Distributed Mind

Sorry, was doing some cooking today, so I will subject you all to my experiment.

Instead of using chicken, use tofu. Use flour seasoned with sage, thyme, and salt as batter. Fry the coated tofu in a pan coated lightly with olive oil until golden brown. Top with some pizza sauce (has a little more kick than pasta sauce, but you can subsitute that or something similar if you want). The Parmesan? Well, if you're vegetarian I suppose you can add some. With the tofu, though, it isn't really all that necessary (tofu is soy cheese after all). Serve with grape juice if you're classy, or chocolate soy milk if you aren't (guess which I did?).

So anyway, there you have it, the poor man's chicken parmesan - and it tastes better than eggplant parmesan, so there.

The Pentagon released a report earlier in the month which spells out the possible national security crisis that is ahead due to global climate change: Weathering the Crisis

Ok, well, I guess we should have some diversity anyway, so here is a (short) religious post for you all.

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding in the (Christian) church today. Frequently, I have heard people ask questions in the form of, "Is it alright for me to ...?" Often the question comes from good intentions, and sometimes it is even a good question, but much of the time it misses it mark. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth (part of which was stuck on the idea evidently that being set free from the law meant they could do whatever they wanted),

"Everything is lawful," but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is lawful," but not everything builds others up. (I Corinthians 10:23, NET)

The real question should be "Is this beneficial?" This frequently will give us a much better idea I think.

[Remainder of article]

No, not that group theory...

The dangers of group mentality are the dangers that come with any association of like-minded or like-cultured or like-skinned people. Obviously, people with common properties will be drawn together and any close-knit community is going to have some common foundation (more on that later), but the danger comes when the group becomes important over the interests of others outside the group (a.k.a. nationalism, racism, *-ism). Specifically, when we see ourselves as part of a group (part of an in-crowd) we may feel that we can and should defend the clan from anything that does not secure its position, whatever that may be. The worst thing that can happen is that ethics and truth are pushed aside in the name of the clan, though we're good at rationalizing it in terms of select principles. Today, nationalism is considered an okay thing by many, yet it has led people to give up the very freedoms that they claim their nationalism is founded on (see: Patriot Act) and in the worst cases has led to atrocities (see: wars, genocide).

But what concerns me more than the examples given above, is when shared religious belief forms an unhealthy group mentality. Since religion is concerned with ultimate truth, it is very bad to get into preserving the clan - i.e. to make the church a club. Truth is truth no matter where it comes from and for it to be truth it must be accessible to everyone. In other words, in my book there are no special mysteries (see: Gnostics) to be initiated into.

So there it is...

Okay, this is blatantly ripped from Slashdot, but the Onion A.V. Club ran an interview with the man himself, Arthur C. Clarke.

And by the way, the correspondance between Clarke and C. S. Lewis was recently published in a book edited by Ryder Miller. Evidently the part of the book occupied by actual letters is quite small (Miller throws in some short stories, because, well, I guess he could), but still, you can put that on my to-buy list.

I created this "blog" (I hate that term) to harness the power of nerdy thoughts. Prepare to have your universe changed...