My guts went cold this morning with the knowledge of approximately 100 higher education employees were rounded up in Baghdad today. It’s a reactionary move, but I think we’re seeing a home jihadi version of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: kill the knowledge, kill the knowledge keepers.

We’ve seen this fire before: Communist Russia and Cold War America. Fervent indoctrination with a clear and concise enemy and a hallucination of a plan to get there: kill the intellectuals.

This warfare is suspiciously effective: without higher education, people will be limited in their experience. Start re-education, like Soviet Russia with Fatwas. Control the present to control the past, control the past to control the future.

We’ve seen this behavior before: in China, in Russia, in America (McCarthyism), in Cambodia. It’s the exact same behavior of Germany - a flawed final solution therefore it’s neither.

So why does it matter?
The denial of our intellectual capabilities threatens the extinction of humanity. We must leave this planet. We must adapt our form to more threatening environments. Intellectuals prefer not to fight back under the aegis that peace equals reason. Intellectuals must stop thinking that peace and reason are equivalent. Most intellectuals are “peaceful” because they avoid confrontation.

I entreat fellow thinkers that instead of thinking peaceful coexistence, think of mechanisms to burn out the fear and anger first to enact change.

We must move forward.

Google Video has captured beautiful proof that the followers of the intelligent designer don’t have any intelligence themselves.

So - what’s wrong with the 5 sided banana and 5 sided whole for a banana theory?

0) the presumption: no matter how smart or how capable of a designer you have, you still have the “who designed the designer” argument. But since this *specifically* is not Mr. BananaHand’s argument, we’ll just pass it by.

1) not all primates consume bananas. Bananas only grow in specific climates where humans are found all over the world. There are no bananas in Inuit country - and seals do not have 5 sides with easy pealing tabs like a coke can, but Mr. Bananahand can make a case for clubbing baby seals on how easy that is.

2) dates and nuts: if more people eat dates and nuts across the world - why are dates and nuts so damned HARD to eat? What - does gawd only want us to eat bananas or is this intelligent designer figure that an economy of dates and nuts and oil is just so damned easy?

3) hands come in different sizes. Does this mean if I eat a banana that is a little too big or too small, that the intelligent designer didn’t intend for me to eat it? If so, does this mean someone else is going to go hungry by design? What about babies? They can’t grab a banana off a tree, so they’re supposed to what… STARVE because they can’t peel a banana?

And so on… Please feel free to submit your own below…

If people are already convinced that the world is flat, the moon is blue cheese and gawd exists then they will find the coincidences to further justify stupid beliefs. Like maybe, Jerusalem is for jewish people because both Jew and Jerusalem start with the letter J. Hey, why didn’t Intelligent designer would have made Jerusalem start with F for stupid suicide bombing FUCKTARD?

We’ve seen a perceived lack of resources cause MMORPG players to steal and mug “virtual” things. And now, in the equivalent bigger-nerd (”bigger dick” even) contest over an online chat, and being egged on by their peers, two Koreans met at the playground and kicked each others’ ass. This behavior of virtual chat bleeding into reality with fists is called Hyonsil-P, a combo for “Reality” and “Player-Killing” or PKing.

As an observer of behavior, humans are physically fighting over anonymous audience prestige for virtual resources. Reality-locked sentiences will not understand the need for either, and see the fights as ridiculous. Humans like excuses to fight and prove their dominance. What I am expecting next is that a group of Horde members (or a future equivalent) will meet one or more Alliance members and slay them.

And I believe it will happen within 5 years. Once this starts, we will have MMORPG publishers using this behavior as a back-handed way to promote their game, much like Rockstar games tries to bait parent groups to ban their games (Bully, GTA). In fact, this is very similar to the way alcohol manufacturers and drug dealers name their products: invoking death to incite interest.
Maybe we need a Mortal Kombat MMO that really knits players together under law and chaos, so they can bond together? How about events that record the movements with MoCap functionality to create a real battle on 3d frames?

Do I consider myself to be a “Bright”? By their definitions, yes. By my own willingness, sure. But what is a Bright? What are the attributes of Brightness?

Declaring one’s Brightness is an attempt at consciousness raising: changing the name by which someone calls oneself is an attempt to change a political discourse. Being an a-theist is a definition of no god. Being a bright is not just no god, it’s also an implication of one’s intelligence, allegiance to the truth, and a bit of shiny-ness.

By implication alone, it’s challenging an embedded linguistic metaphor and trope: religions claim their followers have seen the Light. In literature, Light versus Dark has been thinly veiled as religious versus evil, and in thesauruses (thesauri? thesaurisies?) around the word: light is synonymous with good and truth. Atheists are godless - an inherently evil state. Brights on the other hand is synonymous with curiosity - a bright child, and with progress - a bright future.

And even more simple, in a trope that only morons will understand, you can’t spell Bright without being Right.

Atheists are more united by the rational of seeking a better future with our curiosity uniting our efforts than their godlessness. Shouldn’t the name by which we refer to ourselves reflect that definition?

The Backhanded Implication
I do not regret the return implication of the Bright naming: those that aren’t Brights aren’t bright. This renaming is not just an escape from the godless state, but it’s forcing people to recognize a very big elephant that no one has been wanting to discuss: education, primarily children. Across the world today we grant parents and religious figures near impunity of how to mis-educate their children.

To be knowledgeable - to be bright, one must study from a wide resource-rich repertoire - that is to say, we have to be exposed to non-doctrine to be considered knowledgeable by our peers. To only be knowledgeable about one form of thought isn’t smart - it’s indoctrination.

The simple declaration of one’s Bright status is an action of political identity, Mazlow’s “self actualization” combined with the feminist-rooted consciousness raising efforts it takes to remove an imposed paradigm.

In short - it makes you feel good. Go on, say that you’re a Bright.

About friggin’ time I finish this off.

OK, I lost SOME comments, but may be able to move them over. Please step up and register an account. It’s there because I want to prevent the link spam.  Expect some tweaking soon, specifically in the comments section - I’ll be adding a CAPTCHA image and Digg/Slashdot/Technorati linkage for improving my traffic.

Plus old-fashioned business cards.  With the new loglow of twisty neuron thingies.