As my antithestic tendencies increase, I’ve become involved in an interesting movement. It will undoubtedly offend many and while that is surely fun, the main purpose is to cause people to critically analyze their religious beliefs. The Devil’s Highlighter points out several instances of immorality, contradictions, obscenities and silliness in the bible. I’m constantly surprised with the things I find. Such as:

• Leviticus 25:44-46 | Slavery is Okay
• Numbers 31:17-18 | Moses kills people then divides up the virgin girls
• Deuteronomy 22:28-29 | Rape victim forced to marry rapist.
• 1 Samuel 18:23-27 | 200 foreskins gain David a king’s daughter
• Proverbs 23:13-14 | beating kids is good
• Ezekiel 23:19-20 | Sex organs and ejaculate of harlots’ lovers compared to asses & horses
• 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 | Disgraceful for women to speak in church
• 2 Thessalonians 2:11-2 | God makes people believe lies then condemns them for it
• And it just gets worse

I’m very impressed with how well everything is researched. I’m a little partial because I’m part of the team that hunts these things down. We actually read the entire chapter then the entire book of the bible in question just to make sure that we’re not taking anything out of context. We also do online searches to see what other people are saying about the verses. Any time we can come up with expert interpretations or theists who agree with our conclusions, we point it out.

Remember, if the Devil can quote scripture to his own ends, then anyone can and the bible loses it’s ability to be used as a tool for teaching in righteousness… and that’s the point of this movement. It’s not just a biblical contradiction site either. The idea is to take bibles and highlight in them so that when arguments about scripture arise, they can say “hey, when I had questions I read my bible. If you’ll read my bible here from cover to cover, we can continue this debate.” It also encourages people to take free bibles, highlight them and pass them out again. If you don’t feel like doing that, you can always print out the list.

The interesting thing is that I’ve actually seen them make a post where they mention that the verse is taken out of context.

Luke 14:26 | You can’t be a disciple of Jesus unless you hate your family

They specifically mention that this verse is often used by atheists to mean something which Jesus didn’t intend. While the wording is a little strange for what he was really meaning to imply, it seems as if this verse, in combination with the verses that follow, are suggesting that we give up everything including our families, friends and self in order to follow him. It then goes to mention that even that is a terrible thing and is certainly not common practice among modern Christians.

It’s fun, it’s interesting, you’ll learn, you’ll laugh, you might get angry but that’s okay too. Check it out:
http://www.devilshighlighter.com

With the elections coming up, everyone is thinking about taxes. Will they raise? Will they fall? Will they get more complex? Will they fix all the crazy loopholes? Will they put in a carbon tax?

Well, I’ve got a few ideas about how the system “should” be set up. I’m no economist, but I do support a few interesting policies that I think are worth noting.

First, I think that the current tax system is WAY to complex. With increased complexity, you increase the likelihood that large corporations will use that complexity to their advantage and benefit from the system more than the lower income brackets. This complexity also requires a lot of government employees review all of that mess and requires the need to enforce it as well. The more complex the tax system, the more resources are required to regulate it. In effect, complex taxes are a mess.

Progressive Taxes can also stunt economic growth. I remember when my mother and father got better jobs, which bumped them up into the next tax bracket (but only just barely). They actually ended up making a slightly higher amount for a disproportionately greater amount of work. I am convinced that the current system discourages economic growth by “punishing” people for earning more.

My solution is not a new one… but I am going to put a twist on it. I am a firm believer in the flat tax. Basically, a flat tax system is a very simple and easy to understand tax. It is a tax on income that is the same percentage no matter how much you earn. Likewise businesses will all be subject to the same taxation of profit. Every company, no matter how much they earn, or how big or small they are will pay the same percentage of their profits to the government. Up to this point, this is just like any other flat tax system. However, I don’t believe that there should be caps for the poor. I think EVERYONE should have to pay.

However, there is the twist I mentioned. I believe that an alternative to making the system more complex by adding exemptions and allowances for dependents and so on… would be to simply have a rebate system that is designed to redistribute a percentage of the nations wealth. Basically, if everyone payed 20% on their income taxes (no matter how much they made or how big their family is), it would make it all very simple to understand. Then the government takes 30% of the total taxes collected, divides that money up evenly, then give it back to everyone as a tax rebate. If we exclude the taxes paid by businesses (for simplicity’s and demonstration’s sake), you can estimate that the average income for an American household is around $45,000. This means that the average tax rebate would be $2,700 (which is equal to the amount payed for those making $13,500 per year). Basically, What this does is encourage growth from those making less than a third of the national average without punishing people for making more money. Because there are no “brackets”, there is no way that making more money could result in you actually earning less because of extra taxes.

The only problem produced is that it might encourage moochers, or poor people who intentionally earn less because they’re getting paid to be citizens anyway. The good news is that the tax refund will be paid yearly and they will likely need more than the average of $2,700 per year in order to survive. Also, if people do decide to mooch, they will bring down the national average income which will then reduce the amount they earn every year.

This little twist simplifies the system and has a few other benefits. It will help close the gap between the rich and the poor instead of widening it. It will not encourage or discourage people from getting married for tax reasons. It will not encourage the poor to have more kids for tax reasons. The last one is very important because the ever-increasing population is a huge burden on this planet and personally, I would rather see a progression towards the middle class rather than a progression towards the poor. Essentially an increase population of the rich (because they can afford to have more kids than the poor) would cause their wealth to spread out, causing them to move towards the middle class. All while the poor are discouraged from having large households while providing them the economic assistance they need to move into the middle class.

The other cool effect is that it will boost the economy. Small businesses will have the same opportunity as the big guys. This will increase an individuals opportunity to compete and prosper. Also, because the refund checks will be issued yearly, it actually encourages people to go out and spend it fairly quickly, injecting money back into the market and ultimately benefiting both the consumers (because they get more stuff) and the producers (because they’ll sell more stuff).

The only problem then is the issue of “Marginal Utility”. Basically this means that the more money you have, the less it effects your survival. If a retail worker earning $15,000 had to give up $3,000 in taxes, it would be a very big deal and would certainly effect their livelihood. However, if a CEO of a major corporation earning 10 million had to pay 2 million in taxes, they’ve still got 8 million to live comfortably on. Also by removing deductions, you can discourage the small businessman from working because a large percentage of his profits might be spent on items necessary for his business (which are deductible). Granted, the big businesses will have the same issues but they’ll have much more money to throw around. Graduated tax rates are supposed to compensate for this by taxing the rich more. However, the result is that the rich hire professionals to figure out how they can pay the smallest amount possible (something the poor cannot afford). The end result is often that the rich pay a smaller percentage of their wealth than the poor because they can use the complexities of the system to weasel out of paying what they owe. A flat tax would make it impossible for these big businesses to get out of paying. Additionally, using the money gained from the flat tax to fund programs to help provide relief from poverty would offset this major issue.

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Besides the flat tax, I also support a carbon tax. This is basically a tax that forces companies to pay for polluting. In its most basic form, it is a tax on oil and coal. Companies will have to pay more for these products and would be rebated if they manage to reclaim/capture carbon or otherwise do not release it into the air. For instance, plastic is made from petroleum products, but much of the carbon from these products is stored in the resulting plastic. These companies would get money back from the taxes they paid on the petroleum they used based on the amount of carbon that is fixed in the end result.

The cap and trade system is just too complex and would cause the market to become extremely volatile. It is also far too complex and will encourage big polluters to find loopholes and cheat the system. I really don’t want my power bills or my gas prices to be going all over the place just because they managed to complicate the market. I want things to be simple and easy to understand. I want the system to result in stability and sustainability. The cap and trade system just doesn’t seem like it could do that.

It is suggested that the carbon tax would put an increased burden on the poor. If it became more expensive to drive our cars or power our homes, this could indeed cause much more hardships in lower income homes. However, the more affluent rich tend to spend more on carbon emitting products such as gas and power. If you use a percentage of that tax to help lower other taxes, then the benefits will be felt most by the poor, especially if in a flat-tax system. If 50% of the carbon tax went to lowering other taxes or was added to the yearly tax rebate (as discussed earlier), it would significantly lower the impact of the carbon tax on the poor. If you put the remaining 50% aside specifically into incentives, grants, and compensations for producing or using zero carbon energy sources, you could drastically increase the rate at which we shift to green energy. Imagine that more green energy research could be performed because more government grants will be available to them. Imagine that installing solar cells on your roof will be cheaper because the government will refund a percentage of their cost.

The carbon tax will have several effects. It will begin reducing carbon emissions immediately. It is simple and easy to implement. It will encourage energy companies to research less carbon expensive methods of energy production. And it would encourage the general public to be more carbon conscious, because carbon emitting products will be more expensive.

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The system I’m propsing is simple and easy to understand. It may be flawed (simply because I’m not economist). However, I think it would work fairly well. All I know is that the current system is broken and current efforts to fix it are like putting duct tape on a crack in the Hoover Dam. Something drastic needs to be done soon before the entire economy collapses.

Read more about the flat tax by clicking here.
Read more about the carbon tax by clicking here.

Make money, lose weight, or kill yourself! Google makes suggestions for what you might be searching for based on trends. The image below shows Google’s suggestions when “top 10 best ways to” is typed in.

Google Suggests Suicide

Now, I know that Google isn’t actually suggesting that I should kill myself. What it really means is just that there just happen to be a large number (379,000+) pages that are about the “top 10 ways to kill yourself”. Likewise there are a similar number of pages (360,000+) that are about the “top ten ways to commit suicide”.

I am encouraged by the fact that there are about 82 times more pages on the “top 10 ways to go green”. Although this is somewhat balanced out by the fact that apparently more people want to destroy the Earth than want to commit suicide (about 163,000 more)… although I suppose you could consider the destruction of the planet as a form of suicide… unless the plan also involves an escape strategy so that they could survive on another planet.

It seems, however, that the majority of people simply want to make money. This is not surprising when you consider the distribution of wealth in a world where 1% of the world’s population controls 99% of the world’s wealth. Perhaps the poor are just depressed by their financial standing. I know I am. That’s why I dabble in internet marketing and work as hard as I do while going to school full time. At some point, reality sinks in and you realize “none of my dreams can come true because I just can’t fund them.” That is rather depressing isn’t it?

A friend of mine was trying to do a search for “top 10 best ways to make money” and when he did it, the very first suggestion was “kill yourself”…. immediately followed by “kill someone”. Seems like the results change fairly frequently, but it’s still very illuminating. Seems like a lot of people are angry and depressed, likely over money problems or social problems. Admittedly, I have a word document that I add to occasionally that details my many plains for the destruction of the planet (evil super-villian style). But it’s more of a cathartic stress-relief and an exercise in creativity, than an actual blueprint. Who knows, I may want to create a cartoon series, or a game that involves such elements in their story-line.

Based on these results,I think people are angry and depressed mostly because they feel poor, unattractive, unimportant, unwanted, or otherwise disadvantaged. I know Google is just trying to be helpful, but should it really be putting this kind of ammunition in someone’s hands? Especially the young children who might be searching for “top 10 ways to ruin the first day of school”. I suppose when it comes right down to it, it’s not Google’s fault. People are angry and depressed, so they create content that relates to that. In fact, they are probably less likely to commit an act of violence (against themselves or others) if they are capable of releasing such emotions by creating such content.

I think the burden lies with us as a society. We need to step up and address the issue of suicide. It is up to us to recognize the early warning signs that someone might be or become suicidal and to help try to prevent suicides. As for myself and my wife, we both use a very powerful strategy for quelling suicidal thoughts. We live for other people. In other words, my life is not just mine, it is shared by all of those around me. My friends and family are invested in my life, the loss of which will cause them harm. Additionally, you top it off with a promise to such individuals “I will not kill myself because I know it would hurt you.” This method does have one flaw, however… what if they have nobody to make such promises to? Go out and get some friends, that’s my suggestion. We are social creatures and we require some degree of social interaction. you may find that you feel better just by gaining a friend.

This Article, gives great advice for the recoginizing the early signs of depression and suicidal thoughts as well as ways to help somone through their troubles. It also urges people not to assume full responsibility for the suicidal person’s emotion support. They need professional help. The thoughts may go away, they may get worse. The depression could be caused by something as simple as a vitamin deficiency, but you won’t know unless you get checked out by a doctor. The Samaritans are also a great resource for those who just need someone to talk to. They offer completely confidential and non-judgmental emotional support 24/7/365. I have personally used them to work through some of my own depressions.

Additonally, the causes of this anger and depression need to be addressed… such as money making methods that actually work and ways to increase social equality without destroying capitalism. Pipe dreams, I know. But one can still dream, even if it is idealistic hippie-dippy commy garbage.

I remember hearing stories when I was young about cars that ran entirely on water and I was fascinated by the idea. However, after a lot of thought and learning about thermodynamics I realized that it had to be a load of hogwash. There are a lot of people trying to make claims that simply are not possible and a lot of other people who are quick to claim things are impossible when they have no clue what they’re talking about.

First, you cannot get more energy out of a system than you put in without losing something. In other words if you use electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then burn it, then you’re putting in energy from the batter and producing power from the engine. Not only that but the engine loses quite a bit of that energy as heat. Because the battery is charged by the alternator (which is run by the engine… which in this case is run by the battery), the battery will run down. It’s basically like trying to recharge an electric car by running it. It simply won’t work. This might work if the water was broken outside of the vehicle and the gas was burned in the vehicle. Basically a station would make the fuel and your car would consume it. That might be thermodynamically possible, but it’s still not very practical.

Now there are kits you can purchase that claim to increase your fuel efficiency by using this process as an additive to your air intake. The battery is now used to break water into hydrogen and hydro-oxygen, but instead of being used purely as a fuel, it is used to increase efficiency. This works by piping these highly flamable gasses through the air intake. Some claim that this can drastically increase your fuel efficiency, with some claiming to reduce your fuel consumption by 60%. I find that to be highly unlikely but I do think it is possibly to increase fuel economy in this way.

What is happening is actually very simple. You’re just making a chemical battery. Yep, that’s it. Your alternator uses energy from your engine to recharge the battery. When the battery is fully charged this energy is completely wasted, it goes nowhere. Alternators are designed to provide much more than enough energy to recharge the battery so this can be quite a bit of lost energy. In these systems, it simply takes that extra energy to break water. You’ve then stored that energy, which would have otherwise been wasted, in these gasses. Those gasses are then fed into the fuel system and burned. All the energy is still coming from the gas. You’re just recapturing otherwise lost energy and feeding it back into the engine.

I’ve also heard of engines that use water directly for combustion and work in combination with gasoline. Basically, they combust fuel in the engine and use the residual heat to combust water in the next stroke. It hits the hot cylinder and simply turns to steam. This reduces the temperature of the engine, making it run more efficiently and reclaims some of that heat energy to produce power for the engine. This has shown a lot of promise, but I’m concerned that the water will damage the engine. Also, if the water and steam isn’t completely ejected from the cylinder, it will make the combustion of the gas less efficient and cause the engine to chug and knock.

All in all, this has led me to believe that water can indeed be used as a fuel if it is produced outside of the car, it can be used to increase the efficiency of your gas by reclaiming otherwise wasted energy from your alternator, and it might be useful for generating steam power alongside gasoline. It’s possible. But I don’t know if all the scam artists out there selling kits are really telling the truth. This might be something worth looking into though.

Just me musing some stuff over. What are your thoughts?
Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

Check this out:

Now, she goes into a little side rant about cigarrette ads and smoking that I don’t really agree with. But the most important message is fairly clear. Now, nicotene is an appetite suppressor… but I certainly wouldn’t suggest anyone smoke to loose weight.

To see my opinion on the matter of the idea of “thin=attractive” check out this article.

This isn’t so much a rant, as it is a simple statement… but I’ll put it under rants because well… this is my site and I can do whatever I want with it. so :P

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

Many children, and even adults, are diagnosed with ADD/ADHD(Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder… hereafter referred to as ADD) every year. Some would argue that there is an epidemic. While others, such as myself, debunk it as a load of bull. Yep, this rant is about the ADD excuse as I like to call it. Now, that being said, I have been diagnosed as having ADD and I have noticed odd difference between those with and those without this supposed disorder. The main difference is that stimulants and depressants work backwards on us. Most of the medications prescribed to those with ADD are actually amphetamines. I can’t imagine giving a hyper kid a stimulant would make them any easier to deal with… however, that is the case. For instance, drinking caffeine will make me lose consciousness fairly quickly whereas Benadryl will make me jittery and fidgety. So I recognize that there is a fundamental difference between those with and without this supposed disorder. Studies have actually shown that people with ADD actually have decrease levels of activity in the parts of their brain that govern impulse control. However, I don’t think it’s a disorder at all, nor do I think it’s a learning disability. However, the entire country is using it as an excuse. Students, teachers, and parents are all saying “it’s not their fault… they’ve got ADD”. It’s all garbage.
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Alright, what is up with women’s obsession with the size of their posteriors? Women now-a-days are obsessed with their weight. They’ve got it in their heads that if they don’t look like the anorexic drug addicts they see on television and in magazines that they’re not good looking. They’re torturing themselves and feeling self conscious for no good reason. Seriously, there is something wrong with this world if women think they need to starve themselves to look beautiful. It’s just not true.
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I’ve been noticing an amazing trend in games over the years. As technology advances, we are better able to create more and more realistic games. Graphically games are becoming more and more advanced with high resolution textures and models, great animation and extensive storyline. One would think that this would mean better games right? Wrong! In my opinion, games are starting to lose their “fun” qualities and take on more “entertaining” qualities. Essentially, game developers seem to be forgetting the most important thing about games: They’re games! I’m just tired of being tricked into buying interactive movies when I want to play a game. The biggest letdown I’ve had over the past few years was the Max Payne series, they where FAR too linear. The game played very straight forward as the story unfolded. Now, the game was great, the gameplay was fun… but the ridged structure of it just felt like I was being forced into things instead of making choices.

Personally, I think that many game development companies are too focused on how a game looks and not focused enough on how the game plays. As games become better and better looking, they seem to lend less to the realm of game play. Almost as if the player is forced to sit and watch the artists show off their work instead of playing a game.

I used to program games on my TI-83+ graphing calculator. These where ugly games, written in a very limited programming language. But I made them fun. Why? Because if they weren’t fun, no one would play them! I didn’t have the fancy graphics and options that modern games have because of the language limitations. However, that didn’t stop me from making very addictive versions of tic-tac-toe, slolum, FPS, maze, guessing, and memory games. I had a blast, and so did the students who I gave the games to. So much so, that the teachers tried to erase all the programs from every calculator in an effort to curb these distractions. Good thing we had them backed up on our computers… or they might have been lost forever. My point here is that even an ugly, option-low game can be very fun and addictive. Games don’t need to be pretty, they don’t need extensive storyline, THEY NEED TO BE FUN!

That being said, graphics and storyline are VERY important for the immersion of a game. Games like Halo 3, Bioshock, and Heavenly Sword are all examples of engaging graphics and storyline. They’re also extremely fun to play (I’ve only personally played Halo 3 and read very good reviews about the other two). Hopefully, as graphics becomes easier for us to utilize and making games pretty becomes super easy, we will be able to focus better on making games fun again. I’ve got good hopes for the game industry. Also… if I ever manage to break into the game industry, I can guarantee that my main focus will be on fun… unless I’m an artist. Nah, fun is king.

Let me just put it this way: People didn’t wait so long in line for Halo3 just so they can see how neat the graphics where. They waited that long so that they could buy the game and blow stuff up in cool new ways! End of story.

Rant to you later,
~Nathaniel

Readers beware, there has been a long, on-going scam dealing with the flu vaccine. Many health care facilities have been pocketing your hard earned money by injecting you with immunologically useless, and often dangerous materials. Be very cautious with considering getting the flu vaccine. What’s going on you ask? Have some groups replaced the actual flu vaccine with something else in order to make money? Not really, in fact you might be safer if they had!
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Alright, I’m going to post another rant. This one is directed at the gothic subculture. Now, don’t worry, I’m not going to alienate anyone. Let me start out by saying that I identify with the gothic subculture very well. I understand the need for individualism and even the fascination with all things morbid. However, I don’t listen to just angry death metal (I enjoy listening to everything but country and rap), I do not wear all black (but I do prefer dark colors) and I have no piercings or tattoos (although I’ve always dreamed of getting full sleeves). That being said, I am not labeled as “goth” by anyone seeking to stereotype me. Now, just because I don’t appear gothic, doesn’t mean that I can’t identify with them. Now, I’m also not going to label myself as goth either. Because I am not a label. If anything, I’m just that creepy, nerdy, artist guy.
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