Monday, May 01, 2006
Friday, April 28, 2006
George Bush is no Christian
I was going to write a post entitled "The Gospel According to Dubya." It was going to go something like this:
"Blessed are the warmakers, for they shall ensure the security of the people. Thou shalt kill and torture and bear false witness as long as you do it in the name of national security. And if a man smite thee on on one cheek, well, you should have launched a pre-emptive strike to disarm him."
But as I was reading through the Sermon on the Mount I was really struck by something. What few supporters Dubya has left among generally say they stick with him because they think he's a good Christian and his actions are guided by God. Well, maybe he's guided by some god, but he certainly isn't guided by Jesus. Here are a few quotes from Matthew:
"But I say unto you that ye resist no evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."
"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you." (I wonder if Dubya has ever said a prayer for Osama bin Laden.)
"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men... But thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet.. [and] pray to thy Father... in secret."
"Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink." (Oh, but Jesus didn't say anything about what ye shall put in your fuel tank!)
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Dubya's version: "This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base.")
"Blessed are the peacemakers..." (Maybe Dubya thinks that Jesus was referring to the LGM-118 missile.)
If Dubya is guided by God, it must be the god of the Old Testament (e.g. "And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them. Thou shalt make no convenant with them, nor show mercy unto them." (Deut. 7:2)
Still, one has to wonder...
"And if thy say in thine heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously..." (Deut. 18:21-22)
WMD's are a slam-dunk. We will be greeted as liberators. Mission accomplished. The war will last weeks, not months.
Are these the words that the Lord hath spoken?
"Blessed are the warmakers, for they shall ensure the security of the people. Thou shalt kill and torture and bear false witness as long as you do it in the name of national security. And if a man smite thee on on one cheek, well, you should have launched a pre-emptive strike to disarm him."
But as I was reading through the Sermon on the Mount I was really struck by something. What few supporters Dubya has left among generally say they stick with him because they think he's a good Christian and his actions are guided by God. Well, maybe he's guided by some god, but he certainly isn't guided by Jesus. Here are a few quotes from Matthew:
"But I say unto you that ye resist no evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."
"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you." (I wonder if Dubya has ever said a prayer for Osama bin Laden.)
"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men... But thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet.. [and] pray to thy Father... in secret."
"Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink." (Oh, but Jesus didn't say anything about what ye shall put in your fuel tank!)
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Dubya's version: "This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base.")
"Blessed are the peacemakers..." (Maybe Dubya thinks that Jesus was referring to the LGM-118 missile.)
If Dubya is guided by God, it must be the god of the Old Testament (e.g. "And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them. Thou shalt make no convenant with them, nor show mercy unto them." (Deut. 7:2)
Still, one has to wonder...
"And if thy say in thine heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously..." (Deut. 18:21-22)
WMD's are a slam-dunk. We will be greeted as liberators. Mission accomplished. The war will last weeks, not months.
Are these the words that the Lord hath spoken?
The FDA squanders its credibility
Since the FDA, in a patently absurd and obviously politically motivated move, declared that marijuana has no medical benefits, the news is chock full of stories reviewing all the scientific studies (to say nothing of the anecdotal evidence) that show unequivocally that it does. I'll just note this one since it's very well written and comes from The Economist, which is hardly a bastion of left-wing propaganda.
You know, if one's goal were to get the truth about marijuana's benefits out there for people to see, one could hardly imagine a more effective strategy than to get the FDA to make such a manifestly false claim. Someone in the administration is either very stupid or very clever.
My money is on stupid.
You know, if one's goal were to get the truth about marijuana's benefits out there for people to see, one could hardly imagine a more effective strategy than to get the FDA to make such a manifestly false claim. Someone in the administration is either very stupid or very clever.
My money is on stupid.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
The right way for religion to critique science (and vice versa)
Science and religion waste of a lot of energy talking past each other by arguing about the wrong things, like whether or not God exists. Relgionists go to extreme, sometimes comical lengths to "scientifically" prove the existence of God. Scientists also go to equally extreme and ultimately equally futile lengths to prove his non-existence. It is at once amazing and sad to see all these smart people wasting so much effort on such manifestly useless endeavors.
What is most amazing about it is that it is transparently obvious even by their own standards that both sides are wrong. How can that be? It seems a logical tautology that either God exists or He does not. But it isn't so. P or not P is tautologically true only if the truth value of P is well defined. "Either God exists or He does not" is no more of a tautology than "Either Les Demoiselles D'Avignonis a beautiful painting or it is not."
The futility of the debate ultimately stems from the fact that the two sides are actually arguing about something different than what they think they are arguing about. They think they are arguing about the existence of God, but in fact they are arguing about His nature. What the religionists really are setting out to prove is not that the Universe was Designed, but that the Designer is still around, and He has a plan, and you have a place in it. What (most) scientists/humanists/atheists really want to say is not that the universe is devoid of transcendant meaning, but that we need to seek it in places other than holy scripture.
Even on a question as basic as whether or not we were created in God's image the two sides could find common ground if only they would be honest with themselves about what they really believe. The Bible teaches that we are created in God's image, but what does that mean? It can't mean that we are exact duplicates of God, if for no other reason than that there are six billion of us and only one of Him (to say nothing of the fact that He is almighty and omniscient and we clearly aren't and never were). The only reasonable interpretation is that there is something in our essential nature that mirrors the essential nature of the Creator. But for a scientist, the Creator is simply the Laws of Physics (LP). Framed that way, it becomes self evident that we are created in the image of the Creator/LP. We can even agree on what certain aspects of that essential nature is. For example, we have the capacity to do Good. The story that would be told to explain this is different on both sides, but the fact itself is beyond dispute, as is the fact that it arose from and is a reflection of whatever created us.
This is not to say that we would achieve perfect harmony; we would not. There are legitimate disagreements between science and religion, and productive debates to be had, but we're not having them because neither side is capable of seeing beyond its own prejudices.
One of the most counterproductive prejudices that is shared by both sides is that science is not a religion, that it is the antithesis of religion. That is hogwash. Science is not necessarily a religion, but it certainly can be (and I think it should be). It is clearly Richard Dawkins's religion (and the fact that he would take great umbrage at that suggestion is evidence that it is in fact true). And if Dawkins won't have it, then I'll claim it as my own. I am a scientist. That is my religion. I believe that the Laws of Physics, once they are properly understood, provide an adequate guide to how to live a good, moral, and even transcendant life. But coming to that understanding has not been easy, either for me personally or for mankind as a whole, and I can certainly understand how someone could believe otherwise.
I think a proper understanding of science as a religion would help the debate become more productive all around. We would not achieve perfect agreement, of course, because no two religions can ever be perfectly reconciled. (That's one of the things that makes them religions.) But I do think that reframing the debate as one between two religions rather than between relgion and non-religion would go a long way towards breaking some of the present logjams.
Consider for example the question of the reliability of the Biible on how we should live our lives. The extreme positions are "It is absolutely reliable" (the fundamentalist Christian position) and "it is absolutely unreliable" (the fundamentalist scientist position). Both are, of course, wrong. (Ron's First Law: All extreme positions are wrong.) Even the most extreme fundamentalist would concede that, if nothing else, the meaning of certain passages in the Bible is far from self-evident, and the debate within the religious community about how to address that problem has been raging for thousands of years. And even the most extreme scientist would concede that some parts of the Bible, like "Love thy neighbor as thyself", are probably not bad ideas. And we can go even further: the scientific viewpoint on morality is that it evolved as an evolutionarily stable strategy, so it would make sense that at some point as the human brain evolved that certain aspects of that strategy should be codified in writing. So the Bible can be viewed as a sort of an early draft of a theory of evolutionarily stable (which is to say moral) behavior, just as Beowulf can be viewed as an early draft of a theory of drama.
So how should religion critique science? Well, how about something like this:
There is no dispute that science serves as a reliable guide to a great many things, like how to build cars and computers, and how to make medicine. But science has its limits. Our scientific understanding of the human mind is rudimentary at best, and progress is slow. Those who pursue this work are driven by a faith that the extreme challenges presented by this undertaking will some day be overcome. That faith is laudable, but it is, in fact, faith.
In the meantime, the world is filled will six billion humans who have to figure out what to make of their lives here and now. Many of these people do not have the luxury of being able to invest the very high time and effort that it takes to reach a scientific understanding of one's place in the Universe. Most people's time is consumed with the day-to-day business of survival, of getting crops planted and harvested, of finding clean water, of caring for the livestock (if they are lucky enough to have livestock), of struggling with the passion and pain, the joys and sorrows and the pain that are part and parcel of being human. Some day, perhaps, science will understand all this well enough that we can cure every disease, ease every heartache, and provide everyone with a sense of purpose and transcendant meaning based on science. In the meantime, if someone is in pain, what purpose is served by depriving them of the comfort they might obtain by believing that God loves them and has a Plan?
And how should science critique religion? Well, how about this.
What is most amazing about it is that it is transparently obvious even by their own standards that both sides are wrong. How can that be? It seems a logical tautology that either God exists or He does not. But it isn't so. P or not P is tautologically true only if the truth value of P is well defined. "Either God exists or He does not" is no more of a tautology than "Either Les Demoiselles D'Avignonis a beautiful painting or it is not."
The futility of the debate ultimately stems from the fact that the two sides are actually arguing about something different than what they think they are arguing about. They think they are arguing about the existence of God, but in fact they are arguing about His nature. What the religionists really are setting out to prove is not that the Universe was Designed, but that the Designer is still around, and He has a plan, and you have a place in it. What (most) scientists/humanists/atheists really want to say is not that the universe is devoid of transcendant meaning, but that we need to seek it in places other than holy scripture.
Even on a question as basic as whether or not we were created in God's image the two sides could find common ground if only they would be honest with themselves about what they really believe. The Bible teaches that we are created in God's image, but what does that mean? It can't mean that we are exact duplicates of God, if for no other reason than that there are six billion of us and only one of Him (to say nothing of the fact that He is almighty and omniscient and we clearly aren't and never were). The only reasonable interpretation is that there is something in our essential nature that mirrors the essential nature of the Creator. But for a scientist, the Creator is simply the Laws of Physics (LP). Framed that way, it becomes self evident that we are created in the image of the Creator/LP. We can even agree on what certain aspects of that essential nature is. For example, we have the capacity to do Good. The story that would be told to explain this is different on both sides, but the fact itself is beyond dispute, as is the fact that it arose from and is a reflection of whatever created us.
This is not to say that we would achieve perfect harmony; we would not. There are legitimate disagreements between science and religion, and productive debates to be had, but we're not having them because neither side is capable of seeing beyond its own prejudices.
One of the most counterproductive prejudices that is shared by both sides is that science is not a religion, that it is the antithesis of religion. That is hogwash. Science is not necessarily a religion, but it certainly can be (and I think it should be). It is clearly Richard Dawkins's religion (and the fact that he would take great umbrage at that suggestion is evidence that it is in fact true). And if Dawkins won't have it, then I'll claim it as my own. I am a scientist. That is my religion. I believe that the Laws of Physics, once they are properly understood, provide an adequate guide to how to live a good, moral, and even transcendant life. But coming to that understanding has not been easy, either for me personally or for mankind as a whole, and I can certainly understand how someone could believe otherwise.
I think a proper understanding of science as a religion would help the debate become more productive all around. We would not achieve perfect agreement, of course, because no two religions can ever be perfectly reconciled. (That's one of the things that makes them religions.) But I do think that reframing the debate as one between two religions rather than between relgion and non-religion would go a long way towards breaking some of the present logjams.
Consider for example the question of the reliability of the Biible on how we should live our lives. The extreme positions are "It is absolutely reliable" (the fundamentalist Christian position) and "it is absolutely unreliable" (the fundamentalist scientist position). Both are, of course, wrong. (Ron's First Law: All extreme positions are wrong.) Even the most extreme fundamentalist would concede that, if nothing else, the meaning of certain passages in the Bible is far from self-evident, and the debate within the religious community about how to address that problem has been raging for thousands of years. And even the most extreme scientist would concede that some parts of the Bible, like "Love thy neighbor as thyself", are probably not bad ideas. And we can go even further: the scientific viewpoint on morality is that it evolved as an evolutionarily stable strategy, so it would make sense that at some point as the human brain evolved that certain aspects of that strategy should be codified in writing. So the Bible can be viewed as a sort of an early draft of a theory of evolutionarily stable (which is to say moral) behavior, just as Beowulf can be viewed as an early draft of a theory of drama.
So how should religion critique science? Well, how about something like this:
There is no dispute that science serves as a reliable guide to a great many things, like how to build cars and computers, and how to make medicine. But science has its limits. Our scientific understanding of the human mind is rudimentary at best, and progress is slow. Those who pursue this work are driven by a faith that the extreme challenges presented by this undertaking will some day be overcome. That faith is laudable, but it is, in fact, faith.
In the meantime, the world is filled will six billion humans who have to figure out what to make of their lives here and now. Many of these people do not have the luxury of being able to invest the very high time and effort that it takes to reach a scientific understanding of one's place in the Universe. Most people's time is consumed with the day-to-day business of survival, of getting crops planted and harvested, of finding clean water, of caring for the livestock (if they are lucky enough to have livestock), of struggling with the passion and pain, the joys and sorrows and the pain that are part and parcel of being human. Some day, perhaps, science will understand all this well enough that we can cure every disease, ease every heartache, and provide everyone with a sense of purpose and transcendant meaning based on science. In the meantime, if someone is in pain, what purpose is served by depriving them of the comfort they might obtain by believing that God loves them and has a Plan?
And how should science critique religion? Well, how about this.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
I couldn't have said it better myself
If I am ever able to write even one tenth as well as Douglas Adams I will be a very happy man. Here is a transcript of a speech he gave which starts out shredding religion and then goes on to say why it is indispensable. It's much the same point I've been trying to make, but he does it much better than I could ever hope to. It's very long but well worth the time.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Whaddya know? I'm not a lone nutcase!
It seems I'm not the only one who thinks that George Bush wants to nuke Iran while he still can.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
A sober view of global warming
Tom Evslin offers up a sober view of global warming, and a conclusion with which I agree:
What we can't afford to do is make policy based on hysterical observations that the glaciers are continuing their fifteen-thousand year retreat OR a complacent assumption that things will stay the way humans have always seen them.
Here again we would be well served with a little more humility on all sides.
What we can't afford to do is make policy based on hysterical observations that the glaciers are continuing their fifteen-thousand year retreat OR a complacent assumption that things will stay the way humans have always seen them.
Here again we would be well served with a little more humility on all sides.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Why vs How - a false conflict
The Atheist Spy sent me an email asking me to comment on his blog, and this post in particular. My knee-jerk reaction was that he is taking an awfully long time to say a fairly simple thing, but I think his point (once you get to it) is basically valid: people become religious or not depending on whether they care more about "why" than "how", or vice-versa. And there's no way to justify a concern for one over the other from first principles. Every world view, even atheism (even solipsism or nihlism), requires a leap of faith. (I actually made this point in my very first post here.)
But all that got me to thinking: why (it's a loaded word now!) must these two questions put people at loggerheads? Why can't we care about both? How (!) can we reconcile the conflict that seems to arise between the Whyers and the Howers?
The answer, I think, is very simple. The problem is that the methods that are effective for answering "how?" are not very effective for answering "why?". So if you care about one or the other then you naturally conclude that the methods that are effective for answering the question that you care about are "good" (because they produce the answers that you care about).
Can these positions be reconciled? Of course they can. All it takes is to recognize that there are two questions being asked, that people can be legitimately concerned (or not) with both of them, and that the effective methods for answering them are different.
Of course, this requires a bit of humility and a willingness to admit that what is important to you might legitimately be different from what is important to someone else, and perhaps even a willingness to admit that you might be wrong about some things. Such humility is in short supply at both extremes of the debate. Both religious fundamentalists, who insist that X must be true because it is what they think their holy text says (they are very rarely actually correct about this -- more on that later), and science fundamentalists (like Dawkins), who insist on pretending that anything that does not succumb to reductionism is nothing more than a human foible, will never be convinced. For the rest of us, middle ground is not hard to find.
The problems with fundamentalist religion have been extensively cataloged. Fundamentalists have attempted to make similar catalogs of the failings of "fundamentalists science" (e.g. creationist/ID critiques of Evolution) but these fail because they attempt to critique science using logic, and that can never work because science by definition *is* logic. It is rather like trying to critique faith by saying, "Jesus can't be the Son of God because I don't believe it." It doesn't work.
An effective religious critique of science must be based on the methods of religion, not science. The problem with science is not that it has trouble explaining how we got here, it's that it is utterly uncapable of explaining why we got here. The scientific answer to this is to simply dismiss the question as unimportant, but that's cheating. It's just as much of a cheat as saying, "It's true becuase the Bible says so." If I want to ask "why?" it is not for you to say whether my concern is worthy of consideration. The mere fact that I am a human and I choose to ask makes it worthy of my fellow human's concern. (Likewise for those who choose to ask "how".)
It is a happy circumstance that those who choose to ask "how" have stumbled recently (like in the last few hundred years) upon a method on which they (we) could all mostly agree and which seems to be effective. Those who choose to ask "why" have not yet been so fortunate. But that in and of itself is not license to dismiss the question. It was not that long ago in the grand and glorious scheme of things that the how-askers were trying to convert lead into gold. The arrogance of fundamentalist science is no more well founded than the arrogance of fundamentalist religion. Just because we scientists have found some common ground does not give us license to dismiss as unimportant the concerns of our fellow humans who have not been so fortunate.
I think we would all be well served with a little more humility and compassion all around.
But all that got me to thinking: why (it's a loaded word now!) must these two questions put people at loggerheads? Why can't we care about both? How (!) can we reconcile the conflict that seems to arise between the Whyers and the Howers?
The answer, I think, is very simple. The problem is that the methods that are effective for answering "how?" are not very effective for answering "why?". So if you care about one or the other then you naturally conclude that the methods that are effective for answering the question that you care about are "good" (because they produce the answers that you care about).
Can these positions be reconciled? Of course they can. All it takes is to recognize that there are two questions being asked, that people can be legitimately concerned (or not) with both of them, and that the effective methods for answering them are different.
Of course, this requires a bit of humility and a willingness to admit that what is important to you might legitimately be different from what is important to someone else, and perhaps even a willingness to admit that you might be wrong about some things. Such humility is in short supply at both extremes of the debate. Both religious fundamentalists, who insist that X must be true because it is what they think their holy text says (they are very rarely actually correct about this -- more on that later), and science fundamentalists (like Dawkins), who insist on pretending that anything that does not succumb to reductionism is nothing more than a human foible, will never be convinced. For the rest of us, middle ground is not hard to find.
The problems with fundamentalist religion have been extensively cataloged. Fundamentalists have attempted to make similar catalogs of the failings of "fundamentalists science" (e.g. creationist/ID critiques of Evolution) but these fail because they attempt to critique science using logic, and that can never work because science by definition *is* logic. It is rather like trying to critique faith by saying, "Jesus can't be the Son of God because I don't believe it." It doesn't work.
An effective religious critique of science must be based on the methods of religion, not science. The problem with science is not that it has trouble explaining how we got here, it's that it is utterly uncapable of explaining why we got here. The scientific answer to this is to simply dismiss the question as unimportant, but that's cheating. It's just as much of a cheat as saying, "It's true becuase the Bible says so." If I want to ask "why?" it is not for you to say whether my concern is worthy of consideration. The mere fact that I am a human and I choose to ask makes it worthy of my fellow human's concern. (Likewise for those who choose to ask "how".)
It is a happy circumstance that those who choose to ask "how" have stumbled recently (like in the last few hundred years) upon a method on which they (we) could all mostly agree and which seems to be effective. Those who choose to ask "why" have not yet been so fortunate. But that in and of itself is not license to dismiss the question. It was not that long ago in the grand and glorious scheme of things that the how-askers were trying to convert lead into gold. The arrogance of fundamentalist science is no more well founded than the arrogance of fundamentalist religion. Just because we scientists have found some common ground does not give us license to dismiss as unimportant the concerns of our fellow humans who have not been so fortunate.
I think we would all be well served with a little more humility and compassion all around.
If abortion is murder redux
Ohio is poised to make it a felony to leave the state to have an abortion.
It makes perfect sense. If the fetus is a person then abortion is murder, no different from infanticide, no different from shooting someone in the head. Abortion is cold-blooded, premeditated murder. Driving someone out of state for an abortion is no different from kidnapping a baby to be executed. Of course it should be a felony.
If abortion is murder. If the fetus is a person.
And what about all those frozen embryos? If life begins at conception then embryos are people too, and so letting an embryo thaw out without being implanted in a woman's uterus is murder. Cold-blooded premeditated murder. Why should not a woman who undergoes in-vitro fertilization not be required by law to carry all of the resulting babies to term? If life begins at conception, isn't the embryo a person? Isn't refusal to implant an embryo tantamount to abortion, tantamount to murder?
Am I the only one feeling a little queasy here?
The answer is that embryos are not people. Fetuses are not people. It takes more than a full complement of human DNA to make a person, more than a beating heart. It takes a functioning brain. That is why we recognize the concept of "brain death" (most of us anyway).
Life may begin at conception, but personhood doesn't start until much later. If we do not recognize that, we are headed towards a very unpleasant future.
It makes perfect sense. If the fetus is a person then abortion is murder, no different from infanticide, no different from shooting someone in the head. Abortion is cold-blooded, premeditated murder. Driving someone out of state for an abortion is no different from kidnapping a baby to be executed. Of course it should be a felony.
If abortion is murder. If the fetus is a person.
And what about all those frozen embryos? If life begins at conception then embryos are people too, and so letting an embryo thaw out without being implanted in a woman's uterus is murder. Cold-blooded premeditated murder. Why should not a woman who undergoes in-vitro fertilization not be required by law to carry all of the resulting babies to term? If life begins at conception, isn't the embryo a person? Isn't refusal to implant an embryo tantamount to abortion, tantamount to murder?
Am I the only one feeling a little queasy here?
The answer is that embryos are not people. Fetuses are not people. It takes more than a full complement of human DNA to make a person, more than a beating heart. It takes a functioning brain. That is why we recognize the concept of "brain death" (most of us anyway).
Life may begin at conception, but personhood doesn't start until much later. If we do not recognize that, we are headed towards a very unpleasant future.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
The fear-mongering begins
Here is the first of what will no doubt be a long series of lies designed to bolster the case for going to war with Iran:
"April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Iran, which is defying United Nations Security Council demands to cease its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days if it goes ahead with plans to install thousands of centrifuges at its Natanz plant, a U.S. State Department official said."
That claim is absurd on its face. Iran probably couldn't build a car in sixteen days, let alone a nuclear bomb. Iran's current capacity for enriching uranium is tiny. It will take them months if not years to produce even the raw materials for a nuclear bomb, let alone the bomb itself.
Now, one must wonder: since it has become clear that the invasion of Iraq was based on, at best, willful ignorance, why he is once again resorting to transparent falsehoods to bolster the case for yet another invasion? My theory is this: George Bush is a man of deep convictions. He believes in Right and Wrong, and he would never let a little thing like facts stand in the way of smiting the evil doers. Nor would he let a little thing like democracy stand in the way either.
My guess is that Dubya has his doubts that God will arrange to keep control of the House in Republican hands after November. That means he has to get the war with Iran started in the next six months while he still has a Congress full of lap dogs. After the election he can use the "now that we're there we have to stay" argument to bring the Democrats to heel.
A crazy theory? God, I hope so. But we would all do well to keep a very close eye on Adminstration rhetoric in the next few weeks. The possibility that George Bush actually wants to start World War 3 (perhaps to hasten the return of Jesus) is not entirely out of the question.
"April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Iran, which is defying United Nations Security Council demands to cease its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days if it goes ahead with plans to install thousands of centrifuges at its Natanz plant, a U.S. State Department official said."
That claim is absurd on its face. Iran probably couldn't build a car in sixteen days, let alone a nuclear bomb. Iran's current capacity for enriching uranium is tiny. It will take them months if not years to produce even the raw materials for a nuclear bomb, let alone the bomb itself.
Now, one must wonder: since it has become clear that the invasion of Iraq was based on, at best, willful ignorance, why he is once again resorting to transparent falsehoods to bolster the case for yet another invasion? My theory is this: George Bush is a man of deep convictions. He believes in Right and Wrong, and he would never let a little thing like facts stand in the way of smiting the evil doers. Nor would he let a little thing like democracy stand in the way either.
My guess is that Dubya has his doubts that God will arrange to keep control of the House in Republican hands after November. That means he has to get the war with Iran started in the next six months while he still has a Congress full of lap dogs. After the election he can use the "now that we're there we have to stay" argument to bring the Democrats to heel.
A crazy theory? God, I hope so. But we would all do well to keep a very close eye on Adminstration rhetoric in the next few weeks. The possibility that George Bush actually wants to start World War 3 (perhaps to hasten the return of Jesus) is not entirely out of the question.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Global warming is a myth -- NOT!
Professor Bob Carter claims There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998:
For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).
Is he right? Well, take a look at the chart and see for yourself.
His raw claim is (more or less) true. The average temperature for the years 1998-2005 were more or less contant. Is this a reason to believe that global warming has stopped? Absolutely not. To see why, ignore the black line and look just at the raw data (the blue and red bars). As you can see, there is a lot of random noise on top of the signal. Some years the temperature goes up and in other years it goes down. (On two occasions in the last 20 years global temperatures went down two years in a row!) But the general trend is pretty clearly up. Can we actually quantify this so that it's not just a gestalt assessment? Yes, we can.
The tool that science uses to pull a signal out of noisy data like global temperatures is called statistics. The math can get pretty hairy, but the fundamental idea is very simple. The method works like this:
1. Pick some assumptions. (These are called the null hypothesis conditions.)
2. Figure out the probability distribution of some property of the data if those assumptions are true.
3. Compute the probability of the data that you actually observed. If the probability is low then there are only two possibilities: either a very unlikely event happened, or your assumptions are false.
Let's see how we can apply this to the global temperature data.
1. Let us assume that the earth is not warming up.
2. If that is true, then the probability distribution of temperatures should be a normal distribution around the average. In particular, we should see more or less the same number of above average temperatures as below-average temperatures. (We should also see more or less the same number of increases and decreases. There are many different properties of the data we could choose.)
3. When we look at the data we see that over the last 25 years the data are not evenly distributed between above and below average. In fact, every one of the last 25 years has been above average. The probability that this would happen merely by chance (on the assumption that there is no global warming) is 1 in 2 to the 25th power, or about one in 33 million.
So there are only two possibilities: either our assumption is wrong, or we've just happened to hit upon an extremely unlikely set of events.
In fact, the evidence is even more compelling than that. If you take as your baseline temperature the average before 1900, then every year since 1940 has been above average. The odds of that happening in the absence of real underlying global warming is about one in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 (more or less).
You can do a similar analysis using an assumption that there is global warming and figuring out the probability of hitting an eight-year long spell of more or less constant temperatures. The probability depends on exactly what your assumptions are (mainly the rate of the underlying warming and the magnitude of the noise) and I don't have time to actually do the math at the moment, but it almost certainly will turn out to be a fairly common event. There are actually several multi-year periods in the recent past with no apparent temperature change (e.g. 1975-85, 1988-92).
So Carter's basic observation is correct, but his conclusion is absolutely wrong. In fact, it is so wrong that I wonder how he ever managed to get his Ph.D., let alone a faculty position. His mistake is so fundamental that it is hard to put it in any kind of favorable light. Carter is either disingenuous, or he is ignorant of basic scientific principles. I can't think of any other possibility.
For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).
Is he right? Well, take a look at the chart and see for yourself.
His raw claim is (more or less) true. The average temperature for the years 1998-2005 were more or less contant. Is this a reason to believe that global warming has stopped? Absolutely not. To see why, ignore the black line and look just at the raw data (the blue and red bars). As you can see, there is a lot of random noise on top of the signal. Some years the temperature goes up and in other years it goes down. (On two occasions in the last 20 years global temperatures went down two years in a row!) But the general trend is pretty clearly up. Can we actually quantify this so that it's not just a gestalt assessment? Yes, we can.
The tool that science uses to pull a signal out of noisy data like global temperatures is called statistics. The math can get pretty hairy, but the fundamental idea is very simple. The method works like this:
1. Pick some assumptions. (These are called the null hypothesis conditions.)
2. Figure out the probability distribution of some property of the data if those assumptions are true.
3. Compute the probability of the data that you actually observed. If the probability is low then there are only two possibilities: either a very unlikely event happened, or your assumptions are false.
Let's see how we can apply this to the global temperature data.
1. Let us assume that the earth is not warming up.
2. If that is true, then the probability distribution of temperatures should be a normal distribution around the average. In particular, we should see more or less the same number of above average temperatures as below-average temperatures. (We should also see more or less the same number of increases and decreases. There are many different properties of the data we could choose.)
3. When we look at the data we see that over the last 25 years the data are not evenly distributed between above and below average. In fact, every one of the last 25 years has been above average. The probability that this would happen merely by chance (on the assumption that there is no global warming) is 1 in 2 to the 25th power, or about one in 33 million.
So there are only two possibilities: either our assumption is wrong, or we've just happened to hit upon an extremely unlikely set of events.
In fact, the evidence is even more compelling than that. If you take as your baseline temperature the average before 1900, then every year since 1940 has been above average. The odds of that happening in the absence of real underlying global warming is about one in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 (more or less).
You can do a similar analysis using an assumption that there is global warming and figuring out the probability of hitting an eight-year long spell of more or less constant temperatures. The probability depends on exactly what your assumptions are (mainly the rate of the underlying warming and the magnitude of the noise) and I don't have time to actually do the math at the moment, but it almost certainly will turn out to be a fairly common event. There are actually several multi-year periods in the recent past with no apparent temperature change (e.g. 1975-85, 1988-92).
So Carter's basic observation is correct, but his conclusion is absolutely wrong. In fact, it is so wrong that I wonder how he ever managed to get his Ph.D., let alone a faculty position. His mistake is so fundamental that it is hard to put it in any kind of favorable light. Carter is either disingenuous, or he is ignorant of basic scientific principles. I can't think of any other possibility.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
You've got to fight for your right to be a bigot
The LA Times reports:
Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.
Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.
Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.
With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.
The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. "Christians," he said, "are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian."
...
"What if a person felt their religious view was that African Americans shouldn't mingle with Caucasians, or that women shouldn't work?" asked Jon Davidson, legal director of the gay-rights group Lambda Legal.
Christian activist Gregory S. Baylor responds to such criticism angrily. He says he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race and gender. But he draws a distinction that infuriates gay-rights activists when he argues that sexual orientation is different — a lifestyle choice, not an inborn trait.
I guess Ruth Malhotra hasn't read Timothy 2:11-12. Or if she has, she seems to be pretty choosy about which bits of her Christian faith are worth fighting for.
Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.
Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.
Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.
With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.
The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. "Christians," he said, "are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian."
...
"What if a person felt their religious view was that African Americans shouldn't mingle with Caucasians, or that women shouldn't work?" asked Jon Davidson, legal director of the gay-rights group Lambda Legal.
Christian activist Gregory S. Baylor responds to such criticism angrily. He says he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race and gender. But he draws a distinction that infuriates gay-rights activists when he argues that sexual orientation is different — a lifestyle choice, not an inborn trait.
I guess Ruth Malhotra hasn't read Timothy 2:11-12. Or if she has, she seems to be pretty choosy about which bits of her Christian faith are worth fighting for.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Better late than never
If in 2000 Al Gore had mustered the courage to give the speech he gave the other night at the Los Angeles HRC dinner he might be president today. Instead of the wishy-washy yes-on-civil-unions-but-no-to-gay-marriage position he took during the campaign, he finally came down squarely on the side of human rights. Better late than never I suppose.
Unfortunately, Al hasn't learned a thing about delivery. He was as wooden and meandering behind the mike as ever. The AV team did an admirable job of keeping the audio level adjusted as he wandered this way and that behind the podium. These are style-over-substance issues that matter a whole lot more than they ought to. I can't help but think that poor Al has been a couple of acting lessons away from the White House for the last ten years.
Still, having the truth on your side goes a long way towards making up for a lack of charisma. It has always been blatantly obvious to me that those who would deny human rights to gays are on the wrong side of history, and Al Gore finally seems to have come to this realization. (I don't know, maybe he always knew this, and his position in 2000 was just a political calculation rather than a reflection of what was in his heart of hearts. Either way, it's a hard position to respect, and I think it cost him the presidency.)
Imagine a charismatic Al Gore championing gay rights not because he's a liberal but because he's a Christian, pointing out that laws forbidding interracial marriage were on the books in a number of states until the Supreme Court struck them down in 1967, that this is today a national embarrassment. Imagine a fired-up Al Gore saying that fifty years from now people will look back with similar shame at the day when we as a society denied certain people the right to legally commit their lives to their country and the people they loved. Imagine Al Gore extemporizing [gasp!] "Good grief, all you're asking for is monogamy and military service! Is that too much to ask?" That Al Gore was at the Century Plaza last Saturday.
I just wish this Al Gore had surfaced six years ago. The world would be a better place.
Unfortunately, Al hasn't learned a thing about delivery. He was as wooden and meandering behind the mike as ever. The AV team did an admirable job of keeping the audio level adjusted as he wandered this way and that behind the podium. These are style-over-substance issues that matter a whole lot more than they ought to. I can't help but think that poor Al has been a couple of acting lessons away from the White House for the last ten years.
Still, having the truth on your side goes a long way towards making up for a lack of charisma. It has always been blatantly obvious to me that those who would deny human rights to gays are on the wrong side of history, and Al Gore finally seems to have come to this realization. (I don't know, maybe he always knew this, and his position in 2000 was just a political calculation rather than a reflection of what was in his heart of hearts. Either way, it's a hard position to respect, and I think it cost him the presidency.)
Imagine a charismatic Al Gore championing gay rights not because he's a liberal but because he's a Christian, pointing out that laws forbidding interracial marriage were on the books in a number of states until the Supreme Court struck them down in 1967, that this is today a national embarrassment. Imagine a fired-up Al Gore saying that fifty years from now people will look back with similar shame at the day when we as a society denied certain people the right to legally commit their lives to their country and the people they loved. Imagine Al Gore extemporizing [gasp!] "Good grief, all you're asking for is monogamy and military service! Is that too much to ask?" That Al Gore was at the Century Plaza last Saturday.
I just wish this Al Gore had surfaced six years ago. The world would be a better place.
Self-confidence indicates incompetence
Dick Cheney seems pretty cocksure about the Rupublican's ability to conduct the war in Iraq, and the Democrats' lack of same, saying of the Dems, "If they are competent to fight this war, then I ought to be singing on American Idol."
Better start warming up those vocal chords. This paper from the APA shows that self-confidence has a very strong negative correlation with actual ability:
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.
Better start warming up those vocal chords. This paper from the APA shows that self-confidence has a very strong negative correlation with actual ability:
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
It's official: George Bush is a dictator
He says so himself. Glen Greenwald has a lucid analysis.
Didn't we already have this debate back in 1972?
Didn't we already have this debate back in 1972?
Friday, March 24, 2006
Haven't we learned anything redux
You gotta hand it to George Bush, he certainly has balls. Despite the furor over the unauthorized wiretapping of U.S. citizens he still has no compunctions about brazenly declaring that he intends to violate the law. And of course, those spineless Republican lap dogs in Congress will let him get away with it. (To be fair, the Democrats have been pretty spineless too, but they aren't the ones in power.)
It's 1932 all over again.
It's 1932 all over again.
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Shooting the messenger
What do you do when someone singlehandedly saves our democracy? Why, you throw them in prison of course.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Is killing cancer cells murder?
I just learned about the remarkable case of Henrietta Lacks, who came down with cervical cancer in 1951. Cells from her tumor are still alive.
I wonder, would pro-lifers consider killing these cells to be murder? After all, this is human life.
The obvious answer is, "No, killing tumor cells is not murder because, despite the fact that they have a full set of human DNA, they are not capable of becoming a fully-fledged human being the way, say, a frozen embryo is."
To which I will respond: but isn't that just a limitation of our technology? After all, bringing a frozen embryo to fruition as a human being is not an easy matter, and would not have been possible fifty years ago. Why is one ball of cells with human DNA better than another just because we happen to have the technology at the moment to bring one to fruition and not the other? Surely moral principles ought to trancend our (transient) technological limitations?
I wonder, would pro-lifers consider killing these cells to be murder? After all, this is human life.
The obvious answer is, "No, killing tumor cells is not murder because, despite the fact that they have a full set of human DNA, they are not capable of becoming a fully-fledged human being the way, say, a frozen embryo is."
To which I will respond: but isn't that just a limitation of our technology? After all, bringing a frozen embryo to fruition as a human being is not an easy matter, and would not have been possible fifty years ago. Why is one ball of cells with human DNA better than another just because we happen to have the technology at the moment to bring one to fruition and not the other? Surely moral principles ought to trancend our (transient) technological limitations?
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
A modest proposal
Here's a question for all you supply-siders out there who never met a tax cut they didn't like:
If lowering taxes is always a good thing and budget deficits don't matter, why not just eliminate taxes entirely and fund the entire U.S. government on debt? While we're at it, why don't we just go ahead and write every U.S. citizen check for, oh, say, $10 million or so and put it on our tab? That would solve just about every problem we have: poverty, education (everyone could afford private school), health care (everyone could afford insurance), you name it. We could double the size of the military, which we'll probably need to do before we can attack Iran. Hell, why not triple it and take on North Korea while we're at it? After all, the debt doesn't matter, so the sky's the limit, no?
Hm, I think I may be on to something here.
If lowering taxes is always a good thing and budget deficits don't matter, why not just eliminate taxes entirely and fund the entire U.S. government on debt? While we're at it, why don't we just go ahead and write every U.S. citizen check for, oh, say, $10 million or so and put it on our tab? That would solve just about every problem we have: poverty, education (everyone could afford private school), health care (everyone could afford insurance), you name it. We could double the size of the military, which we'll probably need to do before we can attack Iran. Hell, why not triple it and take on North Korea while we're at it? After all, the debt doesn't matter, so the sky's the limit, no?
Hm, I think I may be on to something here.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
And now, a baby alpaca
We ran into this little guy at an alpaca farm outside of Cuzco:
Isn't he the cutest thing you've ever seen?
Isn't he the cutest thing you've ever seen?
Escape from Peru
Last month my wife Nancy and I took a cruise around South America, starting in Buenos Aires and ending up in Lima. I posted a tiny snippet of our adventures over on Xooglers but then decided that a travelogue really wasn't appropriate over there. So here is the rest of the story, just in case anyone was wondering.
I'm going to post the rest of the Peru story first even though that happened at the end of the trip.
I have to tell you a couple of things to set the stage for this story. First, I've been to a lot of places. My parents were (and still are) big-time travellers. They were born in what was at the time Palestine, and I was born in Germany, so we took a lot of trips to Europe and the Middle East when I was a kid. One of my earliest memories is being allowed inside the cockpit of an El Al 747 at 40,000 feet over the North Atlantic. I hung out there for half an hour or so gazing in wonder at the cloud deck far below. I am deeply saddened that no child will ever again have that experience, at least not for a very, very long time. We also toured all over the United States. I don't specifically remember it, but my parents are fond of recounting how one of the few times they were able to get me to sit still was driving across the Arizona desert in an unairconditioned Volkswagen squareback. It was just too hot to move.
So I've been to a lot of places. I've been to beautiful places, and I've been to ugly places, rich places and poor places, cities and wilderness. But the most beautiful place I have ever seen is Peru.
It is also the ugliest. But first things first.
Machu Pichu is just beyond words. You have to experience it to appreciate it. I'd read about it and seen lots of photos, but no third-hand fascimile can even begin to do the place justice, so I won't even try. I will tell you a few things that you'll need to know to appreciate the experience though.
The only way to get to Machu Pichu is by train from Cuzco, which is a fascinating place in and of itself. If you ever go (and you really should) plan to spend at least one full day in Cuzco, one full day at Machu Pichu, and one full day at Aguas Callientes, which is the little town at the base of Machu Pichu where the train drops you off.
(Aguas Callientes, as one might imagine, is so-called because there is a hot-spring where you can go swimming. The road to the hot spring is lined with little stores that rent towels and bathing suits. Unfortunately, the packaged tour we were on didn't allow for a full day in A.C. so the ticket booth at the end of the row of shops is as far as I got.)
From A.C. a shuttle bus takes you up a onee-lane dirt road which traces out a gut-wrenching series of switchbacks to the Sanctuary Lodge, which is the only structure on top of Machu Pichu besides the Inca ruins themselves. From there you have to walk a few hundred yards to enter the ruins.
Go to Machu Pichu while you can still walk. It is literally impossible to see it any other way. One of the members of our tour had had a bad recorvery from knee surgery and couldn't walk the few hundred yards it takes to get to the ruins. He went all the way to Machu Pichu but was never actually able to lay eyes on the place. It was heartbreaking.
Like I said, Machu Pichu itself (the name actually refers to the mountain where the Inca ruins lie, not the ruins themselves) is the most beautiful place I have ever been to. Zermat is like Gatlinburg next to Machu Pichu. And it's not just the surroundings, it's the Inca ruins themselves. Nothing prepared me for the scale of the place. It's simply enormous, and the Inca trail, still in very good repair after hundreds of years of neglect, stretches all the way back to Cuzco and beyond. The Incas give new meaning to the term rock-solid. I walked many miles through the ruins and along the trail and not once did I encounter so much as a loose stone.
On the shuttle ride up the mountain your bus will very likely stop to pick up a Peruvian kid dressed in traditional costume. The point of this will become apparent on your way down: these kids are called "goodbye boys" and what they do is put on a little bit of street theatre (or dirt-road thatre) by racing the bus down the mountain and magically appearing at every other switchback to bid the tourists goodbye. The wave and call out "Aaaadiiioooosss goooooood byyyyyyeeee" and something in the traditional Inca language that I can't recall. At the bottom they board the bus to pose for photos and collect tips. It's hard work. Some of those kids have to have some wicked shin splints.
Back in A.C. we had an hour before our train left and I wandered around town a bit. It's a very safe place in part because the place is crawling with a special security force designed specifically to protect tourists. They are very discreet, but once you notice them you realize that they are absolutely everywhere. This could be the reason that, although street hustlers and vendors giving you the hard sell (sometimes a very hard sell) are ubiquitous in Peru, we saw very few actual beggars, despite some pretty crushing poverty (about which more later). Everyone has at least an ostensible trade, even if it is nothing more than standing around hustling for tips to have your photo taken with a llama.
(This is not to say that there are no heartbreaking scenes. One little girl of about seven years old dressed in traditional costume had a perpetual smile on her face as she walked around asking, "Photo? Photo?" But as I watched her from the bus I saw the smile crack a bit when she thought no one was looking. Her parents were nowhere to be seen.)
Anyway, we got on the train, got back to Cuzco, back to our hotel (the Monestario, which is interesting because it is the only hotel in the world that pipes oxygen into the rooms to help guests suffering from altitude sickness), and crashed in preparation for a 5 AM wakeup call the next day. Our plane was supposed to leave at 7:30, but as you already know, it was solid overcast and heavy rain and the airport was closed. We hung out waiting for a break in the weather, watching as one flight after another was cancelled, the crowds at the airport grew, and places to sit became harder and harder to find.
I found a wireless internet connection, but it didn't seem to work (no DHCP) so I went up to the counter to ask how to use it and was told that it wasn't working. I thought for a moment that I might be able to help them fix it, that maybe all it needed was to have their router's DHCP server turned on, but I decided that the language barrier (they spoke no English and my Spanish is rudimentary at best) was too great to overcome on a matter like this. But having nothing better to do I decided to try to see if I could hack it. Without going into too many boring details, I succeeded after only about five minutes. Not only did I have wireless Internet at the airport, but it was free! Except for being stuck in the middle of nowhere in a third-world country, I was in hog heaven. The first thing I did was check the weather in Cuzco, and it did not look good. They were predicting two days of solid rain, which seemed plausible given the situation on the ground: no wind. Apparently a stationary front had parked itself over Cuzco and wasn't going anywhere any time soon.
Finally at about one (six hours and three cycles through the check in line after we had arrived at the airport) our guide decided it was time to give up and wait until the next day. This was really bad news for us because it would mean that we would miss our flight back to the U.S., which left at 7 AM the following day.
Then, just as we were assembling to get on our shuttle bus back to the hotel, the rain stopped, and the clouds began to lift. The airport was still closed and bursting at the seams with people trying to get the hell out of dodge, but it was starting to look like we just might be able to make it. Two options eventually presented themselves. Our tour company had booked us on a flight scheduled to depart at 5 PM, four hours later, and our friend Tom had called his travel agent back in Santa Barbara who had somehow managed to snarf the last four seats on a 2:30 departure to Lima with (we thought at the time) two stops. The 5:00 flight was direct and we'd be able to stay with the group, but I've had too much experience with mountain weather turning on a dime and the stakes were too high not to go with the bird in the hand.
Until the day I die I will sing the praises of Lima Tours. If you ever go to Peru, hire them. They were just absolutely terrific. Somehow, a second guide magically appeared just to sheperd the four of us (me, Tom, and our two spouses) through the check-in process for our 2:30 flight, and it was a really good thing too. We almost missed the flight. It took literally an hour to get us checked in because we had to upgrade our tickets and pay a surcharge to take the earlier flight. This turned out to be a major production because we didn't have enough cash in our pockets to cover the cost and had to pay with a credit card. The infrastructure for taking credit cards is not as well established in Peru as it is in the U.S. and Europe, and it often involves a lot of manual processing, phone calls, and filling out of forms. (One of our fellow tourists told us about one poor shopkeeper who had to use a pay phone to try to call the credit card company to verify that the card wasn't stolen. After half an hour or so she finally just gave up and helplessly conceded that she would just have to trust them.)
I'll spare you all the gory details. Suffice it to say we made it to Lima.
A more shocking contrast I have never experienced. Not twenty-four hours earlier we had been in Machu Pichu, surely the most beautiful place I have ever seen. And Lima is just as surely the ugliest. It hit us as soon as the plane touched the ground and they start piping in non-recycled air from the outside. There was a stench that I can only describe as a mix of rotten eggs and raw sewage. Like the rest of the coastal desert on which Lima is built, it never rains here. And I don't mean that it never rains like it never rains in LA. It really honest to god never rains in Lima. Ever. (Well, that's not quite true. It rained for an hour or so about thirty years ago. The locals still talk about it.)
Lima is perpetually enveloped in a fetid haze ranging from a tropical humidity in the summer (it's only 12 degrees south of the equator) to a drizzly mist in the winter. Throw in eight million people and their non-emission-controlled diesel-powered vehicles, their untreated sewage, their unburied trash, and an admixture of God only knows what, and you have Lima. Or at least you have the air in Lima. The city itself is a whole nuther thing entirely.
Because it never rains, roofs are a luxury, not a necessity, and very few Limaians can aford them. Driving out of the airport there is nothing but mile after mile after mile of raw cinder block buildings with no roofs, and there is no doubt that these are not abandoned buildings because every one of them has a clothes line full of laundry. And all this is bathed in a murky soup of diesel exhaust, humidity, and whatnot.
Even when you get to the beach there is no letup. Physically it looks a lot like the California coast, with beaches backed up by cliffs that look as if they'd come down in a good rain, except that California's cliffs are regularly subjected to such tests whereas Lima's never are. There are people on the beaches, but they are not sunbathers because the beaches are used as landfills. The people are either dumping trash, or picking through it. After the trash dumps there is actually a section of beach that is used by surfers, but even there the water roils under a thick layer of brown foam.
It is the ugliest thing I have ever seen. It is heart-wrenchingly ugly.
I will never understand how Limaians keep themselves from sinking into a morass of despair (I surely would if I had to live there) but they don't. Without exception everyone we met was cheerful and friendly and, as far as I could tell, working hard to make their city a better place. (I am also sure that there are nice parts of Lima that we didn't get to see because we spent all day just trying to get there. I am equally certain that none of those nice places are near the airport.)
Of course, we rich Americans were whisked through all the blight to Miraflores, the Riviera of Peru. Our tour company put us up in a five-star hotel, world-class in every respect, from the sweeping curved staircase in the marble-floored lobby, to the the granite slab countertops in the bathrooms, to the huge pool table in the cherry-clad walls of the lounge. The contrast with the world we had driven through to get there was jarring.
We had a restful if short night, and I am writing this on our flight to Miami. Ironically, the Peruvian plane we took from Cuzco to Lima was much nicer than the American plane we are now on to Miami. The LAN plane was a sparkling new Airbus A320. This AA plane is a leaky old Boeing 757. (I mean that literally. Among other problems, there is something dripping from one of the overhead bins.)
I have never been so glad to leave a place (twice). As we took off, Nancy and I jokingly called out "Aaaaaadiiiooooos Lima, goooodbyyyyeeee Peru..."
But we both left a little piece of our hearts on Machu Picchu.
I'm going to post the rest of the Peru story first even though that happened at the end of the trip.
I have to tell you a couple of things to set the stage for this story. First, I've been to a lot of places. My parents were (and still are) big-time travellers. They were born in what was at the time Palestine, and I was born in Germany, so we took a lot of trips to Europe and the Middle East when I was a kid. One of my earliest memories is being allowed inside the cockpit of an El Al 747 at 40,000 feet over the North Atlantic. I hung out there for half an hour or so gazing in wonder at the cloud deck far below. I am deeply saddened that no child will ever again have that experience, at least not for a very, very long time. We also toured all over the United States. I don't specifically remember it, but my parents are fond of recounting how one of the few times they were able to get me to sit still was driving across the Arizona desert in an unairconditioned Volkswagen squareback. It was just too hot to move.
So I've been to a lot of places. I've been to beautiful places, and I've been to ugly places, rich places and poor places, cities and wilderness. But the most beautiful place I have ever seen is Peru.
It is also the ugliest. But first things first.
Machu Pichu is just beyond words. You have to experience it to appreciate it. I'd read about it and seen lots of photos, but no third-hand fascimile can even begin to do the place justice, so I won't even try. I will tell you a few things that you'll need to know to appreciate the experience though.
The only way to get to Machu Pichu is by train from Cuzco, which is a fascinating place in and of itself. If you ever go (and you really should) plan to spend at least one full day in Cuzco, one full day at Machu Pichu, and one full day at Aguas Callientes, which is the little town at the base of Machu Pichu where the train drops you off.
(Aguas Callientes, as one might imagine, is so-called because there is a hot-spring where you can go swimming. The road to the hot spring is lined with little stores that rent towels and bathing suits. Unfortunately, the packaged tour we were on didn't allow for a full day in A.C. so the ticket booth at the end of the row of shops is as far as I got.)
From A.C. a shuttle bus takes you up a onee-lane dirt road which traces out a gut-wrenching series of switchbacks to the Sanctuary Lodge, which is the only structure on top of Machu Pichu besides the Inca ruins themselves. From there you have to walk a few hundred yards to enter the ruins.
Go to Machu Pichu while you can still walk. It is literally impossible to see it any other way. One of the members of our tour had had a bad recorvery from knee surgery and couldn't walk the few hundred yards it takes to get to the ruins. He went all the way to Machu Pichu but was never actually able to lay eyes on the place. It was heartbreaking.
Like I said, Machu Pichu itself (the name actually refers to the mountain where the Inca ruins lie, not the ruins themselves) is the most beautiful place I have ever been to. Zermat is like Gatlinburg next to Machu Pichu. And it's not just the surroundings, it's the Inca ruins themselves. Nothing prepared me for the scale of the place. It's simply enormous, and the Inca trail, still in very good repair after hundreds of years of neglect, stretches all the way back to Cuzco and beyond. The Incas give new meaning to the term rock-solid. I walked many miles through the ruins and along the trail and not once did I encounter so much as a loose stone.
On the shuttle ride up the mountain your bus will very likely stop to pick up a Peruvian kid dressed in traditional costume. The point of this will become apparent on your way down: these kids are called "goodbye boys" and what they do is put on a little bit of street theatre (or dirt-road thatre) by racing the bus down the mountain and magically appearing at every other switchback to bid the tourists goodbye. The wave and call out "Aaaadiiioooosss goooooood byyyyyyeeee" and something in the traditional Inca language that I can't recall. At the bottom they board the bus to pose for photos and collect tips. It's hard work. Some of those kids have to have some wicked shin splints.
Back in A.C. we had an hour before our train left and I wandered around town a bit. It's a very safe place in part because the place is crawling with a special security force designed specifically to protect tourists. They are very discreet, but once you notice them you realize that they are absolutely everywhere. This could be the reason that, although street hustlers and vendors giving you the hard sell (sometimes a very hard sell) are ubiquitous in Peru, we saw very few actual beggars, despite some pretty crushing poverty (about which more later). Everyone has at least an ostensible trade, even if it is nothing more than standing around hustling for tips to have your photo taken with a llama.
(This is not to say that there are no heartbreaking scenes. One little girl of about seven years old dressed in traditional costume had a perpetual smile on her face as she walked around asking, "Photo? Photo?" But as I watched her from the bus I saw the smile crack a bit when she thought no one was looking. Her parents were nowhere to be seen.)
Anyway, we got on the train, got back to Cuzco, back to our hotel (the Monestario, which is interesting because it is the only hotel in the world that pipes oxygen into the rooms to help guests suffering from altitude sickness), and crashed in preparation for a 5 AM wakeup call the next day. Our plane was supposed to leave at 7:30, but as you already know, it was solid overcast and heavy rain and the airport was closed. We hung out waiting for a break in the weather, watching as one flight after another was cancelled, the crowds at the airport grew, and places to sit became harder and harder to find.
I found a wireless internet connection, but it didn't seem to work (no DHCP) so I went up to the counter to ask how to use it and was told that it wasn't working. I thought for a moment that I might be able to help them fix it, that maybe all it needed was to have their router's DHCP server turned on, but I decided that the language barrier (they spoke no English and my Spanish is rudimentary at best) was too great to overcome on a matter like this. But having nothing better to do I decided to try to see if I could hack it. Without going into too many boring details, I succeeded after only about five minutes. Not only did I have wireless Internet at the airport, but it was free! Except for being stuck in the middle of nowhere in a third-world country, I was in hog heaven. The first thing I did was check the weather in Cuzco, and it did not look good. They were predicting two days of solid rain, which seemed plausible given the situation on the ground: no wind. Apparently a stationary front had parked itself over Cuzco and wasn't going anywhere any time soon.
Finally at about one (six hours and three cycles through the check in line after we had arrived at the airport) our guide decided it was time to give up and wait until the next day. This was really bad news for us because it would mean that we would miss our flight back to the U.S., which left at 7 AM the following day.
Then, just as we were assembling to get on our shuttle bus back to the hotel, the rain stopped, and the clouds began to lift. The airport was still closed and bursting at the seams with people trying to get the hell out of dodge, but it was starting to look like we just might be able to make it. Two options eventually presented themselves. Our tour company had booked us on a flight scheduled to depart at 5 PM, four hours later, and our friend Tom had called his travel agent back in Santa Barbara who had somehow managed to snarf the last four seats on a 2:30 departure to Lima with (we thought at the time) two stops. The 5:00 flight was direct and we'd be able to stay with the group, but I've had too much experience with mountain weather turning on a dime and the stakes were too high not to go with the bird in the hand.
Until the day I die I will sing the praises of Lima Tours. If you ever go to Peru, hire them. They were just absolutely terrific. Somehow, a second guide magically appeared just to sheperd the four of us (me, Tom, and our two spouses) through the check-in process for our 2:30 flight, and it was a really good thing too. We almost missed the flight. It took literally an hour to get us checked in because we had to upgrade our tickets and pay a surcharge to take the earlier flight. This turned out to be a major production because we didn't have enough cash in our pockets to cover the cost and had to pay with a credit card. The infrastructure for taking credit cards is not as well established in Peru as it is in the U.S. and Europe, and it often involves a lot of manual processing, phone calls, and filling out of forms. (One of our fellow tourists told us about one poor shopkeeper who had to use a pay phone to try to call the credit card company to verify that the card wasn't stolen. After half an hour or so she finally just gave up and helplessly conceded that she would just have to trust them.)
I'll spare you all the gory details. Suffice it to say we made it to Lima.
A more shocking contrast I have never experienced. Not twenty-four hours earlier we had been in Machu Pichu, surely the most beautiful place I have ever seen. And Lima is just as surely the ugliest. It hit us as soon as the plane touched the ground and they start piping in non-recycled air from the outside. There was a stench that I can only describe as a mix of rotten eggs and raw sewage. Like the rest of the coastal desert on which Lima is built, it never rains here. And I don't mean that it never rains like it never rains in LA. It really honest to god never rains in Lima. Ever. (Well, that's not quite true. It rained for an hour or so about thirty years ago. The locals still talk about it.)
Lima is perpetually enveloped in a fetid haze ranging from a tropical humidity in the summer (it's only 12 degrees south of the equator) to a drizzly mist in the winter. Throw in eight million people and their non-emission-controlled diesel-powered vehicles, their untreated sewage, their unburied trash, and an admixture of God only knows what, and you have Lima. Or at least you have the air in Lima. The city itself is a whole nuther thing entirely.
Because it never rains, roofs are a luxury, not a necessity, and very few Limaians can aford them. Driving out of the airport there is nothing but mile after mile after mile of raw cinder block buildings with no roofs, and there is no doubt that these are not abandoned buildings because every one of them has a clothes line full of laundry. And all this is bathed in a murky soup of diesel exhaust, humidity, and whatnot.
Even when you get to the beach there is no letup. Physically it looks a lot like the California coast, with beaches backed up by cliffs that look as if they'd come down in a good rain, except that California's cliffs are regularly subjected to such tests whereas Lima's never are. There are people on the beaches, but they are not sunbathers because the beaches are used as landfills. The people are either dumping trash, or picking through it. After the trash dumps there is actually a section of beach that is used by surfers, but even there the water roils under a thick layer of brown foam.
It is the ugliest thing I have ever seen. It is heart-wrenchingly ugly.
I will never understand how Limaians keep themselves from sinking into a morass of despair (I surely would if I had to live there) but they don't. Without exception everyone we met was cheerful and friendly and, as far as I could tell, working hard to make their city a better place. (I am also sure that there are nice parts of Lima that we didn't get to see because we spent all day just trying to get there. I am equally certain that none of those nice places are near the airport.)
Of course, we rich Americans were whisked through all the blight to Miraflores, the Riviera of Peru. Our tour company put us up in a five-star hotel, world-class in every respect, from the sweeping curved staircase in the marble-floored lobby, to the the granite slab countertops in the bathrooms, to the huge pool table in the cherry-clad walls of the lounge. The contrast with the world we had driven through to get there was jarring.
We had a restful if short night, and I am writing this on our flight to Miami. Ironically, the Peruvian plane we took from Cuzco to Lima was much nicer than the American plane we are now on to Miami. The LAN plane was a sparkling new Airbus A320. This AA plane is a leaky old Boeing 757. (I mean that literally. Among other problems, there is something dripping from one of the overhead bins.)
I have never been so glad to leave a place (twice). As we took off, Nancy and I jokingly called out "Aaaaaadiiiooooos Lima, goooodbyyyyeeee Peru..."
But we both left a little piece of our hearts on Machu Picchu.
"The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion"
Turns out that there are many, many cases of anti-choice women having abortions. Imagine my surprise.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Let me see your papers
The U.S. has taken yet another step towards totalitarianism. A U.S. Appeals Court has ruled that "'The Constitution does not guarantee the right to travel by any particular form of transportation.'"
I guess they didn't read this bit.
I guess they didn't read this bit.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Haven't we learned anything?
Good grief-o-ramus, Americans really are a bunch of morons:
"Despite persistent disillusionment with the war in Iraq, a majority of Americans supports taking military action against Iran if that country continues to produce material that can be used to develop nuclear weapons, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found."
Could someone explain to me why it's OK for us to bomb other countries who want to develop nukes, but not OK for other countries to bomb us for already having done so?
"Despite persistent disillusionment with the war in Iraq, a majority of Americans supports taking military action against Iran if that country continues to produce material that can be used to develop nuclear weapons, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found."
Could someone explain to me why it's OK for us to bomb other countries who want to develop nukes, but not OK for other countries to bomb us for already having done so?
Monday, January 23, 2006
Justice for a justice
A group of New Hampshire activists is trying to get the state to take over Supreme Court Justive David Souter's house so they can convert it into a hotel under the auspices of the new eminent domain doctrine that Souter voted to support. Under the new doctrine, eminent domain can be used to take private property not only for public use but also for private development.
I hope they succeed in taking Souter's house away. Justice would be well served.
I hope they succeed in taking Souter's house away. Justice would be well served.
Capitalism in action
I have mixed feelings upon learning that capitalism is apparently stepping up to the plate to solve the oil shortage. The price of oil has gotten high enough to make it possible to make a profit from Canadian oil sands. This means that oil will be expensive from here on, but we won't actually run out for a very long time. That gives civilization a little breathing room until we figure out how to make cold fusion work.
That's the good news. The bad news is that we'll have to put up with all the traffic, noise, exhaust fumes and greenhouse gasses for long, long time. But I guess that's better than having civilization collapse.
That's the good news. The bad news is that we'll have to put up with all the traffic, noise, exhaust fumes and greenhouse gasses for long, long time. But I guess that's better than having civilization collapse.
A salute to Clarence Thomas
Ishakamusa wrote:
Justice Clarence Thomas is amazingly consistent and logical.
I was skeptical of this until I finally got around to reading his opinion in Gonzales vs. Raich, the California medical marijuana case. I was certain that Thomas would vote to uphold the federal government's power to override and state's attempt to legalize marijuana use, and thus reveal himself to be just as hypocritical as all the rest of the conservatives on the court.
I was wrong. Thomas dissented. Wow.
So here's something I never thought I'd say: Justice Thomas, I salute you.
Justice Clarence Thomas is amazingly consistent and logical.
I was skeptical of this until I finally got around to reading his opinion in Gonzales vs. Raich, the California medical marijuana case. I was certain that Thomas would vote to uphold the federal government's power to override and state's attempt to legalize marijuana use, and thus reveal himself to be just as hypocritical as all the rest of the conservatives on the court.
I was wrong. Thomas dissented. Wow.
So here's something I never thought I'd say: Justice Thomas, I salute you.
If a fetus is a person...
On what appears might be the last anniversary of Roe v. Wade it seems like a good occasion to ask...
If a fetus is a person, why do we wait until someone is born before we count them in the census or allow people to claim them as dependents on their tax returns?
Why do we measure their age from their birthday instead of their conception day?
Why do we not issue a death certificate or hold a funeral after a miscarriage?
Would it be OK for an art museum to charge a pregnant woman for two tickets?
Why do we generally wait until after someone is born to give them a name?
Should we start to make heroic efforts to save babies born with anencephaly? And if your answer is yes, should we dispense with the concept of "brain death" in adult humans?
Why is so much time and effort being spent trying to save unwanted fetuses, when thousands of fully fledged human children die every day from a lack of clean drinking water and basic medical care?
Why does there seem to be almost universal consensus that abortion ought to be legal to preserve the health of the mother, and in cases of rape or incest? After all, if a fetus really is a person whose moral standing is no different than a fully fledged baby, then abortion is murder then there is no moral difference between performing an abortion and committing infanticide. Surely infanticide should not be legal under any circumstances?
Why did it take the Catholic church almost 1800 years before it decided that a fetus was a person?
The answer to all these appearent dilemmas is so crystal clear it just makes me want to tear my hair out. What makes somone a person is not a full complement of human DNA, but a functioning brain. It is not always easy to draw the line of where brain function begins and ends, but that has never stopped us from doing do in many, many circumstances, without the moral histrionics associated with abortion.
Which brings me to the most puzzling question of all: why do so many women continue to vote Republican?
If a fetus is a person, why do we wait until someone is born before we count them in the census or allow people to claim them as dependents on their tax returns?
Why do we measure their age from their birthday instead of their conception day?
Why do we not issue a death certificate or hold a funeral after a miscarriage?
Would it be OK for an art museum to charge a pregnant woman for two tickets?
Why do we generally wait until after someone is born to give them a name?
Should we start to make heroic efforts to save babies born with anencephaly? And if your answer is yes, should we dispense with the concept of "brain death" in adult humans?
Why is so much time and effort being spent trying to save unwanted fetuses, when thousands of fully fledged human children die every day from a lack of clean drinking water and basic medical care?
Why does there seem to be almost universal consensus that abortion ought to be legal to preserve the health of the mother, and in cases of rape or incest? After all, if a fetus really is a person whose moral standing is no different than a fully fledged baby, then abortion is murder then there is no moral difference between performing an abortion and committing infanticide. Surely infanticide should not be legal under any circumstances?
Why did it take the Catholic church almost 1800 years before it decided that a fetus was a person?
The answer to all these appearent dilemmas is so crystal clear it just makes me want to tear my hair out. What makes somone a person is not a full complement of human DNA, but a functioning brain. It is not always easy to draw the line of where brain function begins and ends, but that has never stopped us from doing do in many, many circumstances, without the moral histrionics associated with abortion.
Which brings me to the most puzzling question of all: why do so many women continue to vote Republican?
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Right result, wrong reason
Once again I find myself, to my neverending astonishment, agreeing with Clarence Thomas, who observes in his dissent in Gonzales vs Oregon that the majority's opinion is diametrically opposed to their ruling just seven months ago in Gonzales vs Raich, a medical marijuana case. If you decide that Congress has the power to make it a crime for someone to cultivate a marijuana plant in their back yard with a doctor's prescription, there is just no way that you can then turn around and say that they don't have the same power to make it a crime for a doctor to prescribe a lethal dose of morphine and still retain any semblance of logical consistency. (I don't have time to look up the Raich opinion right now. I wonder on which side Thomas came down on that one.)
The Right Answer, it seems to me, is that Congress doesn't have the power to outlaw either one. The idea that someone growing a marijuana plant in their back yard for their own personal use necessarily has something to do with interstate commerce seems to me absurd on its face. But, of course, conservatives have long since abandoned the notion of limited government, especially when it comes time to legislate morality.
The Right Answer, it seems to me, is that Congress doesn't have the power to outlaw either one. The idea that someone growing a marijuana plant in their back yard for their own personal use necessarily has something to do with interstate commerce seems to me absurd on its face. But, of course, conservatives have long since abandoned the notion of limited government, especially when it comes time to legislate morality.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
A clear sign
Pasadena was dry (albeit cold and grey) until about 2 PM today. Tomorrow's chance of rain is 100%.
Clearly, God is sending a message that He wants the Rose Parade to happen on New Year's Day even if it does happen to fall on a Sunday.
Update:
It's 9:18 AM on parade day. I live about ten miles from the parade route and it is raining cats out here. I watched about half an hour of the parade on TV. My hat is off to all the participants. It's about as miserable out there as it ever gets here in SoCal, but somehow they're still managing to have fun -- or at least putting on a pretty convincing act. Either way, it's inspiring.
The floats look like they're holding up surprisingly well too, at least on TV.
Clearly, God is sending a message that He wants the Rose Parade to happen on New Year's Day even if it does happen to fall on a Sunday.
Update:
It's 9:18 AM on parade day. I live about ten miles from the parade route and it is raining cats out here. I watched about half an hour of the parade on TV. My hat is off to all the participants. It's about as miserable out there as it ever gets here in SoCal, but somehow they're still managing to have fun -- or at least putting on a pretty convincing act. Either way, it's inspiring.
The floats look like they're holding up surprisingly well too, at least on TV.
Friday, December 30, 2005
The "S" word
Over at Xooglers I recently posted a note about all the people who have been writing me asking for advice on how to get jobs at Google and sundry other things. In a fit of pique regarding certain aspects of my correspondents' style, I employed a certain anglo-saxon epithet which nominally means excrement, but which I employed in a more colloquial and idiomatic style merely to provide emphasis and a little more semantic interest than a word like "things".
Will Ray posted an interesting comment on my choice of terminology. It's interesting because he seems to object to my use of the "S" word, even though he doesn't actually come out and say it. Instead, he engages in some armchair psychoanalysis of my character. (I won't comment on the accuracy of his assessment except to observe that there's hardly any sport in diagnosing someone -- anyone -- as insecure, especially someone who has chosen computer programming as a profession.)
I don't really care so much about what Will Ray thinks, but I am concerned about the possibility that I might offend people by using an expletive, even where the use is defensible. Personally I've never understood why people get so upset about certain words. It's even more puzzling to me that it's acceptable to use these words if you change the spelling even though everyone still knows exactly what you mean (e.g. F***). But regardless, I have become keenly aware of the fact that one can completely undermine one's position just by being an a*****le, to say nothing of the fact that there's just no need for it.
So now I am torn. On the one hand I really don't want to offend anyone, but on the other hand I don't want to give the appearance that I agree with those who think that using swear words is a Terrible Thing. (I also don't want to give the appearance that I'm caving in to pressure, for fear that this will encourage more Will Rays to crawl out of the woodwork to critique my writing or catalog my personal failings.) So should I go back and edit that entry? Post an apology? Do nothing?
Quite the moral quandry, this one.
[Update:]
Upon reflection I have decided to go back and edit the entry. I decided this for a couple of reasons, but the overriding one was that Xooglers isn't my blog, it's Doug's blog, and I don't want my bad language to reflect poorly on him. I guess I'll just have to risk giving Will Ray a reason to feel smug. Will, if you're reading this, don't be under any delusions: I didn't do it for you.
Will Ray posted an interesting comment on my choice of terminology. It's interesting because he seems to object to my use of the "S" word, even though he doesn't actually come out and say it. Instead, he engages in some armchair psychoanalysis of my character. (I won't comment on the accuracy of his assessment except to observe that there's hardly any sport in diagnosing someone -- anyone -- as insecure, especially someone who has chosen computer programming as a profession.)
I don't really care so much about what Will Ray thinks, but I am concerned about the possibility that I might offend people by using an expletive, even where the use is defensible. Personally I've never understood why people get so upset about certain words. It's even more puzzling to me that it's acceptable to use these words if you change the spelling even though everyone still knows exactly what you mean (e.g. F***). But regardless, I have become keenly aware of the fact that one can completely undermine one's position just by being an a*****le, to say nothing of the fact that there's just no need for it.
So now I am torn. On the one hand I really don't want to offend anyone, but on the other hand I don't want to give the appearance that I agree with those who think that using swear words is a Terrible Thing. (I also don't want to give the appearance that I'm caving in to pressure, for fear that this will encourage more Will Rays to crawl out of the woodwork to critique my writing or catalog my personal failings.) So should I go back and edit that entry? Post an apology? Do nothing?
Quite the moral quandry, this one.
[Update:]
Upon reflection I have decided to go back and edit the entry. I decided this for a couple of reasons, but the overriding one was that Xooglers isn't my blog, it's Doug's blog, and I don't want my bad language to reflect poorly on him. I guess I'll just have to risk giving Will Ray a reason to feel smug. Will, if you're reading this, don't be under any delusions: I didn't do it for you.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
21 Grams
A rhetorical question for those who believe that the soul weighs 21 Grams:
Does that mean that as long as a fetus weighs less than this it cannot possibly yet contain a soul and therefore it's OK to abort it?
Does that mean that as long as a fetus weighs less than this it cannot possibly yet contain a soul and therefore it's OK to abort it?
And another thing....
As long as I'm on the topic of being frustrated by people undermining their arguments with the wrong choice of words, I'd like to say a word about the abortion debate in the U.S. Not about abortion mind you, just about the debate, which is framed as being between the "pro-choice" side, which is for abortion, and the "pro-life" side, which is against abortion.
No! No! No! And a thousand times no! People who are pro-choice are not "for abortion"! (Well, maybe some of them are, but there are crazies on all sides of an issue.) No sane person could possibly be "for abortion" any more than they could be "for amputation" or "for mastectomies." All sane people agree that abortion is a bad thing and that the fewer of them there are the better. The only disagreement is over the best mechanism to use to minimize the number of abortions. The "pro-life" side thinks that the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to make abortion illegal and throw people who attempt to provide them in jail. The "pro-choice" side is too busy cramming its head further up its metaphorical butt by allowing the myth to persist that they are "for abortion" to have anything coherent to say about the matter at all. (Hm, what was it I was just saying about how descending into obnoxiousness tends to undermine one's argument? Does that still hold when one is calling one's own side names?)
I fear, though, that there are too many people with vested interests in the status quo of stalemated debate for any real progress to be made, even when the path is so clear.
No! No! No! And a thousand times no! People who are pro-choice are not "for abortion"! (Well, maybe some of them are, but there are crazies on all sides of an issue.) No sane person could possibly be "for abortion" any more than they could be "for amputation" or "for mastectomies." All sane people agree that abortion is a bad thing and that the fewer of them there are the better. The only disagreement is over the best mechanism to use to minimize the number of abortions. The "pro-life" side thinks that the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to make abortion illegal and throw people who attempt to provide them in jail. The "pro-choice" side is too busy cramming its head further up its metaphorical butt by allowing the myth to persist that they are "for abortion" to have anything coherent to say about the matter at all. (Hm, what was it I was just saying about how descending into obnoxiousness tends to undermine one's argument? Does that still hold when one is calling one's own side names?)
I fear, though, that there are too many people with vested interests in the status quo of stalemated debate for any real progress to be made, even when the path is so clear.
Why do atheists have to be so obnoxious?
I am constantly frustrated by atheists who write beautiful and lucid expositions and then completely undermine their arguments by being obnoxious. I can certainly understand the temptation to descend into name-calling (e.g. "Our Christian enthusiasts are evidently too stupid, as well as too insecure, to...") but it serves no purpose. I was going to paraphrase what came after the elipsis, but it hardly matters. No one but the already (un)converted is going to read past that phrase.
I have the same problem with U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III's blistering rebuke of Intelligent Design in the Dover, Pennsylvania case. Obivously I agree with his decision, but did he have to use the phrase "breathtaking inanity" to describe the ID position? The only effect it will have is to convince the ID proponents that Jones was prejudiced against them and they need to redouble their efforts.
I have the same problem with U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III's blistering rebuke of Intelligent Design in the Dover, Pennsylvania case. Obivously I agree with his decision, but did he have to use the phrase "breathtaking inanity" to describe the ID position? The only effect it will have is to convince the ID proponents that Jones was prejudiced against them and they need to redouble their efforts.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
A fine bit of irony
Amidst the kerfuffle over the liberal assault on Christmas it is deliciously ironic to note that there actually was a time in American history when serious attempts were made by Christians to ban the celebration of Christmas.
UPDATE: Turns out that you don't have to go into history to find Christians who are against Christmas.
Even some major denominations, including Baptists, which today trumpet the birth of Jesus with carols and yuletide symbols, dismissed Christmas as unimportant, even pagan, until the early 19th century. Another was the Pasadena-based Worldwide Church of God, which until a major theological upheaval in 1995 had forbidden its members to celebrate Christmas. Some members then left the church and affiliated with breakaway churches that continue to hold Christmas at bay.
UPDATE: Turns out that you don't have to go into history to find Christians who are against Christmas.
Even some major denominations, including Baptists, which today trumpet the birth of Jesus with carols and yuletide symbols, dismissed Christmas as unimportant, even pagan, until the early 19th century. Another was the Pasadena-based Worldwide Church of God, which until a major theological upheaval in 1995 had forbidden its members to celebrate Christmas. Some members then left the church and affiliated with breakaway churches that continue to hold Christmas at bay.
Monday, December 12, 2005
On Writing
Since I've started posting on Xooglers a number of people have written to compliment me on my writing (thank you all!) and to ask for pointers. So here in a nutshell is what I've learned about writing.
There are two main ways to learn to write:
1. Read
2. Write
I'm not trying to be glib. I think that really gets to the nub of the matter. You can't really be taught to write well, sort of like you can't really be taught to program well. You can be taught the basics -- grammar, structure -- but to get from there to really being good at it you have to figure it out on your own. I wish it were otherwise.
There are two main things to keep in mind as you write:
1. Everything comes out shitty the first time. You have to debug writing the same way you debug code.
2. Good writing is dramatic, and drama is all about conflict. This is why crappy experiences make much better stories than pleasant ones.
There's a wonderful episode of The Simpsons that illustrates this point beautifully. Marge goes on a crusade to eliminate violence from television -- and she succeeds! The result is an episode of Itchy and Scratchy where they just get along. It is, of course, stultifyingly boring (and at the same time uproariously funny).
So let it be written.
There are two main ways to learn to write:
1. Read
2. Write
I'm not trying to be glib. I think that really gets to the nub of the matter. You can't really be taught to write well, sort of like you can't really be taught to program well. You can be taught the basics -- grammar, structure -- but to get from there to really being good at it you have to figure it out on your own. I wish it were otherwise.
There are two main things to keep in mind as you write:
1. Everything comes out shitty the first time. You have to debug writing the same way you debug code.
2. Good writing is dramatic, and drama is all about conflict. This is why crappy experiences make much better stories than pleasant ones.
There's a wonderful episode of The Simpsons that illustrates this point beautifully. Marge goes on a crusade to eliminate violence from television -- and she succeeds! The result is an episode of Itchy and Scratchy where they just get along. It is, of course, stultifyingly boring (and at the same time uproariously funny).
So let it be written.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Queasy about Christ
I don't want to be a religion-basher. I recognize that religion plays an important role in many people's lives and serves a genuine human need. But, to be perfectly frank, I get a little queasy about Christianity some times. (I get a little queasy about Islam too, but I know so little about it that I can't discuss it intelligently.)
There are two main facets to Christianity. The first has to do with how we live our lives here on earth (love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, etc.) I have no quarrel with that. It's the second aspect that makes me nervous, the one having to do with what happens after you die.
The problem is that a strict reading of Christian doctrine says that anyone who has not accepted Jesus as their personal savior is damned for all eternity. It says so right there in John 14:6. "No man cometh unto the father but by me." (Funny that none of the other Gospel writers thought to include this little tidbit, but who am I to second-guess the inspired Word of God?)
Let's try to put this eternity thing in persepctive. Let's say a person lives to be 100. That's 36525 days (more or less -- it depends on exactly where the leap years fall), 876,600 hours, 52,596,000 minutes, or somewhere in the neighborhood of three billion seconds. Most people would agree that next to the span of an entire human lifetime, a single second is pretty insignificant.
And yet a second is an infinitely greater portion of a human lifetime than a human lifetime is a portion of eternity. Eternity is a dreadfully long time. A lifetime (or any finite amount of time for that matter) is a mere blip by comparison, all but imperceptable against the vastness of the infinite. All of the human suffering that has been endured since the beginning of time is nothing compared to the anguish of even a single soul that dies without having accepted Christ.
Against the prospect of eternal damnation, nothing else matters.
I think very few Christians have really come to grips with this and what it implies. If you accept John 14:6, then unless you are a truly cold-hearted son of a bitch you must dedicate your life to converting as many people as you possibly can by whatever means necessary. You cannot allow doubts about Jesus to be voiced for fear that they will lead someone to lose their faith. The consequences of that are immeasurably worse than a thousand holocausts, a million Stalinesque purges, billions upon billions of 9/11s.
John 14:6 leaves no room for doubt of any kind. In fact, it leaves no room for anything but an absolute dedication of your time here on earth to cementing your relationship with Christ, and getting as many of your fellow humans as possible to do likewise.
I think this is the reason that we're seeing discontent about people saying "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas". If "happy holidays" causes people to think that it's somehow acceptable not to believe in Jesus, that's a truly terrible thing. In fact, if it causes anyone to doubt that Christ is the Way and the Truth and the Light and no man comes to the Father but through Him, then merely uttering the phrase is in fact a heinous crime, vastly worse than murder.
Viewed in this light, the current grumbling is actually a pretty restrained response.
The Right Answer, I think, is to recognize that it's possible that whoever wrote John just might have embellished the truth a bit. After all, none of the other Gospels mention this quip, and you'd think that they would considering how important it would be if it were true. Remember, if John 14:6 is true, nothing else matters. But this requires the capacity for humility and doubt, something that seems in short supply among many self-professed Christians noawadays.
There are two main facets to Christianity. The first has to do with how we live our lives here on earth (love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, etc.) I have no quarrel with that. It's the second aspect that makes me nervous, the one having to do with what happens after you die.
The problem is that a strict reading of Christian doctrine says that anyone who has not accepted Jesus as their personal savior is damned for all eternity. It says so right there in John 14:6. "No man cometh unto the father but by me." (Funny that none of the other Gospel writers thought to include this little tidbit, but who am I to second-guess the inspired Word of God?)
Let's try to put this eternity thing in persepctive. Let's say a person lives to be 100. That's 36525 days (more or less -- it depends on exactly where the leap years fall), 876,600 hours, 52,596,000 minutes, or somewhere in the neighborhood of three billion seconds. Most people would agree that next to the span of an entire human lifetime, a single second is pretty insignificant.
And yet a second is an infinitely greater portion of a human lifetime than a human lifetime is a portion of eternity. Eternity is a dreadfully long time. A lifetime (or any finite amount of time for that matter) is a mere blip by comparison, all but imperceptable against the vastness of the infinite. All of the human suffering that has been endured since the beginning of time is nothing compared to the anguish of even a single soul that dies without having accepted Christ.
Against the prospect of eternal damnation, nothing else matters.
I think very few Christians have really come to grips with this and what it implies. If you accept John 14:6, then unless you are a truly cold-hearted son of a bitch you must dedicate your life to converting as many people as you possibly can by whatever means necessary. You cannot allow doubts about Jesus to be voiced for fear that they will lead someone to lose their faith. The consequences of that are immeasurably worse than a thousand holocausts, a million Stalinesque purges, billions upon billions of 9/11s.
John 14:6 leaves no room for doubt of any kind. In fact, it leaves no room for anything but an absolute dedication of your time here on earth to cementing your relationship with Christ, and getting as many of your fellow humans as possible to do likewise.
I think this is the reason that we're seeing discontent about people saying "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas". If "happy holidays" causes people to think that it's somehow acceptable not to believe in Jesus, that's a truly terrible thing. In fact, if it causes anyone to doubt that Christ is the Way and the Truth and the Light and no man comes to the Father but through Him, then merely uttering the phrase is in fact a heinous crime, vastly worse than murder.
Viewed in this light, the current grumbling is actually a pretty restrained response.
The Right Answer, I think, is to recognize that it's possible that whoever wrote John just might have embellished the truth a bit. After all, none of the other Gospels mention this quip, and you'd think that they would considering how important it would be if it were true. Remember, if John 14:6 is true, nothing else matters. But this requires the capacity for humility and doubt, something that seems in short supply among many self-professed Christians noawadays.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Welcome to the new PC
By which I mean Political Correctness, not personal computer.
A professor of religious studies was beaten after making comments deemed insulting to Christianity.
He has also, as a result, resigned as chair of the religious studies department of the University of Kansas, and withdrawn a course he was going to teach on creationism and intelligent design.
For now at least, is seems the terrorists have won.
A professor of religious studies was beaten after making comments deemed insulting to Christianity.
He has also, as a result, resigned as chair of the religious studies department of the University of Kansas, and withdrawn a course he was going to teach on creationism and intelligent design.
For now at least, is seems the terrorists have won.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Suddenly feeling the pressure
I previously reported on my experience installing a pressure reducing valve on the main water inlet to our house. Well, it seems there's still some kind of problem. We've been noticing that one of our showers occasionally starts to drip water. I had thought that it was a bad seal in the show spigot (it's kind of a cheap fixture). Today it started dripping again and just on a hunch I went outside to check the pressure gauge that I installed on the main water line.
It read 130 PSI.
Holy shit! That's double what it should be, and 40 PSI higher than the maximum pressure that the pump is able to produce.
This is really bizarre. I have no idea how the pressure could have gotten up that high. The inlet pressure at the main is 30 PSI and the pump only pushes that up to 90. Somehow we're getting an extra 40 PSI from somewhere, and it's getting past the PRV, which is set to 65 PSI and is supposed to be good up to at least 150 PSI on the inlet.
The only thing I can think of is that we have an air bubble trapped somewhere in a hot water line. Maybe the air is heating up, expanding, and compressing the water in the pipes in the house. It seems pretty farfetched, but that the pump could suddenly produce twice the pressure that it normally (and that this would coincide with a failure of the PRV) seems pretty farfetched too.
As the King of Siam would say, is a puzzlement.
If anyone has any idea what might be going on here please let me know before my pipes burst.
It read 130 PSI.
Holy shit! That's double what it should be, and 40 PSI higher than the maximum pressure that the pump is able to produce.
This is really bizarre. I have no idea how the pressure could have gotten up that high. The inlet pressure at the main is 30 PSI and the pump only pushes that up to 90. Somehow we're getting an extra 40 PSI from somewhere, and it's getting past the PRV, which is set to 65 PSI and is supposed to be good up to at least 150 PSI on the inlet.
The only thing I can think of is that we have an air bubble trapped somewhere in a hot water line. Maybe the air is heating up, expanding, and compressing the water in the pipes in the house. It seems pretty farfetched, but that the pump could suddenly produce twice the pressure that it normally (and that this would coincide with a failure of the PRV) seems pretty farfetched too.
As the King of Siam would say, is a puzzlement.
If anyone has any idea what might be going on here please let me know before my pipes burst.
Monday, November 28, 2005
ID and economics
Just happened to stumble, (by way of this interesting essay) onto a piece that talks about the parallels between Intelligent Design in biology and socialism/communism in economics. Worthwhile reading.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
The God Who Wasn't There
... is the title of a documentary film taking a skeptical look at Christianity. It's pretty well done, and worthwhile viewing for anyone interested in dipping a toe into the waters of religious scholarship. (Warning: it can be hazardous to your faith.)
Becoming one with the pipes
It's been a while since I posted anything here, mainly because my time has been occupied dealing with some broken plumbing in our house. We have low water pressure coming in from the main so the builder installed a Grundfos MQ booster pump. Alas, the MQ has a few quirks, not least of which is that it is not adjustable and produces about 95 PSI. So when you turn on a tap in our house it starts out as a trickle, and then transforms into a gushing torrent.
The situation came to a head, so to speak, when a few weeks ago the plastic (!) fitting that attaches the outflow pipe to the pump failed, resulting in a rather spectacular geyser of water at the side of our house.
I went through half a dozen different plumbers, plumbing supply shops, and don't even know how many web pages to try to figure out what to do about it. Everyone was telling me something different. Some said I needed a different kind of pump. Others said, no, the MQ is top of the line, you need a pressure regulator. Still others said I don't need to do anything, 95 PSI is not too high.
I finally decided to go with the pressure regulator since that seemed to be the least disruptive solution. Again I had the very devil of a time finding someone who would do the work for me. There must be an awful lot of demand for plumbing services in Southern California. I actually had one come out and spend an hour evaluating the situation and then never even got back to me with an estimate. Go figure.
If you want something done right you've got to do it yourself. So I got myself a propane torch, some lead-free solder, a can of water soluble flux and a pile of copper fittings and installed the damn thing myself. Here's the result:
It looks quite good (if I do say so myself), and it doesn't leak (well, not much). But mainly the pressure in the house is now down to a more reasonable 65 PSI. It feels good to get something like that done.
The situation came to a head, so to speak, when a few weeks ago the plastic (!) fitting that attaches the outflow pipe to the pump failed, resulting in a rather spectacular geyser of water at the side of our house.
I went through half a dozen different plumbers, plumbing supply shops, and don't even know how many web pages to try to figure out what to do about it. Everyone was telling me something different. Some said I needed a different kind of pump. Others said, no, the MQ is top of the line, you need a pressure regulator. Still others said I don't need to do anything, 95 PSI is not too high.
I finally decided to go with the pressure regulator since that seemed to be the least disruptive solution. Again I had the very devil of a time finding someone who would do the work for me. There must be an awful lot of demand for plumbing services in Southern California. I actually had one come out and spend an hour evaluating the situation and then never even got back to me with an estimate. Go figure.
If you want something done right you've got to do it yourself. So I got myself a propane torch, some lead-free solder, a can of water soluble flux and a pile of copper fittings and installed the damn thing myself. Here's the result:
It looks quite good (if I do say so myself), and it doesn't leak (well, not much). But mainly the pressure in the house is now down to a more reasonable 65 PSI. It feels good to get something like that done.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Where are the good guys?
So Saddam didn't use chemical weapons during Desert Storm (because he didn't have any) but now it appears that we did. Not that this should come as too much of a surprise in the wake of Abu Ghraib and the ongoing opposition by the Bush Administration to the McCain amendment to outlaw torture.
It's official
The International Space Stations is now officially useless. (It's been unofficially useless pretty much since its inception.)
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Now why didn't I think of that?
I'm not quite sure whether this is an indication of how badly screwed up the patent system is in this country, or a brilliant idea that I wish I had thought of.
A method of doing business includes: ascertaining an invention record; identifying an inventor; estimating a cost to breaking the invention record; indicating to a sponsor that the inventor intends to invent sufficiently many inventions to break the invention record; providing evidence to the sponsor that the inventor is capable of inventing sufficiently many inventions to break the invention record; and inciting the sponsor to pay for at least a portion of the cost at least in part by offering to the sponsor at least one of: at least a portion of royalty rights relating to the inventions; and at least a portion of media rights relating to the inventor.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Saletan does it again
Who needs to debunk Intelligent Design when we have William Saletan to do it for us?
Friday, October 14, 2005
Stoner's revenge
I've long been convinced, mainly after reading this book, that the national hysteria about marijuana is just that. Now there's a new Canadian study to back me up:
While most addictive drugs, legal or illegal, have been proven to slow down or inhibit the growth of brain cells, a new study shows that marijuana might do just the opposite.
It might still be too early to claim pot smoking makes people smarter, but a new study from the University of Saskatchewan shows that some of the ingredients that make up marijuana can actually stimulate brain cell growth
While most addictive drugs, legal or illegal, have been proven to slow down or inhibit the growth of brain cells, a new study shows that marijuana might do just the opposite.
It might still be too early to claim pot smoking makes people smarter, but a new study from the University of Saskatchewan shows that some of the ingredients that make up marijuana can actually stimulate brain cell growth
Friday, October 07, 2005
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