Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Sam Harris finally gets it right!
Looks like Sam Harris may have saved me from having to write the followup post to "How material wealth leads to spiritual poverty." Required reading.
Monday, October 01, 2007
If the shoe fits
As I noted before, sometimes the hardest things to explain are the ones that are self-evident to you. So it seems to be with Michael Medved's apologia for slavery. Denis Bider, who usually strikes me as a clear-thinking individual, rose to Medved's defense when I obliquely accused Medved of trying to roll the clock back to 1950. It seemed obvious to me that Medved's position was thinly disguised bigotry of the basest sort, but apparently this is not evident to everyone. So herewith a detailed critique of Medved's piece:
Those who want to discredit the United States and to deny our role as history’s most powerful and pre-eminent force for freedom, goodness and human dignity invariably focus on America’s bloody past as a slave-holding nation.
Note that Medved starts out by tacitly assuming that the only possible motive someone might have for focusing on America's bloody past as a slave-holding nation is that they "want to discredit the United States and to deny our role as history’s most powerful and pre-eminent force for freedom, goodness and human dignity" as if this is the most likely reason for anyone to be paying attention to this little historical incident.
Unfortunately, the current mania for exaggerating America’s culpability for the horrors of slavery bears no more connection to reality than the old, discredited tendency to deny that the U.S. bore any blame at all.
What "mania" and what "exaggerations" exactly? He doesn't cite any examples of who he considers manic, or what he considers current. But the idea of reparations if fairly contemporary, and later context seems to indicate that that's what he's talking about, so we'll go with that as a working assumption.
No, it’s not true that the “peculiar institution” featured kind-hearted, paternalistic masters and happy, dancing field-hands, any more than it’s true that America displayed unparalleled barbarity or enjoyed disproportionate benefit from kidnapping and exploiting innocent Africans.
Ah. So just because America's barbarity was not "unparalleled" or the benefits gained were not "disproportionate" that makes it OK?
SLAVERY WAS AN ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL INSTITUTION, NOT A DISTINCTIVELY AMERICAN INNOVATION.
Granted, but so what? Since when did "but everyone else was doing it too" become a valid excuse according to conservative morality?
[Lengthy accounting of other slaveholding nations snipped.]
In other words, when taking the prodigious and unspeakably cruel Islamic enslavements into the equation, at least 97% of all African men, women and children who were kidnapped, sold, and taken from their homes, were sent somewhere other than the British colonies of North America. In this context there is no historical basis to claim that the United States bears primary, or even prominent guilt for the depredations of centuries of African slavery.
On this reasoning a murderer should be able to argue: "Hitler, Stalin, etc. have killed countless millions. I only killed one person. Therefore I do not bear primary or even prominent guilt for my actions." How well do you think that would fly in a Texas courtroom?
SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS.
The same argument applies: "It took only a second for me to pull the trigger, your honor. So I was only a murder for a tiny fraction of my life." To say nothing of the fact that the claim isn't even true:
The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution put a formal end to the institution of slavery 89 years after the birth of the Republic; 142 years have passed since this welcome emancipation.
Why start counting from "the birth of the Republic"? The slaves surely didn't. And to draw the analogy back to to the individual case, this is analogous to a murderer claiming that all the people he killed before he turned 18 ought not to count. Or even to accept Medved's accounting, it's analogous to a serial killer who goes on a 9-year-long murder spree followed by a 14-year retirement and saying that everything is now square.
Moreover, the importation of slaves came to an end in 1808 (as provided by the Constitution), a mere 32 years after independence
Ah, so because at that point we were only enslaving people born here that somehow makes it better? That seems like some might odd balancing of the moral scales to me.
Slavery had been outlawed in most states decades before the Civil War.
That is simply false. There were brief windows during which free states outnumber the slave states, but great pains were taken to try to keep the number of slave and free states the same. The ultimate failure of this effort is one of the things that the civil war was fought over.
Even in the South, more than 80% of the white population never owned slaves.
So because only one in five people decides to murder people that makes it OK to make murder legal?
Given the fact that the majority of today’s non-black Americans descend from immigrants who arrived in this country after the War Between the States, only a tiny percentage of today’s white citizens – perhaps as few as 5% -- bear any authentic sort of generational guilt for the exploitation of slave labor.
Perhaps as few? Is there any basis for this number, or did Medved just pull it out of his ass?
Of course, a hundred years of Jim Crow laws, economic oppression and indefensible discrimination followed the theoretical emancipation of the slaves, but those harsh realities raise different issues from those connected to the long-ago history of bondage.
They do? Why? Note that I have elided nothing here. That is Medved's sole mention of Jim Crow in the entire piece. No elaboration on why "those harsh realities raise different issues." It seems to me that those harsh realities raise exactly the same issues: an entire class of people was systematically denied basic human rights and equal treatment under the law. The difference between slavery and Jim Crow is a difference of degree, not of kind.
THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL: LIVE SLAVES WERE VALUABLE BUT DEAD CAPTIVES BROUGHT NO PROFIT.
So just because it wasn't your intent to kill people that somehow makes it less heinous that they died as a result of your reprehensible actions? How exactly do you square that with the case of Kenneth Foster who narrowly escaped being put to death by the state of Texas not for killing someone but merely for driving someone else after they had killed someone?
[Details of slavery atrocities snipped]
Here, the popular, facile comparisons between slavery and the Holocaust quickly break down: the Nazis occasionally benefited from the slave labor of their victims, but the ultimate purpose of facilities like Auschwitz involved mass death, not profit or productivity. For slave owners and slave dealers in the New World, however, death of your human property cost you money, just as the death of your domestic animals would cause financial damage. And as with their horses and cows, slave owners took pride and care in breeding as many new slaves as possible. Rather than eliminating the slave population, profit-oriented masters wanted to produce as many new, young slaves as they could. This hardly represents a compassionate or decent way to treat your fellow human beings, but it does amount to the very opposite of genocide.
[Emphasis added.]
At this point my ability to remain calm breaks down. Anyone who cannot see the absurdity in this is beyond help. Just because you intended to treat people like animals and end up killing a lot of them only inadvertantly does not mean that your actions were "the very opposite of genocide." Whether or not it was genocide is perhaps debatable. That it was every bit as morally reprehensible and unforgivable as genocide is not.
As David Brion Davis reports, slave holders in North America developed formidable expertise in keeping their “bondsmen” alive and healthy enough to produce abundant offspring. The British colonists took pride in slaves who “developed an almost unique and rapid rate of population growth, freeing the later United States from a need for further African imports.”
Ye gods, can Medved not hear himself? This is what he cites to make the case that "Those who want to discredit the United States and to deny our role as history’s most powerful and pre-eminent force for freedom, goodness and human dignity invariably focus on America’s bloody past as a slave-holding nation"? Medved is essentially, saying, "We didn't intend to kill the slaves, we just intended to breed them like cattle. What you bleeding-hearts getting so worked up about?"
IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES.
At the risk of getting tiresome (because I want to be absolutely clear that NONE of Medved's arguments are even remotely valid): because they didn't make money that makes it OK?
[Details of the negative ecnomic consequences of slavery snipped.]
WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION. In the course of scarcely more than a century following the emergence of the American Republic, men of conscience, principle and unflagging energy succeeded in abolishing slavery not just in the New World but in all nations of the West.
The United States was the last Western nation to abolish slavery, and the only one that had to fight a civil war to do it. I predict that if the United States ever switches to the metric system Medved will write an essay about how we deserve special credit for that too.
THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA.
It is hard to imagine a more condescending claim. Even if it were true, so what? Isn't it supposed to be a conservative tenet that people should be free to choose their own course in life even if it results in undesirable consequences? If I kidnap a child of poor parents, should it be a defense that I was able to give that child a better life than his parents would have been able to?
The idea of reparations rests on the notion of making up to the descendants of slaves for the incalculable damage done to their family status and welfare by the enslavement of generations of their ancestors. In theory, reparationists want society to repair the wrongs of the past by putting today’s African-Americans into the sort of situation they would have enjoyed if their forebears hadn’t been kidnapped, sold and transported across the ocean. Unfortunately, to bring American blacks in line with their cousins who the slave-traders left behind in Africa would require a drastic reduction in their wealth, living standards, and economic and political opportunities.
Imagine that I kidnap a child of poor parents, an academic underachiever with no prospects, and hack off all their limbs. Imagine further that they manage to escape, sell their life story to Hollywood, and make more money than they ever would have been able to make had I not kidnapped them. Imagine further that because of my power and influence I am able to escape prosecution for my crime. (I know that kind of thing never happens, but bear with me here.) Suppose that the kid brings a civil suit against me for pain and suffering. Should I be able to use as an argument in my defense that the kid is better off because of what I did to him?
No honest observer can deny or dismiss this nation’s long record of racism and injustice
And yet that is exactly what Medved is doing. Well, if the shoe fits...
If we sought to erase the impact of slavery on specific black families, we would need to obliterate the spectacular economic progress made by those families (and by US citizens in general) over the last 100 years.
That assumes that no Africans would have emigrated to this country if it had not been for slavery, a dubious assumption at best. The rest of this argumnt thus becomes a non-sequitur, and I have elided it.
In short, politically correct assumptions about America’s entanglement with slavery lack any sense of depth, perspective or context.
No, it is Medved's straw-man that lacks any sense of depth, perspective, or context. The not-so-thinly veiled subtext of Medved's position is simply this: everything is fine, except for blacks being a little too uppity, along with the white liberals who support them, a class of people which in the 1950's were referred to as "nigger lovers."
If the shoe fits.
Those who want to discredit the United States and to deny our role as history’s most powerful and pre-eminent force for freedom, goodness and human dignity invariably focus on America’s bloody past as a slave-holding nation.
Note that Medved starts out by tacitly assuming that the only possible motive someone might have for focusing on America's bloody past as a slave-holding nation is that they "want to discredit the United States and to deny our role as history’s most powerful and pre-eminent force for freedom, goodness and human dignity" as if this is the most likely reason for anyone to be paying attention to this little historical incident.
Unfortunately, the current mania for exaggerating America’s culpability for the horrors of slavery bears no more connection to reality than the old, discredited tendency to deny that the U.S. bore any blame at all.
What "mania" and what "exaggerations" exactly? He doesn't cite any examples of who he considers manic, or what he considers current. But the idea of reparations if fairly contemporary, and later context seems to indicate that that's what he's talking about, so we'll go with that as a working assumption.
No, it’s not true that the “peculiar institution” featured kind-hearted, paternalistic masters and happy, dancing field-hands, any more than it’s true that America displayed unparalleled barbarity or enjoyed disproportionate benefit from kidnapping and exploiting innocent Africans.
Ah. So just because America's barbarity was not "unparalleled" or the benefits gained were not "disproportionate" that makes it OK?
SLAVERY WAS AN ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL INSTITUTION, NOT A DISTINCTIVELY AMERICAN INNOVATION.
Granted, but so what? Since when did "but everyone else was doing it too" become a valid excuse according to conservative morality?
[Lengthy accounting of other slaveholding nations snipped.]
In other words, when taking the prodigious and unspeakably cruel Islamic enslavements into the equation, at least 97% of all African men, women and children who were kidnapped, sold, and taken from their homes, were sent somewhere other than the British colonies of North America. In this context there is no historical basis to claim that the United States bears primary, or even prominent guilt for the depredations of centuries of African slavery.
On this reasoning a murderer should be able to argue: "Hitler, Stalin, etc. have killed countless millions. I only killed one person. Therefore I do not bear primary or even prominent guilt for my actions." How well do you think that would fly in a Texas courtroom?
SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS.
The same argument applies: "It took only a second for me to pull the trigger, your honor. So I was only a murder for a tiny fraction of my life." To say nothing of the fact that the claim isn't even true:
The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution put a formal end to the institution of slavery 89 years after the birth of the Republic; 142 years have passed since this welcome emancipation.
Why start counting from "the birth of the Republic"? The slaves surely didn't. And to draw the analogy back to to the individual case, this is analogous to a murderer claiming that all the people he killed before he turned 18 ought not to count. Or even to accept Medved's accounting, it's analogous to a serial killer who goes on a 9-year-long murder spree followed by a 14-year retirement and saying that everything is now square.
Moreover, the importation of slaves came to an end in 1808 (as provided by the Constitution), a mere 32 years after independence
Ah, so because at that point we were only enslaving people born here that somehow makes it better? That seems like some might odd balancing of the moral scales to me.
Slavery had been outlawed in most states decades before the Civil War.
That is simply false. There were brief windows during which free states outnumber the slave states, but great pains were taken to try to keep the number of slave and free states the same. The ultimate failure of this effort is one of the things that the civil war was fought over.
Even in the South, more than 80% of the white population never owned slaves.
So because only one in five people decides to murder people that makes it OK to make murder legal?
Given the fact that the majority of today’s non-black Americans descend from immigrants who arrived in this country after the War Between the States, only a tiny percentage of today’s white citizens – perhaps as few as 5% -- bear any authentic sort of generational guilt for the exploitation of slave labor.
Perhaps as few? Is there any basis for this number, or did Medved just pull it out of his ass?
Of course, a hundred years of Jim Crow laws, economic oppression and indefensible discrimination followed the theoretical emancipation of the slaves, but those harsh realities raise different issues from those connected to the long-ago history of bondage.
They do? Why? Note that I have elided nothing here. That is Medved's sole mention of Jim Crow in the entire piece. No elaboration on why "those harsh realities raise different issues." It seems to me that those harsh realities raise exactly the same issues: an entire class of people was systematically denied basic human rights and equal treatment under the law. The difference between slavery and Jim Crow is a difference of degree, not of kind.
THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL: LIVE SLAVES WERE VALUABLE BUT DEAD CAPTIVES BROUGHT NO PROFIT.
So just because it wasn't your intent to kill people that somehow makes it less heinous that they died as a result of your reprehensible actions? How exactly do you square that with the case of Kenneth Foster who narrowly escaped being put to death by the state of Texas not for killing someone but merely for driving someone else after they had killed someone?
[Details of slavery atrocities snipped]
Here, the popular, facile comparisons between slavery and the Holocaust quickly break down: the Nazis occasionally benefited from the slave labor of their victims, but the ultimate purpose of facilities like Auschwitz involved mass death, not profit or productivity. For slave owners and slave dealers in the New World, however, death of your human property cost you money, just as the death of your domestic animals would cause financial damage. And as with their horses and cows, slave owners took pride and care in breeding as many new slaves as possible. Rather than eliminating the slave population, profit-oriented masters wanted to produce as many new, young slaves as they could. This hardly represents a compassionate or decent way to treat your fellow human beings, but it does amount to the very opposite of genocide.
[Emphasis added.]
At this point my ability to remain calm breaks down. Anyone who cannot see the absurdity in this is beyond help. Just because you intended to treat people like animals and end up killing a lot of them only inadvertantly does not mean that your actions were "the very opposite of genocide." Whether or not it was genocide is perhaps debatable. That it was every bit as morally reprehensible and unforgivable as genocide is not.
As David Brion Davis reports, slave holders in North America developed formidable expertise in keeping their “bondsmen” alive and healthy enough to produce abundant offspring. The British colonists took pride in slaves who “developed an almost unique and rapid rate of population growth, freeing the later United States from a need for further African imports.”
Ye gods, can Medved not hear himself? This is what he cites to make the case that "Those who want to discredit the United States and to deny our role as history’s most powerful and pre-eminent force for freedom, goodness and human dignity invariably focus on America’s bloody past as a slave-holding nation"? Medved is essentially, saying, "We didn't intend to kill the slaves, we just intended to breed them like cattle. What you bleeding-hearts getting so worked up about?"
IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES.
At the risk of getting tiresome (because I want to be absolutely clear that NONE of Medved's arguments are even remotely valid): because they didn't make money that makes it OK?
[Details of the negative ecnomic consequences of slavery snipped.]
WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION. In the course of scarcely more than a century following the emergence of the American Republic, men of conscience, principle and unflagging energy succeeded in abolishing slavery not just in the New World but in all nations of the West.
The United States was the last Western nation to abolish slavery, and the only one that had to fight a civil war to do it. I predict that if the United States ever switches to the metric system Medved will write an essay about how we deserve special credit for that too.
THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA.
It is hard to imagine a more condescending claim. Even if it were true, so what? Isn't it supposed to be a conservative tenet that people should be free to choose their own course in life even if it results in undesirable consequences? If I kidnap a child of poor parents, should it be a defense that I was able to give that child a better life than his parents would have been able to?
The idea of reparations rests on the notion of making up to the descendants of slaves for the incalculable damage done to their family status and welfare by the enslavement of generations of their ancestors. In theory, reparationists want society to repair the wrongs of the past by putting today’s African-Americans into the sort of situation they would have enjoyed if their forebears hadn’t been kidnapped, sold and transported across the ocean. Unfortunately, to bring American blacks in line with their cousins who the slave-traders left behind in Africa would require a drastic reduction in their wealth, living standards, and economic and political opportunities.
Imagine that I kidnap a child of poor parents, an academic underachiever with no prospects, and hack off all their limbs. Imagine further that they manage to escape, sell their life story to Hollywood, and make more money than they ever would have been able to make had I not kidnapped them. Imagine further that because of my power and influence I am able to escape prosecution for my crime. (I know that kind of thing never happens, but bear with me here.) Suppose that the kid brings a civil suit against me for pain and suffering. Should I be able to use as an argument in my defense that the kid is better off because of what I did to him?
No honest observer can deny or dismiss this nation’s long record of racism and injustice
And yet that is exactly what Medved is doing. Well, if the shoe fits...
If we sought to erase the impact of slavery on specific black families, we would need to obliterate the spectacular economic progress made by those families (and by US citizens in general) over the last 100 years.
That assumes that no Africans would have emigrated to this country if it had not been for slavery, a dubious assumption at best. The rest of this argumnt thus becomes a non-sequitur, and I have elided it.
In short, politically correct assumptions about America’s entanglement with slavery lack any sense of depth, perspective or context.
No, it is Medved's straw-man that lacks any sense of depth, perspective, or context. The not-so-thinly veiled subtext of Medved's position is simply this: everything is fine, except for blacks being a little too uppity, along with the white liberals who support them, a class of people which in the 1950's were referred to as "nigger lovers."
If the shoe fits.
Conservatives show their true colors
Michael Medved says that slavery wasn't so bad after all. No, he really does. And not just in passing, the whole essay is an extensive apologia (NOT an apology) for slavery in the U.S.
I am appalled, but I am not surprised. If you really take the hard-core conservative position seriously then this is where you end up, back in the good old days, when family values were strong, when you could still pray in school, display the Commandments on public property, and lynch those uppity niggers.
There is no reason to believe today’s African-Americans would be better off if their ancestors had remained in Africa.
And to think that some blacks actually want reparations for slavery. Can you imagine? Those ungrateful bastards. Slavery might actually have been good for them and all they can do is complain, complain, complain. Really, we ought to just ship 'em all back to Africa, and those white liberal nigger-lovers along with 'em.
I am appalled, but I am not surprised. If you really take the hard-core conservative position seriously then this is where you end up, back in the good old days, when family values were strong, when you could still pray in school, display the Commandments on public property, and lynch those uppity niggers.
There is no reason to believe today’s African-Americans would be better off if their ancestors had remained in Africa.
And to think that some blacks actually want reparations for slavery. Can you imagine? Those ungrateful bastards. Slavery might actually have been good for them and all they can do is complain, complain, complain. Really, we ought to just ship 'em all back to Africa, and those white liberal nigger-lovers along with 'em.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
More irony from the Pharisees of reason
If I only had a nickel for every time one of the Atheist Triumvarate (Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins) said something ironic. The latest comes from Sam Harris:
"Reason is a compulsion, not a choice. Just as one cannot intentionally startle oneself, one cannot knowingly believe a proposition on bad evidence."
Well, Sam, if that were really true, then why do so many people believe in God? There are logically only three possibilities:
1. All those people who claim to believe in God don't really believe it (which immediately begs the question of what motivates people to blow themselves up in God's name if not belief).
2. There is in fact good evidence for believing in God.
3. Your claim is wrong.
It seems like a no-brainer to me. Just because reason is a compulsion for Sam Harris doesn't mean it's a compulsion for everyone. It's pretty clear to me that many -- possibly most -- people are quite capable of self-delusion about a wide variety of matters. Moreover, self-delusion can actually be beneficial as the placebo effect demonstrates. Not only that, but there are evolutionary arguments that self-delusion actually has survival value, which means that evolutionary theory itself refutes Harris's claim. (More on that in an upcoming post.)
I despair when I read Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins. The world needs reason now more than ever. It is a tragedy that logic's greatest advocates are blind to their own irrationality.
"Reason is a compulsion, not a choice. Just as one cannot intentionally startle oneself, one cannot knowingly believe a proposition on bad evidence."
Well, Sam, if that were really true, then why do so many people believe in God? There are logically only three possibilities:
1. All those people who claim to believe in God don't really believe it (which immediately begs the question of what motivates people to blow themselves up in God's name if not belief).
2. There is in fact good evidence for believing in God.
3. Your claim is wrong.
It seems like a no-brainer to me. Just because reason is a compulsion for Sam Harris doesn't mean it's a compulsion for everyone. It's pretty clear to me that many -- possibly most -- people are quite capable of self-delusion about a wide variety of matters. Moreover, self-delusion can actually be beneficial as the placebo effect demonstrates. Not only that, but there are evolutionary arguments that self-delusion actually has survival value, which means that evolutionary theory itself refutes Harris's claim. (More on that in an upcoming post.)
I despair when I read Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins. The world needs reason now more than ever. It is a tragedy that logic's greatest advocates are blind to their own irrationality.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
How material wealth leads to spiritual poverty
I regularly rail against the rhetorical tactics of strident atheists like Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins because they fail to realize that religion serves a legitimate human need, and that until atheism offers up a competitive substitute for that need it will fail to win hearts and minds. Yes, HH&D's books are bestsellers, but I think they're just preaching to the already unconverted. There is little evidence that they are actually winning over many people who were not already predisposed to rationality. Moreover, their conflation of relgion and fundamentalism is a dangerous fallacy. These are two distinct phenomena, and only one of them (fundamentalism) needs to be combatted.
The need that religion serves is the need to feel that life has a purpose, the need to feel that one is part of something greater than onesself, the need to quell existential angst. Let me concede up front that this need is wholly irrational, but just because something is irrational doesn't mean it isn't real.
When I was in college I had a serious relationship with a girl who lived 2000 miles away (I was in Virginia, she was in California). The rational part of me recognized that it was silly to expect monogamy in such a situation (to say nothing of the fact that I wanted to keep my options open) and I told her so. One day she told me that she had had oral sex with another man. The rational part of me said that this was no big deal. But deep in the dark evolutionary recesses of my brain there arose a powerful and completely unexpected emotion: jealousy. It took me completely by surprise and almost completely paralyzed me for days. At one point I tried to call her, but she was out, which of course made things worse. This was back in the 80's, before cell phones, before AIDS, before voice mail. I sat on the floor literally for several hours listening to the phone ring and ring and ring and ring and ring and ring and...
All the while, part of my brain knew that I was severely overreacting. But simply knowing that didn't make the feeling, or its physical impact on my life, any less real.
Of course, jealousy is irrational only from the point of view of a college student trying to carry on a long-distance relationship. From the point of view of my genes trying to compel me to help them reproduce it makes perfect sense. So too with existential angst. For most of their evolutionary history, humans existed at subsistence levels, always on the hairy edge of starvation. In such an environment, labor is a precious and valuable resource. Any extra hands available to hunt or gather or till or harvest contribute directly to survival. Such an environment selects heavily for instincts that in this modern age we would call a Puritan work ethic, and a belief that human life (which is to say, labor) is precious.
The advent of economic plenty brought about by the indusrial revolution changed everything. Suddenly everything became cheap including labor. It was suddenly possibly for members of the clan to engage in activities not directly related to the production of food without putting the other members in peril of starvation. People could become scholars or poets or even outright parasites (c.f. Paris Hilton) without being strongly selected against, at least not by evolution.
Moreover, labor, once a precious resource, became a commodity. Which is to say that people became a commodity. With division of labor, standardization and specialization, humans were essentially turned into machines, at least in the workplace. All this was enormously beneficial in societal and evolutionary terms (as evidenced by the fact that humans are now overrunning the entire planet) but from the point of view of the human instincts and emotions evolved during leaner times it was a disaster. Our genes evolved a wide variety of dirty tricks to make us want to work hard, to be useful, to be part of something greater than ourselves, to feel like our life had a purpose, to believe that God Himself wanted us to be fruitful and multiply. Barely an eyeblink ago in evolutionary terms these instincts had real survival value. Today they don't, but the gears of evolution turn slowly and those instincts and emotions are still with us, and no less real and impactful on our lives than jealousy.
The reality of these instincts is manifest -- there is no other way to explain the rise of fundamentalism in the modern world. Many authors have written about this, including Karen Armstrong and Michael Lerner. The modern resurgence of fundamentalism is an instrinctive response to the dehumanizing effects of modern industrial society. We evolved to believe that human life is precious because we evolved in a world where that belief had survival value.
Of course, DD&H understand all this. (This is actually the central thesis of "The God Delusion.") What they do not understand is that they are outliers. Random variation naturally produces some people in whom these instincts are less strong or even absent altogether, and with the old evolutionary pressures removed these outliers begint to survive and become more common. But DD&H apparently fail to realize that the vast majority of people cannot simply switch off their instinctive desire for meaning, community, and purpose, even if that desire has to be fulfilled by beliefs that are objectively fictional.
The objective fact of the matter is that human life is no longer precious, which is just another way of saying that labor is cheap. Most people are confronted with this harsh reality every day when they go to work. Modern industrialism has transformed humans from precious individuals to interchangeable components. Evolutionarily it has been a great success. We can now, for example, afford to slaughter each other wholesale with nary a blip on the exponential population curve. But evolution works slowly, and those not-so-old instincts are still with us, and it is very, very hard to shake off the burden of instinct. These feelings are wired deep into the dark recesses of our brain, and logic is a poor weapon against the power of evolution.
Until DD&H realize that for many people religion is just as much a compulsion as reason is for them they will continue to fail to win hearts and minds. And that is a damn shame.
The need that religion serves is the need to feel that life has a purpose, the need to feel that one is part of something greater than onesself, the need to quell existential angst. Let me concede up front that this need is wholly irrational, but just because something is irrational doesn't mean it isn't real.
When I was in college I had a serious relationship with a girl who lived 2000 miles away (I was in Virginia, she was in California). The rational part of me recognized that it was silly to expect monogamy in such a situation (to say nothing of the fact that I wanted to keep my options open) and I told her so. One day she told me that she had had oral sex with another man. The rational part of me said that this was no big deal. But deep in the dark evolutionary recesses of my brain there arose a powerful and completely unexpected emotion: jealousy. It took me completely by surprise and almost completely paralyzed me for days. At one point I tried to call her, but she was out, which of course made things worse. This was back in the 80's, before cell phones, before AIDS, before voice mail. I sat on the floor literally for several hours listening to the phone ring and ring and ring and ring and ring and ring and...
All the while, part of my brain knew that I was severely overreacting. But simply knowing that didn't make the feeling, or its physical impact on my life, any less real.
Of course, jealousy is irrational only from the point of view of a college student trying to carry on a long-distance relationship. From the point of view of my genes trying to compel me to help them reproduce it makes perfect sense. So too with existential angst. For most of their evolutionary history, humans existed at subsistence levels, always on the hairy edge of starvation. In such an environment, labor is a precious and valuable resource. Any extra hands available to hunt or gather or till or harvest contribute directly to survival. Such an environment selects heavily for instincts that in this modern age we would call a Puritan work ethic, and a belief that human life (which is to say, labor) is precious.
The advent of economic plenty brought about by the indusrial revolution changed everything. Suddenly everything became cheap including labor. It was suddenly possibly for members of the clan to engage in activities not directly related to the production of food without putting the other members in peril of starvation. People could become scholars or poets or even outright parasites (c.f. Paris Hilton) without being strongly selected against, at least not by evolution.
Moreover, labor, once a precious resource, became a commodity. Which is to say that people became a commodity. With division of labor, standardization and specialization, humans were essentially turned into machines, at least in the workplace. All this was enormously beneficial in societal and evolutionary terms (as evidenced by the fact that humans are now overrunning the entire planet) but from the point of view of the human instincts and emotions evolved during leaner times it was a disaster. Our genes evolved a wide variety of dirty tricks to make us want to work hard, to be useful, to be part of something greater than ourselves, to feel like our life had a purpose, to believe that God Himself wanted us to be fruitful and multiply. Barely an eyeblink ago in evolutionary terms these instincts had real survival value. Today they don't, but the gears of evolution turn slowly and those instincts and emotions are still with us, and no less real and impactful on our lives than jealousy.
The reality of these instincts is manifest -- there is no other way to explain the rise of fundamentalism in the modern world. Many authors have written about this, including Karen Armstrong and Michael Lerner. The modern resurgence of fundamentalism is an instrinctive response to the dehumanizing effects of modern industrial society. We evolved to believe that human life is precious because we evolved in a world where that belief had survival value.
Of course, DD&H understand all this. (This is actually the central thesis of "The God Delusion.") What they do not understand is that they are outliers. Random variation naturally produces some people in whom these instincts are less strong or even absent altogether, and with the old evolutionary pressures removed these outliers begint to survive and become more common. But DD&H apparently fail to realize that the vast majority of people cannot simply switch off their instinctive desire for meaning, community, and purpose, even if that desire has to be fulfilled by beliefs that are objectively fictional.
The objective fact of the matter is that human life is no longer precious, which is just another way of saying that labor is cheap. Most people are confronted with this harsh reality every day when they go to work. Modern industrialism has transformed humans from precious individuals to interchangeable components. Evolutionarily it has been a great success. We can now, for example, afford to slaughter each other wholesale with nary a blip on the exponential population curve. But evolution works slowly, and those not-so-old instincts are still with us, and it is very, very hard to shake off the burden of instinct. These feelings are wired deep into the dark recesses of our brain, and logic is a poor weapon against the power of evolution.
Until DD&H realize that for many people religion is just as much a compulsion as reason is for them they will continue to fail to win hearts and minds. And that is a damn shame.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
The acid test
The Bush administration's rhetoric on Iraq is about to be put to a very stark experimental test. The administration says that its goal in Iraq is to establish a stable, sovereign democratic government, which implies that it wants to establish the rule of law. Well, the Iraqi government is about to file criminal charges against employees of Blackwater in connection with the recent shootings of 20 innocent civilians. The employees in question are still in Iraq.
Of course the idea that the Iraqi government is anything even resembling sovereign is a transparent sham. The U.S. has already strongarmed the Iraqis into rescinding their earlier decision to expel Blackwater from the country altogether. Now this latest attempt by the Iraqis to secure justice for their dead will determine just how transparent the sham is. If there is even the tiniest shread of truth to the administration's rhetoric, the merest vestige of honor left in the United States of America, then we will allow the prosecutions to proceed whether or not we believe that the employees in question are guilty. If we are truly fighting for democracy and the rule of law then those Blackwater employees must face trial. That is what it means to follow the rule of law. If, on the other hand, we are fighting for something else (did someone say oil?) and the principle that the United States is the world's last superpower and we can do whatever the fuck we want then those employees will be spirited out of Iraq back to their comfy home in the good ole U.S. of A.
Care to guess which outcome my money is on?
Of course the idea that the Iraqi government is anything even resembling sovereign is a transparent sham. The U.S. has already strongarmed the Iraqis into rescinding their earlier decision to expel Blackwater from the country altogether. Now this latest attempt by the Iraqis to secure justice for their dead will determine just how transparent the sham is. If there is even the tiniest shread of truth to the administration's rhetoric, the merest vestige of honor left in the United States of America, then we will allow the prosecutions to proceed whether or not we believe that the employees in question are guilty. If we are truly fighting for democracy and the rule of law then those Blackwater employees must face trial. That is what it means to follow the rule of law. If, on the other hand, we are fighting for something else (did someone say oil?) and the principle that the United States is the world's last superpower and we can do whatever the fuck we want then those employees will be spirited out of Iraq back to their comfy home in the good ole U.S. of A.
Care to guess which outcome my money is on?
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Where's my tin foil hat?
I don't normally subscribe to conspiracy theories, but this is looking pretty frickin' weird.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Heil Kerry
Fascism is alive and well in the United States. A University of Florida student asked John Kerry a longwinded question. In response he was arrested and tasered while the spineless pussy in chief looked on and did nothing. John Kerry, you disgust me and make me ashamed to call myself an American.
UPDATE: Daily Kos has an eyewitness account with a different read on the situation. Personally, I'm skeptical. Yes, the guy was being obnoxious. But there were four cops. Surely they were capable of removing one student from the room without a taser? (No one should believe anything they read on Daily Kos anyway :-)
UPDATE: Daily Kos has an eyewitness account with a different read on the situation. Personally, I'm skeptical. Yes, the guy was being obnoxious. But there were four cops. Surely they were capable of removing one student from the room without a taser? (No one should believe anything they read on Daily Kos anyway :-)
Sunday, September 16, 2007
The Northwest Passage is open
The Northwest Passage is open for the first time in recorded history. Stan Rogers would be proud.
UPDATE: Turns out this story may not be all it's cracked up to be.
UPDATE: Turns out this story may not be all it's cracked up to be.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Questioning my own sanity
Every now and then I stumble across something that makes me question my own sanity, and realize just how tenuous a grasp we actually have on the past.
I started college in 1982. I stayed for two quarters before going to California for the first of two six-month-long co-op jobs at IBM's Cottle Road facility in San Jose. On the second of those jobs, in 1984, I rented a room from my then-girlfriend's grandmother in Los Gatos and commuted to work in a 1969 Dodge Dart which I bought for $1700 and named Emily after a Simon and Garfunkel song that I had recently learned to play on the guitar. ($1700 might seem like a lot to pay for a Dart, but Emily had a brand new metallic-blue paint job and a like-new interior. She was a real beauty, almost showroom condition. They don't make 'em like her any more.)
My rent included room and board, and Grandma Betty would make me dinner every evening. At the beginning of the summer she asked me if I liked avocados, which I said I did. So every night for six months she served me half an avocado with a little puddle of Girard's champagne salad dressing in the hollow where the pit had been. It was actually quite tasty, but after six months of non-stop avocados it was about a decade before I could bear to face one again.
I mention all these trivial details to show that I have, at least apparently, a pretty clear recall of the time and the events, even if many of them seem a bit surreal to me now. And one of the things that I can recall very clearly is spending a lot of time watching MTV, which was the hot new thing at the time. And one of my favorite videos was Roxette's "Joyride". Marie Fredriksson was so hot, and the song just made me want to dance. I must have watched that video three dozen times in the summer of 1984.
Except that Joyride wasn't released until 1990. And the video wasn't made until 1991. In fact, Roxette didn't even release their first album until 1986. So although I can remember all of these events with absolute clarity and I would swear on my mother's grave that all of these things actually happened, it can't possibly be true (unless someone has rewritten the history of Roxette, which seems exceedingly unlikely).
It gets even weirder: in 1991 I was living in Southern California, and as far as I can recall I didn't have cable TV, so there's no way I could have seen the video at the time it was ostensibly released. And yet I definitely did see the video. I just pulled it up on YouTube after not having seen it for God only knows how many years and it's pretty much exactly as I remember it.
I wonder how many other things I remember that couldn't possibly have happened.
I started college in 1982. I stayed for two quarters before going to California for the first of two six-month-long co-op jobs at IBM's Cottle Road facility in San Jose. On the second of those jobs, in 1984, I rented a room from my then-girlfriend's grandmother in Los Gatos and commuted to work in a 1969 Dodge Dart which I bought for $1700 and named Emily after a Simon and Garfunkel song that I had recently learned to play on the guitar. ($1700 might seem like a lot to pay for a Dart, but Emily had a brand new metallic-blue paint job and a like-new interior. She was a real beauty, almost showroom condition. They don't make 'em like her any more.)
My rent included room and board, and Grandma Betty would make me dinner every evening. At the beginning of the summer she asked me if I liked avocados, which I said I did. So every night for six months she served me half an avocado with a little puddle of Girard's champagne salad dressing in the hollow where the pit had been. It was actually quite tasty, but after six months of non-stop avocados it was about a decade before I could bear to face one again.
I mention all these trivial details to show that I have, at least apparently, a pretty clear recall of the time and the events, even if many of them seem a bit surreal to me now. And one of the things that I can recall very clearly is spending a lot of time watching MTV, which was the hot new thing at the time. And one of my favorite videos was Roxette's "Joyride". Marie Fredriksson was so hot, and the song just made me want to dance. I must have watched that video three dozen times in the summer of 1984.
Except that Joyride wasn't released until 1990. And the video wasn't made until 1991. In fact, Roxette didn't even release their first album until 1986. So although I can remember all of these events with absolute clarity and I would swear on my mother's grave that all of these things actually happened, it can't possibly be true (unless someone has rewritten the history of Roxette, which seems exceedingly unlikely).
It gets even weirder: in 1991 I was living in Southern California, and as far as I can recall I didn't have cable TV, so there's no way I could have seen the video at the time it was ostensibly released. And yet I definitely did see the video. I just pulled it up on YouTube after not having seen it for God only knows how many years and it's pretty much exactly as I remember it.
I wonder how many other things I remember that couldn't possibly have happened.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
The elephant in the environmentalist living room
A tip o' the hat to Daniel Engbar who found the courage to stand up and state the obvious, that if we really want to save the environment we have to stop having so many babies.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
The wrong headline
The Guardian has a story headlined George Bush insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. So why, six years ago, did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints to build a bomb? I think the headline writer got it wrong. The right headline would be, "Why is George Bush so confident that Iran is going to build a bomb? Because the Iranians got the information they need to do it on his watch."
Sunday, September 02, 2007
IAEA confirms the "peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear activities"
It's official, Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon. Of course, I predict that this won't stop the Bush administration from starting a war with Iran, they'll just ignore the report or find some other excuse.
I have never in my life wanted so much to be wrong.
UPDATE: The blogosphere is abuzz with speculation that an attack on Iran is imminent. So is the international press. But the mainstream U.S. press is completely silent about this as far as I can tell. So is the U.S. Congress. Some of the signs are looking quite ominous.
UPDATE2: Here's a good discussion of the monster SPY options trade and its implications.
I have never in my life wanted so much to be wrong.
UPDATE: The blogosphere is abuzz with speculation that an attack on Iran is imminent. So is the international press. But the mainstream U.S. press is completely silent about this as far as I can tell. So is the U.S. Congress. Some of the signs are looking quite ominous.
UPDATE2: Here's a good discussion of the monster SPY options trade and its implications.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Fighting the good fight at JPL
Part of me regrets no longer being at JPL so that I could join the fight against invasive background checks. Give 'em hell Dennis!
Spiritual bankruptcy defined
Ask and ye shall receive. Spiritual bankruptcy is when you are driven to "seek love in rank public bathroom stalls."
Dinosaurs, shminosaurs
On the recommendation of a fellow Xoogler I've been reading a truly excellent book by William Bernstein called "The Birth of Plenty : How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created". Although it's ostensibly about economics it relevantly touches on religion and philosophy as well. Bernstein argues (convincingly IMO) that scientific rationalism is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for economic growth and prosperity. (The other three necessary conditions are property rights, capital markets, and an efficient communication and transportation infrastructure.)
Berstein insightfully identifies the willingness to discard old ideas in favor of new ones as one of the defining characteristics of scientific rationalism, and indeed as the principal distinction between modern Western culture and all other human cultures throughout history. This is significant because if Bernstein is right (and it seems like a no-brainer to me, but read his book if you need to be convinced) then the potential dangers of fundamentalism go far beyond the fears of even the most paranoid among us. If Bernstein is right then the fundamentalist's rejection of scientific rationalism will lead us back to the economic dark ages just as surely as the Communist's rejection of private property did the same during the latter part of the 20th century. For that reason alone I believe that it is vitally important that fundamentalism be resisted by any means necessary.
I actually believe that there are fundamentalists who think that breaking the back of the modern capitalist economy would be a good thing, but I think these are a tiny, tiny minority. I think most fundamentalists -- certainly most Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. -- know in their heart of hearts that getting rid of science would be a Bad Thing all in all, hence the odd spactacles of so-called Creation Science and Intelligent Design, Al Quaeda recruiting on the Internet, and Pentacostals praying to God that their Power Point presentations will work properly.
The problem is that science is based on the premise that reality is the ultimate arbiter of Truth, and reality is a harsh taskmaster. You realy can't fool Mother Nature. That is why fundamentalists tend to focus on things like evolution where much of the scientific evidence is subtle or not readily accessible or even lost in the mists of time. Scientists (and I mean that with a capital "S") fall readily into the fundamentalists' rhetorical trap, which is one of the reasons that fundamentalism is gaining so much ground these days. Fundamentalism may not be correct, but fundamentalists are very, very good at making it feel as though it is. Fundamentalism has a much, much better marketing department than most of its competitors.
I have said it before but it bears repeating: I have no quarrel with religion, only with fundamentalism. I believe that religion serves a genuine human need, and the failure of atheists like Richard Dawkins to recognize this, let alone propose a credible alternative for fulfilling that need, is one of the reasons for the rise of fundamentalism. (Karen Armstrong thinks so too.)
One indication of the utter futility of rational debate when it comes to fundamentalism is the amount of effort spent on arguing about things like whether or not humans were contemporaneous with dinosaurs. If you're going to try to take Genesis seriously as an alternative scientific hypothesis you have much, much bigger worries than dinosaurs. Let's take a brief tour of Genesis, shall we?
In the beginning God created the heavans and the earth. And the earth was without form and void...
So... what shape was the earth at that point? Well, it didn't have a shape. That's what "without form" means. So what does it mean for the earth to have been created but not have a shape?
...and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
So earth didn't have a shape, but the waters still had a "face" for God to move upon. And how, exactly, does God "move"? I don't mean to ask by what mechanism God moves, I'm asking what it actually means for God to move. On the usual meaning of the word move it means to change location from one place to another. But that is only possible for a thing that has a definite location to begin with, and modern Christian fundamentalist dogma holds that God is everywhere at all times. So how can He possibly move?
We're not two verses in and already there are a host of questions that are perfectly legitimate to ask from a scientific point of view, but which are utterly unanswerable except by e.g. holding that words mean different things when they apply to God, at which points all bets are off. To quote Tom Stoppard, "The only point of using language at all is that words are taken to stand for certain thoughts and ideas and not for other thoughts and ideas."
And God said, "Let there be light" and there was light.
Where was the light coming from at this point? Remember, this is only the First Day, and the sun and stars don't get created until the Third Day.
And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Here in verse 5 we collide headlong against a scientific brick wall. What does it mean for there to be "evening" and "morning" in a universe where the earth has no shape and there is no sun?
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were above the firmament from the waters which were below the firmament. And God called the firmament Heaven.
Leaving aside the linguistic question of how God can create "heaven" on day 2 after already having created "the heavens" on day 1, this is quite possibly the most transparent indication that Genesis is just a bronze-age creation myth like any other. Bronze-age people thought that the sky was blue because it was full of water. Forget dinosaurs, where are the waters above the firmament?
There's so much just in the first chapter of Genesis which is utterly ridiculous from a scientific point of view that it is hard to know where to stop. God creates plants on day 3, but doesn't create the sun until day 4. The sun and the moon are called "two great lights" despite the fact that the moon is not a light, it's a big rock. The sun, moon and stars are created "to divide the light from the darkness" but the light was already divided from the darkness back in verse 4. And then we get to chapter 2 where the whole story is told over again, except this time man is created before the animals instead of after (the animals are created specifically to keep man company, but the plan doesn't work so God has to try again, at which point He creates Eve). As a scientific hypothesis, Genesis is utterly and transparently hopeless long, long before we ever get to Noah. It's not even a close call. And yet the arguments go on. And on and on and on and on and on.
The problem is not that Creationism is wrong, the problem is that it is wrong only from a particular point of view. Genesis is wrong from a scientific point of view, not from the point of view of faith. But Creationists are adept at flitting back and forth between these two points of view while the Scientists (and the scientists) are stuck in their Baconian and Popperian epistemologies. The success of science is so overwhelming that they cannot accept that there might be truth beyond science despite the fact that there is scientific evidence that this is in fact the case! The placebo effect, for example, is scientific proof that believing in things that aren't scientifically true can have materially beneficial effects.
Faith is a placebo, and I do not mean that in any sort of pejorative way. Placebos can be effective. Sometimes they are the most or even the only effective medicine available for certain maladies, and the modern world suffers from such maladies much more than atheists generally acknowledge. And in that regard atheists have their heads buried more deeply in the sand than the fundamentalists, with the net result that the fundamentalists are winning.
And as someone who enjoys the creature comforts that modern economies provide, that's bad. Really really bad.
Berstein insightfully identifies the willingness to discard old ideas in favor of new ones as one of the defining characteristics of scientific rationalism, and indeed as the principal distinction between modern Western culture and all other human cultures throughout history. This is significant because if Bernstein is right (and it seems like a no-brainer to me, but read his book if you need to be convinced) then the potential dangers of fundamentalism go far beyond the fears of even the most paranoid among us. If Bernstein is right then the fundamentalist's rejection of scientific rationalism will lead us back to the economic dark ages just as surely as the Communist's rejection of private property did the same during the latter part of the 20th century. For that reason alone I believe that it is vitally important that fundamentalism be resisted by any means necessary.
I actually believe that there are fundamentalists who think that breaking the back of the modern capitalist economy would be a good thing, but I think these are a tiny, tiny minority. I think most fundamentalists -- certainly most Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. -- know in their heart of hearts that getting rid of science would be a Bad Thing all in all, hence the odd spactacles of so-called Creation Science and Intelligent Design, Al Quaeda recruiting on the Internet, and Pentacostals praying to God that their Power Point presentations will work properly.
The problem is that science is based on the premise that reality is the ultimate arbiter of Truth, and reality is a harsh taskmaster. You realy can't fool Mother Nature. That is why fundamentalists tend to focus on things like evolution where much of the scientific evidence is subtle or not readily accessible or even lost in the mists of time. Scientists (and I mean that with a capital "S") fall readily into the fundamentalists' rhetorical trap, which is one of the reasons that fundamentalism is gaining so much ground these days. Fundamentalism may not be correct, but fundamentalists are very, very good at making it feel as though it is. Fundamentalism has a much, much better marketing department than most of its competitors.
I have said it before but it bears repeating: I have no quarrel with religion, only with fundamentalism. I believe that religion serves a genuine human need, and the failure of atheists like Richard Dawkins to recognize this, let alone propose a credible alternative for fulfilling that need, is one of the reasons for the rise of fundamentalism. (Karen Armstrong thinks so too.)
One indication of the utter futility of rational debate when it comes to fundamentalism is the amount of effort spent on arguing about things like whether or not humans were contemporaneous with dinosaurs. If you're going to try to take Genesis seriously as an alternative scientific hypothesis you have much, much bigger worries than dinosaurs. Let's take a brief tour of Genesis, shall we?
In the beginning God created the heavans and the earth. And the earth was without form and void...
So... what shape was the earth at that point? Well, it didn't have a shape. That's what "without form" means. So what does it mean for the earth to have been created but not have a shape?
...and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
So earth didn't have a shape, but the waters still had a "face" for God to move upon. And how, exactly, does God "move"? I don't mean to ask by what mechanism God moves, I'm asking what it actually means for God to move. On the usual meaning of the word move it means to change location from one place to another. But that is only possible for a thing that has a definite location to begin with, and modern Christian fundamentalist dogma holds that God is everywhere at all times. So how can He possibly move?
We're not two verses in and already there are a host of questions that are perfectly legitimate to ask from a scientific point of view, but which are utterly unanswerable except by e.g. holding that words mean different things when they apply to God, at which points all bets are off. To quote Tom Stoppard, "The only point of using language at all is that words are taken to stand for certain thoughts and ideas and not for other thoughts and ideas."
And God said, "Let there be light" and there was light.
Where was the light coming from at this point? Remember, this is only the First Day, and the sun and stars don't get created until the Third Day.
And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Here in verse 5 we collide headlong against a scientific brick wall. What does it mean for there to be "evening" and "morning" in a universe where the earth has no shape and there is no sun?
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were above the firmament from the waters which were below the firmament. And God called the firmament Heaven.
Leaving aside the linguistic question of how God can create "heaven" on day 2 after already having created "the heavens" on day 1, this is quite possibly the most transparent indication that Genesis is just a bronze-age creation myth like any other. Bronze-age people thought that the sky was blue because it was full of water. Forget dinosaurs, where are the waters above the firmament?
There's so much just in the first chapter of Genesis which is utterly ridiculous from a scientific point of view that it is hard to know where to stop. God creates plants on day 3, but doesn't create the sun until day 4. The sun and the moon are called "two great lights" despite the fact that the moon is not a light, it's a big rock. The sun, moon and stars are created "to divide the light from the darkness" but the light was already divided from the darkness back in verse 4. And then we get to chapter 2 where the whole story is told over again, except this time man is created before the animals instead of after (the animals are created specifically to keep man company, but the plan doesn't work so God has to try again, at which point He creates Eve). As a scientific hypothesis, Genesis is utterly and transparently hopeless long, long before we ever get to Noah. It's not even a close call. And yet the arguments go on. And on and on and on and on and on.
The problem is not that Creationism is wrong, the problem is that it is wrong only from a particular point of view. Genesis is wrong from a scientific point of view, not from the point of view of faith. But Creationists are adept at flitting back and forth between these two points of view while the Scientists (and the scientists) are stuck in their Baconian and Popperian epistemologies. The success of science is so overwhelming that they cannot accept that there might be truth beyond science despite the fact that there is scientific evidence that this is in fact the case! The placebo effect, for example, is scientific proof that believing in things that aren't scientifically true can have materially beneficial effects.
Faith is a placebo, and I do not mean that in any sort of pejorative way. Placebos can be effective. Sometimes they are the most or even the only effective medicine available for certain maladies, and the modern world suffers from such maladies much more than atheists generally acknowledge. And in that regard atheists have their heads buried more deeply in the sand than the fundamentalists, with the net result that the fundamentalists are winning.
And as someone who enjoys the creature comforts that modern economies provide, that's bad. Really really bad.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
My sentiments exactly
I'm too beaten down to compose my own words so I'll steal a few choice ones from The New York Times:
It was appalling to watch over the last few days as Congress, now led by Democrats, caved in to yet another unnecessary and dangerous expansion of President Bush's powers, this time to spy on Americans in violation of basic constitutional rights.
Hear hear.
It was appalling to watch over the last few days as Congress, now led by Democrats, caved in to yet another unnecessary and dangerous expansion of President Bush's powers, this time to spy on Americans in violation of basic constitutional rights.
Hear hear.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Whoa!
The blogosphere is aghast that Karl Rove deputy Scott Jennings seems to be taking executive privilege a wee bit too far:
Transcript:
SENATOR PAT LEAHY, (D), VERMONT: Are you aware of any presidential decision documents since the 2004 election which President Bush decided to procede with a replacement plan for U.S. attorneys?
JENNINGS: Sir, pursuant to the president's assertion of executive privilege, I decline to answer at this time.
LEAHY: As special assistant to the president, deputy director of police affairs, what role do you have in the selection of nominees to the U.S. attorneys?
JENNINGS: Senator, I will decline to answer that question pursuant To the president's assertion of executive privilege...
LEAHY: Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. I'm just asking what role you have in the selection of nominees to be U.S. attorney. I'm just talking about what you do. I mean--let's not be too contemptuous of this committee. I'm just asking you what role do you have in the selection of nominees for U.S. attorneys. You work at the White House, you're paid for by taxpayers. You work for the American people. I'm just asking what kind of work you do.
JENNINGS: Sir, I understand. And based on my understanding of the letter I have from Mr. Fielding, this falls under the president's assertion of executive privilege and, therefore, I must respectfully decline to answer at this time.
But it makes perfect sense to me. The truthful answer to that question is very likely something along the lines of, "My job is to make sure that the Republicans win the 2008 election by any means necessary." Little wonder he's asserting executive privilege.
No, the puzzling part to me is not that Jennings asserted privilege, but that Leahy was surprised by it. I would have hoped that someone with Leahy's experience would not be so naive as to have been caught off guard by that. And so the logical next question in Leahy's rapid-fire sequence will now be forever unasked: "Are you asserting privilege because your job requires you to engage in activities that are ethically or legally questionable?"
Alas.
Transcript:
SENATOR PAT LEAHY, (D), VERMONT: Are you aware of any presidential decision documents since the 2004 election which President Bush decided to procede with a replacement plan for U.S. attorneys?
JENNINGS: Sir, pursuant to the president's assertion of executive privilege, I decline to answer at this time.
LEAHY: As special assistant to the president, deputy director of police affairs, what role do you have in the selection of nominees to the U.S. attorneys?
JENNINGS: Senator, I will decline to answer that question pursuant To the president's assertion of executive privilege...
LEAHY: Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. I'm just asking what role you have in the selection of nominees to be U.S. attorney. I'm just talking about what you do. I mean--let's not be too contemptuous of this committee. I'm just asking you what role do you have in the selection of nominees for U.S. attorneys. You work at the White House, you're paid for by taxpayers. You work for the American people. I'm just asking what kind of work you do.
JENNINGS: Sir, I understand. And based on my understanding of the letter I have from Mr. Fielding, this falls under the president's assertion of executive privilege and, therefore, I must respectfully decline to answer at this time.
But it makes perfect sense to me. The truthful answer to that question is very likely something along the lines of, "My job is to make sure that the Republicans win the 2008 election by any means necessary." Little wonder he's asserting executive privilege.
No, the puzzling part to me is not that Jennings asserted privilege, but that Leahy was surprised by it. I would have hoped that someone with Leahy's experience would not be so naive as to have been caught off guard by that. And so the logical next question in Leahy's rapid-fire sequence will now be forever unasked: "Are you asserting privilege because your job requires you to engage in activities that are ethically or legally questionable?"
Alas.
Who says rock stars are dumb?
Brian May, lead guitarist for the rock band Queen, has finished his Ph.D. in astronomy after a 36 year hiatus. Congratulations, Dr. May. I doff my hat.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
This is what happens when you don't maintain your country
The Minneapolis bridge collapse surprises me not at all. The nation's infrastructure has been suffering chronic neglect for decades, and even if it turns out that the cause of the collapse was something else, it's only a matter of time before things like this start becoming regular occurrences unless America changes its priorities.
Yes, I can hear you laughing.
The presidential race is still close enough that a clever political trick might be enough to put a Republican in the White House in 2008. Think about that. It is hard to imagine a more destructive, corrupt, divisive, unmitigated collossal disaster of a presidency than George W. Bush, and yet enough people are still willing to vote Republican that it's a close call. Civil rights evaporate, freedom becomes nothing more than a slogan, New Orleans is all but lost to the sea, our bridges are crumbling, and enough people still want to stay the course that it's a close call.
Ye gods.
The land of the free and the home of the brave is rapidly becoming the land of the surveilled and the home of the fearful. Frankling Roosevelt got it right when he said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Well, I believe in that 100% and I'm scared. Our collective national freak-out over not quite 3000 deaths a little over six years ago continue unabated, and it's costing us everything that once made this country great. We are rapidly devolving into a third-world banana republic complete with crumbling infrastrcture, corrupt one-party rule, and an unbridgeable gap between rich and poor.
To say nothing of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
Yes, I can hear you laughing.
The presidential race is still close enough that a clever political trick might be enough to put a Republican in the White House in 2008. Think about that. It is hard to imagine a more destructive, corrupt, divisive, unmitigated collossal disaster of a presidency than George W. Bush, and yet enough people are still willing to vote Republican that it's a close call. Civil rights evaporate, freedom becomes nothing more than a slogan, New Orleans is all but lost to the sea, our bridges are crumbling, and enough people still want to stay the course that it's a close call.
Ye gods.
The land of the free and the home of the brave is rapidly becoming the land of the surveilled and the home of the fearful. Frankling Roosevelt got it right when he said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Well, I believe in that 100% and I'm scared. Our collective national freak-out over not quite 3000 deaths a little over six years ago continue unabated, and it's costing us everything that once made this country great. We are rapidly devolving into a third-world banana republic complete with crumbling infrastrcture, corrupt one-party rule, and an unbridgeable gap between rich and poor.
To say nothing of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Go green! Nuke the world!
If we're going to save the world, so-called "renewable" energy sources won't help. The only way is to go nuclear.
(Some) Data belongs in revision control
I would like to address some of the issues raised in the recent debate over whether data belongs in tables or not. I think Honroy hit the nail on the head when he wrote, "It's important to consider the likelihood of change as well." But the issues are subtle and complex, which is the reason it has taken me a full day to get around to writing this response.
So let me begin with one of Jeff's responses, since he's the one I'm mainly picking on here :-)
there are no problems. That was an example. If you need historical reporting or tracking, you simply model it that way. As the article clearly says.
Ah, but the devil is in the details. How exactly are you going to model it? If you actually sit down to work it out you will find that the complications mount very quickly. For example, one way to model historical changes is to add effective-start-date and effective-end-date columns. But now you have to deal with the possibility that the time periods could overlap, or that there could be gaps between the periods. (Actually, you already have a similar problem even in the original simple example because there is nothing to prevent shifts from overlapping or having gaps, but that's another can of worms.) If you have an effective-end-date, how do you model the currently effective shift schedule? Do the current shifts have NULL end dates, or end dates far into the future (creating a Y2K-like problem)? What do you do if, due to an operational error, some incorrect data finds its way into the shifts table? What if that incorrect data was used in subsequent dependent calculations? Do you log all your database updates so that you can tell which calculations used the wrong data? Or do you have to go back and recompute everything from scratch?
I'm not saying that these problems can't be solved. Obviously they can. But the structure of the shifts table, and in particular the way in which the contents of the shifts table evolves over time, is such it is not at all clear that storing it in a database is really the best way to do it. The shifts table evolves over time in a very particular way. First, changes are rare. Second, retroactive changes are even rarer, and are generally an indication that some kind of mistake has been made and needs to be dealt with. And third, it is important to know not just what the shift schedule was on date X, but also what the system on date Y thought the shifts shedule was on date X. And it is not at all clear that that information might not be better stored in a config file under revision control.
The devil is always in the details, and it gets worse. What if your data volume is huge and performance is an issue? In cases like that it is not at all clear that it would not be best to hard-code certain rarely-changing parameters directly into the code instead of sticking them in a table and hoping that your database optimizes the join properly. What if you're writing an embedded system and the data is parameters that, if they are wrong, can make something blow up?
There are certainly cases where it is appropriate to put data in tables, and some of Jeffrey's examples (though not all of them) are good examples of such cases. But to extrapolate from there to claim validity for a general rule that "data belongs in your tables, not in your code" is a serious mistake.
So let me begin with one of Jeff's responses, since he's the one I'm mainly picking on here :-)
there are no problems. That was an example. If you need historical reporting or tracking, you simply model it that way. As the article clearly says.
Ah, but the devil is in the details. How exactly are you going to model it? If you actually sit down to work it out you will find that the complications mount very quickly. For example, one way to model historical changes is to add effective-start-date and effective-end-date columns. But now you have to deal with the possibility that the time periods could overlap, or that there could be gaps between the periods. (Actually, you already have a similar problem even in the original simple example because there is nothing to prevent shifts from overlapping or having gaps, but that's another can of worms.) If you have an effective-end-date, how do you model the currently effective shift schedule? Do the current shifts have NULL end dates, or end dates far into the future (creating a Y2K-like problem)? What do you do if, due to an operational error, some incorrect data finds its way into the shifts table? What if that incorrect data was used in subsequent dependent calculations? Do you log all your database updates so that you can tell which calculations used the wrong data? Or do you have to go back and recompute everything from scratch?
I'm not saying that these problems can't be solved. Obviously they can. But the structure of the shifts table, and in particular the way in which the contents of the shifts table evolves over time, is such it is not at all clear that storing it in a database is really the best way to do it. The shifts table evolves over time in a very particular way. First, changes are rare. Second, retroactive changes are even rarer, and are generally an indication that some kind of mistake has been made and needs to be dealt with. And third, it is important to know not just what the shift schedule was on date X, but also what the system on date Y thought the shifts shedule was on date X. And it is not at all clear that that information might not be better stored in a config file under revision control.
The devil is always in the details, and it gets worse. What if your data volume is huge and performance is an issue? In cases like that it is not at all clear that it would not be best to hard-code certain rarely-changing parameters directly into the code instead of sticking them in a table and hoping that your database optimizes the join properly. What if you're writing an embedded system and the data is parameters that, if they are wrong, can make something blow up?
There are certainly cases where it is appropriate to put data in tables, and some of Jeffrey's examples (though not all of them) are good examples of such cases. But to extrapolate from there to claim validity for a general rule that "data belongs in your tables, not in your code" is a serious mistake.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Why storing (too much) data in tables is a Really Bad Idea (tm)
The world is full of Really Bad Ideas which look like good ideas at first glance. My favorite example of this is the Schick Slim Twin disposable razor. The Slim Twin is, as the name implies, a twin-blade razor. It has the "innovative" feature of having a small plastic tab between the blades. The tab is attached to a little button that lets you push the tab towards the business end of the blades thereby (ostensibly) forcing out the razor stubble and other assorted gunk that is trapped in the space between the blades. Schick actually had a series of TV commercials that touted this feature when the Slim Twin first launched many years ago.
It seems like a good if not particularly earth-shattering idea at first glance. That is, until you actually try it. What you find is that the Slim Twin actually collects a lot more gunk than other razors. This is because the plastic tab blocks the space between the blades and actually causes gunk to build up in the first place! When the tab isn't there, any accumulated gunk just falls out of the back of the blades. So this "innovation" actually causes the problem it purports to solve. (And in fact, it makes the problem much worse, because hair can get caught between the tab and the blades, at which point it becomes all but impossible to dislodge. Don't ask me how I know all this.)
Which brings me to this blog entry from Jeff Smith where he asserts that "data belongs in your tables -- not in your code." It seems like a plausible enough assertion on its face, kind of like the idea that having a little tab in the razor to push gunk out ought to be a useful feature. But he doesn't back up this assertion with any actual arguments, only with examples. And in those examples he looks only at the benefits of storing data in tables instead of code and none of the drawbacks.
There are a lot of problems with storing data in tables the way Jeff suggests, but there is one overriding uber-problem, but I won't spoil the fun by telling you what it is just yet. Instead, consider what happens if you follow Jeff's advice, for example:
Now consider what would happen if the company's shift schedule were to change. Simple, you just update the SHIFTS table to reflect the new schedule and you're done, right?
Except that all your historical data is now wrong because it is based on the old shift schedule. And that old shift schedule is now gone.
So the first problem with storing data in tables is that relational databases don't have revision control. Code does. And if you have data that has the kinds of dependencies that revision control systems are good at tracking then you might well be better off having that data in your code so that you revision control system can track it.
But there is a much more fundamental problem with Jeff's advice, and that is that there is no sharp dividing line between code and data. Look at those SQL queries. They are just strings, and hence they are data. So should we store them in a QUERIES table? For that matter, look at the code itself. That is just data too. Why not store that in a table?
The fact of the matter is that the admonition to store data in tables is completely vacuous because the distinction between code and data is arbitrary. It is therefore, just like the tab in the Slim Twin, worse than useless because it seems like such a good idea but in fact it creates problems rather than solving them.
The right way to decide what to put where is to look at the properties of the data you need to store. If it's large quantites of identically structured data that doesn't change in ways that alters referential integrity then it probably belongs in the database. If it's small quantities of data whose structure defines the semantics of other data and which doesn't change at run-time, then it probably belongs somewhere else, if not actually in the code then probably in a configuration file under revision control.
But just because something "looks like data" doesn't mean it belongs in a table.
UPDATE: I do not deny that the problems with Jeff's original example can be fixed. But the point is 1) there are problems and 2) they have to be fixed and 3) the process of fixing the problems is, in this example and many others, essentially, re-invention of revision control. There is no magic that automatically accrues unvarnished benefits merely from moving "data" (whatever that means) out of code and into a database, and applying Jeff's advice uncritically is as likely to create problems as solve them.
It seems like a good if not particularly earth-shattering idea at first glance. That is, until you actually try it. What you find is that the Slim Twin actually collects a lot more gunk than other razors. This is because the plastic tab blocks the space between the blades and actually causes gunk to build up in the first place! When the tab isn't there, any accumulated gunk just falls out of the back of the blades. So this "innovation" actually causes the problem it purports to solve. (And in fact, it makes the problem much worse, because hair can get caught between the tab and the blades, at which point it becomes all but impossible to dislodge. Don't ask me how I know all this.)
Which brings me to this blog entry from Jeff Smith where he asserts that "data belongs in your tables -- not in your code." It seems like a plausible enough assertion on its face, kind of like the idea that having a little tab in the razor to push gunk out ought to be a useful feature. But he doesn't back up this assertion with any actual arguments, only with examples. And in those examples he looks only at the benefits of storing data in tables instead of code and none of the drawbacks.
There are a lot of problems with storing data in tables the way Jeff suggests, but there is one overriding uber-problem, but I won't spoil the fun by telling you what it is just yet. Instead, consider what happens if you follow Jeff's advice, for example:
Your company defines 3 shifts per day: Shift 1 is 12:00AM-8AM, Shift 2 is 8AM-4PM, Shift 3 is 4PM-12AM.
So, when you need to evaluate a DateTime variable to see which shift it falls into, you write:
SELECT ..., CASE WHEN Hour(SomeDate) < 8 THEN 1
WHEN Hour(SomeDate) < 16 THEN 2
ELSE 3
END as ShiftNo
FROM ...
Great, except you now have data stored in your code -- not in a table! Let's store our data where it belongs by creating a “Shifts” table:
And now you simply write:
SELECT ...., Shift.ShiftNo, Shift.Description
FROM ...
INNER JOIN Shift
ON Hour(SomeDate) BETWEEN Shift.StartHour and Shift.EndHour
Now consider what would happen if the company's shift schedule were to change. Simple, you just update the SHIFTS table to reflect the new schedule and you're done, right?
Except that all your historical data is now wrong because it is based on the old shift schedule. And that old shift schedule is now gone.
So the first problem with storing data in tables is that relational databases don't have revision control. Code does. And if you have data that has the kinds of dependencies that revision control systems are good at tracking then you might well be better off having that data in your code so that you revision control system can track it.
But there is a much more fundamental problem with Jeff's advice, and that is that there is no sharp dividing line between code and data. Look at those SQL queries. They are just strings, and hence they are data. So should we store them in a QUERIES table? For that matter, look at the code itself. That is just data too. Why not store that in a table?
The fact of the matter is that the admonition to store data in tables is completely vacuous because the distinction between code and data is arbitrary. It is therefore, just like the tab in the Slim Twin, worse than useless because it seems like such a good idea but in fact it creates problems rather than solving them.
The right way to decide what to put where is to look at the properties of the data you need to store. If it's large quantites of identically structured data that doesn't change in ways that alters referential integrity then it probably belongs in the database. If it's small quantities of data whose structure defines the semantics of other data and which doesn't change at run-time, then it probably belongs somewhere else, if not actually in the code then probably in a configuration file under revision control.
But just because something "looks like data" doesn't mean it belongs in a table.
UPDATE: I do not deny that the problems with Jeff's original example can be fixed. But the point is 1) there are problems and 2) they have to be fixed and 3) the process of fixing the problems is, in this example and many others, essentially, re-invention of revision control. There is no magic that automatically accrues unvarnished benefits merely from moving "data" (whatever that means) out of code and into a database, and applying Jeff's advice uncritically is as likely to create problems as solve them.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
What if Sara Taylor was telling the truth?
From the L'esprit_de_l'escalier department Rondam Ramblings brings you this:
Remember Sara M. Taylor's testimony before the Senate Judiciary committee? The part where she said that she "swore an oath to the president"? Senator Patrick Leahy pounced on that comment, lecturing her about how her oath was to the Constitution, not to the President.
Consider: what if Leahy was wrong? What if that wasn't a Freudian slip? What if Sara Taylor really had (secretly, of course) sworn an oath to the President? Perhaps Leahy should not have been so quick to correct her. Maybe he was on to something and didn't realize it.
Crazy? Maybe. Maybe not.
Remember Sara M. Taylor's testimony before the Senate Judiciary committee? The part where she said that she "swore an oath to the president"? Senator Patrick Leahy pounced on that comment, lecturing her about how her oath was to the Constitution, not to the President.
Consider: what if Leahy was wrong? What if that wasn't a Freudian slip? What if Sara Taylor really had (secretly, of course) sworn an oath to the President? Perhaps Leahy should not have been so quick to correct her. Maybe he was on to something and didn't realize it.
Crazy? Maybe. Maybe not.
If this isn't grounds for impeachment, what is?
The Bush administration has denied a formal request from Congressman Peter Defazio to see the secret plans for operating the government after a terrorist attack.
WASHINGTON -- Oregonians called [Congressman] Peter DeFazio's office, worried there was a conspiracy buried in the classified portion of a White House plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack.
As a member of the U.S. House on the Homeland Security Committee, DeFazio, D-Ore., is permitted to enter a secure "bubbleroom" in the Capitol and examine classified material. So he asked the White House to see the secret documents.
On Wednesday, DeFazio got his answer: DENIED.
"I just can't believe they're going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack," DeFazio says.
Bush has also issued an executive order allowing the Administration to seize the property of anyone who opposes the war in Iraq. And so the fifth amendment bites the dust along with the first, fourth and ninth (to say nothing of Separation of Powers). Four down, six to go. (What, you really think the second amendment is safe just because the emperor calls himself a republican?) Meanwhile, the Democrats fiddle while Democracy burns.
WASHINGTON -- Oregonians called [Congressman] Peter DeFazio's office, worried there was a conspiracy buried in the classified portion of a White House plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack.
As a member of the U.S. House on the Homeland Security Committee, DeFazio, D-Ore., is permitted to enter a secure "bubbleroom" in the Capitol and examine classified material. So he asked the White House to see the secret documents.
On Wednesday, DeFazio got his answer: DENIED.
"I just can't believe they're going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack," DeFazio says.
Bush has also issued an executive order allowing the Administration to seize the property of anyone who opposes the war in Iraq. And so the fifth amendment bites the dust along with the first, fourth and ninth (to say nothing of Separation of Powers). Four down, six to go. (What, you really think the second amendment is safe just because the emperor calls himself a republican?) Meanwhile, the Democrats fiddle while Democracy burns.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Foursquare with Voltaire
My previous post is generating a surprising (to me) amount of controversy, and there were a number of comments that I thought deserved considered responses. But writing those responses in Blogger's tiny little comment window (Google people, are you listening?) was getting really annoying so I decided to escalate.
Do you consider their opinion to be more authoritative than any other obvious sources (say, a local christian bookshop or church committee or the bible), and if so, why?
This is a very good question, and I have three different answers for it:
First, the meanings of symbols have nothing to with authority. The meanings of symbols derive entirely from the intent of those who employ them, and from the perceptions of those who view them.
Second, it is fairly clear that the ring in this case is a Christian symbol. It is widely recognized as a Christian symbol, and it is inscribed with a reference to the New Testament, which should quell any remaining doubt.
But third, and most important, the ring is a red herring. If the girl had been wearing a crucifix on a chain the school's prohibition on jewelry would (presumably) still have applied. And surely no one would question that a crucifix is a Christian symbol.
So anyone should be allowed to take anything, call it a symbol of some religion
Yes, of course, as long as it is their religion. No one should be allowed to decide what is and is not a symbol of anyone else's religion.
(even though it isn't generally recognised as such)
Yes, of course. Some people have their own private religions with their own private theologies, symbols and rituals. Who are you to tell me that what I choose to be the symbols of my relgion are not valid?
it doesn't follow that you're allowed to say what you want, when you want, and where you want.
A straw man. No one disputes that freedom of speech has limits. You can't cry fire in a crowded theatre or commit libel. Clearly none of those circumstances apply in this case.
it doesn't entitle you to a free audience
It's a ring, for crying out loud. It's not like she's getting up in the middle of class with a bullhorn.
The real problem here is that the underlying prohibition on jewelry is inherently discriminatory against religions like Christianity which tend to render their symbology as jewelry rather than, say, clothing or makeup. Jews have yarmulkes. Sikhs have turbans. Hindus have Tilakas. But the principal symbol of Christianity is the Cross, and the principal means of displaying it on one's person (at least in the U.S.) is as a pendant hanging from a chain. So the issue is not the ring per se, the issue is that any blanket prohibition on jewelry necessarily discriminates against Christians, just as any blanket prohibition on wearing head-coverings indoors inherently discriminates against Muslims (and Jews and Sikhs).
Do you consider their opinion to be more authoritative than any other obvious sources (say, a local christian bookshop or church committee or the bible), and if so, why?
This is a very good question, and I have three different answers for it:
First, the meanings of symbols have nothing to with authority. The meanings of symbols derive entirely from the intent of those who employ them, and from the perceptions of those who view them.
Second, it is fairly clear that the ring in this case is a Christian symbol. It is widely recognized as a Christian symbol, and it is inscribed with a reference to the New Testament, which should quell any remaining doubt.
But third, and most important, the ring is a red herring. If the girl had been wearing a crucifix on a chain the school's prohibition on jewelry would (presumably) still have applied. And surely no one would question that a crucifix is a Christian symbol.
So anyone should be allowed to take anything, call it a symbol of some religion
Yes, of course, as long as it is their religion. No one should be allowed to decide what is and is not a symbol of anyone else's religion.
(even though it isn't generally recognised as such)
Yes, of course. Some people have their own private religions with their own private theologies, symbols and rituals. Who are you to tell me that what I choose to be the symbols of my relgion are not valid?
it doesn't follow that you're allowed to say what you want, when you want, and where you want.
A straw man. No one disputes that freedom of speech has limits. You can't cry fire in a crowded theatre or commit libel. Clearly none of those circumstances apply in this case.
it doesn't entitle you to a free audience
It's a ring, for crying out loud. It's not like she's getting up in the middle of class with a bullhorn.
The real problem here is that the underlying prohibition on jewelry is inherently discriminatory against religions like Christianity which tend to render their symbology as jewelry rather than, say, clothing or makeup. Jews have yarmulkes. Sikhs have turbans. Hindus have Tilakas. But the principal symbol of Christianity is the Cross, and the principal means of displaying it on one's person (at least in the U.S.) is as a pendant hanging from a chain. So the issue is not the ring per se, the issue is that any blanket prohibition on jewelry necessarily discriminates against Christians, just as any blanket prohibition on wearing head-coverings indoors inherently discriminates against Muslims (and Jews and Sikhs).
Monday, July 16, 2007
Equal opportunity oppression
It's not just inarticulate teens who are being denied their right to free speech, it's Christians too.
I stand foursquare with Voltaire (or whoever it was who first said it): I may not (and in this case most assuredly do not) agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it. Or at least blog about it.
I stand foursquare with Voltaire (or whoever it was who first said it): I may not (and in this case most assuredly do not) agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it. Or at least blog about it.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Required viewing
If you are on the fence about impeaching Bush and Cheney (and even if you aren't) then you should watch this.
Friday, July 13, 2007
The real reason the neocons want to attack Iran
Iran announced today that it will sell oil to Japan for yen instead of dollars.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Ron prognosticates: separation of powers is doomed
This is almost too easy. Here's how it's going to go down.
Congress has issued subpoenas. The White House has refused citing executive privilege. The fight will end up in the Supreme Court, which will side with the White House on the grounds that this is not a criminal investigation. (It doesn't really matter. If it were a criminal investigation they would find some other excuse, but this is the most defensible argument for not following the Watergate precedent, so that is the one they will use.)
At that point, Congress's only option to restore separation of powers will be to impeach Bush, Cheney, and at least some of the members of the Supreme Court. Which they could do. But which, of course, they will not do because the Dems are spineless cowards who are afraid of their own shadows.
At that point American Democracy will be well and truly fucked.
Have a nice day.
Congress has issued subpoenas. The White House has refused citing executive privilege. The fight will end up in the Supreme Court, which will side with the White House on the grounds that this is not a criminal investigation. (It doesn't really matter. If it were a criminal investigation they would find some other excuse, but this is the most defensible argument for not following the Watergate precedent, so that is the one they will use.)
At that point, Congress's only option to restore separation of powers will be to impeach Bush, Cheney, and at least some of the members of the Supreme Court. Which they could do. But which, of course, they will not do because the Dems are spineless cowards who are afraid of their own shadows.
At that point American Democracy will be well and truly fucked.
Have a nice day.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Prophecy done right
What will happen if you take a ping-pong-ball-sized sphere and fly it in orbit around the earth for eighteen months? The Bible won't tell you, but Albert Enstein predicted what would happen almost 100 years ago and got it right to within 1% (and that is most likely experimental error). Now that is a prophecy fulfilled.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Ron prognosticates: Kiss Roe v. Wade goodbye
Since I seem to be amassing a pretty respectable track record as a prophet I'll give it another go:
If anyone had any doubt that John Roberts's appointment to the Supreme Court is going to be yet another unmitigated disaster brought to you by the Bush administration, yesterday's decision overturning a 96-year-old precedent for no reason other than five Justices thought it was a good idea should put it to rest. It's not so much that the decision itself will be disastrous (though it is that as well) as that it shows conclusively that Roberts's testimony at his confirmation hearings that he respects precedent was false. Roberts is an utterly predictable reactionary idealogue with no respect for precedent, the law, or indeed anything other than neo-conservative doctrine: big business is good, the government can do no wrong, and the People are an annoyance to brought into line rather than the constituency that the government is supposed to serve. Acordingly, there can be no doubt that Roe v. Wade's days are numbered. I don't know exacly when Roe will fall, or what twisted "reasoning" (and I use scare quotes quite deliberately) will be used to overturn it, but fall it will. (I'll go out on a limb just a little bit and predict that it will be shortly after the next election.)
Not that it wasn't clear before, but this latest decision really puts the facts in stark relief: Bush & Co. care not a whit for anything the United State osensibly stand for: not for freedom, nor truth, nor justice, nor civil rights, nor the will of the People. They care for big business, for oil, for discipline, and for unfettered government power, and they will promote these "virtues" by any means necessary. They will lie, they will cheat, they will steal, and they will even burn the houses of people who oppose them. With a government like this, who needs Al Quada? Bush & Co. are the ultimate terrorist sleeper cell.
And they have nukes.
If anyone had any doubt that John Roberts's appointment to the Supreme Court is going to be yet another unmitigated disaster brought to you by the Bush administration, yesterday's decision overturning a 96-year-old precedent for no reason other than five Justices thought it was a good idea should put it to rest. It's not so much that the decision itself will be disastrous (though it is that as well) as that it shows conclusively that Roberts's testimony at his confirmation hearings that he respects precedent was false. Roberts is an utterly predictable reactionary idealogue with no respect for precedent, the law, or indeed anything other than neo-conservative doctrine: big business is good, the government can do no wrong, and the People are an annoyance to brought into line rather than the constituency that the government is supposed to serve. Acordingly, there can be no doubt that Roe v. Wade's days are numbered. I don't know exacly when Roe will fall, or what twisted "reasoning" (and I use scare quotes quite deliberately) will be used to overturn it, but fall it will. (I'll go out on a limb just a little bit and predict that it will be shortly after the next election.)
Not that it wasn't clear before, but this latest decision really puts the facts in stark relief: Bush & Co. care not a whit for anything the United State osensibly stand for: not for freedom, nor truth, nor justice, nor civil rights, nor the will of the People. They care for big business, for oil, for discipline, and for unfettered government power, and they will promote these "virtues" by any means necessary. They will lie, they will cheat, they will steal, and they will even burn the houses of people who oppose them. With a government like this, who needs Al Quada? Bush & Co. are the ultimate terrorist sleeper cell.
And they have nukes.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
First Amendment? What First Amendment?
I'm blogging from a ship in the North Sea. The fact that I can do this at all is a freakin' miracle, but unfortunately, the quality of the connection is poor, so this post is not going to have the links and cross-references that it should. (I'm crossing my fingers that I get it out at all.)
The Supreme Court dealt another body blow to the First Amendment yesterday, ruling cryptically that student speech is not protected by the First Amendment if it is too cryptic, or if it "might" be construed as advocating illegal drug use, or something like that. Frankly, the "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" message makes more sense to me that the Court's decision. As near as I can tell, the legal principle that the Court is establishing is that the First Amendment doesn't protect any speech that any authority figure doesn't like, taking yet another giant step towards the day when we in the United States enjoy the kind of free speech they once had in the old Soviet Union.
What worries me most about this is that despite the fact that Bush, Cheney, Rove and their appointed cronies Alito and Roberts have so clearly gone rogue, that they so obviously and manifestly despise everything that America ostensibly stands for: Democracy, the Rule of Law, fairness, respect for human rights, government of the People by the People and for the People... despite all this, there is still no one marching in the streets (I know, I'm a fine one to talk, I can't even be bothered to be in the fucking country as it comes apart at the seams. But I feel bad about it. Does that count?) and Bush's approval rating is still north of 25%, an historic low to be sure, but it still means that there are tens of millions of people out there who think everything is just hunky-dory. To you 25% I say: are you insane? Have you lost your fucking minds? What does it take to get you to disapprove of this crew of incompetent megalomaniacal monsters? Ye gods, they could probably ship your own grandmother off to Gitmo and you'd probably just take their word for it that she was aiding and abetting Al Quaeda!
I haven't felt at this much of a loss for a long time. Does anyone know where I can order a "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" T-shirt on line?
The Supreme Court dealt another body blow to the First Amendment yesterday, ruling cryptically that student speech is not protected by the First Amendment if it is too cryptic, or if it "might" be construed as advocating illegal drug use, or something like that. Frankly, the "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" message makes more sense to me that the Court's decision. As near as I can tell, the legal principle that the Court is establishing is that the First Amendment doesn't protect any speech that any authority figure doesn't like, taking yet another giant step towards the day when we in the United States enjoy the kind of free speech they once had in the old Soviet Union.
What worries me most about this is that despite the fact that Bush, Cheney, Rove and their appointed cronies Alito and Roberts have so clearly gone rogue, that they so obviously and manifestly despise everything that America ostensibly stands for: Democracy, the Rule of Law, fairness, respect for human rights, government of the People by the People and for the People... despite all this, there is still no one marching in the streets (I know, I'm a fine one to talk, I can't even be bothered to be in the fucking country as it comes apart at the seams. But I feel bad about it. Does that count?) and Bush's approval rating is still north of 25%, an historic low to be sure, but it still means that there are tens of millions of people out there who think everything is just hunky-dory. To you 25% I say: are you insane? Have you lost your fucking minds? What does it take to get you to disapprove of this crew of incompetent megalomaniacal monsters? Ye gods, they could probably ship your own grandmother off to Gitmo and you'd probably just take their word for it that she was aiding and abetting Al Quaeda!
I haven't felt at this much of a loss for a long time. Does anyone know where I can order a "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" T-shirt on line?
Monday, June 18, 2007
And the staggering irony award goes to...
... Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, Pakistani religious affairs minister, who in response to the news that Salmn Rushdie was being knighted, told the Pakistani parliament in Islamabad:
"The west is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a bomb on his body he would be right to do so unless the British government apologises and withdraws the 'sir' title."
Ye gods.
"The west is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a bomb on his body he would be right to do so unless the British government apologises and withdraws the 'sir' title."
Ye gods.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Hello world redux
For those of you who may have been wondering why I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth, I can finally tell you. For the last year I have been working on a new startup company which just came out of stealth mode. It is Virgin Charter. Yes, I now work for Richard Branson. (No, I have not met him.)
Although you can't tell, there's actually a functioning beta site running behind the scenes that I have been working to bring up for the last few months (with a lot of help from a really great crew of software engineers). Getting ready for today's launch has been using up most of my mental energy, hence the relative blogging silence.
Things are still kind of intense for now, but I hope to be back in the blogging swing of things before too long.
Although you can't tell, there's actually a functioning beta site running behind the scenes that I have been working to bring up for the last few months (with a lot of help from a really great crew of software engineers). Getting ready for today's launch has been using up most of my mental energy, hence the relative blogging silence.
Things are still kind of intense for now, but I hope to be back in the blogging swing of things before too long.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
There were no WMDs. But we knew exactly where they were. And it's Blix's fault for not finding them.
With all the twists and turns, flip-floppery, and circular reasoning used by Iraq war apologists I'm sometimes amazed they don't get seasick. Consider this item from a webchat with Richard Perle last week:
Alexandria, Va.: You claim Hans Blix believed Iraq was hiding WMD, but certainly by March 7, 2003 -- the date of his report to the U.N., and twelve days prior to the bombing of Baghdad -- he was stating that no evidence of WMD could be found and had expressed his skepticism to Condi Rice that any would be found. Isn't it irrelevant what Blix might have thought before he began inspections?
Richard Perle: It is true that Blix was unable to find evidence. There was never any real prospect that he could. But he did not believe that he was getting full cooperation from Saddam.
Finding WMD in Iraq could only have been accomplished by offering safety to people involved in the prior programs and removing them and their extended families from Iraq where they were in mortal danger. Blix, for reasons I will never understand, did not insist on the authority to offer sanctuary so he was reduced to touring the old sites associated with earlier WMD activity. In any case, we now know that the stockpiles that were thought to exist did not.
The capacity for self-deception exhibited here is truly mind-boggling. Despite acknowledging (in an offhand way) that there were no WMD he still tries to lay the blame for not finding them at the feet of Hans Blix. He does this using an argument of the form, "The only way to find WMDs was to do X. Blix did not do X. Therefore it is his fault no WMDs were found."
Well, no. Since there were no WMD's, there is NOTHING Blix could have done to find them short of manufacturing them himself. And let us not forget that what the administration said at the time was that they had "slam-dunk" proof that the WMD's were there, including information about exactly where they were located.
It is this claim that put the lie to the warmonger's arguments even at the time, because if they really knew where the WMD's were it would have been a simple matter to communicate that information to the inspectors on the ground and have them go there. If the inspectors were "reduced to touring the old sites" it is beause the administration was withholding information, not the Iraqis.
You can't have it both ways. If you claimed to know where the weapons were you can't saddle Blilx with the blame for not looking in the right places. And if you admit that you didn't know where they were, well, then you have a lot of explaining to do.
Why is no one in the press calling the administration on this?
Alexandria, Va.: You claim Hans Blix believed Iraq was hiding WMD, but certainly by March 7, 2003 -- the date of his report to the U.N., and twelve days prior to the bombing of Baghdad -- he was stating that no evidence of WMD could be found and had expressed his skepticism to Condi Rice that any would be found. Isn't it irrelevant what Blix might have thought before he began inspections?
Richard Perle: It is true that Blix was unable to find evidence. There was never any real prospect that he could. But he did not believe that he was getting full cooperation from Saddam.
Finding WMD in Iraq could only have been accomplished by offering safety to people involved in the prior programs and removing them and their extended families from Iraq where they were in mortal danger. Blix, for reasons I will never understand, did not insist on the authority to offer sanctuary so he was reduced to touring the old sites associated with earlier WMD activity. In any case, we now know that the stockpiles that were thought to exist did not.
The capacity for self-deception exhibited here is truly mind-boggling. Despite acknowledging (in an offhand way) that there were no WMD he still tries to lay the blame for not finding them at the feet of Hans Blix. He does this using an argument of the form, "The only way to find WMDs was to do X. Blix did not do X. Therefore it is his fault no WMDs were found."
Well, no. Since there were no WMD's, there is NOTHING Blix could have done to find them short of manufacturing them himself. And let us not forget that what the administration said at the time was that they had "slam-dunk" proof that the WMD's were there, including information about exactly where they were located.
It is this claim that put the lie to the warmonger's arguments even at the time, because if they really knew where the WMD's were it would have been a simple matter to communicate that information to the inspectors on the ground and have them go there. If the inspectors were "reduced to touring the old sites" it is beause the administration was withholding information, not the Iraqis.
You can't have it both ways. If you claimed to know where the weapons were you can't saddle Blilx with the blame for not looking in the right places. And if you admit that you didn't know where they were, well, then you have a lot of explaining to do.
Why is no one in the press calling the administration on this?
Monday, April 16, 2007
Requiem for a peaceful world
I vividly remember the first time I ever saw the Virginia Tech campus. It was April of 1982, I was about to graduate high school, and my family and I were making the college rounds. Two days later a storm would dump a foot of snow on Boston as we visited MIT (interesting how the weather comes around), but that day was clear and warm -- a perfect Spring day in the Appalachians. I remember walking out onto the little dais that overlooks the drill field in front of Burrus Hall, the main administration building, and being awed by the spectacular panaoramic beauty of the place. The nearest municipality that even pretended to be a city back in those days was Roanoke, and that was an hour away. The nearest "real" city was Richmod, another four or five hours away. It was a quiet place, far from the pressure and madness of the world. The biggest problem we had was negotiating the muddy unpaved footpaths carved across the drill field when it rained.
I could have gone to MIT or Stanford, but I chose Virginia Tech because it made me feel at peace. And so the irony of today's events strikes me in the deepest parts of my soul. When life in Los Angeles gets too crazy I have always been able to comfort myself with the thought that there are places like Blacksburg where I could retreat if things get too nutty to bear. And even though I don't think I'd ever actually move back there, just knowing that I could has made LA easier to put up with.
That comfort is gone forever.
I know a little bit of what the people who actually lived through it feel like. In 1991, having lived in LA for three years, I came home to my little house in Glendale to find that the bulb had burned out in the light that we kept on a timer. As I entered the house I could just make out some motion in the darkness out of the corner of my eye. I shouted, as much in fear as in anger, and I saw the muzzle flash as the burglar took a pot-shot at me with his '38 on the way out the window. My first though was, "That can't have been a real gun. It looked and sounded too much like the movies." It wasn't until the police came and dug the bullet out of the wall that I realized that I was lucky to be alive, let alone uninjured. It was many years before I got my next good night's sleep. I still get the odd stranger-in-the-house nightmare.
In other news, 129 civilians died today in Iraq. No one noticed.
I could have gone to MIT or Stanford, but I chose Virginia Tech because it made me feel at peace. And so the irony of today's events strikes me in the deepest parts of my soul. When life in Los Angeles gets too crazy I have always been able to comfort myself with the thought that there are places like Blacksburg where I could retreat if things get too nutty to bear. And even though I don't think I'd ever actually move back there, just knowing that I could has made LA easier to put up with.
That comfort is gone forever.
I know a little bit of what the people who actually lived through it feel like. In 1991, having lived in LA for three years, I came home to my little house in Glendale to find that the bulb had burned out in the light that we kept on a timer. As I entered the house I could just make out some motion in the darkness out of the corner of my eye. I shouted, as much in fear as in anger, and I saw the muzzle flash as the burglar took a pot-shot at me with his '38 on the way out the window. My first though was, "That can't have been a real gun. It looked and sounded too much like the movies." It wasn't until the police came and dug the bullet out of the wall that I realized that I was lucky to be alive, let alone uninjured. It was many years before I got my next good night's sleep. I still get the odd stranger-in-the-house nightmare.
In other news, 129 civilians died today in Iraq. No one noticed.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
The time-travel plot thickens
The other day I read this story about a card-carrying physicist named John Cramer who has come up with an idea that sounds suspiciously like my patent on faster-than-light communications. For the record, I'm pretty sure that it won't work (for reasons described here). But this is still interesting. If Cramer is wrong then I feel vindicated -- a long time ago I submitted the "Quantum mysteries disentangled" paper to the American Journal of Physics. It was rejected on the grounds that, essentialy, "Everyone already knows this." Well, apparently everyone doesn't.
On the other hand, if Cramer is right and I'm wrong then I'm about to win a Nobel Prize in Physics, which would be cool too.
On the other hand, if Cramer is right and I'm wrong then I'm about to win a Nobel Prize in Physics, which would be cool too.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
If she floats she must be a witch
In a nushell: on March 11 a school received a bomb threat and through their phone logs traced the call back to a 15-year-old boy,who was arrested and incarcerated for twelve days despite the fact that the boy's voice sounded nothing like the voice on the tape.
Of course the authorities had forgotten about the early onset of daylight savings time, and the boy had actually called the school an hour before the bomb threat.
Aside from the scary fact that it took twelve days for the authorities to sort this out, the account contains this precious little burn-the-witch moment:
"After he protested his innocence, ... the principal said: 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a [terrorist]. [Terrorist]s lie all the time.' "
All this would be more amusing if we hadn't been doing more or less the same thing on an epic scale for over five years now.
Of course the authorities had forgotten about the early onset of daylight savings time, and the boy had actually called the school an hour before the bomb threat.
Aside from the scary fact that it took twelve days for the authorities to sort this out, the account contains this precious little burn-the-witch moment:
"After he protested his innocence, ... the principal said: 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a [terrorist]. [Terrorist]s lie all the time.' "
All this would be more amusing if we hadn't been doing more or less the same thing on an epic scale for over five years now.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Ron prognosticates: the Dems will cave
I generally subscribe to Carl Sagan's admonition that prophecy is a lost art, but in this case I feel fairly safe in going out on a limb and predicting that in the matter of setting a timetable to get troops out of Iraq, Bush will veto the funding bill with the timeline attached, and then the Democrats will cave and give him the money anyway. They will cave because that is their nature. They have no spines, no courage, no convictions. They are afraid of their own rhetorical shadows. Want to scare a Democrat? Just remember three magic words: Weak. On. Defense.
All of which is quite unfortunate, because the Dem's position is quite strong, and they would almost certainly win this fight simply by saying, "No, we did not refuse to fund the troops. We DID fund the troops, albeit with conditions attached that are supported by the vast majority of the American people. It is the PRESIDENT who chose not to accept those conditions and thereby subject our troops to harm." But they will not say that. They will cave. They will meekly say, "I'm terribly sorry, Mr. President. Here's your money, no strings attached. Only please please PLEASE don't call say (shudder!) that we didn't support the troops."
God, I hope I'm wrong. But I don't think I am. If the Democrats don't even have the balls to issue subpoenas in the attorneygate scandal (authorizing subpoenas and actually issuing them are not the same thing), where are they gong to find the intestinal fortitude to stand their ground when something really meaningful is at stake?
All of which is quite unfortunate, because the Dem's position is quite strong, and they would almost certainly win this fight simply by saying, "No, we did not refuse to fund the troops. We DID fund the troops, albeit with conditions attached that are supported by the vast majority of the American people. It is the PRESIDENT who chose not to accept those conditions and thereby subject our troops to harm." But they will not say that. They will cave. They will meekly say, "I'm terribly sorry, Mr. President. Here's your money, no strings attached. Only please please PLEASE don't call say (shudder!) that we didn't support the troops."
God, I hope I'm wrong. But I don't think I am. If the Democrats don't even have the balls to issue subpoenas in the attorneygate scandal (authorizing subpoenas and actually issuing them are not the same thing), where are they gong to find the intestinal fortitude to stand their ground when something really meaningful is at stake?
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Bee afraid
Forget the housing market collapse, there is a much more serious problem looming: honeybees are dying and no one knows why. The seriousness of the problem can be pithily summed up in one sentence:
“If we don’t figure this out real quick, it’s going to wipe out our food supply.”
Youch.
“If we don’t figure this out real quick, it’s going to wipe out our food supply.”
Youch.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
A joke, eh?
Ann Coulter has responded to those denouncing her calling John Edwards a "faggot" by saying that it was just a joke:
"C'mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean."
Oh? Imagine if Coulter, instead of directing her little "joke" against Edwards had decided to attach Barak Obama instead and said, "I wanted to talk about Barak Obama, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word "nigger"..."
Or perhaps, "I wanted to talk about Joe Liberman, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word "kike"..."
Yeah, Ann, you're a laugh riot.
"C'mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean."
Oh? Imagine if Coulter, instead of directing her little "joke" against Edwards had decided to attach Barak Obama instead and said, "I wanted to talk about Barak Obama, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word "nigger"..."
Or perhaps, "I wanted to talk about Joe Liberman, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word "kike"..."
Yeah, Ann, you're a laugh riot.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
The price of free speech
My latest reply to Cerebrator's comments to my previous post was getting so long I decided to elevate it to a new post:
previous records of copyright infringement
If YouTube shut down every account that had repeated copyright violations there'd be no content left.
Misrepresenting facts, is simply a defamatory move
Really? Who exactly was being defamed? (For that matter, what facts were being misrepresented? Does the Quran not say the things that Gusburne says it does?)
And the TOU I quoted above was clear about that.
Indeed. The part about misrepresenting facts is completely separate from the part about defamatory material. Furthermore, they don't say that you must not misrepresent facts. (Again, if that were the case and were uniformly enforced there would be no content left.) They say that you must not "publish falsehoods or misrepresentations that could damage YouTube or any third party."
So which is it? Is Gisburne being suspended for copyright violation? (And if so, why aren't all the other copyright violators being suspended right along with him?) Or is it because of defamation (in which case, who exactly has he defamed)? Or is it because of "falsehoods or misrepresentations that could damage YouTube or any third party" (in which case how exactly could YouTube or a third party be damaged)?
The fact of the matter is that Gisburne was suspended not because what he published was defamatory or because it misrepresented facts, but because it was offensive (and particularly because it was offensive to muslims some of whom are notorious for using offense as an excuse for engaging in uncivilized behavior). For further evidence, note that Gisburne's video describing his account deletion has also been removed for alleged terms-of-use violations. It had no background music and no offensive quotes, so what is the excuse this time? This is capricious censorship pure and simple.
The problem with censoring speech for being offensive is that free speech, indeed all freedom, means nothing if not the freedom to say (and do) things that offend people. The "freedom" to say (and do) only those things that offend no one is not freedom at all. I am getting sick and tired of all this pandering to people's frail sensitivities. In a free country, the proper response to people who complain about being offended is to say, "Tough. That is the price of freedom. Deal with it."
As long as I'm on the topic let me say a few words about the elephant in the living room: Gisburne is not being silenced merely because his video is offensive. YouTube is chock-a-block with offensive videos (and that is a good thing). No, Gisburne is being silenced because his video is offensive to Muslims and the folks at YouTube are afraid of offending Muslims. And this fear is not without foundation. Some Muslims (a minority to be sure, but enough to matter) respond to being offended by engaging in various forms of uncivilized behavior. They riot in the streets. They fly airplanes into buildings. They kidnap people and chop their heads off. And Muslims engage in these behaviors on a scale that dwarfs any other identifiable group. Christians may bomb the odd abortion clinic, but they haven't engaged in the kind of wholesale slaughter that Muslims regularly undulge in nowadays for a long, long time. The Scientologist engage in all manner of unsavory practices against those they consider "fair game", but they have not to my knowledge ever actually killed someone. And the idea of a Buddhist terrorist is so absurd it could be the basis of a Saturday Night Live sketch.
Silencing people for saying offensive things is wrong even if they are so offensive as to move some people to violence. It is wrong because it sacrifices freedom for the illusion of security. Silencing critics of Islam doesn't quell violence, it rewards violence and thus encourages more violence.
Do my words offend you? Tough. That is the price of freedom. Deal with it.
previous records of copyright infringement
If YouTube shut down every account that had repeated copyright violations there'd be no content left.
Misrepresenting facts, is simply a defamatory move
Really? Who exactly was being defamed? (For that matter, what facts were being misrepresented? Does the Quran not say the things that Gusburne says it does?)
And the TOU I quoted above was clear about that.
Indeed. The part about misrepresenting facts is completely separate from the part about defamatory material. Furthermore, they don't say that you must not misrepresent facts. (Again, if that were the case and were uniformly enforced there would be no content left.) They say that you must not "publish falsehoods or misrepresentations that could damage YouTube or any third party."
So which is it? Is Gisburne being suspended for copyright violation? (And if so, why aren't all the other copyright violators being suspended right along with him?) Or is it because of defamation (in which case, who exactly has he defamed)? Or is it because of "falsehoods or misrepresentations that could damage YouTube or any third party" (in which case how exactly could YouTube or a third party be damaged)?
The fact of the matter is that Gisburne was suspended not because what he published was defamatory or because it misrepresented facts, but because it was offensive (and particularly because it was offensive to muslims some of whom are notorious for using offense as an excuse for engaging in uncivilized behavior). For further evidence, note that Gisburne's video describing his account deletion has also been removed for alleged terms-of-use violations. It had no background music and no offensive quotes, so what is the excuse this time? This is capricious censorship pure and simple.
The problem with censoring speech for being offensive is that free speech, indeed all freedom, means nothing if not the freedom to say (and do) things that offend people. The "freedom" to say (and do) only those things that offend no one is not freedom at all. I am getting sick and tired of all this pandering to people's frail sensitivities. In a free country, the proper response to people who complain about being offended is to say, "Tough. That is the price of freedom. Deal with it."
As long as I'm on the topic let me say a few words about the elephant in the living room: Gisburne is not being silenced merely because his video is offensive. YouTube is chock-a-block with offensive videos (and that is a good thing). No, Gisburne is being silenced because his video is offensive to Muslims and the folks at YouTube are afraid of offending Muslims. And this fear is not without foundation. Some Muslims (a minority to be sure, but enough to matter) respond to being offended by engaging in various forms of uncivilized behavior. They riot in the streets. They fly airplanes into buildings. They kidnap people and chop their heads off. And Muslims engage in these behaviors on a scale that dwarfs any other identifiable group. Christians may bomb the odd abortion clinic, but they haven't engaged in the kind of wholesale slaughter that Muslims regularly undulge in nowadays for a long, long time. The Scientologist engage in all manner of unsavory practices against those they consider "fair game", but they have not to my knowledge ever actually killed someone. And the idea of a Buddhist terrorist is so absurd it could be the basis of a Saturday Night Live sketch.
Silencing people for saying offensive things is wrong even if they are so offensive as to move some people to violence. It is wrong because it sacrifices freedom for the illusion of security. Silencing critics of Islam doesn't quell violence, it rewards violence and thus encourages more violence.
Do my words offend you? Tough. That is the price of freedom. Deal with it.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Protest YouTube suppression of free speech
Reddit today led me to this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRPVsamLaKk
This video is by a fellow named Nick Gisburne. His account was deleted for posting another video that was nothing but a slide show of quotations from the Quran. (That video has since been reposted by at least a dozen other people so it's easy to find.)
This really bothers me for four reasons. First, to deem quotations from a holy text to be "inappropriate content" is outrageous on its face. Second, Gisburne was given no warning. Third, YouTube didn't just delete the video in question, they deleted Gisburne's entire account. And fourth, this makes a mockery of Google's "don't be evil" slogan. There can be no possible reason for this action other than caving to intimidation, and sanctimonious cowardice in the face of oppression is a particularly pernicious breed of evil.
If you share my outrage I urge you to contact YouTube and let them know how you feel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRPVsamLaKk
This video is by a fellow named Nick Gisburne. His account was deleted for posting another video that was nothing but a slide show of quotations from the Quran. (That video has since been reposted by at least a dozen other people so it's easy to find.)
This really bothers me for four reasons. First, to deem quotations from a holy text to be "inappropriate content" is outrageous on its face. Second, Gisburne was given no warning. Third, YouTube didn't just delete the video in question, they deleted Gisburne's entire account. And fourth, this makes a mockery of Google's "don't be evil" slogan. There can be no possible reason for this action other than caving to intimidation, and sanctimonious cowardice in the face of oppression is a particularly pernicious breed of evil.
If you share my outrage I urge you to contact YouTube and let them know how you feel.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The mind works in mysterious ways
I just a truly surreal experience. It actually started a month ago, when I was in Portland, Oregon for the holidays. I had just driven from Portland to Seattle for a day trip to do some interviews for the film. I got back to Portland at about 9 PM, just in time to catch my family finished dessert at a downtown restaurant. Because I still had my car I ended up driving back home by myself. I was listening to the radio and they started playing a song that struck me as a perfect addition to the soundtrack for the film. I was just rolling up to the house as the song was winding up. I had the volume cranked up loud, and my wife and her sister heard the last bars of the song. I mentioned to them that I thought the song would be good for the film, and they both agreed.
A few days later we were back home and I found that I had totally forgotten what the song was, and so had my wife and her sister. I called up the radio station and asked them to run down the playlist at the time which they very graciously agreed to do, but none of the songs that were on the air around the time I was driving home seemed to be the one I was looking for.
I figured that song was gone forever.
Then today as I was waling my dog (funny how so many of the key events in this saga seem to be connected to my dog) a little snippet of melody suddenly popped into my head, just half a dozen notes, but somehow I knew that this was part of the long-lost song. I kept humming that little bit of tune to myself over and over again, and slowly enough of the song reassembled itself in my brain that I was able to recall a bit of the lyrics, which let me look it up on Google, which led me to iTunes, which led me to... 'Question" by the Moody Blues!
I'm looking for someone to change my life
I'm looking for a miracle in my life
That was it! It also explained why I didn't recognize the song when I was going through the playlist. "Question" is almost like two songs in one, a hard-rock intro and a soft ballady ending. I remembered that the song was a ballad, and so when I heard the hard intro I thought that couldn't be it and moved on.
Funny how the mind works.
Now, if I could just find the sunglasses I lost in Las Vegas over the weekend...
A few days later we were back home and I found that I had totally forgotten what the song was, and so had my wife and her sister. I called up the radio station and asked them to run down the playlist at the time which they very graciously agreed to do, but none of the songs that were on the air around the time I was driving home seemed to be the one I was looking for.
I figured that song was gone forever.
Then today as I was waling my dog (funny how so many of the key events in this saga seem to be connected to my dog) a little snippet of melody suddenly popped into my head, just half a dozen notes, but somehow I knew that this was part of the long-lost song. I kept humming that little bit of tune to myself over and over again, and slowly enough of the song reassembled itself in my brain that I was able to recall a bit of the lyrics, which let me look it up on Google, which led me to iTunes, which led me to... 'Question" by the Moody Blues!
I'm looking for someone to change my life
I'm looking for a miracle in my life
That was it! It also explained why I didn't recognize the song when I was going through the playlist. "Question" is almost like two songs in one, a hard-rock intro and a soft ballady ending. I remembered that the song was a ballad, and so when I heard the hard intro I thought that couldn't be it and moved on.
Funny how the mind works.
Now, if I could just find the sunglasses I lost in Las Vegas over the weekend...
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Spare change
Ran across this old poem I wrote many years ago. Seems kind of apropos given that I'm making a film about homeless people.
---
SPARE CHANGE
(Copyright (c) by Ron Garret, all rights reserved)
The man says, "Got any spare change, mister?"
Now as it happens I do have spare change.
There are seventy-seven cents in my coat pocket.
I know because I just bought myself a Snickers bar
And paid with one of three crisp dollar bills
That were up against the fives
That were up against the twenties
That came from the magic money machine.
The man looks at me with burning, sunken eyes
That look as if they saw one day too many on the street
About a year ago.
The hair that once was golden
Now is black and stringy, greasy
The hand that holds the broken paper cup
Is sun-dried leather
The clothes that hang like flying-dutchman sails
From bony shoulders
Are as dirty as the street they know so well.
Poverty makes strange bedfellows.
"Got any spare change, mister?"
The man does not repeat himself.
The paper cup speaks for him.
The paper cup, the hands, the hair, the eyes
Peer through my stoic facade and into my coat pocket
At seventy-seven cents.
The eyes gaze at me with a longing and desperation
That I have never known for anything
At seventy-seven cents.
Response comes thick and fast and automatic:
My mouth says, "Sorry, no."
My head bows in regret
My legs pick up the pace
And I walk briskly away
As if only the urgency of my business prevents me
From acting on my true nature
And giving him my seventy-seven cents
And asking his name
And shaking his hand
And offering him a meal and a bed and a shower.
As I walk away I think of a thousand good reasons
Why I'm doing the right thing.
Funny, though, none of them really sound convincing.
But they are enough
To keep me from turning around
And going back.
---
SPARE CHANGE
(Copyright (c) by Ron Garret, all rights reserved)
The man says, "Got any spare change, mister?"
Now as it happens I do have spare change.
There are seventy-seven cents in my coat pocket.
I know because I just bought myself a Snickers bar
And paid with one of three crisp dollar bills
That were up against the fives
That were up against the twenties
That came from the magic money machine.
The man looks at me with burning, sunken eyes
That look as if they saw one day too many on the street
About a year ago.
The hair that once was golden
Now is black and stringy, greasy
The hand that holds the broken paper cup
Is sun-dried leather
The clothes that hang like flying-dutchman sails
From bony shoulders
Are as dirty as the street they know so well.
Poverty makes strange bedfellows.
"Got any spare change, mister?"
The man does not repeat himself.
The paper cup speaks for him.
The paper cup, the hands, the hair, the eyes
Peer through my stoic facade and into my coat pocket
At seventy-seven cents.
The eyes gaze at me with a longing and desperation
That I have never known for anything
At seventy-seven cents.
Response comes thick and fast and automatic:
My mouth says, "Sorry, no."
My head bows in regret
My legs pick up the pace
And I walk briskly away
As if only the urgency of my business prevents me
From acting on my true nature
And giving him my seventy-seven cents
And asking his name
And shaking his hand
And offering him a meal and a bed and a shower.
As I walk away I think of a thousand good reasons
Why I'm doing the right thing.
Funny, though, none of them really sound convincing.
But they are enough
To keep me from turning around
And going back.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Gald you noticed
I'm glad that someone besides me is starting to recognize that Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil is turning out to be disturbingly prophetic.
Monday, January 08, 2007
America is no longer a free country
Wow, I really thought (hoped) this would go the other way. The Supreme Court today refused to hear a challenge to a law that requires people to show ID when travelling. Why is this significant? This "law" is not actually on the books. It was never passed by Congress. It is a secret law, the very antithesis of free and open democracy. By refusing to hear this appeal the Supreme Court effectively sanctioned the transformation of the U.S. into a totalitarian state.
Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper:Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?
This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
-- Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
We have cut down the law to get at the devil. Heaven help us now, for the law surely will not.
Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper:Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?
This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
-- Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
We have cut down the law to get at the devil. Heaven help us now, for the law surely will not.
This seems like the right answer
Much as it surprises me to say this, it looks like Chevrolet has found the right answer for the car of the future. It's called the Volt, and it's a hybrid but with a design tilted more towards an electric car than a gas-powered one. Basically, the gas tank is there to provide range when needed, while short trips (up to 40 miles) run on batteries. It also doesn't look nearly as goofy as previous hybrids/electrics, though it's not quite as cool-looking as the Tesla roadster.
I sure hope Chevy can make a go of this. I hate watching the U.S. auto industry go under.
I sure hope Chevy can make a go of this. I hate watching the U.S. auto industry go under.
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