Godless Geek Blog Year Zero, a Makeover, & a New tumblr

Today marks the first complete year of Godless Geek Blog, which isn't a particularly significant event by ANY standard, but it does make ME happy. So I decided to mark the occasion by giving the page a bit of a makeover, as you have likely noticed by now, and I also decided that it was about time I gave you another option for following the blog. So as of today, you can now follow Godless Geek Blog on tumblr at: godlessgeekblog.tumblr.com, where I'll be compiling not only posts from both here and Compendium, but also a variety of additional content straight from tumblr, as well as all of the other places where I can be found lurking on the web.

So since it has been a year and all, and I don't often ask you for any special attention, I have a favor to ask. If you enjoy the blog, then please, just for today, share it with your friends. Post a link on your own blog, like it on Facebook, send out a tweet, or you could even just start following me on twitter @Godlessgeek_. Why, there's even a button for most of those things just sitting and waiting patiently for you to press it, right there underneath the "share The Godless Geek Blog" heading to your right. And if you do decide to help promote the blog somehow, let me know, and I'll gladly return the favor.

Lastly, I wanted to say thanks, not just for the sharing, but for your continued interest in the blog. Daily traffic continues to grow slowly but surely, as it has been doing since the day I started, and I genuinely appreciate you all making the effort to follow, and to read what I have to say. So weather you've been following for a while now, or you've just found your way here for the first time, know that your interest is greatly appreciated, and though posts may have gotten a bit sparse around here as of late, I've got a lot more stuff on the way.

Thanks again.

-CAINE-

Weird Things: Room 717

I've been linking back to these guys since I first launched the blog several months ago and have written about both weirdthings.com as well as The Weird Things Podcast several times before. But this week's episode of Weird Things was extra special, and not just because The Godless Geek Blog was one of three listener sponsors.

In this week's special Halloween episode of Weird Things the guys put together an impromptu ghost investigation after Brian checks into not merely a haunted Hotel, but into the very room where the haunting is said to be centered. As always, this episode is loads of good weird fun and in the end, the guys manage to apply their own unique brand of skepticism to the subject at hand. This time through a series of simple experiments involving numbers and random chance to illustrate just how easy it can be to interpret simple chance as the deliberate actions of an unseen hand.

So if you haven't done so before now, then please take the time to check out weirdthings.com, The Weird Things Podcast, as well as the rest of the various forms of entertainment Brian, Justin, and Andrew have to offer. And if you do decide to visit Weird Things for the very first time because of this post, or even if you're here because of my plug on this week's episode, do me a favor and leave the guys a comment letting them know you read about it here.

Thanks!

-CAINE-

Subscribe to the Weird Things podcast on iTunes

Podcast RSS feed
Episode archive

Also be sure to check out Itrick.com, NSFW, and Scam School for more of Brian, Andrew and Justin.

And finally, why not pay Timothy O’Briant's Strips4.com a visit as well, since he also helped sponsor this week's episode of Weird Things.

Gene Ray and Time Cube Theory

This weeks episode of Righteous Indignation (Ep.70) introduced me to one of my new favorite conspiracies of all time. I'm a little late to the party given that the website around which this particular conspiracy revolves has been up since 97 and has well over a million hits. But I figured since I've never heard of it before then surely some of you haven't either, so why not share.

The Time Cube is self-proclaimed "Dr. of Cubicicsm" and "Wisest man who ever lived" Gene Ray's personal theory of reality and revolves around his assertion that the concept of a linear 24 hour day is an evil lie and that the Earth actually experiences 4 simultaneous days in a single rotation.

See if you can follow this "explanation" of the theory taken from timecube.com:

"When the Sun shines upon Earth, 2 – major Time points are created on opposite sides of Earth – known as Midday and Midnight. Where the 2 major Time forces join, synergy creates 2 new minor Time points we recognize as Sunup and Sundown.

The 4-equidistant Time points can be considered as Time Square imprinted upon the circle of Earth. In a single rotation of the Earth sphere, each Time corner point rotates through the other 3-corner Time points, thus creating 16 corners, 96 hours and4-simultaneous 24 hour Days within a single rotation of Earth – equated to a Higher Order of Life Time Cube."

The website as a whole is a collection of borderline incoherent, and at times racist, antisemitic, homophobic, and violent ramblings about everything from the nature of time itself to religion, mainstream educators, which Ray describes as evil for refusing to teach his theory, and society as a whole, all printed in large, multicolored type set in the center of two pages worth of text which seem to scroll on forever.

As you might expect, Gene is regarded as a nut by most, seen by many as potentially mentally ill, and his theory is not accepted by mainstream science, despite Ray's assertion that his discovery is "the holy grail of physics" and his promise of 10,000 dollars to any scientist or institution that can disprove his theory. And while it's unclear what it was that triggered Ray's seeming break with reality, what ever it was seems to have begun long before he gained infamy as the man who created timecube.com.

In the 1970's Gene Ray was known around St. Petersburg Fl, apparently quite fondly, as Mr. Marbles for his advocacy of the once popular pass time which he authored a book about entitled, "Mr. Marble-Marbles for Everyone", and was even successful in convincing the Mayor of St. Petersburg to devote an entire week to marbles. But then, around 1987, Ray's passion for marbles evolved into a strange metaphor for a new found personal philosophy centering around the concept of the circle and the pyramid.

In Ray's new found "Order of the Sphere" the circle came to represent the "circular cycle", which he described as Natural, mobile, and self-sustaining. While the Pyramid was used to represent what he called the unsustainable increasing growth rate of modern civilization - which he believed had grown to the point of breaking the family circle. Ray's solution to this problem of "pyramiding" progress, was a proposed 1 million dollar marbles tournament. Which he believed would attract people who were concerned with the long-term implications of pyramiding growth, people who could then be convinced of the validity of his philosophy by playing marbles inside a giant sphere. It was shortly after this failed proposal that Ray disappeared from the public eye, until august of 1997 when he introduced the world to "Time Cube Theory".

-CAINE-

Source: Righteous Indignation

Given the sheer volume of material contained on Ray's website I couldn't possibly hope to cover it all in a single reasonably sized entry so for more information on Ray and his theory go to: WordIQ.com

This Weeks Compendium

This week on Compendium Of Strange: Art from Bobby Chui and Zdzislaw Beksinski, The transforming owl, guitar bot, Glow in the dark sperm and more. Follow the links provided to see these and all the other posts from this week on Compendium Of Strange.

Of course, if you followed me on twitter or liked my musician page on Facebook, you'd already know all this...I'm just sayin'.

-CAINE-

My Compendium oF Strange...

There are a number of things I come upon during my travels here on the internets that I find entertaining, bizzar, or just plain disturbing, but for one reason or another choose not to share them here. Instead, I've started a new blog on tumblr that's just for all of the strange, funny and perhaps at times vulgar and offensive things I find on the net. So far the collection is rather small and pretty tame, but the rapid fire style of tumblr blogs means its easier for me to post on the site during the week since entries there don't require the research my posts here often do, so the collection should grow rather quickly and as it does you should probably expect it to get stranger and darker.

Save The Lightsaber!

A few weeks ago Bill Meeks blogged about the device pictured above from Wicked Lasers on the Weird Things Blog. Described by the company as: "The most dangerous laser ever created." The device produces an "Ultra high power 1W beam" which can instantly blind anyone within 700 feet after a mere 1/4 second and can easily cause skin burns as well as cause cancer! Cool. You might also have noticed the device clearly resembles a certain sidearm from a fairly obscure sci-fi franchise called "Star Wars". Don't see the resemblance? Well George Lucas did, which is why the company has recently been slapped with a cease desist from the mighty Lucas empire.


In the Wednesday edition of weird
things TV Justin made an impassioned plea to "SAVE THE LASER!" and urged others to do the same. So protect your inalienable right to own dangerous yet otherwise functionless toys simply because they happen to resemble props from your favorite films by going to the weird things TV channel on YouTube and uploading a video of yourself chanting, "Save The Laser" in reply to the following episode of Weird things TV.
-CAINE-

George Hrab: Trebuchet

Weird Things

So I had a long busy weekend spent working both on the computer as well as in the studio and unlike most of you I didn't have today off. So tonight I'm taking the easy way out and I'm just going to plug one of my favorite places on the web, weirdthings.com.

Weird Things dot com is: " a blog dedicated to people who love both science and are fascinated by the impossible and fantastic. It’s for people who believe a mystery is interesting no matter the outcome." But my favorite part of Weird Things is their podcast.

I listen to a lot of different pod casts but Theirs is the one I look forward to the most. Hosted By Andrew Mayne, Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young. In Each episode the three discuss, say it with me now, Weird Things! Here's the description from itunes:
"How would you fight a Yeti in hand to hand combat? Would you attempt to sell your soul to the devil in the interest of science? How can you prepare for a zombie apocalypse? Find out all of this and more every week on the Weird Things podcast, where your hosts, Andrew Mayne, Justin Robert Young and Brian Brushwood probe the most challenging questions about the paranormal, supernatural and fringe."
I know that sounds like one of those clever lists of abstract things people come up with to make their show or blog sound more interesting than it really is but on Weird Things they have actually discussed all of those things and much more. In fact, surviving the zombie apocalypse comes up fairly regularly as does the singularity (look it up). But the best part is they manage to discuss it all while remaining Rational, Skeptical and scientific. How could you not want to listen to that?

But the actual inspiration for today's post was Weird Things most recent addition to it's growing list of content Weird Things TV. IN these 4-5 minute long videos Justin discusses some of the more interesting topics from the blog and is hilarious as always. Here's the most recent episode:


So if you like science, skepticism or the paranormal but get bored with the dry and uber serious manner in which most rationalists deal with these subjects you should check out weirdthings.com, The Weird Things Podcast and subscribe to their new channel on youtube:Weirdthingstv to watch Weird Things TV.
-CAINE-

MADNESS, Streaming Madness...

In searching for links and clips for my previous entry I came upon a site which I linked to at the bottom of the post, "Streaming-Madness.net." I ended up spending a lot of time there this weekend. Mostly checking out the site to see if it was something I really wanted to promote and or recommend to others. The answer is, Sort of.

While there are some great documentaries on the page, there is also a lot of nonsense and conspiracy to be had as well. Particularly in the social issues and philosophy categories. Which would be fine, if an effort were made to distinguish those documentaries from other legitimate programs on the site, but no such effort is made. To the contrary, and despite claims of neutrality made in the "about us" section of the page, the site displays an obvious admiration for peter Joseph, creator of the movie, "Zeitgeist". Including direct links to both Zeitgeist the movie and the Zeitgeist movement websites. The site also posts a photo and link for Joseph on it's cover page along side Micho Kaku, Richard Feynmen, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, as well as three other men I am not personally familiar with, all under the heading: "Great minds, The most inspiring people."

The obvious problem with this display is that it places opportunists and conspiracy theorists like Peter Joseph and the bullshit they sell on the same level as Einstein, hawking and other legitimate intellectuals and journalists. Which is of course a bad thing.

But despite the authors of the page obviously possessing some personal conspiratorial reasons for creating the site, as well as personal philosophical views to promote. Views with which I certainly don't agree. There is worthwhile content to be had here and I do recommend that you take some time to look the site over. If nothing else, this site should prove a valuable reference source for researching and debunking various fraudulent claims, by bringing the source of many such claims together in one place.
-CAINE-
Today I'm linking to Brian Dunning's podcast, "Skeptoid" . More specifically, I'm providing a link to the episode dealing with the movie "Zeitgeist" for those of you who had never heard of the movie before today.

If you've never Heard of Skeptoid or Brian Dunning before, then once you've listen to the linked episode use the search box at the top of the page to search past episodes of Skeptoid for other topics you're interested in. Also be sure to look around the site and check out some of Brian's other projects.