Our place in the entire sequence of life is rather meager. Here is the Hillis plot of all life on Earth:

Full tree here.

A Mac laptop: $1,200. A Mac laptop with the Hillis Plot as it’s cover design: priceless:

Hillis Plot on a 13″ MacBook Pro.

From Freethought Firefighters International:

Life does matter and I think everyone, even the most devout Christians, realize this in spite of the rhetoric they get from the church.  I think people are not nearly so confident in their hoped for dreams of immortality in a pie-in-the-sky afterlife.  I think this life is very important to people, and that is why they do everything they can to extend it as long as possible, but recognizing the inevitable, they convince themselves that this life is not all that there is.

I love life myself and I hope it lasts for a long time to come, but if it doesn’t, so be it, at least I was alive and did something productive with it by helping others in their times of need; at least I experienced life and had a family.  Whatever our life spans may turn out to be, just being alive is something to be cherished and should never be down-played or seen as unimportant in terms of some hoped for “eternal life.” Death is the natural end to life and while it is sometimes horrific and almost always painful for the surviving loved ones, it is grotesque to assign some special divine significance to it beyond the natural indiscriminate world we inhabit.

I don’t think this is 100 percent airtight Kantian philosophy, but hey, it’s decent enough for three minutes.

As one YouTube commenter pointed out in the ax murderer example given here, presumably, given Kant’s moral imperative, the ax murderer would not choose for the victim to then go to his own house and slaughter his family as if that too was one of the “universal laws of nature” that everyone should follow.

Credit to CollegeBinary for the video.

The Whole Problem – StumbleUpon.

While states like North Carolina continue to futility live in the dark ages on equality issues like gay rights, Obama has become the first sitting president in history to voice his support for same-sex marriage. While the fringe right and radio hosts have continually blasted Obama over the last four years for being so progressive, yet he waited a rather long time to “come out” about his personal feelings on same-sex marriage. Of course, they’ll no doubt blast him more now.

In any case, it was a bold move with the election looming, and one that was, perhaps, catalyzed by the vice president’s recent show of strong support for equality. That said, I don’t know that I see any negatives for Obama as it relates to the presidential campaign. The gay community in this nation, who may have been hesitant prior to this admission for his persistent silence on the issue, will most likely back him now. For Obama’s base, many of whom already support same-sex marriage, his recent comments won’t make any difference and will probably only be a positive for them.

He may have lost a few moderates or undecided votes, but really, I think, or at least hope, that most people will vote this election on the economy, foreign policy and matters of more import. I seriously see very few voters’ decisions turning on this personal admission from the president.

But back to North Carolina. Six states and D.C. now allow same-sex marriage. Even if it takes another century, I think the other states will follow suit because history shows us that even the most backward areas of the nation, which is still the South, and to a lesser extent, the Southwest (not including California) have always, however, begrudgingly, caught up with the times. This can be seen most immediately in how the South has slowly crawled into the late 20th century (I hesitate to say 21st century) on matters of race. And I say that North Carolina’s recent vote was a futile attempt to oppose gay marriage because gay marriage will happen in the South eventually; it’s just a matter of how long it takes. Older generations and their like-minded progeny will die off, while younger generations will become more accustomed to the idea of gay rights and the necessity of treating every human being, in every case and on every issue, as equal.

The problem, of course, is blind stupidity. Opponents of gay rights apparently don’t see how their opposition is analogous to previous generations’ opposition to black civil rights or women’s rights. And the issue becomes more contemptible in the cases of people like Maggie Gallagher, herself a benefactor of generations of women struggling for equal rights, who adamantly opposes gay marriage as co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage. The stupidity continues: blacks are not equal to rights. Women are not equal to men. Gays are not equal to heterosexuals. In the end, all three dichotomies will fall.

News from The Associated Press.

As evidenced by some posts on this site, I have recently gotten back in to fractal art, and I usually use either a program called Apophysis or Mandelbulb 3D to perform the renderings. Fractal art is basically a way to create digital artwork using mathematical algorithms, while using the power of the computer to actually perform the calculations. I enjoy this particular genre because of the abstractness and because the sheer number of potential designs is pretty much limitless.

I have also begun to appreciate the genre in another regard: its resemblance to the process of evolution. I’m about halfway through Richard Dawkin’s “The Greatest Show On Earth,” and early in the book, he mentioned his little program called, “The Blind Watchmaker.” He has a book by the same name. The idea behind the program is that the user essentially begins with a very simple form (a dot) and by selecting one of many potential “genes” by which to modify the current “biomorph,” the user can synthesize a new “organism” on the screen and see evolution at work by selecting a particular “gene” over another. Obviously, no one is “selecting” which genes will be passed on to subsequent generations in real life. In nature, variation takes place because of the environment, predation and any number of other factors. But the program synthesizes the basic process, similar to some other evolution “games” in which users can manipulate simple “organisms” on the screen, add variation and see them develop into different forms.

Here is a set of biomorphs that I rendered using Dawkin’s programy. These biomorphs are more than 200 “generations” old:

In fractal art, the same concept applies. Once you select the basic shape that you are going to manipulate, you can then “mutate” the shape using one of many “trends,” which are analogous to real life genes. The “trends” apply unique characteristics to the original shape, and the user can manipulate how strong the influence is for each gene. I was creating fractals a couple years ago when I first read “The Blind Watchmaker” and first learned of the biomorph program, but the resemblance to evolution, for whatever reason, did not occur to me at the time. But once this occurred to me, I was quite fascinated to learn that I was, in one sense, creating artwork using a similar process as that of real life evolution on a very small scale.

Here are some screenshots from Apophysis that show the various trends and the program’s “mutation” tool.

that there’s not a hell for this pissant to go to:

Thanks to facebook.com/hammerthegods for this:

facebook.com/HammerTheGods