Final Presentation

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Feedly is a free RSS feed service that I've been using for a while now. It's really easy to add pages to and to organize them into folders, which is mainly why I decided to forgo using googleReader. I also like the ease-on-the-eyes colour palette they used and although that may not be a main feature, it does make my life a little bit more pleasant.

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"World Nutella Day" Editorial

Now, I'm generally somewhat irritated when people create days for products and brands as though they were a charity or cause and not something that is likely making a group of shareholders obscene amounts of money.

However, I do find it silly and actually somewhat irritating that Ferrero has cancelled 'World Nutella Day', seeing as how they only stand to benefit from it. Companies will even hire people to get memes started for them.

Why Ferrero has decided to be the killjoy on this project is uncertain, but until future notice I'll infer that  they simply lack a sense of fun and good market sense.

Resources:
Chocoholics Devastated as World Nutella Day Cancelled - by Manufacturer
Nutella Demands Immediate Cancellation of World Nutella Day

Benefits of Legalizing Marijuana Mental Map

Logical Fallacies in "Pascal's Wager"

There is a famous argument by Blaise Pascal, a historical scientist and theologist, intended to convert atheists and agnostics into belief by ways of a wager.

He asserts that you have two choices: belief in God or no belief in God. If you believe in God you will be gifted with endless pleasures in the afterlife in heaven. If you don't believe in God then you have only the pleasures in the finite world around you. Believing in God, he claims is the most rational choice because the payoff is so great and the loss is only finite (loss due to being pious and maintaining that lifestyle). Therefore the best choice for a rational individual would be to believe in God.

However, the flaws in this argument are great, if not immediately apparent. First of all:

It is not an argument for the existence of God.

The whole argument is about the potential payoff for either choice and not about the likelihood of either outcome. In this case, I think some of his basic assumptions are true for only some people out there.

First of all: He assumes that pleasure is the only goal or value of a rational individual by including no other values in his wager. However, I personally value the freedom of thought and the pursuit of truth over a potential paradise. If I were to believe in God simply to get the end 'payoff', then I would be blindly believing and not seeking truth or allowing myself freedom of thought. If I got the 'payoff' in the end, I would still know that I had blindly followed an idea for selfish reasons and that would be a sort of self-betrayal.

Second of all: He assumes that it is possible for all people to simply choose their beliefs. My mind doesn't work that way. When I was a child I went through an existential crisis that I couldn't handle yet, so I desperately tried to believe in God. It didn't work; I couldn't just choose to believe, all I could do was pretend to others that I did. My beliefs are based on my experiences and interactions with the world around me and though I allow myself a modicum of doubt on everything, doubt does not equal belief.

Third of all: One still has to make a choice between all the possible Gods out there in the world of religion. All the Gods who would really care if I believed in them or not have personalities I cannot abide (since that very trait is attention-seeking) and their techniques for dealing with atheists tend to be brutal (another trait I cannot stand) and, even if I would regret it later, I could not stand to bow to them. The 'nice-guy' gods, if they turned out to be real, wouldn't care that I hadn't believed in them and some of them would congratulate me for having made the rational conclusion with the information I had available.

As logical fallacies go "Pascal's Wager" includes an "Appeal to Consequences" (the consequence of not being admitted to heaven if it turned out to be real) and a "False Dilemma" (there are many choices because many of the other potential God's would be angry if you believed in the 'wrong one', thereby making the liklihood that one's belief in God would payoff infinitesimally smaller).


Resources:
Stephen's Guide to Logical Fallacies
What is Pascal's Wager?
The Argument from Pascal's Wager

Honeybees Being Trained to Search for Land-mines in Croatia

Honeybee behaviorist, Nikola Kezic, is training honeybees to locate concentrations of TNT which could help in the future to locate land-mines.

The process of training them is mixing tiny amounts of TNT into sugar water so that the bees associate TNT with food. The problem right now is training large numbers of bees as well as finding a way to get them to also ignore the flowers around them so that they all congregate on the land-mines.

“It is not a problem for a bee to learn the smell of an explosive, which it can then search,” says Kezic, “but training their colony of thousands becomes a problem.”

http://grist.org/list/croatia-is-training-honeybees-to-locate-landmines/
http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/national-world/article_9cc3b41f-65e6-5d84-81b2-12296c686b77.html

Coca-cola and Obesity

In the attempt to retain their 'family-friendly' image, Coca-cola released 'Coming Together', an ad campaign focused around Coke products being part of a healthy lifestyle.

However, this ad campaign is deceptive and manipulative for the following reasons: 1) The low- and no-calorie options they tout are sweetened with artificial sweeteners. These have not proven themselves to be a better option in long-term independent studies.  Reference: Artificial Sweeteners and Weight 2) "All calories count, no matter where they come from, including Coca-cola and everything else with calories. If you eat and drink more calories than you burn off, you'll gain weight." This is a gross-oversimplification of weight gain and weight loss and it doesn't take into account that nutrient-dense foods are always a better option than pop. They don't point out that their products are treats and not actually a part of a healthy diet.  I'm not saying that an indulgence now and then would hurt most people, but the idea of cutting healthy food from your diet in order to reduce your calories so that you can have coke really irritates me and that is an unspoken implication of this ad. 3) Encouraging children to drink more juice is a better option than pop, but a much poorer option than water. Juice is simply so sugar-dense and lacks the fibre that is found in a whole fruit. Also, bottled water is an unnecessary waste of food-grade plastic 3) It is yet another ad that implies that a major corporation like Coke has any goals other than ever-increasing profit. A corporation's only goal is to make money, so if they tell you they've got your best interests at heart, unless you're a major investor, probably not.
In short, this ad campaign is misleading and manipulative to a degree that is not often seen in one short advertisement. If I wasn't so angry, I'd give them kudos for it.

Higgs Boson

The Higg's boson is a particle that is expected to appear through interactions with the Higgs field (a field that theoretically causes mass). It's discovery was announced from CERN in July 2012 and, after a thorough review, has been confirmed.

For more information:

March Against Monsanto- Winnipeg

People will be gathering at the Forks in Winnipeg this Saturday for the Manitoba branch of 'March Against Monsanto', an international day of solidarity and demonstration against the Monsanto corporation. The Monsanto corporation is the biggest player in genetically modified crops right now, largely with their 'Round-up Ready' brand of glyphosate-resistant seeds. Glyphosate, under the name 'Round-up' is Monsanto's own invention and their most widely-ued herbicide. The press-release from 'March Against Monsanto' organizers can be found here. The facebook page for the Manitoba branch is found here.

Texas Grandmother Arrested for Trespassing on her Own Land

Eleanor Fairchild, a 78-year-old Texas grandmother has been arrested for trespassing on her own land. The U.S. government has ruled that, through an eminent domain ruling, TransCanada gets a legal right to her land. However, Fairchild has refused negotiations, saying "I don't want tar sands anywhere in the United States."

Eminent Domain is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as: "a right of a government to take private property for public use by virtue of the superior dominion of the sovereign power over all lands within its jurisdiction".

This law is largely used for government construction jobs considered to be in the common good of the public such as building roads, parks and rail, so it's use for a private foreign investor is being questioned.


Daryl Hannah and 7 Other Celebs Arrested While Crusading for a Cause
History of the Federal Use of Eminent Domain
Daryl Hannah and Eleanor Fairchild Defend Family Farm from Tar Sands Pipeline

The Zipper and the Arctic Bob

Two Summer Fair rides have arrived! Th Zipper and the Arctic Bob. Both are parked at the Keystone Centernear Richmond Avenue.

Update: Major Digging @ BU

I reported yesterday on the backhoe and flatdeck truck parked outside Flora Cowan yesterday. The flatdeck was not here today at noon or at four o'clock, bit the backhoe still is. It appears that there is a damaged pipe, since the hole has standing water at the bottom and a large pipe visible.

Major Digging @ BU

There is a large pile of dirt being created outside Flora Cowan and a large flatdeck is blocking half the road beside the Brodie building.

'Transient Obsession' Official Launch!

I'm so excited for my new blog of vaguely orderly randomness! My first entry is done in an imitation of the blog-style of "Hyperbole and a Half" by Allie Brosh. I really loved this style, but it was a lot more challenging than I first thought it would be (which has a lot to do with my patchy photoshop experience and my lack of skill with a wacom tablet).

Anyways, please check out my first post and stay tuned for more!

My new blog: Transient Obsession

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