Maxims, rules of thumb and other observations on human cognition and sociocultural affectations

This will be added to on an irregular basis...
  • What is said to humans directly is received with skepticism and considered with dubiousness while that which is heard in passing, especially that which most conforms to their mentality or prejudices, is readily believed.
  • Humans have a certain cognitive latency between exposure to new information or experiences and the ability to think dispassionately and intellectually about it.
  • Humans have a certain cognitive spectrum starting with the moment of exposure to new information or experiences and ending with some point at which the thing is effectively "in the past" for them.
  • This cognitive spectrum is linked to the emotional process often referred to as shock, anger, denial and acceptance.
  • The more and faster information or experiences are presented to people and the closer the quarters and the lesser the distance between people, the more their early reactions in the passionate emotional stage are reflected back to them in the manner of responses to those reactions from others in light of those responses.
  • The more outrages which are suffered without sufficient time to allow emotional bleed-off, the farther the bar for subsequent reaction and outrage are pushed, and the more further events must progress before reaction and outrage.
  • It is possible for serious detriments to eventually sit below this threshold for long enough for their damaging effects to build and multiply until their entire society undergoes some reactive convulsion.
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Monday, October 29, 2007

Man who had sex with bike in court - Telegraph

Man who had sex with bike in court - Telegraph




He is not the first man to be convicted of a sexual offence involving an inanimate object, however.

Karl Watkins, an electrician, was jailed for having sex with pavements in Redditch, Worcs, in 1993.



Now that is doing things the hard way.


Thursday, October 25, 2007

What is up with the mixing of religion and bullshit here?

I will tell you, if you must know, and yes you must because I am the Tr1v14l Spud that I am. Or merely I must tell you. One of those.

For long long spans of time, people have sought out the meaning of their lives. Most found nothing like whatever it was Morpheus was blabbing about except colored pills might have been involved. They aren't involved with me. Those people or the pills.

What is the meaning of mine? Well, it isn't in Catholicism or Christianity. Or wasn't. Or won't be. One of those.

I was struck from a very early age with the smell of bullshit in the water coming from the directions of my parents and well, we sharks, or kids, one of those, can smell bullshit in the water and we go for the kill. Mine being that I was no longer going to go on Sunday to do the knee-board calesthenics of the Catholic church we attended because well, I was really not hip to the whole trinity thing since Jesus himself liked to contradict the church's positions on him every chance he got.

It took a lot of years to get past literalism and find the plastic reality of existentialism without sliding down the slope to self-indulgent dadaism for the sake of attention and hellraising. Along the way I was startled, depressed, angry, sad, violent, virulent, and truculent unto myself by turns until I had traipsed through my life in all directions and lost all the footprints I'd left, most especially His when He carried me.

I've not come to any sort of peace with myself and yet have achieved total inner serenity. I've railed against my drive for complacency and stood steadfast against my desire for change for the fuck of it. I have united the opposites in a mutually canceling harmony and achieved the perfect sound of silence.

Of course, as soon as I did, He spoke up and said, "I thought you'd never pick up..."

So my religious posts are moving on to...

On the road with You-Know-Who

The American Spectator

The Current Crisis: The Merry Sage of Broadcasting Excellence



"This is more fun than I've ever had in my life," Rush declared on Hannity & Colmes during their October 18 show. By then he had sixty or so bids, the highest for $851,000. He was faced with writing the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation a personal check for almost $1 million. Nonetheless he was laughing. Later he laughed even more when one of his supporters bid $2.1 million for the Democrats' epistolary assault on the First Amendment. Now Rush is out an equal amount, but all to a good cause. He can now claim responsibility for a $4.2 million fund drive for the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. What has been the Democrats response, a matching grant? Actually Senator Harry Reid lumbered out onto the Senate floor and heaved up yet another exhalation of guff.


What Democrat has done such an act of personal charity of such potentially and in the end realized high cost to their finances like this? Anyone?


For those who don’t remember, this is Henry Waxman:


Henry WaxmanIf he looks familiar, it might be because you saw Scanners.


 

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

In Soviet Russia...

...Slashdot probes you!

Oddly, this firewall entry:
Date: 10/25 00:27:30 Name: spp_portscan: portscan status from 66.35.250.150: 13 connections across 1 hosts: TCP(13), UDP(0)
Priority: n/a Type: n/a
IP info: n/a:n/a -> n/a:n/a
References: none found

Led to:
[someone@somebox ~]$ host 66.35.250.150
150.250.35.66.in-addr.arpa is an alias for 150.0/24.250.35.66.in-addr.arpa.
150.0/24.250.35.66.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer slashdot.org.
[someone@somebox ~]$ whois 66.35.250.150
[Querying whois.arin.net]
[whois.arin.net]
Savvis SAVVIS (NET-66-35-192-0-1)
                                                                    66.35.192.0 - 66.35.255.255
VA Software SAVV-S234813-4 (NET-66-35-250-0-1)
                                                                    66.35.250.0 - 66.35.250.255

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2007-10-23 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.


They port scanned no less than 17 ports. Don’t believe me?


[someone@somebox ~]$ host slashdot.org
slashdot.org has address 66.35.250.150


So, anyone want to posit what the fuck they think they’re doing sending unsolicited traffic at my firewall having nothing to do with web surfing?

Slashdot | Humans Not Evolved for IT Security

So sayeth Bruce Schneier, expert!


I know how right this is. Getting my firewall installed took years of education and indoctrination by religious, educational, and parental institutions.

On TV: Networks will lose big if there's a writers strike

In layman's terms, the people who write your favorite TV shows and films are at a standoff with the people who write their checks.

No_way. What kind of G-d would let the stuff on TV happen through conscious willful rational choice??? These writers cannot possibly exist. No one is so supremely balanced between mediocrity and evil as that. Even the government can’t manage it. I could not manage it.


If this turns out to be true, that someone really concocted this crap on purpose, then we are damned and doomed, all. You could not possibly sell your soul to the devil, it would be already spoken for. Which says volumes about the gullibility of the lower realms.


“Oh great, American television viewers are in line to come in. Will someone get the pit fiends to move the 10,000 units of George Foreman cookers to the warehouse? We have new customers on the way. Whose idea was this wardship of evil anyways? We got cheated, I know it. There’ll be Survivor t-shirts littering the locker rooms now.”

Police Horrified By Grisly Remains Of Taco Bell Meal | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Though there are still no leads on who is responsible for the gruesome mess or what their motives may have been for entering the restaurant in the first place, police say they believe the incident occurred sometime between 1 and 2 a.m.

FOURTH_MEAL_THIS!.


 

First Orgy After Brian's Death Very Solemn | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

FAIRFIELD, CA—Lacking the exuberance, spontaneity, and airborne bodily fluids of previous all-night fuckfests, the first orgy since the passing of group-sex enthusiast Brian Hodge was a solemn and subdued affair, heavily lubricated sources reported Monday.

First Orgy After Brian's Death Very Solemn | The Onion - America's Finest News Source.


BWAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!

9NEWS - Article - Sidetracks - Another town bans saggy pants

The ordinance, passed unanimously Monday by the Port Allen City Council, requires pants to be secured at the waist so they do not fall below the hips, expose underwear or create indecent exposure.

9NEWS - Article - Sidetracks - Another town bans saggy pants.


WHERE IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY WAS THIS MOVEMENT TO REGULATE PUBLIC DRESS WHEN BELLBOTTOMS WERE DE RIGEUR?


And where were these baggy pants when all the hot girls were big on wearing thongs???


I truly live on Planet of the Morons.

American kids, dumber than dirt / Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history

He cites studies, reports, hard data, from the appalling effects of television on child brain development (i.e.; any TV exposure before 6 years old and your kid's basic cognitive wiring and spatial perceptions are pretty much scrambled for life), to the fact that, because of all the insidious mandatory testing teachers are now forced to incorporate into the curriculum, of the 182 school days in a year, there are 110 when such testing is going on somewhere at Oakland High. As one of his colleagues put it, "It's like weighing a calf twice a day, but never feeding it."

American kids, dumber than dirt / Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history.



any TV exposure before 6 years old and your kid's basic cognitive wiring and spatial perceptions are pretty much scrambled for life


Absolutely. Thanks to watching television since before I could walk, that entire school report I did in fifth grade about the relativity of the Hubble constant to actual observation vis a vis the ongoing expansion of the universe and the implications of localized and macroscopic spatial distortions affecting red-shift in terms of spatial stretching as well as inherent modification of frequencies by changing electrodynamic interaction with intergalactic plasma was entirely a put-on.


Furthermore, my accuracy with a BB gun was just a fluke. Thanks to television there is no way I should have been able to keep a one inch shot group with 75% or better accuracy at 200 feet. My spatial distortion should have given me a real Ted Striker drinking problem.


It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I can still spell just fine…

Back-seat toilet to end mishaps in traffic jams - Yahoo! News

But prospective customers will have to hang on until November 15, when the firm begins selling the new product online.

Back-seat toilet to end mishaps in traffic jams - Yahoo! News.


I’m not sure I can cross my legs and hop around til then.


Why not just replace the seats with toilets? Drop your pants, get in and sit down. Hair-raising near-miss? Fear not to lose composure and control. With every seat replaced by a privy seat, and a constant negative pressure maintained, farts need not be a problem in a car with windows rolled up ever again. Get pissed off at bad drivers for real. Bonus: all effluent can be used to generate methane to help power said car and keep the world green.

Prior Permission From Government to be Required for Each Flight - 10 Zen Monkeys

But it's never too late to express your outrage... against another act in the continuing project to turn the United States into North Korea.

Prior Permission From Government to be Required for Each Flight - 10 Zen Monkeys.


It is exactly this kind of dramatic over-reaction and over-blowing that makes the DoHS and TSA idiocy so dangerous. No one will be listening to the cries when the wolf finally comes round, will they?


Good going.

Singapore relaxes sex law but not for gays

Singapore on Tuesday legalised oral and anal sex between heterosexual couples but retained a law which criminalises intercourse between gay men.

Singapore relaxes sex law but not for gays.


In other news, flights from Southern California to Singapore rose over night to unprecedented levels. Singapore customs officials are said to be utterly perplexed that so many people can afford such expensive camcorders in such numbers.


Rapidshare administrators reached for antacids.

Monday, October 22, 2007

After Fight, Airport Embraces SUX Code

City leaders have scrapped plans to do away with the Sioux Gateway Airport's unflattering three-letter identifier — SUX — and instead have made it the centerpiece of the airport's new marketing campaign.

After Fight, Airport Embraces SUX Code.


“This airport sucks.”


“Yes, it is.”


“You mean yes it does.”


“What?”

Motorcyclist's horrific death brings call to ban 'cheese-cutter' barriers - 22 Oct 2007 - NZ Herald: New Zealand National news

He could recall no previous deaths of motorcyclists hitting wire barriers and did not believe they would have much more of a chance against traditional W-section steel guard-rails.

Motorcyclist's horrific death brings call to ban 'cheese-cutter' barriers - 22 Oct 2007 - NZ Herald: New Zealand National news.


Yeah… like slamming bodily into a steel barrier at highway speed is less lethal than a wire barrier. It’s either slice or smash, when you go off a motorcycle at high speed.


Want a cheese grater, fly off of a bike on a steel grid bridge and go sliding 200 feet… It HAS happened. Not pretty…

Home-made helicopters hit northern Nigeria - Yahoo! News

We don't reward talent in this country," he lamented.

Home-made helicopters hit northern Nigeria - Yahoo! News.


 


That’s okay, we don’t either. I suspect that is why phishing and scams are so common in bother countries.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Every time I get ready to write something really good...

Oh look! Shiny!

Wait, what?

Damn.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Sometimes, comparitive examples are needed to make a point...







This image was found at Judaism.com at this page.














Would the Israel Baseball League think this was an okay image for them?








Other than that, I got there because I found this after remembering this post by RR.

Oh well. I hope their teams don't take the field vowing to kill the apikorsim...

Kosher cat is...


Lolcats are where you find them.

Dogs and Rabbis - Daily Life

There's something that make us both objects of trepidation. And it's not the facial hair

Dogs and Rabbis - Daily Life.


I loved this.