Mate, if those two got any closer together, that LIGO would be detecting the birth of a new black hole somewhere in the Sol system.

I used to love Church: a dinner of Taco Bell burritos, a wooden pew, and the word of Christ. Clench, lean 15 degrees to the left, relax your sphincter and PUSH! The silence that is golden will last about 10 seconds before the retching and piling out the doors brings an end to today's sermon. That's when you snatch the collection plate and bolt out the back door.

I lost a major source of income when I became an atheist.

Did you know Taco Bell delivers? At least in Seattle they do. I have to wonder what life choices lead to the terminus of hauling two dollar food between source and the customer 25 miles away. Yeah, that $5 tip will more than pay for gas, upkeep, insurance and oil changes on that riced-out K car you've been driving since The Pet Shop Boys were still popular.

Also, "...blahblah whining and such..." -- look, if I want unfair criticism of a job well-done, I'll ask my clients to pay up. That's primo Gonzo humor you're tut-tutting and you paid exactly nothing to enjoy it. Y'know who else was a cheap ingrate? HITLER! Why ya gotta by like Hitler, Moonsammy -- IF THAT IS YOUR REAL NAME. I have my doubts on this topic, by the way.

Hey, what's Bob up to? I always enjoy a cheap laugh at the expense of the less fortunate.

(seriously dude -- I can hold 1:1 with a Clydesdale for an hour and have enough left in the tank to draw a standing ovation at Centurylink Field.)

Sorry, I just realized your comment wasn't a cut and paste. I apologize.

No I'm not upset at all. Never thought you were attacking Republicans.

What I clearly heard from your comment is that you're afraid and I was being baited by the unrelated opinion about a talk show host.

EDIT: Look more for the good in people. That goes for smart people and "innocent" people and spread that around instead of fear. There's enough of that around already.

Love people as though your life and theirs depends on it and you'll always be right. Ponder the wonders of life. Like, when you eat mashed potatoes why do they come out solid?

Jimmy has been doing the Drunk Donald for quite some time now. He should get credit for giving the heads up on such videos. (in my opinion)

Eric Idle rewrites Monty Python’s “Galaxy Song” to celebrate the wonders of biology
Lauren Davis

To market the BBC Two series Wonders of Life, hosted by Brian Cox, the BBC got none other than Eric Idle to write and sing new lyrics to "The Galaxy Song" from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. But instead of singing about the massive scale of the universe and humanity's insignificance in it, this time Idle sings about the miracle—and weirdness—of life on Earth.

http://io9.com/5971938/eric-idle-rewrites-monty-pythons-galaxy-song-to-celebrate-the-wonders-of-biology

Wonders of Life Trailer - Brian Cox And Monty Python has been added as a related post - related requested by Grimm on that post.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'wonders of life, song, brian cox, monty python, eric idle' to 'wonders of life, song, brian cox, monty python, eric idle, galaxy song' - edited by Grimm

Sooo, I went to his site (which I'm sure is the point of this, being that he wants to work again I assume), and it makes it seem like he's Mr Amazing, can do everything, is wonderful at life.

And yet here we are.

Hmmm, I wasn't the only one that felt a bit sad. I wonder what life is like for her. Lots of attention, I'm sure... but wouldn't a girl get tired of so much of that kind of attention? Wouldn't it be frustrating? I'll never know.

She is stunning, though, and that's from someone who isn't really into Angelina Jolie.

This is probly a private story, but wtf.

This track (REZ) defined my adolescence. My older sister was a party kid (read: raver) and I thought she and her boyfriend were just about the coolest people on the planet when I was about 14. She had crazy colored hair and hosted all her crew's house parties at our house. He was an "agro-skater" as we called them in the mid-90s, and he taught me how to grind rails and do stairs backward. I used to hang around them like the classic cloying little brother, just trying to absorb all their coolness by proxmosis (that's a term for proximity osmosis I just made up).

Late one night, my sister came in to my room when I was in bed and she popped a disc into my stereo and cued up track nine on some nameless trance compilation and pressed the repeat button. REZ. I listened to that track over and over as I fell asleep that night, and for many nights after. I don't mean to be saccharine, but I think all your inner fourteen-year-olds will understand when I say that it gave me a sense of the universe, of all the sensory wonders this life and body had to offer, and even some beyond what I thought possible at the time. I can recite every note of that melody and every drum line in the track as if I were breathing. I danced by myself in the reflection of my bedroom window, making sure I could hit every beat and even started making up some silly shit I thought I would never show anyone. I spent about two years soaking up all the trance I could get (and thankfully my tastes grew more mature and eclectic as a result) and before too long, it was my turn to step out into the night.

My first party was a small affair at a tiny little club on 28th street, where I danced for an hour before falling fast asleep. As I came out of it, I thought I was still dreaming. It was about 3:30, and every single person in that club was sweating like a demon in an incredible symphony of movement. The first notes of the REZ melody were just coming in. I stood up, still a little unsure, or perhaps so excited I couldn't really believe it, and began to move. Before I knew it, I was writhing with the abandon I'd taught myself in the bedroom window and I truly had never felt so alive. A friend of mine had taught me how to figure-eight with sticks earlier in the night (we didn't have LEDs quite yet), and within seconds I was off. And people noticed. A lot of people noticed. By the apex of the track, I was at the center of a circle of party veterans, who seemed to see straight into the center of my transcendent bliss. I laughed like a madman. I cried like a baby. I danced like an animal. By the time the next track began to wind it's way in, I had made friends who followed me and whom I followed for years to come. I never heard REZ out at a party again, but I knew I didn't have to. It had given me an incredible gift, and I am still inspired and filled up whenever I hear it.

My sister broke up with that dude, and it turned out she wasn't really a party kid after all. But I was. Through and through I was a party kid. My friends and I, some of us wear suits now (@handmethekeysyou), some are still dancing (@youmakekittymad), some, well who knows...but I really do believe that what cemented my bond to that scene, and to the people I came to love, had a lot to do with REZ.

Just because the universe might be eternal, does not mean that God is the automatic solution, nor the simplest explanation. That's just the one that makes sense to you. I would say that an eternal universe filled with rocks and gas is a little less complicated than an eternal, thinking, feeling, all-powerful being. But again, that's just my opinion. Those are large concepts, and the rules of physics, or even the seemingly bizarre rules of quantum mechanics do nothing to help explain them.

To me it is simply a probability argument. If you say that everything is equally unlikely, then if you strip away all other concerns, you just have the question..was the Universe deliberately created? The answer is either yes or no. You have evidence that perhaps there is design, which implies an intelligent (and powerful) creator. You have evidence that perhaps it could have happened by chance, by naturalistic processes. From there, you have to figure out what explanation best matches reality. You could ask, does something as wonderful as life and as amazing as the Universe just happen by itself? You could ask, am I just a bunch of atoms moving through space or is there something more to me than that?

Is an eternal God hard to grasp? Yes, but easier I think than something from nothing. If it is something from nothing we will always be ignorant of the initial conditions. If God created it, He will (presumably) educate us about the mystery of His existence. He promised this:

1 Corinthians 13:12

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

It is basically saying that God promises full disclosure when His Kingdom is established on Earth..

Occam's razor is simply a pragmatic way to find a solution, it does not prove anything, but just suggest what a likely answer might be. People use that argument about the complexity of universal laws all the time, but the fact of the matter is, we still don't understand 99.99999999% of the universe or how it works. We can see that if we "tweaked the dials", it would probably look much different than the universe we know, but there isn't a scientist out there in this world that could tell you with any certainty what would happen. Only that on a large scale, things might fall inward or burst outward faster, or that water might not congeal the same way.

Well, just in the initial conditions of the Universe, you have several values which just defy any naturalistic explanation. Even atheist scientists have to admit that a straight forward explanation indicates a designer:

Fred Hoyle, Astronomer said

"A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."

This has major implications for scientific theories, because it isn't simply a matter of it being incredibly unlikely, it is also matter of contradicting the predictions of standard models. I think you'll enjoy this article:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0208/0208013v3.pdf

Speaking of complexity, here's an exercise for your brain: Think about a mountain, on part of that mountain, pressure builds up, and a rock slide starts to fall. When it finally settles, the rocks, all the little pebbles and large boulders and particles of dust are arranged in just a certain way. Even though it's just a pile of rocks, it contains within it an inconceivable amount of complexity. Nowhere else in the entire universe, will there ever be a pile of rocks that have the exact specifications of this one. And even if it did, it wouldn't be composed of the same stone, And even if was, the elements that make up the stone wouldn't be arranged the same way. Nor would it be the exact same temperature, unless it was in the exact same relative position in the universe with an identical sun, with all the particles of gas and dust in between them arranged in exactly the same way.

In a way, the pile of rocks, when you think about it, is an impossibility. And yet it exists. There is no simple solution to explain it. An eternal creator, or the laws of physics? Either way, the true meaning is something that neither of us can comprehend. And to say that either one is "simpler" than the other is merely a statement of faith. Not fact.

Sure, taken by itself, such a thing is astonishing to behold. Divorced from its circumstances, it is perplexing to say the least. Yet, either explanation for the origin of this impossibility leads to a definitive conclusion. If it was naturalism, there is no meaning to it. It just happened that way and at best you can invent a meaning for it and decide to believe it. If it was created, however, it was created for a purpose. It has meaning because of that purpose; it is invested with meaning. In naturalism, you are practically looking at something alien. It is cold, dead, inexplicable, and doesn't care about you. Under creation, you are at the least staring this quote from Einstein dead in the face:

"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."

I go a step further because I believe God has revealed a bit about his Dewey Decimal System, but essentially, I am in staring at this in awe and wonder. I think those rocks are amazing and startling, but I also praise God for making them that way.

>> ^Ryjkyj:
We love you too. (but it's a rough, heathen love)
Just because the universe might be eternal, does not mean that God is the automatic solution, nor the simplest explanation. That's just the one that makes sense to you. I would say that an eternal universe filled with rocks and gas is a little less complicated than an eternal, thinking, feeling, all-powerful being. But again, that's just my opinion. Those are large concepts, and the rules of physics, or even the seemingly bizarre rules of quantum mechanics do nothing to help explain them.
Occam's razor is simply a pragmatic way to find a solution, it does not prove anything, but just suggest what a likely answer might be. People use that argument about the complexity of universal laws all the time, but the fact of the matter is, we still don't understand 99.99999999% of the universe or how it works. We can see that if we "tweaked the dials", it would probably look much different than the universe we know, but there isn't a scientist out there in this world that could tell you with any certainty what would happen. Only that on a large scale, things might fall inward or burst outward faster, or that water might not congeal the same way.
Point being, just because we can tell that the universe would be different, doesn't mean that it was designed. It just means that it is this way.
Speaking of complexity, here's an exercise for your brain: Think about a mountain, on part of that mountain, pressure builds up, and a rock slide starts to fall. When it finally settles, the rocks, all the little pebbles and large boulders and particles of dust are arranged in just a certain way. Even though it's just a pile of rocks, it contains within it an inconceivable amount of complexity. Nowhere else in the entire universe, will there ever be a pile of rocks that have the exact specifications of this one. And even if it did, it wouldn't be composed of the same stone, And even if was, the elements that make up the stone wouldn't be arranged the same way. Nor would it be the exact same temperature, unless it was in the exact same relative position in the universe with an identical sun, with all the particles of gas and dust in between them arranged in exactly the same way.
In a way, the pile of rocks, when you think about it, is an impossibility. And yet it exists. There is no simple solution to explain it. An eternal creator, or the laws of physics? Either way, the true meaning is something that neither of us can comprehend. And to say that either one is "simpler" than the other is merely a statement of faith. Not fact.

I read this the other day, not exactly on point -- science likes reproduciable experiments, and we have many discoveries yet to make:

All of this brings to mind a surprising turn I encountered near the end of Nick Lane's wonderful book Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution. The turn is not a hard turn made by a man with a background in the hard sciences (Lane is a biochemist), but a soft turn to the dreamy speculations of panpsychism. The turn was made to hint at the place one might possibly find an explanation for the nature of emotions and states of mind:

"Feelings are physical, yet the known laws of physics, which can supposedly give us a complete account of the world, have no place for them. For all its marvellous power, natural selection doesn't conjure up something from nothing: there has to be a germ of something for it to act upon, a germ of a feeling, you might say, that evolution can fashion into the majesty of mind. This is what Scottish physical chemist Graham Cairns-Smith calls `the bomb in the basement' of modern physics. Presumably, he says, if feelings don't correspond to any of the known properties of matter, then matter itself must have some additional features, `subjective features', that when organised by selection ultimately give rise to our inner feelings. Matter is conscious in some way, with `inner' properties, as well as the familiar external properties that physicists measure. Pan-psychism is taken seriously again."

When it was last taken seriously, at the end of the 19th century, the psychologist/philosopher William James called conscious matter some kind of "mind-dust."

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/06/19/bees-can-be-pessimistic-about-life

I never took a side on that thread I was stating what I'd learned about Fluoride. I never said it was slowly killing millions. I was making a point that ANYTHING in excess is harmful. I was in no way on an all out campaign against the use of it.

And the fertilizer thing. Did you even read my comments? And I have talked to my father about fertilizer. (Mind you he's been in the agricultural research business for over 20 years, and holds a Ph D.) When fertilizer is used properly. I want you to note that I use the word PROPERLY, not irresponsibly, or that everyone who uses it is irresponsible. But when used properly it provides nourishment for the plants we grow and eat.

By the way organic farms tend to use more fertilizer then those who spray herbicides and pesticides. (Which also will breakdown completely when used as directed.)

So let me reiterate. I have not moved to any 'dark side'. My stance has not changed. If you had read my comments you would see that my points are not "it's evil and killing our kids" or "It's wonderful and life is amazing". My stance is that ANYTHING IN EXCESS IS HARMFUL. The question is who's using too much?

(EDIT): See Qruel, that's what I want from you, your opinion in your words. Not the copy + paste that you seem very fond of. Research, it's great, but use it to support you point not to be your words.

You should change this

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/2667/karaidl1ib6.jpg

to your avatar, Eugene.

Man, Eugene is your name. Wow, you know I feel bad picking on you. Your one liners and prepubescent wit are part of why I joined videosift, that and to downvote Choggie's videos... Looking at your photo I feel for you, I really do.

You can't drink. You probably can't have sex (with women). Your issues with one are most likely compounded by the other.

Most likely you spend a significant amount of your life either masturbating, or spending countless hours working on comments and posts for this website.

You should know that someone out there loves you. And sure, he is probably 30 years older than you, has a wife and three kids after doing a stint in the navy (*cough, blankfist, cough). But, there are people out here that love you, even if it is in a way that is illegal in all 50 states.

Look, my point is the pain you are feeling now is normal. I mean, not everyone goes through it, but a lot of people do. In a few years you will be at college, you will figure out who you are and forget your crazy obsession with mlx and the restraining order she placed against you. Maybe you will get a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, who knows? Despite all the madness, you will have a successful, humor filled, wonderful, *quality life. Maybe, we are all just a little jealous of that. Maybe we all wish we could go back and redo some things, just a few years. Make some different choices, the right choices.

But, hey if everyone could do that...you wouldn't be with us right now. And more is the pity.

Cheers and Happy Roasting.

Mycroft.