Still Hot Not Unbearable

 Good riddance to July. With August some hope of change, at least. 

I'm reading in my old journal from 1988 and I noted, in May of that year, that the human population had reached 5.1 billion. Today it is 8.1 billion. Yes indeed, the human race commits suicide by baby. That kind of population increase is non-sustainable and self-destructive. It's good to be old and out of the hunt. At some point, gigadeath will be a thing. And it won't be in the distant future. 

It's A Fine Morning

 Yes, and it's a rather fine morning, 72F and that's not bad, although it might be hot later, but that's about normal for this time of year, in late July. I am always ready to say good riddance to July. After all this time we still honor Caesar Augustus, and I like that just fine. Wednesday is for Wotan, and so on. We still honor the old gods. It's interesting that there are still Messianic Jews running around. They should know better. I recently got a little book on the Gospel of Mary. Interesting. I've been reading a lot of Bart Ehrman and James Tabor and Elaine Pagels and so on. That's true and authentic scholarship. No bullshit there. No huckstering, nothing tendentious, and no mindless propaganda. There is no substitute for honest and intelligent scholarship. 

There is too much mindless recitation of creeds that fall apart under the critical and discerning eye. 

Mnesis Gnosis Praxis

 Those are three things worth considering. And belief might well be the enemy of knowledge. Faith, you can stuff in a dumpster and forget about. Faith is the ruin of many a poor boy (or girl). Most of the time the stuff offered as "evidence" for some belief is worthless. Faith, of course, is pulled out of thin air-- a whim. A dream. A vision. And almost always very toxic. One should avoid everything that is labeled "faith-based".  But hope and charity are still virtues. But faith is the poison that brings crusades and jihads and book-burning, and holy war. There is no such thing as a holy war. Never. Ever. 

To summarize: faith is shit. 

Meatball!

 I refer to an R. Crumb comic skit. UAPs are all too much like that. And nobody ever did figure out how meatball worked. But if you got bopped, you were briefly a celebrity, and you felt so special. And now the FAA promises to protect us from alien invaders from the distant stars by cracking down HARD on RC airplanes flown by kids and adults having fun being kids again. That'll scare the crap out of ET! We're going to slap fines on people having fun with a hobby! Fucking morons all the way down, and as far as the eye can see. If I wasn't affected by any of this shit it would be funny, but I can't wall myself off from the asshole monkeys, and the critters are both stupid and dangerous. And they breed like rats. Fuck the world. I want to get OFF. Or at least far away...

I should mention that back in the eighties I went on a "high IQ club" binge, and got into Mensa, Intertel, and Three Sigma. And I was not impressed. I don't do that anymore. I was so disillusioned. I met lots of crackpots, and alcoholics who were NOT recovering. 

Is It the X-FILES Then?

 Too bizarre. I think this is where you end up when hardly anyone has an adequate background in the sciences, or at the very least, an understanding of scientific method, and some familiarity with what is currently known. The Germany of the 1930's was awash with nonsense like "world ice" and bizarre racial "theories".  An ascendancy of nonsense here does not bode well. Let's face it, people are poor observers, period. Fighter pilots and other aviation professionals are no exception. 

Those who "want to believe" are all too likely to end up believing crap.