NomadSoul on OmniNerd

Update in White Supremacist Case - Article

NomadSoul — Wed May 27 17:38:34 -0500 2009

A recent story on the CBC website details the hearing of a child custody case involving a mother who sent her daughter to school wearing a swastika, as previously reported on Omninerd.

The mother claims this was to protest alleged discrimination against white people, as evidenced by the presence of minority pride posters and the lack of similar posters celebrating whiteness in her daughter’s school. She also claims social workers were lying when they reported that her daughter was routinely reciting racist and white supremacist rhetoric.

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What moves you? - Article

NomadSoul — Sat Jan 17 14:41:12 -0600 2009

Hey there. NomadSoul here with another somewhat rambling question to ask the Omninerd community. It pertains to aesthetic experiences and the sense of being “moved” by something. Let me clarify:

If I experience something beautiful—maybe something I saw while hiking, or a tender moment with a loved one, something like that—and I write it down in poetic or literary form, maybe you will be affected by it, maybe you’ll be indifferent.

But if you are affected by it, then what is it that is affecting you? What is it that allows a piece of poetry, or a work of art—a second-hand copy, incomparable to the fullness of the original experience—to cause such reactions? Or, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what is it about the beholder that recognizes and attunes them to such an aesthetic experience?

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Robots More Ethical on the Battlefield - Article

NomadSoul — Wed Nov 26 07:29:24 -0600 2008

A recent New York Times article asks the question: Can robots be more ethical than living soldiers in battlefield conditions? Free of the conflicting emotions human soldiers experience, a well programmed robot might be better able to follow moral codes and rules of engagement; particularly with regard to non-combatants and civilian targets. So, the question for OmniNerds is: what do you think? Will ethical robots assist or replace soldiers on the battlefield and make war more humane?

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A Question of Morality - Article

NomadSoul — Wed Nov 26 07:26:47 -0600 2008

So, I’ve been pondering capitalism and morality again, as I pathologically do, and found myself going in circles. So, since I’m something of a sadist, I decided to share my confusion:

Most political, economic, and even religious debates seem to revolve around the balance of individual rights and collective rights. To a religious conservative, gay marriage and abortion are issues where the collective rights of the religious community trump; compared to a liberal or libertarian who values individual rights in such matters.

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X-Rays and Nuclear Fusion From Scotch Tape: WTF? - Article

NomadSoul — Mon Oct 27 03:15:52 -0500 2008

A recent New York Times article proclaims the wild discovery of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles: When you unroll Scotch tape in a vacuum, it emits X-rays. Although scientists have known Scotch tape emits light when peeled since 1939, in this new research Professor Seth J. Putterman reveals as the adhesive pulls away from the surface of the roll, the friction creates electric currents that generate X-ray bursts strong enough to take an X-ray photograph of a finger. The researchers see a number of applications for this phenomenon, including testing plastics and composite materials for fatigue, since they do not otherwise show obvious signs the way metal structures do. Perhaps the wildest idea, however, is the possibility of nuclear fusion: Could the energy generated be directed to heavy hydrogen ions in the tape, causing them to accelerate and fuse, releasing greater energy?

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Harlan Ellison Tells It Like It Is - Article

NomadSoul — Sat Oct 18 11:41:41 -0500 2008

In this YouTube video Science Fiction writer Harlan Ellison talks about the insidious nature of television. Check it out.

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Canada Holds Mock Election - Article

NomadSoul — Fri Oct 17 07:45:36 -0500 2008

Canada went to the polls on Tuesday to re-decide the composition of the federal government. The results are in, and the Conservative party won with another minority. The Conservatives gained about 20 seats in the House of Commons, giving them 143 seats overall (out of a total 308)—but effectively, not much changed.

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Thieves Gettin' Busy - Article

NomadSoul — Sat Oct 04 05:04:24 -0500 2008

From the world of the inexplicable, someone stole 5,000 condoms from an HIV/AIDS awareness vehicle in Mexico on Sunday. The coordinator of the program, Polo Gomez, said the "condom-mobile" was in its parking spot in front of a friend’s house in Mexico City when it went missing. It was later found on Wednesday in a shopping mall parking lot, but the condoms and some equipment were missing. Still in the vehicle were 800 HIV tests, and a "seven-meter inflatable prophylactic." (Why, that would just about fit – if I were an anatomically correct parade balloon!)

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Collapse of the Bandwidth function - Article

NomadSoul — Thu Oct 02 15:26:29 -0500 2008

Why is it that some days, when I keep my file sharing program open on my desktop, the download speeds are terrible—and yet, when the program is minimized and I open it up, the speeds are great but immediately drop to nearly nothing?

Is there an unwritten law of the net that if there is no observer, bandwidth is higher than when there is one?

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The Origins of Evil - Article

NomadSoul — Tue Sep 30 06:46:44 -0500 2008

In a recent posting to YouTube (linked below), Social Psychologist Philip Zimbardo talks to TED about the origins of evil—how good people can behave badly because of the social or institutional situations in which they find themselves. Referencing his own Stanford prison experiment and the famous Milgram conformity experiment, Zimbardo discusses events like Abu Ghraib, and how groupthink can get even good people to perform acts of unspeakable evil. The YouTube video is linked here: it contains images of a disturbing, often sexual nature from the Abu Ghraib prison.

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