Heath C. Ice

I can’t take it anymore. I am sick of politicians trying to win over voters by calling legislation “common sense.” I can’t really blame them though since it seems a large section of the American population is far too willing to say “Hmm, I have no idea what they are talking about, but they said it’s ‘common-sense legislation’ and common sense is good, so the legislation must be good!”

What really set me off about this finally is that while I was driving home tonight, I heard a clip of Obama from some recent speech where he said “we’re going to enact ‘common-sense’ regulations on Wall Street.”

Anyways, I am just sick of hearing about “common-sense conservative solutions”, “common-sense gun regulation”, “common-sense bank regulation”, “common-sense Wall Street regulation”, “common-sense healthcare reform”, “common-sense drug regulation” and any other legislation crammed down the throat of America as “common sense.”

Government officials, stop trying to dupe us into thinking that this crap is good for us. Start trying to sell legislation to the American public based on its merits, not on buzzwords. Treat us like we have some fracking common sense of our own.

I was compiling an email for a good friend and decided that the list was worthy of a blog post so that all of you could benefit from these YouTube channels.

First, I want to introduce you to cdk007. This YouTuber has created some of the best animations I have seen showing evolutionary ideas and refuting arguments against them.

This video from cdk007 refutes the often-used “blind watchmaker” argument. I have played around with and modified the MATLAB code cdk007 created and it has been the source of entertainment for hours on end. I am in the process of porting the code to C++. I still need to get permission to release the resulting code though.

Now we have another great video from cdk007 refuting, through analogy, the claim that “micro-evolution exists but that can’t possibly be proof of macro-evolution.”

As a final example of cdk007‘s work I give you one of his arguments against “irreducible Complexity.”

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This Star Trek: The Original Series episode’s plot shows the stupidity of segregation and racism.  The Enterprise encounters two humanoids who are black on half their body and white on the other (as shown in the image).  The crew cannot figure out, at first, why these two men hate each other over “racial issues” when as far as the crew can tell, the men are exactly the same.  One of the men looks perplexed that the difference cannot be seen, for it is clear to him that he “black on the right and white on the left” while his “different-raced” enemy is “white on the right and black on the left.”

This is clearly to show, even in a racially sensitive society in which the episode was aired, that differences in skin color really shouldn’t play any role determining the worth of an individual.

So what is the observation I want to make about this episode?  It is that if their racial bias is based on the fact that one race is “black on the right and white on the left” while the other race is “white on the right and black on the left,” wouldn’t each race hate the “oppressive” or “inferior” race they see in the mirror each morning?  Can you imagine seeing something you, rationally or irrationally, hate in the mirror each morning?  To me it seems that this simple fact would have eased the racial tension of this species long ago.

Watch “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” at CBS

I found a clip of John Stossel’s show from December 17, 2009 where he is discussing the state of healthcare and what reforms, if any, need to happen.  He has the CEO of Whole Foods Market, John Mackey, as a guest.  If you have not heard about the controversy surrounding Mackey’s healthcare comments, read here.

Unfortunately, I am not a huge fan of Stossel’s new talkshow format, the clips below are still pretty informative.

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I drove to LA this afternoon to stay the night so I can catch my 8:30 flight to Hawaii in the morning. I stopped at the gas station close to the hotel to fill up the rental car and some little old guy came up to me with this story.

My care broke down and now my wife and I are trying to get home. We called a tow truck (shows me a towing company business card and his driver’s license) but we are $16 short (shows me $62 he already has for the tow truck).

In he back of my mind I am thinking “he is probably scamming me.” Though, at the same time I was thinking “if it were me or one of my friends broken down with little money on them, I would hope someone would help out.” I went ahead and gave the guy $20 just in case he really did need it. He thanked me and took off walking towards where his car supposedly was.

After getting gas, I went down the street to a Taco Bell to grab some quick food. On the way from Taco Bell to the hotel, I passed the same gas station. “Poor little old man with a broken down car” was walking back across to the same gas station to hit up the next unsuspecting person for money. I had the urge to role down my window and yell at him about it or even pull into the gas station and confront him about it. My tiredness and hunger from driving all afternoon made me go ahead and go to the hotel instead.

This is actually the 3rd time this year I was hit up by “someone in a desperate situation and they have no money to get home” and each of the 3 times I have helped them out at least a little. The other 2 times were probably scams too, but I still think it’s worth it just for those few times when you end up helping someone who actually needs it. One of these days though, I may just say “screw it” because of the number of people running scams as opposed to actual people in need.

I’d like to hear your thoughts or stories about this whole subject.