Chubby Nickel Audio Vlog

Well, apparently there are a bunch of evil witches in Nigeria that keep the population from having a wonderful life. Yes, according to the evangelical Christian pastors in Nigeria, evil witches are what is making their lives horrible. Who are these evil witches keeping them down? Their children… yes their children are the evil witches. How these children learned witch craft is unknown… unless they are speaking directly to Satan! Oh wait, witchcraft has nothing to do with Satan or anything Christian… maybe they just learned it on their own? Who knows, but they are there, they are evil and they are the cause for the suffering of the people there. Let’s be clear, it’s not the shitty water, lack of food, AIDS, poverty, economy or the people’s fault; it’s the evil little witches… well according to the evangelical Christian leaders.

This is yet another example of how awesome and great Christianity is. It teaches love and understanding and forgiveness. Yes, the love these Nigerians show their evil witch kids is shown by driving nails into the young witch’s heads, splashing acid on their faces, burying them alive, banishing them to fend for themselves, sawing their heads in half and of course beating the love of Jesus into them. So not only is Christianity spreading the great wisdom that condoms spread AIDS, it also teaches them to abuse their kids for Jesus. All this violence, is from the love of Jesus and God.

One thing I can’t understand is why I have to go to another country for world news instead of finding world news as awesome as this in America. I can only speculate so this is probably wrong: America knows this amazing act is saving the lives of these Nigerians from evil witches and the bleeding heart, human rights, anti-child abuse, anti-child murder, fat, lazy Americans would just want to stop it. Forget those children, forget that the only learning the Nigerians get is from Religious people and forget that this is an atrocity committed by devout followers of Christ. Just let it happen, just let the Lord work his loving and mysterious ways by having parents kill their kids out of fear and desperation.

The Guardian: Children are targets of Nigerian witch hunt

BBC: Is witchcraft alive in Africa?

Telegraph: ‘Child-witches’ of Nigeria seek refuge

This should be read alongside the king james version of the bible Genesis 1:1 there’s a web version here http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=KjvGene.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1

This is how genesis should really be written:

Genesis – 1

1:1 In the beginning the universe was made in an instant, there was no god (even in the bible agrees with this because even the bible suggests that it was the beginning and how could anything exist before the beginning?)

1:2And the earth didn’t get formed for billions of years, there was pretty much radiation and heat.

1:3 No one told the light to be there, it just was because that’s what happened.

1:4 And the light was good, I guess but I wasn’t there and I didn’t see it, and there really wasn’t any division — the whole damn universe was freakin’ hot!

1:5 And there wasn’t anything but light for a hell of a lot longer than a day, so no one counted time especially because no one was there. let me reiterate there was no evening or morning, it was all the same. then things started to cool off and stars were made out of clouds of gas. oh and by the way it was a couple billion years not days until stars were made.

1:6 And then things started cooling off and there were stars and galaxies made, then, about four and a half billion years before creationists believe the earth was made, it accumulated mass shot out by stars which originally made a disc around our sun.

1:7 the earth is hot and pretty much not a nice place to live for a while, until about 9 billion years after the beginning of the universe, the earth is friendly to life.

1:8 (why the hell would God call the firmament heaven??? wouldn’t the solid part be the EARTH?)

1:9 We probably got hit by a meteor or comet with a lot of freakin’ water on it to get most of the water that was there, it didn’t just come out of nowhere when someone said that they should be separate from the land.

1:10 (Now god wants to call the dry land earth? you sure you don’t mean heaven big guy?) And there were oceans and volcanoes and stuff.

1:11 (And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. — What the hell?) just to let you know, things originated in the ocean probably because it was the best suited for microorganisms and things like single celled life forms, and probably didn’t start with grass, sorry.

1:12 And the earth didn’t bring forth grass or anything like it for a long time after the first life forms sprouted in the ocean.

1:13 well there actually were evenings and mornings now, but it took a lot longer to get stuff done than a freakin’ 6 day workweek I’ll tell you that!

1:14 The sun existed before the earth, and it’s not a sign of seasons or time. It’s how we tell time, and it changes seasons because in the winter there’s less photons per square mile so it gets colder, not because god said there’s seasons and the sun will tell you when they are.

1:15 And it  was already giving light because the sun existed before the earth

1:16 the moon doesn’t give off it’s own light, it only reflects that of the sun which is why when it is closer to the sun than we are we can’t see it. The stars were probably already there because most stars were made before the earth.

1:17 The sun and moon were already out in space, I don’t know where else they would be? did god leave them in his back pocket?

1:18 … no comment…

1:19 took a LOT longer than a day

1:20 Well, life was began in the waters, but the fowl of the air??? that’s one of the last things to come about, how about amoebas? microorganisms? or freaking fish? birds? you’re pulling my chain

1:21 Now whales and then birds? didn’t he already make birds? anyway that’s not how things went.

1:22 And it’s because of genetic programming that things want to multiply, again not birds yet they come later.

1:23 only the fifth day? what the fuck?

1:24 And the earth didn’t bring forth creeping things, they moved from the water where all life was at the beginning to the land. Not from dirt. just wanted to make that clear.

1:25 pretty much natural selection made each of the varieties of every living thing we know now and from fossils.

1:26 and then waaaaaaaaay after mammals and monkeys and apes and a lot of other things were evolved, the first hominid was born, evolved into another form, and another, and another for a lot longer than a day.

1:27 then homo sapiens evolved and are us and our ancestors, oh did i mention we’ve been here for way longer than a few thousand years? more like millions of years.

1:28 and we are fruitful and multiply because we like sex and it’s fun. We also like making babies because they’re a natural thing for a species to want because if we weren’t programmed to procreate and multiply then we would die out wouldn’t we? oh and we didn’t have dominion over the whole earth for a freakin’ long time, we were prey to a lot of animals until we started making tools and even then we could be prey to them so until recently we weren’t the bosses of the world. and ALL the earth would imply america as well which wasn’t inhabited for a long time even after the paleolithic revolution.

1:29 every herb and tree are not for us to eat, some of them are for us to smoke (though you can eat the “roach” if you really want… eww) and there are things like poison ivy that you shouldn’t eat because it makes you really itchy… that god what a practical joker saying stuff like “yeah eat everything it’s good for you to eat, especially those three leafed plants and some really tiny mushrooms **snicker**”

1:30 animals eat stuff too…

1:31 and all this stuff was done in a lot longer than six days… oh and why does an all powerful god need to rest? all powerful means that he has all power why doesn’t he just, well be powerful and not rest?

For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden

I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Rush Limbaugh, as everyone should know, is incorrect a lot. It should be no surprise, because almost everything he says is speculation… then he builds on his speculations as if they were logically valid. Which means that if you can prove the first premise incorrect, then the whole argument is false. So I was listening to Rush Limbaugh one day and decided to record him off the radio… onto a hi-tech cassette tape… wow, my technology is advanced.

“Women can give birth without a man around, many of them, hehe, prefer to do so, they work in the Obama administration too.”

So many single mothers are in the Obama administration? Nice. We all know that Rush thinks that Obama is bad and anyone who supports him is bad, so attributing being a single mother to people in the Obama administration is like him saying that being a single mother is bad. While it can be difficult to be a single mother, it should in no way be looked down upon, if anything it should be held high due the amount of effort it takes. But anyway, this is just another ad hominem that Rush loves to use.

“We’re the only ones who know god, who can conceive of god. And all that, that means. Therefor, to the left,  to know god is the single most destructive part of the human mind. That’s what has to be destroyed. Faith in god, belief in god that’s the real, and there are many enemies of the left, but that’s… if you go to any communist country the first thing they do is wipe god and religion out of every bodies mind. The state, becomes god and whoever is running it at the time becomes the messiah.”

Everyone on the “left” wants to destroy god and religion… even the religious ones that believe in god. I can’t help but to question the last part about whoever is running the state is a messiah… like the “left” were so happy and so prone to worshiping Bush when he was in office… oh right, here in a place I like to call reality, they weren’t. It’s like Rush has a problem with universal statements. He can’t see that his own statement doesn’t fit with reality, when he himself was complaining about how the “left” shouldn’t be questioning Bush and should be thanking him.

“If you strip away god, because everybody, a human being has to believe something, a higher power, a human a ha, even atheists they’ve got something that… has a higher power, it’s a tree or whatever. Could be another human being, it could be a, ah ah wu wu, institution, the human beings put together, there’s got to be something, if you strip god out, it has to be the state.”

Everybody has to to what? A human being must believe in a higher power? Really? Because I don’t. There are not one, but two false dichotomies in this one snippet. This is the first: because not everyone has to believe in a higher power, why must we? Atheists believe in a tree? I am sure he just said this to piss people off, but that is seriously retarded. The second false dichotomy is at the end when he says that if you take away god, you must believe in the state. No, no I don’t. I don’t believe that god exists, and I don’t believe that the state will magically work things out on its own.

That was from just 15 minutes of his third hour on 2009-10-20. Out of that 15 minutes there was even more bullshit than I covered. It doesn’t even take much to see that Rush is a blatant liar if someone can spot three deceptions in 15 minutes. So why do people listen to him? Because he blames people (the wrong people), for all the bad stuff that’s happening, and if you aren’t those people being blamed, you feel superior. Even though you would be a mindless automoton drone for not seeing the very clear hypocrisy and lies. If you want to hear the whole thing, then subscribe to his site and download it.

I know how Rush Limbaugh likes free speech, so let me add that this use of his radio show is covered under fair use of the DMCA.

Well, The first goal of Socrates in the apology is simple… to save his ass by discrediting his accusers. He starts the apology by stating that he is not a good speaker and that his accusers are liars, good start. Basically he tries several different ways to work on the jurists, he even says something along the lines of, “I won’t talk about my family, but my family is thus…” What a guy. He also needs to refute the accusation that he is an atheist. Though that might be seen as a good thing for a philosopher to be, in ancient Greece it’s a bad thing and punishable by law. But without saying I believe Melatus. He says it’s impossible to not believe in something that was brought about by the gods without believing in the gods. Kinda smooth way of saying if you believe what you believe and I do too, how can I believe in this without believing in the gods?

The Socratic dialectic is a way of introducing doubt to people who didn’t have any doubt of what they believed, first one has to respond to the question as though it were the answer and continue in that line until the questioner has doubt in his mind. Once doubt is established try to use questions to get to the answer already in the person’s mind. Like Socrates trying to figure out what virtue is with Meno; first Meno thinks he knows what virtue is and how it is established and then after talking to Socrates for a while he begins to doubt and together they decide that virtue is in everyone and cannot be gained, but is continued through anamnesis (or memory from a past life). It is an odd belief that Socrates has that anamnesis is a thing which actually exists and continues belief, though the idea is not altogether crazy except for that Socrates was a sort of monotheistic person and most monotheistic persons which we still have few of today because most Christians are dualists which believe that there’s a god above and a devil below. Monotheists believe that all things good and bad come from one god and that is the belief system that many people believe that Socrates held to.

Basically the reason that in “the Meno” that Socrates brought Meno to such a point of doubt so that he had no more understanding of what was virtue than what the surface of the sun was made of, Socrates brought him to his wits’ end to retrain his mind and to bring him to the same place Socrates was in, because he himself explained in the Meno that he does not know the answer to what is virtue and wishes to explore that with Meno and in order to do that he has to be at the same level.

In the Crito Socrates talks about social agreements and things like the law, and our agreement to abide by it. The conscience of Crito is bugging him because of the fact that he believes that Socrates doesn’t deserve to die, and offers an escape from prison.

And though I know those don’t necessarily flow in a certain way or toward a certain goal, I feel that those are some good points to know about Socrates.

While this fad is all but over, there are a few people who still believe that NDEs are evidence of an afterlife. When examining these experiences it is very important to remember that, despite a lot of progress, we as humans are very far from understanding how the brain works.

How do we objectively study these experiences? Simple, do not resort to fallacies.

Lancet Study

That study of 344 people that were resuscitated from heart problems shows that only 18% have NDEs and only 12% have significant NDEs. Another result of the study showed that 70% of the people that experience NDEs are religious while only 10% of the people that did not have NDEs were religious. This shows that religious people are more prone to NDEs. I won’t speculate what religion has to do with it, I will just let it sit at that.

The study also had some stories in it, but they were only recorded, not verified. They are just stories as far as objectivity goes. Several people make the mistake that because a story is logged in a scientific study that the stories themselves are scientific fact. They are not, unless they had been verified. None of these stories were verified beyond that the people had the stories.

This doesn’t mean that these people are lying. I highly doubt that they would lie, and because of that, I fully believe that the experiences are real. I also don’t think that people that are hallucinating from taking LSD are lying about their experiences, but I would be insane to think that their experiences are reality. This is were we must remain objective: just because they had these experiences, doesn’t mean that it is evidence of an afterlife. You can trust that they had these experiences, but that doesn’t mean you can trust their conclusions of them. Several pilots that blackout from extreme g forces experience the same kind of experiences, but they are not dying. This suggests that NDEs are caused by lack of oxygen to the brain no matter what the cause is.

There are people that say that the experiences of extreme gravity blackout out of body experiences are different than ones resulting from heart failure. The problem with this is that no one can verify that there is a difference because there is no objective measurement. Just asserting that they are different is irrational.

Then there are those that have NDEs when their brain is in a state of inactivity. This would mean that the brain is not recording anything because it is not functioning. Some people propose that because there is no brain activity at the time of the experience, it shows that there is something other than the brain that provides consciousness… a soul perhaps. The problem with this illogical leap is that no one knows when these NDEs are experienced. It is far more likely that the experience happens as the brain begins to receive oxygen again rather than when the brain is inactive. This is not too far fetched as anyone who has ever had a dream should know, because the state that which the brain is providing images while dreaming is an extremely short period of time while the dream may seem to last for years.

In the end, NDEs are not reliable, verifiable or rational evidence for an afterlife.

In my life there has been joy’s sweet tears

And loss’ bitterness through the years

Though the loss of anything could not

liken to death, and a siblings lot

my life changed with the loss of blood

too soon was taken from blood

I’ve given up Jesus and as such have given up hope

Not for the future, but for meeting you again

at the end of my life’s journey is nothing

But darkness and dampness and cold

And now that I’ve lost faith I’ve lost you

And though I know that, I can’t deny what’s true

I can’t stop my heart from the longing

but the longing must stop

I know that life will end my cares and sorrows

When you died you took a piece of me along

And the piece off of my heart was cropped

And sometimes I’m found in wallowing sorrow

And my life is found too damn fucking long

But I’ve given up Jesus and have given up God

And with them I’ve given up faith

And the dogma swallowed through gritted teeth

enough to gag, and enough to kill

I’ve decided that in this life I’ve had my fill

and will not be sheep’d with the lies of dead tyrants

I’ve given up Jesus and as such have given up you

And in my heart I know that it’s true

That I will never see you again in any but mem’ry

I love and will always miss the love that you’ve shown

And miss the times that you could’ve watched me grow

But in my heart I can’t help but know

There is no god, no jesus, and no life after death

And in my life I’ll hold true with my last breath.

Though i’ve given up God I’ve given up you

And may we all rest beneath the grass, the stone, and the dew.

To my sibling, long dead, long cold, and for this life, long loved.

It’s not news. Seriously it’s not news. It also shouldn’t be news that fox news has the most incorrect reports known to media… while they spew out things like “liberal media bias.” Don’t believe me? You probably watch fax news. I have stated before I and I will state it again: the authority you don’t question is the most dangerous authority.

Fox News: The Grand Speculators

This story is very interesting… not because Fox News tried to bribe the reporters to keep quiet, but because Fox News won a landmark case that had shown that lying to the public under the guise of unbiased news, is not against the law and that any news organization can lie, distort and just make shit up, all under the guise of honestly informing the public.

That is not the only case of Fox News blatantly deceiving the public, that is just the case that had shown that lying is allowed by the FCC… but saying a few words that some people don’t like is not allowed. Seriously, how fucked up is that?

Now most of Fox News is not news anymore, it’s TV show hosts speculating. Just bare assertions, spewing fallacies as if they are truth. Recently Glenn Beck had shown a video of a kid getting beat to death with a railroad tie, then said that it was the result of money no longer being printed with “In God We Trust” on it, and those damn atheists. Pure speculation, that belongs more to a B horror movie than to a channel that claims to be fair and balanced.

Sean Hannity, Bill O’ Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and many talk radio personalities continue to state that the health care bill has death panels and coverage for illegal immigrants in it, when it has been proven to be factually wrong. No death panels of any conceivable incarnation exists in the health care bill (I have read the whole thing over several times). And if anyone says that an illegal immigrant can be a qualified eligible citizen for the public option, then they are just fucking retarded or deliberately misleading.

No matter how you look at Fox News, they are not news, they are bare assertion fallacies.

Health Care Bill

The top 1% say; "bend over and take it like a poor person"

How many of you have money to spare? Well since you’re viewing such an abstract and low profile blog you probably have a lot of extra time so that pretty much means you’re unemployed or so rich you don’t have to work. I hope it’s the latter though I know it’s probably not because the majority of people in this country are not even near rich. We may be doing well enough and have enough and some to spare but maybe you’ve noticed that things seem to be getting tighter around the wallet for the past thirty to forty years? Here’s why, the top one percent of people have more money than the combined lower ninety five percent isn’t that wrong? depends if you’re on top or not.

Now, I’m not calling rich people dishonest or saying that they’re doing anything illegal. But there is something to be said about the lack of taxes being paid by the people on top and the huge chunk that the lower end pays, not in dollars but in percentage.

If you’re in the top 20% according to the heritage foundation (here) you pay 70% of income taxes, but when the top 5% make 350% more money than the median household is it really such a burden? and it’s not 70% of their income it’s 70% of the TOTAL tax paid, the average percentage they pay is a lot lower than the median household pays. The median household pays about half of what they make in all taxes combined. The taxes the rich pay are much lower in percentages but higher in dollars. The difference is how much of their income in percentage is being taken out of their pocket? not as much as is taken out of yours.

Sure paying a million dollars of income taxes seems like a lot to you but when you make six million dollars in a year a million in taxes is only one sixth of your income. but if I pay about 20 grand out of my 60 grand yearly salary that’s a third, for all those math wizzes out there it’s twice as much and none of it is disposable income because it leaves 40 grand and not five million dollars. I work with a guy who says, what do you think about redistribution of wealth? and he is seriously outraged that I think that it’s bad one way and good another and since he seems to be conservative at heart (if they have those) he will not be swayed and even though the social mobility in America is seriously less than even Britain he claims that it’s wrong to tax rich people more. So, I said let’s tax them the same. He said they already pay more than I do. Well sure, I said, in dollars. He looked at me as though to say duh! I get the hint and tell him that sure they pay way more dollars than I do in taxes but they pay way less in percentage. The average income family will pay about half of what they make in taxes every year, but an upper income family will pay only around a third or less. To which he made a flummoxed grunt and wandered off to some town hall meeting with his gun and as usual without his brain.

The bottom line (sorry about the pun) is that the top money makers have been gaining wealth since the 60’s and 70’s while the rest have been losing wealth even though the dollar amounts we make are about the same it’s the percentages that matter. And it’s the percentages that are shrinking for us and growing for them.

Whenever I have had the misfortune of being curious about Glenn Beck’s TV show… it has always been a disappointment. I mean at least O’ Reilly and Hannity have some character and are easy to laugh at because they have the look of a douche bag… but Glenn just seems more like a disillusioned sock puppet. The point is, I feel more pity for the man than I am angry at his bare assertions that he claims are facts.

I know, I am letting my emotions get the better of me, because while listening to Glenn, it is very apparent that he is a dishonest jackass. Maybe is not intentionally spreading falsehoods as facts, but he is definitely acting like he knows the facts. So he is either being dishonest about knowing the facts or he is intentionally misleading. Either way, he is dishonest.

For instances: Glenn had this whole series of bare assertions about how the progressive Rockefellers are emanating communism to media stations just because the news stations are inside the Rockefeller plaza… just like his station Fox News is. Glenn on a radio show trying to bash Olberman (who I don’t really like anyway), stated that propaganda is when the state controls the media provided to the public… when any quick reference search shows that propaganda is any one or any group skewing facts to the public with the intent to gain support for something or hurt the public opinion of something. Glenn also a while ago said that America had the worst health care in the world, but now says that America has the best health care in the world, what a difference switching to Fox News makes on ones views. He also says that taking “In God We Trust” off of the money will result in people getting beat to death with railroad pins. There are a lot more… like every single show, but those are just off the top of my head.

Now maybe it’s because he hasn’t been doing this for as long as others, but I vote that he is just a great douche bag. this has been a very opinionated post, but at least you can look up what I am talking about which is a hell of a lot more than you can do for any Fox News show.