Anyone else sick of seeing the Scientology ad in their "home" space?

 I'm slowly recovering past entries from the hack attempt, but it will be quite some time before they're all up and running again. 

What is the relation between supersymmetry and dark matter? It seems like there must be something there.

After hours of re-tooling, I finally managed to at least recover my layout, interests, icons, and communities.  Now to go bug people for friendship again.

LJ has also apparently decided that perfectly good html is no longer acceptable (see below).

Haxxored!

Fabulous.

Is it the meetings of p-branes that give birth to a new universe in multiple dimensions?

As of today, I will be posting (and re-posting) all of my scientific musings in this journal.  There will be a significant amount of backdating going on, so please bear with me.   Possibly, I will also include my sci-fi stories and other writings of a scientific nature.  Posting them up on the website was getting a bit hectic and also expensive to maintain, so here I am to stay! Enjoy!

Possibly one of the best South Park episodes ever: Cartman, impatient for the release of the Nintendo Wii in three weeks, freezes himself in order to be thawed out later and avoid the wait, but ends up 500 years in the future instead, where we see a world without religion, plus Buck Rogers, Aliens, Halo, Battlestar Galactica, Universal Soldier, Planet Of The Apes & Logan's Run references, and Richard Dawkins teaching evolution to the class (and banging "Mrs." Garrison)! Another excellent satire by Trey Parker & Matt Stone.  Bravo!

By and large the simplest dismissal of theism, summed up in this simple passage concerning the problem of evil: 

"Briefly, the problem of evil is this: If God does not know there is evil, he is not omniscient. If God knows there is evil but cannot prevent it, he is not omnipotent. If God knows there is evil and can prevent it but desires not to, he is not omnibenevolent. If, as the Christian claims, God is all-knowing and all-powerful, we must conclude that God is not all-good. The existence of evil in the universe excludes this possibility." 

And let's not forget morality vs. religion -- the all-too-common mistake made by the casual proselytizer: 

"Religion has had the disastrous effect of placing vitally important concepts, such as morality, happiness and love, in a supernatural realm inaccessible to man's mind and knowledge. Morality and religion have become so intertwined that many people cannot conceive of ethics divorced from god, even in principle-which leads to the assumption that the atheist is out to destroy values. Atheism, however, is not the destruction of morality; it is the destruction of supernatural morality. Likewise, atheism is not the destruction of happiness and love; it is the destruction of the idea that happiness and love can be achieved only in another world. 

Atheism brings these ideas down to earth, within the reach of man's mind. What he does with them after this point is a matter of choice. If he discards them in favor of pessimism and nihilism, the responsibility lies with him, not with atheism. By severing any possible appeal to the supernatural-which, in terms of human knowledge, means the unknowable-atheism demands that issues be dealt with through reason and human understanding; they cannot be sloughed-off onto a mysterious god. If atheism is correct, man is alone. There is no god to think for him, to watch out for him, to guarantee his happiness. These are the sole responsibility of man. If man wants knowledge, he must think for himself. If man wants success, he must work. If man wants happiness, he must strive to achieve it. Some men consider a godless world to be a terrifying prospect; others experience it as a refreshing, exhilarating challenge. How a person will react to atheism depends only on himself-and the extent to which he is willing to assume responsibility for his own choices and actions."

Stephen Jay Gould's famous article on ( Evolution vs. Creationism )