Until the 22nd.
So... relevant requests and statements consistent with my personality.

It's official, I'm now old.
I turned 27 today.

I blame you turkey gobblers :P

I'm curious if anyone sees similarities between my style and any other artists, be they furry or not. I borrow a lot from a huge number of sources and haven't really modeled my style after anything particular.

Who's art style does mine look similar to, to you?


Stolen from  maikeru

Lots of people like to think about the possibility of real life furries, but often they look to genetic engineering for the answer. I think a much more realistic way to see them exist is through robotics. In fact I believe that by the time we have functional humanoid robots, we'll also have them modified to look like anthros. This effectively lets us skip over the uncanny valley, a major hurdle if we want to integrate life like machines into our society.

We may even see such things in our lifetime. After all it's just Asimo in a Fursuit :P

"The great cause of much psychological illness is the fear of knowledge of oneself ....
We tend to be afraid of any knowledge that could cause us to despise ourselves or
make us feel inferior, weak, worthless, evil, shameful. We protect ourselves and our
ideal image of ourselves by repression and similar defenses, which are essentially
techniques by which we avoid becoming conscious of unpleasant or dangerous
truths .... But there is another kind of truth we tend to evade. Not only do we hang
on to our psychopathology, but also we tend to evade personal growth because this,
too, can bring another kind of fear, of awe, of feelings of weakness and inadequacy.
And so we find another kind of resistance, a denying of our best side, of our talents,
of our finest impulses, of our highest potentialities, of our creativeness .... It is
precisely the god-like in ourselves that we are ambivalent about, fascinated by the
fearful of, motivated to and defensive against."

Abraham Manslow "The Need to Know and The Fear of Knowing"

Was reading an excerpt in a book on social engineering and this passage came up. I think I wrote a journal about that at some point :P

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/eart.....00/8311373.stm

I may have mentioned in the past that there is a theory that binds together the western and chinese zodiacs. That theory being that rather than stars influencing how we develop as people, the solar cycles do. There is a 12 phase annual cycle and an 11 year cycle that coincides with those zodiacs. Now here's some scientific evidence that these solar cycles do result in radiation that has repeating, developmental effects on life on earth.

My computer decided to disable all my external connections last night. No internet, no USB, occasional ESATA (works 25% of the time).

Repairing tcpip.sys failed to fix the problem so I guess I'm stuck installing windows again :(

Oh well, might as well upgrade to 7

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR "if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court."

http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2009/1.....e-republicans/

I like how he put it: "30 Republican Senators have come out in favor gang rape."

I don't think there's a way to weasel out of that one :P

http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bittm.....at_we_eat.html

Good info.

I'm sure most of us have faced a situation where we've asked ourselves, or someone has asked us "Am I a good person?". At first glance the answer is generally pretty simple, if you don't do bad things intentionally then you're probably a good person. However there is another deeper interpretation of this same question. Rather than asking if we qualify as either good or evil we should be asking ourselves, "Am I being a good human?". That is to say are our beliefs, thoughts and actions appropriate for a successful human being? Doing good deeds is a simple thing we can look at on the surface, but do such simple actions define us as a successful and good human being?

If we are acting out of fear, or false beliefs, selfishness or due to an imagined law that we must follow, are we being good?

I cannot claim to be a good person because I have not been as successful a human as I would like, or am capable of being. Do we not owe it to ourselves to fulfill our potential?

"Am I a good person?" is a simple question on the surface, "Am I a good soldier in TF2?" is an apt analogy for how to perceive the question. I believe we should think of those questions in the same way.

We are all people, but are we all good at being people?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFJYUzsXCSE

Watch all the parts, very informative.

Unfortunately it's only available in Canada :(

Just do a google search for "the brain that changes itself" .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuA4MCv2Blg

Check out other Weston Price Foundation stuff on google. It's quite compelling.

http://www.destructoid.com/buddhist.....n-149304.phtml

When you satisfy an emotional need you are less likely to express it in a harmful way :3

It seems when spirituality is brought up it inevitably leads to discussion or correlation with the supernatural. I don't believe there is anything supernatural going on during spiritual experiences nor when doing things that may appear "supernatural". Even supposed miracles are often well within the realm of reality.

A famous example is of course Jesus and the miracles he's said to have performed. They don't really impress me or give me the impression he was divine. They're all feats reported to have been achieved by eastern spiritual masters to sometimes even greater effect. Some are still practiced and used today, such as reiki healing or chi-gong. The manipulation of magnetic fields isn't to me a supernatural ability but one we can all learn.

Then there are visions and spirit journeys and other mental feats. These can be simulated through drug use but some will assume they're tapping into some alternate dimension. If we are spiritual beings does it not stand to reason that we have biological functions and organs that are capable of these feats?

I'd also like to mention that I have been a firsthand witness to some pretty amazing things so I don't have to speculate that they're possible.

I made a new public screen name for those of you too shy to ask for it via notes: miffymaffy

I'll also keep it as a a backup in case my current screen name becomes invalid again.

Some people think that if you draw lips on furries they should be skin toned. Otherwise they'd look like they had fuzzy lips. Nothing says they can't have fuzzy lips; giraffes do.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/17/8.....018841.jpg?v=0

Fuzzy eyelids are another matter entirely.

I always like to think of logical extremes that ideologies can take. It helps put things in perspective and is effective in arguing against the "slippery slope" idea.

Simply take an ideology and imagine if it were allowed to manifest unfettered to the utmost extreme that it is capable of.

One that I came up with, as a result of current healthcare scares, is the logical extreme of for profit medicine. Take into account everything you can think of that would be beneficial to this idea and remove anything detrimental. The extreme I have come to is that eventually people would need to use their own organs and tissue as collateral for insurance. Think of it as a reverse mortgage but instead of on your house, its on your liver. Add to this a push to sell drugs that keep a person's health stagnant but not curing anything. Mandated drug treatment, no consumer protection and covert manipulation of health education to prevent the average person from keeping their costs down. I can't think of an extreme more than that scenario.

Or perhaps take something more tangible than an ideology, like an animal for example. What is the logical extreme for say... a cow? Perhaps it would be an immobile animal that merely sucks up nutrition from a feeding pool while dropping off meat tumors and likewise discarding bladders full of milk for later retrieval.

Did I mention this kind of stuff can make for interesting art and story settings?

What are some logical extremes you can come up with?

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/.....-and-exercise/

Coincidentally I'm actually on a 0 fat diet this week. You'd be surprised how hard it is to find foods that contain no fat and no oils. I'm on the diet in order to give my liver a chance to "shift gears" and start focusing on processing my stored bodyfat instead of new fat that gets introduced into my system.

I've been working on a game and I need 2 graphics in order to finish it.

The first and most important is the final boss of the game. It's huge, it's complicated, and it needs to have animated parts.

The send thing is a title graphic. It would be much easier but still relies on some very technical and accurate drawing.

These would both need to be drawn in flash. The boss would be drawn with the line tool.

I can provide a document with proper size comparisons, a color palette, other enemies so the boss can be themed correctly, and some animated components that would simply need to be tweaked to match the boss.

I'm willing to either pay for the production and/or offer a credit in the game.

Contact me via Note if you're interested, please also send a link to some of your mechanical drawings.

I'm not talking about adding years, but to instead make those years feel longer. As we grow older the rate at which we perceive time changes. In fact it accelerates every year to such an effect that by the time we've reached the age of 25 we've lived over half of our perceived lifetime. However there is an easy way to reclaim some of that perceived time back.

Wake up early.

That's it. Just wake up early and get to bed at a comfortable hour and your perception of time will slow dramatically. It may feel nice to stay in bed but you'll wind up wondering where the day went. Even if you get 8 hours of sleep you'll still feel that the days are longer.

http://tauntermedia.com/2009/07/28/.....cionable-math/

A great article and a worthwhile read. It helpfully explains what the statistics being used in the debate actually mean.

... cuz I never do memes and there's always room for more!

Say a word and I will attempt to share a fact about myself that incorporates that word.

I have a hunch as to what word is sure to appear >.>

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-dr.....ackfire-effect

I'm sure we've all run into a person that exhibits this at least once X3

I've been meaning to write a journal about this for a while, and I'm bored so I figured I'd do it now.

I have a theory about how all supernatural phenomena occurs. This only deals with phenomena that cannot be discounted by known natural occurrences.

The foundation is that everything is ultimately a series of waves. All matter when broken down to its most basic quanta is simply a wave. Supernatural events are caused by these waves interfering. These waves of course do not operate on the electromagnetic spectrum as we know it but are more basic and are in the same spectra as gravity and nuclear forces.

When I say everything I also include our own mental functions and emotions. So now that I've presented the foundation idea here's the specifics for several phenomena.

Hauntings: These are caused by strong emotions affecting the frequencies of an environment or object. You'll note that there are no hauntings associated with boring places or happy places but instead those with strong emotional tragedies such as murders. This process of haunting can also be done while a person is still alive, a process these days that is seen as blessing. Essentially a person imposes their emotions on an object until it resonates in a manner similar to the emotion presented. You can haunt something by simply associating it with a desired emotion and keeping it around a lot. This is also why exorcism can remove a haunting. A strong conviction is required to exorcise a haunting because it allows the person to impose an extremely strong emotion with confidence. This essentially overwrites the ghost with a new frequency or scrambles it enough to break down any manifestations. Theoretically this could be done artificially once we manage to detect and produce these energy fields.

Poltergeists: A haunting being a certain frequency or frequencies in an environment or object can thus radiate these waves on other things. In the case of poltergeists it starts to affect a human being. Children are the most common target of poltergeists and I believe this is because their mental frequency has not solidified as it has with more mature brains. A poltergeist can do quite a bit to a person as a result. Note that in either case it implies that you cannot talk to the dead as they are simply emotional recordings though a fraction of their memories may also have been recorded.

Telekinesis: This is a tough one since I've never seen it done. In theory however it would be through the use of ones own field to influence the gravitational field of an object. It would thus be very hard to move something large/dense as it would have a stronger gravitational field to influence.

Psychic ability: We all share our thoughts through our radiated neurological field. I posted about that in one of my earlier journals and provided a video of research done on the subject.

I guess those are the big 4.