Peter Steele, We Hardly Knew Ye....

Peter Steele from the band Type O Negative has passed away. Multiple sources are reporting that Type O Negative lead singer/bassist Peter Steele has passed away at the age of 48 from heart failure.

RIP. I bet his girlfriend's girlfriend is very upset right now.

Jesus saves. And pwns.

Jesus can be such a dick sometimes.

I'm sorry...

For puking all over the table at the Lux Cafe. That was terribly rude. And awesome. I RULE!

Irony meter is on overload

Apparently, Pokemon is the source of all our problems. Pepsi almost came out of my nose when he talked about not being able to tell the difference fantasy and reality.

I am ashamed of what I did for a Klondike bar

If you have some time to kill, check out Autocomplete Me. It is a collection of improbable Google autocomplete suggestions. My favorite is "I like Jesus but he loves me so it's awkward".

2012

First off, let me state that I really like apocalyptic movies (i.e. Sunshine, Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow). The science is always a little sketchy and some suspension of disbelief is required but I can get over that long enough to be entertained. Some of these movies (The Core) cross the line and I have trouble enjoying them. 2012 crossed the line, spit on the line, gave the line a twirling wedgie, and then kept going. They didn't even try! It made The Core seem plausible. I kept expecting to see dinosaurs jump out of the cracks in the earth. Don't even rent 2012.
I knew 2012 would be bad but we went because it was an excuse to try out D-Box seats. There are only a few theaters in the country currently featuring D-Box and the Galaxy Theater at the Cannery Casino happens to be one of them. D-Box seats (provided you are watching a movie coded for them) move and vibrate along with the movie. It's a lot like Star Tours though not as intense. Now that I have tried them, I'm not sure how I feel about them. It was fun at times but there were scenes in which the seats either moved too much or too little to give an immersive experience. In fact, some times it was just a distraction. I don't think I will be willing to shell out the extra $6/ticket in the future. Unless... maybe it could keep me awake next time Niki makes me see a romantic comedy.

A smile on the lips and a hole in the head

If you haven't discovered it yet, I strongly encourage you to check out Better Off Ted on ABC Tuesday nights. I had never heard of it until a couple weeks ago and the show is already in it's second season. It's like a brilliant cross between The Office and Arrested Development. The first nine episodes have been pulled from Hulu now but you can find them with a little digging.

P.S. - I'm really hoping somebody will get the reference in this post's title.

Museum Fail

For those of you who are familiar with the dinosaurs at Cabazon, I'm sure will be outraged to learn that it has been turned into a creationist museum. This is the kind of museum that tells us dinosaurs and humans lived side by side in harmony 6000 years ago. As Luis Black said, "These people watch The Flintstones like it's a documentary!". You can visit their website for some jaw dropping stupidity.

Reply to "Paranormal Activity" on Gary's blog

I tried to post this reply on Gary's blog but had some issue so I'm posting it here:

"This is all based on the assumption that the video wasn't doctored in any way."
It would be a more interesting argument if your basic assumption was not flawed. Paranormal Activity is a work of fiction filmed in documentary style. It's not real.
Another problem is your understanding of atheism. The simplest way to define atheism is a lack of god belief. There are atheists who fall for all kinds of other hokum including ghosts and homeopathy. It is possible to believe in poltergeists, demons, unicorns, and leprechauns without subscribing to a particular religion or believing in a god.
What you may mean to ask is "How does a skeptic explain...?". Skeptics, generally speaking, are people who demand evidence of extraordinary claims before acceptance. Those extraordinary claims could pertain to just about anything including religion, apparitions, aliens, or werewolves. Atheism is much more specific. While there is quite a bit of overlap, skeptic and atheist are not synonymous. In my opinion, any sufficiently informed skeptic should be an atheist but there are those who disagree. People are shockingly good a partitioning parts of their brain to shield cherished beliefs from scrutiny.
Now that we have our terminology straight, let's get back to your question. How does a skeptic explain such a thing? To my knowledge, there hasn't been any evidence that defies conventional explanation or is strong enough to warrant it. Even if there was, the important thing to understand is that unexplainable evidence is only indicative of our ignorance. We don't know EVERYTHING yet and probably never will. As science and technology progress, the gaps in our knowledge grow smaller and smaller but there is still much outside of our grasp. When we try to fill those gaps with superstition, we only stand in the way of our own progress. Let's not forget that many medical conditions (esp. mental illness) were attributed to demonic possession until relatively recently in human history. I knew a Nigerian man who was firmly convinced that meteors were the souls of the deceased moving on to the afterlife. He was not interested in any explanations about space debris burning up as it passed through earth's atmosphere. His superstition stood between him and knowledge.
There is a compelling hypothesis in the physics world right now that suggests our universe might actually be part of a Multiverse. That is to say our known universe is one of 6, 13, or even an infinite number of parallel universes that may interact with each other in unknown ways. There may even be a copy of you in each of those universes leading a slightly different life. It's kind of a trippy concept to wrap your head around but the evidence is surprisingly strong. (read up on String Theory if the topic interests you)
Suppose we had an unadulterated video of what appeared to be an apparition walk into a kitchen and drink a cup of coffee and then vanish. A credulous individual may claim that this is clearly evidence of the existence of ghosts and/or an afterlife. What if the "apparition" was actually caused by a brief "window" into another parallel universe? Perhaps the coffee drinker saw the person holding the camera in the same way. Is my explanation any less likely? No. It may very well be wrong but at least it is based in reality and may some day be testable.
This is purely hypothetical but it illustrates my point. Unexplainable evidence does not justify appeals to the supernatural. That would be an intellectual dead end. Unexplainable evidence just reminds us that we have a lot more to learn. I am comfortable with the fact that I cannot explain everything and realize that greater understanding may come with time. I feel no need to insert my own cultural biases to fill the voids in my understanding. It is o.k. to say "I don't know".

Update: Gary fixed the comment issue on his blog so this can now be found there.