I feel like I’m always looking for interesting things to read about a variety of topics, but I manage to include your blog among my reads every day because you have compelling entries that I look forward to. Here’s hoping there’s a lot more great material coming!

This comment was submitted 2 days ago (Sep. 7th). At that point I hadn’t posted a new entry in almost 3 months. Apparently my last post up ’til then was so amazingly compelling that this person checked back every day to re-read it.

Akismet is awesome for finding such otherwise innocuous sounding spam.

In case you’re wondering why that can be considered spam even though there are no ads to be seen, it’s actually an attempt to game the Google search system. The username is a link to their business site, and if they get enough blogs to allow such an innocuous sounding comment it will trick Google into thinking a lot of people are linking to their site. The hope is that it will appear so popular that their site will appear in the first page or so of a search.

Then there was this comment by someone named ocljlwijlmcds which says merely “ocljlwijlmcds”. So why didn’t I delete that one, too? Because as strange as it is there is no link or email associated with it so I have no reason to believe it’s spam. It’s possible that it was made by someone who has had previous comments deleted as spam and was just testing to see if I was indiscriminately deleting comments.

If so I just wanted to assure everyone that I’m not just deleting comments just because I feel like it, or because I don’t like the comments. In all cases they’ve been deleted because I have good reason to believe they are spam. In the future, if you want to make a legitimate comment, please try and make sure that it’s on topic and meaningful in some way. If your homepage URL has something “spammy” in it, mention that so that I know to take that into account when assessing your comment.

Since being banned from those sites I’ve visited less and less because as an onlooker who has no chance of participating it’s not any fun. That means I’ve spent more and more time at places like Pharyngula and The Panda’s Thumb. I agree with most of the posts that appear there, so the posts here have slowly declined in value as I have nothing much more to add to such discussions. Instead of building on something like “You’re wrong and this is why…” I’m trying to build on something like “Yup…you’re right…” which doesn’t lend itself to much more than agreement.

Knowing this, I’m adding those two sites back into my normal site rotation in the hopes that they will kick start my blog again. I may not be able to interact with those people directly, but hopefully I’ll see enough that I disagree with to make this site interesting again.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1234430/Mystery-spiral-blue-light-display-hovers-Norway.html

Having just seen this for the first time, and without having to investigate any further I can say without reservation that this is absolute proof that aliens are among us. Now that we have this proof, it is up to you to prove everything that has ever been claimed about UFO’s is absolutely false before you can claim otherwise. That’s how real scientists work. Umm…isn’t it?

Unfortunately for me, this is the one that was hung just above and in front of my desk:

You don’t really get a sense of scale with this picture, but it was like a foot and a half across and staring down at me for like a month! Sure it’s smiling, but after awhile even a smile begins to look sinister. And are those tears running down the sides of it’s face? What the hell is wrong with that thing?

(In truth I loved it because it bothered everyone else so much)

• Obama Team Continues Effort to Isolate Fox News – Of course Obama isn’t saying anything that isn’t known by pretty much everyone anyway. However, I’m not sure if this is the way to handle it. First pass impression is that this will backfire. However, what are the alternatives? Simply ignore it? Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll give it some thought and get back to you.
• Intelligent Alien Intervention Institute – A very good spoof on ID and their quest to work their way into the US schools.
• Futurity – I heard about this site from an NPR story. I’m not sure exactly what to make of it yet. So far it seems great. However, since the stories are direct from the sources, rather than being vetted by a professional Science journalist (a dying breed), they may not be as accurate as one would like. I’m keeping an eye on this one, and I may be making posts about stories found here soon.
• New view reveals how DNA fits into cell – I want to make a post about fractals soon, and I think this might be a good jumping off point.

That’s all I really have time for at the moment. I’ll try and get back to this as soon as I am able.

Since I learned this about the Nobel Prize I’ve wondered why they don’t do the same thing with the Peace Prize. Award the prize only after several decades have passed so that it’s limited to those who have had an actual real impact on the world. The fact that President Obama won it this year shows pretty clearly that this is not how it’s done. I think even the staunchest Obama supporter understands that he hasn’t done much to earn that prize yet (whether they admit that aloud or not is another question altogether).

Two possibilities really jump out at me on exactly what has happened here (not this year specifically, but to the Peace Prize in general). First, it’s possible that the original award was not meant to reward those who have made a difference, but to try and make a difference itself. In other words, it was always meant as a political gesture. The second possibility is that the award process was corrupted by those who recognized it’s potential political use. This process would be a little slower, but only because it would start later, after the prize had time to gain some real credibility. In either case it would quickly lead to the exact situation that we see today: Peace Prize as an empty, meaningless political gesture.

In conclusion, let it be understood that I am speaking from a position of ignorance here. I don’t know much about the Peace Prize, and I’ve done almost nothing to remedy that. Perhaps someone could convince me that it’s worth digger deeper into. Otherwise I’ll just continue doing sciency stuff and making fun of religion and homeopaths.

I always have the destination in mind. I must always know that an idea that I’m exploring has an answer, even if I don’t know it. Even if I in fact know that I will never know it. The process of thought is meant to draw as close as possible to that answer, even when it is in practice far beyond reach.

I think he always has the journey in mind. An idea need not have an answer that can be discovered. The exploration of an idea and the lessons that can be learned from it are the real focus of thought. This can be a much more introspective way of thinking, with less tangible, but no less important and possibly more personally satisfying results.

The two modes of thought are very different, and they result in different ways of expressing ourselves. Mine lends itself to definitive statements which can be easy to evaluate. His leads to deeper philosophical statements which can be more difficult to evaluate. It’s this difference that I think leads to his perception of an inequality between us that I don’t think really exists.

1. A new game built from the ground up called Cataclysm.
2. A WoW expansion called Cataclysm.
3. A simple mind-fuck designed to watch the fan base squirm as they try and figure out what the hell is going on.

Well, at BlizzCon, they made it official. And the winner is…

WoW Cataclysm!!!

I really need to get my Rogue up to level 80 to be ready for the new expansion. In case you’re wondering what it’ll look like, here’s the official trailer (well…kind of…)