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Watch this film and ask yourself how this could ever end? Warning: there are images of men, women, and children who have been shot or hit with shrapnel in this video. Don’t look away though, look right at it and see it for what it really is.

Here’s an interesting link. It’s work safe unless you work at the Creation “Science” Museum or maybe a Mosque.

http://thefutureofourworld.ytmnd.com/ (link goes to page with sound)

It’s a little depressing, but watch until the end. I think it puts things nicely into perspective. Just remember that you only get this one life, so don’t be afraid to do the things you want to do. You won’t get another chance.

I finally “finished” my theme for this site. I am also releasing it to the world. If you use Wordpress and want your site to look exactly like mine, go download my theme right now! I have done several themes in the past, but this is the only one I’ve ever made for general use and I think it’s the best looking one I’ve ever done. Let me know if you like it and if you find any bugs, send me a note.

So you want to win every argument? Good. But I’m not talking about those emotional knock-down, drag-outs you might have with your significant other. I’m talking about making and proving your point. This little “tutorial” will give you the tools to put together a good argument and will help you determine if someone else’s arguments are sound.

Step 1 - Be right. If you are trying to convince someone of something, it always helps if you are actually correct.

Step 2 - Be specific. Don’t get bogged down in broad generalizations or abstract concepts.

Step 3 - Be thorough. Do your research and make sure you’ve covered every angle.

Step 4 - Check your assumptions. Sometimes you make an assumption and don’t even know it.

Step 5 - Avoid logical fallacies. Make sure you are using your powers of reason and logic.

That last step is very important. You should not only avoid logical fallacies, but look for them in your opponent’s arguments. A logical fallacy instantly invalidates an argument and can really make someone look bad.

On the web Saturday has become Caturday. Caturday is the day set aside each week for bloggers to post about their cats. I don’t have, nor do I want any cats in my apartment. However, other people’s cats are still cute and funny. Here’s a funny example.

Unlike when I voted for these guys, I finally managed to vote for a presidential candidate that won something. Barack Obama has won the Democratic party’s nomination! I’m pretty excited that he won and I’m also glad that Senator Clinton is backing down gracefully and not trying to fight it out to the bitter end.

I’ll be voting for him in November even though I don’t really think he has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning in Tennessee. There are three types of people here that won’t vote for him and they sadly make up a large number of people in this state. Some people won’t vote for him because he is brown (i.e. they’re racist assholes). Some people won’t vote for him because they think he’s Muslim (i.e. they’re ignorant assholes). And the last group are Republicans (i.e. easily led sheeple that are afraid a teenager who isn’t ready for motherhood will have an abortion or that a gay person might be happy somewhere or that kids might learn some science).

However, I do have some reason to be optimistic. Harold Ford Jr., a black Democrat from Memphis, only lost to Bob Corker by three percentage points in the 2006 Senatorial race. This despite racially charged ads that were run by the Corker campaign and also despite the fact that he has some notoriously corrupt family members.

So there is some hope and that’s part of what Obama’s campaign is about. Hope that people and things will change for the better. If you’d like to see things change for the better, donate to the campaign and be sure to vote for Barack in November!

If you have the cable television or satellite, check out current_. It’s a channel that some of you may remember as being invented (much like the internet) by former Veep Al Gore. The content of current_ is contributed by the viewers of the channel and is in the form of short video “pods.” Think Youtube on television only smarter, funnier, hipper, and insert-”er”-type-adjective-here.

Also, I’ll be adding select posts from previous blogs that I’ve maintained. These posts will be backdated so they won’t show up on the main page, but will show up in their correct chronological order at the time they were originally written. Here’s one for creating my own revisionist history!

Blowback is a concept that most people today cannot understand. I linked to the Wikipedia article on the topic, but the first line sums it up.

Blowback is a term used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. Blowback typically appears random and without cause, because the public is unaware of the secret operations that provoked it.

Examples of blowback are the 9/11 attacks, the 7/7 bombings, the Iran hostage crisis, and the Soviet-Cuba alliance.

At this point I’m sure the Republicans in the crowd are doing their best Rudy Giuliani impersonation and demanding that I take it back, but I won’t be doing that. Blowback is real and when we start messing with other people’s countries, they are going to start messing with ours. Now I’m not saying that terrorists are justified in what they do, but I understand the reasons they do it and understand that part of the blame sits squarely on our shoulders. That’s right boys and girls, the United States isn’t the glorious force of good you’ve been led to believe it to be. We’ve got blood on our greedy little hands, just like everyone else.

There’s an old axiom that says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” While we can’t always live by this rule, it’s a good rule to follow whenever we can. If we followed this rule, blowback wouldn’t exist in our foreign relations or our personals lives. So do what you can to prevent blowback.

Here’s a nice video that sums up the common myths about my favorite presidential candidate Barack Obama.

For those of you who don’t “believe” in evolution I suggest you check out this blog entry about Podarcis sicula. It’s no Crocoduck, but it’s a great illustration of what evolution is really all about. Take a population, isolate it, change the environment, et voila, something new and different. I wonder what will happen if they introduce some of the new lizard variants back into their original environment. Will they interbreed with the old population? Will they change back to their insect eating ways? Will they revert back to their original configuration? An interesting scenario no matter how you look at it.

Now it comes down to finding out if this is “true” evolution, meaning actual genetic variation. That’s the next step. Hopefully there will be a followup article to let us know the results of that research. Here’s a link to the original article.