On my way home from buying a tasty Subway Sandwich, I looked down on the sidewalk and saw this ghostly apparition of non-other but the King of Kings!
I snapped this photo near my house with my iPhone. (and then brightened it in Photoshop only because the iPhone ain’t too good at night photos. The original photo is here.)
My photo (brightened) of apparition of Jesus near my house. Contrasted against a standard drawing of Jesus (so your brain is primed to see the apparition.)
I tell you this was clearly a sign. Only an hour before the sighting I was watching “Zeitgeist – The Movie” in which the first half is about how Jesus doesn’t exist.
Clearly God was telling me something. Like do more skeptic comics!
David Blaine irritates me. I found his feats more about quests for egotistical attention than for actual entertainment value.
However, I now have respect this nut case because he has a strong respect for using science and also giving back to it.
In his talk, in which explains how he held his breath for 17 minutes, he tells how he essentially donated himself to science immediately after the event so doctors and scientists could study the effects of this kind of depravation on the human body.
Kudos, I say.
I go jogging because it makes me feel better about myself.
There are other reasons of course, such as it’s good for your health and your brain but the main reason is that it brightens my day.
No matter what did I that day, I can always say “and I went jogging!” and it washes away all the things I regretted doing. For example:
It was a busy week.
To be honest, I never really enjoyed biology in school. It seemed to be more about memorizing the names of things than actually learning how things work.
But If I had The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA as my text book, I’d be singing a different tune.
It’s a great example of using comics and graphics to illustrate complex scientific ideas and a piece of work that someday, I hope to aspire to being able to create. (God willing of course.)
I’m starting to be getting a little skeptical.
First he nominates Francis Collins to the NIH and now he’s putting a halt to sending humans back to the moon?
I think someone needs to arrange a special screening of Carl Sagan’s The Cosmos at the Whitehouse.
I was fortunate enough to spend 3 months in the People’s Republic of China. It was my first time living in an officially Atheist country.
However, it by no means, is the atheism advocated by people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.
For atheism or secularism to have any meaning it must be backed up by a support of freedom of expression, opening questioning, and respecting one’s right to dissent.
The Chinese government of course will say it’s for all these things but in true doublespeak it also restricts the Internet, imprisons dissentients, and attempts to ban beliefs.
The backbone of atheism is science and science needs a free society to succeed. Although truths are not something one can vote on, the process of science must be free and unfettered or else it will fail to uncover those truths.
Without freedom, there is no science. Without science there can be no atheism.
Oh boy. Deepak Chopra, spiritual peace pacifist, has some serious animosity towards Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptics Society.
On Larry King Live, they [and a boy who says he was reincarnated as a World War II pilot] debated over life after death.
However, after Shermer made a reasonable comment about our brains allowing us to have a “sense of self”. Chopra couldn’t let that insightfulness go unchallenged.
After starting with:
CHOPRA: Well, I have to say of Michael that he is very superstitious. He’s addicted to the superstition of materialism.
[What ever that means]
Everytime Shermer commented on the conversation Chopra chimed in with less than enlighted ridicule.
CHOPRA: ..are we talking to you, Michael, or to your [neural] networks right now?
And…
CHOPRA: So what — you know, when you say I’m skeptical about this, who’s the “I” that’s skeptical? Is it your networks or is it — it you? Are you confused?
And…
CHOPRA: Because his neural networks will not allow him to.
It continues…
CHOPRA: All I have to do is debate with your synaptic networks, not with you.
I would think that such an “enlightened individual” as Chopra would come with a more mature form of debate.
But you might be saying, “Hey Jeffrey that’s not fair. Chopra said a lot more meaningful things.”
Well, I think I can let Michael Shermer answer that with his treatise on Deepakese.
What could be more Christmassy than getting up early on a cold frosty Christmas morning, going outside and viewing the corpse of Mao Tse-Tung.
God, that's an ugly goatee
The story of Saddleback Church’s Rick Warren self-made rise from small town preacher to zillionaire pastor is certainly inspiring.
What’s not inspiring, however, is what the Pastor now preaches.
As this Slate.com article points out, if Rick Warren had listened to his own sermons, he’d still be presiding over his little high school church club.
“There are those who come up with an innovative idea, develop the skills necessary to realize it, and use every bit of their creative capacity to make it succeed. Then there are those who believe that human beings have no power to change the world but are mere pawns directed by a supernatural force whose decisions are arbitrary and inscrutable. Finally, there are rarities like Rick Warren who fit into both categories at the same time.”
