What Neuralink is, What it Does, Why it’s Awesome A quick and simple explanation of this revolutionary device The neuralink is a tiny computer about the size of a quarter that attaches to the outside of your skull. 1024 microscopic tendrils connect to 1024 different neurons in your brain. The device then gives you read and write access to those 1024 neurons. At its core that’s really all there is to it. It can Bluetooth into your phone and give you a readout on what those neurons are doing and allow…
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My Tactics for Arguing to Re-Invent the Police or any Political Discussion
My Tactics for Arguing to Re-Invent the Police or any Political Discussion My personal notes and rules about how to behave in a discussion These are notes and rules I have written for myself to remember when I am in a political discussion. I intend to follow them as much as possible but I am sure I will have some unfortunate exceptions. While many of these concepts might work for anyone, many of them are tailored specifically for me and my personal speaking style and goals. I am not trying…
Read MoreIf I Turn Up Dead…
Just a safety precaution if the worst should happen I do not have any specific reason to fear for my safety. No one has specifically threatened me, but due to my speaking out on certain topics, I think it’s important to say a couple things just to be on the safe side. I pledge to all my friends, family and anyone else reading this that I will never, under any circumstances, kill myself. I have not had the slightest desire since I was in high school. In fact, the opposite is…
Read MoreThings I want to do when I’m a millionaire
stuff that’s more meaningful than buying a yacht I do not claim any sort of ownership or copyright on any of these ideas so if you want to take one and run with it, please go for it. Let me know how it turns out and maybe I can help. I haven’t quite made it to millionaire status yet but there’s still time. I’m 41 now and plan on retiring at 45. My early retirement may be taken up with Custom Data Organizer, the spreadsheet-replacement app I am currently building, so…
Read MoreHeart Disease will Kill More this Year than Coronavirus
Our reactions to the virus are wildly inconsistent with life’s other dangers NASA estimates that around 5,000 people died worldwide from various effects of nuclear power between 1971 and 2009, including meltdowns. By comparison, coal is estimated to kill 800,000 people per year. However, nuclear power is far more scary and people get far more upset about nuclear power plants in their communities. Why is that? Likewise, most of us know that airplanes are safer than cars, but we are still more terrified of them. If you really look at all…
Read More50 Life Lessons in 5 Minutes
50 Life Lessons in 5 Minutes Just some theories I try to live by. Seek out experiences, not pleasures… but don’t feel guilty about your guilty pleasures. Don’t judge others openly regardless of how horrible they are, but that doesn’t mean you have to trust them or hang out with them. Do what you need to do to get along with people. Or leave. Don’t allow emotional vampires to take advantage of you. Worry about real-world effects rather than emotions… but recognize that your emotions have real-world effects on the people around…
Read MoreRamblings About How I Cured My Depression
Ramblings About How I Cured My Depression I used to be very depressed when I was a kid, to the point where I made plans to kill myself and I think once when I was about twelve I even walked out the door with the intention of following through with it. One day in seventh grade I remember telling half the class that I wished I was dead. Someone told me that wasn’t cool to joke about and I insisted that I was not joking and I genuinely wished I…
Read MoreHow Logic and Reason Help Me Lead a (Relatively) Fear-Free Life
Mysteriously paralyzed, my atheism kept me calm while totally vulnerable. This is the first and only time this has ever happened to me, but a few nights ago I had a very strange occurrence. I woke up at about 4:00 AM, in the near pitch-blackness of my bedroom, and found myself paralyzed. I tried to sit up, but couldn’t. I tried to lift an arm, and could not, so I started trying every little part of my body that I could think of, and somehow, nothing was working. My mind…
Read MoreWhat Do Religious Leaders Really Mean by Faith?
What Do Religious Leaders Really Mean by Faith? Religions could greatly help themselves by clarifying this. I’ve thought for a long time that the majority of churches and preachers don’t truly support people having faith in God. Instead they’re looking for people who put a smile on their faces and say that they have faith. To me, having true faith in God means something like my friend Josh, I remember from long ago who jumped off a bridge because Jesus asked him to prove his faith. No doubt the vast majority…
Read MoreHow Our Governments Have Failed to Manage Currency
They’re using the modern equivalent of sea shells I was exploring a neighborhood where I was considering buying a condo and found myself in a BBQ restaurant that looked like something out of an episode of In Living Color. As I stood in line I read all the crazy signs and looked at the random junk they had tacked to the walls, and noticed a sign that said, “In God we trust. All others pay cash.” and somehow I read this sign and yet it just didn’t click in my head…
Read MoreDual Perspectives
Dual Perspectives The power and weirdness of simultaneously holding two opposing viewpoints I watched a couple episodes of Hoarders the other day, the documentary show about those people who refuse to throw things away and find themselves buried in trash, and found myself rather shocked. I didn’t know this psychological issue was so common. If I remember correctly, they claim that it affects 3 million people. That’s more than what the experts claim is the number of people in America addicted to cocaine. It’s strange that hoarding isn’t a criminal…
Read MoreHow Atheism Can Be Magical
How Atheism Can Be Magical We fall in love with logic and reason as others do with God. Here’s a random comment about atheists that I found interesting and important to address: “One exasperating aspect of reading or watching the atheists’ arguments is that they are so linear, cognitive and left brained. If we were wholly left brained beings, this would make sense but we are not. There is an emotional aspect to us as well as a strong sense of intuition. When we are seriously ill, we do not respond solely…
Read MoreOur World View Determines Everything
Our World View Determines Everything Here’s me bragging about how awesome my life is I’ve been watching Ted Talks recently and decided to watch a pro-God video in the interest of being open minded. It’s by Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life which has sold more than 30 million copies. I’m not sure what happened to the video but I’m sure it’s still out there. But I wanted to mention something that he said that I absolutely, %100 agree with: “Your world view though does determine everything else…
Read MoreOn Being an Anarchist but Still Going Corporate
I’m fraternizing with the enemy Here is another article I wrote in 2010 on my WordPress blog when my career was really just getting started and I was sorting out how I felt about working for a big corporation and making lots of money. I actually went corporate years ago, but now I’m moving up again in the corporate world. I got hired on full-time at the agency where I’ve been working the last six months. Before this I was making more money than I felt I deserved, and now I’m…
Read MoreScience vs. Faith — a few examples
Science vs. Faith — a few examples Science VS Faith — A few examples When a surgeon removes a tumor from a patient, and saves the person’s life, did he look at the situation scientifically, research prior surgeries, run tests based on real world results, and compare them logically with other similar cases in an attempt to systematically narrow down if the patient has cancer, where the cancer was located, and what the most appropriate treatment might be?… …or did he pray really, really hard and God told him where to cut? — — — — — — – When a…
Read MoreThe Final Season of Roseanne
The final season of Roseanne from the 90’s is one of the best in television.
Read MoreThou Shalt Not Lie
This is a commandment that I actually agree with. I’ve heard atheists argue that this can be a problem because occasionally telling a lie is the right thing to do, such as if you were hiding a Jewish person in your attic in Nazi Germany. This is one of the few cases where I tend to agree with the Christians instead of the atheists. I would make a few exceptions for if you’re lying to a government entity or a selfish corporation, but I believe that it’s never okay to…
Read MoreThe Complexity of Equality Between Men and Women
So I have about fifty unpublished or incomplete posts and pages sitting in my queue for this blog and I feel like I need to clean things up a bit, so here is one that I found sitting around that I think has some decent points. I had a bunch more stuff to say on this subject, but my mind has wandered in the year since I wrote this, so I’m just going to post it as-is. I once had an argument with someone about gay marriage and he claimed…
Read MoreOpposing the Department of Education Doesn’t Mean Opposing Education
At first glance it seems that getting rid of the department of education would be insane. Your first reaction is to think “oh, he doesn’t think people should be able to get an education,” but this judgement isn’t fair. Somehow it seems like we’ve gotten to a point where in order to support something people are required to support it on a massive scale and in an absolute fashion. However, for some of us we just don’t see our federal government handling our education better than the average state. For…
Read MoreAtheist Quotes
Atheist Quotes Here’s a few quotes I had lying around that I felt kinda applied to atheism or at least my views on spirituality. I have probably skipped over most of the good ones and after looking over these quotes again, it’s kind of a sad list, but there it is. I can’t guarantee they’re accurate and whatnot. I figure I’ll post them anyway since I’m trying to start just writing and posting without thinking and debating so much about what I say and not worrying so much about what…
Read MoreHappiness Is A Choice
This Is Scientific Proof That Happiness Is A Choice. This is an article I found that sparked my thinking about this concept. I don’t like the idea of ‘proof’ since I don’t think there is such a thing as proof since there is always the chance something in our reasoning is incorrect and I think it’s dangerous to think of things in absolutes like that. However, I do truly believe that happiness is a choice. Furthermore I believe many other things in life that people believe they are stuck with…
Read MoreCatch the Water Droplets (Flash Game)
In 2010 I built a set of interactive banner ads for the clean water charity, Tap Project, using a little piece of transparent video.
Read MoreDynamic Link Viewer
This is a menu for any website that can hold an infinate number of links, each with a description. Still old and lame, however.
Read MoreDynamic Slideshow
A simple slideshow flash app. Terribly lame by today’s standards. Again, from 2004 when I was still line-cooking for a living, and wasn’t sure if I really wanted to be a Flash developer.
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