The Voice

I am always trying to figure out the voice of the person in whatever commercial I'm watching. I find it fascinating these companies pay big money for celebrities to simply lend their voice to their product. Most of the time the average viewer doesn't even recognize the voice.

See how well you do identifying the celebrity voice in these commercials...

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Ready for some answers?

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I Hate Humor

Last night President Obama continued a long standing tradition of Presidents appearing at the annual White House Correspondence Dinner and delivering some jokes. Personally, I thought the event was very funny and the President got in some good lines. I was curious how Jimmy Kimmel would fare since he isn't really known for his political humor but I thought he nailed it as well.

I was curious to know what those on the right thought about the dinner and the comedy so I checked out Paula Priesse's wall on Facebook. She is known as a conservative comedian to her followers and she has a public figure page on the social network. Several of my friends on Facebook are "friends" or "fans" of Paula and her wall. Today Paula posted about the correspondence dinner and listed some "jokes" of her own about our president. Within the first hour of her posting there were over 600 "likes" and 150 comments. Here are some of my favorites:

Linda Bartlett I dislike barak husin Osamabama and all for which he stands.

Matthew Tretler What a narcissistic piece of trash...

Jerry Nevil he is a lying corrupt communist union goon who shou[d br impeached and sent back to africa

Wayne Burnside There was an article i read that took a stab at trying to pin the 40+% approval rating for Obama as racial. they did this, (We see race does still matter) right after they showed his approval rating.

Dale Leischner Demented

Mark R. Heath Ha ha!! What a card! And his moron voters think he is funny. The joke is on them!

David Kosak Past presidents respected the idea that the office was bigger than the man who occupied it. Obama has managed to reduce the office to the man. Unfortunately what a small man he is.

Larry Murray Geez no jokes about his 13 year old daughter's spring break to Mexico? No Michelle and kids go sking in Colorado on the taxpayers dime?

Joe Downs Lord Barack is such a total douche. I don't know why I let myself get so worked up about the stuff he says.

Connie Stephens Hunnings Saw this on TV last night. BHO is very flippant about America's problems. Reminds me of Marie Antoinette who said "Let them eat cake!" And you know what happened to her. That was not a threat, BTW.

Jason Knick puke

Diane Donovan I'm going to throw up now. He is so dillusional it's not even funny.

Shannon Clark I watched last night, made me sick. What to do about these parasites.

Robert Kendrick Let's see, that would be President Marx, President Lenin, President Stalin, and President Obama.

Bruce Riffle HATE THAT PIECE OF GARBAGE!! NAZI COMMIE!!

Shirley Cagle Bossbach Didn't see anything particularly funny and couldn't force myself to sit through it again. No Thanks!

Meredith Gray Truly and honestly makes me sick to my stomach. Such an enormously embarrassing fraud.

William S. Gatlos Jr hes so damn arrogant

I'm far from a being a Democrat. I believe I have Libertarian beliefs, even though I'm not on board with the idea of no government and anarchy that is represented by some of those that currently belong to the Libertarian Party. Having stated that, I don't hate our President. He seems like a guy that is doing his best to try to make this a better country. I think he's made mistakes. And if his healthcare law, especially the mandate part, gets overturned by the Supreme Court next month then I'd be willing to say he's made huge mistakes. But he's done a lot of good as well. 

The idea that we have to hate the "other" guys and the "other" side should be troubling to everyone. When people can't even find humor at a roast then what does that say about them and their state of mind? Simply because you aren't a fan of President Obama or you want to elect someone else doesn't get my ire. However, when people have no desire to honestly evaluate his performance and only wish to attack him and challenge everything about him, even things that aren't relevant to his job, then I find it alarming. 

I love the fact that everyone has an equal vote in our democracy, I wouldn't want it any other way. That is why I feel it necessary to ridicule this type of conduct that is only motivated by ignorance and fear. We know stupid people outnumber smart people. We understand these people will out breed the smarter people and will always have the numbers. That is why it is so important to call out this behavior and make it uncomfortable for them to spout this ignorance. I'm not trying to change the mind of these people at all, that would be pointless and a waste of time. However, I am trying to show those of you that I think are smarter than the average person how foolish this hate and anger is and how it shouldn't be the motivator when we go to the polls.

The number one reason, listed in every respected polling survey, for people who turned out to vote for Romney during the primaries was the fact they want to beat Obama in the next election.  They didn't list values, ideas, policies, etc... they simply mentioned their dislike, distrust, fear, and hate of our current president as their number one reason for supporting Romney. They tune into a "news" network that only confirms what they want to hear, Obama is horrible for this country. The tune into a.m. radio channels (what does that say about someone and their propensity to move forward when they tune into a.m. radio?) to hear people tell them our country is doomed if Obama wins another term. They search out people on social media that will hate on Obama the same way they want to hate on him.

This way of thinking can't be the answer. If it is, we truly are doomed. We have to demand intelligent conversations about meaningful subject matter if we want to continue in the tradition of forming a more perfect union. 

Not All Experts Agree

Have you ever presented facts in an argument and you know 99% of the professionals in the field agree, yet the person that is arguing with you counters by saying, "Not everyone in that field agrees, I know some respected experts that hold a different opinion,"? Well if you have, I would be willing to bet Bryan Fischer is one of those "experts". Fischer holds a degree in philosophy from Stanford University. He also holds a degree in theology from Dallas Theoretical Seminary. My only motivation for creating this post is so it can be used as a reply, a tool, when someone references a claim by Fischer in a future argument. Just question them, "This Bryan Fischer?", and post a link to this blog post.

Campaign advice for Mitt Romney

Thermodynamics and Evolution

God loved Christopher Hitchens so much he sent him to Hell

Mormonism, the false religion

Gays are Nazis

Clarification -- Understand now?

Confused about the First Amendment? Fischer will explain it to you.

Islam and Gays

Even turkeys aren't safe with this guy

Faces Come Out Of The Rain

Here's a new one for you, I'm going to explain how the trick works before I show it to you. The room you are about to see isn't as it appears. The floor isn't flat at all, it slopes from low on the left to high on the right. The patterns on the floor aren't symmetrical, they are only painted in a way to make it appear so. The people are actually the same height or very close to it. And even when I tell you all of this and inform you that the video below is an optical illusion, your brain will still create a different reality and sense the room is "normal" and the people are different.

Here's another one, albeit not as fancy.

There are two ways to view the front of the box. Either you can envision the front of the box to use the bottom left corner and slope upward to the right or you can see the front of the box to use the top right corner and slope downward to the left. Nothing at all changes about this box except your perception of it.

Let's try another video. Again, I'm telling you it's an optical illusion before you watch. This time, however, I'm not going to tell you how it works, I'm just telling you what you think you're seeing isn't what you're really seeing. About the 30 second mark the illusion will be revealed. I challenge you to hit the pause button before then and try to figure it out.

The next video I really like because even when you are shown how both of these illusions work your brain still goes right back to seeing what it wants to see at the end of the video.

Here's another illusion where I'm going to give it away before you see it. Square "A" and square "B" are the exact same color. So now that I've told you this in advance you should be able to see it. Right?

What do you think is the illusion in the following image?

Correct, the orange circle is the same size in each image. But it doesn't feel that way does it?

Do you like spirals. Take your mouse or your finger and follow the spiral in the above image. Getting anywhere?

Now we're going to get to a couple of my favorites. These are different types of illusions, kind of, because they aren't really intended to be illusions. For instance: many of the images and videos I've included were created to show you how your brain can be fooled, and that's pretty cool. However, the next set is your brain fooling you all on its own. It's giving you a false sense of reality.

Each year the Neural Correlate Society holds a contest for the Best Illusion of the Year. This one won in 2007. Since I'm sure you know you're being tricked at this point, you can figure out by now that these photos are identical. How it works is your brain sees this image as a single scene. Because we see it this way our brain makes the necessary correction to make it possible for these two towers to exist next to each other. Our brain creates the divergence even though one doesn't really exist. Our brain makes it seem like one of the towers is leaning.

Now we've seen a bunch of illusions. So now that I'm going to show you another one and let you know ahead of time that it is very hard to grasp it should be easier to understand. What makes it so great, to me at least, is its simplicity. The items or shapes presented in the illusion aren't things in nature that exist to fool you. You fool yourself.

That's it. You know what I'm going to tell you. Those are the same size. Want a video of it?

You know what, that looks more like a trick of some sort. Even though this was filmed at The Hong Kong Museum of Science it still seems like something is up with it.

Crazy, huh?

The second you think you know something you have limited your ability to perceive the true nature of reality. Our brain is an amazing thing. It tries very hard to make sense of a crazy universe. And, for the most part, it does a pretty good job, as far as we know. It helps us survive. But that's really all it does, help us survive and get along in this world without dying and walking off bridges or eating things that will kill us. It has its limits. The more we understand these limits the more we understand ourselves, the world, the universe.

This next video isn't an illusion at all, but it is about perspective.

Now imagine your brain in relation to that scale of the planets and the stars. It's beyond preposterous to even begin to believe that our brains understand how it all works. This is why it seems so bizarre to me that we first begin by trying to understand how it all functions and then live our lives based on the premise of how we fit into that understanding. It would seem a much more reasonable approach to understand how we function and how we are a part of the bigger picture, not the other way around.

It's hard to know who really first coined the idea about the strangeness of the universe and our ability to grasp it, but the point is someone said it and that someone is right.

"Reality is not only stranger than we perceive, it's stranger than we CAN perceive."

A Prison For Your Mind

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.  ~ Albert Einstein


It's funny how humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their version of reality. ~ Rick Riordan


Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. ~ Frank Herbert


Humankind cannot bear very much reality. ~ T.S. Eliot


Reality can be beaten with enough imagination. ~ Mark Twain


The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real. ~ Philip K. Dick


Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think. ~ Werner Heisenberg


The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head. ~ Kurt Vonnegut


Most of us go through each day looking for what we saw yesterday And, not surprisingly, that is what we find. ~ James A. Kitchens


The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. ~C.S. Lewis


Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it. ~ Niels Bohr


Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor. ~ Wallace Stevens


We must look at the lens through we see the world, as well as the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world. ~ Stephen R. Covey


It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us. ~ Carl Sagan


Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit. ~ William James


You can do everything right, strictly according to procedure, on the ocean, and it'll still kill you, but if you're a good navigator, at least you'll know where you were when you died. ~ Justin Scott


Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject. ~ Andre Breton


Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky


Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.  ~ Simone Weil

Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them. ~ Oscar Wilde


One might suppose that reality must be held to at all costs. However, though that may be the moral thing to do, it is not necessarily the most useful thing to do. The Greeks themselves chose the ideal over the real in their geometry and demonstrated very well that far more could be achieved by consideration of abstract line and form than by a study of the real lines and forms of the world; the greater understanding achieved through abstraction could be applied most usefully to the very reality that was ignored in the process of gaining knowledge. ~ Isaac Asimov


Lies have always been easier to invent than reality. ~ Marty Rubin


You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. ~ Morpheus 

Who Said It?

Below are several quotes about Mitt Romney. The rules are easy, guess which Democrat said it.

1) "Mitt Romney is someone who doesn't have a core. He has been on both sides of almost every single issue in the past ten years."


2)  "There is something so grotesquely hypocritical about the Romney campaign."


3) “If Romney could use an Etch a Sketch anywhere, it’s with Hispanics. When they start vetting, they have to start with the Hispanics and go from there. He’s really hurt himself with Hispanics in this primary…It’s not just about 2012, it’s about the future of the Republican Party. If you don’t make inroads with Hispanics now, I think the Republican Party could be wiped off the map for 20 years.”


4) "It seems like Republican primary voters will not vote for Mitt Romney unless they are forced into it."


5) "I've been Romney-boated...Somebody who will lie to you to get to be president will lie to you when they are president. Romney's not telling the American people the truth."


6) "What is wrong with Mitt Romney? He doesn't have to build a $19 million dollar Taj Mahal in La Hoya, California. Couldn't he just wait a few years?"


7) "Romney's foreign affairs resume is extremely thin, leading to credibility problems."


8) "Bless his heart, I have respect for Mitt Romney, but I do not have respect for what he has done through this debt increase debate. He waited until it was a done deal...and then he came out and made a statement that 'aw, he didn't like the deal after all. 


9) "Apparently Mitt Romney doesn't believe in putting your country first. He's got this bumper sticker that says, 'Believe in America,' It's just phony nonsense." 


10) "The problem for Mitt Romney is his weaknesses reflect Obama's strengths in the same way John Kerry's weaknesses reflected George Bush's strengths." 


11) "Mitt Romney's biggest challenge in this election will be convincing Republicans he has principled positions on important issues, especially now that it's known that he remained committed to pro-choice policies after his 'epiphany' on abortion in 2004."


12) "Romney...is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable, he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate."












Answers
1. Rick Santorum 2. Newt Gingrich 3. Ford O'Connell 4. Nelson Warfield 5. Newt Gingrich 6. Bill O'Reilly 7. John McCain 8. Sarah Palin 9. Jon Hunstman 10. Mark McKinnon 11. Matt David 12. George Will

A Hot Dog Wrapped In Bacon Inside A Bun

I trip out on the fact that we all love impersonations. We love watching people act like other people. If someone can make their voice sound like the voice of another person we can't help but laugh. Weird idea to me.

When guys fart other guys always laugh. Interesting.

We fight and argue and dispute all different types of things in this country. Yet a box that contains three different colored lights sitting at an intersection can dictate whether we can proceed or stop and we all, for the most part, agree to its terms. Bizarre concept.

A sports event happening someplace other than my location can be taking place and I can flick on a box in my front room and view it live. Fascinating.

I can walk into a room in my house, sit on a type of strange chair, excrete my bodily waste, push a button and it travels through some highway type structure of pipes to some location far from me and is disposed of by people that making a living performing such duties. Extraordinary.

To appear more professional we take a piece of material, tie it in a knot, and wear it around our neck. Odd.

I'm a type of ape and I let a completely different type of animal, a dog, sleep in my bed. Intriguing.

A bunch of people gather together to watch something and when they like or agree with what they see everyone takes their hands and claps them together. Very strange idea.

I can travel anywhere in the world and if I shake my head up and down or back and forth from side to side the other person will understand what I'm trying to convey. Universally interesting.

I can pick up a small little device, push some buttons, talk into the machine, have my voice changed into a bunch of zeroes and ones, have those zeroes and ones sent to a satellite in space, have that satellite locate a friend of mine, make their little device signal them, they pick it up and my zeroes and ones are changed back into my voice and I communicate with them. Mind boggling.

To show someone you really care about them intimately you place your tongue against their tongue and move it around. How did this come to be?

People that truly decide to get into your home and take your property rarely walk around the neighborhood and check to see if front doors are unlocked. Yet when we leave our residence we lock the door. Even if a burglar did decide to randomly check to see if doors were left unlocked and then steal from those houses, then why do we have a separate deadbolt lock above the handle lock? Meanwhile we have slim little pieces of glass all around our home that can easily be broken. Hard to understand the reasoning on this one.

People with a little dent in their cheek that becomes visible only when they smile are more attractive than people that have a permanent dent in their chin. Why is this?

Hair says so much about a person. How they wear it, if they have it, what color they make it, how they decorate their face with it, if they have it in places they aren't supposed to have it. Perplexing.

There are trillions and trillions of living things that are their own entity, their own living life form, that make you who you are. Hard concept to grasp.

The sun is a star. To reach the next closest star it would take over four years traveling at 186,000 miles every second. That's the closest one. There are between 100 billion and 300 billion stars, maybe more, in our own galaxy. We estimate there are over 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Does that even make sense?

The Path of the Righteous Man

PULP FICTION