Thank you. I for one will never forget you.
CHILDREN ARE NOT SMALL ADULTS
This reminds me of one of my finest hours...
While waiting for school to start, a bully got a smaller kid on the ground, sat on him, held his wrists to the ground and let spittle leak out of his mouth onto his victim's face. It made my 9 year old self very angry, so I jumped on the much larger kid so the little kid could get away.
Of course, I got my ass kicked, but it was worth it.
And the bully never fucked with me again.
This is another from the guy who photographs his daughter in poses from classical paintings...
Of course, I got my ass kicked, but it was worth it.
And the bully never fucked with me again.
This is another from the guy who photographs his daughter in poses from classical paintings...
I wish I had thought of that.
Elton John playing with George Best's balls...
Elton John playing with George Best's balls...
As a guy who likes to think up solutions to problems like surviving a zombie apocalypse, I never understood why they didn't take turns using a long sharpened rod to stab the zombies as they lined up at the chain link fence. Sure there are hundreds of them, but how long could it take?
And what about finding an island? Or a very large boat?
How about a more creative use of fire.
I call it lazy writing. What we have now is a bunch of egotistical posturing.
I watched this show every time it came on. Even at that young age I would scoff at the villains who, after shooting all their bullets, trying unsuccessfully to kill Superman, throw the pistol at him......and Superman dodges it!!!
How about a more creative use of fire.
I call it lazy writing. What we have now is a bunch of egotistical posturing.
I watched this show every time it came on. Even at that young age I would scoff at the villains who, after shooting all their bullets, trying unsuccessfully to kill Superman, throw the pistol at him......and Superman dodges it!!!
I have worked hard all my life. Some times I think I have worked too hard on some projects that didn't pan out.
Without a doubt, the hardest work I have ever done was writing books. They aren't Literature with a capital L, but it was not due to lack of effort.
I have become a fan of decorating one's body. The more original the design the better, of course. Picking a design off the display wall is just going along with the crowd, in my opinion, and should be avoided at all costs....unless you are drunk, then, hey, all bets are off....
Without a doubt, the hardest work I have ever done was writing books. They aren't Literature with a capital L, but it was not due to lack of effort.
I have become a fan of decorating one's body. The more original the design the better, of course. Picking a design off the display wall is just going along with the crowd, in my opinion, and should be avoided at all costs....unless you are drunk, then, hey, all bets are off....
I wrote a short story about "Crooked Tree".
Near my neighborhood when I was growing up, there was a tree (similar to the one above) that had been broken as a sapling, but kept growing horizontally until the vertical limbs were tree sized. A right of passage for each male child was to get the nerve and/or size and strength to leap from one of the limbs to the other from high above the ground.
The myth was that an indian had been shot and when he fell to the ground he broke the tree, but his blood made it so that the tree would not die.
What an amazing image. It's the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.....
The myth was that an indian had been shot and when he fell to the ground he broke the tree, but his blood made it so that the tree would not die.
What an amazing image. It's the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.....
LET'S TALK, SHALL WE?
The moment we acquired self awareness, humans seem to have a great need to think they are special.....special as in greatest thing in the universe special...
In all the myths, we were made in the likeness of the all powerful Oz; the invisible creator in the sky, because we are special.
Modern humans believing myths from the Bronze Age (the bible) is one of the most perplexing things I have ever tried to explain....think December 21, 2012 Mayan bullshit. I put that squarely on the same plane as the rapture or whatever you want to call it....you know, the bible story of the seven headed dragon fucking with us.
I realize we want to know the answer to this next guy's question, but not knowing (as I freely admit) is not such a bad thing.
What should be a clue in your quest for answers is whether you believe the exact same things as your parents.
I put the fear of hell in the exact same category as this next myth...
I can remember the exact day of my personal moment of clarity.
I lived in Birmingham, Alabama until my teens years.
I was as guilty as anyone else brought up in that culture of using the word nigger without a second thought. I didn't hate black people, exactly, but I was absolutely certain that they were inferior.
Then I moved to Oklahoma.
In Oklahoma they don't give a shit whether you are black or not. I never heard the word nigger. Black people were included in all parties, etc.
But the white people like me hated indians and KNEW they were inferior.
Now, in Alabama, having a distant relative who was indian made you proud and people bragged about it. Now the tables were switched and I was confused.
That was my epiphany. On that day I laid down every value I had, then I picked them up one at a time and asked myself if it was bullshit like the racism or was it worth making a part of my life. I would ask why I was thinking this or that way and if the answer was that I was taught to think that way by my parents, I remembered their track record on blacks and indians and it immediately became suspect.
As one should be able to predict, when I picked up the whole talking snake, heaven/hell, invisible man in the sky value.....it came up lacking....and I left it on the table and never regretted it.
Living a good life without looking for the reward of heaven or fearing the punishment of hell is so much more........pure.
Of course, there were other long held beliefs that remained on the table and out of my life...
And now the last point.
I will freely admit that I am not only an atheist, but an anti-deist. In my opinion organized religion has caused so many of man's problems that it is irredeemable and should be fought with every tool at my disposal.
To all you people who have told me (confessed to me) that even if they have great doubts, it makes them feel better, I'm sorry, but I can't let you off the hook either. You are not a lemming or a sheep. You can be good and do good without all the mumbo-jumbo bullshit. Try it.
I put the fear of hell in the exact same category as this next myth...
I lived in Birmingham, Alabama until my teens years.
Then I moved to Oklahoma.
In Oklahoma they don't give a shit whether you are black or not. I never heard the word nigger. Black people were included in all parties, etc.
But the white people like me hated indians and KNEW they were inferior.
Now, in Alabama, having a distant relative who was indian made you proud and people bragged about it. Now the tables were switched and I was confused.
That was my epiphany. On that day I laid down every value I had, then I picked them up one at a time and asked myself if it was bullshit like the racism or was it worth making a part of my life. I would ask why I was thinking this or that way and if the answer was that I was taught to think that way by my parents, I remembered their track record on blacks and indians and it immediately became suspect.
As one should be able to predict, when I picked up the whole talking snake, heaven/hell, invisible man in the sky value.....it came up lacking....and I left it on the table and never regretted it.
Living a good life without looking for the reward of heaven or fearing the punishment of hell is so much more........pure.
Of course, there were other long held beliefs that remained on the table and out of my life...
I will freely admit that I am not only an atheist, but an anti-deist. In my opinion organized religion has caused so many of man's problems that it is irredeemable and should be fought with every tool at my disposal.
To all you people who have told me (confessed to me) that even if they have great doubts, it makes them feel better, I'm sorry, but I can't let you off the hook either. You are not a lemming or a sheep. You can be good and do good without all the mumbo-jumbo bullshit. Try it.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!
I would appreciate any information in new technology like this. Send me a link in the comments, please.
This is fucking hilarious...unless you are a muslim....
This is fucking hilarious...unless you are a muslim....
Let's revisit the instructions on stoning for adultery...
I don't give a shit about Iranians one way or the other, but the fact is they are governed by one of the most bat-shit crazy religions the world has ever invented, and I take delight in jabbing them with my limited inventory of weaponry.
This artist has many of these. They are delightfully called "Photographs of Neatly Arranged Objects"....
I don't give a shit about Iranians one way or the other, but the fact is they are governed by one of the most bat-shit crazy religions the world has ever invented, and I take delight in jabbing them with my limited inventory of weaponry.
This artist has many of these. They are delightfully called "Photographs of Neatly Arranged Objects"....
Johnny Depp and Ed Harris are the two that most surprise me...
If you are white you just can't pull this off without looking like a complete fool...
This reminds me of a story....
An American was buying tickets at a German train station and the clerk said, "...then at this stop you transfer to a French train, but it's always late, so be prepared."
The American said, "Why don't the French trains run on time?"
The German said, "Don't blame us. We got them running on time twice, but you Americans came over here and gave them back to them."
Another photo of my wife's family...
The American said, "Why don't the French trains run on time?"
The German said, "Don't blame us. We got them running on time twice, but you Americans came over here and gave them back to them."
Another photo of my wife's family...
I'm sorry I did that to you.
This man is not married...
This man is not married...
I once taught my dog, a puppy, to fetch the paper in two lessons. It was so small that on Sunday I had to sneak out the back door, run around to the front yard, take out most of the pages, then go back in the house and let the dog out to retrieve a paper small enough to fetch.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are Pavlov's dogs...
You might want to save this next one so for when your dog does something really, really stupid and you have thoughts that he's the stupidest dog in the world..
If they did it for this horse, why can't they do it for the race horses?
Public transportation......yeah, sign me up....
I should have showed this to my daughter when she went to ride elephants last year...
I bet he will never do that again...
....if he even remembers what happened.
Sometimes I think I'm too picky, but then I watch my dog look for a place to shit.
Scientists have recently discovered why he does this.
Sometimes I think I'm too picky, but then I watch my dog look for a place to shit.
Scientists have recently discovered why he does this.
Because he fucking can.
Can you tell what happened?
A bird shit right in his mouth!
Talk about getting your money's worth...
Talk about getting your money's worth...
And not one fuck was given....
One of my very own...
OOMVO...
Don't make fun of people with lisps. They are probably thick and tired of it.
I once read "Why use Google, when Jesus has all the answers."
Yeah, like I'm going to ask Jesus where to find midget porn.
He looks so sad.....
Yeah, like I'm ever going to need this....
Black people are way more susceptible to diabetes. That's not racist, it's jus a medical fact.
Now if I said, "Hide your wallet there's a lot of diabetes patients in this neighborhood," that would be racist.
5 comments:
So much to love in today's post, especially the N word vs Indians.
What kind of info do you want?
Here's the Myo website:
https://getmyo.com/
Not much there but jargon and marketing.
The Myo is a remix of two rapidly-developing but common technologies:
Wikipedia/Electromyography
^ for measuring the electricity generated by muscles; common in medicine
Wikipedia/Inertial_measurement_unit
^ for keeping track of an object's position and movement in 3D space; common in avionics, smartphones & tablets, etc
Also involved in the mix are an ARM processor (again common in smartphones), some batteries, and whatever plastics and metals make up the band itself.
The electromyography bit of the Myo is electrodes which pick up the arm's electrical signals + whatever software interprets their output. The IMU is made of these:
Wikipedia/Microelectromechanical_Systems
... aka MEMs (these are used as opposed to e.g. an analog-to-digital mechanical gyroscope, which obviously wouldn't work in a tiny device).
The most interesting thing about this, to me, is that they're (apparently) getting fairly fine-grained and consistent readings from their electrodes without the saline interface (gel smear) you commonly see with medical electrodes.
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While the Myo is "groundbreaking" in that it's the first such working device to achieve anything like commercial success (something like 10,000 pre-orders, I think), it's not the first such device (see the Microsoft MUCI, developed in 2008):
https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+muci
Prior to the MUCI people were predicting things like the Myo, because the ever-cheapening and ever-shrinking nature of MEMS and EGM tech were obvious even in the 90s.
I don't know if I've posted it here before, but if you have a half-hour, I think you'd like Kerby Ferguson's series of four short vids called Everything is a Remix:
http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
At the end of one of the vids he used a great quote about innovation from Henry Ford:
“I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.”
That applies to paintings and sculptures as much as it does to vehicles and the Myo, and that's why people calling themselves "artists" usually gets my dander up. When people label themselves that way, they tend to mean that they're good at drawing, painting, sculpting, filming, playing music, etc... so why not just call oneself an illustrator, sculptor, director, musician, etc?
There's this pervasive notion in modern culture that visual and performing arts are in some way more aesthetically pleasing or meaningful than e.g. designing industrial tooling or surveying the countryside to lay in a road or whatever. In reality, all human endeavor is reducible to creative instincts (even our very worst endeavors) and there's interest and meaning—both aesthetic and intellectual—to be found pretty much everywhere.
Great stuff today Ralph. Thanks for sharing how you came about your revelations. very interesting.
Hm. Did you get my comment from earlier?
Yes, Matt, I got it and have been too busy to check out all the sites. I thank you very much.
Live long and procreate wisely.
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