Author: Jim

The Gullibility of Consumers

/ Jim / 1 Comment

 

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I just had a drink of water. Not out of a bottle. Not that which has been filtered to remove all possible (well, not all) contaminants, and not one that has been infused with vitamins or electrolytes (what are those anyway?) suggesting in both that consuming these will improve my health or my athletic performance. Nor was the water I just drank untouched by human hands(someone explain to me how that works?). No it was just plain old tap water. Very uncivilized of me.  I used to buy bottled water, then it occurred to me that i was already paying for the same thing, monthly, and I didn’t have to drive anywhere to get it. I even bought a fancy filter, believing that the tap water would suddenly be better for me and taste better, neither of which I was able to determine.

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This is Not the Way Science Works

/ Jim / 2 Comments

 

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I see it almost every day: A new study claims…, well whatever it happens to be depending on the day of the week. Most that I read predict some sort of doom-and-gloom for the human race. Some of them actually receive notice on the television networks. Think about it: a single study because national news. Whether it’s in print or on television, it’s rare that a single dissenting voice of the study is heard. What we’re looking at, I think, is a sort of scientific activism within those hallowed halls of journalism. We constantly see studies telling us we’re all going to die unless we all get on board and do something about climate change. What we never hear about are studies showing that, yes, the planet is warning, but it’s nothing to worry about. There are many of those studies but because it doesn’t fit the specific narrative we’re supposed to buy into, we rarely, if ever hear about it.

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Let’s Be Better, Atheists

/ Jim / 6 Comments

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Sometimes I view online atheism as disappointing. Many online appear, in my opinion, to view their mission to simply mock religious believers and never proffer an actual argument against some believer they’re having a dialogue with at the time. The discussion devolves into insult and condescension. I don’t think that’s a way to approach anyone’s dogma, and of course it doesn’t make either party look especially mature. There are some that are decent and ask respectable questions, only to receive the same condescending, attitude from the other person. Does that mean, as atheists, we should descend to the same level in response?

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Is Social Media Presence a Civil Right?

/ Jim / 8 Comments

 

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So now it seems a person may be permanently banned by social media, in this case, Facebook, for just appearing in a video with someone deemed  undesirable. That’s not going to work very well for journalists, is it as they are always interviewing, sometimes on camera, people that many people may despise because of their views on a number of topics. Oh, wait! No, they won’t ban these journalists as their ideological positions fit within what Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms view as acceptable. I’ve written numerous times about social media censoring and have stated outright that these are private companies and have ban whoever they want. After a lot of thought and conversation with other people I know and trust, I think that position is simplistic.

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Guilt By Association

/ Jim / 4 Comments

 

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We live in a hypersensitive society where just using the wrong pronoun for someone may lead a person to be publicly denounced. Never mind that someone may associate with the wrong people, those ideologically impure. It may even come down to the information someone consumes. Watch Fox News? You’re a right-wing, Nazi. MSNBC? A communist, anarchy supporter. The online sites a person may occasionally peruse would also be suspect. We’ve decided, well not all of us, but a vocal number of people, that what you read, who a person may occasionally associate with, is what defines that person.

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The Epistemological Intersectionality of Postmodernism

/ Jim / 6 Comments

 

 

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I was recently in a conversation on Twitter about, well, I’m not sure exactly, because it was so loaded with what was described at one point as academic language, that I had to read some of the posts twice before I think I understood what was being discussed. I actually replied that I wished people would start using English. There was actually some agreement with that response. I mean, in one tweet, someone referred to steelmanning, word I had never seen used before. It was used in a way to indicate an accusation made against the person tweeting. After looking it up, I discovered it was a way of taking an opponents strongest argument, and using that to refute their thesis. Now  I’ve bored myself.

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Blogging. Just Because I Can

/ Jim / 3 Comments

 

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Blogging, for me is an interesting hobby. I think for many of us that remain out here in the blogosphere, it’s become a way for us to express ourselves, simply, without all of the overhead that is required for other forms of media. Think about it, right now, I’m typing this on an old iPad, it requires nothing else than my WordPress subscription; I don’t require a video camera, or a microphone or even a special place to set down my thoughts. I can do this in my home office, in the living room, or as I am now, sitting outside on my patio, on a perfect morning, drinking coffee.

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Is it Really Deconversion?

/ Jim / 1 Comment

 

 

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I’ve never really cared for the word, deconversion. The actual meaning of the word, as a noun, is that it’s a return, from some religious belief to a previous belief or none at all.  For many, if not most atheists I know, they never had a chance to deconvert, because they never converted to their religious belief initially. Think about it. A child of parents from any religion automatically raise them to believe what those parents believe. Small children always, at least in my experience, want to please their parents, so it’s easy for them to take on those characteristics the parents indoctrinate them with, whether good or bad.

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Think Before You Retweet, or Re-Post.

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There are times when I log into social media, Twitter specifically, and scroll through my timeline that I see tweets that I think can’t possibly be real. By real I mean that it’s either fake news or some sort of joke/parody account. Of course parody accounts are usually self-described as just that, others that promote what turns out to be fake or incorrect information, seem to be less noticeable and some of those tweets will go viral in a short time without anyone  bothering to verify the content before retweeting (remember the Covington Catholic School debacle a few months ago?). So, I attempt to not retweet those that aren’t verifiable from more than one trusted source.

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Changing the World, One Idiot at a Time

/ Jim / 2 Comments

 

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I won’t compromise what I think is right. I won’t allow others to scream over me, trying to silence my voice, based on what I believe. No one should. The greatesd problems I see in my country today is people willing to be shouted down, and leave the stage, without any recourse to those that would prevent them from speaking, even writing, what they think about in any context. What foes on at the Higher Education level today is a disgrace to all those that fought for that right to speak on any topic, whether it was something generally accepted or not, to anyone that may want to listen.

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