Awkward Halloween Moments

Reposted from ReverendFun.com

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When Pat Robertson Is the Moderate Among Conservatives

It would be no exaggeration to claim that the Republican Party is full of extremist ideologues. One clear example would be the fact that there have been times when people like former President-of-the-National-Rifle-Association-you'll-only-take-my-gun-from-my-cold-dead-hands-Charles-Heston have been the voice of reason among conservatives.

But just to prove how bat-shit insane the GOP is becoming, the person now urging them to tone down the crazy is none other than Pat "gays cause hurricanes" Robertson...

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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The 180 Club... love it :)

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Science - What's It Up To?

Science claims to be looking for cures for diseases, save the planet from the multiple dangers that threaten it, and to want to solve and understand the mysteries of the universe, but Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, sat down with a conservative conspiracy theorist bimbo to try to uncover what science is really up to... and discovers instead that you can't underestimate how bat-shit-insane and idiotic you can be when you let your retarded ideology determine the shit that comes out of your mouth...

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Wow... and I thought Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann were idiots...

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The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

"Our conceptions of human nature affect every aspect of our lives, from the way we raise our children to the political movements we embrace. Yet, just as science is bringing us into a golden age of understanding human nature, many people are hostile to the idea. They fear that a biological understanding of the mind will be used to justify inequality, subvert social change, dissolve personal responsibility and strip life of meaning and purpose.

In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker (bestselling author of The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Stuff of Thought, and The Better Angels of Our Nature) explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings.

He shows how many intellectuals have denied the existence of human nature by embracing three linked dogmatic myths: The Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), The Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and The Ghost in the Machine (each of us has an immaterial soul that makes choices free from biology). Each dogma carries a moral burden, so their defenders have engaged in desperate tactics to discredit the scientists who are now challenging them.

Pinker tries to inject calm and rationality into these debates by showing that equality, progress, responsibility, and purpose have nothing to fear from scientific discoveries about human nature. He disarms even the most menacing threats with clear thinking, common sense, and pertinent facts from science and history.

Despite its popularity among intellectuals during much of the twentieth century, he argues, the doctrine of the Blank Slate may have done more harm than good. It denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces hard-headed analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of government, violence, parenting, and the arts."

Don't you feel just a little bit smarter now? :)

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Michael Winslow - Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin

In the animal kingdom, there is no sound imitator quite like the lyre bird. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you've got to check this out.

But if there is anyone who might be able to outperform the lyre bird, it would have to be Michael Winslow (Sgt. Larvell Jones from Police Academy, in case you don't remember).

In the following clip, which starts as some ordinary beatboxing, Winslow manages to invoke the spirit of some of the most radical electric guitar you have ever heard, and he's just getting started...

I never realized just how talented this dude is... I always assumed that the sound effects in Police Academy were exactly that, just sound effects. I stand humbly corrected.

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Herman Cain's Nine Nine Nein Nein Plan

I don't know why it is that (with the possible exception of John Huntsman) virtually every Republican candidate does better with their base whenever they make irresponsible, racist, bigoted and divisive remarks, or when they dismiss the value of education, critical thinking and/or scientific research.

In Herman Cain's bizarro pizza world, difficult and complex economic, social and political problems ought to be solved by appealing to solutions based on empty soundbites (after all, the man is proud of his disdain for reading, erudition and having complex thoughts), and whenever that doesn't work, he thinks we ought to just fry a couple of Mexicans...

The Colbert Report
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If he were to build that fence, I wouldn't be surprised if he made sure the signs were written in English...

But why stop with Mexicans when you can discriminate against Americans too?

The Colbert Report
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The Impossibility of Motion - Achilles and the Tortoise

There are many things most of us just take for granted as obvious or just plain common sense, and therefore as not worth wasting our time on. Philosophers, however, nit-picking bunch that we are, are insatiably curious, and in our search for some coherent grand theory of everything, usually mange to find trouble instead, of the conceptual kind, although there is also a respectable history of weird philosophers' deaths, which you may find interesting.

When you question what others take as self-evident, you may come to realize that what we take to be real may be anything but. If you can spare 60 seconds, the following animation demonstrates one of Zeno's famous paradoxes of motion proposed to support his mentor Parmenides' thesis that "all is one" and that change is impossible.

According to this paradox,if you think that it is possible for something to move from point A to point B, you've got to be kidding... and you haven't actually "thought" anything...

And for a more comprehensive introduction to, and analysis of, Zeno's paradoxes, check out the article on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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