There are certain kinds of pains I just don't understand and by not understanding I mean, why do they hurt so much when nothing can be done about them?
Take tooth pain for example. Pretty much any pain involving the mouth, like abscesses, is dreadfully bad. We've only had anything resembling modern dentistry for, at best, a few hundred years. But we've been anatomically human for almost 200,000 years. Why should tooth pain be quite so exquisite? What's the purpose of it? Sure, something could be done about it now...but what about then?
And then you have other types of pain that seem to serve no purpose as nothing can be done about it like kidney stones, splinters, broken bones, and giving birth.
Pain should have a purpose. It should be there to remind you that what you're doing is damaging or potentially so. It's good that fire feels hot because you don't want to be exposed to it. It's good that ice feels cold for the same reason. The initial pain of a splinter is fine. It teaches you to be careful but the continued pain that is felt until you or your body can push it out is just overkill.
Broken bone pain seems unnecessary too. Yes, nowadays we have casts and splints but what about when you broke your leg back in prehistoric times? You were tiger food now and all the while you're waiting to become a meal, it hurts like fuck. Your body and mind get to have one final, totally unnecessary conversation about how you shouldn't've done what you did à la Scrambles to Chopper: (body) "I told ya! I told ya!" (mind) "I know! I KNOW!!!"...but with pain instead of words.
And like tooth pain, I don't even know the point of the pain associated with kidney stones. Whatever causes them to form in the first place certainly doesn't happen overnight so their being painful just seems so spiteful on the part of your body, doesn't it?
Why is childbirth painful? One would think that giving birth, being vital for the continuation of a species, would be a most pleasant experience in order to encourage females to want to do it again. But nope, dorko body here has decided to trip all its pain sensors instead.
I guess I'm referring to two major types of stupid pain here: inexplicable and fatal. Both are senseless but the latter is especially cruel. Unfortunately evolution could never set up a system to deal with fatal pain because, well...you need survivors to pass along traits. Still, you'd think some sort of mercy would exist for cases like this. At the very minimum such a system could be present in the bones and/or the nervous system.
Breaking a leg in prehistory pretty much meant death. It means death for any animal today to lose its primary means for locomotion. The same is true for severing an artery. Wouldn't it be much more merciful to the animal (or human) if opiates or some other feel-good chemicals could be released from bone marrow if a bone broke or from the brain if reports of pain went above a certain threshold or if blood pressure dropped below a critical point?
Let the inevitable end for the animal feel euphoric instead of horrifying. Why shouldn't being mauled by a tiger feel fantastic?
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
LINGERING RACISM...
While walking to work the other night, I saw two high school aged girls run across what is normally a very busy street to seek shelter from the rain which had only just started. I noticed that they were both rather pretty and for a moment found myself wishing I were their age again if only to continue the fantasy that if I could be given a second chance that I (somehow) wouldn't make the same mistakes over and over again.
The thought left me when I saw the group of four guys they had been with bicycling and skateboarding across the street to meet them. Three of these teenaged boys were black and the one on the skateboard, latino. I scoffed to myself wondering what these pretty white girls were doing hanging out with these black and latino kids.
It was an automatic reaction. It caught me off guard. It had been a while since I had felt such a thought in me. I don't know where it comes from or how it got rooted. Is it something my parents had taught me subtly? I don't remember either of them ever being overtly racist.
My father would drop the N-bomb every once in a while in conversation but I would describe his use of nigger more like the Black People vs. Niggaz bit Chris Rock did all those years ago. My Dad was not wanting for black friends throughout his life so I find his use of nigger puzzling, almost like he believed blacks ought to be better than the stereotypes attributed to them. I never heard him use the word in anger nor did I ever hear him direct the word at a black person.
Maybe it was the lack of interracial relationships in my life? I cannot think of any except on TV and whenever those relationships did appear the couples always had to justify their being together. That alone presses the idea that such relationships are unnatural and ought not be pursued. Perhaps it plays into the mind over the years?
My personal thoughts upon seeing a pretty white girl - and it's only when it's a pretty white girl: I could care less if it were an unattractive white girl or a white boy with a black girl - my thought is that of disgust but not disgust in that I find a black guy with a white girl disgusting, but a jealous disgust that derives from my loneliness. This idea that there are plenty of white men for you to be with and you chose a black man? This idea that white girls shouldn't go for other races until all the white men in their local group have been taken.
The jealousy is still there if the guy with the pretty white girl is white. Perhaps since jealousy comes from an ugly place, it is only natural that racism will follow when presented with the opportunity?
It is the only racism that lingers on inside me. Personally I think I hide it well. No one I know has ever suspected it in me. It is something I intend to die with and do my damnedest not to pass along to the next generation should I actually have kids of my own.
The thought left me when I saw the group of four guys they had been with bicycling and skateboarding across the street to meet them. Three of these teenaged boys were black and the one on the skateboard, latino. I scoffed to myself wondering what these pretty white girls were doing hanging out with these black and latino kids.
It was an automatic reaction. It caught me off guard. It had been a while since I had felt such a thought in me. I don't know where it comes from or how it got rooted. Is it something my parents had taught me subtly? I don't remember either of them ever being overtly racist.
My father would drop the N-bomb every once in a while in conversation but I would describe his use of nigger more like the Black People vs. Niggaz bit Chris Rock did all those years ago. My Dad was not wanting for black friends throughout his life so I find his use of nigger puzzling, almost like he believed blacks ought to be better than the stereotypes attributed to them. I never heard him use the word in anger nor did I ever hear him direct the word at a black person.
Maybe it was the lack of interracial relationships in my life? I cannot think of any except on TV and whenever those relationships did appear the couples always had to justify their being together. That alone presses the idea that such relationships are unnatural and ought not be pursued. Perhaps it plays into the mind over the years?
My personal thoughts upon seeing a pretty white girl - and it's only when it's a pretty white girl: I could care less if it were an unattractive white girl or a white boy with a black girl - my thought is that of disgust but not disgust in that I find a black guy with a white girl disgusting, but a jealous disgust that derives from my loneliness. This idea that there are plenty of white men for you to be with and you chose a black man? This idea that white girls shouldn't go for other races until all the white men in their local group have been taken.
The jealousy is still there if the guy with the pretty white girl is white. Perhaps since jealousy comes from an ugly place, it is only natural that racism will follow when presented with the opportunity?
It is the only racism that lingers on inside me. Personally I think I hide it well. No one I know has ever suspected it in me. It is something I intend to die with and do my damnedest not to pass along to the next generation should I actually have kids of my own.
Monday, September 16, 2013
LINE OF THE DAY, part XXXV
This is from a recent post on Snopes. It very clearly states why nothing you do will ever make a difference in anything:
Remember that quote the next time you try convincing anyone of anything, especially if it's a subject dear to you, and also that you are vulnerable to it too.
"...I tell them that I don't really believe our site (Snopes) makes much of a difference in the greater scheme of things; that the responses we get tend to indicate a good many people are determined to believe whatever they want to believe, and no collection of contradictory factual information, no matter how large or authoritative or impressive it might be, is ever going to dissuade them from their beliefs."
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| You said it Homer. You sure said it. |
Remember that quote the next time you try convincing anyone of anything, especially if it's a subject dear to you, and also that you are vulnerable to it too.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
9/11: WE WILL NEVER FORGET...BUT WE WILL MOVE ON
For the twelfth time now, media has officially gone somber for the occasion. Bringing out its sad music and mourning wear, especially for its normally flirty hostesses. A day to pay homage before going back into their normal stupid shit. I'll admit, this September 11th like last year's (for me at least) just came and went without acknowledgement.
I can't be bothered with it anymore. This "national day of mourning" I feel has long since crossed the line from a genuine expression of emotion to exploitative. It's one thing to acknowledge sadness but it's quite another to use it to drum up business or an agenda and that's what I feel the "holiday" of September 11th has become. It's officially called "Patriot Day" and while no one calls it that, I think just like the other day of infamy in this country, "Pearl Harbor Day" (December 7th), it too will just fade away but not before the big anniversaries - the 20th and 25th (and so forth) - into little blurbs in the headlines becoming less and less acknowledged with each passing year.
But for me, it's just exploitative. There are enough survivors from that heinous attack. It's their day now, not the nation's. Leave them alone, stop reading the names of those who died that day, and quit it with the phony jingoism and easy patriotism the day affords. Stop using them as symbols to unite us in supporting wars that don't need to be fought.
I think back to the opposite expression: the end of a trying war. V-J Day was on September 2, 1945 and we've seen the pictures...it was a hell of a celebration (for the United States at least). World War II was finally over. And I imagine there were similar, albeit smaller, parties through what remained of the 1940s on that day. But how long can one keep celebrating victory over one's enemy before it slips from a meaningful celebration over the end of a great war to what amounts to "rubbing it in"?
And that's what brings me back to September 11th. Yes, the first anniversary was meaningful and it probably should've stopped there as we had taken our pound of flesh from Afghanistan. But before even the second anniversary it had been used as a backdrop to justify an invasion of Iraq and to maintain the growing "security" state apparatus. By the tenth anniversary, one of the big anniversaries, the failure of our "War on Terror" was more than apparent and I remember acknowledging it as such (I'm certainly using that word a lot, aren't I?) but being introspective about what we as a nation had done to others and ourselves in response to that terrorist attack was not fashionable to say the least of it. I'm not when it will ever be fashionable to criticize our responses in the mainstream.
I'm not sure where I'm going with all this so I'll end it here. September 11th is just another day...as it should be.
I can't be bothered with it anymore. This "national day of mourning" I feel has long since crossed the line from a genuine expression of emotion to exploitative. It's one thing to acknowledge sadness but it's quite another to use it to drum up business or an agenda and that's what I feel the "holiday" of September 11th has become. It's officially called "Patriot Day" and while no one calls it that, I think just like the other day of infamy in this country, "Pearl Harbor Day" (December 7th), it too will just fade away but not before the big anniversaries - the 20th and 25th (and so forth) - into little blurbs in the headlines becoming less and less acknowledged with each passing year.
But for me, it's just exploitative. There are enough survivors from that heinous attack. It's their day now, not the nation's. Leave them alone, stop reading the names of those who died that day, and quit it with the phony jingoism and easy patriotism the day affords. Stop using them as symbols to unite us in supporting wars that don't need to be fought.
I think back to the opposite expression: the end of a trying war. V-J Day was on September 2, 1945 and we've seen the pictures...it was a hell of a celebration (for the United States at least). World War II was finally over. And I imagine there were similar, albeit smaller, parties through what remained of the 1940s on that day. But how long can one keep celebrating victory over one's enemy before it slips from a meaningful celebration over the end of a great war to what amounts to "rubbing it in"?
And that's what brings me back to September 11th. Yes, the first anniversary was meaningful and it probably should've stopped there as we had taken our pound of flesh from Afghanistan. But before even the second anniversary it had been used as a backdrop to justify an invasion of Iraq and to maintain the growing "security" state apparatus. By the tenth anniversary, one of the big anniversaries, the failure of our "War on Terror" was more than apparent and I remember acknowledging it as such (I'm certainly using that word a lot, aren't I?) but being introspective about what we as a nation had done to others and ourselves in response to that terrorist attack was not fashionable to say the least of it. I'm not when it will ever be fashionable to criticize our responses in the mainstream.
I'm not sure where I'm going with all this so I'll end it here. September 11th is just another day...as it should be.
Monday, September 9, 2013
WELL THAT WAS ANNOYING...
I had gotten used to my blog looking the way it had. I don't what I did while trying to edit the blog description but it fucked up my header and I couldn't get it back the way it had been so yay (?) new template and color scheme. Get used to it because I don't have a choice now either. This is why you don't muck with things that ain't broke kids...
I'll remind you from a previous post that I do in fact suffer from a common form of colorblindness so if the colors clash or are otherwise ridiculous, feel free to suggest new colors. Just be sure to use web color values (because I have no idea what mauve or bone is - let's be realistic here) and I'll get right on it.
I'll remind you from a previous post that I do in fact suffer from a common form of colorblindness so if the colors clash or are otherwise ridiculous, feel free to suggest new colors. Just be sure to use web color values (because I have no idea what mauve or bone is - let's be realistic here) and I'll get right on it.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
A TOTALLY GRATUITOUS SWIPE AT THE KARDASHIANS...
I saw this posted on Facebook the other day and it annoyed me. I should probably make this clear that autistic people don't annoy me. To me they're no different than anyone else who's retarded. They get passes for their behavior (within reason) because you know they know not what they do. No, I get mad at their caregivers/parents because they, more often than not, come across with rather unrealistic assessments of their child's present and future capabilities.
I get it. You've been saddled with a burden you never asked for but stop pretending that your burden must now also be our burden. Just as you wouldn't bring a child into a go-go bar or a deaf person to a music concert, you have to be aware that not all venues are appropriate for retarded/developmentally disabled children and adults.
Anyways, I see this post and my assholish thoughts immediately surface. I'll post my thoughts in blue italics and not bother to proofread them to make it easier for you to attack me in the comments' section. Also, the original post had "thou shall" rather than the properly conjugated "thou shalt". This has been corrected.
I get it. You've been saddled with a burden you never asked for but stop pretending that your burden must now also be our burden. Just as you wouldn't bring a child into a go-go bar or a deaf person to a music concert, you have to be aware that not all venues are appropriate for retarded/developmentally disabled children and adults.
Anyways, I see this post and my assholish thoughts immediately surface. I'll post my thoughts in blue italics and not bother to proofread them to make it easier for you to attack me in the comments' section. Also, the original post had "thou shall" rather than the properly conjugated "thou shalt". This has been corrected.
TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR INTERACTING WITH KIDS ON THE AUTISM SPECTRUM:
THE LOW-HANGING FRUIT OF FEEL-GOOD...
So how far in the minority am I for not believing any, not a single one, of the many posts you've doubtlessly seen on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit (oh yeah, and here on Blogspot), etc. is real? You know, those ones which often come with an inspiring story or perhaps a tale of revenge or some other comeuppance?
Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:
I don't believe any of it. All these feels-inducing human interest stories come across as having been staged. And no, I still wouldn't believe it if any of the above scenarios had been caught on video because those too are easily staged. They're all too easy to fake and just seem like easy and extremely convenient ways to get attention and page views for agenda-driven websites and forums. It's confirmation bias run amok.
After all, is it really any different than, "Can you believe what so&so did the other night with such&such?"?
"No, what? Tell me. This I gotta hear!"
ADDENDUM: Here's some more confirmation bias courtesy of NBC news :-)
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Gay-Server-Tip-Lifestyle-Receipt-Discrepancy-233040811.html
Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:
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| allegedly from a pissed off One Percenter |
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| allegedly from a store's entire staff in reaction to a bad manager |
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| allegedly given to a family with an autistic child |
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| allegedly written by an active duty US soldier |
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| allegedly after Zachary had come out of the closet on Facebook |
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| allegedly given to a woman seen "controversially" breastfeeding in public |
After all, is it really any different than, "Can you believe what so&so did the other night with such&such?"?
"No, what? Tell me. This I gotta hear!"
ADDENDUM: Here's some more confirmation bias courtesy of NBC news :-)
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Gay-Server-Tip-Lifestyle-Receipt-Discrepancy-233040811.html
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
COGITO ERGO SUM ERGO MORIAR...
I've been reading a book by Jim Holt called Why Does the World Exist?. It's been an interesting romp through various philosophers and thinkers over the ages from the Greeks to today concerning the question. The book, of course, does not resolve the issue. No, it's a series of interviews and explorations of man's attempts to resolve this question. Along the way, you will find yourself falling into one camp or another or some mixture thereof.
He ends the book reflecting on the essence of self. It got me to thinking (once again) about how existence itself is the ultimate joke. It makes me wonder if the Watchmen's Comedian would have agreed?
How is it a joke? Well...you didn't ask for your existence, but you were given it anyway, and it will be taken away from you whether you like it or not. Our lives, at least when compared to the eons that the universe has existed, are likenable to the quantum foam. As quantum physics points out, space is not really empty. Even in the vacuum, at the tiniest of levels, particle pairs emerge from spacetime itself but only fleetingly.
Their existence, like ours, is on borrowed time and they will soon return to the nothingness whence they came. It happens all around us all the time and all the while not violating physical principles.
The universe is what, about fourteen billion years old?, and it will continue for an untold amount of eons. And do we get? If we're lucky, about eighty years. Eighty years versus fourteen billion.
And it's a wonderful thing too. Even if your life is shitty, existence is still the most fucking amazingly amazing thing ever in all of ever...but it's not yours to keep. You get a piece of it and then you lose it...forever. Sure, non-existence could be likened to the billions of years you didn't exist and thought of as not such a big deal to return to but that doesn't bring me any comfort...at least not after learning what existence has to offer.
The thing is, when I was born, I didn't know what I had been missing out on. I also couldn't know what I had been missing out on. I had to figure it all out (or at least a portion of it). But when it comes to dying, you know know damn well what you're going to be missing out on (or at least that you're going to be missing out). It's so impishly cruel to do to someone.
Either way, I assure you I will be kicking and screaming like a little bitch when my time comes. I will hold on to reality for as long as I can muster.
Are suitably arranged brains required for consciousness or do the particles themselves comprising the universe come ready-made with such an endowment? It makes me wonder of life's other forms. Are insects aware of their existence? Do they have a sense of self? Do trees? How about slime molds, or even bacteria? How many animals are born only to die within minutes of their birth? How many seeds sprout only to grow a few leaves before dying? And even with humanity, after watching a documentary on World War II from Japan's point of view, there were babies suffocated by their mothers in caves under orders by their military to prevent their location from being discovered by the Americans. Those babies had only a few months of existence before they were returned to the void. It just seems so ridiculously pointless.
I guess...take existence while you can and make of it what you will for surely it shall soon be gone is all that can be said.
I will return to the void neither silently nor with begrudging acceptance. I will return with a "Fuck you!" on my lips. How dare "you", whoever "you" are, tease me with such wonders only to capriciously take them away!!! I guess what bugs me most, is like those particle pairs mentioned above, the choice to exist and to cease to exist were never mine to make. Stupid random chance...
In the meantime, I shall live and enjoy myself :-)
He ends the book reflecting on the essence of self. It got me to thinking (once again) about how existence itself is the ultimate joke. It makes me wonder if the Watchmen's Comedian would have agreed?
How is it a joke? Well...you didn't ask for your existence, but you were given it anyway, and it will be taken away from you whether you like it or not. Our lives, at least when compared to the eons that the universe has existed, are likenable to the quantum foam. As quantum physics points out, space is not really empty. Even in the vacuum, at the tiniest of levels, particle pairs emerge from spacetime itself but only fleetingly.
Their existence, like ours, is on borrowed time and they will soon return to the nothingness whence they came. It happens all around us all the time and all the while not violating physical principles.
The universe is what, about fourteen billion years old?, and it will continue for an untold amount of eons. And do we get? If we're lucky, about eighty years. Eighty years versus fourteen billion.
And it's a wonderful thing too. Even if your life is shitty, existence is still the most fucking amazingly amazing thing ever in all of ever...but it's not yours to keep. You get a piece of it and then you lose it...forever. Sure, non-existence could be likened to the billions of years you didn't exist and thought of as not such a big deal to return to but that doesn't bring me any comfort...at least not after learning what existence has to offer.
The thing is, when I was born, I didn't know what I had been missing out on. I also couldn't know what I had been missing out on. I had to figure it all out (or at least a portion of it). But when it comes to dying, you know know damn well what you're going to be missing out on (or at least that you're going to be missing out). It's so impishly cruel to do to someone.
Either way, I assure you I will be kicking and screaming like a little bitch when my time comes. I will hold on to reality for as long as I can muster.
Are suitably arranged brains required for consciousness or do the particles themselves comprising the universe come ready-made with such an endowment? It makes me wonder of life's other forms. Are insects aware of their existence? Do they have a sense of self? Do trees? How about slime molds, or even bacteria? How many animals are born only to die within minutes of their birth? How many seeds sprout only to grow a few leaves before dying? And even with humanity, after watching a documentary on World War II from Japan's point of view, there were babies suffocated by their mothers in caves under orders by their military to prevent their location from being discovered by the Americans. Those babies had only a few months of existence before they were returned to the void. It just seems so ridiculously pointless.
I guess...take existence while you can and make of it what you will for surely it shall soon be gone is all that can be said.
I will return to the void neither silently nor with begrudging acceptance. I will return with a "Fuck you!" on my lips. How dare "you", whoever "you" are, tease me with such wonders only to capriciously take them away!!! I guess what bugs me most, is like those particle pairs mentioned above, the choice to exist and to cease to exist were never mine to make. Stupid random chance...
In the meantime, I shall live and enjoy myself :-)
Monday, September 2, 2013
ICE-AGES, IMPACTS, & DISEASE - oh my!
It was just something that came up the other day in conversation but it left me wondering about the causes of extinction in plants and animals. It can't always be impacts, supervolcanoes, and ice-ages. Nor would it be fair to always blame humanity for these problems (though I'm sure with our worldwide presence and relative ease with which we can travel we do share some of the blame). After all, over 90% of all the species which have ever lived are extinct and were extinct long before homo sapiens entered the scene. As George Carlin would say, "We didn't kill them all. They just disappeared. That's what nature does."
It had me wondering what role disease has to play. White Nose Syndrome is devastating bat populations in North America. Mortality rates make the Black Death look like a walk in the park by comparison. 90%-95% of bats who contract this fungus die and at this point I'm not even sure if those "lucky" 5 or so percent are naturally immune or simply got lucky. But still, it's like the Drafa Plague for bats...
Fossil records only show that species have gone extinct and can only date those extinctions relatively or within a plus-or-minus of thousands to millions of years. With rare exceptions like the K-T Extinction event which famously wiped out the dinosaurs can it be shown that 80% of the species alive at the time perished in short order but even then, it only happened instantly in geological terms. Overall hundreds or even thousands of years may have passed before that 80% threshold was reached.
But still, what of disease? Recorded history has only been around for a mere 6000 years and it's only become detailed recently. Yes, humans are responsible for some extinctions like the dodo bird but I don't think it's productive to reflexively blame humanity as we haven't been around long enough to notice how else the Earth disposes of species.
Even if the White Nose Syndrome isn't 100% fatal, could it crash the bat populations to the point where it would be impossible for them to recover? The disease was only noticed in 2007. If a thousand years is the blink of an eye in geologic time, what is a decade or two? Is it possible that several bat species will have gone extinct before 2017 or 2027? And if so, how often has something like this happened? Viruses, bacteria, and fungi are insidious creatures and the former two have had quite a head start evolutionarily speaking.
I don't know but like I said...it makes me wonder.
It had me wondering what role disease has to play. White Nose Syndrome is devastating bat populations in North America. Mortality rates make the Black Death look like a walk in the park by comparison. 90%-95% of bats who contract this fungus die and at this point I'm not even sure if those "lucky" 5 or so percent are naturally immune or simply got lucky. But still, it's like the Drafa Plague for bats...
Fossil records only show that species have gone extinct and can only date those extinctions relatively or within a plus-or-minus of thousands to millions of years. With rare exceptions like the K-T Extinction event which famously wiped out the dinosaurs can it be shown that 80% of the species alive at the time perished in short order but even then, it only happened instantly in geological terms. Overall hundreds or even thousands of years may have passed before that 80% threshold was reached.
But still, what of disease? Recorded history has only been around for a mere 6000 years and it's only become detailed recently. Yes, humans are responsible for some extinctions like the dodo bird but I don't think it's productive to reflexively blame humanity as we haven't been around long enough to notice how else the Earth disposes of species.
Even if the White Nose Syndrome isn't 100% fatal, could it crash the bat populations to the point where it would be impossible for them to recover? The disease was only noticed in 2007. If a thousand years is the blink of an eye in geologic time, what is a decade or two? Is it possible that several bat species will have gone extinct before 2017 or 2027? And if so, how often has something like this happened? Viruses, bacteria, and fungi are insidious creatures and the former two have had quite a head start evolutionarily speaking.
I don't know but like I said...it makes me wonder.