Disgusting. Despicable. Why would any self respecting human being be a cam whore, and why would any respectable lover let them? That was my attitude a few years ago. Now it's just my girlfriend's job. And she makes good money doing it. So why did I change my mind?
Maybe I've just gotten more perverse, or maybe I've loosened my morals. While I'm not in a position to defend my level of perversity, I assure you that my morals were strong a few years ago, and they are as strong, if not stronger, today. What has certainly changed is my perspective. I've given a lot of thought to life and love and money... and ethics. You might disagree with me on my ethics, I'll bet we have some common ground still.
Whether our societal views on sex come from God, from family, from friends, or simply from society, what I think we can agree on is that these rules and judgments naturally arose from something real. The idea was to keep us safe. After all, I don't think that anyone believes that God just arbitrarily made up commandments, just for the fun of watching us squirm. To the contrary, many biblical rules were quite functional. Eating pig meat really was quite dangerous in those days.
One can surely make a logical, biblical, and ethical argument about why promiscuous sex is wrong. It spreads stds, and leads to unwanted pregnancy. Stds are really getting out of hand. Something like 1 in 4 people have an std at this point. Think of the last 4 random people you met. Which one do you think had the std? I've never watched someone die from aids, but I have watched a friend's whole world change after finding out she had herpes. For her doctor, it was another awkward moment with a patient, and for her, it was all her aspirations of true love, marriage, and children all crumbling before her eyes.
Unwanted pregnancy - in spite of great advances in birth control, and the development of the morning after pill, and the increased information we have available to us - remains out of control. Kids are put up for adoption, forced into the hellish foster care system, and, well, aborted. Pro lifers say that adoption is the solution to everything. Adoption is fine, sometimes. At least it is when the baby gets adopted. The fact is that not every baby gets adopted, and while pro lifers advocate the importance of family, too many children grow up with no family, and instead are neglected and abused by series of foster parents. No one likes abortion. It's an ugly and unfortunate thing. What's troubling to me is that while so many people are fighting for a doomed fetus's right to life, or an unfortunate mom's right to choose, not enough people are fighting to make sure that this sort of thing doesn't happen in the first place.
This brings me to my point. Sex across the internet is safe. It might just be the only safe sex. Not only is it safe, but it's also satisfying. You can get as nasty as you want with a girl you just met, and I promise you that you won't get her pregnant. I promise that she won't give you herpes. If her husband comes home while you're still in bed with her, well it might be awkward, but you're safe and satisfied 1000 miles away. The fact is that having sex online is the solution to all the problems that make sex dangerous.
My girlfriend isn't a bad person. She's a pioneer. She is providing a service. She's fulfilling a need for men that could otherwise be fulfilled in a very unhealthy way. The men leave happy and healthy, and my girlfriend makes some money on it. Later in the night, I take her to bed with full confidence that her body is exactly the way it was that morning.
You might try to make the argument that there's some kind of psychological damage from doing this. There is no data to back up any such claim. For what its worth, my personal observation is that there's no real difference before or after she started modeling. Well, I guess she's happy that she doesn't have to work a 9 to 5.
In conclusion, I'd like to to propose a cure for every std known to man, and simultaneously propose a political theory to reconcile the pro lifers with the pro choicers. 1. Go to your local electronics store. 2. Buy a webcam. 3. The next girl you wanna do it with, tell her to go home and get naked on cam with you. 4. If step three falls through, my gf will be waiting for you.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
give me liberty, or give me... wait what was the other thing?
if you pay attention to politics, you've probably noticed a general mood stirring amidst the putrid sea of conservative shit spewers. apparently, our country is in terrible danger. since the democrats have taken the office of president, america is turning into a totalitarianism. I use hyperbole, but someone really did using the word fascism. not sure when the switch from socialism occurred, but I digress. we are losing our freedoms. kids may be forced into re-education camps, with liberal propaganda forced down their throats. if you watch glenn beck, then we may also be on the verge of nucular holocaust. (a side note.. the spell checker did not correct me for saying nucular...)
its such a bizarre line of reasoning.. especially coming from them. what has obama actually done to limit our freedom? how does one begin to even spin such a tale? and to what effect? why are they using this tactic?
and then it occurred to me. the way they see it, this is what the democrats did to bush in his last years. complaining about destroying our freedoms, the constitution, and what it means to be american worked for the democrats. I mean, why else would obama be in power? the tactic worked so well, that the republicans are gonna give it a go.
if you think this is far fetched, remember that this is the same party that elected michael steele to head the rnc. in the many, many years of the republican party, never have they had a black person run the rnc. why the sudden change of heart? oh right, because it worked so well with the democrats. having a black person in charge is clearly what the american people have shown that they want, so choosing one to run the rnc is only natural. the decision to choose palin as a running mate seems to have used a similar logic.
it seems like the republican party is just trying to go through every superficial tactic it can find until it finds one that will make us love it again, like a jaded exboyfriend sending love letters, standing outside our windows playing songs, and leaving too many messages on our answering machines.
so at the risk of losing the the ongoing war, I'm going to let you republicans in on a secret. pay attention. this is the secret tactic that made us win.
obama treats us like we're people.
I know! its crazy! when you actually understand what its like to be an american citizen, what you say matters a little bit more. you can charge obama with lies and whatever, but face it, everything about you is a lie. the only way you can get people to listen to you is to lie. holy crap man, show some spine. be a man. stop lying. treat us like we're your equal. maybe even convince yourself that we are equal. if you do, we will respect you more.
right now you look like a bunch of spineless cowardly crybabies and sore losers. you epitomize everything that we teach our children not to be. go through your bible again, and actually try doing the things is says. you have to really do it. we're gonna know if you're faking. if you can crawl your way out of the fecal empire that is your sense of morality; if you can treat us like humans and not just poll numbers; if you can talk to us like we're all human beings, and that we in fact make you what you are; then I promise, we will listen.
until then, I look forward to all the jokes that you will bless jon stewart with.
its such a bizarre line of reasoning.. especially coming from them. what has obama actually done to limit our freedom? how does one begin to even spin such a tale? and to what effect? why are they using this tactic?
and then it occurred to me. the way they see it, this is what the democrats did to bush in his last years. complaining about destroying our freedoms, the constitution, and what it means to be american worked for the democrats. I mean, why else would obama be in power? the tactic worked so well, that the republicans are gonna give it a go.
if you think this is far fetched, remember that this is the same party that elected michael steele to head the rnc. in the many, many years of the republican party, never have they had a black person run the rnc. why the sudden change of heart? oh right, because it worked so well with the democrats. having a black person in charge is clearly what the american people have shown that they want, so choosing one to run the rnc is only natural. the decision to choose palin as a running mate seems to have used a similar logic.
it seems like the republican party is just trying to go through every superficial tactic it can find until it finds one that will make us love it again, like a jaded exboyfriend sending love letters, standing outside our windows playing songs, and leaving too many messages on our answering machines.
so at the risk of losing the the ongoing war, I'm going to let you republicans in on a secret. pay attention. this is the secret tactic that made us win.
obama treats us like we're people.
I know! its crazy! when you actually understand what its like to be an american citizen, what you say matters a little bit more. you can charge obama with lies and whatever, but face it, everything about you is a lie. the only way you can get people to listen to you is to lie. holy crap man, show some spine. be a man. stop lying. treat us like we're your equal. maybe even convince yourself that we are equal. if you do, we will respect you more.
right now you look like a bunch of spineless cowardly crybabies and sore losers. you epitomize everything that we teach our children not to be. go through your bible again, and actually try doing the things is says. you have to really do it. we're gonna know if you're faking. if you can crawl your way out of the fecal empire that is your sense of morality; if you can treat us like humans and not just poll numbers; if you can talk to us like we're all human beings, and that we in fact make you what you are; then I promise, we will listen.
until then, I look forward to all the jokes that you will bless jon stewart with.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Open letter to republican crybabies
My uncle Dan has me on his mailing list. That means that I get daily letters of republicans freaking out about how socialist the country is turning and how the liberal world view is destroying us. Normally I don't read the letters at all, but I did today, and it prompted me to write a response.
Well, here was my response; an open letter to kooks and crybabies:
Well, here was my response; an open letter to kooks and crybabies:
Hello republican friends.
I just wanted to introduce everyone to a gentleman named Róger Calero. Calero was the 2008 candidate for the socialist workers party. Please note how Calero is not President Obama. In fact, if you research Calero's issues and what he believes in, I think you'll find that he believes very differently than Obama. Obama became rich because he believes in captitalism. Obama became president because he actually seems to believe in helping people that aren't necessarily already rich. If this is troublesome for anyone, just realize that the only reason that this was possible in the first place is that there were so many people so desperately needing help. If you're not one of those people, then congratulations. You've succeeded in life. All thats left now is to care about your fellow man.
Calero's website is http://www.themilitant.com/2008/ElectionCampaign/ platform.html
I reccomend reading it, just so that you guys can quit using the word socialism incorrectly, and so you can actually show a little knowledge about the political philosophy that you hate so much, and that you insistantly tie to Obama.
I am not a socialist. I am a capitalist. I don't like that the government is spending so much money, but I understand why we have to. The economy gets better if and only if we spend money. The economy needs to get a lot better. The only system with enough money to spend enough to get the economy going is, unfortunately, the government. I don't like it, but really, it makes a lot more sense than doing nothing. Doing nothing is what everyone is doing, because no one has the money to spend on goods and services. Why would you want the government to echo the same activity that is deepening the recession?
I'm not going to talk about blame and who got us into this hole, because we're just going to disagree. One thing you can't disagree with however, is that Obama walked into the recession, and didn't create it.
Thanks for reading
no hard feelings
signed,
the liberal nephew of a conservative uncle
Friday, April 3, 2009
philogrammer and superman
Friedrich Nietzsche had a lot of interesting ideas, many of which were misunderstood. without getting into the bulk of his philosophy, there's one thing I was pondering on tonight. its the idea of the ubermensch. ubermensch roughly translates to superman (although I think something is lost in translation). nietzsche believed that humankind, while evolution's greatest creation, was not quite finished, and that eventually we would eventually evolve into something more complete. the more complete human would be a superman.
this was, of course, a bit of a mischaracterization of darwin's theory of evolution. evolution does not have a goal. its not always survival of the best per se; its more a trend of which mutations are the least likely to die, or simply don't die for whatever reason. it's unfortunate, then, that nietzche didn't really believe in the ability to change one's self. he believed in a deterministic universe in which the person you are when you are born is more or less the person you will always be. ubermensch was not an idea to aspire to, but rather a someone fantastical idea of what we may one day become as a species. its worth noting for the record that quantum theory disproves the notion that the universe is completely deterministic, but that's irrelevant to this discussion.
the idea of not being able to change ourselves was in contradiction to other thinkers at the time, who made a practice of trying to figure out how we should change ourselves. this idea seemed to take for granted that we were our own makers, and that we could be whoever we wanted to be. frankly, I think that both ideas are a bit naive.
I think that it is possible to deeply change the core of who you are. however, I also think that in order for it to happen, something significant has to happen to you. if your life continues exactly as it is from day to day, you're unlikely to be able to make a significant change to it. for example: if you have an ok job, but you want a better job, you probably won't put that much effort in to finding one. you'll think about it, maybe even passively look through classified ads, but when it comes to the actual work it takes to get a new job, you will likely reason with yourself 'the job I has pays enough, and I'm not really unhappy there. by the end of the day I'm usually to tired to job hunt anyway.'
different personalities vary, but the point is that however you are is generally how you will remain. if, however, your wife suddenly gets pregnant, you may suddenly be given the courage you need to do whatever it takes to make sure you're bringing in enough money for a family. I'm also not saying that this is deterministic; I think there is an element of free will here. I think that in the mundane times in our lives, we really sit and think and really galvanize our ideals and how we want our lives to be. the result of this is that when something major happens, we are ready to make those changes that we need to accommodate. its perhaps our free will that determines how we want to act, and then life that gives us opportunity to express our free will.
this was, of course, a bit of a mischaracterization of darwin's theory of evolution. evolution does not have a goal. its not always survival of the best per se; its more a trend of which mutations are the least likely to die, or simply don't die for whatever reason. it's unfortunate, then, that nietzche didn't really believe in the ability to change one's self. he believed in a deterministic universe in which the person you are when you are born is more or less the person you will always be. ubermensch was not an idea to aspire to, but rather a someone fantastical idea of what we may one day become as a species. its worth noting for the record that quantum theory disproves the notion that the universe is completely deterministic, but that's irrelevant to this discussion.
the idea of not being able to change ourselves was in contradiction to other thinkers at the time, who made a practice of trying to figure out how we should change ourselves. this idea seemed to take for granted that we were our own makers, and that we could be whoever we wanted to be. frankly, I think that both ideas are a bit naive.
I think that it is possible to deeply change the core of who you are. however, I also think that in order for it to happen, something significant has to happen to you. if your life continues exactly as it is from day to day, you're unlikely to be able to make a significant change to it. for example: if you have an ok job, but you want a better job, you probably won't put that much effort in to finding one. you'll think about it, maybe even passively look through classified ads, but when it comes to the actual work it takes to get a new job, you will likely reason with yourself 'the job I has pays enough, and I'm not really unhappy there. by the end of the day I'm usually to tired to job hunt anyway.'
different personalities vary, but the point is that however you are is generally how you will remain. if, however, your wife suddenly gets pregnant, you may suddenly be given the courage you need to do whatever it takes to make sure you're bringing in enough money for a family. I'm also not saying that this is deterministic; I think there is an element of free will here. I think that in the mundane times in our lives, we really sit and think and really galvanize our ideals and how we want our lives to be. the result of this is that when something major happens, we are ready to make those changes that we need to accommodate. its perhaps our free will that determines how we want to act, and then life that gives us opportunity to express our free will.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
prime numbers
so I spent an entire day staring at lists of prime numbers. seriously, the whole day. I guess I have issues. when I get into a project, I can become rather obsessive. I have a tendency to neglect all but main survival aspects of life until I can come to some conclusion, or finish whatever I'm working on. it's a certain mad scientist quality I guess.
I was hoping to find some pattern, or some way of organizing prime numbers in a way that could be useful for programming. specifically, I wanted to use prime numbers help be represent large numbers, for reasons I'll discuss later. my theory was that it might be more efficient to represent numbers as lists of primes, and describe primes by their position on the number line. here's an example. 8 is 2^3. 2 is the first prime number. so we can describe 8 by saying 1^3, because 8 is the first prime number cubed. 20 is 4 * 5, and 4 breaks down to 2 squared. so 20 could be written 1^2 3^1, which means that the first prime number (2) goes into into it twice, and the third prime number (5) goes into it once. it would remain to be seen if this model would actually be useful in reducing the size of large numbers. it may end up taking more bytes in the long run.
for this to work, of course, I'd need a quick and easy way to determine what numbers are prime and what factors composite numbers have. granted, if I could figure that out, I would probably win a prize of some sort, as no one's done it yet..
another theory was that I could use a multidimensional array to count prime numbers up from 1. it seemed to work in concept. basically you just create another dimension for each new prime number. my hope was that there would be some kind of multidimensional spiral right down the middle of gooey creamy uninterrupted prime numbers.
I did find a few patterns... some of them were interesting. nothing that's going to win me the nobel prize though. in the end I just had to give up and spend time with my girlfriend. such is the life of a mad scientist.
I was hoping to find some pattern, or some way of organizing prime numbers in a way that could be useful for programming. specifically, I wanted to use prime numbers help be represent large numbers, for reasons I'll discuss later. my theory was that it might be more efficient to represent numbers as lists of primes, and describe primes by their position on the number line. here's an example. 8 is 2^3. 2 is the first prime number. so we can describe 8 by saying 1^3, because 8 is the first prime number cubed. 20 is 4 * 5, and 4 breaks down to 2 squared. so 20 could be written 1^2 3^1, which means that the first prime number (2) goes into into it twice, and the third prime number (5) goes into it once. it would remain to be seen if this model would actually be useful in reducing the size of large numbers. it may end up taking more bytes in the long run.
for this to work, of course, I'd need a quick and easy way to determine what numbers are prime and what factors composite numbers have. granted, if I could figure that out, I would probably win a prize of some sort, as no one's done it yet..
another theory was that I could use a multidimensional array to count prime numbers up from 1. it seemed to work in concept. basically you just create another dimension for each new prime number. my hope was that there would be some kind of multidimensional spiral right down the middle of gooey creamy uninterrupted prime numbers.
I did find a few patterns... some of them were interesting. nothing that's going to win me the nobel prize though. in the end I just had to give up and spend time with my girlfriend. such is the life of a mad scientist.
Monday, March 30, 2009
first blog post
hm.
I don't really expect anyone to be reading this, so if you've stumbled upon it, welcome, and thanks for reading.
I don't envy you...
mostly, I just needed a place to get down some thoughts, because I don't really have anyone to talk to about them. specifically, tonight I've been pondering on kierkegard. soren kierkegard is a danish philosopher from the 19th century. he is considered to be one of the first existentialists, although his work took place well before the term existentialist was coined.
so that no one wonders, I'll state from the offset that I'm neither religious nor atheistic. while I find christianity and most religion to be filled with hippocrites and people who use it for their own personal gain, and while I acknowledge all of the various logical contradictions and lack of evidence for the religious dogmas, its still difficult for me to conclusively decide that there is no god, no afterlife, or no anything besides what we know and experience day to day.
its very rare that I feel like a religious person has anything new to tell me, or even anything worth saying. kierkegard, on the other hand, has a philosophy that really speaks to me, which is particularly surprising given the almost christian fundamentalist character of his beliefs.
he'll have to forgive me if I don't do his theory justice, but the basic idea is that it is utterly impossible to know conclusively whether or not there is a god, whether jesus is his son, etc. it draws a distinction between objective knowledge, which is the goal of science, and subjective knowledge. to kiekegard, one's faith is a personal choice - something completely subjective. kierkegard taught that it is up to every individual to determine what is right to believe and the purpose to which one should live their life, and that once they decide, they should live those beliefs fully and passionately.
I feel like there's something very profound here, but not at just the most superficial level of it. sure, you can believe in what you want because there's no reason not to. but what's more than that, a tenet of his belief still holds true today. with everything we know about molecular biology, psychology, philosophy of the mind, and even the best theories on consciousness, we are still cripplingly unable to describe just what it is that subjectivity actually is. we know that when you feel sad, that certain chemical signals are queueing something in your brain. but what does it mean that you are feeling it? I'm not talking about your body feeling it, but you youself. if you were to say that the rain fell onto a rock, and then you were to say the rain fell on you, you would mean something entirely different and unreconsilable by the two statements. there are something like 3^76 atoms in the universe, and each one of them can experience any range of things, and yet for you and your insignificant self to experience something is something of a different texture. its something special, and entirely unexplainable, by both philosopher and scientist.
it's frustrating to have such conclusive knowledge about the objective world, but to still be fumbling around, knowing very little, in our own personal subjective worlds. and this is where kierkegard's real profundity comes into play. if we know nothing about the stuff of subjectivity, then who are we to really say that there isn't a god? who's to say that there isn't a world of stuff, made from the same stuff that our subjectiveness is made of. for that matter, whatever the subjective is, maybe it isn't dependant on the objective flesh body that it attaches to. maybe in the subjective stuff world, your subjectiveness is freed when you die, and goes to a heaven, or to go live with your ancestors, or whatever. maybe it does whatever you believe it will do, according to your religion.
I'm not saying I believe any of this. what I am saying is that we have no idea, again for emphasis, no idea why we have a subjective mind or what subjectivity itself is made of. science, being of an objective viewpoint, seems incapable of telling us. so perhaps its just as good to decide what you believe in for your subjective life, and just live it, and live it passionately.
I don't really expect anyone to be reading this, so if you've stumbled upon it, welcome, and thanks for reading.
I don't envy you...
mostly, I just needed a place to get down some thoughts, because I don't really have anyone to talk to about them. specifically, tonight I've been pondering on kierkegard. soren kierkegard is a danish philosopher from the 19th century. he is considered to be one of the first existentialists, although his work took place well before the term existentialist was coined.
so that no one wonders, I'll state from the offset that I'm neither religious nor atheistic. while I find christianity and most religion to be filled with hippocrites and people who use it for their own personal gain, and while I acknowledge all of the various logical contradictions and lack of evidence for the religious dogmas, its still difficult for me to conclusively decide that there is no god, no afterlife, or no anything besides what we know and experience day to day.
its very rare that I feel like a religious person has anything new to tell me, or even anything worth saying. kierkegard, on the other hand, has a philosophy that really speaks to me, which is particularly surprising given the almost christian fundamentalist character of his beliefs.
he'll have to forgive me if I don't do his theory justice, but the basic idea is that it is utterly impossible to know conclusively whether or not there is a god, whether jesus is his son, etc. it draws a distinction between objective knowledge, which is the goal of science, and subjective knowledge. to kiekegard, one's faith is a personal choice - something completely subjective. kierkegard taught that it is up to every individual to determine what is right to believe and the purpose to which one should live their life, and that once they decide, they should live those beliefs fully and passionately.
I feel like there's something very profound here, but not at just the most superficial level of it. sure, you can believe in what you want because there's no reason not to. but what's more than that, a tenet of his belief still holds true today. with everything we know about molecular biology, psychology, philosophy of the mind, and even the best theories on consciousness, we are still cripplingly unable to describe just what it is that subjectivity actually is. we know that when you feel sad, that certain chemical signals are queueing something in your brain. but what does it mean that you are feeling it? I'm not talking about your body feeling it, but you youself. if you were to say that the rain fell onto a rock, and then you were to say the rain fell on you, you would mean something entirely different and unreconsilable by the two statements. there are something like 3^76 atoms in the universe, and each one of them can experience any range of things, and yet for you and your insignificant self to experience something is something of a different texture. its something special, and entirely unexplainable, by both philosopher and scientist.
it's frustrating to have such conclusive knowledge about the objective world, but to still be fumbling around, knowing very little, in our own personal subjective worlds. and this is where kierkegard's real profundity comes into play. if we know nothing about the stuff of subjectivity, then who are we to really say that there isn't a god? who's to say that there isn't a world of stuff, made from the same stuff that our subjectiveness is made of. for that matter, whatever the subjective is, maybe it isn't dependant on the objective flesh body that it attaches to. maybe in the subjective stuff world, your subjectiveness is freed when you die, and goes to a heaven, or to go live with your ancestors, or whatever. maybe it does whatever you believe it will do, according to your religion.
I'm not saying I believe any of this. what I am saying is that we have no idea, again for emphasis, no idea why we have a subjective mind or what subjectivity itself is made of. science, being of an objective viewpoint, seems incapable of telling us. so perhaps its just as good to decide what you believe in for your subjective life, and just live it, and live it passionately.
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