This is why I'm in a band

Probability of my jacket being stolen in a club: 15%

Probability of my iPod falling out of the stolen jacket's pocket: 5%

Probability of one of my three friends left finding my iPod - without knowing it was stolen - in a club with 400 people: 0.75%

Them figuring out it's my iPod because songs from my band are on it: Fucking Awesome.

Let's separate the Knower from the Known

Let's do it, baby.

So, talking about knowledge, beliefs, and truth real quick. Seriously, real quick.

I thought about this today while thinking about agnosticism vs. atheism...

If one is an agnostic, and thus doesn't know whether there is a god or not, because he is not sure, consequently one would have to doubt everything in the world just as much. Admitting that you are an agnostic, you say "contrary to no evidence what-so-ever proving the existence of a god or gods, I choose to still not be sure of whether there is one or not." And I am not even talking about the nut-job... excuse me... fundamentalists literal truth god but any god. When one isn't sure about something being not there or actually there that has been disproven by all means of science as far as currently humanly (maybe physically) possible, it should resolve in a lot more questions than just: 

"Is there a god? I am not sure!"

Furthermore:

Is the moon made out of blue cheese? Is gravity really just invisible goblins constantly winning a invisible tug-o-war against invisible griffins? Is everyone dead, is life a dream, am I dead, am I awake? I am not sure!

Having similar doubts all the time would require a lot of creativity, but would also seriously blow ass.

Constantly everyone involved in the process of living chooses to accept scientific concepts, laws of nature, or anything that surrounds us and we perceive through our senses as truth - as something that we can know. I don't want to say that this is the ultimate way, but it certainly enables ANYONE (fundamentalists, atheists, agnostics, butchers, tap-dancers, and many more) to live life without constantly worrying about floating away into space or worrying about whether the world is going to explode in one second.

(BOOM - Oh Shit.)

In short, without this we wouldn't be able to live. So we do make constant decisions (unconscious or not doesn't really matter) to accept certain visible things as truth. How then do we draw the line when it comes to a god or religion? How is it that some people decide to accept it as a truth, some people decide to deem it as "unknowable," and some are certain that it's baloney (Bologna, yeah, whateffz)?

Seriously, I can understand the religious side of this triad of theism in this argument better than the agnostic one. Obviously I am on the atheist side, but I can see how you choose a truth that has been taught to you over decades by family, friends, and the clergy/priests/really nice people in big buildings with symbols on the roof. But I can't see how you can be a non-religious person on the basis of not-knowing-for-sure. Because, as established, what the f do we really know for sure? We pick and choose on many things (2+2=4 ... Truth! Hooray, let's have a cup of tea.) based on our education, experience, genes, history, bla. It's just me, but picking and choosing beats "I don't know man..." any day. Especially when you have access to the information required to make a pretty educated guess.

This by no means is a suggested argument against doubt or the concept of it, because as atheist or as theist you should still doubt. But declaring your position as the position of the one without a clue, you are picking the easy way out, dude.

Short is short and long is long. This might not be as short as promised, but I am done.

... OR AM I?

Muahahahaaaa....

Merry Christ... we don't even know when... mas!

I love Christmas.

In a pagan kind of way... in a family-come-together-celebrate kind of way, in a I-get-to-go-home-way, in a give-me-some-fucking-presents kind of way, in a spread-some-awesome-love kind of way. Short: in the way in which everyone should love it. Maybe not exclusively, but definitely includingly (not a word, not a problem)!

I mean, we celebrate it - and it's kind of Christian, cause it has "Christ" in it - but in the end we barely know + - 10 years when Jesus was born. So how come we are so certain it's today?

So let's all enjoy it, atheists and non-atheists (achm... Christians!) of the western world (or eastern, if you wanna come along for shits + giggles)! Because it's awesome and it's positive. And it is a great opportunity to have some time off and spend it with family, friends, and partying with those.

And good wine.

Good Night and Merry Christmas to the whole lotta ya'll!

Post scriptum:

Love it, cause Hitler can't steal your seat anymore!

If you fly...

Hope for a blue sky.

Kansas City to Cincinnati delayed,

Mechanical error they said.

Flight to Paris fled, instead

In Cincinnati I stayed.

Cincinnati, woman in blue said,

"It was the weather's fault.

Therefore: you pay. Default!"

I pay and hang my head.

"At least Business class tomorrow,"

I think and go to sleep.

Next day, DELAY AGAIN, I weep.

In Atlanta I land, 10 minutes from sorrow.

I run and climb and sweat and curse.

Arrive at the gate and see my plane!

But the doors are closed and I strain

My voice to make my claim

That I need to be on this plane.

My pleas in vain, oh what a shame,

Another plane left and I remain.

Another woman in blue, and I converse.

"My plane left without me!"

"I understand, rebooking in progress.

No flight tonight, but do not stress,

Maybe tomorrow, or Tuesday."

"Tuesday you say!? 2 more day!?"

"It is the weather! Hotel! You pay!"

"I will not pay, there is no way!"

"The Woman in Red, I guess,

Has more power, less stress."

To the Woman in Red I flee.

"There are no flights,

but what do you claim?

The flight from KC is to blame?

A mechanical error you say it was?

Records say, 'Maintenance was the cause.'

They made you pay? A shame!

Hotel on us, glad you came."

Savior in Red, 2 free nights.

Hotel is nice, friendly, and large.

In my room, a flat screen TV.

And also, on floor three,

A gym, free of charge.

I hope to be,

In Germany,

With family,

By Christmas.

Lev says it for me...

This pretty much sums up how I feel about this topic fairly well:

He probably did!

I haven't posted in almost a month.

Nothing really new to report, except that more people need to appreciate this:

Save money. Die better. Walmart

The Craziest Thing I Ever Heard...

Recently in class here at William Jewell, one of my fellow student talked about a religious practice in some cult. That student said it was, "the weirdest thing I ever heard about."

This provoked me to think about "the weirdest/craziest thing I ever heard about." It was also religion related and came as a little revelation (sarcasm, maybe) to me. Most certainly do I believe that there are a lot of crazy people, cults, and communities out there. They do crazy stuff and embrace their crazy s*** as super awesome pastime activities. But are those crazy things (killing each other, killing their children, eating each other - get as crazy as you want, let your mind wander and I bet someone or even some group did it) the "craziest things I ever heard about?"

Nope, because the premise for this to happen is that there are a couple of kooks out there that unite to do some crazy s***tuff (I just really feel like conforming to the American censorship of language and not swear so much right now). As mentioned above, it's a given that there are some nuts out there. So, do these lunatics and their actions surprise me? Maybe the creativity they come up with new s*** to do, but that's about it. Every toddler has access to the internet and can read up all the crazy s***, nothing new most of the times. So, what are "the craziest things I ever heard about?"

I quickly (much quicker than it took me to write those last two paragraphs or it took you to read them) came to the conclusion that my motivation for many posts in this blog are due to the craziest s*** I ever heard about. It's the creationists and literal-truth-of-the-bible movement. The craziest s*** I ever heard about has to be based on more than just some few lunatics, because that might be totally out of the social norm, but - as mentioned - enacted by nut-jobs. The creationist movement is a huge movement that - in large parts - consists of fairly well educated individuals with the ability for critical though processes (when it comes to anything BUT religion). It is deeply rooted in a 21st century, 1st world country that happens to be considered to be one of the prime examples of industrial evolution ("Evolution!" Oh, sweet irony). One of the - maybe the - most powerful countries in the world.

1/3 of this industrialized, highly educated people embraces a view as "the absolute truth" that has been disproven for more than 150 years and was strongly in doubt several years before it's Episode II was even written (6th century BCE).

Ultimately I think that how "crazy" something is has to be measured not only by how much it contradicts our current perception of what a social norm is (I do think eating each other is more crazy than believing in a being that makes stuff appear. Whenever, wherever, without any proof except an old book) but also by how many people follow it.

My formula for overall general craziness of an action/belief goes something like this:

Degree of Craziness = [(Number of People Involved + Number of People Killed) * Discord with Social Norms] - Weighted Scientific Evidence that Actions/Beliefs were/are Necessary for Society

You can see how in my - I think - fairly rational formula many crazy actions quickly move towards a freakin' high degree of craziness. At first I wanted to divide by the "Scientific Evidence" factor, but then thought better of it, as most even just moderately crazy stuff would be considered "impossibly crazy" as we would have to divide by "0."

So let's test the formula with an example!

30 alien-loving cult members kill themselves on the roof of a skyscraper on New Year's 99-2000.

Variables:

Discord with Social Norms (Standardized scale of 1-10, 10 being highest discord) - Killing oneself:

7 - pretty crazy, but not excessively punished by law.

Number of people involved:

30

Number of people killed:

30

Scientific Evidence:

0 - fairly indiscernible right now, but so far I think it's fair to assume that there was/is/will be not a lot of evidence supporting this to be the way to awesomeness.

[(30 + 30) * 7] - 0 = 420

From this first experiment I would say that anything above 100 can be considered pretty crazy.

Very scientific, I know.

I will leave you with this for now. I encourage anyone and anything to try this formula and see if you can come up with interesting results, prove it totally wrong, or improve it!

Also, I encourage an exercise of the mind... looking at how crazy the "literal Christians" movement is. Don't forget to include empirical data of the last couple millennia. As soon as I have another hour to spare, I will try to write a post looking at that.

My Motivation

Haven't been writing in a while.

Am planning on two big posts that will come once I get a little more time here at Jewell... busy bee.

For all German-speaking friends, this is my motivation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdNt3hgIYuI

Westboro Baptist Church is pretty close to where I was living for the first 2 years in the U.S.

English speaking friends. You know the Church, you know they are nuts, I just felt like pointing out some extremists that take it all a little extremer.

:)

Back to my essays, papers, readings.

Quickly... and Inglourious Basterds

Yeah, I am at William Jewell College now.

So far it's going really good. Baseball and classes started of good, and so on and on and on...

I know this is not really what people come to read Blogs for. If they come at all. But also, this is not what I want my Blog to be for. So... here we go!

I watched the Tarantino movie Inglourious Basterds the other day and I really loved it. It easily surpasses most of the other movies he has done. While I think it surpasses Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs as well, it doesn't really do it very easily, and probably it only surpasses them in my own little world of movie-rankings because by now I watched P. F. and R. D. too often.

Anyways... I decided to write a quick review with a special focus on how it handles German culture and the whole "Hollywood movies + German Nazis" problems. Cause, as most of you hopefully know/realized, most of the time this simple addition is solved to "= lets shoot some fucking Germans that are really stupid and evil."

Seriously, most of the times I feel like if you want to do a movie where a lot of people get shot and it's awesome to shoot them, either make them German Nazis or Zombies.

In his newest movie Inglourious Basterds Tarantino depicts Nazi Germany and it’s people with an amount of respect and detail that I wouldn’t have expected from him or any major Hollywood production. While I greatly despise the acts of the Nazi regime, I also despise the many shallow movie presentations of the German people, the reduction of German culture to angry sounding people that really need to be shot as fast and as numerous as possible.

Nazi Germany is a topic for itself and that every Nazi should have been stopped is out of the question. What impresses me so much about Tarantino’s most recent endeavour is that he manages to connect his well-know love for gore and violence with a great deal of atmosphere and respectful treatment of Germans. The movie is based on the premise of a group out to kill as many Nazis as possible, but at the same time it involves an enormous amount of German spoken language by an impressive selection of famous and great German actors.

It is very apparent throughout the whole movie that Tarantino and his crew put great effort and man-power into adjusting the script so it would involve German culture in a great amount, not to mention the flawless German that was scripted and consequently spoken. Little details like the way Germans show the number “3” compared to how Americans do it play essential roles in the movie.

All these factors adding up in the movie make not just a great movie, but also communicate a cultural responsibility and awareness that I have rarely experienced in any WW2/Nazi movies, especially ones coming from the U.S.

The movie is by no means primary or secondary a cultural work meant to establish tolerance and understanding, but between the lines (or the pictures/sound) one can clearly see how it can establish more distinctive and multi-faceted perceptions of (Nazi-) Germany.

If you guys want to know more about what is going on with me mail me, facebook me, studivz me, reply here, yell it off a mountain.

All the stuff that I don't really feel like posting here, are just things like moving out of my apartment, a light pulled hamstring, and cafeteria food. Not very intellectually intriguing or interesting to read for anyone but - probably - my parents. Although I doubt even they would be blown away by narratives about aforementioned events.


I want to leave you with the thought that I had about how - while I really liked I. B. (watch out, I feel a long tangent coming... oooohhh, here it comes: isn't it funny how all Tarantino movies, directed by him, seem to be just two words? Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds. Awesome.) - it seems to me that Tarantino is unable to develop a deeper connection to characters?

I liked most of the characters in the movie a lot and they were really well played and everything. But when they died (which almost all of them in good Tarantino fashion did) I didn't really feel sad.

It really strikes me with I.B. a lot more than with other movies by him because I. B. is more about atmosphere, actors, and characters than about referencing older movies and being super awesome cool shooting people in the face yeah bitch.

If you feel like it, yell what you think off a mountain.

Leaving.

PPE (post-publishing-edit):

Oh yeah, I also made a new video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bt8isqQRiM