Happy Fourth of July!

From Cracked

Picture from a Manta Ray feeding frenzy. Source

"Mantas and whale sharks commonly feed together, untroubled by the occasional collision. As many as 200 rays and a half dozen whale sharks have been counted in a period of several hours, British marine biologist Guy Stevens reports."
Source

Apparently there was a massive bank fraud in EVE online. I'm amused and horrified.


There is a new Turkish reality show pitting a Buddhist monk, a Rabbi, an Imam, and a Greek Orthodox priest against each other to see who can convert the most atheists. Missing the point much?

A 19 year old was arrested for tripping on weed and LSD, thinking he was Terminator, and then running around a casino naked. What not to do on your day off.

I love this piece about "5 presidential elections even dumber than this one".

So I was staring at a tree, thinking "I want to climb this tree". I know, I know, I'm an adult and tree-climbing is not for adults. Well, you're wrong; it's not for boring adults. Anyways, I was thinking about climbing it and defending it from trespassers, when I went "Holy crap, that's not an inborn notion".
Or is it? Were the Native Americans taught to squash their inborn urge of possession? I'm not an anthropologist so I couldn't give a comparison of cultures and their native practices or what is generally considered "tribal" vrs "individual" property. Did the Mongols in their migration routes consider the land itself "theirs", or did they consider the land a place to defend and live upon? The most obvious place to look for an answer to the general question would be pre-history.
The notion of individual possession and tribal possession obviously have different limits in different cultures. We are taught at as young an age as possible what is ours and what is not. Children, at first, consider everything to be grabable(and breakable). It is more likely they do not possess the distinction of ownership than that they consider every object a possession. This is probably the most compelling evidence questioning the innateness of this drive. When a child screams "mine" after having a toy taken away it's more likely that the object is simply desired at the moment than that he or she feels he has ownership of it. Obviously, though, these are just hypothesis.
Would artists feel pain at having their creations taken away? Would scientists gall at having a theory used without their names cited? What would happen to the notion of plagiarism? The notion of ownership has very obvious advantages and disadvantages.

It would be awesome if they created a school which utilized children's existing knowledge to discover new knowledge, like a game or exciting job. I also really believe that a school in the manner of Plato would be much more effective than the Socratic schools we have now. People do think knowledge is cool and like finding out how things work.

It's fun to analyze feminism in Star Trek. The show is fairly progressive in many ways, though it still is struggling between the notions of women as powerfully sexual beings, workers just as capable as their male counterparts, and wives. Both Kirk and many of the women on the show are portrayed as extremely attractive; in fact, one of the reoccurring factors of the plot is attractive women and Kirk seducing them with his genuinely deep good-boy ways. Whatever happened to guys like that? Did they ever really exist? Star Trek is more moral than a lot of the show on today.
Btw, the episode "The Conscience of the King" is really good. Also, why is Scotty the only one with an accent?



Here is a short sketch comedy parodying what it would be like if homeopaths ran the emergency room: