tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59323504930467969002026-06-05T10:34:51.107-04:00Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger125125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-20817139425068459212013-03-06T04:08:00.000-05:002013-03-07T01:19:41.225-05:00

I ran into that old familiar complaint again yesterday, the claim that no one is interested in hearing about your dreams. As a writer who works frequently with dreams, naturally I find this idea to be dismissive and obnoxious. But in a way, I do understand where they’re coming from. We’ve all been there. Someone tells you about a dream they had where the dog had their grandmother’s face and

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-849761045942891972012-09-20T11:11:00.003-04:002012-09-20T11:19:33.749-04:00

A few months ago they came out with a remake of the 80's action movie Total Recall.  The special effects and the cinematography were, of course, light years beyond the original, but the story...well, it kind of sucked.  The main problem was that they took Mars completely out of the story, and they didn't really bother to find anything else to fill the gaping hole left in the plot.&nbsp

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-58026395285345391562012-06-27T11:13:00.002-04:002012-08-28T17:07:22.010-04:00

Today's post from Strangers Call Me Sunny is kind of hybrid of the posts I do there, as well as the kind of stuff I used to post over here.  So I figured that I would post this on both blogs, and use this as an opportunity to plug the other blog and try to bring some of you stragglers back into the fold. Over the years, I've heard about plenty of psychological experiments which

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-9283882871474203702012-04-15T13:22:00.001-04:002012-04-15T16:22:02.376-04:00

Consider the following scenarios. 1.) A man is on his deathbed.  He is a wealthy man; a man with the means to hire the best minds on the planet to come up with some way of prolonging his life.  One day his most trusted adviser comes to him bearing good news.  He tells him that they have found a way to clone him (as a young man of course), and more than that, they found a way

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-49183175221903475892011-12-31T09:53:00.000-05:002011-12-31T09:53:17.364-05:00

First of all, Happy New Year from everyone here at the nuclearheadache staff.  Of course, that staff is mostly just me.  So, I guess that means Happy New Year from me. There are some benefits to running a one man operation.  I can make my own hours, set my own terms, and come and go as I please.  So, I suppose this is as good a time as any to announce that it's time for

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-59273193802524199972011-12-27T16:38:00.005-05:002011-12-27T18:02:15.906-05:00

I was pleasantly surprised when I recently learned that Carl Sagan's Cosmos series is available through Netflix's streaming video service.  I don't know if it's a new addition to the service, but it is a welcome one.  I've seen most of the series' short thirteen episode run here and there in various different ways over the years, but this gives me the opportunity to watch it all in

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-60063642399566416822011-12-22T11:52:00.006-05:002011-12-24T13:20:04.808-05:00

I remember the first time someone told me what would happen if you were outside on a cold winter day and you stuck your tongue to a metal post; how you were likely to find yourself securely fixed until the paramedics arrived.  This idea held a grip on my imagination for days, weeks, even months after that.  I was afraid that I would find myself in a situation where I would just go ahead

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-835267255158620622011-12-20T09:57:00.004-05:002011-12-21T08:37:37.402-05:00

A recent check of my stats for this blog shows that I've gone well over four thousand pageviews for this month, and I'm well on my way to topping five thousand by the end of the month, possibly even topping 30,000 total pageviews by the end of the year.  This has easily been the most successful month so far here at nuclearheadache...at least traffic-wise.  Unfortunately, I find this

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-56366109337844308692011-12-16T11:11:00.003-05:002011-12-17T08:41:01.122-05:00

Yesterday my wife asked me a question that I had been wondering about myself for quite some time: Why didn't people smile in old pictures?  Since I've never liked to be stumped by one of my wife's random questions, I took a stab at pronouncing the word "daguerreotype" and speculated that the long exposure times that were originally involved in taking a photograph necessitated keeping your

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-11091328667262713142011-12-15T11:04:00.003-05:002011-12-15T17:16:13.233-05:00

When I was a kid, there was a rather strange couple that taught a few of the Sunday school classes at the church that I went to.  Their family adhered to a very strict orthodoxy, which included a few extra and unusual stipulations that they had thrown in themselves for good measure.  For one thing, they didn't believe in owning a TV, as they considered the idiot box to be inherently

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-39577254573457051832011-12-08T10:45:00.007-05:002011-12-08T15:10:04.315-05:00

When it comes to dark dystopian visions of the future, George Orwell's 1984 is the standard-bearer, the prototype.  It's not a subtle work, by any means, but it is an extremely powerful one.  It's a dire warning about totalitarian government, an indictment of censorship, a defense of the nuances of language, and a text book on brainwashing, all rolled into one.  It relentlessly

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-58861395997933355112011-12-06T11:46:00.004-05:002011-12-06T13:02:42.548-05:00

When we think of philosophy, we tend to think of an esoteric subject far removed from the actual practice of living.  We think of the obscure terminology, the perpetually ponderous "isms" and the various schools of thought which bear their names.  We tend to think of the great names of philosophy, Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, and so on, those giants of wisdom who's names we invoke in

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-85565498434213339802011-11-29T18:42:00.003-05:002011-11-30T02:00:57.191-05:00

"Bad Faith" is Sartre's rather odd term for a rather odd concept.  The nearest equivalent that I could think of is "self-deception", although taking the term at face value as a description of misplaced faith might be appropriate as well.  Neither interpretation quite does the term justice.  The former is a bit misleading in its tone and the latter is a bit too broad in its scope.&

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-79726066871631918812011-11-25T19:58:00.001-05:002011-11-26T07:03:43.399-05:00

When I first heard of the Expansion Theory years ago, I don't think I ever really considered taking it seriously.  It struck me as the sort of cornball idea that's only good for shaking up your preconceptions and possibly motivating you to consider different perspectives, the typical sort of thing that inevitably comes up in conversations about "thinking outside the box", something akin to

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-52343123757344167022011-11-20T15:01:00.009-05:002011-11-20T18:20:32.890-05:00

What I am about to tell you is shocking.  If you have small children then you might want them to leave the room.  Of course, then you'd have to come back here to read the rest of the post, and that would leave the little tike unattended.  There's a good chance that they could hurt themselves or start crying because you left them alone.  That would be a big distraction. 

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-47505719182243284922011-11-17T09:34:00.001-05:002011-11-17T09:41:41.858-05:00

I originally wrote this piece for a project which Vincent and I were working on during this past summer.  I'm not sure how much sense it will make when taken out of the context of that project and all the strange metaphysical disputes Vincent and I were having, but I figured it might serve as something appropriate for Rachel Hoyt's latest sociology study which is on the theme of "doors &

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-34346623969264367532011-11-15T11:12:00.011-05:002012-04-15T15:38:32.816-04:00

It probably shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone that I have a fondness for identifying tropes from TV shows and movies, and I enjoy reading about tropes that others have identified.  But although I also indulge in the inevitable smart-ass tone which attends the descriptions of such things, I usually have some appreciation for the dramatic, esthetic, and even sometimes financial,

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-90191287352288870252011-11-12T13:40:00.001-05:002011-11-12T22:17:45.043-05:00

A few years back someone started an internet "hoax" about a mythical creature known as The Slender Man.  I hesitate to use the word "hoax", and I rope it off behind quotation marks, because even at the time of its origin, the creature was never presented as anything other than fake.  I'll say that again, as it bears repeating, The Slender Man was openly and clearly created as a made-up

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-77442634863161126962011-11-08T11:15:00.006-05:002011-11-08T18:59:18.331-05:00

In several interviews I've heard evolutionary biologist and notorious atheist, Richard Dawkins, make a statement to the effect that over the ages mankind has gotten rid of a vast pantheon of gods, and all that remains is for us to rid ourselves of the last remaining one.  He seems quite satisfied with this formulation of his, as often as he's repeated it.  I think its pat simplicity

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-9257978337859024462011-11-07T08:09:00.003-05:002011-11-07T08:40:37.579-05:00

"Get with it. Millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars, in a speck on one in a blink. That's us, lost in space. The cop, you, me... Who notices?"That line comes from Vincent, the coldly efficient hit man in the movie Collateral.  It's arrives at a pivotal point in the story, and it expresses Vincent's extremely nihilistic outlook in a simple and straightforward manner. 

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-25939957807733935502011-11-04T18:00:00.003-04:002012-01-14T10:43:40.664-05:00

From the looks of it, it appears that every Monday morning someone shows up at my work with Sunday's paper, and then they proceed to have an epileptic fit which involves throwing the sales flyers around in all directions.  Every Monday night, we find the aftermath of this episode scattered all over the break room, and we all sit around thumbing through these flyers and having fairly insipid

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-32847390419374062852011-10-25T08:27:00.000-04:002011-10-25T08:27:25.930-04:00

When Sartre speaks of the question, he is referring to more than just an interrogatory statement with a piece of punctuation fixed to its tail.  He is speaking of an attitude of uncertainty towards being.  Although this attitude may only occasionally be expressed through a literal, explicitly outright question, it is nearly always with us, close at hand.  It is a fundamental part

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com44tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-45851623098866275622011-10-22T09:43:00.007-04:002011-10-22T12:29:41.060-04:00

Imagine that there's a very large rock poised precariously on the edge of a precipice.  Tremors from an earthquake shake the ground beneath it just enough to dislodge it and send it falling to the ground far below where it shatters into several pieces.  This is causality in nearly its most elementary form; basic physical interaction, the shaking ground disturbs the rock and causes it to

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-85610715027312425272011-10-18T18:28:00.001-04:002011-10-20T17:40:53.127-04:00

At this point you may be wondering, "If it all comes down to our ability to question, then why this circuitous route through consciousness and nothingness?  Why even bother with Sartre to begin with?"  A fair question.  Well, as I said in the previous post, determinism builds its case entirely on the basis of causality.  So, any argument that wishes to challenge determinism

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5932350493046796900.post-31390081962220994862011-10-16T08:46:00.001-04:002011-10-16T11:11:44.878-04:00

When we first began this little existential adventure, I briefly mentioned the basic rudiments of the theory of determinism.  I said at the time that the theory seemed to be missing something, but that it was hard to put my finger on exactly what that was.  Well, I think that perhaps the time has come to go back and take a closer look at determinism, and see if we can't pinpoint the

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com24