out of mind

windowinyourhead asked: "Pseudoscience" suggests there might be some element of science present. Astrology is faith-based, which is to say, religion.

I agree that it has more of a religious tone in terms of believing without understanding, but astrology has a very rich history. It’s basically the primitive version of astronomy, so it’s just a matter of correcting ones course to interpret the universe correctly.

People who are hard core believers of such pseudoscience are not corrupting the world, they’re simply choosing not to reach beyond their own understanding because of the way it already makes them feel. It’s a gap of ignorance they have yet to cross. That’s a very similar parallel to the way religions persuade others’ minds to operate as well, but astrologists are not banning together against climate change, women’s reproductive “rights” or gay marriage.

However, astrology will eventually fade out, as will other religions in terms of superimposing these “truths” or this pseudo “knowledge” onto others as well as applying it across the board, globally overgeneralizing and completely tuning out the societal factors at hand along with the persistent, applicable and rapidly-advancing understanding of how our brains/minds function.

The way I look at astrology is this….I’m just glad you’re looking up and paying attention to the stars. If you don’t have anyone around you providing you with any more information on the stars and planets you so dearly attribute to the way you are and the interpret our existence, then you’re limiting yourself to truly understanding the natural world for what it really is.

Understanding the way the planets and the stars operate manifests true awe and slowly displaces your feeling of connectivity once sought through pseudo-practices like astrology. You want to know, or you don’t. If you don’t, you’re not doing anyone any favors by putting others onto it or again, superimposing your own insecurities and willful ignorance onto another person’s life. There’s no excuse for ignorance anymore. Our technological advances as a civilization have brought forth abundant knowledge and global access. To waiver that “right” as a human being - knowledge, curiosity, understanding, intelligence - is to deny life itself.

Because once you go down that road and you take the little that you know, applying this naïvety to your peers, loved ones, etc. - whom are all faced with diverse struggles for a multitude of reasons brought forth by this society and the reality we live in, dealing with them through their own understanding of life - you are automatically assuming what you’re “preaching” or passing on, is correct.

I would much rather be sharing the correct information based upon my understanding of the world as it actually is, which exhibits true recognition and respect regarding what that person is going through so that I can effectively assess the situation coherently and confidently, to comfort and strengthen someone emotionally and intellectually as well, so they are able to move forward with new knowledge.

Astrology, much like religion, is like staring into a fire and admiring its physical and aesthetic beauty, but never getting too close to the fire. A comfortable relationship based upon something perceived as too complex, too mysterious to grasp, yet using that a tool for how you navigate through and assess life. And to make matters worse, it’s a dangerous social tool passed onto others, dispersed as some kind of independent spiritual truth.

But without ever experiencing what it’s like to get burned and the natural laws coupled with the biological/neurological understanding of the way fire truly “works”, you’re “truth” - whether it be pseudoscience/religion - complicates the lives of others when passed off or shared as this beneficial understanding and connection with reality, which is based on false pretenses, primitive understanding or “ancient wisdom, some of these are called”. I don’t need to go forth with breaking down how harmful this is to a person, let alone a society, let alone a global population, let alone a species - the only species, mind you - with the ability to rationalize themselves out of the truth, making them a danger to themselves, others and the environment they coexist amongst.

So there. If anyone wants to know why I have any type of anti-religious bias, here it is. Not all religions and spiritual practices are harmful in this way, but the ones that are harmful and manipulative are the ones indoctrinating the minds of the youth in the present day.

I too am just learning you have a kid. And the way you conduct yourself here, and what you say you do with him to spend time together is great. It’s so sad that I have to say this… but it’s so rare nowadays to see a parent truly give a damn. Thank you for not being a crappy parent… because I feel being a mediocre or worse parent is far too common and also responsible for a LOT of our woes in today’s society. :/ — hazderpy

It is sad, but it’s the harsh reality we live in. There are parents who try to “make up for their past” or “give their kids a better life than they had” without actually taking the time to understand themselves; in turn, putting the child/children through the same anguish they faced or worse.

I received so many “baby books” when I became a father *unexpectedly*, and I didn’t read one fucking book. Because it was logical. I loved being around kids. I wasn’t scared of being a father, what to do or my responsibilities. I knew they *the responsibilities that lie ahead* were scary and were to be life altering. I was only concerned about the well-being of his health and financially being able to take care of him so that I wouldn’t lose him. And to me, that’s the saddest part I’ve had to deal with as a father. The simple fact that I’ve actually had to stress about money - paper - which, now, is the least of my concerns.

Scientific literacy, true love and like I said in my latest response: teaching him how to think, not what to think…those are what I will provide for him and if something were to happen to me, I’m secure in knowing that I’ve left him this blog, my knowledge, memories, love and a stellar library of literature :)

rimbalzante asked: Well I have a huge range of interests, but I need to pick a topic for my technical writing class and my teacher suggested something ecological!

Hmm…ecology….

Ok here’s a topic: how about light pollution? Although many people who bring up this topic tend to stick to the simple reality that we are endangering our night sky and our inability to grasp the cosmos through inadequate stargazing conditions, there’s an entire ecosystem at work which was just fine until we came along and started to snuff out the night lights :(

It’d be a wonderful and broad topic with far reaching implications to elaborate on. Here are some resources to get you started:

IDA (International Dark Sky Association)
National Geographic: Our Vanishing Night
How Light Pollution Works
The City Dark | Documentary

Anonymous asked: Your last post about the government not having better weapons than people is the stupidest thing I've read today.

sagansense:

Woah. That’s creepy for everyone. Stay original, tumblr. I love you.

(Source: sagansense)

ironkilledthestar asked: I'm confused, do you also run the blog dubbed Sagansense?

Yeah, sorry, I may have to let everyone know this, it’s caused a bit of confusion here & there, but inspirement, which surprisingly just reached 700 followers, was my personal/main blog originally, until I created sagansense. I’d much rather have sagansense be my main blog but unfortunately tumblr doesn’t allow that to be edited. However, I may begin to merge content to incorporate some environmental politics and potentially eliminate that blog entirely. I don’t think Carl would’ve had any objection to this :)

sagansense:

5 ways Obama is just like George W. Bush
January 15, 2013

On President Barack Obama’s second full day in the Oval Office in 2009, he signed important executive orders that signaled a clear break with the excesses of George W. Bush’s “war on terror.” Obama decreed that the Guantanamo Bay prison camp would be closed in a year and that the United States would no longer perpetrate torture. No longer would men, some of them innocent, languish without charges in what has been described as an American gulag by Amnesty International. No longer would men be subjected to brutal interrogation tactics that clearly amounted to torture, like water boarding.

The orders would “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism,” said Obama.

Fast-forward to today. Guantanamo remains open, warrantless wiretapping continues, and drone strikes have accelerated, leading to the deaths of innocent civilians and a burst in support for anti-American forces in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia. Instead of breaking with the Bush era, Obama has codified and permanently institutionalized the “war on terror” framework that has characterized American foreign policy since the September 11, 2001 attacks. And they have done all of this largely in secret, refusing to open up about how drone strikes are decided on. So while torture has been thrown out of the American playbook, other black marks remain. Obama has done everything but restore “core constitutional values” to how the U.S. conducts itself around the world.

Perhaps the most potent symbol of Obama’s willingness to institutionalize Bush-era frameworks for dealing with terrorism is his January 2013 appointment of John Brennan as new Central Intelligence Agency director. Brennan was a key supporter of many Bush-favored tactics used by the CIA, including torture and extraordinary rendition. When Obama first contemplated appointing Brennan in his first term to the post he’s been appointed to now, the outcry was swift and Brennan pulled out from consideration. Now, the reaction has been meek—a symbol of how Bush-era military and intelligence tactics have become normalized to the extent that nobody bats an eye when a man with a sordid record at the CIA is appointed to head up the entire agency.

Obama has kept the U.S. on a permanent war footing with no end in sight through a variety of methods. Here are five ways the Obama administration has institutionalized the never-ending war on terror.

1. Drones

The image of the gray, pilotless aircraft flying through the sky to eventually rain hellfire down will be indelibly tied to Obama. His administration has made drone strikes in countries like Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan the weapon of choice when it comes to dealing with suspected militants. You have to look at the numbers of drone strikes under the Bush and Obama administrations to truly appreciate how Obama has taken this Bush tool and increased its use exponentially.

The first drone strike in U.S. history occurred in 2002, when a CIA-operated drone fired on three men in Afghanistan. The drone strikes have since migrated over to battlefields away from U.S.-declared wars. In Pakistan, the Bush administration carried out a total of 52 strikes, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which closely tracks drone strikes. That led to the deaths of an estimated 438 people, including 182 civilians and 112 children. But the Obama administration has ordered at least 300 drone strikes in Pakistan—and Obama’s second term has yet to begun. Those strikes have killed about 2,152 people, including 290 civilians, of whom 64 were children.

The drone strikes also have a devastating impact beyond the deaths reported. As a New York University/Stanford University study on drone strikes stated, the constant buzzing of drones in the sky “terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves.”

Instead of looking forward to how this permanent drone war might end, the Obama administration has decided to institutionalize the process. In October 2012, the Washington Post revealed that the administration had undertaken a two-year long strategy to institutionalize what has become known as the “kill list,” or the list of suspected terrorists the Obama administration unilaterally decides to kill by drone strikes. The administration calls it the “disposition matrix,” which refers to the different plans the administration has to “dispose” of suspected militants. The Post described the “matrix” as part of “the highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war.”

2. Warrantless Wiretapping

One of the enduring scandals of the George W. Bush years was that administration’s practice of wiretapping American citizens with no warrant in order to spy on suspected terrorists. TheNew York Times, which broke the story in 2005, reported that “months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying.” The move raised concerns that the Bush administration was crossing constitutional limits on wiretapping Americans.

But the outcry from those concerned with civil liberties has largely been muted in the Obama era. In late December 2012, President Obama signed an extension of a law that allows the U.S. to “eavesdrop on communications and review email without following an open and public warrant process,” as NPR summed it up. The law was an extension of the 2008 law that legalized the Bush administration’s wiretapping of American citizens.

As national security blogger Marcy Wheeler notes in a recent piece for the Nation, the president’s signature on the new bill on wiretapping means that the U.S. “has nearly unrestrained authority to eavesdrop on those who communicate with people outside the country. The government doesn’t even need to show that these foreign targets are terrorists or that the conversations center around a plot. This means any international communication may be subject to wiretapping.”

3. Proxy Detentions

Under the Bush administration, the process of “extraordinary rendition” involved abducting people accused of terrorism and shipping them off to another country where they were interrogated and tortured. The Obama administration has continued to use foreign countries to detain and interrogate suspects, but the details of how they do it are changed from the Bush era. Still, the overall practice of using other security forces to do your dirty work remains in place.

The Washington Postreported on January 1 that “the Obama administration has embraced rendition — the practice of holding and interrogating terrorism suspects in other countries without due process — despite widespread condemnation of the tactic in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.” While the Post used the term “rendition,” the more accurate term would be “proxy detention,” as Mother Jones pointed out.

The most recent iterations of the practice of using other countries to detain suspects the U.S. wants to interrogate have been in countries like Dijibouti and Nigeria. The Post reported on one December 2011 case in which an man from Eritrea “revealed that he had been questioned in a Ni­ger­ian jail by what a U.S. interrogator described as a ‘dirty’ team of American agents who ignored the suspect’s right to remain silent or have a lawyer, according to court proceedings.”

Other cases have been publicized by Mother Jones. The magazine reported on the case of Yonas Fikre, a Muslim-American from Oregon who was detained in the United Arab Emirates. There, Fikre and his lawyers claim, he was beaten and held in stress positions. He claims there was cooperation between the FBI and UAE security forces. So the FBI was using the UAE forces to detain people the U.S. wanted to interrogate.

4. Guantanamo

Although the continued operation of the Guantanamo Bay camp is hardly the sole fault of President Obama, it does symbolize the abject failure to reject the Bush administration’s approach to terrorism.

While it’s important to note that the Republican Party has blocked Obama’s desire to close Guantanamo, he has not expended political capital on closing the prison and has signed bills that restrict his ability to do so. The most recent bill concerning Guantanamo Bay crossed his desk at the beginning of the year.

Despite threatening to veto the bill because it restricted the executive branch’s authority, Obama signed it, and curtailed his own ability to move ahead on closing the infamous camp, where people have languished without charge for years on end. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2013, where the Guantanamo provisions are included, restricts “the transfer of detainees into the United States for any purpose, including trials in federal court. It also requires the defense secretary to meet rigorous conditions before any detainee can be returned to his own country or resettled in a third country,” according to theWashington Post.

Human rights activists blasted the move. “Indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo is illegal, unsustainable and against U.S. national security interests, and it needs to end,” Human Rights Watch’s Andrea Prasow told the Post. “The administration should not continue to just blame Congress. President Obama should follow through on his earlier commitments and make the effort to overcome the transfer restrictions.”

5. Indefinite Detention

This issue, over all the others, says loud and clear that the Obama administration is preparing for an endless war on terror.

Domestically, indefinite detention reared its ugly head back in December 2011, when President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, a defense funding bill. Included in the bill was a provision allowing for indefinite military detention without charge or trial. Despite concerns raised by civil liberties activists, Obama signed the bill into law, although an executive signing statement vowed that the president would “not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.”

That has not allayed the concerns of civil liberties groups. The American Civil Liberties Union states: “The NDAA’s dangerous detention provisions would authorize the president — and all future presidents — to order the military to pick up and indefinitely imprison people captured anywhere in the world, far from any battlefield….Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again.”

While no American citizens have been detained under the law yet, indefinite detention has been a hallmark of the war in Afghanistan. Thousands of detainees have remained in Bagram Air Field, including non-Afghan detainees. Picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan, they have been held for years without charge or trial.

“Since 2002, the U.S. government has detained indefinitely thousands of people there in harsh conditions and without charge, without access to lawyers, without access to courts, and without a meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention,” the ACLU notes.

So as the Obama administration fills out its cabinet posts and prepares for another four years, the permanent war on terror will stay with us. From drones to proxy detentions to indefinite detention, the constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office has institutionalized and expanded some of the worst hallmarks of the lawless Bush era.

Source

This is (partly) why I never understood the “lesser of two evils” argument in voting for Obama.

I don’t usually publish political blog posts, but when I do, they inform you on what you should already be aware of. There are no Republican or Democratic ways to govern a society. There are scientifically-driven, life-appreciating and respectful ways to peacefully conduct affairs. The same goes for all the stereotypes that stem from fear and ignorance. There are no male/female, African-American/Caucasian, Hispanic/Asian ways to build an airplane or space capsule. There are only ‘human’ ways guided by the tools of science. That’s it. It’s not that hard to grasp, you know, the various ways to conduct an activity with science as the “candle in the dark” (Carl ref.).

No labels, no clubs, no brands, no borders. Just all of us in this together, separated and segregated into new categories generated from our own misunderstanding during an exhausting adolescence, while we all suffer through the growing pains.

Discover who you truly are, Earthlings. Not in the metaphorical sense, but in the literal, physical sense.

Discover who you/we are by understanding exactly how far life has come in such a short time; how it’s gotten this far and why; how much we are continually revealing to each other of our existence and truly why things are the way they are.

Stop listening to other people’s opinions and thoughts on an “issue” if they don’t have the scientific literacy to speak for us all.

Educate yourself, educate others. Humans are a cancerous organism on this planet, but we have the ability and the capacity to change the way we navigate around our environment, treat each other and make decisions for the good of the whole. This understanding of our influence is crucial for our evolution and equally, our survival. We shouldn’t be countering the ecosystem, we should be aiding in its health to prevent in its collapse.

And speaking of ‘collapse’, the science vs religion debate is one of the most important factors holding us back, IMO.

A population convinced of an all knowing, seeing, caring and blessing deity existing in a hidden dimension we can’t see, test or prove - just to make us feel protected in the darkness of ignorance and intuition, sidestepping the truth as if it were up to us to govern what the truth actually is, while millions die and species become extinct - undermines the privilege it is to be alive on this rock coasting through the cosmos with the capability to synergistically harness our minds for solutions and advancement out of this cradle and toward other worlds.

Ask yourself: the so called “leaders” we have come to know and told to respect due to their “authority”…are they worthy to speak for the Earth and represent us as a collective species? Those “patriots” and “officials” who have never seen the Earth from space or involve themselves in appreciation and continual discovery of the awe the universe provides and our place within it?

(Source: thepeoplesrecord)

sagansense:

That guy has a lot of ball-

Oh.

Never…

Nevermind.

(Source: cbsnews.com)

sagansense:

What a sad sack.

Oh.

Wait.

Never…

Nevermind…

….

…….

….

Because.

Because he, ya know..

sagansense:

The moment when everyone turns their backs on the underlying genocide, crimes against humanity, perpetuation of class warfare, drone strikes and underfunding of space exploration, science and overall education exhibited by the government,

just to giggle, high-five and applaud them for their ‘witty’ response to the Death Star petition….

Albert Einstein.

This, among other reasons, is why you won’t find any “go USA”, “go troops”, go “military” or “made in the USA” posts on this blog. Genuine Earthling right here. Einstein knew what was up. Way up.

drinking coffee & smoking weed. is this ok? i’m doing something wrong here..

Stephen Hawking

With all due respect to this man on his birthday, I think we shouldn’t be shy in pointing out flaws or flawed postulations by credible scientists any more than to a person on the street making statements with little knowledge on the subject altogether. With that being said, I’d like to point out that I’m not a supporter of this statement whatsoever. Why? Because Christopher Columbus was several things:

He studied geography. Not the universe and the complexity of life. He set out on his voyage for several reasons, but was able to do so due to the foundation of knowledge acquired before him, confirming the Earth was round.

He only spent a month at sea. A month. When his crewmen started to complain, he pushed onward to sail for another 3 days. OOooOOooOOh….Christopher you are such a badass. Ever heard of the Greely Expedition?

He started the stereotypical abomination of a term known as “Indians”. I should honestly stop right there. However…he then returned to Spain, “taking” gold, parrots and “Indians” (Native Americans) to show to the king and queen. And THIS was the pinnacle of his career!? Excuse me while I vomit.

He died, feeling as if he was a failure because he hadn’t successfully charted the shipping route for spices he set out for. Yeah. You can just re-read that again.

Because of the way he treated these people of this new world, he opened the floodgates for ships to navigate there, enslaving innocent people, killing children, families, raping women and destroying their way of life, along with the way in which they respectfully lived off of the land.

Oh and also - Christopher Columbus was HUMAN. It’s not even necessary to go into the “fascinating” details of his life, he was a human being. Case closed. Human beings are most certainly not the poster-childs of this planet, let alone the entire universe. If an intelligent species was to discover us, I doubt they would be paying much attention. With our present technological advancements and intellectual reach, we should have been reaching intergalactic exploration by now. How long has it been since we’ve been on the Moon?

Further, there are a vast amount of species on this planet capable of being considered much more intelligent than we. If an extra-terrestrial, hyper-intellectual species traversed the universe and stumbled upon Earth, we would be looked at as a cancer on this planet. We’re the only species that does not live in harmony with one another. We’re the only species that has intentionally segregated one another and pinned ourselves against each other for survival, instead of cooperation. Take a look at the majority of species on this planet. They live and work together. They hunt for survival and kill when necessary to secure the survival and proliferation of the next generation. We kill, when we don’t have to. We kill, because we aren’t intelligent enough to grasp the reality that it makes more sense for us to work together in order to aid in our own survival. And being able to explore the most hazardous, volatile environments (on Earth and off) are a pretty cool advantage when working together as well.

In my personal conclusion, I’m sorry Mr. Hawking (especially on the day of your birth, but hey, you said it, not me), but that statement is not a very intelligent one. As Neil deGrasse Tyson remarked about an intelligent species incomprehensibly intelligent on a scale that belittles us, (paraphrasing) “it would be like going out of your way to try communicating with ants on an anthill.”

Humans are not the standard model for intelligent life in the universe, so we shouldn’t superimpose our predisposition onto the (still) unknown evolutionary complexity of the universe.

Plus, Christopher Columbus was a douche. I understand he was an explorer. But whoop-dee-doo. There were many explorers, (much more courageous), whom didn’t exhibit crimes against their own species (not to mention countless others who suffered & became extinct due to the methods he imposed on “discovering new worlds’). Who would be bold enough to say that we wouldn’t have discovered these new worlds without the aid of Christopher Columbus? We have sent and returned human beings onto a celestial body outside of our biosphere, which was once just a bright object in the sky. It’s inherent within the evolution of the human brain to explore & push our curiosity into new territories of the unknown. Fuck Christopher Columbus.

Humans have the ability to choose to evolve. And we’re the only species on this planet (which we are aware) capable of doing so. When will we choose to change ourselves and correct our course? The universe deserves an explorer of itself not anchored to its own ignorances of knowledge and understanding, propelled by a blind driver of arrogance amongst a universe of infinite beings far more worthy of such self-importance.

Anonymous asked: how old are you?

29 Earth years young, 4.5 billion years strong, 13.75 billion years in the making.