Thought Sparkk

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...