiers content in a way that has a tendency to become more demanding on the amount of players, the amount of time each player can put into the game, each players ability with their character, the ability to focus through 10 – 40 minute long bouts of doing nothing but trying to get your abilities rotated in the way they do the most damage or healing, avoiding instant kill damage flying around constantly, managing aggro, and so on.

Alternatively one can partake in World of Warcrafts "ARENA" the gladiatorium where a players ability in pvp is measured, depending mostly on which class and talent specialization he or she has, their equipment, their partners, the hope that they can avoid or even gain an advantage through the many bugs featured in the arena, where the world of warcraft developers show that they couldn't balance on one leg, let alone a gigantic game.

I spent hours reading articles, spreadsheets, running simulators, highly modify my interface, planning out my character, I once spent 10 hours fretting over my talent specialization moving 2 out of 71 points around trying to figure out which spec gave the most dps.

Now I don't do that much work... at work. Lets not forget I wasn't being paid to do any of this, but it was understood that it was required and expected of a raider. As my old guild leader once screamed at me in a fit of rage "YOU WORK FOR ME, I AM YOUR BOSS".

And my paycheck was in the form of rare items, that made my character (not owned by me, but rented to me by Blizzard Entertainment and their 200 page End User License Agreement) powerful and admired. But really it holds no monetary value, it was a source of satisfaction until I realized I was missing out on having a real life because all my available time was spent on a fake life.

This combined with the rewards of such feats so to speak being the "best in the game" it makes it a requirement in order to compete in player vs player combat, there is also the aspect of such clear evidence of what a player has done in game, leading to both ostracism (of those with lesser gear, as they are seen as a lower class of player that has less value in the game), and direct abuse in the form of hateful comments in game, discussions on the forum turning into mass bullying of players on the official forums and in the virtual world.

I never saw this kind of behavior in SWG, sure there was outright hostility between imperials and REBELS (GO GO REBS) on quite a few servers, but this actually lead to much better gameplay because people would pvp, not for rewards, not for gold but for the glory and satisfaction of vanquishing an enemy. I still remember 12 hour pvp sessions with pure joy in from that game.

Since pretty much everyone could get the same gear, the same buffs, the same profession combinations, and so on, everyone could be roughly the same and people did pvp for fun there wasn't the same kind of ostracism. We'd start rolling out of Gatica (My guilds player city) on Dantooine with a squad of maybe 4 – 5 people and just jump from planet to planet, city to city, looking for trouble, grabbing up every rebel who wanted to come inviting them to come on one of many Vent/TS servers, We'd blow some bases, the imperials would come after us and soon the whole server would be fighting.

My server actually had to have enforced "non combat" zones because people were killing each other while shopping!

Gear can play a part but as long as it does, and is available in ways that does require a person to partake directly in long, excruciating sessions of statistics, spreadsheets, buff farming, and so on and it promotes a negative lets say "vibe" to the whole game.

When in addition to this a "master armorsmith" in world of warcraft doesn't gain much of a mastery by getting that title. It means a few more stats (added to make professions more worth it) if he or she is lucky maybe a few special items that are really good for their class,

To be continued soon.

Ok women, you say you want a thoughtful, feeling man

Here is about 10 seconds of my internal monologue from earlier, while I was talking to a co-worker:

Hmm she just touched her hair, that's usually a sign of interest, but then again she might just have wanted to push it out of her face, oh wait there it is again, that is a pretty sure sign, but then again I could be mistaking, I have been prone to assuming the outcome I want. Oh she's resting her head on her hand now, better get her involved in the conversation again, I could bring up music or films but that's so general that its more or less a cliché by now, and just puts me in a box with every other douchebag around this office, psychology is always interesting, but I need to keep it toned down on a layman's level so she doesn't feel stupid, or ask questions I can't answer.
I also don't want to show off how nerdy I can actually be this early because it might ruin the flow of conversation and the frame in which she sees me which would not be good for the eventual outcome. 
Now I need to find a topic within psychology... oh wait she's licking her lips now, definably a good sign, anyway I need a topic that's engaging, interesting and holds the possibility of bringing up more intimate subjects, which could open the door for moving this relationship forward, oh her pupils are dilated that's another sign of interest. 

Ok I think I can cut it off there, my point being that I consider myself very much a thinking man, who is in touch with his emotions. When I say "In touch with his emotions" I don't mean "Will curl up, watch Sleepless in Seattle, and have a good cry" I mean "Will bring you chocolate, tell you that you're pretty and hug you when you're down".

My point being that those 2 also makes me a fairly complex person, and also a pain to deal with sometimes, since I have a long ongoing affair with sarcasm (Don't tell her but I'm nailing her sister Irony on the side) I have a knack for making witty situational observations, which can be a hazard at certain social gatherings, when I may blurt out inappropriate thoughts. As an example:

"Hmm why do Christians have burials when the Bible clearly states that the body is but a vessel for the soul, and once the soul departs the body the body is an empty shell, so in essence you people are crying over an empty fucking shell!"

Quite an interesting observation at a liberal discussion group, not so much at a funeral.

All people are not created equal

Take me for instance, I prefer working late afternoon, evenings and nights over mornings. I don't like making decisions without having time to review the facts and numbers so I can make an informed decision. I don't like not having control, and I strongly dislike minute to minute changes to my schedule.

I tend to prefer redheads or brunettes over blondes, and black lingerie over red or white. While I do like breasts, I do think I'm more of an "ass-man" and a cute/pretty face is a must. I like blue or green eyes over brown, and tend to look for women with a sense of humor, who challenge me intellectually but are not "ballbusters".

I prefer to watch documentaries, comedies or crime shows, not always in that order. I enjoy reading philosophy, sociology, psychology, but also sleezy crime novels, and the works of Stephen King. I do also enjoy some of the classics, mostly Hemingway, Solzhenitsyn and various adventure based novels like "Treasure Island".

I'm not a huge fan of "rave" music, with a few exceptions naturally, mostly because I believe you can find something you like in every genre.

I don't like organized religion, both because I believe faith is a highly personal thing, and also because I believe faith is easy to corrupt. I also don't like people basing their choices on what they think an invisible man in the sky likes, especially not on something as outdated as bronze/iron age texts.

I don't like that the terms "liberal" and "progressive" are considered negative words in politics these days, because in my mind humanity moving forward should be our goal as a species shouldn't it?

I don't like the term "conservative" either, mostly because I think "backwoods moron" is more suitable. Conservative literally means "disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change."

If you just look at that definition it hardly seems like a good thing does it? So one wishes to preserve the status quo which means no healthcare for all citizens, no plumbing, no dismantling of institutions or programs that do not work. No changes to social freedoms and so on.

I prefer beef or pork to chicken or fish, and some form of starchy carbohydrate accompanying it, and I would prefer a heavy sauce to go with it. Oh and an ice cold beer.

I'm for the right to choose abortion, I'm for the death penalty, euthanasia. Abortion because I believe its a mothers choice if she wants to carry something within her for 9 months, now it shouldn't be used as a means of contraception but how to accomplish that is a different debate.

I like the death penalty, not in its current extreme expensive form, but only in cases where the question of guilt is absolute. I also would prefer just shooting the fuckers in public to be honest, right on the courthouse steps after the final appeal runs out.

Euthanasia is something I support because I think that in cases where patients are terminally ill, keeping them alive is torture and a waste of resources. If a person who is going to die anyway wants to die a little sooner to spare him/herself some pain I don't see a problem with that.

On the same note I don't believe that living a long life should be the absolute goal. Sometimes its worth giving up a year or two to enjoy life. Sure you may live to be a 100 if you eat well, keep yourself in shape and so on, and even if you do get hit by a bus while out jogging at least those years living completely healthy felt a lot longer.

These are just a few of the many opinions I have, just because we are the same species doesn't mean we all think alike, want the same things or even remotely understand each other, like the guy at work who can't believe I only want late shifts. We may be created from the same matter, but still when we don't think and feel alike, assuming we are all equal just creates a world where everyone who doesn't share certain values are pushed down.

So maybe the Mayans were right?

I've been a firm opponent of the 2012 myth since I first heard about it, some years ago but lately I find myself believing it more and more. Not because I suddenly have a lot more faith in a fairly primitive people who didn't even know what a bacteria was, or that Cortez was coming to more or less rape and pillage them, but because I have little faith in humanity.
At the moment the Greeks are rioting because their country has maintained an artificially inflated lifestyle with borrowed money. Greece is the equivalent of someone who pays off their credit cards with other credit cards and have more debt than they will ever be able to pay back.
In essence Greece is one of the more extreme examples of what I like to call "The Tea Party Stupidity" or rather the idea that you can reduce the deficit, reduce the debt, reduce the cost of Government and Public Programs such as medicare, while reducing taxes, creating jobs, and increasing peoples standard of living. In essence wanting money for nothing and chicks for free.

In every transaction something is exchanged for something else. So if you want to reduce debt, the money must come from somewhere. It can come from increased taxes, it can come from reduced spending but it has to come from somewhere. If I have $100, and I need to buy food for 5 days and I have to pay back $50 to a friend of mine that I owe him, aka my debt. In order to manage my debt without going hungry, I need to buy food that will feed me for 5 days, for under $50. I can also pay back the $50 I owe my friend, and then borrow from another friend, but what I'm doing is simply procrastinating doing something I hate doing, curb my spending.

Now here is the problem, very few people are willing to pay more taxes or give up any of the benefits they get from the state. Now I'm not talking benefits as in unemployment, and so on, but the things we don't think of. There are such things as roads, public schools, defense budget, war on drugs and so on.
Money does not appear out of thin air, and when someone lives beyond their means for a long time, there will be blowback.

The definition of irony

is a Bank selling a customer a mortage that the customer is unable to pay, but also unable to completly understand. The Banker who lent the customer the money, then gets a bonus because of his/her high rate of income for the bank. The customer is unable to pay, and his house defaults to the bank, however because of all the bad loans the economy starts to crumble a little, so the housing markets drop, meaning that the bank now owns a bad loan (IE they've lent someone money, which they won't be getting back) which eats up their profit, meaning that they can't afford to keep the doors open.
The Bank now runs to the government and gets a bailout which the customer helped fund through taxes. The Bank is now doing great thanks to the bailout, and the banker gets another bonus.

Bread and Circus P.2

I'm a person who always tries to see things from the angle of the person trying to "spread cheeks and fuck ass" so to speak. Let's take a look at an insurance company, now since its a private company, odds are they want to maximize their profits. Now their income comes primarily from people paying them in case shit happens. I pay them a sum of money every month in order to make sure if I get sick they cover my care. Now the ideal customer for an insurance company is a person who pays their premium every month like clockwork and never gets sick. Because the less they have to pay healthcare providers to treat me, the more profit they make on me.

That's why I would never trust a private insurance company for my health, because its in their best interest not to pay for me. Sure Governments have their own ways of fucking you over, but its never purely by intent. If the government fucks you over its because they fuck up in some way, not because they are intentionally trying to screw you.
A private company tends to always be better off by screwing a portion of their clients. I mentioned Goldman-Sachs in my first post on this issue, and as a part of my investment I've read analyst recommendations, I've seen what the big banks say you should do, but I've also seen what they do themselves. Here in Norway we have a big investment portion of DNB (it's short for "The Norwegian Bank") called DNM (DNB Markets) who have operated with a target price of Opera Software of roughly $1.5 per share, at the same time DNM have purchased shares of Opera Software in the millions well over that target price. So they tell their clients to SELL and they themselves BUY.

This is fairly common in business and there should be some law against it. If I go to see my doctor and it turns out I have pneumonia he will tell me I have pneumonia, not that I have a chest cold that will pass in a few days. If I ask my mechanic to take a look at my car, he won't lie and tell me its a death trap, he might put on a few fixes that aren't needed then and there, but he won't screw me with a 10 foot pole if you know what I mean.

Big private companies live on intentionally screwing people, they gladly sell harmful products that they know are dangerous, they come up with huge lofty words to describe fucking their customers over so that the customer doesn't realize he or she are getting screwed.

A big company that isn't connected to its clients will always look at the bottom line first, then the clients needs and that's where the problem lies. I don't think big business is evil by nature, but I think the kind of people who get into it tend to have a certain mindset. Let's add to it that they can almost freely break the law without being charged with anything serious, and if they do they get a few months in white collar jail.

Business ethics and morals seems to always take a backseat to profit and that's why I would never trust a privately owned company with my health.

I believe Josef Stalin is quoted as saying "Kill 1 person and its a murder, kill 1 million and its a statistic" and the same seems to be true for business. The whole financial crisis came about because of bad regulation, poor understanding of human nature and greed. It's natural to want a little bit more than the guy next door, it's why communism will never work. Sure everyone having the exact same rights, the exact same wages, the exact same living conditions is fantastic, but that's not what make people work hard, being able to get more shit they do not need is.
Of couse I do laugh my balls off every time  I see a teabagger wielding a poster with Obama's face with a Hitler Mustache with the word "socialist" or "communist" under. Mostly because Hitler was very very far right on the political spectrum, while Stalin and communism was on the far far left.

To give a sort of visual demonstration:

Stalin -------------------------------Obama-----------Reagan------------------.W Bush-----Cheney-----Hitler

The republican Party is much closer to Hitler than the Democrats are, but then the democrats are closer to Stalin. Socialism isn't a bad thing as long as it doesn't go to far, just like a free market isn't a bad thing as long as it doesn't go too far. When a CEO makes 300% more than the workers in the factories, the top 2% have more than the bottom 100 million, when a middle class person will die but an upper class person will live, the free market has gone to far.
The problem is that the "teabagger" movement fail to see what is best for them. They think that the Republicans are their party, but the truth is the Republican party only pays off for the top 3% or so. If you are a very rich person, then the Republicans are your guys, but if you are middle class or lower then the Democrats are the better choice.

If people are comfortable with the government dealing with the defense of the country, with medicare, the veteran hospitals, the courts, legislation, medicine (FDA) then why not let them deal with healthcare? There is no doubt in my mind that given the chance Phizer or another huge drug company would bring out HEROIN and COCAINE to everyone if given the chance. I have no doubt that an insurance companies bottom line is their bottom line not whether I live or die, or rather will they make more money off me alive or dead?

Premiums paid + Future Premiums - Cost of care = if this sum is negative an insurance company will want to avoid treating me.

To be continued.