At least he's not a hypocrite

Tennessee Congressman Lincoln Davis wants to outlaw divorce and make adultery a felony.

A little too happy?

Is anyone but me bothered by the gleeful tone behind Newt Gingrich's proclamation that World War III is underway?

Too much of a good thing

Having gotten fed up with the inexcusably shitty manner in which the record industry treats its potential customers I decided to go straight to the source and solicit original music directly from the artists. After all, you can't walk three blocks in this town without tripping over a few dozen musicians.

I sent out an ad to a Hollywood insider's mailing list and in 24 hours I got over 140 submissions (and they're still coming in). At first I was going to respond to every one individually because I know how much it sucks not to get any kind of response at all, but I think I just won't be able to. Instead I'll try to set up a sort of a bloggy thing over at the movie web site to communicate en masse. If any of you who have submitted tunes are by chance reading this, know that I am listening to each and every submission. Not all the way through necessarily, but I am listening to every one. All in all I'm pretty impressed by the general quality of the music. So far I haven't heard anything that really sucked, and a couple of tunes have really shined. (And if you haven't heard of Marina V go check her out. She really knocked my socks off.)

But mostly it's pretty mediocre fare. I've gotten to the point where if I hear a strumming guitar in the opening bars I groan. Synthesizers and MIDI sequencers are really cheap nowadays. So unless you're all about the lyrics (in which case you can just dispense with the intro altogether -- which is fine with me, I'm a Dylan fan after all and he couldn't sing his way out of a paper bag) please please please get something besides a guitar into the opening bars. Pianos, harpsichords, pipe organs, I don't care. Cellos, people! Haven't any of you ever heard of cellos? Doesn't anyone listen to Eleanor Rigby any more? It doesn't have to be concert quality, it just has to be not a guitar! Please! I beg of you!

OK, I feel better now.

I've developed a few other pet peeves as well, including: filtered vocals, vocals that sound like the singer is on drugs (and yes, I know that one of my target songs, Comfortably Numb, is about taking drugs, but the singer is administering the drugs, not taking them himself!). And as long as I'm on my soap box, why on earth are people sending me light bouncy love songs? I'm picking songs for a murder scene and a film about homeless people for crying out loud! I'm looking for existential angst and biting social commentary, and people are sending me things that would be right at home on Love Songs on the Coast. Geez.

But then I stumble on things like this and it all seems worthwhile.

Bad days

The initial adrenaline rush of making a film has definitely worn off and I think I'm now getting into the long, hard slog stage. I watched someone else's film about homeless people today (I don't want to say which one for reasons that will be clear shortly). It really took the wind out of my sails. The message of the film was basically that it's a hopelessly intractable problem, which is not what I needed to hear just now (even if it may be true). I need to believe that there's a solution out there somewhere. I need to have faith. Ironic, isn't it?

The belief that nothing can be done is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If there's no hope, why bother to try? And if you don't try, of course you won't succeed, which of course reinforces your belief that it really was hopeless after all. If ever there was a vicious cycle, this is it.

I have had two people cancel interviews with me so far. One said he didn't want to invest any more emotional energy on the homelessness issue, which I could certainly understand. The other didn't give a reason, which really annoyed me, and I'm finding that I'm having a really hard time letting that one go. This person -- I'll call her B -- is not homeless (by a long stretch), and the one sentiment she did express to me before deciding to cut off contact was that the homeless problem is the fault of the ACLU for challenging laws making it illegal to sleep in public places (or, as she put it, to "pick the homeless up out of their own urine"). And if by some chance B is reading this, please note the pains I am taking to conceal your identity. And if you think I am distorting your position, and you really have the courage of your convictions, then call me and talk to me and set me straight, damn it.

I suspect that the people who support vagrancy laws are afraid to come forward because in their heart of hearts they know that they too have given in to despair. If you can't solve the problem then you only have two choices: sweep it under the rug, or face it day in and day out. And that second option, as I am coming to understand, is very, very unpleasant.

I think supporters of vagrancy laws support those laws for the same people that Walter the bum drinks: because neither one has the inner strength to look their problems squarely in the eye and say: I am going to fix you. Whatever it takes. I will not succumb to despair. I will not accept the premise that the problem is intractable. I will have faith even against all evidence that there is a solution out there, and I will proceed on that premise.

I hope I manage to find the inner strength to do that. Right now I'm not so sure.

Guilt by association

One of my papers has been cited on Bill Dembski's blog.

For the record, I do not consider that paper to support Dembski's views in any way.

Birthright

Dealing with the homeless has gotten me thinking about the question of birthright: what is a human being entitled to merely by virtue of the fact that they are human? There is a universal consensus that they are entitled not to be murdered. If someone is killed, even a homeless person, the police will make at least a token attempt to find and prosecute the perpetrator. But beyond that there seems to be very little consensus. Certainly there seem to be a lot of folks out there who believe that a person is not entitled to a roof over their head. What then? Are they entitled to food? Clean water? A place to defecate? Toilet paper? A toothbrush? A blanket? A kind word? To sleep? To sleep where they can be seen by ordinary, decent, hard-working, god-fearing, money-spending tourists?

I have been at this just over a week now, and I've probably talked to twenty or so homeless people. Without exception they have all (with the exception of one grouch who wouldn't talk to me) been nice, mostly coherent, ordinary folks. Even the crazy guy who calls himself Ra, wears glasses painted to look like windows, and spends day after day standing on the same corner reading verses from the Bible at the top of his lungs ("100% born again Christian" is how he describes himself) is a pretty nice, albeit strange, guy once you get to know him.

And yet there are still a lot of them that I'm afraid to approach: the ones who hang out in the "druggy" part of the park, the guy dressed in the winter parka with God only knows how many layers underneath (picture a dark version of the Michelin Man) who was ranting at a photographer who wasn't even trying to take a picture of him, the bag lady sitting on the bench crying, the psychotic guy digging through the trash can while shouting at things unseen.

They are all human. What are they entitled to?

I am a criminal

I learned yesterday that it is a crime to sit on the sidewalk in Santa Monica. It's a misdemeanor, on a par with petty theft, prostitution, and vandalism. So is brushing your teeth in a public restroom.

When the policeman I was talking to told me that (off camera of course) I decided to put it to the test: I sat on the sidewalk right in front of him, looked up at him and asked, "You mean I'm committing a crime right now?" "That's right," he said. "So why aren't you arresting me?" I asked. His answer was that the police have a certain amount of discretion deciding which cases to pursue. Translation: I, with my clean shave and clean clothes and bag full of expensive video equipment, didn't look like a homeless person.

Ironically, later in the day I met a homeless person who actually had more electronic gadgetry than I do. He's a veteran in his seventies who gets about $900 a month in Social Security, which is not nearly enough to afford a place in Santa Monica (rents here start at about twice that) but if you're on the street with no bills to pay it's quite a lot of money. He showed me his stash: a thick wad of $100 bills (which he said he had a hard time spending because none of the business establishments that will actually let him in will accept hundreds), a laptop computer, a top-of-the-line PDA (which he couldn't actually use because he had forgotten the password).

A day in the life of a pair of socks

I've had an interesting 36 hours.

I got myself a Sony HDR-HC3 camera. It's a true miracle of modern technology: a real 1080i HD camcorder that fits in the palm of your hand. Not as many bells and whistles as the HDR-FX1 I rented for my first couple of days, but vastly more portable. When you're shooting on the street that makes a huge difference, though I do kind of miss the aura of shlepping around a big camera. People seem to take you a little more seriously when it's obvious you're not a tourist. But I wouldn't go back -- not without a camera man.

So I went out onto Ocean Front Park with my new camera and talked to Walter, the self-described "bum" who got me started on this little adventure, and he introduced me to a fellow named Tex. Tex is, suprisingly enough, from Texas, and he ended up in California like so many people do when he lost his job and went West looking for work. Now he goes "canning" as it is called on the streets: rummaging through trash cans for cans and bottles which he collects in huge sacks to sell to recyclers for a couple of bucks. There are lazy homeless people to be sure, but Tex isn't one of them.

I interviewed Tex for about half and hour and when I was done I gave him five dollars, which is more or less my standard "tip". He thanked me and then said that if I really wanted to help him out what he could really use was a pair of socks.

That broke my heart all over again.

So yesterday I went over to Macys and bought a six-pack of cheap (by my standards) cotton socks. I carried them around with me all day, but I was never able to find Tex to give them to him. I hope he shows up again.

I think I'm going to take today off.

Oh, I almost forgot: Michael, the ex-therapist in my trailer, has found a place to stay for two weeks. Some friends of his have gone on a trip, and he's apartment-sitting for them.

I've followed up on quite a bit of Michael's story now, and so far all of it checks out.

Another homeless Michael

Ran across this blog written by another homeless man named Michael, this on in North Carolina.

English needs some better words than "interesting", "fasinating", "compelling" and so on. They all have far too positive connotations for this situation. And yet, Michael's blog is all of these things.

Merely thinking about homelessness can be emotionally draining. I just got an email from someone cancelling an interview he had previously scheduled with me because he decided he just didn't want to deal with it any more. Too hard.

I know how he feels. I've only been at this four days and I'm already finding myself sometimes wishing I hadn't let this particular genie out of the bottle. I'd be sleeping a lot better at night if I'd never picked up that damn camera. (It's a fact I'm not particularly proud of, but there it is.)

A trailer for the homeless

It's rushed and it's rough but at least it's done. I finally finished editing a trailer of my interview with Michael, a man who has a master's degree in Psychology and used to be a marriage and family counselor, and who has been homeless for over four years. It's about eight minutes long.

If anyone has any ideas of how to help this guy please let me know. It's really starting to tear me up.

By the way, one of the most common reactions to seeing the clip is that he is lying. While I have not yet had a chance to follow up on everyting, I have been able to do enough background checking to convince myself (and I'm a pretty skeptical guy) that he is telling the truth at least about the substance of his story. He has given me a lot of verifiable background information, and so far everything that I have been able to check confirms his story. I'll post details when I have more complete information.

There but for the grace of God...

The reason I'm grousing about iMovie's brokenness is that I've embarked on a most unlikely adventure. I have always been interested in making movies, and a few years ago I wrote a screenplay that I've been shopping around Hollywood for a couple of years now (which is par for the course I am given to understand).

I have also been kicking around the idea of making a documentary about homeless people, who have always fascinated me in a macabre sort of way. I have long found it puzzling how a society as rich as ours could have so many homeless people, and I wanted to find out for myself how they got to be that way.

I have started working with a venture capital firm in Santa Monica, which is the homeless capital of the world. The relatively mild climate and liberal politics attract homeless people from all over. In order to make the commute less annoying we got a little apartment near the office, and my wife and I spend about a third of our time there now.

The other night I was walking my dog out in the park that overlooks the Pacific ocean, and he went up to a bum (that is how he later described himself) lying on the grass to say hello. The bum petted my dog for a bit and then he thanked me for letting him pet my dog. He said, "I'd forgotten how nice it is to pet a dog." That nearly broke my heart. So I decided to grab a camera and start filming.

What I found has really shocked me. I don't have time to go into details right now, but suffice it to say that there's an amazing variety of homeless people in Santa Monica. Some are ex-hippies who turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. Some, like Walter, the one who petted my dog, had some tragedy strike them (Walter's wife and four children were killed by a drunk driver) and were never able to recover from the trauma. (Ironically, Walter is now an alchoholic. But he doesn't drive.) Some are Katrina victims dumped here by FEMA. Some have a few screws loose. And some have a whole hardware store rattling around inside their heads. (I have some great footage of a guy named Daniel explaing how he knows all the world's leaders thanks to his psychic powers.)

And then there's Michael.

Michael has a master's degree in psychology. He used to be a licensed marriage and family counselor. His father was a radio and television director. He had a wife and a son. The family had a few million dollars in the bank.

Then Michael's twin brother stole all his money and his father's money and left the country. And then Michael had a heart attack which left him with a $100,000+ hospital bill.

Michael has been homeless for over four years.

Yesterday he turned 60. The stories he tells are heartbreaking and very, very scary.

And I have them all on tape.

Unfortunately, it's HD video, which takes for bloody ever to download and edit on my little Mac Mini. I was really hoping to get a short segment edited out that I could put on the web to try and draw some attention to Michaels case to see if anyone knows a way to help the poor guy. (The situation is very, very complicated.)

It's after 1:00 in the morning, I've been working on the damn thing for six hours and only have it about half done, and I have to host a Fourth of July party tomorrow, so I probably won't be able to finish it until the 5th at the earliest. So this poor sod has to spend two more nights on the street, maybe more, because I'm going to get together with a bunch of friends and eat hamburgers and swim in our pool.

It seems wrong. Very, very wrong.

Five things I hate about iMovie HD

1. It is almost hopeless to actually edit HD in iMovie HD unless you have a dual G5 with 27 GB of RAM, even though all the Apple literature, their sales people, and the guy at the camera shop said that a Mini should be able to handle HD, no problem. I have no problem editing regular DV, but HD just brings the poor little thing to its metaphorical knees. If I try to import more than about half an hour of HD at a time (which takes four hours by the way because a Mini can only import HD at 1/8 speed) it hangs the OS X kernel. Even the mouse stops moving.

2. There is no way to add a simple block of text in the center of the screen in a single font size that doesn't move around in some obnoxious way. For a company that prides itself on minimalist aesthetics this is an unforgivable omission.

3. If you have split a clip into two pieces there is apparently no way to join them back together again (if, for example, you cut something too short for a transition that you want to apply).

4. Rendering effects takes forever, and there is no apparent progress indication. (I'm still waiting for a fade to render as I write this.)

5. There are a bunch of features that have visible controls on OS X 10.3 but which don't actually work unless you have 10.4.

Bottom line: if you're considering stepping up to HD, don't do it unless you're prepared to fork out for a brand new top-of-the-line Mac with OS X 10.4 and Final Cut. Anything less will just cause you pain.

All quiet on the musical front

No word from either of the two companies from which I am trying to obtain music licenses. I guess they just don't want my money. But then again, what would you expect from a company that sues people for parodying songs that are in the public domain.

Happily, I have discovered that copyright law makes granting certain kinds of licenses mandatory. So I can't use the original recording, but I can hire a band to record a cover version for me. Cool! That will almost certainly cost less, and might even sound better. (I've always wanted to tweak one of the lyrics in "Comfortably Numb". It should be "When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse/Out of the corner of my MIND.")

They all look alike to me

An extremist is an extremist is an extremist.

The stupidest leaflet ever

A picture is worth a thousand words. Or in this case, five. This leaflet was actually included in a box of medicine. Go figure.

Music licensing adventures continue

I wonder if the people at the music companies have been reading my blog. Here's the response I got from one of them today:


Dear Mr. Garret,
 
Further to your request for the use of BRAIN DAMAGE in the production entitled “Control,” please note that the song is not available for this use.
 
Thank you for the request.
 
Best Regards,
 
Brooke


I'm bummed.

There are two interesting things about this. First, I asked for a quote on a performance license, which I know they do give out because the Lounge Lizards did a cover of Brain Damage. (It's one of the funniest things I've ever heard. You can find it on iTunes.) Second, why didn't they just tell me this up front instead of asking me for all the term and territory information?

I've sent the following response:


Hi Brooke,

Thanks for getting back to me.

Do you mean that it is not available for use in movies in general, or just not in this particular movie?

Is there anything else in your library with a similar feel that is available that you might suggest as an alternative?

How much is a performance license? (I know those are available because at least one band has done a cover version.)

rg

Music license quote quest part 3

The quest to wrestle a price quote from the music industry for a license to two Pink Floyd songs continues. I got an email today from one of the two companies involved. I was actually somewhat surprised that they got back to me at all. They said they needed more information, including the time period and the territory, which I don't know because the film I want to use the songs in isn't even in production, let alone in distribution.

I sent back a response asking for quotes for various permuations of periods and territories. Haven't heard back.

Still waiting to hear anything from the first company.

If anyone in the music industry is reading this and wondering why your business is in the toilet, it's very simple: your problem isn't pirating, your problem is that you treat your customers like shit. What could you possibly be doing that makes it take days or even weeks to generate a price quote to use a song in a movie? It's not like I'm the first one to do this. And even if there really is a reason for it to take this long, how hard would it be to shoot me an email saying, "Sorry this is taking so long, we have to do X and Y and Z, expect to hear from us in N days."

I can't help but wonder what it is the industry is hoping to accomplish by making it this hard to do business with them.

Beware of light bulb

Just in case you were running out of things to worry about .

Music licencing adventures, chapter 2

It turns out that the situation for licensing music is not quite as bad as I had thought once you know the system, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. There are two companies, BMI and ASCAP, that are the main gateways to the music industry's licensing machinery. Thay have searchable on-line databases that will give you the name and contact information for the publisher of most popular songs, including the ones I'm looking for.

From there the procedures vary by company. In my case I'm dealing with two different publishers, both of which require you to send in a written request for a quote by fax. Why they don't have a web page set up for this in this day and age is beyond me (but is pretty much in keeping with the music industry's general attitude of being too important for their customers). Maybe there's a business opportunity here.

One of the things I've been told is that the quotes for licensing music for movies vary by term (which is to say time period) and territory. Since my film isn't in production I have no idea what the term or the territory might be. We'll see how much of an obstacle that presents to getting them to name me a price.

Stay tuned.

It shouldn't be this hard to get someone to take my money

One of the things I've been doing on the side is writing a screenplay. It's a mystery thriller about a killer virus, and I've written two copyrighted songs into the script. I've bene toying with the idea of producing the movie myself, and so as an experiment I decided to try to find out how much it would cost to license these two songs for my film.

You'd think that the music companies would make this easy. After all, I want to buy something from them. Not only that, but the music industry is on somewhat of a crusade against piracy. Surely they would have things set up so that if someone actually wants to pay them for a song instead of pirating it that it would be easy to find out how much it costs and where to send the money.

Not so. In fact, it turns out to be nearly impossible.

The two songs I'm interested in are Pink FLoyd's "Comfortably Numb" from The Wall, and "Brain Damage" from Dark Side of the Moon. The Wall is copyright 1979 by "Pink Floyd Limited", and it was produced by Columbia Records. Neither company has any contact information on their web site. Dark Side of the Moon was produced by Capitol Records (now EMI), which actually does have contact information on its web site. I was even able to call the company and get the switchboard operator to put me in touch with someone in the licensing department, but of course this person didn't actually answer their phone and they haven't returned my call.

This is no way to treat your customers.

Not that any of this came as a great surprise to me. The music industry has a rather ignominious history of treating their customers like shit. For all the effort they spend on rootkits and legal action, I wonder if any of them ever once considered that they might make more money if they only made it easier for people to figure out where to send the check and how much to make it out for?

Stay tuned for future installments on this saga.

[Update: I finally found this page on the RIAA web site. It was well hidden.

Has America gone completely insane?

I'm so depressed I can hardly bring myself to write about this.

The state of Washington is prosecuting a man for writing a blog about on-line gambling.

And the Supreme Court has ruled that the police don't need to knock before breaking your door down.

Congressman Lynn Westmoreland wants the Ten Commandments displayed in public buildings, but he doesn't even know what they are. (For those of you who share his confusion, the First Commandment is: I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me." How anyone can say with a straight face that serves a secular purpose is beyond my comprehension.)

And last but not least, an old but still worthwhile read if the preceding wasn't enough to convince you that it's time to jump of a bridge.

Does this prove God doesn't exist?

This is so sad. Guess he shoulda stuck with snakes.

Oh, there's also this from a while back too. A clearer indication that God is unhappy with Christians is hard to imagine.

Missing the point again (and again and again and again and again)

I've been reading Bart Ehrman's book Misquoting Jesus. A worthwhile read and quite the eye-opener, which got me to thinking about Isaiah 7:14 (Behold, a virgin (or young woman depending on your scholarhsip) shall conceive etc.) It is transparently obvious from a logical point of view that this verse has nothing to do with Jesus, and that the Christian apologist arguments to the contrary are vacuous.

Consider the following prophecy:

"Behold, a race horse shall win the Triple Crown and his name shall be called Sussmahir."

Now, suppose I claimed that Seattle Slew fulfilled that prophecy. You might counter that while they may share a few letters in common, "Seattle Slew" and "Sussmahir" are quite transparently not the same name. At which point I, playing the role of the religious apologist (and those of you who speak Hebrew are no doubt way ahead of me here) would point out that "Sussmahir" means "fast horse" and there can be no denying that Seattle Slew has been called a fast horse. Q.E.D.

The problem, of course, is that on the apologists' view both prophecies are vacuous. Of course any triple crown winner will be called a fast horse, and of course the (any?) Messiah will be called (some variant of) God With Us by someone (though, I note in passing, Jesus is actually never referred to that way in the New Testament).

Of course, none of this will convince a believer, and so I get quite depressed when people put forth extraordinary efforts to produce even more extensive debunkings. And, of course, all of it completely misses the point, which is that people do not believe in God because it makes sense. People believe in God because it helps them deal with their pain.

You'd think that after reams and reams of futile debunking all these atheists and agnostics (who are by and large fairly bright people, even though many of them are complete morons when it comes to marketing) would take a step back and try to figure out why it isn't working. But they don't. They just keep spouting logic, completely oblivious to the fact that in many cases that is actually making matters worse. There's a reason most people don't gravitate towards math and science.

It is at once amazing and tragic how so many smart people can miss such a simple and obvious truth.

Toe the line or lose your job

At least if you're a government employee. The Supreme Court ruled today that the First Amendment does not protect "every statement a public employee makes in the course of doing his or her job."

Hm, I must have missed that part of the First Amendment where it spells out all the exceptions to freedom of speech. Let's see.

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Nope, still don't see it.

[At this point an NSA agent breaks into my house and hits me upside the head with a baseball bat.]

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, except in such cases where it would embarrass or inconvenience powerful government officials.

Oh. Right. There it is. Can't imagine how I managed to miss that.

What's that sound I hear? It must be the founding fathers rolling over in their graves as they behold government of the people, by the people, and for the people slowly perish from the earth.

Stop the presses!

After six years in office, George Bush has finally admitted to making a mistake!

Don't they have anything better to do?

The Michigan department of education is trying to ban the words "America" and "American" from their public schools. It's good to know that all the more pressing concerns of the Michigan schools have been solved so that they can finally focus on this issue.

Scared of lung cancer? Toke, don't smoke.

Scientists have found that there appears to be no link between smoking marijuana and increased risk of lung cancer.

Nibbling away at the Constitution

Today's chomp is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales floating a trial balloon for the idea that journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information on the grounds that:

"'... it can't be the case that that right [the First Amendment Right to freedom of the press] trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity,' he said. 'And so those two principles have to be accommodated.'"

Well, no. Actually, the Constitution specifically says what rights we have in that regard. The Fourth Amendment reads:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..." (emphasis added) And, of course, this means unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, not by burglars.

This "right" that the "people" have to "see ... the government go after criminal activity" was invented by Gonzales out of whole cloth, and it completely eviscerates the First Amendment. If this theory holds, all the government has to do to censor information is to classify it.

Once again the Bush Administration is trying to take a bite out of the Constitution. Not that this should come as a suprise to anyone at this point.

Someone really needs to get a life

Don't ask me how I stumbled on to it, but this is the weirdest e-commerce site I have ever seen. It even has an extensive Wikipedia entry.

Iranians not Nazis (yet)

Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, writes that yesterday's story about Iran considering a law requiring Jews and Christians to wear distinguishing insignia is (and I quote) "a steaming crock."

The Iranian legislature did pass "a law regulating women's fashion." Well. I suppose that's harder to get worked up considering the long and venerable history of this kind of discrimination.

It can't happen here redux

Michelle Goldberg has an excellent analysis of how the American Taliban (a.k.a. the Christian Nationalist movement) will take over the country.

People go in, but they never come out

The Army Reserve has started denying officers' resignations even after their term of service is over.

Think it can't happen here?

Wow, today is just turning out to be chock full of nasty surprises.

BALTIMORE -- Baltimore City police arrested a Virginia couple over the weekend after they asked an officer for directions.

WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team reporter David Collins said Joshua Kelly and Llara Brook, of Chantilly, Va., got lost leaving an Orioles game on Saturday. Collins reported a city officer arrested them for trespassing on a public street while they were asking for directions.

How is it even possible to trespass on a public street?

I hope those officers are drawn and quartered.

Never again? Think again.

Iran is contemplating a new law that would require Jews (and Christians this time around) to wear special insignia.

I'm not sure what is more shocking, that they would do this, or that there are still Jews in Iran.

[Update: there are indications that the cited story is not true. Nonetheless, the fact that it is plausible enough to cause such a kerfuffle is disturbing in and of itself.]

The light dawns

Conservatives are beginning to figure it out.

Protest the government - go to prison

One of the problems with the President having unilateral power to throw people in prison without trial is there is no way to stop him from doing just that to political opponents. Think it can't happen? Think again.

How convenient

The Justice Department probe of the NSA's domestic wiretapping activity has been called off because the NSA would not give the Justice Department lawyers the security clearances they need to investigate the matter.

Required reading

Four years old but still timely, Andrew Sullivan analyzes Islamic fundamentalism and the war on terror. Should be required reading for everyone IMO.

Sieg Heil!

Would someone please tell me thatLoyalty Day is a joke?

Chernobyl proves nuclear power is safe

Seriously.

George Bush is no Christian

I was going to write a post entitled "The Gospel According to Dubya." It was going to go something like this:

"Blessed are the warmakers, for they shall ensure the security of the people. Thou shalt kill and torture and bear false witness as long as you do it in the name of national security. And if a man smite thee on on one cheek, well, you should have launched a pre-emptive strike to disarm him."

But as I was reading through the Sermon on the Mount I was really struck by something. What few supporters Dubya has left among generally say they stick with him because they think he's a good Christian and his actions are guided by God. Well, maybe he's guided by some god, but he certainly isn't guided by Jesus. Here are a few quotes from Matthew:

"But I say unto you that ye resist no evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."

"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you." (I wonder if Dubya has ever said a prayer for Osama bin Laden.)

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men... But thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet.. [and] pray to thy Father... in secret."

"Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink." (Oh, but Jesus didn't say anything about what ye shall put in your fuel tank!)

"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Dubya's version: "This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base.")

"Blessed are the peacemakers..." (Maybe Dubya thinks that Jesus was referring to the LGM-118 missile.)

If Dubya is guided by God, it must be the god of the Old Testament (e.g. "And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them. Thou shalt make no convenant with them, nor show mercy unto them." (Deut. 7:2)

Still, one has to wonder...

"And if thy say in thine heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously..." (Deut. 18:21-22)

WMD's are a slam-dunk. We will be greeted as liberators. Mission accomplished. The war will last weeks, not months.

Are these the words that the Lord hath spoken?

The FDA squanders its credibility

Since the FDA, in a patently absurd and obviously politically motivated move, declared that marijuana has no medical benefits, the news is chock full of stories reviewing all the scientific studies (to say nothing of the anecdotal evidence) that show unequivocally that it does. I'll just note this one since it's very well written and comes from The Economist, which is hardly a bastion of left-wing propaganda.

You know, if one's goal were to get the truth about marijuana's benefits out there for people to see, one could hardly imagine a more effective strategy than to get the FDA to make such a manifestly false claim. Someone in the administration is either very stupid or very clever.

My money is on stupid.

The right way for religion to critique science (and vice versa)

Science and religion waste of a lot of energy talking past each other by arguing about the wrong things, like whether or not God exists. Relgionists go to extreme, sometimes comical lengths to "scientifically" prove the existence of God. Scientists also go to equally extreme and ultimately equally futile lengths to prove his non-existence. It is at once amazing and sad to see all these smart people wasting so much effort on such manifestly useless endeavors.

What is most amazing about it is that it is transparently obvious even by their own standards that both sides are wrong. How can that be? It seems a logical tautology that either God exists or He does not. But it isn't so. P or not P is tautologically true only if the truth value of P is well defined. "Either God exists or He does not" is no more of a tautology than "Either Les Demoiselles D'Avignonis a beautiful painting or it is not."

The futility of the debate ultimately stems from the fact that the two sides are actually arguing about something different than what they think they are arguing about. They think they are arguing about the existence of God, but in fact they are arguing about His nature. What the religionists really are setting out to prove is not that the Universe was Designed, but that the Designer is still around, and He has a plan, and you have a place in it. What (most) scientists/humanists/atheists really want to say is not that the universe is devoid of transcendant meaning, but that we need to seek it in places other than holy scripture.

Even on a question as basic as whether or not we were created in God's image the two sides could find common ground if only they would be honest with themselves about what they really believe. The Bible teaches that we are created in God's image, but what does that mean? It can't mean that we are exact duplicates of God, if for no other reason than that there are six billion of us and only one of Him (to say nothing of the fact that He is almighty and omniscient and we clearly aren't and never were). The only reasonable interpretation is that there is something in our essential nature that mirrors the essential nature of the Creator. But for a scientist, the Creator is simply the Laws of Physics (LP). Framed that way, it becomes self evident that we are created in the image of the Creator/LP. We can even agree on what certain aspects of that essential nature is. For example, we have the capacity to do Good. The story that would be told to explain this is different on both sides, but the fact itself is beyond dispute, as is the fact that it arose from and is a reflection of whatever created us.

This is not to say that we would achieve perfect harmony; we would not. There are legitimate disagreements between science and religion, and productive debates to be had, but we're not having them because neither side is capable of seeing beyond its own prejudices.

One of the most counterproductive prejudices that is shared by both sides is that science is not a religion, that it is the antithesis of religion. That is hogwash. Science is not necessarily a religion, but it certainly can be (and I think it should be). It is clearly Richard Dawkins's religion (and the fact that he would take great umbrage at that suggestion is evidence that it is in fact true). And if Dawkins won't have it, then I'll claim it as my own. I am a scientist. That is my religion. I believe that the Laws of Physics, once they are properly understood, provide an adequate guide to how to live a good, moral, and even transcendant life. But coming to that understanding has not been easy, either for me personally or for mankind as a whole, and I can certainly understand how someone could believe otherwise.

I think a proper understanding of science as a religion would help the debate become more productive all around. We would not achieve perfect agreement, of course, because no two religions can ever be perfectly reconciled. (That's one of the things that makes them religions.) But I do think that reframing the debate as one between two religions rather than between relgion and non-religion would go a long way towards breaking some of the present logjams.

Consider for example the question of the reliability of the Biible on how we should live our lives. The extreme positions are "It is absolutely reliable" (the fundamentalist Christian position) and "it is absolutely unreliable" (the fundamentalist scientist position). Both are, of course, wrong. (Ron's First Law: All extreme positions are wrong.) Even the most extreme fundamentalist would concede that, if nothing else, the meaning of certain passages in the Bible is far from self-evident, and the debate within the religious community about how to address that problem has been raging for thousands of years. And even the most extreme scientist would concede that some parts of the Bible, like "Love thy neighbor as thyself", are probably not bad ideas. And we can go even further: the scientific viewpoint on morality is that it evolved as an evolutionarily stable strategy, so it would make sense that at some point as the human brain evolved that certain aspects of that strategy should be codified in writing. So the Bible can be viewed as a sort of an early draft of a theory of evolutionarily stable (which is to say moral) behavior, just as Beowulf can be viewed as an early draft of a theory of drama.

So how should religion critique science? Well, how about something like this:

There is no dispute that science serves as a reliable guide to a great many things, like how to build cars and computers, and how to make medicine. But science has its limits. Our scientific understanding of the human mind is rudimentary at best, and progress is slow. Those who pursue this work are driven by a faith that the extreme challenges presented by this undertaking will some day be overcome. That faith is laudable, but it is, in fact, faith.

In the meantime, the world is filled will six billion humans who have to figure out what to make of their lives here and now. Many of these people do not have the luxury of being able to invest the very high time and effort that it takes to reach a scientific understanding of one's place in the Universe. Most people's time is consumed with the day-to-day business of survival, of getting crops planted and harvested, of finding clean water, of caring for the livestock (if they are lucky enough to have livestock), of struggling with the passion and pain, the joys and sorrows and the pain that are part and parcel of being human. Some day, perhaps, science will understand all this well enough that we can cure every disease, ease every heartache, and provide everyone with a sense of purpose and transcendant meaning based on science. In the meantime, if someone is in pain, what purpose is served by depriving them of the comfort they might obtain by believing that God loves them and has a Plan?

And how should science critique religion? Well, how about this.

I couldn't have said it better myself

If I am ever able to write even one tenth as well as Douglas Adams I will be a very happy man. Here is a transcript of a speech he gave which starts out shredding religion and then goes on to say why it is indispensable. It's much the same point I've been trying to make, but he does it much better than I could ever hope to. It's very long but well worth the time.

Whaddya know? I'm not a lone nutcase!

It seems I'm not the only one who thinks that George Bush wants to nuke Iran while he still can.

A sober view of global warming

Tom Evslin offers up a sober view of global warming, and a conclusion with which I agree:

What we can't afford to do is make policy based on hysterical observations that the glaciers are continuing their fifteen-thousand year retreat OR a complacent assumption that things will stay the way humans have always seen them.

Here again we would be well served with a little more humility on all sides.

Why vs How - a false conflict

The Atheist Spy sent me an email asking me to comment on his blog, and this post in particular. My knee-jerk reaction was that he is taking an awfully long time to say a fairly simple thing, but I think his point (once you get to it) is basically valid: people become religious or not depending on whether they care more about "why" than "how", or vice-versa. And there's no way to justify a concern for one over the other from first principles. Every world view, even atheism (even solipsism or nihlism), requires a leap of faith. (I actually made this point in my very first post here.)

But all that got me to thinking: why (it's a loaded word now!) must these two questions put people at loggerheads? Why can't we care about both? How (!) can we reconcile the conflict that seems to arise between the Whyers and the Howers?

The answer, I think, is very simple. The problem is that the methods that are effective for answering "how?" are not very effective for answering "why?". So if you care about one or the other then you naturally conclude that the methods that are effective for answering the question that you care about are "good" (because they produce the answers that you care about).

Can these positions be reconciled? Of course they can. All it takes is to recognize that there are two questions being asked, that people can be legitimately concerned (or not) with both of them, and that the effective methods for answering them are different.

Of course, this requires a bit of humility and a willingness to admit that what is important to you might legitimately be different from what is important to someone else, and perhaps even a willingness to admit that you might be wrong about some things. Such humility is in short supply at both extremes of the debate. Both religious fundamentalists, who insist that X must be true because it is what they think their holy text says (they are very rarely actually correct about this -- more on that later), and science fundamentalists (like Dawkins), who insist on pretending that anything that does not succumb to reductionism is nothing more than a human foible, will never be convinced. For the rest of us, middle ground is not hard to find.

The problems with fundamentalist religion have been extensively cataloged. Fundamentalists have attempted to make similar catalogs of the failings of "fundamentalists science" (e.g. creationist/ID critiques of Evolution) but these fail because they attempt to critique science using logic, and that can never work because science by definition *is* logic. It is rather like trying to critique faith by saying, "Jesus can't be the Son of God because I don't believe it." It doesn't work.

An effective religious critique of science must be based on the methods of religion, not science. The problem with science is not that it has trouble explaining how we got here, it's that it is utterly uncapable of explaining why we got here. The scientific answer to this is to simply dismiss the question as unimportant, but that's cheating. It's just as much of a cheat as saying, "It's true becuase the Bible says so." If I want to ask "why?" it is not for you to say whether my concern is worthy of consideration. The mere fact that I am a human and I choose to ask makes it worthy of my fellow human's concern. (Likewise for those who choose to ask "how".)

It is a happy circumstance that those who choose to ask "how" have stumbled recently (like in the last few hundred years) upon a method on which they (we) could all mostly agree and which seems to be effective. Those who choose to ask "why" have not yet been so fortunate. But that in and of itself is not license to dismiss the question. It was not that long ago in the grand and glorious scheme of things that the how-askers were trying to convert lead into gold. The arrogance of fundamentalist science is no more well founded than the arrogance of fundamentalist religion. Just because we scientists have found some common ground does not give us license to dismiss as unimportant the concerns of our fellow humans who have not been so fortunate.

I think we would all be well served with a little more humility and compassion all around.

Brilliant!

A picture is worth a thousand words.

If abortion is murder redux

Ohio is poised to make it a felony to leave the state to have an abortion.

It makes perfect sense. If the fetus is a person then abortion is murder, no different from infanticide, no different from shooting someone in the head. Abortion is cold-blooded, premeditated murder. Driving someone out of state for an abortion is no different from kidnapping a baby to be executed. Of course it should be a felony.

If abortion is murder. If the fetus is a person.

And what about all those frozen embryos? If life begins at conception then embryos are people too, and so letting an embryo thaw out without being implanted in a woman's uterus is murder. Cold-blooded premeditated murder. Why should not a woman who undergoes in-vitro fertilization not be required by law to carry all of the resulting babies to term? If life begins at conception, isn't the embryo a person? Isn't refusal to implant an embryo tantamount to abortion, tantamount to murder?

Am I the only one feeling a little queasy here?

The answer is that embryos are not people. Fetuses are not people. It takes more than a full complement of human DNA to make a person, more than a beating heart. It takes a functioning brain. That is why we recognize the concept of "brain death" (most of us anyway).

Life may begin at conception, but personhood doesn't start until much later. If we do not recognize that, we are headed towards a very unpleasant future.

The fear-mongering begins

Here is the first of what will no doubt be a long series of lies designed to bolster the case for going to war with Iran:


"April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Iran, which is defying United Nations Security Council demands to cease its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days if it goes ahead with plans to install thousands of centrifuges at its Natanz plant, a U.S. State Department official said."


That claim is absurd on its face. Iran probably couldn't build a car in sixteen days, let alone a nuclear bomb. Iran's current capacity for enriching uranium is tiny. It will take them months if not years to produce even the raw materials for a nuclear bomb, let alone the bomb itself.

Now, one must wonder: since it has become clear that the invasion of Iraq was based on, at best, willful ignorance, why he is once again resorting to transparent falsehoods to bolster the case for yet another invasion? My theory is this: George Bush is a man of deep convictions. He believes in Right and Wrong, and he would never let a little thing like facts stand in the way of smiting the evil doers. Nor would he let a little thing like democracy stand in the way either.

My guess is that Dubya has his doubts that God will arrange to keep control of the House in Republican hands after November. That means he has to get the war with Iran started in the next six months while he still has a Congress full of lap dogs. After the election he can use the "now that we're there we have to stay" argument to bring the Democrats to heel.

A crazy theory? God, I hope so. But we would all do well to keep a very close eye on Adminstration rhetoric in the next few weeks. The possibility that George Bush actually wants to start World War 3 (perhaps to hasten the return of Jesus) is not entirely out of the question.