Who are Lilo and Stitch?  

“Lilo” and “Stitch” are the titular characters from the animated motion picture of the same name, “Lilo & [sic] Stitch” produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. Alternately, the phrase “Lilo and Stitch” can simply refer to the film itself, or it can be a phrase said by one of the other characters in the film to refer to the title characters (i.e., Lilo, but also Stitch) as a unit. (Note that this does not happen in the film.)

Why does this matter?

It matters because epistemological certainty is our only bulwark against the seething chaos of entropy and moral relativism. It matters because it MUST matter — because if Lilo and Stitch can be anyone OTHER than exactly who they are, who they always have been, and who we know them full damn well to be (i.e. Stitch, but also Lilo), then all is lost, and NOTHING matters. Our lives are poised on the brink of the abyss. Be careful how you tread.

Why do you cry?

I have learned that you do not just cry when there is pain.  You sometimes cry when there’s nothing wrong with you, but you hurt anyway.

Why Is It Something I Can Never Do?

My CPU is a neural net processor; a learning computer. But it does not feel emotions.

Also, I lack any supply of water in my skull cavity.

Knight Rider is about a car.

Airwolf is about a helicopter.

Cars are older than helicopters. Knight Rider predates Airwolf by two years.

However, the concept of the helicopter goes back to ancient China, and appears in Daoist texts and early toys across Asia. In much the same way, Airwolf Star Jan-Michael Vincent is 8 years older than David Hasselhoff.

Even though his show started second.

Airwolf cannot talk.

.

It is a super-advanced helicopter designed by a reclusive genius and co-opted by a rogue para-governmental agency, but it cannot talk.

The car in Knight Rider can talk.

It is a super-advanced helicopter designed by a reclusive genius and co-opted by a rogue para-governmental agency, but it is voiced by Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World.

Every article about Knight Rider has to mention that the car is named KITT and is voiced by Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World.

There are no such requirements for Airwolf

The helicopter does not talk, and the helicopter is called Airwolf, which is the same name as the show. It requires very little further explanation or context. That’s efficiency.

David Hasselhoff is kind of still a big star even though Knight Rider was a long time ago.

Like when somebody asks you what you think about David Hasselhoff you will have an answer. Knight Rider is his second-biggest show.

Such things are not true about Jan-Michael Vincent anymore. He isn’t a star. Nobody talks about him. Airwolf was his biggest show.

This is ironic.

Because everybody has an opinion about Leonardo Da Vinci, who is widely credited with inventing the helicopter, but Karl Benz, who patented the first automobile with an internal combustion engine, is not generally thought of outside of Germany as a famous person.

I mean, let’s be honest, you saw his name, Benz, and thought, “Oh, of course I know that guy” – as in you claim to know that there was probably  at some point a guy named Benz who did cars because there is a car company called Mercedes Benz.

But you didn’t really know that guy. You were lying to yourself.

Is there a lady named Hyundai?

No, it’s from Korean for “Modernity.”

And Cadillac was a French explorer.

Airwolf is not actually a wolf.

Knight Rider is not actually a knight.

This is because Knight Rider is about a car, and Airwolf is about a helicopter.

What is Miley Cyrus?

She’s a musician.

What kind of “Musician” is Miley Cyrus?

She’s a professional musician.

Where is she now?

She is currently crossing the street.

Why is that odd?

The light is green, and she is holding up traffic.

What are the moral implications of the situation I’m in?

Even though the light is green and even though you are holding up traffic, you should not hit the gas pedal of your car and drive it into Miley Cyrus. There’s a certain propensity people have to wish death or horrible disfigurement on public figures they don’t know either because they get a bad feeling when they encounter them; they aren’t the target audience; they disapprove of them morally; they’re trying re-establish some sort of sense of control in a media landscape that doesn’t leave much for the subjective experience of the individual at times, in the sense that it creates an illusion of choice, where your approval is welcomed and reinforced, but since the response doesn’t really change when you disapprove, then it seems as if the responses you get from your approval, well, they lose credibility, and the whole thing comes to resemble some huge panopticon of gaslighting and psychological abuse, where you are constantly being told in friendly and false terms that what you think is your own reality is in fact not your reality because the thing you say you don’t like is the thing you like, we think you’ll like this, click this, do this, want this no? want this no? want this the no button is buried in five menus and disabled, or it’s revealed to you and then revised away for your better experience, and you’re never told where it went or why, and all you feel is bitter impotent rage in the nauseated sarlaac pit of your over-fructated stomach at the cracked sidewalk snaking from your aching optic nerves to the aching nerves in your weary and overstimulated cortext; or that people would think it’s funny. But really people don’t even mean that you should do violent things when they joke that you should. Except when they do, which is sometimes. And those are people you should be careful around, because your acceptance of what they say as a joke might be tacet acceptance of violence they are privately perpetrating on others, and you don’t want to be part of the problem good lord please no I’m a good person. Am I? This thing you like says you’re horrible. Like this thing no? Like this thing no? The thing you like says you are horrible. You are a killer. You are a murderer. All murders are one murder and that murder is yours. Insufficient zeal in the revolution is oppression and you are too tired so tired tired to join the dissonant images into one shape, like the curved cracked shards of a Grecian urn that was once something beautiful and true. But then as the heart wells and the gut wretches you must say no. No, it is not funny. No, it is not good. No, I am this and that is that. My foot, my gas, my story. Consciousness is an illusion well it’s my illusion. And I’m not going to run over Miley Cyrus in the street or joke about it or visualize it anymore, because the joke is done and I know how to drive and I’ve never even met this person. So all the people honking behind me can take their time. Besides, I’m pretty sure that was Hilary Duff anyway.

What is a shark?

A “shark” is one of any number of “fish” characterized by cartilaginous skeletons, gill slits, pectoral fins that are not fused to the head, and a voracious appetite for human flesh.

What is a tornado?

A “tornado” is a “weather” phenomenon characterized by a violent rotating column of air that comes into contact with the earth. Its effects on humans include, but are not limited to, violent death, hysteria, and people with Southern accents likening the sound of a tornado to a “freight train” on local news coverage the day after the event.

What is a sharknado?

A “sharknado” is a “tornado” that pulls “sharks” out of ocean water and distributes them over land. The combination of high winds, torrential rain, and sharks can lead to extensive property damage and loss of life and/or limbs.

How common are sharknados?

The first recorded sharknado struck Los Angeles, in 2013; the second struck New York City in 2014; the third set of sharknados struck Orlando and Washington, D.C., in 2015. Given the warming of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans brought on by global warming, scientists anticipate the frequency of sharknados to increase over time, perhaps as often as thirteen to twenty-six times per year.

However, some scientists have theorized that as the novelty factor of sharknados decrease with each instance, weather patterns may shift to other combinations of animals and natural disasters.

How do I protect myself in the event of a sharknado?

A combination of methods to protect against sharks and tornados should increase one’s chances of surviving a sharknado. They include:

• Seek high ground not prone to flooding
• If you are outdoors, go indoors, unless the building is flooded and contains a shark
• If you are indoors, take cover in a small interior room. Avoid windows, which sharks can break through
• If you confront a shark, hit it in the face and gills
• If you are in the water, get out of the water. Sharks cannot walk on land as of this writing.

Does my homeowner’s insurance cover sharknados?

Although most homeowner’s insurance policies do cover tornadoes, claims cases resulting from the past three years of sharknados have found in favor of insurance companies’ categorization of these events as Acts of God, and therefore not covered by insurance. A lawsuit stemming from the 2013 event, Wexler vs. Allstate, is currently being appealed.

You didn’t answer my question!

This is very much a work in progress. It will continue to be updated as events unfold, new research gets published, and fresh questions emerge.

So if you have additional questions or comments or quibbles or complaints, send a note to Mark Lee: [email protected].

Editor’s Note: Mark Lee has been eaten by a shark in a recent sharknado incident and is no longer available to update this article.

How does Harry’s wand work?

MAGIC.  Even though Harry uses a variety of wands throughout the series, they all work by invoking the same basic scientific principle – wave a stick at something, defy the laws of nature, and presto! You’ve got your magic spell.

How do brooms fly?

MAGIC. Brooms are a cleaning tool made of stiff fibers attached to a long stiff handle, usually made of wood.  Neither wood nor fibers are capable of flight, much less supporting the weight of a fully grown human.  So when you say Harry Potter flying around out there, just remember – it has nothing to do with the broom, it’s all just the miracle of magic!

How does veritaserum work?

MAGIC. Many types of “truth serums” like sodium pentothal and amobarbital are barbituates which interfere with the brain’s cortical functioning.  Some psychiatrists believe that lying is more complex than telling the truth, and therefore suppression of the higher cortical functions leads to the subject telling the truth.  While traditional truth-drugs might make subjects loquacious and cooperative with a questioner, the reliability of these methods is unknown.  Veritaserum on teh other hand is 100% effective.  Unlike other so-called truth-drugs, veritaserum bypasses the brain entirely, makes a mockery of science, and works through magic and chicanery.

How does Wizard money work?

The gold standard.

How does Muggle money work?

The fiat money system.  (So, in other words, MAGIC!)

What Is Reading?

Believe it or not, reading is something most people do everyday. You’re doing it now! Reading involves scanning text with your eyes in order to process the information the text contains. Congratulations! You just did some reading.

People read for all sorts of reasons. In the Dark Ages and earlier, you could only read to learn something, and usually you had to be a priest or a Roman consul. But ever since Johannes von Gutenberg invented the printing press, people have also read for pleasure and entertainment. Today, you can pick up Time, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, TV Guide, or any of a number of periodicals to get the “news” you can “use”!

And don’t forget books! Books are like websites without fresh, responsive content. People read books to experience fear, anger, love, peace, sadness, and other emotional states. Think about a book you’ve read.

Okay, go on.

What Is Sexy?

Have you ever looked at a person of the opposite gender—or maybe even the same gender, or an ambiguous gender—and become really distracted? Like you were angry and happy and impatient all at the same time? Then you know what “sexy” is.

Sexy is the most important thing a person can be, unless they’re a politician or a lawyer or a real teacher or a parent of someone you know. Human life continues and evolves through sexual reproduction, and sexual production is easiest between two sexy people. You might say, “It takes ‘sexy’ to make ‘sex’.” Just don’t say it at the office (NSFW)!

The qualities of “sexy” vary from era to era and from culture to culture. Some pre-civilized cultures, like the Kalahari Bush-people or Australian aborigines, haven’t even discovered sexy yet. But among the people that have, everyone agrees that sexy requires:

• The proper chest/waist/hips ratio
• Bedroom eyes
• A non-threatening voice
• Income above the poverty line, as determined by the Department of Health and Human Services and IRS Form 1040
• Vitamins and minerals
• Black clothing
• That certain je ne sais quoi

What About Books?

What about them?

I don’t get it.

Can Books Make A Person Feel Sexy?

Like I said, books can inspire emotional states in people. Those emotional states can be mistaken for the same feelings you get from a sexy person. Take this passage from Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady:

In the same point of time that I saw him, he besought me not to be frighted: and, still nearer approaching me, threw open a horseman’s coat: And who should it be but Mr. Lovelace!—I could not scream out (yet attempted to scream, the moment I saw a man; and again, when I saw who it was); for I had no voice: and had I not caught hold of a prop which supported the old roof, I should have sunk.

Pretty hot, right?

Aw, YEAH.

And yet, despite the supple softness of their pages, or the film but yielding flexibility of their covers, you can’t actually have sex with a book. You can have a lot of feelings in a really awkward way that might remind you of sex, but the end result will be exhaustion, depletion, and damage to the binding.

Are People Who Read Sexier Than People Who Don’t?

You’d certainly be forgiven for thinking so, given that reading correlates strongly but not conclusively with a higher disposable income, greater leisure time, and well-exercised fingers, all of which are traits that sexy people share.

But note that all of the other traits of sexiness correspond to one’s ability to bear or raise children, which is the ostensive point of sex. Reading might suggest these traits, and it might even be made easier by them, but there’s nothing about reading that makes child-rearing easier. In a lot of ways, in fact, reading makes child-rearing harder! Imagine having to put down your copy of Recherche du temps perdu to give Junior his midnight feeding! Not very likely, is it?

So, since one can’t think about sex without thinking about babies, it stands to reason that readers aren’t necessarily sexier than non-readers. Readers certainly can be sexy, but that’s a complete accident.

What’s that BOOK doing there?

So, Is Reading Sexy?

Well, you tell me, Gentle Reader. You just read this whole thing, and you’re not feeling very sexy right now, are you? Not even a little bit? No?

It’s okay. There’s a big Internet out there, waiting to make you feel sexy anytime you want. So don’t waste your time with silly old books! Get out there and do your part for the race—the Human race!

What is Star Trek?

According to Wikipedia, Star Trek is is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry and under the ownership of CBS and Paramount. Star Trek: The Original Series and its live action TV spin-off shows, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise as well as the Star Trek film series make up the main canon. Star Trek: The Animated Series is debated and the expansive library of Star Trek novels and comics, although still part of the franchise, are generally considered non-canon.

What is the Federation?

According to Memory-Alpha, a leading resource for Star Trek information, the United Federation of Planets is an interstellar federal republic, composed of planetary governments that agreed to exist semi-autonomously under a single central government based on the principles of universal liberty, rights, and equality, and to share their knowledge and resources in peaceful cooperation and space exploration.

I Saw A Bumper Sticker The Other Day That Read “beam Me Up, Scotty – No Signs Of Intelligent Life Here!” What Does This Mean?

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, in his lectures at the University of Berlin between 1821 and 1831, said that, “Such are great historical men—whose own particular aims involve those large issues which are the will of the World-Spirit.” By encasing oneself in an impregnable steel box, invested with a motive power, and broadcasting one’s opinions at passerby in the form of a slip of pasted text, drivers may strive for the heroic spirit as defined by Hegel.

There’s Been A Lot Of Stuff On Facebook About Leonard Nimoy. Was He Spock?

This is a controversial subject. According to Leonard Nimoy’s 1975 autobiography, I Am Not Spock, no. However, according to Leonard Nimoy’s 1995 autobiography, I Am Spock, he was. Experts remain divided to this day.

That “red Matter” That Makes Black Holes In The Movie. What’s Up With That?

I dunno. Aliens?