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The Problem with ‘Absolute Morality’

I anticipate a lack of consensus on this point amongst the Meppers, but I think Richard Dawkins gives us a worthy starting point here in responding to a hackneyed argument against Atheism, that it cannot truly uphold morality.

The Simpsons on Grad Students

To quote Good Will Hunting, “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library.”

This is Debate?

Here is the esteemed Governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, repeatedly failing to use the English language in her Gubernatorial Debate opening statement. Arizona seems to be well on its way to surpassing California in the stupefyingly incompetent elected official category.

On the other hand, I am somewhat mollified by her assurance that she has done the best possible job of any conceivable theoretical candidate.

Why I Quit World of Warcraft

No, it has nothing to do with Alterac Valley (a player versus player battle zone) and its minutia. I simply could no longer tolerate having this nonsense crop up in my brain on a daily basis. There are no thoughts or lessons or memories in my head that should be rightfully displaced by knowing how many scraps of armor it takes to achieve a damage multiplier.

MLB Cardinals Go Evangelical

The following is a video of MLB Superstar Albert Pujols and his manager, Tony La Russa speaking at Glenn Beck’s Tea Party rally in DC today.

While I realize that they got Pujols under the auspices of handing him some fakey award, I still feel like accepting it and preaching the gospel to the Tea Party could very well be worse than taking steroids.

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Gaming to Survive

This week, TED, offered up a fascinating lecture by game designer and futurist, Jane McGonigal. Particularly interesting is the bit starting around 12:30 where she relays Herodotus’s tales of gaming in the Lydian empire (circa the 12th century BC).

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What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?

For those of you that don’t know, I spend the majority of my days VJ’ing for Frequency, an internet video show akin to radio’s Pandora.

While most of my work consists of combing the internet for various gems, I also occasionally get to create custom playlists to show off the site’s toolset for assembling video collections. Here are two recent ones I’ve compiled:

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The Pale Blue Dot

Leave it to Carl Sagan to illuminate the optimistic side of the argument I made a couple posts ago, regarding our species. There is always hope — even if it lies beyond the horizons of our imagination.

Contemporary Slavery: The US Penal System

Fantastic round table lead by Stephen Fry on the out of control incarceration rate in this country. We imprison more people, per capita, than any nation in the history of the world. Fortunately for the Prison Industrial Complex, the coming double-dip recession will surely provide ample opportunity to sweep thousands more into our penal/human chattel holding cells, that we may create more wards of the state and more productive slave labor. Huzzah for free societies.

Space Chimp

I half expected this short film to turn into a bizarro version of Planet of the Apes. I wanted this aged space chimp to land on an irradiated Earth, thousands of years after his departure (due to the temporal demands of general relativity) and scream to the heavens in chimp language, “You blew it all up, you bastards!”

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