Dan Hagen

As I was driving home from work today, I saw a girl walking down the street. Didn’t think anything of it. My windows were rolled down though, and after a few moments I heard something strange. It sounded like a cat meowing. Turns out the girl was holding a distressed kitten in her hands.

I felt bad. The traffic was terrible. There was a girl walking along the cement barrier out in the summer heat, carrying an unhappy kitty. Normally I wouldn’t offer some random girl a ride, but I became determined to stop and do so anyway. Maybe my attempts would be futile. Maybe not. I tried anyway.

I saw her enter the 7-11 by the overpass. It was a good opportunity for me to stop. I parked with perfect timing, exited my car as she exited the convenience store. She had a small plastic cup of water so she could give the kitten a drink.

I told her that I saw her walking along the freeway overpass, with a small helpless pet in her hands. I offered her a ride. She graciously accepted. I took her to her home, which would have been a good two miles further for her to walk if I hadn’t picked her up.

She was nice. Apparently it was a kitten that she and her boyfriend rescued. During the drive, the kitten calmed down and appeared to be more at ease. As I dropped her off, I reminded her to take care of it, to feed it and water it. She was nice. I drove home feeling a little better.

I’m not writing well because I’m stressed. I have a lot of shit going on with work and family. I don’t give a shit. I didn’t give a shit about the girl either. But I wanted to make sure the kitten was in safe hands.

Supposedly, anatomically modern humans have been around for 200,000 years. We know something of the past 7,000-9,000 or so. But what was going on before that? Little empires rising and falling, possibly religious and cultural conflicts that still echo even in the present day. Interbreeding with other hominids. Ice age coming and fucking everything up, an apocalypse of sorts. All kinds of crazy stories and happenings that we will never know.

Languages and traditions gone forever. We really only see a tiny fraction of our history. We’re like a 50 year old man in a mental institution with amnesia, and can only remember the past week of our life.

There could have been a person who looked just like you, maybe just as smart as you, running around europe 150,000 years ago. Can’t help but wonder what their life was like.

Source

“For me, the most ironic token of that moment in history is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads: ‘We come in peace for all mankind.’ As the United States was dropping 7-1/2 megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity: We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.”

-Carl Sagan

Occasionally I wonder whether or not I’m bipolar. All it takes is one small experience – or one little negative thought – and suddenly I’ll feel totally depressed. Shortly afterward, however, I may have one small good experience – or a little bit of my own reassurance – and only a moment later, I’ll feel great again.

I will not discount the fact that my emotional reactions are likely normal in such situations, and I will not discount that I probably have no real mental illnesses whatsoever. Frankly, despite AP Psychology, my knowledge of mental ailments is cloudy. The line between true bipolar disorder and regular mood changes escapes me. The worrying thing about my brief emotional shifts though is that they are actually quite extreme.

Technically there really isn’t anything for me to be depressed about. When I put my life in perspective, I am one of the most fortunate individuals in the world. I have everything I could ever need. I live extremely comfortably. I have a job. I have an education. I have a family who loves me. Even with these things, even with living much more nicely than a homeless Somalian teenager who must regularly scavenge for food, my emotional disposition tends to hit rock bottom at times.

Comparing your lifestyle to that of a third-world country’s is admittedly cliche… and to a greater extent, corny. I’m not claiming that as a first-world middle-class American citizen, I shouldn’t have any problems. Of course I have problems. Everybody has problems. Mine are particularly regarding my job (among other things). For example: Sometimes I’ll have a bad day at work. I’ll make a couple of mistakes. I’ll run into some impediments that that keep me from accomplishing what I need to accomplish, and the result is a very unproductive work day. I’ll feel bad about it – no, REALLY bad about it – and I’ll worry about what my boss thinks of me, what my coworkers think of me, I’ll even worry about job security. That’s how low I get.

Then, I’ll feel great, because my boss actually approached me and praised me for one thing or another. Everything is good again.

Then, as I’m driving home, I’ll wonder if I should buy gas or not, and I feel terrible again because I know I spend so much money on crap I don’t need. It sucks.

Then, at dinner, I’ll be eating a sandwich, and I’ll feel awesome. Because I’m eating a sandwich. A large, juicy, sandwich. A goddamn delicious sandwich.

And it just repeats itself.

I always become a little perturbed inside when people are quick to become defensive and/or hostile for no good reason. I remember my 18th birthday, mid-December 2009, when my mom gifted me a copy of Richard Dawkin’s newest book The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution. It’s a sort of primer that sets out all of the evidence for biological evolution, and even clears up some people’s misconceptions on scientific theory and fallibility. It’s a thoughtful and informative text especially for those who are not well-versed in scientific reasoning.

I digress though. For my birthday, I was with my mom, my sister, and my brother-in-law. I was enjoying myself, at least, until a point where the mood shifted a bit: As I uncovered my newly-gifted book from its wrapping paper, I was met with an extremely cynical and disconcerting look from my sister. She immediately, quite forcefully exclaimed, “Seriously, Danny? Seriously?”

To which my mom added, “You know, the LDS church doesn’t speak out against evolution. Not at all.”

Across the table, my brother-in-law nodded in agreement. “Nope, they don’t.”

I hadn’t said anything this entire time. Rather, I was sitting there in disbelief, shocked, and slightly offended by this exchange that just occurred in front of me. It had only been a few seconds, and already my family appeared to be up in arms, speaking defensively about the church, and getting bothered by something that really shouldn’t have bothered them at all. Based on this, I can only assume they believed the book to be deceptive anti-Mormon fuel, granted for me to keep in my arsenal of evil, misguided, confused atheist literature. My family was aware of my negative feelings toward the church, so they felt compelled to immediately tell me how the LDS church really isn’t like that, and I’m looking in the wrong places to get information.

Except… it was merely a science book. And those weren’t my intentions at all.

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There was a recent thread here where people listed their favorite “lightbulb” jokes. These are my favorite.

How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? It’s actually a pretty obscure number, you’ve probably never heard of it.

How many software engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. It’s a hardware problem.

How many Rolling Stones fans does it take to screw in a light bulb? Wouldn’t happen, It could be completely burned out for decades and they wouldn’t notice.

How many members of a minority group does it take to screw in a light bulb? Enough to reinforce my negative opinions of them.

How many flies does it take to screw in a lighbulb? Only two, but how did they get in there?

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Bow down, dirty console-gaming peasants. As told by the video game ambassador himself.

I’ve been cleaning up my subreddit subscriptions. As with any social news aggregator, Reddit started out as a shining beacon in the world of geek/tech news, but since it has grown, attracting the masses, the quality has only gone downhill.

First off of the list: I unsubscribed from /r/pics. /r/pics happens to be the #1 most popular subreddit, even more than reddit.com, which is either a cause or result of it sucking. Either way, it sucks. Once in a while you’ll see a real gem, but otherwise it’s just a bunch of recycled shit and images that really aren’t that entertaining to be worth it. I’m better off without this stupid subreddit. See ya, pics.

Second to be removed from my subscriptions: /r/atheism. The atheism subreddit used to be a very thoughtful forum filled with intelligent people, and I learned a lot from it while coming to terms with my belief in rationality. While some intelligent discussions still exist within, it has mostly de-evolved into a massive atheist circlejerk. I got tired of seeing the same sensationalist, atheist, circlejerk headlines making it to my front page. I finally decided to unsubscribe, and in it’s place, I subscribed to both /r/skeptic and /r/freethought. By now the quality of my front page has shot up by 300%.

Third of all, I unsubscribed from /r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu. When rage comics originally developed as a meme on 4chan a few years ago, they were simple 4-panel illustrations with everyday anecdotes and pitfalls that everyone could relate to. It wasn’t until just in the past year when the subreddit dedicated to these comics decided to whore them out into these huge elaborate graphic novels detailing people’s life-stories, and it was then that they lost their charm. Also, as with any other popular subreddit, the almost total lack of intellectualism put me off. I finally said goodbye to /r/f7u12. Of course there are sometimes still a few gems in there, just as with /r/pics, but the bad outweighs the good. I don’t need to look there for humor anymore.

I think those are the three main ones. There might have been one or two others, but I can’t remember. I know I unsubscribed from /r/music, not because of quality, but simply because none of the articles interested me. Now I am subscribed to /r/electronicmusic and /r/trance which are both much more specific and relevant to my interests.