joaquin phoenix and the futility of celebrity

So as I watch Joaquin Phoenix make more and more of an ass of himself, and reality TV incresingly demonstrate the ridiculousness and irrelevance of celebrities...it becomes increasingly clear that celebrity status is going to the masses. Facebook, ning.com, google etc. allow each of us to decide who is a celebrity, and we are becoming more and more interested in our personal friends, and less and less interested in the "big stars", except for when they go to jail, overdose, or unexpectedly lose an article of clothing. I hope one day we can see them for what they are...regular people who act for a living, and beyond that, not particularly interesting.

(with all due respect to Mr. Phoenix, and the celebrity community of course, many of whom I count as dear friends)

Morgaine Dinova is one of my favorite people

Here is a conversation I had with Morgaine Dinova in Second Life. She is a mystery wrapped in an enigma to me, and I love her for it!

Tree Kyomoon: "its the altazimuth quaternion sir. Im going to need more money."
Tree Kyomoon: "we are in danger of going cartesian"

Morgaine Dinova: 3D. Whereas quats aren't 3D, that's how they get around gimble lock by using a 4th dimension

Tree Kyomoon: "our dimensions are in need of upsizing to avoid gimble lock...thats going to triple the budget"

Can you Astral Project? a conversation with Tony Gerber

Tony is a very close friend, and an incredibly smart person whom I absolutely respect and love. In SL he is known as Cypress Rosewood. Here is a snippet of one of our many chats.

Tony: can you astral project?
Tree: I can imagine im in space, or something if that is astral projecting then yes and I can bend spoons with my hands!"
Tony: do you see a silver chord attaching you to the earth?

Tree: no usually im just floating free...sometimes Im a pilot of a super cool styrofoam airplane

Tony: now its important that you dont come to resent the "sources of stress" but try to detach yourself from them and deal with them logically, as if you are someone else controlling a body.

"I think Second Life is a good analogy for that...think of your body as an avatar and use your mental "alt zoom" to look down on the situation and then you can see the solutions better." -Tree Kyomoon

Season's Greetings

"JOY TO THE WORLD, THERE IS NO GOD

LET MEN

THEIR BRAINS

EMPLOY"

Merry Holiday Seasons...remember Mythras is the reason for the season

Quotes by some famous atheists

usually its better to let smarter people do the talking. I will heed that advice for today!

". . . imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for."-Douglas Adams

"In an infinite universe, aren't we an INEVITABLE eventuality?"-source unknown

"Religion convinced the world that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there's 10 things he doesn't want you to do or else you'll go to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you ... and he needs money! He's all powerful, but he can't seem to hold on to a few bucks."-George Carlin

What can we do in all this doom and gloom?

What to do when the world is falling apart with all this war and economic crisis?

• I can help myself and my friends to learn new skills, essentially investing in their prosperity and our mutual future security.
• I can help others with school costs, teach, and use my technical skills to make education more accessible.
• I can participate in group discussions like this one, and help debunk myths and stop ignorance.
• I can help out local businesses and support my local farmers.
• I can add my voice to those who would call for holding those responsible for this crisis accountable.
• I can vote.
• I can read.
• I can learn.
• I can do.

As soon as the world realizes there is no god, no heaven, no one is right about the afterlife that no one has the goods...war will end.

Ending Faith is the most important thing our species can possibly do right now.

"imagine all the people...living for today" - John Lennon

If you are religious, please visit www.godisimaginary.com

The incredibly elegant theory of everything

NEWEST THING: The incredibly simple and elegant theory of everything

The incredibly elegant theory of everything

NEWEST THING: The incredibly simple and elegant theory of everything

The incredibly elegant theory of everything

NEWEST THING: The incredibly simple and elegant theory of everything

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.

Do you believe that that the above statement is in any way ridiculous? Is it
irrelevant? Is it a raving of any kind? Is its source guided by the phases of
the moon? Perhaps you feel that someone who thinks a wise men listening to
advice is something that should commit a person to be restrained and placed in
an institution.

If you take specific verses, sentences, or phrases, then yes, they can very well make sense if placed in a completely different context.

However, if you take the Bible as a whole, which I understand it is very seriously intended to be taken as such, the foundation is the premise that it is the inerrant word of god, dictated to man, largely through a mysterious inspiration process.

It has been argued for centuries by many scholars, not the least of which is famed Egyptologist Gerald Massey, that the bible was not the first to state the stories and quotes you are referring to and certainly not the only historical document to contain most if not all its "wisdom".

So, taken in that context, the whole context, it can be fairly stated that since god is imaginary, anyone claiming to literally "talk to god" or "receive direct instructions from god" to be a raving lunatic, or categorically insane.

My statement was terse but not invalid. There are far greater pieces of literature in existence that deserve much more consideration that this injustifiably revered work of fiction.

The primary difference between the Bible and Science is that the Bible starts with a conclusion, then attempts (pathetically IMO) to justify its position in light of readily observable evidence. Science the other hand, starts with a question and never really reaches a conclusion.

It is a constant refinement of position that gives the truth the reverence it deserves, that it is illusive and difficult to discover, perhaps even unknowable by our tiny species."

How Order comes from Chaos

Everything in the universe wants to end up in some kind of "stable" state. At the atomic level , all matter continues to bump and jump around, that is, keep moving until it gets to a state where it can rest (a stable state). At the atomic level, atoms are formed as protons and neutrons simply find groups that they can "settle" to, whereas unstable molecules tend to break apart and reform into smaller more stable patterns. Currently, one of the major goals of nuclear physics is to create an atom that has a stable pattern to it but is larger (more protons and neutrons) than any known atom.

All things (elements) are made of atoms, so if we could make a new atom that was stable, theres no telling what its properties might be. Gold? Silver? Plutonium? Air? all made of protons and neutrons, just in different patterns.

Mainly unrelated but similar result: Here is a video showing this in the macro world with sugar and sound vibrations. A stark illustration of how "order" naturally comes from what we would perceive as "chaos".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfs4Rd5f_IQ&NR=1
This would actually suggest that Order is all around, in the form of soundwaves, radiation, light, etc. All forces of pattern influencing solid matter in various ways.

The truth is, chaos is unstable, so while something can explode, say, the big bang, once freed up, all that exploded stuff is going to race to get to stable states as soon as possible, and in the case of stars going supernovae as we can observe any day of the week, we can detect literally hundreds of elements forming from these massive explosions and forming readily into solid bodies of matter (asteroids, planets, etc) This is readily observable any day of the week. This is how "organized" stuff is made by an explosion.

The end..?

Be Sane or Insane

There are only two world views, Insane and Sane.
Insane means you believe in and live to serve imaginary beings. You make up your own reality and reject actual reality.Sane means you accept reality and disregard imaginary things. Put them aside, dismiss them as fantasy, myth, cultural faux pas, superstition.Thats it. Be Sane, or be Insane.