Is that mostly friendly, mostly rabid, or mostly atheists? I'm guessing all three.
I been around. People who know me know how I am. I ask inconvenient questions; that's what a "schneibster" is, someone who asks inconvenient questions. Sometimes it's more a matter of someone who remembers inconvenient answers. It really pisses a lot of people off. I'm constantly surprised how many.
I really hate cranks. Physics cranks who think conservation laws are "wrong" because if they're right, their crank free energy swindle won't work (or anyway nobody will give them any money for it, or the "scientific mafia" or whatever their fantasy is will prevent their earth-shattering theory from being published). Biology cranks who think evolution is a theory (it's a fact; natural selection is a theory, and a pretty difficult one to refute which is why they want to change the subject). Geophysics cranks who don't "believe in" "global warming," and who pester actual scientists and prevent them from doing their fucking jobs we all pay for by making up chickenshit; I usually call them denialist climate cranks but here I'll give their more technically/pedantically correct description. Economics cranks who insist that the bond vigilantes will attack if we borrow enough to fix the economy and who promise that the confidence fairy will visit if we pay down the debt and starve a million people. 9/11 cranks who think "demolition charges" or "missiles" were used. Anti-nuclear cranks who make up and repeat stories about how dangerous nuclear energy is without even understanding how it works, much less what's actually, really wrong with the way we're doing it now (Major ClueTM: oversight).
There's a sample of the ones I ask the most inconvenient questions. They're also the ones who generally hate me enough to try to join the moderation and/or administration team so they can shut me up. We'll see if I piss anyone here off like that.
I play music. I might post some later if this is a friendly place. I take pictures, mostly of sea otters, which abound in my local area. I might post some of those, later, too. I have an observatory (a SkyShed POD) in my backyard, and quite a bit of telescope hardware of one kind and another, including an astrocamera. If I get all stoked up and take some shots with it, I'll post them later too. It all depends on how we get along.
Politically, I'm a non-practicing anarchist, specifically an anarcho-syndicalist, non-practicing because I don't think humans are mature enough yet to make that a successful form of government; people are too chickenshit, and if you want to see how, read Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed (and incidentally, to find out what anarcho-syndicalism might be like if a society ever grew to adopt it). Libertards (right wing so-called "Libertarians") are economic cranks who think they'll get rich by ripping off the public, and who conveniently ignore the power of money in politics. I vote in every election, because people fight and die every day for the right to vote and it would be disrespectful to ignore the chance in the face of that, and because I think I can see a better and a worse candidate just about every time I bother to investigate. I have voted Democratic in every election since I have had the franchise (we get it at 18 in California) and have no idea why anyone making less than US$250k would ever vote Republican after Nixon, Reagan, and Bush, not to mention Hoover (who I regularly refer to as the President with the most powerful suction). I don't like them much (the Democrats); but they're always better than the alternative. If I ever see a Republican who looks better, I'll research, but I expect to find the same thing I always find (and the same thing I always find when I check up on economic, climate, 9/11, and other crankery), which is I was right in the first place. Yes, John McShame is just as much of an asshole as Reagan or Bush. No, Wrong Paul is not any better.
A government is basically an insurance company with an army. Beyond that, it's responsible for maintaining standards of conduct that prevent the somewhere between 1 in 7 and 1 in 20 of us who are sociopaths from ripping the rest of us off, or at least make them give something of value for what they steal. Sometimes you need to whack them pretty hard to make them stop; that's what the police are for. No, I do not want to have to buy a gun and do it myself; that's why I pay taxes, duh. Like all power repositories, oversight is necessary to prevent abuse (the 1/7 to 1/20 again). You will find this is a recurring theme in my political discourse.
That should do it for now. Let's see what happens.
And welcome.
yep.
