Thought Sparkk

How will i leave this world?  Do you ever wonder such things as I do?  One day I will wake up and it will be for the final time.  But how will I go?  Will it be violent?  Will I feel pain?  How far away from that moment am I right now?  Was this morning the last time that I will ever see my wife?  Who in my life will I be forced to watch depart before I am relieved of my mortal duties?  Who will I leave behind to mourn in solitude?  I have no desire to return to the infinite void of non-existence that I came from, but it seems I have no choice in the matter.  What placid window into reality was I given?  What is the extent?  Why was this given to me?  Is there any other way that this existence could have gone?  Did I really have the choices that I thought I did?  My death, no matter when it comes, will come too soon.  I am but a flash of light in a seemingly endless sea of time and place.  It seems...

Before you think there is a war on religion whenever something like removing "In God We Trust" from the money, or removing "Under God" from the pledge is brought up, just please think about it a little harder.  There is no war against you holding whatever faith that you want.  The problem is plain and simply government and state endorsement of ONE SINGLE religion.  Believe what you want and do what you want as long as you don't hurt anyone or take anyone's civil rights away, but our government should remain secular regardless.  It should not take any specific religious stance.  If "In Allah we trust" was put on the money or children in schools were pledging allegiance with one nation under Krishna, Christians would go insane trying to get that changed.  It doesn't mean you are starting a war on Islam or trying to destroy Buddhism or Hinduism.  It means you are trying to be fair and not put one religion over another in the eyes of the state.  Or...

You hear it all the time.  "respect my beliefs!"  you've all heard that phrase repeatedly right?  When is it usually said?  Usually anytime that you disagree with someone's beliefs and they don't really want to talk about it anymore. I say fuck that phrase.  No belief demands respect by default.  Nor should it ever be so concrete that it ever demands respect.  I respect that you have the right to believe whatever you want, and that is very important.  However, the beliefs that we hold, individually, should be tested and challenged constantly.  "But I don't know enough about the intricacies to defend it".  Fair point, but then again maybe you shouldn't espouse it as a belief then if that is the case.  If you can't pose a justified reason as to why your belief is true, then you probably shouldn't hold it as a belief.  If you don't know, just say you don't know.  There is no shame in that, and it is far more honest of a posit...

I fucking hate cancer. It's affected my life indirectly, and by that I mean I personally have not yet been diagnosed with any sort of cancer. My friends, my family on the other hand have. So I believe I have some merit in this discussion. I fucking hate cancer awareness. There, I said it. Fuck the Susan G. Komen foundation in particular. Only about 15% of donations are allocated towards research. Fuck you. A whopping 39.1% is attributed to public health education. We are aware of this  disease and it's many horrors, now let's take the money that we give to you by purchasing the can of soup or the fucking lipstick or the five hour energy fuck drink because it's pink and fucking cure cancer already! Oh and by the way, if you have purchased any makeup with the Susan G Komen ribbon; it more than likely contains carcinogens linked to breast cancer. Remember that for trivia night! Cancer is big money. Period. It's job security for hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceut...

Just wanted to give a little bit of an update for this blog since we haven't posted any new content in awhile.  We are still alive!  Life just got a little busy for the writers (houses, weddings, african safaris, space travel...you know how it goes) but we have a lot of good ideas and have started on some fresh content.  We hope to have some new stuff posted in the next few weeks.  So stay tuned!

The FDA recently approved the use of a Narcan (naxolone) intramuscular injector for home use. The same route as a Epinephrine intramuscular injector (EpiPen) used to counteract the very quick and very deadly allergic reaction otherwise know as Anaphylaxis. What is naxolone? What are we talking about here? Naxolone otherwise know as its brand name Narcan is an opioid antagonist. Meaning in a very basic sence that it binds to opioid receptors in your brain and blocks them from receiving any opioids (Heroin, Vicodin, Norco, Oxycontin, and any other opiate based medication or drug). Narcan has ZERO side effects and essentially only one indicator; an overdose of any opioid based substance. An opioid overdose manifests itself as pinpoint pupils, pale or cyanotic skin, diaphoresis, decreased or completely absent respiratory effort eventually leading to death. Now,  I have administered Narcan countless times and have seen first hand the dramatic effects of this lifesaving drug. *see here...

We live on one simple planet, Earth.  That planet is about 12,712 kilometers in diameter from pole to pole.  The entire human species is just a speck on the face of this planet.  That planet is part of a solar system made up of 8 other planets which revolve around an average star that we call the sun.  Our solar system is approximately 287.46 billion kilometers in diameter.  Just to give you some perspective on our small little tucked away corner of the universe, the Voyager 1 probe was launched from earth on September 5, 1977 and has been traveling ever since.  The total mission duration is about 36 and a half years.  During this time, the probe has traveled at a velocity of 17 kilometers every second (that's 11 miles every second).  As of August 25, 2012, the voyager finally left our solar system and ventured into interstellar space.  That is the scope of our solar system.  Let's move out a little more and see how small this massive so...

Watch this first: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp8tToFv-bA About a year ago I stumbled upon this video from another blogger that I found to be very interesting.  In the video she (girlwriteswhat, or Karen Straughan) talks about the current state of feminism and the role of males in society, primarily their unsung disposability within our culture.  I think she makes a lot of great points and I agree with most of what she says.  I think the term "equality" is something that has been muddied over the years under the guise of what the feminist movement has become.  It no longer stands for equality between genders.  It isn't about equality across the board anymore, but rather about getting the same rewards as men without even discussing giving up the rewards of things like chivalry and exclusive rights.  My stance is that equality is equality across the board regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation.  Equality is not just about gaining the rewa...

First things first. I am excited to be alive during the near certain legalization of marijuana. Its something I never thought I would see in my lifetime. Now, that being said; I have a few things I want to get off of my chest in regards to legalization. These are my opinions and I offer no credible studies to add any sort of substance to my arguments. Number 1: Marijuana is not addictive. I hear this all of the time from Pot Advocates. It's not habit forming. It's not addictive. Let me be the first to say, bullshit. I smoked pot every single day from just before graduating high school in 2006 up until about 2008. Don't get me wrong. I fucking loved it. I wasn't fiendish for weed but I did spend what little money I had on it every time I needed a eighth. I didn't pick at my skin, create sores or get dope sick. I would say that it was the same level of addiction as smoking cigarettes. When I didn't have pot to smoke I was an asshole. A fucking  bear to be a...

So. A little background. Ive been a paramedic for five years now. I started out with no direction after my educational career and mainly sat around smoking pot all day, doing odd jobs that sort of thing. My mother saw an ad in the paper for an EMT class being offered at the local hospital. Free of charge. She told me basically in no uncertain terms that I was going to be taking that class if for nothing other than getting out of the damn house. So I did. I really latched on to the subject matter and it became second nature pretty quickly. Now I'm not saying that I am a master at what I do but I feel like the information really stuck to me. I've seen a lot in the short five years I've been running the streets and fields of rual Mason county. Punk ass kids experimenting with various drugs that got away from them, fatal car accidents, fender benders, successfully resuscitated cardiac arrests with a near total return to normal function and the majority of the time the unsucces...

I feel like I should address the way in which I go into a debate or intellectual discussion.  I have many beliefs.  Some of which are very strong beliefs, while others are very loosely held.  However, the way in which I have grown to discuss these beliefs in my post-religious life is this.  Treat your beliefs as though you were in a library.  When you enter the discussion or the debate, you are walking into the library of your own mind.  You pick the topic.  Which means you walk up to that book in the library and pull it from the shelf.  You sit down with someone and discuss each page of the book.  You go through all of the points and validate what is in that book.  There are some passages or pages that you have leaned on for years and years that after having new evidence brought to your attention you realize, "This cannot be so.  I must discard this."  Once you reach the end of the conversation and you have weighed the book's ...

If we are given eternity, we would wish for an end.  In the multitudes of eons and epochs that pass, we would continuously die without the physical manifestation.  In man's inability to fathom our own non-existence, we have tried on countless occasions to make ourselves eternal.  But I tell you, an eternity, no matter what the company, is worse than any hell I can imagine.  So you ask me what I desire?  What I desire is an end, once and for all.  I desire to see the world in my time and admire it in its own context.  Not eternal, not divine, but mortal, and fleeting.  And what a glorious thing it is that I live in a time where I can see the universe in that light.  Eternity is only beautiful from the stance of mortality.

I was listening to a podcast today and an interesting point was brought up.  They were talking about killer whales (orcas) and how brutal they are when they kill whales for food.  They will swarm the whale and just chew on it and eat off of it until it opens it's mouth in pain and then one orca will basically dive into it's mouth and chew on the tongue, since apparently that is the "good stuff" of the whale.  It is a very barbaric tactic. These animals (killer whales) are such intelligent animals.  They have their own languages, dialects, families, and social structures.  It was being discussed that they were such savages for being that intelligent and still killing in such brutal ways.  However, the point was brought up that, well yeah, of course they are because they are such large animals that all they do each day is look for food to sustain themselves and reproduce.  That's it.  That's all they have time to do in order to survive.  They...

Life is really just one muddied road where everyone is trying to find the motivation to not be worthless.  The highly motivated end up doing great things.  Amazing things.  They create amazing art that will last through the ages.  They discover the underlying laws of the universe.  They further the well-being of mankind.  They make the world a better place.  Those who cannot find the proper motivation just seem to drop off.  There is no discovery.  There is no progress.  They simply fizzle and burn out.  These people tend to remain complacent in their lives and never seem to find a reason to push forward.  The thing that most people don't seem to understand about this situation, however, is the fact that there is NO biological difference between these two types of people.  Each takes their own road and hopes that they find the motivation they seek.  Both have the potential to do great things.  Think about this wh...

I think the one thing that being a programmer has taught me is the truth of something is so much harder when you don't have the "philosophical" approach available to you.  If I try to compile a segment of code, and it comes back with an error, I can't just be partially right about how to fix it.  I have to utilize methods of testing the problem against what i know, and make sure that it is true in ALL cases, EVERY time.  This kind of daily interaction is partially what led me to my loss of faith.  I know that is a big jump in what little context I've given, but let me explain.  When each and every day you deal in precise mathematical truth (it either works, or it doesn't) you begin to realize that believing in anything that you cannot absolutely show proof for is not just wrong, but intellectually dishonest.  How can I say that I know that the universe was created by a supernatural God who transcends time and space, when we know next to nothing about eit...

The time scale of billions of years is as unfamiliar to us as human beings as the time scale of months is to a mayfly.  How strange would it be for the mayfly to assert that the universe and everything in it was only a week old?  Or that the entire universe exists solely for those precious minutes, or hours of their existence.  Mankind is such a tiny speck in the scope of space and time.  The scope of how small we are compared to the entirety of the universe is staggering.  Even more staggering is the short amount of time we have existed in the scope of time, and how long after we are gone this universe will continue on. We are here, on this planet, so insignificant and small;  Tucked away in our little corner of this galaxy which joins the ranks of the billions and billions of galaxies outside of our own.  How many other organisms throughout the universe have risen to the same apex and fallen before our planet even existed?  How many other orga...