To my dismay in recent weeks I’ve noticed that I’m not receiving any trackbacks or pingbacks anymore. This was especially annoying as it happened right on the time I posted the Carnival of the Godless and received approximately 17 linkbacks (of which about 5 must have included proper pingbacks, blogger as always sucks in that regard).
So after getting annoyed enough, I’ve managed to discover the perpetrator of these disappearances. It seems for some reason the BcSpamBlock plugin was just chewing everything up without letting anyone know. I disabled it and the problem went away.
I think this may have to do something with relation to Dreamhost as if it happened to everyone, everywhere, surely someone might have noticed sooner. Nevertheless, if you’re missing pingbacks, at least you have an idea where to look.
Unfortunately all the ones I should have gotten by now are lost forever…unless the good people who linked to me make the trouble to do it manually again 😉
Now you have the ability to show all the posts of your domain which have been submitted to reddit and sort them by the best. That way new visitors have a quick way to find out what is best to read first.
Along with things like AideRSS’s top posts widget (mine you can see on the top slidebar) you can put your best content, by popular vote, to the forefront. Unfortunately AideRSS does not update as soon as I’d like so it’s good to have the alternative of reddit.
Another good addition from reddit is that you can now customise the colour of your buttons. Finally I can add it to my own webpage and have it fit. This is my classic problem with widgets in that they never fit my dark colour scheme. The Alien needs some antialiasing work I think but generally it looks good.
To tell the truth, I really wanted to the button to be on the botton right of the post so that people can use the buttons once they’re finished reading the article but there was no realistic way to do it. Putting the button after the content meant that it fell next to the similar posts and bunched them up (which I didn’t like). Using the css “position” property I could move it a couple of dozen pixels upwards to have it within the content but unfortunately the word-wrapping did not follow it and thus it just ended up obscuting the text.
If anyone has any idea on how to achieve this without having to manually put code in the content each time I’d love to hear it.
Ah, I forgot to mention that you can also put something nice in your sidebar to show others what you liked
but the reduction of socialism to planned production is an entirely different matter; just as effective democracy requires the right to vote, but the reduction of democracy merely to the right to vote once in a while makes it a fraud.
I just noticed that today is the blog action day for Povertry and I felt the need to participate. Although the people for whom this blog day is about will probably never read it, I’m hoping this post to perhaps give insight and ideas for people who are, or might be struggling with povertry.
Povertry is unfortunately a major problem in the world still. Even with the rise of technology to such a great degree and the amazing enhancements food production has undertaken, millions of people are without the basic things of life. Food and Shelter.
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
I just noticed that today is the blog action day for Poverty and I felt the need to participate. Although the people for whom this blog day is about will probably never read it, I’m hoping this post to perhaps give insight and ideas for people who are, or might be struggling with poverty.
Poverty is unfortunately a major problem in the world still. Even with the rise of technology to such a great degree and the amazing enhancements food production has undertaken, millions of people are without the basic things of life. Food and Shelter.
This is, incidentally, the biggest failing of Capitalism. It is not that we do not have enough food to feed everyone in the world, it’s that we don’t know how to make a profit while doing so. How can you sell food to someone who does not have any money? Thus the invisible hand of the markets wipes itself of any responsibility and leaves the suffering to go unattended or alleviated through charities so that the companies can still make money.
In a our society, poverty is something expected and indeed I would argue, welcomed. You cannot have a perfect capitalist society just because poverty is something necessary. Not only does it force the impoverished people to do the worst jobs for the longest time within an unbreakable cycle, but as George Carlin famously said, it is the perfect tool to keep the middle class in line. What better way to be an obedient little worker, than to see everyday what awaits you if you dare to anger the powers that be?
I can’t really help the people who are impoverished, although I do have some ideas ((Which I’ve been consistently told will never work)) but what I can do is explain how all but the worst types of poverty need not be the end of life. The answer lies in what you need to live.
As a social human, most of us require three basic things to have a good life. Food, Shelter and Friendship. The rest is simply extravagance. When one has conditioned itself not to require anything other than these three to be happy it will take only the worst type of poverty to shake the foundations.
Food is generally cheap. Even if you cannot grow your own foo, one can easily find the food that is cheap and filling. When I was living with £100 per month for general & food expenses in London, I went on a diet of noodles and rice. While I not only learned to cook these simple things more interestingly, it also sustained me without ruining my organism as would eating junk-food have achieved.
Shelter is unfortunately at the moment quite expensive. Due to the concept of private property, land that could have very adequately sheltered people if put to use, now is just left unattended as the owner has no benefit in either using it, or letting others use it.
Fortunately, there are options available for the unfortunate ones. In a society who respects itself, there should be shelters for the poor. Not only are these necessary to protect the most unfortunate of us but they are a necessary stepping stone in making people a productive member of society again. It is amazingly difficult to find a job when you haven’t taken a bath for over month. Societies that do not have shelters for the homeless are especially criminal in this regard as they only keep this effect going.
Once someone has even a little money, options could include finding a cheaper place in a more remote area of the country (where the rent must be much cheaper) or along with a few others cohabitate, even if they may be a bit tight. At least that might help in the final necessity
Friends are (or should be) the final need of any human. Fortunately the good ones they are notoriously cheap to come by. Hell, all one needs is a bit of empathy and a non-toxic character and they come gratis. Not only do friends fill the basic social needs of all of us but good friends are the ones who will act as your own personal safety net when poverty is rearing its ugly head.
If one manages to be content with these three basic things, it will take the worst kind of abject poverty to put them down and even then, the way up is easier.
Here’a first, I’ve just been tagged by the Atheist Blogger with a new meme. I haven’t done any of these in the past (other than taking it upon myself that is). So let’s see…
Can You Remember The Day That You Officially Became An Atheist?
Well, Officially is a weird word that doesn’t apply very well since there’s no organised Atheist Religion. Nevertheless, I can’t really say that I remember the day I became an atheist. I know that I considered myself an Atheist for a while mostly because I could not consider myself a good Christian but I never expressed it. Truth be told, I wasn’t really an atheist but rather an agnostic at that point.
What I do distinctly remember is being in a church for a reason or other (I think because of Easter) with my aunt and for some reason I ended up telling a priest that I was an Atheist, which of course promted him to tell me that I’m just angry at God that I lost my mother. Highly presumtious of him I’d say.
Yes my memory is incedibly crappy.
In actuallity, I became a full-fledged Atheist in my current (and only correct) form only in recent years but it was a gradual process.
Do you remember the day you officially became an agnostic?
Again not really. I was really an agnostic while calling myself an atheist in my teens so I guess you could say that.
How about the last time you spoke or prayed to God with actual thought that someone was listening?
I remember occasionally, when in a difficult or sad situation, asking inside my head for help but I never explicitly prayed. Perhaps I was defending my self mentally or perhaps it was a leftover from school&church brainwashing.
I’ve since conditioned myself to stop doing this ridiculous mental trick and just get on with the problem at hand.
I never actually truly prayed, as in, “get down on my knees” kind of thing. I was seeing my classmates devoutly bending down their head and closing their eyes in the school’s morning mandatory prayer and I remember I tried it once (simply saying the Πατερ Ημόν prayer internally) but I thought it was all too silly.
Did anger towards God or religion help cause you to be an atheist or agnostic?
Nah, although people were inclined to believe that because of my mother’s death, that wasn’t the case. I never really felt enough about them to feel anger. I am currently opposed to organised religion and their actions occasionally get me angry but this does not drive my irreligion.
Here is a good one: Were you agnostic towards ghosts, even after you became an atheist?
By the time I consider myself to have become a proper Atheist I had managed to achieve scepticism as well. By the time I first called myself an Atheist when I should have been saying agnostic or even agnostic Christian I still believed in various woo-woo like Energies, Auras, Magic etc
But fortunately not Ghosts. I think Holywood ruined it for me 🙂
Do you want to be wrong?
I would not like to be wrong (I mean, who does?) as it would mean that I was living my life wrongly, based on false beliefs and knowledge. Having said that, If I did turn out to be wrong, I wouldn’t mind, unless the Christian God is, indeed such a bastard as the Old Testament makes him out to be, in which case I would summarily be going to hell anyway.
I would like to be wrong about other stuff however. I would very much love to be wrong about Global Warming, Aliens, Ghosts, Auras and the like. If those things existed, the world would be so much more interesting.
Unfortunately just because I’d like those to exist, I can’t bring myself to willful delusion.
I’ve decided to withdraw my support for the Greek libertarian party.
Image by acebal via Flickr
Με λύπη μου ανακάλυψα οτι η ΦΣ την οποία υποστήριξα στις προηγούμενες εκλογές είναι τελικά δεξιοί-φιλελεύθεροι που σημαίνει οτι υποστηρίζουν την απόλυτη οικονομική ελευθερία με την μορφή της ελεύθερης αγοράς, καθώς και την ατομική ελευθερία. Γενικά είναι παρόμοιοι με το Libertarian party των Η.Π.Α.
Αν και είμαι εντελώς φιλελεύθερος όσον αφορά τις προσωπικές ελευθερίες, είμαι διαμετρικά αντίθετος στην απόλυτη ελευθερία της οικονομίας. Η ελεύθερη αγορά ή το laissez-faire που υποστηρίζουν οι δεξιοι-φιλελεύθεροι απλά αφήνει τον δρόμο ελεύθερο για αυτούς που θα το εκμεταλευτούν, να το κάνουν όπως και έγινε πάρα πολλές φορές στο παρελθόν όταν ο κρατικός έλεγχος άρθηκε (με το καλύτερο παράδειγμα την οικονομική κρίση των Η.Π.Α. των τελευταίων ημερών)
Για να μην τα πολυλογώ, συμφωνώ με του λόγους που αναφέρει ο ebonmuse στην σειρά άρθρων του Why I’m not a Libertarian“.
Προσωπικά χαρακτηρίζω τον εαυτό μου ως αριστερό-φιλελεύθερο ή αλλιώς σοσιαλφιλελεύθερο (αν και δεν μ’αρεσει η λέξη) παρόμοια με τον Noam Chomsky και άλλα ονόματα εκείνης της πλευράς (Αν και τείνω να είμαι περισσότερο αριστερά και φιλελεύθερα). Όχι μόνο αυτό, αλλά μ’αρεσει να δουλεύω τους Libertarians γιατί μπριζόνονται άσχημα και βγάζουν αφρούς όταν ακούνε για κομμουνισμό.
Για όλα αυτά. αποφάσισά να διαγραφώ απο την ΦΣ ωστε να είμαι σωστός με τον εαυτό μου.
Είναι κρίμα που δεν μου ταιριάζει η ΦΣ μιας και μου άρεσε ο τρόπος οργάνωσης. Δεν έχει πολύ σημασία έτσι και αλλιώς μιας και δεν μπορώ να ψηφίσω ή γενικά να συμμετάσχω απο εδώ που είμαι αλλά τουλάχιστων δεν νοιώθω υποκριτής τώρα. Απ’οτι φαίνεται το μόνο κόμμα που βρίσκεται κοντά μου στον Ελληνικό χώρο αυτή τη στιγμή είναι η ΣΥΡΙΖΑ αλλά απο την άλλη, δεν είναι ούτε αρκετά φιλελεύθεροι ούτε σοσιαλιστές.
Oh Well. Θα περιμένω να οργανωθεί ένα Ελληνικό Κόμμα Πειρατών.
In previous times I have had sporadic thoughts on how would it ever be possible to reach a utopic society through a system such as Capitalism. I just couldn’t fathom how such a thing could occur.
My classic thought example was that we develop machinery that is capable or creating enough food to feed the whole populace of the earth 5 times over. This would be obviously be a good thing for everyone as nobody would ever have to starve again but I couldn’t just see how our current society would work with it.
Image by just.Luc via Flickr
In previous times I have had sporadic thoughts on how would it ever be possible to reach a utopic society through a system such as Capitalism. I just couldn’t fathom how such a thing could occur.
My classic thought example was that we develop machinery that is capable or creating enough food to feed the whole populace of the earth 5 times over. This would be obviously be a good thing for everyone as nobody would ever have to starve again but I couldn’t just see how our current society would work with it.
The recent Quote of the Day gave me the insight, or rather the mental push I needed. Capitalism just cannot work with such concepts. While things like infinite goods (food & shelter included) would seem as something positive for any humans, for the concept of Capitalism they are anathema. When you have infinite food, automatically the value of it must approach zero. When you have enough place to shelter everyone on earth, by necessity, the cost of residence must approach zero.
Thus, there is absolutely no way for a capitalist to ever want to invest in a technology which would produce any kind of infinite good unless they can act as the monopoly or they can insert artificial scarcity. And indeed, we already see these kind of limitations used where much more good would be done without them.
A good example is genetically engineered food-producing plants which are much more resistant to disease and produce a higher wield. The companies that created these seeds have also made them produce sterile plants, the seeds of which will just not grow. Thus farmers are forced to buy seeds from the company every year, instead of using part of their crop to sow the next year.
Artificial Scarcity.
My biggest revelation however was not that. It was that Capitalism needs two very specific things in order to be able to exist. These two things incidentally, are the ones that prevent the world from ever approaching Utopia. Misery and Greed.
Why Capitalism requires misery
Can there ever be a Capitalistic society in which work is not required in order to be fed and sheltered? I can’t see how it can. If this happened, it means that the cost of food & shelter would have become zero. But if the cost of food is zero, then there is no profit to be had, thus nobody would care for producing food and shelter, which means there will be a shortage and thus the price will rise above zero due to supply and demand. Thus it’s impossible. (unless we can make the aforementioned machinery somehow)
It does not stop only there but this is the basic idea. Capitalism requires people to be in some degree of misery so that it will be able to sell them something to alleviate it. A healthy human does not need medicine. A fed human does not need food. A warm human does not need shelter etc.
Misery is the driving force that makes humans take the worst, but necessary jobs. Without misery you would not have people willing to be abused at McDonalds or a Nike sweatshop. It is the acid which turns humans into the necessary grease for the economic gears.
Without people being in some state of misery, all those industries which exist to prevent or stop it must cease to exist. Without it, nobody would be willing to put humiliate or punish himself for the thankless benefit of others. And finally, without misery, the only other thing left to keep Capitalism going is greed.
Why Capitalism requires greed
Although greed is very closely tied to misery (one who does not have the object of his greed becomes miserable) it plays such a big role in a Capitalistic society that I believe it deserves special analysis.
Greed is arguably the basic driving force of capitalism. When misery has been vanquished for an individual, it is greed that takes the baton and drives them to continue playing the capitalist game.
A content human is the true enemy of Capitalism.
Having a society where work is not required for basic food and shelter would mean that there would be a significant amount of humans stopping working in order to do the activities they really enjoy. Perhaps these activities would simply be a waste of time, or perhaps they would be some of those activities that are not considered valuable enough to sustain someone (notably the arts). These people would thus not be productive member of society as defined by “what people will pay for”.
Capitalism requires people to be greedy and greed demands capitalism. It is a vicious circle that a society cannot break away from without a significant shift in beliefs and desires which will lead humanity to ditching both of them together.
The problem our capitalist economy faces is not how to feed everyone, but how to make a profit feeding everyone.
Aptly said and so true. We would have no problem feeding everyone on the planet but the capitalists can’t make a profit that way and this goes for most goods.
Just look at the situation with Intellectual Property where the right holders are trying to reign in infinite goods just because they can’t figure out a business plan to make money out of them.
Welcome to the 102nd Carnival of the Godless! As promised, I’m hoping to make this edition a bit special so all submissions dealing with the theme of the carnival have been woven into a short story. What I couldn’t make fit follows in a simple format after that.
Religion, for most of us, is something irrational. People just believe in something that has no proof or basis in reality, simply because they were raised that way. It replicates and evolves through memetics and the more devout one is, the more disconnected from reality they appear.
As a result, it is a breeding ground for all things inane. From the simple impossibility of the Christian god in the face of the PoE, to the living oxymorons of radical Muslim Feminists.
This Carnival is a salute to all that.
The God of Atheism would be looking around, if he had eyes, or a face for that matter, but he didn’t so he couldn’t. Sometimes he really wished to however, just so that he would just roll them at the absurdity of it all. Just the concept of eternal and infinite punishment should have been enough to show people how ridiculous their whole belief system is. In fact, it’s so absurd that mere words cannot express it, so perhaps the Tale of the Enormous Speeding Ticket might explain it to the limited human minds but of course, he already knew that this was not going to be good enough. Who is going to consider the ramification of Eternal torture when their whole religious belief is due to fear? Not the scared ones certainly.
Yes, he himself was an absurdity but that was the point damnit! People weren’t supposed to believe in Gods and other things that couldn’t be proven. If he did in fact had the power to reveal himself to the humans, he certainly wouldn’t do it in the way that created confusion, like blind men groping an elephant. Indeed he was getting really annoyed lately with all these people muddling the waters even more by claiming things like Christianity not being a religion anymore. If he had a head, it would now be spinning.
He turned off his omniscience and turned on his 20Pi inch TV for a bit to relax, hoping to watch the latest season of Heroes. Instead he got a dose of Jesus on TV. Can’t a deity get away from Christian mythology for a minute anymore? It’s bad enough that he has to suffer people having ridiculous “Demon enounters” in their daily life and then ignoring perfectly acceptable scientific explanations in order to claim more Demon proof. What’s next? Back to witch hunts and Guardian Angels? Sighing He turned his omniscience back on…
The God of Atheism did not care much about passing human politics but the latest US elections were really taking the cake as far as absurdity was concerned. Not only were his favorite people ((hint: It’s the Atheists)) excluded from politics but with each passing year the scene got more and more disconnected from reality. Not to be undone, churches strive for new levels of density by demand free speech only for themselves and just end up taxing people’s patience. They can’t even think of a proper oxymoron.
But politics always give indigestion and he didn’t like to dwell on this too long. Politicians promoting religion and Pastors would get their “just rewards” in the afterlife but that would be nothing compared to the “special hell” he is preparing for those who brainwash children who can’t think for themselves. Looking at you Ron. Of course, it’s one thing to have parents do this to their children actively or through ridiculous Cartoon shows, and another to have aforementioned Pastors lay their grubby memes on students just because they happened to donate some of the land they accumulated in the dark ages to make schools.
Still, things were going better lately. The last century had seen a surprising rise in Atheism which meant he actually had some people to reward with eternal bliss. Like expected the pampered Christians are crying foul because they were not being priviledged enough. The Inanity, it burns!
Nevertheless, he was proud of his chosen people. The refutation and debunkings happening daily are music to his nonexistent ears. He got up from his standing position and started to move toward his room of defeated and forgotten deities. As he passed the stuffed head of YHVH he remembered something and turned towards you.
“This Carnival of the Godless is almost at an end my precious unbeliever. I’m glad you kept reading until now but it’s not over yet. Db0 could not really fit everything in this light fictional story about me, so he asked me to help him out a bit. Since I’m not very artistic so I’ll just list what’s left.
First you can learn how to make a Christian cross. I find it especially funny how the followers of the false Jesus godling can’t even get their holy symbols right. If that does not make you snicker, you might be amused to learn that there is such a thing as too much prayer. For me, any prayer is too much but anyway.
Now that we’re passed humor, perhaps you can grow angry by reading about the things atheists hate. In truth, this is just the introduction but I can’t wait to see what my unbelievers dislike. And since we’re talking about them, you might as well check who the famous ones are as well. If I had any prophets, they would certainly make the cut. And since we’re on the subject of Atheism, I thought I might remind you that my irreligion was not the cause of the 20th century atrocities. But I’m sure you know that already.
You can now continue to have some fun at the expense of Catholics by reading h on bill on bill so that you can see the latest wacky adventures of the Catholic league leader. Then grab some lube and kleenex and head over to read the Bible’s 5 most Sexually Explicit Verses. Don’t worry, I consider fapping extremely healthy, if not necessary.
The other day while I was browsing through the articles linked from The 5 stage of Republican Grief and reading the bugfuck crazy comments, I came to the realisation that I just do not see this kind of inanity in most of my online activity.
But why is that? Why is the conservative presence so limited in most of the online nexus points? Not only will you very rarely find sentiments such as those expressed in popular news sites like digg and reddit, not only will you rarely find them in online fora and commenting on random blogs, but when they do come up, they’re immediately striken down in flames either through rebutals or downvoting, which just shows how much in the minority such commenters are.
My take on this is that they simply cannot survive in this world. The reason for this I believe lies in the following
1. Conservatives are, well…conservative.
As a result they have not started using the internet as much as the more progressive members. They were late to get online, late to start doing anything other than surfing&emails and the last to go social. As a result most places are already filled with progressive regulars ((Not to mention that because of the distributed and geeky nature of the Web, most of the early adopters are liberal and…Geeks)) and when a conservative attempts to take part, they are skewered. This of course turns them off and they slither back into the depths from which they came which of course does not allow a critical mass of them to gather and start shifting pushing the status quo.
Many, I’m sure choose to lurk instead where then, in combination with the Libertarians (see below), they have a chance to make themselves heard on specific topics.
2. The internet is an extremely toxic environment.
The conservative mind is a sensitive beast. There is a profound sense of denial necessary to avoid cognitive dissonance when you are not only a fundamental christian but you consider that the Bush regime was doing a damn good job.
Image by oztenphoto via Flickr
As the saying goes, reality has a well known liberal bias and as the internet does not have the strict filters this denial requires, so does it. As a result, the hapless conservative is assaulted on all sides by information conflicting his preconceptions. Not only do they have to dodge surprise buttsex Daily Show videos and ridicules of their personal zombie saviour, but whenever they so much as open their mouth to protest in an online dialogue, they are shortly refuted, to say the least.
Indeed, there is precious little a conservative can do when the hard facts are staring them in the face and there is no Fox Network to hide or twist those uncomfortable truths. As an extra bonus, because of the dynamics of online conversation, it is not unlikely for someone to take the time to educate the unfortunate conservative which further shakes his psyche.
Since it is pretty much impossible now to both deny reality and muster the presence required to “detoxify” the online environment (see point 1), the conservatives prefer to simply huddle together in their own little corners of the internet, where they can preserve their groupthink.
There is not better example of this point than the creation of Conservapedia which happened because the disorganized nature of Wikipedia and the liberal nature of reality meant that Conservatives either had to avoid using an online encyclopedia or suffer more cognitive dissonance.
3. They are suddenly in a very small minority.
Whereas in the USA the Conservatives have roughly half the population (or at least are vocal enough to seem this way) online, where location is meaningless, they suddenly find themselves very, very lonely. They cannot even expect support from conservatives of other cultures since:
They usually have wholy different values.
Conservatives of other countries would be considered liberal for U.S. American standard. It is not simply a joke when people say that in the US you do not have left and Right but only the Right and the Extreme Right. For everyone else outside the US, it definitely seems that way. Your Obama would probably be quite capable of leading the Right party of any European country without batting an eyelid.
Thus, not only do the conservatives have to argue against their own countrymen who happen to be liberal, but they have to tackle with the liberals of other countries who they must think are like the extreme fringe left. I sometimes get the impression that if I ever had to discuss with such a conservative, their Left/Right compass would not have any position left for me except than outside the range.
They are in a way a bit fortunate that most of the world does not speak English as then they would have seriously have been the footnote in this story. Unfortunately for them, there are enough English speakers from many countries to seriously outnumber them.
The only thing somewhat pushing the conservative agenda is…you guessed it
The Libertarians
It is a well known fact that most Libertarians are only by name. Like true game theory defectors they declare loyalty to the Libertarian party but come election day, they cast their vote for Republicans as they promise to cut taxes ((for the rich)) and let them keep their guns. They conveniently ignore how the Republicans end up doing the opposite of what they say and have subsequently expanded the Government more than ever before, which for a Libertarian should have been anathema.
Nevertheless, because they are committed to the Republican ticket, they feel the need to defend their choice whenever they can. They will thus attack the Government tactics when it is going against their libertarian stances (Drugs, Abortion, Religion) but defend it when it reduces taxes to the rich, cuts healthcare and welfare etc, even if all of this is against their own hide.
The only thing saving them is that because they lack true faith in the Regime and they also tend to be more liberal in their faith (if not outright irreligious) they suffer much less of a cognitive dissonance and can much more easily take part in the social networks.
And this is of course the only way the Conservative agenda can ever appear. The Libertarians are generally active because they can, while conservatives probably just lurk around for fear of the intellectual smackdown. When however a topic where their two worldviews merge appears, they can combine their voices and votes and downvote the opposition effectively. Thus the reason why libertarian topics happen now and then to bubble up to the surface.
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Welcome to the 102nd Carnival of the Godless! 