Simon Paynton

@Jake – your mention of Utopia touches a long-standing thought I have.  How do those Utopia Warriors behave, if they finally achieve Utopia on Earth?  What do they do?  They’re fighters, not bakers. What do the ‘Freedom Fighters’ imagine their role would be, in the Utopia they seem to be fighting for?

Simon, you are still redefining “faith” to make it appear intellectually respectable. You are using the religious version, which explicitly praises belief without evidence, and you are stretching it to also mean rational expectations grounded in observation. That doesn’t create unity between religion and science. In a debate it confuses the point…[Read more]

Can/will Trump/DOJ “manage” blue polling places? Is it a dress rehearsal for 2028 elections?

Thank you for your kind words Jake. I happen to be thinking in this line of thought all week…..from the piece I wrote for the previous week’s Sunday School post. We atheists should spend more of our time enjoying the fruits of freethinking.  Just Think Atheist and be in the Zone. 🙂

Simon, I think you are trying to rescue the word “faith” by redefining it. You are taking a specifically religious term that means believing in something without sufficient evidence and trying to stretch it until it becomes a synonym for “hope” or “general trust in life.” It sounds warm but it is sleight of hand. People can have high life satisf…[Read more]

Thanks, Reg 🙂

Have a great week!

If the “Pro-Palestine” demonstrations and outrage were really about humanitarian concerns, they would still be out on the streets for Sudan, Congo, Yemen, and a dozen other places where civilians are dying by the thousands but without the cameras rolling.

The “colonizer” label collapses under even basic historical scrutin…[Read more]

@Reg- Yes, the doctor and priest are dual symbols of institutional authority. It’s strong imagery, but it blurs historical and factual accuracy. Not every State or Nation uses both so it is not a “long-standing custom”. Your symbolism is compelling on the first read but you are rather weak on empirical accuracy.

The doctor’s presence might be leg…[Read more]

Naw man, you uppin my skill levels! And I needz it bad.

Just started listening to a U of Minn CIDRAP podcast this week, and coincidentally ran into a short (below) about the beginning of state (and other lesser than federal) agencies rising to fill in the gaps of our suddenly increasingly incompetent federal public health agencies. (I think the west coast states have started something too, but I…[Read more]

Wow, thanks Reg. Glad I finally got to reading this.

I mentioned before that I’m incompetent in topics of history. I often even fail at accurately recalling the history of myself.

High school pre-college tests ranked me at 99th percentile in science, 95th percentile in math, 35th percentile in humanities and history, and others I’ve forgotten.…[Read more]

This singer’s even in tune.
And that second line, “Oww!”.

was/is414x736

IMPORTANT UPDATE: I finally discovered that, after pasting short’s URL, all you have to do is change the word “shorts” in the URL to the letter “v“!

I also put this tip in the TIPS group, so if youtube ever changes how this trick works, please let me know and I will update how this tip can or can’t be made to work properly.
—– —– —–…[Read more]

@Enco –  I ‘misspoke’ – I usually format the USB drive completely. Type each line, one at a time, from a command prompt in Windows to fully and safely delete data so it can be re-used.

diskpart
select disk 2
clean
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
assign
exit

As a bit of an aside, have you ever considered how difficult English is to learn vs. most other languages?

Yes. When I am in America I speak Hinglish with my extended family. At home I am currently learning Tamil. Soon I will try to only speak Tamil in my house so it’s now a case of “Hindi theriyathu poda” and I will have to get the t-shirt for t…[Read more]

Many U.S. students will very likely start going to Chinese Universities soon.

@Simon, – The coordinated flight of birds or the efficiency of an ant colony are examples of true emergence. It is complex order arising from simple, local rules. Each agent behaves independently, yet their interactions create a collective intelligence without any central plan or higher consciousness.

It’s legitimate emergence because the…[Read more]