badmigraine
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Posts posted by badmigraine
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There was this windbag at my old company who might have served the purpose, but he was fat and would have weighed things down a lot on the ascents.
I can't see wearing him around my neck on the slopes, though in my old job he was basically draped around my neck the whole time.
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What's the best nanpa resort then?
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I can hardly write a single kanji by hand, but using a computer I can compose intelligible business letters full of the most beautiful kanji.
How did I get to be this way?
Keitai mail to/from girls!
Thank you, J-Phone! Highly recommended as a study aid.
If algebra and geography had involved constant interaction with beautiful fun-loving gals, I'd have had a much easier time of it in middle school.
Instead, I got the withered 72-year-old Ms. Troyer for math, and the rather shockingly obese Ms. Fisher for geography.
It was said that Ms. Fisher was selected for study of the globe because her massive body had its own gravitational field. I was able to memorize the location of places like Borneo and the Solomon Islands by referencing certain periodic wobbles and jellyflaps on her southern hemisphere.
Sorry Mogs--you don't want to know where NZ was located!
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Mabye Satan-worship works like smoking cigarettes...in spite of sensible advice to the contrary, some people willingly participate in spite of the consequences.
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I thought logic had disproved royalty.
These people are like the hood ornament on a car...no practical value, and looking around you don't see too many of those anymore either.
There is one kind of queen still worthy of worshipping on bended knee, however.
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As usual, I'm not saying that I'm right, I'm merely saying that everyone else is wrong!
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Ocean, I'm merely saying that we just don't yet know what all is out there, and until we do, we are just making guesses about cosmology and religion. Nothing wrong with that, just that you can't say god/religion has been proved or disproved.
Based on the trend to which you refer, and the level to which our currently-popular religions have been scientifically de-bunked, it seems reasonable to assume that they, and the concept of god(s) they contain, are fully wide of the mark.
In other words, our current concept of divine may be obsolete. It hasn't changed significantly over many centuries--even though science and the archaeological record allow us today to giggle at some of the preposterous and disproven accoutrements that were associated with it. Why hasn't the concept of the divine itself been subject to the same treatment?
One problem may be that we judge god and religion today using this antiquated concept of divine, when maybe that concept itself should be adjusted, updated, re-worked or even discarded.
As you point out, natural forces that used to be called "divine" now turn out to be things like electricity and subterranean methane gas. And there are few natural phenomenon today that drive people to look for supernatural causes.
If future science or knowledge reveals more and more natural forces that ancient peoples dubbed "divine", that's great and would be the continuation of a trend that is, in the life of the universe and this planet, only a small part of the human history that itself is a mere wink or flash in the temporal vastness. So what? Do we in our current enlightened state really expect an old-style god with talking plants and miracles and so forth? We're not really that primitive anymore.
What if there is a god or number of gods, and they don't act like the ones in our recorded or known myths and religions?
What's the justification for the proposition that a god or gods is knowable by humans, provable in any way by humans? This is just a big, unjustifiable guess we make so we can keep talking about this stuff.
Frankly speaking, if a god were really to exist, I would suppose the god to be rather different from anything I've ever imagined.
Some people look at the amazing complexity of matter and the universe, and conclude that it is too wonderful to have happened by chance only. Where did it come from, and is there a why?, etc. This is just more guesswork, an ontological fudge.
The absurdly interesting wonders of theoretical physics are fine, but they don't seem to me to say anything about whether or not one or many gods exist.
What if there was a god, but s/he/it made billions of universes and our particular one fell down behind the sofa cushions? Until that god finds us behind the sofa, nothing like talking pillars of fire or provable godlike entities will happen around here?
Or maybe the god just up and left?
Again, I am agnostic, but I'm really not getting much satisfaction out of the current pat answers about how logic disproves god and so forth.
I'd rather just say that I have a hard time seeing where a god in the old style, as we have come to know it, could fit into our current cosmology. If there is one, it's likely that god is qualitatively different from the anthropomorphic or magic-trick performing ones we've heard about until now.
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So now a lot of people believe in logic.
Here's 2 observations about that:
1. LOGIC IS SMALLER THAN RELIGION
Logic's a tool, like a pasta making machine. Sometimes you take the machine out of the cupboard, put some stuff in it, turn the handle, and a result comes out the other end. You can't put in the wrong ingredients and get a good result.
Clearly, that's not the role that religion plays in the lives of its believers.
When you lose religion and get logic, logic does not fill up the space left empty by religion.
What's my point here? Simply that religion and logic do not occupy co-extensive spaces in human consciousness, do not substitute for each other, and are not mutually exclusive.
This has little to do with whether or not a god exists or a religion is true or false.
2. LOGIC HAS NOT YET PROVED OR DISPROVED THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
How about this: The existence of God is scientifically provable, but it requires a technology that we haven't yet developed. Like a new variant of radar, or a special kind of particle accelerator that won't be developed until the year 2096.
How can we say today that logic has proved this god or that religion invalid? We just don't know yet.
Logic is useful for dissecting some of the myths and patent falsehoods in many religions. But these false or laughable components of some religions were, at one time, plenty good enough for the then-current level of human and scientific development. That we find them silly or easily disproved today could merely reflect the obsolete or incorrect human reporting of actual events or circumstances.
If you traveled back to Europe or China in 200 A.D. to explain what lightning really is, your explanation just wouldn't work. They had a different story about it then, and that story was linked to so many other "facts" and known truths that today seem silly. You and I may laugh at the stupid childish primitive explanation of lightning current in those days. Even so, lightning really did exist then. Don't blame the reporter. In the same way, our current story of what lightning "really is" will probably be different 1200 years from now, too. For example, instead of being couched in terms of charged air and water molecules rubbing together in clouds, it might be delivered in terms of interactions among various now-unknown fields and particles...
If you want a view of something as bizarre as wine turning magically to blood, just have a look at some particle physics and theoretical physics pages where you can read about quantum computers, two things being in the same place at the same time, faster-than-light tachyons, the 6 flavors of quark and dozens more that are described by taking the negative square root of this or that, tunneling back through time as antimatter or what have you.
I mean, really. Some of this stuff seems absurd, but it may actually turn out to be true.
With all this stuff going on, how can logic be used today to disprove religion or god? One item that must go into the logical pasta machine, before we turn the crank, is "the possibility that we don't yet have all the evidence".
In fact, that possibility (that there is a ton of yet-unknown evidence) seems extremely likely.
Maybe animism is actually valid, and inside rocks and trees there are beings or entities composed of charged subatomic particles or as-yet-unknown energy fields. Can this be disproved today?
I read that the makeup of 98% of the mass of the universe is unknown...the so-called "dark matter" that they haven't been able to find yet. I don't think that 98% has anything to do with god, I just wonder what the heck it is and why we don't know yet. We must be in a rather primitive stage of development, don't you think? I lean toward atheism and sympathize with that point of view. But 98% of our playpen is a giant question mark, and people now claim to have disproved religion? That's shoddy reasoning, illogical conclusion-jumping at best.
When I hear stuff like this--and flash on how little humanity knows, let alone the tiny subset of that dimly cognized by poor Mr. badmigraine himself, well...I conclude that we should not be as smugly certain about cosmology, ontology and religion as the average person seems to be.
I also wonder why people think religion or god would necessarily be provable or disprovable. How would anyone know that? In that light, the question becomes one of personal opinion, suasion, belief or disbelief, and logic be damned.
I don't subscribe to any religion right now, but I can't say I have decided for myself whether there is or is not a god or gods.
Make a pie chart of the following 3 things, giving what you feel is the correct size to each piece of the pie:
1. What you know that you know
E.g., the capital of Canada, how many quarts in a gallon, how to ride powder, etc.)
2. What you know that you DON'T KNOW
E.g., all about quantum mechanics; how many grains of sand are on that beach; how to do a McTwist on 210cm. straight skis, etc.)
3. What you DON'T KNOW that you DON'T KNOW
E.g., all the stuff it never occured to you that there is to know, because nobody yet even figured out that it was there to know. And all the stuff that we humans can never know, just like squirrels can never know about coding XTML.
I think #3 would be the giant portion of the pie, with #1 and #2 being very, very tiny slivers.
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Let's say you are employed in a Japanese-speaking office and you have a computer at your desk. Now, how are you going to make it through the day?
Cruising up and down the Internet gets noticed pretty fast, either by the boss's eyes, or through IT Dept. stats showing how many times you clicked and on what URLs.
Scary!
Is there no personal freedom left in the world?!
Don't you wish you could just curl up with a coffee and a good book...
Maybe one of those great novels that you always thought you might read, but never got around to? Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Count of Monte Cristo? The Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom books? Alan Quatermain? Anatole France, James Branch Cabell, Voltaire, Pasternak?
How about some personal historical accounts, like Richard Henry Dana's "Ten Years Before the Mast"? This Boston legal clerk chucked his desk job and sailed with quasi-pirates to the Sandwich Islands, before your grandad was even born!
Or maybe some non-fiction? Plato, the Koran, Darwin, Levi-Strauss?
Maybe you enjoy Ernest Dowson and the Decadent Poets, the early Yeats, William Morris...or how about those Petrach sonnets, or some fascinating samples of thousand-year-old English poetry--"Westron wind, when wilt thou blow?"
Here's what you do. Go to the Project Gutenberg site , browse or search among the thousands and thousands of works, download the text file, then open it up in Word on your computer.
In a few seconds, you can format the document with columns or dummy headings and make it appear that you are working on a long memo.
It works every time!
Nobody will really notice anything when they walk past. If some needle-nose bothers to come up and look closer at your screen, you can click up another document, or minimize the lot and say "confidential memo" until they leave you in peace.
Well, happy reading.
I'm not even at work, but I am reading Dumas' "Twenty Years After" on my old IBM laptop in bed these days. The thing gets nice and warm, so I don't even need the electric blanket.
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Hey Lama, where are you going this year?
Niseko, then France, and now what?
Do tell!!
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Ocean--sorry, I thought the rhetorical device to which you were referring was the offering of the cigar.
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How about renting a high school gym?
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We found a place that shows second-run films for $1.50. Has 10 big screens too.
Now playing are 28 Days Later, Terminator 3, Jeepers Creepers 2, Charlie's Angels 2, Tomb Raider 2 and a few others that I never would have paid full price to see, but that now seem a great idea at $1.50.
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A "micro-reality"...nicely put.
I want to see Samurai Fiction too. I'm afraid to rent it until I hear from someone else what it is like.
Did I mention that I went on a few dates with Lucy Liu back in 1987/88?
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I'm not here saying this movie is a social outrage, offensive and should be boycotted.
Nor am I taking an ivory-tower position that the movie fails this standard or that test of quality.
I'm just saying after all the hype and rave reviews, well, it kind of sucked.
Let me put it this way:
Know how it is in Japan when you see a Japanese movie scene set in New York City, but all the white guys have Aussie accents and the black guys have African accents and they all act weird, with mannerisms and statements that only a Japanese person would ascribe to a "gaijin"? Because that's what the Japanese director told them to do, or because that's what the audience wants its gaijin to be like? Then maybe later how about a Japanese woman single-handedly kills 250 gaijin with blood spraying everywere and a spanking of an especially stereotypical "gaijin" looking one?
That's Kill Bill.
It really is like a bad whiff of QT's mental flatulent: you can smell the rotten leftover bits of what his brain digested in previous meals.
Yeah, I read the interviews and articles too...why does QT's saying in advance what he was going to do change anything?
"I've intentionlly assembled here a few rotten stereotypes because I think they are really cool..."
That makes it OK?
I'm all for a good flick and the last guy you'd find picketing Jar-Jar Binks. I'm not proclaiming that this movie is harmful, I'm just saying that I found it annoying and ignorantly smug...and explaining why.
It's pretty rare that a flick shoulders me out so completely that in the middle of it I sort of "wake up", become conscious of sitting in a flickering room, listening to the noise of the projector instead of the soundtrack, and looking around at the other customers to see their clothes, snack foods and reactions...that, to me, is a sign of Badness.
This movie is not "just a movie". It's a middling-to-bad movie that in no way lives up to the hype.
That's what I personally thought about it.
As for my J wife, who rarely complains about this type of thing, she found it outright hard to watch. Why?
Because--and this has nothing to do with stereotypes--some parts of it seemed to her so stupid and badly done.
And because it suggests to her a heretofore unsuspected universe of stereotyping of Japan and Asians by Americans.
Ocean, I was not suggesting that Hollywood makes realistic movies about the USA.
What I meant was, when a Hollywood movie is set in the USA, the scenes, settings, characters and speech are fairly true to the actual locale and population...we don't get French guys to do the set decoration and dialogue for Boston bar scenes. That's because we all live here in America and would notice if the continuity and reality were bogus.
In contrast, movies like Kill Bill are set in a fictional space where nobody really lives...so nobody can complain that the items on the countertop wouldn't have been there, that this sort of person or restaurant would never have looked like this or been in this place, etc.
This is one place Kill Bill fell down for my wife. As a native Japanese, she found some of the scenes, sets, props, and characters to be off, awkwardly done, or just odd--even allowing for the fact that this movie is supposed to be hip, tongue-in-cheek, an homage, an anime-cum-chop-socky thrill ride, etc. It just didn't work for her. Films are not supposed to do that. You shouldn't have to work hard to suspend your disbelief during a film.
I, as an American, have seen the same oddness or cinematic bugs in Sergio Leone's fictional cowboy world, and in Japanese movies that include a "gaijin" who says things or has mannerisms that gaijin don't really have unless they are imitating Japanese forms or mannerisms.
And my wife, having noticed these things, took it to the next, obvious level. "This guy Tarantino is kind of a dope, if this is how he thinks Japanese--even cartoon ones--would act or talk.
The movie ain't that great. Don't believe the hype.
Yes, it is "just a movie". A middling-to-bad movie, at that.
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I don't know... I don't perceive great uniformity or consistency from one Hollywood film to another, so I'm not really sure what general statement to make about how Hollywood views or depicts the USA.
One thing I noticed while watching Kill Bill was that much of it transpires in an imaginary, fetishized Asian cinema space borne out of exhaustive viewing of kung fu, Samurai and Hong-Kong action flicks...and that is a purely fictive, imaginary space. So it's easy for Tarantino and Hollywood to transgress, manipulate or enact within it, and no judge or populus from this imaginary space could ever materialize and complain or take them to task for what they have done.
The USA, by contrast, really exists and is the place where most of Hollywood's audience lives. It's a lot harder for Hollywood to pull tricks, sling stereotypes or merely invent characters/write dialogue when there is such a constant reality referent.
Look at it this way: will the Monkey Kung-Fu Master ever leap off a frame of cellulite and write a letter to the editor?
Probably not. But there are plenty of people in the USA who would, and do, when Hollywood does another Driving Miss Daisy or what have you.
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Just saw it with my wife...she found it hard to sit through for all the stereotyping, cheap shots and demeaningly Hollywood-Asian-cinephile-driven treatment of Japan and Japanese.
We went in there knowing how it was pitched, liking other Tarantino flicks, and aware that it is supposed to be hip and tongue-in-cheek.
But in the end it seemed like just a "hip" re-doing of a white otaku's imaginary fetishistically Asian cinematopia. Another white-guy-out-Asians-the-Asians flick. The latest nugget in a bucket of bad broth starting with Shogun, extending through the Karate Kid and American Ninja flicks, Rising Sun and, as may be the sad case, re-done yet again in the latest Tom Cruise vehicle "The Last Samurai".
That being said, we enjoyed the first fight scene in the kitchen, the anime sequence, and found the cartoonlike violence fun to watch.
But that cannot save it for us! Two thumbs down but see it anyway...
Just wondering: did the Japanese media or word-of-mouth have anything bad to say about this flick?
It was praised to the skies here as some kind of work of genius...
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This is all fantastic! Go, Siren, go!
I am following this with bated breath.
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I've enough mileage for a free JAL roundtrip. I have to be ticketed by Dec. 31, but the actual travel can happen after that.
Mogs how about another Hirafu Chalet boondoggle?! You can teach me to ski powder.
Shall we leave the women at home this year?
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Fox News..."fair and balanced"...
I think that says it all.
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I was watching the TV news last night and it seems they are charging this kid...unbelievable.
There was a sound-bite of a righteous suited federal prosecutor blaring out something like "it doesn't matter what the motivation or background was, this person committed a CRIME"...
It's enough to make one puke with disgust.
I would have thought the head of the affected agency would have come forth to explain to an outraged public how this person could so easily get these prohibited items onto the plane when security checks are so incredibly invasive, annoying and time consuming. What, are we just wasting our time with these frustrating procedures?
I would have thought the agency would be in big trouble, would apologize, would be subject to some kind of investigation and would propose some serious steps to fix this kind of problem, or else admit that it may be impossible to make the skyways safe.
But maybe their pigheaded incompetent arrogant respose is the best thing after all. Now we see what part of the problem is--they are hypocritical, arrogant idiots out of touch with reality and the public.
Looks like another festering boil that needs to be lanced.
Arrest and charge this kid?! Unbelievable.
I hope the media and the public rips this one to shreds, but I don't hold out any hopes. The "Establishment"--whatever that is--consistently manages to squelch stories whenever it really needs to, and the public somehow seems to prefer being deluded.
Like with the Jessica Lynch story, the staged pulling-down of the Saddam statue, the fact that a lot of Americans still think Saddam was good buddies with Bin Ladin, etc.
Oh well.
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I live four minutes from a Vans skatepark that is deserted on weekday mornings and afternoons.
A rank beginner, I was drawn to the vert ramp and after a few weeks I was actually getting about 2 meters up each side, and managing a few frontside and backside spins, as well as pumping to get more height. What a great feeling!
Then my knee began to hurt something awful and I went back to my knee doctor.
"What?!" he said, "you had arthroscopic surgery in July to remove most of your right meniscus, and now, at 40 years old, as part of your 'rehab' you take up vert skating and wonder why it hurts? I'll see you in 5 years for that knee replacement surgery then..."
It was a fair point to make.
I just wish I had taken up vert skating earlier in life, or else not torn that cartilage in the moguls that day at Naeba.
Zoom, float...zoom, float...zoom, float!
What a great feeling...mesmerizing.
Well, goodbye to skateboarding then.
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I'm running out of money and looking for a job.
Do you guys think I could get paid to do spellcheck and basic grammar cleanup on snowboard and ski mags?
Maybe I could just charge them $50 for my list of top 5 mistakes so often seen that they may become the norm. Seeing these in e-mails, posts and short memos that are whipped off is fine, but in a nationally-published glossy magazine?! Sheesh.
1. The difference between "its" and "it's"
2. How to spell the word "definitely" (hint: there's no "a" in it)
3. The difference between "their" and "there"
4. The difference between "affect" and "effect"
5. The difference between "principle" and "principal"
Oh well. Those Transworld writers have jobs...look at me, I'm unemployed and missing a big piece of knee cartilage.
Maybe nobody cares anyway. Language is continually evolving and I don't need to care about that.
In principal, their's definately no bad affects from all this.
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Here's my personal ust-haves for goggle shopping:
1. Double-walled lenses to prevent fogging...accept no substitute.
2. Easily available/inexpensive replacement lenses and/or different color lenses...because believe me, once your lenses get scratched up (this will happen), you'll be happy if you can make them like-new again with replacement lenses, rather than having to buy a totally new, expensive pair of goggles.
3. Must fit my face shape without letting wind in here or there, and without blocking my field of vision.
If you can find something like this, then forget about the brand name and buy the cheapest cool-looking ones you can find!
Cheap, single-lens goggles fog up, scratch up and end up in the trash much too soon to be worth the savings...but you don't have to buy the top-o-the-line stuff to get great performance.
I've had some Arnettes and some Simths, both were great, bought on sale as last year's model etc. I try to buy replacement lenses at the same time as the new goggles because it's hard to find the exact ones you need in the middle of the season.
"Be seeing you"!
Satan and Satanic Church
in General off-topic discussions
Posted
C H R I S T I A N I T Y vs. S A T A N I S M
MUSIC
Amy Grant vs. Dead Can Dance
Hymns vs. This Mortal Coil
CLOTHING
khaki pants vs. leather pants
Laura Ashley look vs. Perry Farrell look
Gap/Crew/Bauer connection vs. Highlander-the TV series
ACCESSORIES
cookies vs. body piercings
vacuum cleaner vs. tribal tatoos
RECREATIONAL PASTTIMES
church bake sale vs. Renaissance Fair
bingo nite vs. fetish nite
PREFERRED MODE OF TRANSPORTATION
minivan vs. motorcycle
MOVIE
Sound of Music vs. The Crow
EMPLOYMENT
full salary & benefits vs. retail clerk/part time
DWELLING
suburban home vs. dorm or rental apartment