ArchLinux is a Gift

I don't use it, yet, but I have to say ArchLinux is a gift to the Linux world. The ArchLinux wiki offers far superior documentation on Linux than any other source on the Internet, bar none. If you are a Ubuntu user, you should read the ArchLinux wiki in preference to anything Canonical or any other Ubuntu web site offers. ArchLinux just knows. Whereas Ubuntu is kind of hit or miss and often miss and a lot of obfuscation. I read ArchLinux documentation and then I understand.

New Horizons Mission

I read this article today about NASA's mission to Pluto. !*&^$%#!&#^$, that is the sort of thing I should be reading instead of the stupid newsless "news". I think I'll add this to my lineup.

Sux to be a Spammer Day

Today is Sux to be a Spammer Day at techlorebyigor. I've updated my IP blacklist with all my latest catches from the sea of spambots.

Earnest Student

The best that can be said about me is that I am an earnest student, willing and eager to learn almost anything, and I prize teachers, anyone who knows something I do not and is willing to share their knowledge freely. I value knowledge. But I have no use for those who hoard their secrets and gloat over their protected nuggets of knowledge.

Disconnected

Does anyone else feel disconnected when they read the news? The Pope says blah blah blah, King Saudi Arabia kicked the bucket, and a lethal injection execution went down in Texas. Who gives a flying fly's copulation? I do not know what is wrong with the world that many people apparently care about these things. Tears for a convicted murderer are strange. My conscious would be eased by approaching death, if I had the blood-guilt, and what's so bad about death anyway? I don't really sympathize with the convicted murderers. A hangman's noose would suffice. I don't know why the modern world has to pussy-foot around with drugs. Maybe because America is so schizo about drugs? Maybe to reinforce the idea that drugs are bad? Whatever. As for the Pope, who cares? As for King Saud, who cares? The King and the Pope are no startling original thinkers or inventors. Tell me if a scientist or writer has a cold, but don't inform me about the deaths of monarchs, please.

N. Korean Survivor

So what if a survivor of North Korea's torture camps had a spotty memory? How many of us remember our lives in perfect detail? I suspect none do, and I also affirm that we rearrange our memories without even being aware of doing so on occasion. How likely is it that someone who grew up in a torture camp is going to be completely together upstairs? Give the guy a break. I think most members of the media would be talking to imaginary friends after experiencing even a single day of what this guy went through. North Korea is guilty until proven innocent beyond all shadow of a doubt. A heavy burden of proof must be placed upon the shoulders of any absolute dictator who holds all the keys of power in a State at his disposal, but in particular, a dictator known to be as evil as Kim "Junkhead-Ill," who is ill in the head, having used his own uncle as dog food. The same bar applies to Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, and Syria. I would not trust anything that issues from the lips of the tools of those systems.

Drop Everything

A good life is one where you could drop everything--die--and not leave too much undone, when you feel you're in the bonus round anyway.

France

I'm glad France is coming together after that stupid nonsense with the fanatics.  If Islam could pop a chill pill, all would be cool. Nobody has a problem with Allah, as long as he can take a joke and roll with it instead of bombing and shooting up the place. An Allah or Mohammed with a thin skin that wants to behead everybody just isn't going to fly. Understand? Assimilate or go back to the Middle East and the Middle Ages.

Mohammed the Pig

The so-called prophet Mohammed was a dirty pig, and his fanatics wallow in his hoof-steps. France pays a heavy price for letting a barbarous cult comprise 8% of the population. Is cheap labor really worth the cost in blood?

The Prophet Mohammed, a dirty pig

USA Today also printed a picture of the Prophet Mo - HAM - MAD (Mad Pig). Their normal policy is to not print such pictures in order to avoid offending Muslim readers. I think Muslims need to have these images broadcast twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, until they come to terms with the fact they are living in 2014 and not 1014. They need to learn that any violence will be met with violence. If they want to live in a land of censorship, then just move on back to Iran or Saudi Arabia, but do not come to the West.

Meanwhile, a liberal blogger in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam. Yes, this is happening in 2014, and the reason is Islam and the madmen that call themselves Muslims. The people in Saudi Arabia love torture, hate science and philosophy, hate democracy, love superstition, and worship a mad pig of a demon-god, one that demands blood sacrifice and death. When the Saudis aren't flogging, maiming, or beheading someone, they're denouncing morality, science, or the arts.

The only reason some Westerners defend the Islamists is they are cowed by the numbers and oil wealth of the Muslim world, which is accidental in more ways than one. The cult does not deserve respect, because it embraces death, torture, rape, and other atrocities, and all of this is self-evident to anyone who takes a glance at the news streaming from Muslim nations. That some Westerners pretend ignorance about such matters is curious. There is blood on the ground, and the media spends its time polling whether it is OK to depict the Prophet Mohammed or not, because murder is interesting and generates headlines. There is some kind of sick relationship between the media and terrorists, each feeding off the other.

Apologies to the noble beast, the pig, Sus scrofa domestica, whose flesh I find delicious, whether in the form of bacon, ham, or pork. The pig is actually a fairly intelligent animal and very useful in that one can feed it scraps and harvest wholesome meat. If Mohammed were alive today, he would probably eat pig as well. A case of food poisoning and the runs is the only reason I can think of that Moham banned ham. He heard the Jews thought God was down on pig, and so he tried pig himself and got diarrhea. He didn't understand science and thought Allah was punishing his bowels. Today he might accept modern science and realize the pig he ate was infected. Try a good pig, and there will be no such punishment. Today, we have lots of good pigs to eat, thanks to modern farming methods.

Paris Attack

The Muslim fanatics take advantage of the kindness and justice of Western societies. Mohammed's lies result in yet more human death and suffering.  The Romans dealt with such deeds in another manner than we do. The Romans would have solved the problem one way or the other and not worried too much about the means. The evil fanatics feel safe in the knowledge that France is kind, France is just, France is benevolent, and they take advantage of that, perceiving it as a weakness, rather than a strength. The Romans would have solved the problem forever in a month, and fear would have stayed the hands of any remaining survivors. But in the modern age, we cannot react as the Romans did. I do not understand why Western countries opened their borders to immoral savages and now seem so surprised when savages behave as their nature dictates. Of course, the idle rich classes merely wanted cheap labor and that is the entire reason France invited millions of Muslims, in order to reduce the wages of the native French, but the long-term costs are apparent.

Rich Justice

Rich justice is a whole lot more lenient than poor justice. A rich man took $165,000 in bribes and got two years. Now if I grabbed $165k worth of jewelry from a store, I bet I'd serve more than a measly two years for it. But then there are two justices in the world. One is for rich people, and it uses kid gloves. The other is for poor people, and it uses an iron mallet.

There's something awfully wrong about premeditated corruption among elected officials. It's an entire order of magnitude worse than simple theft. I think China has the right idea about punishment when it comes to graft and corruption among public officials.

Forcible Chemo

I don't believe medicine should be forced on anyone, with the possible exception of the mentally ill, but our government disagrees, even going so far as to imprison and forcibly administer chemotherapy to a 17 year-old, which amounts to torture and is a grave sin. Rather than forcing a poisonous and painful medicine on one, why not use the same resources to offer medicine to another that needs and wants it, for there are many in the world today that go without medicine due to poverty, including here in America. Of course, the State is insane, and prefers to torture one, rather than comfort another. Compassion ain't in it. Scant regard is given to personal liberty when it comes up against the smug self-righteousness of the fascist State and their scientists. Observe the pomposity of those who think they know better than others and use force and violence to get their way. Perhaps if the judge in the case were imprisoned for seventeen years, for kidnapping and torture by proxy, he might come to understand what a very long time seventeen years is and how much can be learned in that length of time.

Like Statues

Some people are like living statues. They no longer have much to say really, though they may have at one time been world-famous writers. Give a pass to them, mindful that such a fate awaits us all, and remember them not as they are now, but as they were, for that is what they, too, prefer.

Golden Age of Cinema

We are living in the true golden age of cinema and television. Shows of the past simply don't compare to what is available now. In particular, this is the golden age of gay cinema. There are more good gay movies now than I ever dared dream possible. Back in the day, movies were always heterosexual whenever love or sex interests were concerned, which limited severely the variety of plots, by about fifty per cent to be precise.

Drugs

I've favored legalization of marijuana for as long as I can remember and never favored Prohibition. Toxic brain-killing alcohol is legal, whereas marijuana, which is less toxic than aspirin, is strictly prohibited. This is a symptom of collective insanity. Human beings require medication in order to correct their psychosis. The medication of choice is, of course, marijuana. Perhaps that would put an end to a lot of other nonsense around the world as well, besides just the drug laws.

I think any amount of marijuana is okay, from a ton to a gram. Creating arbitrary amounts that are illegal is silly and points to the ignorance of politicians. Weed is a plant, and it varies greatly in potency, if potency refers to the inebriating principle, which is what folks get their panties in a knot about. Guess what? It is possible for a gram of marijuana to have higher potency than a ton of marijuana. People suffer from ignorance of the plant, which is the same reason that the plant became illegal in the first place. Learn about the plant, and then form an opinion based upon facts rather than prejudice. The same rule applies to everything else under the sun: sexuality, race, gender, religion, philosophy, and so on. People that don't know anything are the main problem with the world today. Without education on simple matters, people make foolish choices based upon fear and prejudice.

There is really no reason to prohibit the possession of any amount of marijuana. Somehow human society survived without Prohibition for millennia, but suddenly nowadays, we are so feeble that the dreaded weed must be banned or else our brains will explode. Collective hysteria and the craving of drama is the reason for cannabis prohibition. People have such easy lives today, without starvation and disease and constant warfare, that they look around for other things to turn their lives into Hell, such as unnecessary laws and imaginary crimes. People heed Thanatos, want to die and want to suffer. This is a basic human need, stronger in some than others.

Regarding other drugs, I am not as certain whether I oppose prohibition. It is easy to make a case for legal pot, but legal meth is another matter altogether. Meth is clearly harmful to the user, toxic, and dangerous. Of course, soldiers used it in WW2, but war is a different can of beans, and we are considering civilian life, not war.

Philosophically, I'm opposed to prohibition of any kind of substance, even meth, on the grounds that the State has mandated compulsory education of its otherwise free citizens. Very well, then, you educated them for twelve long years, and once they reach the age of majority, they are free. Why should they not be free to make their own choices in regards to what they put into their bodies? That seems a fundamental freedom.

On the other hand, there are addictive personalities that succumb to the siren call of terrible things like meth, even though their rational mind knows better. Our desire for freedom conflicts with the nurturing desire to protect the mentally ill, the substance abusers who will consume poison even unto death. Then there is the public safety issue. People high on meth may indeed be prone to violence, and what about the victims? Haven't they rights too?

I believe some substances are so dangerous they should not be allowed to be sold, but mere possession should not be a felony. Drug laws should be lenient rather than draconian, because harm does not necessarily follow in every case following consumption of an illegal drug. Drug crimes are rather different than other types of crimes that clearly cause harm to others.

For a substance to be illegal, it must meet certain criteria. It must be highly addictive and cause withdrawal symptoms. It must be highly toxic and capable of causing an overdose. And it should be tempting, that is, there must be some basis for thinking the substance will be abused. Obviously, not many people are huffing gasoline, and society is not worried about the possession and distribution of gasoline.

Updates on Terrorists

I don't know why the media sees fit to report on the doings of terrorists and criminals from long ago, known only for their infamous crimes. Whether they die, and at what age they die, and under what circumstances, does not particularly matter to me or anyone I know. Who cares? One might as well report on the fate of bacteria that killed someone a hundred years ago. How many generations has the bacteria reproduced, and has it mutated, and what slime does it feed on now, and so on. Violent men are common and uninteresting. Only a sociologist charged with researching the type would be interested.

God & Sex

How can anyone believe that the architect of the Cosmos concerns himself with a primate's gonadal impulses, whether hetero- or homo- sexuality? The idea tickles my funny bone. Those who believe it earnestly in the modern age must be subnormal in intelligence. Or perhaps they are obsessed with sex.

Just Say No to Suicide

Certainly, young people strike me as silly sometimes. The suicide of young, healthy people seems ridiculous, a ridiculous waste of potential, and I abhor reading about news stories in which a young person has taken their own life, because their motive often seems petty.

What do I know? Was I there? Did I want to die at fifteen? Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I did, and it became a favorite fantasy of mine. If you want to know what I was fantasizing about as a teenage boy, it was Death, He was my suitor, and He was Romantic, Charming, and tempting. I saw into the other side and wanted to be there with the others, because They, the dead, seemed just as good, if not better, than the living. But that was then, and this is now.

I think that life is an opportunity, and we are fortunate to have it, and to waste it seems pointless and rather stupid. Why not see what develops? Patience. Wait and see. To end it all precludes all possibility for anything good unfolding. A young person has a long life ahead and has only experienced a tiny fraction of it so far. Why be hasty and judge the rest as worthless? Wait and see. Things do get better.

Grown-ups sometimes just aren't willing to make any effort towards understanding, because they are set in their ways. Grown-ups are not lazy or stupid, by any means, or rather most of them are not. They tend to be hard-working and clever, but they are fixed in their habits of thinking, and somewhere along the way they may have lost a flexibility of mind, an agility that allows one to walk inside the mind of another.

For instance, being gay or transgender should not be a big deal. So what? There have been and there are millions of gay and transgender kids. Nor is smoking marijuana. These are small things that cause people to freak out, because they haven't enough drama in their life and a secret part of them craves the manufacturing of drama, like on TV.

Once one moves past the brouhaha, one finds that, yes, gay people exist and have good lives, and marijuana does not warp the brain for life after all. As a matter of fact, marijuana is benign, compared to alcohol, for alcohol opens a gateway for the forces of evil to enter our world. Mohammed understood this, at least, but then, it was made obvious to him.

Society labors under a number of delusions that cause much grief. I am glad that back in the day, my instinct to survive was stronger than the desire to end all suffering, because now that I am free, I am all right. Young people go crazy due to the conflict of older people trying to control them and shape them into something that they are not. The simple fact is that children have their own DNA and cannot become perfect clones of parents. They are different not only due to genetic differences but due to the different environment, the modern culture in which they live.

If I were to speak to a young person considering suicide, I would tell them that suicide is wrong for a healthy young person. Being gay is OK, there is nothing wrong with that. Being gay, transgender, or different is not a valid reason to either consider suicide or any form of self-harm, whether it be slicing, drug abuse or risky sexual behavior. Those bad choices are the influence of the voices of darkness, dark forces that enter our world and seek to harm, to destroy. One must be strong and resist these negative impulses. In order to be good, one must be strong. Otherwise, evil wins. Do not give in to the forces of darkness. Do not let them win. If one is a good person, and one enjoys good health, then it is a wicked thing to end life. Think instead on the fate of those left behind, who will be deprived of the positive influences of one's presence. Think instead on the tremendous burdens of grief and regret left upon loved ones. It is a wrong act, a grievous Sin, and must not be permitted.

Young people are too hasty in their judgments, to apt to paint the world in black and white, too impatient with the slow crawl of progress and enlightenment. Understanding takes time. It does not happen overnight. Sometimes years or decades are required. I say wait and see. I say let love enter your heart. Resist the siren call of hatred and bitterness. Resist the voice of despair. Understand that we are limited. Human beings are feeble of mind. Yes, we are fallible in many things. Much of what we perceive may be delusion. Most of the world labors under delusions. Few people ever see the world as it is even for a single moment in time. We see as through a glass darkly. So how can we be so sure of ourselves as to make the rash assumption that life is not worth living, even before we have given it half a chance? A suicide at fourteen is not half a chance, when the average human lives to be seventy or eighty. I say wait and see. I did and I am glad I did.

Be aware there is light in the darkness. Even in the utter dark, the void, there is light that the dark cannot overcome, burning with the intensity of creation. Seek it out, draw from its energy to increase your own, and that will be your salvation.

Science News > Mother Jones

I plan to add a science or technology media site to my daily routine in 2015. I have in mind The Register, the Inquisitor, or maybe Wired.

I resolved to quit Mother Jones for 2015, because that magazine has proven to be incurably scatological. A reader cannot avoid headlines on Mother Jones that harp upon a recurring theme, fecal matter, an obsession with Mother Jones writers and editors, who can't find any other words in the English language adequate to express their souls.

I have been informed that I am old-fashioned and out of touch and that my opinion is worthless. I don't really mind any of these accusations. If the literature of this Age has sunk so low as to require the constant, gratuitous use of profanity, then I have no use for it and will tune out. They can preach to their tiny little choir of the profane if they wish, but not to me. They can look to their peer group for validation and scoff at me, but I number on my side all the writers before our Age, a mighty legion that wrote in the correct manner, and I am not the only one to prefer them. They are better than the Mother Jones hacks by any measure that one would care to apply, and this is self-evident to anyone with sense, and an old fogey like me quite literally has no time for those without sense.

Why Bad Things Happen to Good People

The apparent paradox as to why bad things happen to good people puzzled me, coming from a Christian background. Often in the media, one finds this question being posed by traumatized people who have lost a loved one. At an early age, I learned that God runs the Universe, and God is omnipotent and omniscient, and God is Good. Why would such a God allow bad things, such as death and suffering, happen to good people? This does not seem reasonable.

I believe the only way to resolve the paradox is to depart from Christian thinking and to accept that our lives do not have quite as much significance as we think they do. Perhaps they are not altogether meaningless, but we are expendable, and I think that is self-evident, with an overwhelming abundance of evidence. All of us die. Our species could fairly easily be wiped from the planet altogether, perhaps through self-destruction, as seems likely at this point, due to our propensity for tribal warfare and our advanced military technology. Would that we had remained with bows and arrows! Think for a moment about the many species that preceded us. Where are they now? There has been a lot of bloodshed and a lot of death to get to us through the long process of evolution. There were a lot of false starts.

If there is such a thing as God, then he has demonstrated utter indifference to our fate throughout the course of history, and why should he not? Our lifespan is brief, and we are fragile and succumb to a myriad of genetic abnormalities, microbial diseases and accidents that have no relation to our moral conduct. From our design, we are meant to be temporary, disposable, expendable, and readily replaced. Those who do not accept that are thinking in childish and selfish terms and can be excused for doing so, because of course, we all would prefer to live forever without pain and suffering. I don't think that God condones death, pain and suffering. I think instead that he is removed from the equation. Those things are not considered important or are a part of the cycle of life.

The idea of living creatures as temporary avatars of the One Unifying Force appeals to me, although I don't know how it works exactly, but computer games offer a glimpse into the system. To think that all matter, everything we see and everything we are, derived ultimately from stars is a deep thought. What naturally follows from that is the observation that everything has a sameness about it, being constructed of the same material and coming from the same origin. The atoms of my body could have, but for random chance, composed one of the many layers of the Sun or the Moon. In our lives, we express a consciousness that may exist only as a potential, dormant and unexpressed, in inanimate things such as the Sun or the Moon. In time, we too lose our consciousness, and our atoms become like the Sun or the Moon, incapable of giving voice to ideas or thoughts. Our atoms are only capable of consciousness for a very brief amount of time, and for the rest of eternity remain silent as the grave, unless they become absorbed into another living being--much recycling takes place on this Earth. Why should mankind be so different, so divorced from nature, from the cosmos? I think instead we express cosmic forces that already exist in the universe, and that darkness and light, good and evil, destruction and rebirth, are expressions of those cosmic forces.

To speak of things in metaphysical terms is to simplify and concentrate the accumulated hard-won knowledge of science, in all its complexity, but we should always stay grounded in science, lest we stray into error. Scientists such as Feynman scorn philosophers in general but perhaps reserve a special scorn for those that stray far away from physical science. I would not say, for instance, that there is a God that will intervene in human affairs, because I have not witnessed that, and it seems to me if there were such a God, he would have intervened long ago to stop various atrocities and right all of the things that are wrong in the world, from North Korea to Iran to Russia and even here at home in the United States. Surely a just God would not have suffered countless injustices to go unpunished upon this Earth, were he at all concerned with the doings of humankind. There are many paradoxes in the mainstream religions that remain unresolved and point to their falseness. Also, I would not say that we have eternal life in Paradise awaiting us, because I have not seen this Paradise, and all the evidence of science points toward the cessation of consciousness at death; therefore I believe, for now, that my consciousness and individuality will be annihilated at the moment of my demise. Although that is a point of intense regret for many people, I am philosophic, because it cannot be helped, and because everyone else in the same boat, and after all, wasn't I lucky even to exist in the first place and to survive for as long as I did? Isn't it ingratitude and selfishness to demand more from the Universe? Even a moment of consciousness is more than many collections of atoms ever experience. All the atoms of the Sun--when have they possessed a single thought? Yet the atoms of the Sun outnumber the atoms of the Earth, as we have been told by our scientists. Others will inherit the earth, and let us hope that they improve the condition of the ones that follow them, as we have tried in our own ways to improve conditions in our times.