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masterBlaster  ·  3747 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Mysterious radiation burst recorded 1,200 years ago in tree rings

| "It would be fascinating," Baker adds, "if there were some record in China or in the Middle East that reported powerful aurora or some other such event" around the same time as the observed 14C increase. |

Buddhism was coming on strong at the time. A lot of people attaining enlightenment which as we all know releases a burst of radiation referred to as a Buddha bomb.

masterBlaster  ·  3747 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Who am I?

you are a delegated form arising from the universe's tendency towards spontaneity, play and drama. the silent witness to your thoughts, the final meta meta meta thought that you cannot see because it would be like looking at your own retina without the aid of a mirror, is none other than the universe its in its entirety. Which makes us all literally one being. Any separation of one part of the universe from the other is only a mental image, a measurement of perceived boundaries for the sake of convention when in reality there is only one everything. The entire universe, you included, is one big organism. With this in mind, I could as Who/what are you not?

masterBlaster  ·  3747 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Visit to the World's Fair of 2014 (written in 1964)

I don't think they foresaw video games being as hugely popular or advanced but I know personally that the main reason I game so much is out of boredom. I would venture to say that many do it for this reason.

masterBlaster  ·  3747 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Visit to the World's Fair of 2014 (written in 1964)

very haunting towards the end. as a programmer, most days I am doing one of the few truly creative jobs in this farm of cubes. yet I am at the same time, in essence, "tending to the machines."

all generalizations are false. ;)

masterBlaster  ·  3751 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hipsters on Foodstamps

Author doesn't understand the current state of employment, culture or display much insight about, well, anything. And it opens with a paragraph that I find massively racist. This is shallow tripe. Moving on.

masterBlaster  ·  3752 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How Much Is a Life Worth?

i'd say about 3.50

masterBlaster  ·  3752 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Raymond M. Smullyan: Is God a Taoist?

Ok, cool. well as a Zen practitioner of many years I guess my answer to Smullyan's question would be "wuhh?" If I were a Zen master I'd shout a random sound or possibly smack him upside the head with my staff, as is the tradition of course.

masterBlaster  ·  3752 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Raymond M. Smullyan: Is God a Taoist?

wasn't posing an argument more than just illustrating what a bad essay it was. even famous philosophers can produce tripe. I understand he's taking a poke at the west's notions of free will and sin by having the western notion of god play the role of a sort of Zen master posing a Koan to a student but I can't help but feel he missed the mark. But since you make an appeal to authority (a classic technique in argument) can I assume we are now arguing? May I counter with an appeal to authority on the subject? My illustration of how bad an essay it was and how plainly the author seems to have missed basic Taoist concepts was mainly an act of regurgitating Alan Watts, a famous British philosopher and theologian who specialized in the subject of Taoism and played a huge role in popularizing it as well as Zen (applied Taoism) in the west.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts

there. now we both have wiki links to some scruffy old dudes.

masterBlaster  ·  3752 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Raymond M. Smullyan: Is God a Taoist?

a Taoist would ask "Why is God arguing with himself." a Taoist would also find the notion of God creating a universe incredibly bizarre. They would ask something like "did you step outside yourself and construct your thumb?." Also, to a Taoist, God is the Tao. They don't call it God. A closer approximate would be Hindu's Brahman. So the question would sound to a Hindu, a Taoist, a Zen practitioner, and to some sects of Buddhism like you are asking "Is God a Godist?" Your dialog does have the potential, taken in certain chunks, to pose an interesting Koan.

masterBlaster  ·  3752 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire

i just replaced Bitcoin with "Wal Street" and it read the same.

masterBlaster  ·  3754 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Psychological Power of Satan.

"Evil has been defined as taking pleasure in the intentional inflicting of harm on innocent others" that's not evil. It's sadism. If the recipient finds pleasure in it then it's quite socially acceptable. In fact most sadists aren't in to it at all if the recipient isn't getting off on it. There's no such thing as an evil person even if he does evil things, just as there's no such thing as a purely good person. In fact it has proven very difficult to define what evil is. Until the article tackles that, any further reading is just brain fodder.

masterBlaster  ·  3811 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Review of the DSM-5 as dystopian fiction

What a very well written article! Loved it. Thank you for sharing.

masterBlaster  ·  3825 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dogs Are People, Too - NYTimes.com [The Opinion Pages]

No. No they aren't.

masterBlaster  ·  3829 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: You can't JavaScript under pressure

just too damn drunk right now to try that.

masterBlaster  ·  3829 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Congressman Confronts Park Ranger Over Closed WWII Memorial | NBC4 Washington

wow. just wow. and the award for least self awareness goes too.....