That's honestly the main reason most people come here. I checked.
But, with such a wide array of people here from so many backgrounds I find that really I have to be careful. Its risky enough putting things online that family or potential employers could see. The internet is a wonderful place for sharing ideas, but it can leave a person very open and exposed. Generally online its pretty much safe to stick to the same rules as having a polite conversation so that you don't offend anybody.
So with that in mind, hide the kids and grab your ankles. Its time to light this candle.
RELIGION!!
I sit in an odd seat. I was raised believing in God. Went to church regularly. I am a Christian, albeit not a terribly good one because I swear a lot and enjoy doing horrible things. I'm also a hard science guy. While my skills at crunching numbers, memorizing theorems, and running equations have atrophied quite a bit, I still try to keep up a bit. So here I sit in a lonely spot of a guy who has made studies into the universe and its origins and how the work around me works and functions, and a firm belief in a divine creator. Typically, its not a problem, but it sticks me in a nasty position on Creationism versus Evolution.Creationism just doesn't add up. That's just population wise. I'm not even getting into the kooky stuff about where blacks and asians supposedly come from or that dinosaurs are some conspiracy myth. Most Christians and Creationists don't subscribe to that garbage. The biggest bone of contention seems to be if God made us in his image then there's no need for us to evolve, that and the whole monkey thing.
Scientists don't believe we evolved from monkeys. It was a whole other species that happened to have a little in common with monkeys. Any creationist who does believe that scientists believe we evolved from monkeys really should have stayed awake in class.
But that bigger bone of contention is one that I'm baffled is even a problem. If God made us in him image then why do we all look different? Its a body. Its the most amazing bio-mechanical machine on the plant. Work it hard, and it becomes stronger. It repairs damage to itself. It can be trained to do amazing things. However, our bodies are not who we are. What is more important than the body? The mind and soul.
Here's a thought. God did indeed create us in his image, and it was the important stuff that he replicated. It was the ability to think and feel. It was the flame inside all of us that is our selves. He took that in put it in a machine that could house it and allow it to thrive. This machine has many different aspects, but it is one thing above all others: adaptable.
Its not God versus Science. Science is our way of understanding the miracle. The more I learn from science the more amazing I think God's creations are.
And for any militant atheitists who read this and start thinking "HA, I knew Chrisitians were all stupid", shaddup, you douchey pricks. Unlike you assholes who just got done with your annual fuming and bitching every time you see a Christmas tree, I'm not out to attempt to crush anyone's spiritual journey. I'm hoping to give them a different perspective.
Behold: Theologian Nozz! You are free to throw Bibles at me now.
POLITICS!!
Political leanings are pretty flat. You lean one way or another depending points of view on various topics. And its easy when you have something that's measured on a flat scale to confuse the two sides, those being liberal and conservative, with good and evil. It reality these things aren't good or evil. They're merely points of view, and both of which have their place.Conservatives (the real ones, not the ones who spend buckets of money) should be running things with the regular business of the country. The federal government is there to do what regular citizens can't, like pave roads, protect our borders, and maintain our military. They typically like to keep taxes low and create an economic environment in which individuals can succeed and thrive. We've had the federal government overstep its bounds to the point that people are expecting the government to take care of them. This isn't good for anybody, as we can see by the state of things now.
Liberals do have their place. They are very good about whining about things. We need them around. They can't run much of anything bigger than a soup kitchen effectively, but they do draw attention to social problems and concerns that we should be aware of. The problem is while they're great for drawing interest and awareness to issues that do warrant it is good, their methods of addressing these things tends to be bad. Throwing money at problems doesn't really help in the long run. You can't find a problem and expect it to get fixed just because you turn it over to the government and think they'll have the funds and power to handle it.
Really, we should have conservatives running the day to day business of the country, and keeping an objective ear open to the liberals. When they whine about whatever cause they have that week it should be discussed and if necessary addressed. There's plenty of things that people can handle themselves without the federal government stepping in.
Let's take the environment for example. The environment is important. However, all the fret and worry about the climate and the global warming nutters aren't. Is this a problem that's going to fixed by the government? Nope. What they can do is apply more ecologically friendly business practices in their own day to day running. They can also do things like offer tax incentives to companies that explore cleaner energy options. If you make it advantageous for people to do something they will usually do it. That and it might actually do some good, because those moron hippies buying Priuses to save the planet is a freaking qualification to ride a short bus if I ever saw one.
Its pretty easy. Government has its place, and it should stay in its place. The country wasn't made great by the government. It was made great by the people. However people can tear a government and a country down. That tends to happen when they figure they can vote for free stuff for themselves. There were a lot of people out there that voted for our Pop Star-in-Chief, because they thought he was going to provide for them. Look how that turned out.
I am The Nozz, and I approved that message.
TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!!
As far as space sci-fi goes, Joss Whedon got it right. You know what you don't see in FIREFLY or the movie SERENITY? Aliens. Its just us. Humans. Going out to explore and settle the universe. There's no advanced alien civilization helping us along. There's no one out there waiting for us. There's something called Fermi's Paradox which put bluntly is if there's all this room out there in space and there must be intelligent life out there somewhere, then where the hell are they?
Let's look at the factors involved in there being intelligent life out in the universe. The need a planet capable of sustaining life of some sort. That's tough enough. On top of that you need enough time for that life form to develop that skills and technology necessary to space travel. That's a big toughie. Earth has already had at least one extinction event. One of the main reasons we don't have more it we've got the gas giant planets in the right spots to catch a good chunk of the nasty planet killers flying around out there.
So you can have an alien civilization on the verge of getting something good going. They may have developed tool, simple machines, domesticated animals, and gotten a good handle on agriculture then WHAM an asteroid hits the planet and wipes everything out. Its not like this process takes place in a matter of years. It takes millennia.
We can't look to the skies and wait for beings to usher us into an age of space travel. They aren't going to show us the stars. There's a pretty good chance that they're out there looking to the skies as well and waiting on us. You see, its not that I don't think that there's life out there on other planets. I just think that we're better than them.
Space Nozz is coming to find the blue women before Captain Kirk bangs them all.
MUSIC!!
I pondered what song would be fitting with my post, and it didn't take a whole lot of pondering.
That's it for today. If I haven't offended you all horribly with this, come on back Friday. I'll be sure to try harder.
