What what? A Budget?

I'm expecting flying pigs. A budget? Nicely done!

Now get the fuck back to work.

What did you want, a cookie? Or a raise? That's your job, shits. Get back from vacation and get to work; there's still way too much to do.

You're in the most important halls of government of our country and, to some degree, the world. Good job on doing your job. Now there's more to do. Get to it. Millions of people below you, which you walk on, work 18/7 or more. You, honestly, don't deserve a vacation. I expect to see some momentum or you've accomplished nothing.

On justice and Christian morality

Because all people must be free to choose. What value to force a man to speak words he does not believe and what cost to force a woman to live a life that defiles her with its injustice to soothe your own guilt.

A person cannot be reached before you honor them and their decision must not be made before we reach them. If God chooses to convict then He has that privilege but the violent power of your governance has no place in my religion.

I fell like a statement should be made about individual opinions and their affect on other people but the words aren't here. Perhaps another day.

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On Being, Krista Tippett interviews Brené Brown
Brené Brown at TEDx Houston
Brené Brown at TED

Visually @ Zenpencils, Gavin Aung Than

And, her website.

Meta-volution

Evolution is truth. However we don't evolve in our bodies anymore. Other animals still do of course but post-humanity won't differ dramatically in physical makeup (unless we go deeply into body shaping or human-machine integration, but that's just an outgrowth of the main point here).

We evolve in our minds. Our bodies are rapidly becoming immaterial except as a support substrate for our minds. Our evolution now molds the social constructs we create for ourselves to live within; our evolution grows with and empowers our ability to find accurate meaning large data sets; our ideas are what spur our future growth and drive our advancement as a species. Vast wealth and power have sprung from the well of innovation but that innovation did not spring from our DNA. It sprang from the brains the DNA created and even more it sprang from the combined effects of social interaction of many or those brains well rehearsed in the workings of the vast computing devices that were envisioned and built by the brains that came before them.

Historical evolution enacted its course through the buildup of physiological and organizational changes that drove competitive advantage. Future evolution will enact its course through the buildup of changes in society, psychology, and mental prowess (either unaided or reinforced by artificial mechanism) that drive the human species into a successful future. Our bodies, if they evolve at all, will largely evolve only to support more powerful or adaptive minds. So if our bodies decay or are poorly adapted to our environment, or happen to exist in a difficult environment the next evolutionary step is to adjust society to better support those bodies. Building up every body leads to more and better functioning brains which further drives evolution forward. Evolution demands comprehensive and effective welfare. Because the mind of every child is our evolutionary future, regardless of that child's family history or the present outlook of its future. Every child's future is malleable regardless of the capacity of their body. If they get sick, they should be made well. Because it can be done, because evolution no longer relies on our bodies, because that child's contribution should not be unnecessarily undercut by physical malady. Every human in need should be lifted up because every brain has the capacity, given the opportunity, to contribute something to society regardless of the circumstances of the life of the body.

What happens...

What happens to time to make it a large dimension?
What are branes? What happens if we consider them as aggregates of strings? How does that interact with the 0-brane?

If we consider time and space, in other words dimensionality in general, as constructed of strings then what is the 'background' or backdrop in which they exist? That's much like asking what a quark is without a String Theory to describe it. We haven't pushed back that far yet. Take the description of dimensionality, spacetime, and use that to probe deeper. Imagining that branes, dimensionality beyond the single dimensional string, are composed of strings is much more satisfying than accepting them as some additional elementary constituent that arises from nothing and nowhere.

On holography... if the holographic universe is a valid theory, and the pair of 3branes bound by a single dimension is a valid theory of creation then the universe as we know it, regular matter, is a tiny almond within a giant shell. And still it would seem to be that the brane is unreachable to us, exiting in a different mode than we do.


Enough half-informed physical ponderings. I've work to get ready for.

Dissonance

So I read this

The uncomfortable tension caused by these two opposing ideas — wanting to smoke but also wanting to be healthy and fit — is known as dissonance. As humans, we look to get rid of this uncomfortable feeling. (This is known as dissonance reduction.)
The only way to get rid of this uncomfortable feeling is by a) quitting smoking b) denying that people actually get sick from smoking or c) justifying and rationalizing.

In some comments and it strikes me that I didn't resolve my own cognitive dissonance around smoking but redirected it. Instead of focusing on the dissonance between the damage and pleasure of smoking I shifted to focusing on the dissonance between the pain of quitting and the cost of continuing. The short term pain of quitting smoking is dissonant with the desire to quit but in rolling down the stress curve towards reducing the cost of the habit I think I unconsciously made it significantly easier to quit. I stopped mitigating the smoking dissonance and worked towards mitigating the quitting dissonance. And the only real solution to that dissonance was taking direct action.

Granted that the procedural option I used (stepping back consumption on a week to week basis with no nicotine crutches) probably helped but I suspect the psychology described above played a part in at least making the commitment against the pain of quitting. In other words it pulled down one side of the wall I was trapped behind and allowed me to commit to climbing out.

Then again maybe I'm just an amateur deluding himself.

An open letter to Congress

Yeah. A bit presumptuous of me to write an open letter. But anyway.

Take a hint. No more bogus deadlines. No bullshit 'balanced budget or we do a sequester' acts. Instead of playing chicken with our economy and government any deadline failures, including setting a budget outline for the year and the decade, should immediately and irrevocably result in a ban from holding public office.

Yes, that's right. You screw up or play games or simply make a boo-boo you get kicked out. Forever. Amen. You are Congress. Your job is the money. Dumbasses. Do it right or you can't be trusted for so much as taking notes in a local city council meeting.

I don't care about you, personally or ideologically, and I'm tired of you playing games. Do your job or shut up and get out. The United States of America would be better served by kicking out, permanently, every single member of Congress (yes, both houses; yes, even with all the inevitable upheaval that entails) seated between now and the time the budget is passed.

It's quite simple. If you can't do your job well enough to care for the single most important responsibility you're given then you can't do anything. You're useless and I want to be rid of you.

Do your job or get out. Take a hint.