Yet again the foolish fool spouts out more foolishly foolish drabble

Or so i've been told.

Leaving for trippin' tomorrie! Phrase of the day: "Ethical magic."

"I have absolute faith in the logic of my convictions."

Here be dragons

I'm going to talk today about dragons in garages.

In Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World, he opens with a passage about a dragon in his garage. Obviously, you're intrigued. He shows you his garage, but you see no dragon. Of course not, he replies, because the dragon is invisible. You try to touch the dragon, but that's no use, as Sagan says the dragon is incorporeal. You try to smell it, but no odour. This process continues so on and so forth, until you exhaust all your possible attempts to prove the existence of this dragon in some way. 

This leads on to a wonderful quote by Sagan: 

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?

Rightly, he concludes, there isn't. 

However, sometimes, there is a dragon in the garage. Newton had one such famous dragon: gravity. He could 'see' it; he could percieve its existence, and had to come up with a new mode of understanding (calculus) to prove it. 

Sometimes, some people's dragons are interesting purely for their imaginative quality. The New Yorker is running a review of a retrospective exhibition held in New York on the life and times of Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was either a eccentric visionary or complete madman; "Fuller’s schemes often had the hallucinatory quality associated with science fiction (or mental hospitals)."

Fuller was a strange, fantastic figure, who invented the idea of using geodesic domes as houses and gave eight hour lectures on everything, from environmentalism to architecture. Quote:

"instead of finding a job, [BF] took to spending his days in the library, reading Gandhi and Leonardo."

We need more people like this. I'm not saying that it would be a good thing if everyone were like this, but we do need more dream sellers.

If nothing else, they make the world less boring.

I think that's what I want to be. Penny for a dream?

This post cribbed and crafted from here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Before I write something

Wondermark is super-rad.

An example of the exemplary mouseover.

the Court's almost obsessive focus on homosexual activity

Repressed gays on the Supreme Court?! Say it isn't so!

That one comes from awesome Harry Andrew Blackmun, who also authored the majority opinion on Roe v. Wade. Another great opinion to read, if you have the time. Actually, the Roe v. Wade opinion is one of the nicer legal decisions i've read, managing a surprisingly nimble balance between women's rights and public outcry. Mind you, it's a long opinion, which is somewhat expected I guess.

The evidence is conclusive

Jesus probably rode dinosaurs. 

I especially like the colouring hints. "Flesh of Christ"? What the fuck does that consist of? Communion wafer colours? Or actual flesh of Christ, if you're into the whole transubstantiation shit?

You can stop reading...now. Back to the picture.

Had a good couple of days, which is good, compared to the terribleness I felt for so much of last week. Learning a lot. I found a metaethics that i'm somewhat favourable on, which is positively good news. It's nice to not feel crappy for extended periods of time. 

Wondering whether I should write some things on hypocrisy. Being involved in rational modes of thought for significant periods of time seems to fuck you up in all sorts of good ways.

'My needs are meager. I don't even care if the world has stupid people in it; I just wish they would leave the smart people alone to get their shit done.'

Man who falls in vat of molten optical glass makes spectacle of self

For all you sexy chemists out there:

Periodic Tables don't come much sexier.

This is an outrage

Legal trouble, again. Actual, blood-boiling style outrage.

About fucking time. Seriously, this sort of bullshit has gone on for too long. 6 years?! Christ. What's even more appalling is the umitigated douchery of Scalia's dissenting opinion:

Of the two dissenting opinions, Justice Antonin Scalia’s was the more apocalyptic, predicting “devastating” and “disastrous consequences” from the decision. “It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed,” he said. “The nation will live to regret what the court has done today.” He said the decision was based not on principle, “but rather an inflated notion of judicial supremacy.”

Yes. Habeus Corpus. A quaint, inflated notion of judicial supremacy. How these people get into power still baffles/saddens me.

That one was easy, if late. Now, in general, the RIAA are dicks, and their lawyers more so. But this...this is a new standard.

To summarise: The RIAA filed a 'making available' suit against Cassin, when said defendant filed a motion to dismiss aforementioned suit. Just before the judge made that ruling however, the RIAA submitted a voluntary notice of dismissal on the suit, and it was over. Or so we thought. 

The bastards then resubmitted the suit, only they renamed the defendants to 'Does 1-4' (in legal terms, John Doe is a placeholder name for defendants who are either unknown or anonymous). In addition, the fuckers filed another motion for ex parte discovery! 

To say that this is a gross violation of legal principles would be, frankly, an understatement. One needs Jon Stewartesque style to adequately convey the sheer gall and principled evil of these people.

I'm not even a fan

But RAD. I especially like the fact that some-bodys went to the trouble of dressing up as the Imperial Royal Guard.

I'm pretty sure the sixth movie lied to us about the Empire being gone...

But...But...I loved Caribbean Monk Seals!

So stop it! Stop with the dying!

If you didn't know: From the 6th of June 2008, they have been officially extinct.

So I is sad :(

Sad, and ornery, because people think stupid things sometimes. Terrible, terrible reasoning. I mean, i'm a pretty reasonable guy and all that, but seriously, when people use really terrible reasoning, I get all ornery like. Like a...orner. Or something like that. 

"A gay man has no need for women."
"Actually, that's not true. He needs them more than anyone else, for it reminds him what he misses, and thus strengthens his resolve."