http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblo.....-universe.html

When I was referring to cellular intelligence I was making reference to both chemical communication and the hardwired nature of molecules to behave "intelligently". By that I mean that they will naturally react in ways conducive to the formation of life.

But this time I'm focusing on the concept of belief itself. So this applies to more than just religion too.

There is a fundamental flaw with most beliefs. We form them based on our observations. This seems reasonable when we think about it, but there is a limitation to this system. We are restricted to one view point and only one foundation of truth. The only thing we are capable of truly knowing is ourselves. Anything beyond ourselves we must understand through our senses. Our senses are primitive and rely on stimulating our nerves and by extension our brain. These senses can be distorted, or even completely inaccurate. Worse than that we can completely change how we interpret those signals with our own mind.

Thus relying on external observation to "know" something is logically limited, if not flawed.

So if we look at religious beliefs we notice that all of them come from external sources (of course). From these external sources we have to use our limited sensory capabilities to form an interpretation. Yet people will insist that what they have learned is absolutely true. Any belief that comes from without cannot be confirmed as truth due to our viewpoint limitations.

If however we are capable of figuring something out within ourselves using only what we know as internal truths, we can then trust the conclusion. This is what meditation and the quest for enlightenment entails and it is by no means easy.

If you have externalized beliefs you owe it to yourself to analyze them in comparison to yourself and what you are capable of actually knowing for certain. It would be irrational to do otherwise.


I leave you with a quote: "The most direct path to finding god is through atheism." -Mif_Maf

Current Commission Slot Reservations:

Immediate:
1. GrandStorm
2. LeonandRenei

Reserved for the next round:
3. StormdragonBlue
4. Mirriringfox
5. flir (you lucky bastard X3 )

Same procedure as before. Comment here if you're interested and I'll pick 5 at random for immediate/future commission slots. I will contact the selected people privately whenever a new game on steam, that I'm interested comes out.

Right now there are 2 that I'm interested in and the 3 runners up will have reserved slots for future commissions.

Games priced $50+: Colored single character
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2380610
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2017432
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2464637
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1793145

Games priced $30: Lineart single character or color bust.
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1658835/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2350950/

Slot selection closes in 48 hours.

Something to think about regarding ancient civilizations. All identifiable traces of our current civilization and technology would disappear from earth within 5000 years. Our known history only goes back 6000 years while our species as it appears today has existed for about 200,000 years. There could have been hundreds of advanced societies in the past and we'd never find any trace.

http://www.havenandhearth.com/portal/

Take a gander. The whole world is malleable and you can do all sorts of stuff. It's still in alpha stages so there are lots of new features appearing every few days. The devs are great too :)

Take a look. I have a village in there as well :3

So there was controversy regarding this woman choosing to wear a veil while teaching. Watch the video to understand why the controversy is pretty much fabricated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK4h8NnnGgM&feature=related

Stuff like this is why I always assume a headline or any news really is completely skewed. People are predictable and predominantly stupid :P

And the winner of the random draw is:
Souffle

If for some reason the commission is cancelled, or I want another game as well, I've also selected the following runners up (in this order).
flir
Rogerandom

Thanks for playing everyone.

I once again see games incoming and being the greedy bastard I am; I want them. :D


But that's a good thing for you guys if you're keen on getting some commissioned art from me. So once again I'm opening a commission slot for the price of a specific game on steam.

This time I'll choose randomly so just comment on this journal if you're interested. The game is a AAA title so it will once again cost about $50 USD.

Examples of what you can get from me for that price:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1793145
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2017432

I'm open to most subject matter but I'm not too big on gratuitous porn (that's what real porn is for) :P
This time I'll even offer FA avatars with animation :)

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4VHS7P7-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=b2f3ecbcd1b9831e76b60aa535c9cc9e

Saw that meme going around but still not bothering with it. Instead here's some pet peeves i have in regards to religion and theistic beliefs.

1. (The big one) The assumption that "god" is functionally retarded: It escapes me how people that believe their god is all knowing, all seeing and all powerful and yet still assume that their god is an idiot. The bible for example is full of references to god testing people, punishing people or otherwise fixing his mistakes. An infallible entity would have an intellect so far beyond anything we can comprehend that assuming the need for it to use mystical means to accomplish anything is like saying that an electrical engineer can't make a simple circuit without hiring someone else to do it for them.

2. Witnessing and brainwashing: After learning the mechanisms for brainwashing I came to realize that all suggested methods of witnessing and targeting people for conversion rely on the same systems. They'll always look for people who have suffered some trauma or are otherwise confused about their own identity. Then give them a "rational" foundation and a comforting & reinforcing environment. The same methods are used to keep people involved as well.

3. Ceremony: If your god of choice is infallible and perfect it certainly wouldn't have created abstract methods of worship that would be impossible in the natural world. Instead ceremony and regular practice are used to constantly reinforce the basic idea of the faith and prevent the believer from having time to think about them. This is most prevalent in Islam where they must pray several times a day. If you don't let your mind wander you can't actually think about these things rationally.

4. Humanizing Features: Our emotions, thoughts and behaviors are all controlled by our physical properties no matter how much we'd like to think otherwise. An intangible being would have none of those things so placing those properties on something like that is pointless. A god could never be angry because it has no body to induce that emotion, just as a soul could have no emotions or personality associated with the physical body.

5. Afterlife: Simply put if an afterlife like heaven or hell existed, then this life wouldn't. Thinking about it mathematically we can simply divide our time on earth by the time we'd spend in the afterlife. Let's say we live on average 85 years. In the afterlife we'd spend eternity, or infinite years. Therefore 85/infinity = zero. No matter how nice that afterlife is you would become bored within the first 10000 years, and you'd still only be 0% done with it :P
Unless you assume eternity is a finite number, in which case you run into the issue of what happens then? Do you die again and go into another afterlife?

6. Arguments of Ignorance: When defending or explaining faith the only argument ever presented is that we are ignorant. Rather than try to find the truth we should ignore it I guess :P

7. Words of Power: Words are meaningless and empty abstracts. They neither define nor reflect reality unless we give them that power. No matter how many times you quote something it won't change it from words and it won't make it tangible reality. This is why hypocrisy is so prevalent among religious people. The assume that their words define the real word while failing to realize that it is only the interpretation that has any meaning, which still doesn't define reality at all.

8. Surrender: Religions have always sought to explain what we do not readily understand. For a time this worked very well but now that our scientific understanding has reached beyond what our religions have been used to explain they are having the opposite intended effect. They now serve to try and quash inquiry and learning.

9. Learning is bad: There is no knowledge that is not power. ANYONE that tells you to not learn something is trying to control you and keep you from the truth. A forbidden book is forbidden because it will cause you to learn something that makes you question dogma. Never shut your mind to learning.


A bit about me: I'm not an atheist or an agnostic even though it may seem that way ;)

When people talk about karma they'll often refer to it as "getting what you deserve". The idea most people have is that through our actions we will receive things that either reward good actions or punish bad actions. If someone does something we see as negative, especially towards us, we seem to hope that they'll receive divine retribution in some form.

This is of course the popular culture notion of what karma is.
The definition according to wikipedia: is the concept of "action" or "deed" in Indian religions understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect (i.e., the cycle called saṃsāra) originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Buddhist philosophies.

According to Buddhist teachings: the law of karma, says only this: `for every event that occurs, there will follow another event whose existence was caused by the first, and this second event will be pleasant or unpleasant according as its cause was skillful or unskillful.' A skillful event is one that is not accompanied by craving, resistance or delusions; an unskillful event is one that is accompanied by any one of those things. (Events are not skillful in themselves, but are so called only in virtue of the mental events that occur with them.)

This second interpretation gives us a clearer picture of what karma is and how it relates to our actions. It describes an action not as being good or bad but as skillful or unskillful. You can perform good or things you perceive as good unskillfully if your motivations for doing so are based on craving, resistance or delusions. The response to such an act does not also need to be an external event as we often believe but can just as easily be an internal event. If we unfairly focus our anger on someone we may suffer an external negative or we may suffer an internal one, such as damage to our heart from the stress.

Often karmic reward is seen as something that may eventually happen. However since karma describes a process it in fact begins taking place from the moment of our action. Karmic response is thus immediate and appropriate to how we behave. Though we should not assume that only our outside actions bear karma, so too do our thoughts and feelings.

Karma is perpetual, all pervasive and above all completely fair.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9051169

Neat finding, unfortunately I can neither find the full research papers or a comparison to regular brain generated EM field strength.

Anyone happen to know what the average strength of the brain's EM field is?

Watch these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6OrDxBnLeY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMucs6dXsv8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MH0Xfp72XE

I often recommend alternative medicine to people when they talk about any illnesses they have or if they have chronic conditions. Some may consider me to be some kind of new age advocate or they clump me in with people that believe homeopathy is effective.

However I think I have a well reasoned stance on the issue. If you are sick and there is a modern medical cure or treatment then go with that first. If however what you have cannot be cured by modern medicine or would be inconvenient to do so (treating colds with antibiotics, etc.) then I will suggest alternative medicine.

For example in my own case I have 3 conditions that fit these categories. The first and most minor is scar tissue under the skin of my face. I went to acupuncture to have it broken apart as modern medical procedures would have been ineffective at removing it without doing even more damage. This has proven quite successful.

My second example is a small bone in my nose that as a result of my operation and slightly deviated septum has blocked off one of my sinus cavities. Having it treated would mean going under the knife again and doing considerable damage to my sinus cavity. I have instead been using kunlun meditation to treat it (though that wasn't an anticipated result of starting the practice.) It has been effective enough so as to allow me to fly without further complications.

The 3rd is an inoperable but benign tumor in my arm. I'm hoping the same bone disintegration that has been seen on the offending bone in my nose (i had an x-ray done) to also be taking place on that thing.


So that's my stance: If you have no other choice, go with something crazy. You never know, it might just work.

When I refer to feeling I'm referring to physical sensations. The sensations we're most comfortable talking about are those of heat, cold, pleasure, pain and texture. However those are but the very crudest and simplest of the sensations and feelings we can experience. Our body expresses its state through all manner of sensations, constantly in flux and providing feedback on our physical state. However I've found that what language I know fails utterly in describing the more subtle sensations.

Something doesn't have to hurt for us to think that something is wrong. Often we'll refer to it as being "off" or somehow bad, but we can't share what we're feeling.

When I went through acupuncture I would describe to my acupuncturist in vivid detail the bizarre sensations that I would experience. Sometimes I would describe them in colors or shapes. Sometimes they were complex amalgamations of contradictory sensations (ex. burning lightning water).

I feel we are naive to dismiss the realm of feeling if it does not fit into our simple categorizations. These feelings can tell us if we're healthy or sick or even if we're doing something correctly or incorrectly. The important thing to consider when dealing with the realm of feeling is that our minds have near total control of it and that we must be careful not to induce feelings when we are trying to pay attention to them.

Current State: Feeling grainy and kinda orange.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI

Pretty good indeed :)

A constant with most people is the desire to get things. The thing itself often doesn't really matter because once they have it they will inevitably grow tired of it and the rush of receiving it will disappear. A similar behavior is often exhibited among those that create things. Once we've made something we lose the desire to possess that item.

We all love the act of acquisition but the process of having something is ultimately a burden rather than a blessing.

However, how often have you felt worse after giving something that is appreciated? The rush itself is short lived, but the emotional connection between giver and recipient is improved, even if only for the giver.

I feel that ultimately we don't want to have anything, but we want to create incessantly and share openly. We are restricted in acting this way because we must suffer the lowest common denominator: those that do not appreciate and those that would exploit.

I wish I could be more eloquent with this.

Journal inspired by  sokitwopaw

Can you imagine the furry fandom one day disappearing? That everyone just forgets about it and nobody is interested in furry art or stories anymore? I don't see that happening. Humans are too primal and almost have the things furry represents hard wired into their brains.

Lets make up a scenario: There has been a nuclear armageddon, mankind is but a shadow of itself. The world lies in ruins and mankind must rebuild. Centuries pass and archeology starts to flourish in an attempt to recover all the lost knowledge and technology. Eventually a piece of furry art is uncovered, given how prolific it is these days. It may be examined and eventually written about and even displayed. I guarantee you that someone that sees that art is going to be turned on by it. Thus from the ashes of the end of the world furry will rise again.

Lets compare that to another fandom, star trek for example. Same scenario, world ends, archeologists find a video or piece of art. This no longer has any cultural relevance anymore. If someone were to see an episode of star trek in a museum of the future what do you think their chances are of being so enamored by it that they'd become fans of it?

This is why we don't have egyptian pottery fandoms or amazon folk tale fandoms. They don't toy with our most basic instincts, they rely on cultural relevance or influence to persist. Furry is different, its something we can imagine naturally and something that makes us feel funny in the pants.

That is why I believe furry is eternal.

Unless our planet explodes and no humans survive X3

Suggested subject by  badkera

Evolution is a fascinating subject and it seems to breed a lot of controversy, which generally indicates that it's really hard to understand. Most people with only limited knowledge of evolution will assume that natural selection is the defining factor that controls the change of species. However those with a bit more knowledge understand that it is merely one of the many factors that contributes to evolution.

There are a few more that people rarely consider. One I personally find interesting is called "lateral evolution". Basically lateral evolution is the process of dna being exchanged between different species that exist at the same time rather than in successive generations. The instruments of this exchange are interestingly enough: viruses. Yes viruses are an important part of the evolutionary process, they survive by injecting their dna into cells and then programming those cells to create more viruses. What often happens is a bit of that cell's dna winds up being copied into successive generations of that virus. These offspring can then spread to other compatible species and insert that DNA into them as well. This process has been observed and indicates why as the number of different species in an area increases so too does the rate of DNA mutation. In effect bio diversity accelerates evolution. This in effect gives the effect that all species interbreed on a cellular level; and as a result the boundaries that separate life are blurred.

Another concept that is only now starting to be realized is the concept of 'cellular intelligence'. You must keep in mind that cells are functional life forms and as a result they must have the means and instincts necessary to survive. Some of this intelligence can manifest in forms of communication, such as those observed between the nucleus containing cells of our own bodies. They can connect with one another and give off chemical signals to communicate with one another. Even simpler than that, DNA itself has been observed to have "intelligence", though it is more physical characteristic than intellect. Proteins will actually move towards one another or away from each other due to their chemical properties.

Another key that is sometimes touched upon is the idea that evolution does not "progress". All species are in fact perfectly suited for the environment within which they exist. This is why we don't have dinosaurs for example. They simply could not survive in the conditions the earth is in right now. The progression of species towards higher forms is just an illusion but one many tend to ignore given how evolution is often presented. We are not the pinnacle of evolution, we just happen to be perfectly suited for the state of the world as it is right now. Environmental change can make us less compatible but we'll change to suit it eventually.

Now for some more speculative stuff based on the points i've made. Consider that cells do possess some intelligence, what if that could allow them to respond to the will of the organism they compose? This could serve to induce mutation based on need, rather than trial and error. More importantly this could act very quickly. A potential example can be seen in some african elephants that have begun growing smaller, or no tusks, in response to poaching. This process has happened very quickly and is more than likely due to a mutation that increases their chance of breeding due to not being hunted. However given how beneficial this mutation is and how quickly it has manifested it might be attributed by the animal's need to not have the tusks anymore. I hope this subject receives some serious study as there may be some merit to it. This is essentially intelligent design, but driven by the intelligence of the cells themselves.

I'm also going to mention one more related subject and contributor to evolution. It may in fact be the single largest force of evolution in existence; the sun. The sun has a lot of wonderful properties and a lot of bad ones too, then there are those that we don't pay attention to despite knowing they exist. Solar radiation is surprisingly powerful and is capable of affecting DNA here on earth. Often this will result in random mutations or cell damage, but some people speculate that the effects are predictable to an extent. The sun's radiation has 3 different cycles. The shortest of which occurs approximately 12 times in one year, the next shortest is at an approximate 12 year cycle. The third is considerably longer and I'm too lazy to look it up. If you're familiar with astrology you might notice that those cycles correspond to both the western and chinese zodiacs. The idea is that the stars have no effect on you, but the massive ball of radiation in our own neighborhood does. This in effect means that the genes of everything on earth are affected by the sun and thus evolution may be happening faster than we may think.

Oh and if you're into that whole mayan calendar 2012 thingy. It corresponds to a period when the 3 solar cycles are in sync and the result will be a very large dose of solar radiation leading to drought and infertility and a potential axis shift. The last axis shift occurred on venus a few hundred years ago and is part of historical record. The mayan calendar merely predicts earth's approximate turn.

Nice tangent from evolution huh? :D

tl;dr: Cells are smart and we're all kinda like ninja turtles.

PS. There's also another theory, but it's much more complex and delves into non-linear time and the nature of consciousness as it acts as an integral component as to the substance of the universe. But I'm too lazy to get into that.

I'm sure many of you are know quite aware of the types of journals I write and the kinds of questions and ideas I present.

I'd like to ask if any of you have anything you'd like me to write a journal about. Any subjects that people seldom discuss or even think about. Lets give those braincells a workout :D

What would you like my next journal to be about?

I learned something interesting a little while ago. In many mystic/spiritual traditions one organ in particular has special meaning. It's a poorly understood part of the brain called the Pineal Gland. What we know from scientific study is that it is capable of producing powerful hallucinogens when properly stimulated (meditation, extreme trauma or near death) and that its function is closely tied to our maturation and growing up. In fact damage to the pineal gland has been shown to have catastrophic effects on developing children.

Now here's where the abortion angle comes in. The pineal gland is formed rather early during gestation in the womb. 49 days to be precise, the same time that the child's sex is set as well. In those aforementioned spiritual beliefs that number is also referred to as the time when the seat of the soul (what they called the pineal gland) is occupied. In essence they believe that the spirit does not exist at conception but only 49 days after wards. I never see this mentioned in abortion debates.

So yeah, have some 1:00am mutterings from the mif, and do a little research on these subjects. There's a lot more to it too :D

I finally got my video card back. However they sent me a different model entirely. Turns out I won out because it's a superior card. However I now have a problem.

The video card doesn't fit in my case D:
The harddrive rack gets in the way. Should I trim the rack a bit to make room?

How many of you have inadvertently tattooed yourselves with a stab from a pencil?

I've got a nice graphite dot in my palm, near my thumb from when that happened. I see it as the badge of an artist :D

Anyone out there know a thing or two about VPN proxies?

I need to subscribe to one or find a free one that allows me the use of a large range of ports and has servers in the US. If you've got experience with such things send me a note :P