I recently ran into one of the tried-and-boring christian come-backs against atheism: “if you don’t believe in god, how can you find joy in your life?” You know, that kind of yawner.
Stderr
All the unbuffered error messages
I recently ran into one of the tried-and-boring christian come-backs against atheism: “if you don’t believe in god, how can you find joy in your life?” You know, that kind of yawner.
I suspect this is the same in most states in the US, right now: you go through a maze of websites and eventually sign up to get the COVID-19 vaccine, perhaps getting a text message to verify that you can be reached.
When I came up with the name “stderr” for this blog, I was thinking about the way that the error-stream is unbuffered; that means that things come out in the order that they are printed, sort of like how I speak/write: blah blah blah unfiltered and there’s no “pause” button.
In my previous episode on hypnosis, [stderr] I began by framing my views on the topic by dividing it into two separate things, stage hypnosis and hypnotherapy. I’m going to stand by that distinction, as I think it’s useful – but I’ve got a bunch of new angles that I need to add to my notes.
This fascinating tidbit was mentioned in an aside on TWIV. Even their digressions are often mind-blowing, and teach fundamental scientific thinking. I mentally bookmarked it under “more research” and “not miserably depressing” and started digging.
[Warning: Long]
Skepticism is generally a good thing, but sometimes we run into contrarianism – a version of pseudo-skepticism characterized by motivated reasoning aimed at running against some prevailing opinion or belief.
The radiation from the “elephant’s foot” slag-flow under the reactor at Chernobyl would flat-out kill a human in about 5 minutes. Two minutes’ exposure would be a death sentence.
I got home lateish last night and just went to bed after a quick shower – a good end to a successful mission.
Back in 2012 I was at a security conference in Boston and one of the keynote speakers made a pitch that computer security was beginning to show some of the properties of an evolved system. I.e.: pathogens were starting to occupy every possible niche, defenses appeared and were overcome, etc.
This is one of those “damn it, I am not qualified to write about this…” topics that I want to write about. Therefore, I encourage any of you who feel you are more qualified to correct me accordingly.