Random Musings

In recent years I’ve often seen articles and posts about the possibility of “terraforming” Mars. Terraforming is the attempt to change a planet’s environment to make the planet more habitable by humans. The hope is that some day people could live on that planet without requiring special protective gear.

In an effort to distinguish between ordinary, civilized Muslims, and those terrorists who commit atrocities in the name of Islam, a new label has been created. Those murderers are not Muslims; they are Islamists. I don’t think this is a valid distinction.

There is a custom among some Muslim women to wear a veil that covers all of her face except for her eyes. This is called a niqab. In western countries, some efforts have been made to ban this custom, at least in public places. It has been met with vehement anger, often accusing the proponents of the ban of “Islamophobia.”

Iran has publicly announced that, through its proxy Hezbollah, it will target Israeli civilians when it launches its retaliatory attacks. To which I say, “no shit.”

On July 27th, 2024, a rocket fired from Lebanon by Hezbollah killed twelve children playing soccer in a field at Majdal Shams. Normally when children are killed in war, they are identified as children. The outrage of civilian deaths in war is bad enough; when it is children, it is especially brutal. Unless the kids are Israelis.

I’m not here to claim that science is bogus or vain; or that it should somehow not be conducted. I believe science has given us many good things, and will likely continue to do so, assuming we don’t annihilate ourselves in the meantime. However, some people have let themselves become arrogant because of all the progress science has made throughout history. I want to take it down a notch or two.

According to dictionary.com, scambaiting is “…the practice of pretending to fall for fraudulent online schemes in order to waste the time of the perpetrators.” Basically, a scambaiter acts as though they were naive, gullible, even stupid, in order to get the scammer to spend a great deal of time accomplishing nothing. Somehow this feels satisfying, turning the tables on scammers who try to defraud people of their hard-earned money.