No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via email on my Posterous here.

No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via email on my Posterous here.

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No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via email on my Posterous here.

So he’s looking at a bunch of animals and curiously discovering new ones, categorizing and filing them away, when he notices some strange patterns.

It seems like certain traits are inherited between generations. Huh.

It seems like certain species of animals inherited traits from other species. Huh.

(Tree of Life, Darwin passes away, moving on:)

It seems like the inheritence goes back so far as tiny, single celled organisms. Wow. Huh.

It seems like the inheritance goes back so far as tiny molecules. Wow! Huh.

It seems like this all started with a big bang. … … huh…

It seems like this event’s effects have continued to today…

It seems like this event’s effects made us what we are…

It seems like this event’s effects are what “we” are…

It seems like we can be changing the future, and there’s reason for that;

We are.

Cool.

No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via email on my Posterous here.

A rigorous code of ethics
for non-religious individuals

is not impossibly hard to find.

It’s not as easy as reading a book,
though.

No.
Not yet.

Get thinking.
Think until you know.

Know why you know.
And how!

What might it be worth doing? Why?
What might it be worth not doing? Why?

Be Good.

Find objective reasoning.

Think well, act well, be well.

Find reason in nature, for existence’s sake.

Good luck,
have fun.

Don’t stop asking the “why?”s and “how?”s just “because you’re just supposed to”. There are better reasons than that.

Why not try harder? You exist — you are one of the lucky ones. Don’t you owe it to the rest?

No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via web on my Posterous here.

You can have whatever view of reality you want, and that’s OK. Because we need a diversity of views of reality to have a good society.

Or are those two statements really true, in reality?

How might we know, how might we find out?

What if there’s an objective reality we can all agree on. Let’s call it… I don’t know, “objective reality”.

The chair you’re sitting on, if I were there, if “AI” were there, might agree –  that chair exists.

How aggravating might it be if one were to come in to the room and contend that your chair were not there!

“Unbelievable.” — you might say.

“How rude.” — you might say.

“Do you not believe in the laws of physics, gravity?” — you might ask.

And you might be right.

“How objectively unbelievable.”
“How objectively rude.”
“Do you not believe in objectively existent phenomenon?”

“Good statements, good questions.” — I might say.

And I might be objectively right.

No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via web on my Posterous here.

With experience sometimes comes a certain disrespect for past experiences. It “just happens”. “It’s healthy”, I promise.

Learn to learn from your past — play with it, re-frame it, look at it with newly acquired lenses and never stop investigating. Your past is important, because it’s informed your “you”.

But don’t be myopic. You are not the only “one” here on Earth who is experiencing the world. Open your mind to others’ stories. Learn, teach, spread the useful lenses and innovative ideas you come across.

Distill your signal. Speak, write, IM concisely. “Get to the point.”

Ignore the noise. How long would you stare into a TV screen with random snow-noise on it? How many times would you click “generate” on a random number generator?

Wake up. Find meaning in meaningful things.

My Brothers, my friends, my loves:

Good luck.

Have fun.

No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via web on my Posterous here.

Each and every duck — sitting in a row.

What happened was; the ducks did not know.

They did not know they /should not/ be sitting in a row.

So I told them.

“Do not sit in such a row!”

And I their response:

“quack”.

No, ducks, no!

You must realize, you must not, you can not continue
sitting in a row.

So I moved one.

“QUACK!”

And that duck went, glaring, back into the row.

No, ducks, no!

Do not sit in such a row!

For when the fox comes trotting, it will already know.

That the simplest thing to eat is:
a group of ducks in a row.

But the ducks did not know.

And the ducks would not go.

And the ducks died that day.

Oh.

No ducks. No.

No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via web on my Posterous here.

I’ve been embarrassed many times during my life. I had some doozies.

One of the most epic moments was in elementary school.

I was in a tee pee.

They had built a tee pee next to my school to teach us about the local Native American history and culture.

The tee pee was our classroom for the hour. We sat in the traditional Indian-style in front of the Native American presenter while our teacher sat beside us to quell spontaneous childlike outbursts of questions and laughter.

To my immediate right, my teacher. To my immediate left, the girl that I liked [insert monologue/sappy love song here].

The scene is set. Who cares?

I did.

Something happened.

Something with high embarrassment potential.

There was a lump in my pant leg.

Sitting Indian style, my left leg’s pant cuff concealed from the view of the others (too engrossed learning about how Native Americans used *EVERY* part of the local deer), I slowly worked the lump towards my field of view. It felt cloth-y. I was at the edge of my seat.

What. The. Doo doo.

Underpants…

… [red face] …

… underpants with a brown streak …

… [redder face] …

[swearword redacted]…

…

Wearing one pair of underpants is fine, even inside of a tee pee. But my concern was not the tighty whities I had on my bum. My concern was the pair of tighty whities which somehow, the day before, made their way into my pant leg. I had a bundled up bunch of doo-doo-streaked bum cover-ers, and only one bum which needed covering.

Girl-that-I-liked sitting Indian-style to my left, teacher sitting Indian-style to my right, the words from the Native American at the front of the tee pee no longer hit me. I was busy walking through (1) the stages of grief and (2) play-outs of this potentially tragic, embarrassing, traumatizing situation in my head.

[denial] What? No…
[anger] How! WHY IS THERE A PAIR OF UNDERPANTS CRUMPLED UP IN MY PANTS LEG.
[bargaining] Dear God, if you’d just make these underpants disappear I will stop picking my nose. Forever.
[depression] EVERYONE WILL LAUGH AT ME. THE GIRL THAT I LIKE WILL SEE THESE. [sob]
[acceptance] Keep your cool. Doo doo happens. Let’s do this, B.

That’s when the voice of deceptive reason spoke to me. I’d call it my intelligence, my mom would call it The Devil. Either way, it told me:

1. Neatly tuck these shit-streaked bad boys back in your pant leg.
2. Don’t let on that something is happening. There are no underpants. [There is no spoon.]
3. When we’re back in class, tell your teacher you need to go to the bathroom.
4. Neatly place them in your locker.
5. At the end of the day, sneak to your locker early. Re-stuff the white (brown striped) underpants back in your pant leg and hope (Praise Jesus) they stay lodged up there until you’re home.

Moral of the story is: to win at the game of embarrassment; don’t play. Avoid having bullshit flung your way.

No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via web on my Posterous here.

When you’re born, there is no such thing as embarrassment. There is just you, your parents,  the shit you see and the shit you pee. You do ridiculous things because you’re a kid, and because you just don’t know any “better”, you just don’t care.

Remember the videogame “Super Mario Brothers 2″? Oh… good game, good game. Ahead of its time.

My oldest brother Eric was *overjoyed* when it came out — he was engrossed by the flying carpets, the walking, talking radishes, and, of course, the two Italian plumbers jumping into poop sewers to collect spare change.

So when my mom asked my brother Eric to watch over me (a young, *helpless* baby), it’s no surprise that he would nod his head and say “yes”, “fine.”, then *immediately* go back to playing the game.

My mom wasn’t asking him to watch me for just any reason.

My mom was going to get the cleaning supplies.

My mom was going to clean up the poop the family dog had pooped on the stairwell.

She was afraid I might find it.

And find it I would.

My brother in the family room, my mother upstairs finding cleaning supplies, I hurtled my baby self towards whatever caught my interest. Ooh, a pacifier. Ooh, mommy and daddy. Ooh, a steaming pile of dog shit.

I didn’t just touch it.

I ate the shit out of it.

Mom comes down, finds me with dog shit smeared all over my face. I don’t remember how it tasted, but the memory certainly tastes funny.

And some people complain about eating sushi!

Moral of the story is: babies aren’t born embarrassed, they learn to be. They’re taught by their parents, they’re taught by their friends, they’re taught by the advertisements on TV and the teachers who advertise normalcy.

• Watching sesame street.
• Whipping your dick out to pee.
• Having acne.
• Saying the word “underpants” in public.
• Throwing up.
• Crying.

We are taught to avoid, to steer clear, to run as fast as possible away from embarrassment, because it supposedly means something.

How embarrassing, society. How self-referential. How normalizing, sensitizing, de-democratizing, hyper-politicizing, seemingly right but oh-so-wrong.

Stop it.

You’re embarrassing me.

No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via web on my Posterous here.