Apparently, My Ass Is No Asset

In which I link my latest disappointment back to politics and religion.

I was brainstorming how to make some quick cash, and thought back to an article I was reading, about how research institutions really need bodies to do research on..

http://tinyurl.com/3o9zqlz

..and so I thought, hey, I wonder how much I could get if I sold my future corpse to science. Sounded like a good idea to me. Supply and demand! There's probably alotta fun stuff inside this bizarre set of guts.
But then I was researching it further, and found out that it is, seemingly for no good reason, illegal to sell bodies or body parts, even if they're your own, in these United States, and in each of the states of these United States.
Instead, we are prodded, with a strong undertone of moral sanction, to just hand over our most precious asset (our actual former selves) to those researchers who would seek to both deal in and deny its commodity.

"Your donation should be made in the spirit of a truly priceless gift for mankind and the advancement of health sciences."

Blah blah blah giveusyourbodyforfree blah.

What are the honest reasons behind this quaint proscription? I wager, the self-same religious "sacred body" jibberty jabber mentioned in that article.
Oh, Reginald, we mustn't trample on the "soul", cheapen up the "chakras", or debase the "spirit" of the deceased's former temple.
Laws against such an otherwise reasonable transaction can only be based in superstitious sensitivities and rooted in the antiquated asshattery that has yet to be fully flushed out of our societal system.
I'm winking at you, religion.

Hey, wait! What happened to our great capitalist society?! Why isn't the political Right jumping all over this? Oh, that's right, they have to play the doublethink game and play to the diametrically opposed constituents of their base: the fundie religious, and the free-market wheeler-dealers. And since this idea would step on the toes of the already panicky social reactionaries, the fundie card trumps on this one.
And why isn't the Left up in arms.. or rather, flowers.. about the infringement that is unjustly and unreasonably restricting our personal right to happiness in determining the manner by which our remains meet their ultimate destiny? Oh, that's right, they have to tiptoe around the egg shells of political correctness. We shouldn't dare to possibly disrespect anyone's sacred beliefs. Especially if those beliefs happen to have been sneaked in and codified by law. Everyone has the right not to be offended, after all.
Sure, I can understand a ban on selling other people's body parts. That sort of market would conjure the whole woke-up-in-a-bathtub-full-of-ice-with-a-surgical-scar-missing-a-kidney scenario. But my own body parts?! My own whole body? That's gotta be worth something. And I was under the impression that it was mine to do with as I pleased.. well, except apparently, use "controlled substances" on it, sell it for sex, or voluntarily stop its life functions.. but that's a whole nother set of somewhat related issues.
Can't say there wouldn't be any purchase interest, if they were being honest, especially with all the interesting complications of diabetes churning around in this walking zombie. But then, of course, the arms of those institutions of higher learning would be hard twisted to start actually paying for something they've always gotten for free.. or clandestinely dug out of the local paupers' field. That's the real reason they're so quick to leverage that "spirit of giving" "betterment of mankind" spiel. For them too, it's just all a matter of the cash.
If they want it, they can buy it.
Their moral outrage is plastic.

So, fuck 'em. They're not willing to fork over fare trade value, they're getting squat. My corpus is going in the furnace.

Root Beer Milk?

In the Supermarket I sees this amazing new product. Rootbeer flavoured milk! For times when you crave that poorly disguised children's medicine taste, combined with a thick mucous inducing consistency.

And not only is it "Select", folks, but also "artificially flavored", for those times when you want your viscous medicine fluid to also bear down on your internals like ever so much plastic.

Theists are so Clever (sarcasm)

This placard encountered on facebook here, with this addition from the poster:

" 'Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...' — C.S. Lewis "


This assay endeavors to be witty on the basis of a number of disingenuous straw-man arguments and projection. It fancies itself an artful attempt at objection to atheism, but ends up failing as badly in its aim as the erstwhile flat-earther complaint, "If the earth is round, why don't we all fall off?"
Let's see exactly what's wrong with it.

Firstly, the attempted lampoon, in trying to attack atheism, fails to address it at all. Instead, it tries to aim its spit-wad caliber missiles at firmly evidenced, scientifically based, standard cosmological and biological principles; and doesn't even represent them accurately. Know what you're attacking before you rush head-long into idiocy.

Atheism is not a belief system. It has no dogma and promotes no claims. It is the simple *lack* of belief in a god or gods. We are all atheist with respect to the gods we don't happen to believe in. Do we believe in Amaterasu? No. Most likely because most people don't even know which of the many gods that is. We are atheist in respect to it. Don't think your particular god is special, or any different than any of the rest. People who define themselves as atheists today simply lack a belief in all gods. So right from the start, "Atheism, The belief that.." is fallacious.

Secondly, no one I know of on this planet holds the belief that "there was nothing". Not cosmologists; who only extrapolate on the basis of sound evidence back to a quantum singularity; which is something, not nothing; Not agnostics, who don't address the subject at all on the basis that we can't know either way about gods, creation, something or nothing; And not theists, who are the ones who postulate a variety of incongruous and mutually incompatible *magic* creators, without any evidence for such beings, who *magically* brought everything into existence with no description of the method. They postulate without basis a supernatural cause, and fail to explain the connection between that cause and its effect. That is the very definition of magic.
Yes, it is the theist who believes in magic, not the atheist.
And the bottom line is, there may or may not have been nothing. We don't know, but atheism has nothing to say on the subject.

And Thirdly, the poster's assertion of atheism being too simplistic, on top of her tired old claim that a universe without a god has no meaning, via C.S. Lewis; That is what is too simplistic. Human beings assign meaning to their lives and the elements in their lives. That is not a depraved view of meaning by any stretch. It wonderfully speaks to the way we can describe how we fit *naturally* into our world and this universe. There is no need, and indeed no evidence to assume some supernatural meaning-assigner. That, in and of itself, is yet another instance of projection; of anthropomorphizing the universe as an intelligence. That's what is too simplistic, too juvenile, and not well thought out.

Is atheism simple? Yes. Is it too simple? Not unless you try to misconstrue it as a belief system, or a means by which answers are derived. But atheism is, as I've stated, not a belief system. It makes no claims. It doesn't pretend to answer any questions, and doesn't seek, unlike the many religions of the world, to fill in the gaps of our knowledge with the unsatisfactory and dishonest place-holder of "god did it". That's not an answer. It describes nothing; explains nothing. It has no basis in reality. It is honest to admit there are things we don't know. Making up gods for those things we have yet to figure out is no answer at all.
The next disjointed and overreaching assertion religious people usually jump to is that atheists don't believe in anything at all then. That's not true either. Just because atheism doesn't provide a belief system by itself, doesn't mean that we, as human beings, don't derive our beliefs elsewhere. We just don't happen to tie them to unsubstantiated myths, fairytales, or imaginary friends. I for one, value belief in things that are supported by evidence. Some atheists find meaning in the pursuit of science, others in the tasks of humanism.. or both. There are many belief systems that have nothing to do with the idea of gods, even religions- some forms of Buddhism, for example. We shouldn't assume that those who differ in their beliefs from us are in some way devoid of belief, meaning, ethics or morals.

To finish up, let's look at some of the *filler* in this supposedly clever epithetic paragraph.

"..nothing happened to nothing.." - Utterly meaningless. Who would claim such a thing? Though atheists usually cannot be generalized in most ways religious people would like, I can assure you, we would not.

"..then nothing magically exploded for no reason.." - A quantum singularity is not nothing. It didn't explode, it expanded. To say that everything that occurs has to have a reason, i.e., goal oriented intelligence behind it, is just another case of anthropomorphic projection, again. This is not to say that there isn't a valid question of "how". There is just not always a "why". These two questions are often conflated by religious people who can't seem to wrap their heads around the difference.

"..creating everything.." - Yet another case of not being able to wrap their heads around the concept that not only isn't everything "created", but that most things are not "created". Human beings create things. That is the only verifiable example of creation that exists in the universe so far. Human beings like to project that perception of creation onto other things that seem complex. Just because something is complex doesn't mean it's created. This simply boils down to an argument from ignorance on the part of religious people.

"..and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself.." - I've already shown how magic is a hallmark of religious belief, not of atheism, nor of science. Science does very well at describing rationally, logically and with supporting evidence how order can arise from natural physical conditions. Read a science book. If you think your god put stuff together like lego pieces, then describe exactly the method by which he did this and how such a claim can be independently substantiated. Do that, right after you show that your particular god exists and acts upon this universe at all.

"..for no reason what so ever [sic].." - Again with the fallacy that everything has to have a "why"-based reason. If you think that everything has to have such a reason behind it, then do please explain why that is in the first place.

"..into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs." - Now who's being too simplistic? Oh wait.. it's this sophomoric, fallacy-soaked, straw-man laden attempt at cleverness that has been too simplistic all along.

"Makes perfect sense." - Yes, It does, when you both represent the concepts you're attempting to describe accurately, and know what you're talking about.

I Have Implants!

Wait. No I don't, despite what iPhone autocorrect may wish to have you know. The word "unopened" is a perfectly good word anyways. Why would it want to change it?

Between Boehner and Dayton

Why does Governor Mark Dayton.. rr.. Marshall Field.. Macy.. Target?. whatever, always look like he's about ready to cry?



At least he doesn't blubber uncontrollably like Boehner.

We're Not Racist

At a nearby movie house.

Are the Irish considered a "race"? What criteria go into determining a race of people? Physical considerations, usually, but how about purely cultural or geographic ones. Are Northern Irish people a different "race" than Republic of Ireland folks?
Can ginger people be considered a race? How about people with Down's Syndrome? Things that make ya go blërg.

..But What Else Doesn't it Contain?

I had breakfast at McDonald's with a friend this morning.

Yes, I know we have better choices, but [fill in excuse here]. One breakfast burrito mummied up tight. I'm not exactly sure what it contained, but I've been successfully duped by their marketing department into perceiving the ingredients as something resembling scrambled eggs, sausage and cheese.

What I was surprised at was their apparent need to tell me what was *not* in the burrito, and what that something was...

Hail Storm

Suddenly it's hot and humid today. Then we get a hail storm. I went outside in it, to get a hailstone, because I'm smart like that :P I forgot my side door lock was busted and had to run round the front. We'll see if I've raised any bruises.

Buffett Biffs It

Jimmy Buffett fell off stage in Australia..

Fox news in Minneapolis apparently changes the news item to the collapse of a self-serve food counter :P



I wonder if the buffet in question had any cheeseburgers in paradise?

FAIL

Just rummaging through old stuff. I found this missing pet flyer that I took from a supermarket on my way through Albert Lea Minnesota in September of 2001.
For those who don't know, Hormel is a meat packing plant. 0_o