Random Rants from a Space Nut

Stephen Mansfield has some stuff to say about the 81% in an article entitled "After 'Choosing Donald Trump,' Is The Evangelical Church In Crisis?"  And I mostly agree with him.  In the places where I don't, it's usually because I don't think he goes far enough. For example, he says, "They are in crisis.  And I think there's a lot of healing that needs to happen." Yes, but we can't leave it at that.  There's a lot of repentance that needs to happen.  "Healing" can't really take place without it. And that repentance needs to come from various corners, not just the ones that were loudly political and appointed with the movement's money and resolve to speak for all within the tribe.  I don't harbor the illusion that every Evangelical wanted to gain societal influence through political means -- but I do recall a strange silence on the matter as far as most people were concerned.  A good number of them were p...

Why I love Steins;Gate so darned much -- a brainstorm that, I hope, gets people talking about fictional works that have touched them on a profound level: Potential spoilers ahoy!  * It's character-driven.  There's no question that, especially in the second half, everything happens because of who Okabe Rintarou is .  When the show shifts in tone, it not only changes what you think the show is doing; it changes how you see the main character.  That's brilliant.  * The main character seems at first to be oblivious to everyone but himself, with an awkward, off-putting personality(*) that holds everyone at a distance -- but the story carries emotional weight precisely because Okabe cares so very deeply about people he encounters, and wants desperately for the right thing to happen to them, even at his own expense... even though he keeps screwing that up .  That's exactly the kind of person I want to be (minus the "screwing up" part, even though I seem...

I'd just like to try to jot down some of the questions that struck me after the first watching of the Blade Runner  sequel ( Blade Runner 2049 ).  I'm hoping that some of them will lead to interesting philosophical questions. I should mention that there will be spoilers, so if you want to go into the movie fresh, stop reading now.  * There are ways we define ourselves as human in terms of what it is that we want.  We want, for example, to be treated fairly, to have our rights recognized, and to be loved by other humans.  Joi was expressing something like this when she demanded to remain only in her emitter so that K couldn't be traced if people examined the memories of the copy in his apartment.  She said she wanted to die "like a real girl". This is flipped on its head when K sees the billboard hologram of Joi -- a creation that, its marketers assure us, allows us to "see what [we] want" and "hear what [we] want".  (That may even be why...

I think I've hit on a way to talk to people when an accusation of conspiracy is thrown into the discussion in a way that's respectful and keeps things on track. For example, a creationist might assert that the only reason radiometric dating is thought to be reliable is because there's a scientific conspiracy to suppress results that would cast doubt on the method. The tactic I'm hoping might gain some traction is to point out that conspiracy theories don't contribute to the discussion by inventing one of my own in the opposite direction.  I could point out, for example, that it's hypothetically possible that there is a conspiracy on the part of creationists to make radiometric dating look unreliable; the conspiracists merely misrepresent results or invent anecdotes so that the method looks dubious. If this gives me enough room, of course, I would hope to be able to explain that conjectures about conspirators get us nowhere, because they can be used to e...

This is just the fulfillment of a promise.  :) Any of you remember that old children's song about the old lady who swallowed a fly?  I feel like we're living that, sometimes. He started a civil war to distract from the nukes He yelled about nukes to distract from the Muslim ban He created a Muslim ban to distract from his "health care" He leaned on his "health care" to distract from his staff He hired his staff to distract from the wall He talked up a wall to distract from his taxes He hid his returns to distract from the spy ... I don't know why With the Russians he'd spy; Perhaps we'll die