Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your BrainNext Monday, May 12th, I will be relaunching Neural Gourmet. All your old links to posts should still work (contact me if you get a 404 Not Found) but the feed will be changing. The link to the new feed is here. There will also be a new comments feed. Again, the new feeds will be active on Monday, May 12th.
I'm ditching Drupal, not because it's bad but because it's too powerful for my needs right now (at this stage of my life I tend to favor "just works" over "power" any day) and moving to a Wordpress install. I think you'll like it. Unfortunately, that does mean the forums and all comments will be closed on Monday, May 12th, as well. If there's interest, I'll be bringing back the forums in a new guise too.
Update: As you might have noticed, this first version of Neural Gourmet is now closed. This site has been moved to http://archives.neuralgourmet.com. A lot of functions that you have seen here in the past have been disabled to reduce database and bandwidth overhead however all blog and forums posts prior to May 1, 2008 are intact. Your old URLs should still work, redirecting you to the archives site. Please see the relaunched main site on or after May 12, 2008 for Neural Gourmet 2.0 and all newer material.
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As you might know, I was on Hans Meyer's Situation Awareness radio program this past Saturday talking about Carnival of the Liberals. If you couldn't tune in you can listen to the show on the Free World Radio Network's site or (hopefully if the embedding works) with the widget to the left.
As always, I really enjoy doing these sorts of things, and besides, it got Hans to volunteer to host Carnival of the Liberals! I think I'm becoming more comfortable talking extemporaneonously although I've got to relax more (if only to get rid of that high pitched edge to my voice). Perhaps in the future, if I ever get my act together, I'll start my own skepticism podcast. Although, I've got to say, Brian Dunning's Skeptoid would be hard to beat.
In any case, thanks go to Hans, FWRN, and Blogtalk Radio. I look forward to doing the show again sometime.
I know it's been quite a while since I've written anything here, though I know you can forgive me. I just haven't thought of anything fantastic to write (though if you look at my previous posts, you'll see quite clearly that I have some rather crummy standards for what counts as fantastic). I am still around, though. Most of my computer time has been eaten up with moderating over at DU (FSM, I hate primary season). Aside from that, I have also been busy with the LSAT and getting my applications into law school. In the end, though, that all paid off. I've been accepted into law school and will begin in the fall, assuming I can figure out some way of paying for it.
All that being said, my interests are shifting in other directions. I guess that's a bit unfair to say - I am still interested in theology, religion, politics, medicine, and pseudoscience. It's just that these days I spend most of my time reading and researching law and policy. I'm not exactly sure where posts on such matters will fit in here on NG - but I guess we'll find out! I promise to try to come up with something good to write soon, but in lieu of that I just wanted to let whomever might read this that I'm still kicking.
Pi Day Rap
Couldn't miss the opportunity to promote everybody's favorite transcendental number on this day devoted to the most amazing ratio of all. Happy Pi Day everyone.
I've been taking a break from blogging lately because I contracted a nasty case of writer's block. However I haven't been twiddling my thumbs all this time. One thing I've been doing is working on a new and improved version of Neural Gourmet as well as doing a lot of reading about writing plus catching up on some books I've been meaning to read for a long time.
But I couldn't stay away from blogging entirely. So recently my sweetheart and I started a blog devoted to one of our favorite things -- food! You won't find just recipes there though. We plan to cover everything from restaurant, grocery and product reviews to news and commentary about food. There'll be an added emphasis on our adopted home town, Fort Wayne, Indiana.
So if you like to eat, or haven't yet mastered breatharianism, then check out Food In The Fort.
And look for Neural Gourmet to come back stronger and better than ever before real soon now.
Mojoey has been doing all of us atheists a favor by keeping the definitive list of atheist blogs. I've sported Mojoey's Atheist Blogroll on the sidebar for over a year now. Unfortunately because of the way Technorati changed the way it indexes sites the links don't count toward a site's authority it seems. So taking my cue from the many atheist bloggers who have been posting the entire list uncut in recent days (I've seen it posted at quite a few places, Atheocracy being the most recent to catch my attention) I'm now doing my part to help boost our collective blogospheric stature by doing the same.
Just as a note, I don't agree with every blog/blogger on this list. In fact I vehemently disagree with quite a few and likely many would disagree with me. No big surprise there as I can be quite the contrarian when I want to. However, I don't see this as a negative thing. Rather it helps illustrate the fact that if someone tells you that they are an atheist then they've told you remarkably little about themselves. Actually, all they've said is, "I don't believe in gods".
Beyond that atheists are as rich and varied a bunch as any random group of people you might find. There are liberal atheists, socialist atheists, conservative atheists, libertarian atheists, anarchist atheists, materialist atheists and even spiritual atheists with the only thing in common being our lack of belief. The one type of atheist you will never find however are "fundamentalist" atheists as atheists lack any coherent set of principles or doctrine on which to rigidly adhere to a fundamental interpretation.read more »
So I encourage everyone to pick a half dozen or so blogs off the list below that you've never heard of before and go give them a read. You might hate what you find there, you might love what you find there. Who knows? The one thing that is for sure though is you will have broadened your horizons just a little bit more. Enjoy. (listing below the fold)
Talk Like A Pirate Day lasts all year: If you're at Cap'n Dyke's blog. Home of the Lesbian Pirate Queen.Avast ye scurvy dogs! In case you haven't noticed it's Talk Like A Pirate Day and on Neural Gourmet that means everyone talks like a pirate -- whether they want to or not. But why should TLAPD come only once a year!? It doesn't have to if you sign on to our good Lesbian Pirate Queen's, Cap'n Dyke, ship. I'm not sure I understand Cap'n Dyke's blog... Actually, I'm sure I don't understand Cap'n Dyke's blog. But that's OK because I'm always having too much fun to care. 'Sides... She has great beer and it's a ship full of lesbians. What could be better than that? Well, Flying Spaghetti Monster heaven, but on this Earth, er sea, I mean. Anyway, we need more rogue bloggers.
This blog is rated PG: Not enough gay porn I guess.Hey gang, I've got some bad news. This site is just not living up to societal expectations. We're a bunch of evil atheists and commie pinko secular humanists and all we can muster up is a lousy 'PG' rating fer cryin' out loud!? And that for a measly two mentions of gratuitous porn. Jeesh. That's just sad. I know you can do better. So from now on I expect to see much more sex, violence and overall general depravity. Oh well, at least we did better than Pharyngula.
If you have about 10 minutes to spare, won't you please consider taking our reader survey? Data from this survey will help me identify who's reading Neural Gourmet, what their interests are and possibly make changes to the site to better reflect NG's audience. And oh yeah, there's the possibility of selling ads based on our audience too. Sorry. I hate ads as much as anyone but NG costs money to operate and it'd be great if we could offset expenses. They're not coming very soon though and when they do I'll consider adding a subscription model that will allow users who subscribe to turn off ads.
Pharyngula has posted a list of the 50 Most Influential Science Fiction Books (1953-2002), via tikistich. Near as I can tell this list was compiled by the Science Fiction Book Club (where a good deal of my paper route money as a kid went). PZ highlighted all the ones he's read in bold but I decided to boldface only the ones I haven't read (after the fold). read more »
Happy Five-Oh PZHappy 50th Birthday to everybody's favorite champion of cephalopod sexuality and scourge of Creationist nimrods everywhere! That's right, PZ Myers of Pharyngula fame turns fifty today and the blogosphere is having a party. Everyone's invited!
PZ asked for poems for his birthday, and not being the creative type, I'm going to cheat and present a little poem about (personal) Evolution that I like by Sharmagne Leland-St. John (after the fold). And since it'd be rude to show up at a party without bringing anything, you can imagine I brought some delicious stuffed squid. read more »
I just enabled a module that relocates the 'read more' link from the links bar at the bottom of posts. The 'read more' link is now included on the last line of the post. This has the advantage of making it more visible while also including it in the RSS feed, which makes it convenient for people reading the site via feedreaders.
As usual, this announcement will stay here for about 24 hours and then go hide itself with the rest of the stuff nobody wants to read.
In my previous post here, I explained my absence. I've recently realized that I am an addict, and I realized that because I hit the bottom. If I hadn't; if circumstances had been different and I had been allowed to continue down that path, then I am certain that's where I would still be. I don't want to go back there anymore. I don't want to go back, but at the same time I miss it very much. It was as if I had a small corner of my life where I could run to when push came to shove and cope with the stress, the anxiety, and the rage. I don't have that anymore, and it's almost like trying to figure out how to walk again. Now that I don't have the familiar methods of coping, I have to figure out a new way to live my life - one that doesn't involve self-destruction and dishonesty. That's a tall order for someone who has spent the past several years living a chunk of his life out of the awareness of everyone. read more »
I've tried to write this post several times now. I keep trying to say exactly what it is that I feel and outline, in a general sense, the reasons for my absence. Either my words don't seem up to the task or I chicken out at the last minute and delete it. There is a definite narcissistic quality to my writing this, as perhaps I have deluded myself into thinking that there are those who would care enough about me (or at least the me that they know) to care what is happening in my life. On the other hand, my primary motivation for writing this is really to dispel any worry or wonder on the off chance that someone actually does care. Secondly, it is my humble wish that, maybe, possibly, something that I have to say might be able to offer someone else some hope or some insight if they are in a similiar situation. read more »
In my neverending quest to avoid actually writing, I found this quiz over at Living The Scientific Life. As we all know, it's those high school stereotypes that really define us and really, aren't we all burning to know whether we're nerd, geek or dork?
According to this silly blog quiz I'm a nerd which is interesting because I tend to refer to myself as a geek, leaving the nerd designation for an earlier generation of techies who concentrated primarily on hardware hackery. Which is fine. I'll proudly call myself nerd. I just wonder when I'll be getting my Λ Λ Λ membership kit in the mail.
So how about you? What culturally marginalized high school social clique do you belong to?
I just wanted to take a little time and thank everyone who helped promote yesterday's First Anniversary Edition of Carnival of the Liberals but especially the following bloggers who gave us the best advertising possible -- they posted about it on their blogs. I'm sure the following list is incomplete, but these are the blogs of which Technorati knows. If I've missed anybody please let me know and I'll be sure to add to the list. So... In no particular order, special thanks go out to:
Thanks again everybody and let's make 2007 even better than 2006! And on that topic I'll have more to say in a few days if I can get my ducks properly aligned (the ducks they'd rather be in Florida).
Updated December 10, 2006.
