Category Archives: Philosophizin'
So That’s Why the Sun is Always Smiling at Me
An interesting article from Scientific American about the reason why God, ghosts, and conspiracy theories exist.
“The problem is that we did not evolve a baloney-detection device in our brains to discriminate between true and false patterns.”
And thus we are saddled with religion, making the sane world under the control of idiotic crackpots who actually seem to believe the bullshit they spew. The sane people of course realize that you can’t reason with the insane, but instead of drowning them in the tub, we allow them to run things in the vain hope that they will leave us alone.
Exuberant Imperfection and Transcendent Purpose
I learned about two new theories this week, both of which interested me. One theory I have already applied to my life. The other is highly unlikely to be anything more than a passing interest, something that I note, nod, and say “that’s interesting” about, like a man standing on the street with no pants.
The Future of Twitter
For a couple of months I’ve been watching the explosion of Twitter-related news and trying to figure out what it means for the future of Twitter. I don’t use it, I never will, and I find most of the celebutards using it as idiotic as the people who follow them. I was pretty convinced that Twitter would fail soon, since it was getting used and commented on old people who clearly don’t understand the new technology (Peter King of SI and the two or more people it took to teach him how to use it spring to mind). This would make the first adopters grimace in distaste and move on to the next hot thing, with King Celebutard Ashton Kutcher leading the way. Soon after, Twitter would die and I would never have to hear the word “tweet” used without baby birds being involved. Now, I am not so sure.
Accountants, Gamers, and Nerds
Accountants seem to be one of those professions that are universally classified as pure geek in popular culture. Watch any episode of Law & Order where the investigation leads to a trail of money, and at some point a bow-tie wearing, nervous, shifty weakling will be accosted, and the initials CPA will be associated with him. Computer techs used to get the identical treatment, until the emergence of shows like Chuck and the insufferable douchebag that hocks Macs. Douchey is better equated with lacrosse players and popped collars on golf shirts, which is decidedly no longer geeky. So why is the accountant the Lone Staple Nerd archetype among actual well-paying jobs?
Winter in Derenemyn 