Google Search: "It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse"

Oct 05, 2005 -- 02:30:01 PM EST
Remarks by Al Gore as prepared
Associated Press / The Media Center
October 5, 2005

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger.
...
At first I thought the exhaustive, non-stop coverage of the O.J. trial was just an unfortunate excess that marked an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. But now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time.
...
The coverage of political campaigns focuses on the "horse race" and little else. And the well-known axiom that guides most local television news is "if it bleeds, it leads." (To which some disheartened journalists add, "If it thinks, it stinks.")
...
Decades ago Walter Lippman wrote, "the manufacture of consent...was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy...but it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique...under the impact of propaganda, it is no longer plausible to believe in the original dogma of democracy."
...
Make no mistake, full-motion video is what makes television such a powerful medium. Our brains - like the brains of all vertebrates - are hard-wired to immediately notice sudden movement in our field of vision. We not only notice, we are compelled to look. When our evolutionary predecessors gathered on the African savanna a million years ago and the leaves next to them moved, the ones who didn't look are not our ancestors. The ones who did look passed on to us the genetic trait that neuroscientists call "the establishing reflex." And that is the brain syndrome activated by television continuously - sometimes as frequently as once per second. That is the reason why the industry phrase, "glue eyeballs to the screen," is actually more than a glib and idle boast. It is also a major part of the reason why Americans watch the TV screen an average of four and a half hours a day.
..

Part of me wants to applaud Al Gore for what is a good speech and a noble effort.

Unfortunately, the bigger part of me is restrained by what I think is a correct realization that it simply doesn't matter, because there is nothing that can be done to stop the general slide we're in - the overshoot we're in and the dieoff we're apparently headed for - on account of our natural, human inability to arrange our affairs sustainably, to understand such messages as those of Hardin and Tainter, all the while embracing such things as religion and a belief in perpetual growth.

Oh, well... Good luck Mr. Gore. I'll be on your bus as the caravan heads for the cliff. I've added your "Current TV" to my link list, and I've put a full "Fair Use" cache of your remarks in the first comment below.

Expecting Disappointment - Supreme Court hears arguments over Oregon's assisted-suicide law

I fully expect to be disappointed when this decision is announced. I expect the Court to please the right-to-lifers, but it'll take a miracle for me to ever agree that end-of-life decisions like these are any business of the Federal government's.

A court that rules intrA-state, non-commercial, LEGAL, medically prescribed provision of marijuana to dying people is the Federal governments business under the interstate commerce clause of the constitution, or that finds it's OK to steal someone's property because someone else's use of it for private purposes would be better for the community, is not one that I have much use for.

USATODAY.com - Cocaine blight spreads in Colombia

That we continue to believe in prohibition and place the blame for its side effects on the objects of prohibition marks us as FUCKING IDIOTS.

"INTELLIGENT THOUGHT" ON EDGE

"INTELLIGENT THOUGHT" ON EDGE

I've already seen a couple of these pieces in the New York Times, such as Daniel Dennett's "Show Me The Science" and Lisa Randall's "Dangling Particles".

I'm happy to see Edge collecting these pieces in their Intelligent Thought pages.

WSJ.com - Here It Comes

Well, I certainly hope Kurzweil is right. His vision is one hell of a lot more hopeful than mine.

Responding to Yamauchi's Paradox

Peaknik posted at The Oil Drum that he'd like some opinion on what he'd written on his own blog, so I followed him there and posted what follows:

At The Oil Drum you mentioned writing this piece, and that it would be nice to hear some opinion about what happens when your mind and your job go in different directions.

It's not just gamers or Mr. Yamauchi. I think the majority of brilliant people don't seem to acknowledge the problem of peak oil, because brilliant people are just a subset of people, and of the various personality types among people, only a small number seem to see this problem. I read somewhere that someone had looked at this and concluded that of the 16 Myers-Briggs types, peak oilers came from just two of those types. Personality-types and population proportions are two different things, but peak oil worriers are in the minority in either case.

Someone observed that people tend to reject uncomfortable truths in favor of comfortable falsehoods. It's just the way most of us are. You can see the same workings in other arenas like religion or belief in perpetual growth against limits.

Michael Shermer (of Skeptic Magazine among other things) thinks that smart people believe weird things because they are very good at rationalizing. Sounds plausible to me.

So what do you and I do in the face of all this? Have you read "On The Beach" or seen the movie(s)? What would you do if presented with the fact of impending catastrophe? Well, it's not radiation, but it sure seems to me that for various reasons the fairly near-term future is rather likely to be catastrophic. What to do when there's no real hope? Pretend or act as though there is hope and aspire to be proven wrong in the end? Why not; it's probably kinder.

Don't let me stop you, but I don't think you'd be likely to accomplish much by starting a dialog among gamers because gamers are just people, too. Some number of them are already aware or could be made aware, but I think the population of gamers would break out in similar proportion to the general population on this and similar issues. Gamers might even be worse than the general population if the Google crowd's reaction to Kunstler is a guide. "Yo, Dude, you're so, like, wrong! We've got, like, technology!"

I don't think there are any tipping points to be reached before their time here, and their time probably won't come until it's too late, unfortunately.

To each his own, I guess. As for me, I like the line from that Tom Hanks movie about being stranded on a desert island where he says something like, "You've just got to keep on breathing, because you never know what tomorrow might bring."

Guess I'd better go post this comment on my own blog now. Thanks for giving me something to write about.

Salud, amor, pesetas, y el tiempo para disfrutarlas! Steve

Microsoft Addressing Consequences of Pernicious Complexity

Following up on my earlier post, Pernicious Complexity:

WSJ.com - Battling Google, Microsoft Changes How It Builds Software:
"With each patch and enhancement, it became harder to strap new features onto the software since new code could affect everything else in unpredictable ways." (Fair Use archive in the first comment below.)

I don't know if Mr. Allchin had read Tainter by this time, but it sounds fairly likely.

This is a great article from the Wall Street Journal. Their editorial stance pissed me off a while back so I dumped them, but I always thought their reporting was good. Maybe I'll go back the next time they send me one of their "come back" emails. This also bodes well for Microsoft.

Money available for diversion to Katrina and Rita

Hey! Here's some "wasteful spending" money available for Katrina! Hey! Look! Here, right here!

Ah, never mind then.

Son of a bitch...

TIME.com: Pattern of Abuse

Hat tip. And another.

The abuse we keep hearing about from Iraq has been a real shock to me.

I was an enlisted Army counterintelligence agent for five years back in the mid-'70's, and clearly remember the training we received on the Geneva Convention. There would have been no excuse for participating in such things, or for failure to report such things. "Following orders," it was stressed over and over and over again, was no excuse. Training on these things was not delivered with winks and nods, either. It was serious and sincere.

Though atrocities occurred back then, too, I'd come forward from that time with the clear impression that the chain of command at least tried to stay on top of things like this.

As little as just two or three years ago I was moved to write a letter to Russia's President Putin to protest the actions of Russian soldiers in Chechnya. One particular story had Chechen people forced to crawl gauntlets of Russian soldiers, who would beat them as they passed. One particular Chechen victim had been partially paralyzed and permanently tortured by a hammer blow to the spine. I was outraged, and the thought of such a thing happening at the hands of American soldiers didn't even cross my mind.

How stupid of me.

Along came Abu Grabass and stories like this, and I am disgusted and ashamed. It's not so much that these things happen as that the command structure seems so clueless. Complicit, even.

I would like to think that the officer class of the US military, being all christian and shit, would have a good handle on things like this, but apparently not.

During my time in the Army I met some of the best people in the world, and some of the worst. The latter seemed vastly outnumbered, though. Now I'm not so sure.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Vatican 'to ban new gay priests'

'
Hey Pope!
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html

Conclusion

The empirical research does not show that gay or bisexual men are any more likely than heterosexual men to molest children. This is not to argue that homosexual and bisexual men never molest children. But there is no scientific basis for asserting that they are more likely than heterosexual men to do so. And, as explained above, many child molesters cannot be characterized as having an adult sexual orientation at all; they are fixated on children.

Faith is belief absent evidence, so I guess they can believe that homosexuals have a higher tendency towards child abuse than straights if they want. But then, I don't think the church really believes this; rather, they're scared of the fundies and facts are irrelevant.

The real problem has been the church's failure to deal with child molestation when it happened. They preferred instead to bury the problem and shuffle the guilty off to another parish.

In any event, the real aberration is celibacy. They don't even want you to jack off. Don't they know that prostatitis is called "monks disease" for a reason, or that masturbation prevents prostate cancer?

That's enough <-- The Museum of Left Wing Lunacy

I've had enough of this right-wing shit thank you very much. For starters, they should can the sound effects.

In the introduction to his lecture, Our Energy Challenge, [here] [here], Dr. Richard Smalley refers to "right-brained" and "left-brained" people in the context of political tendencies, alluding to the same sort of Mars-Venus differences some say exists between men and women.

I think he's right. Whatever the case, the people behind this so-called museum of left-wing lunacy are wired differently from me. Looking at the site repels me, which is unfortunate because we need more not less accommodation across this divide. I enjoy Brooks and Buckley, but not these guys.

(Everybody should see Smalley's lecture, by the way. Very highly recommended.)

Bennett reverses: He's foe of Yucca

"The entire issue needs to be rethought, Bennett said. The fundamental principles of that new policy should include unqualified support for more nuclear power, that the nation work toward the technology that would allow reprocessing of waste and that all nuclear waste be left where it is until reprocessing can proceed, he said.

"If it is safe to transport nuclear waste, and it is safe to store nuclear waste at an interim storage site like Skull Valley, "by definition it is equally as safe to leave it where it is," he said."

Sounds like a punt to me.

Reprocessing of "spent fuel" is the way to go. Were it up to me, there would be absolutely no dumping of "spent fuel". So-called spent fuel still contains the vast bulk of its original fuel value. It should be reprocessed both to recover that fuel value and to radically reduce the amount, and lifetime, of nuclear waste ultimately needing disposal. Reprocessing "spent fuel" makes a great deal of sense.

On the other hand, leaving spent fuel at the plant in spent fuel pools or in dry casks, as is now the practice, is hardly as safe as putting it underground or gathering it from hundreds of scattered interim locations to one interim location.

Had Bennett said, "Reprocessing is now an option in this country" rather than " the nation [should] work toward the technology that would allow reprocessing of waste", I'd have been encouraged. Had he said, "Reprocessing is now an option and this bill mandates reprocessing over dumping" I'd have been very happy with it.

Reprocessing is already more than an option. It's a reality. The French, Japanese and Russians do it all the time. We should, too.

As it is, though, Bennett's stance is just pandering to anti-nukes and NIMBYs. As someone said, perfect is the enemy of good enough. Yucca will be good enough for now. Reprocessing would be better, but the energy situation is dire and we have to get a move on. All Bennett's stance does is shield him a bit from anti-nuke activists and NIMBYs at the expense of reduced prospects for nuclear energy.

Reducing the prospects for any relatively benign, massive-scale, non-intermittent renewable energy source is exactly the wrong thing to do to our modern industrial society, especially on the eve of peak oil and at a time when the reality of anthropogenic global climate change is acknowledged by all but the blind and self-interested. And yes, nuclear energy is relatively benign, massive-scale, non-intermittent and renewable.

The Museum of Left Wing Lunacy

Update 20050919:

This morning the Museum is lacking their blogroll so I could not visit any new right-wing blogs, but I'm not sure it matters. So far the best thing I've noted is this picture.

I'll have to keep visiting for a little while, but I'm starting to think that there must be a Mars-Venus-like difference between at least this variety of conservative and myself. After I start looking I have to force myself to keep looking. Their facts are not my facts, and I feel their stance on my facts is that they are not facts. I've seen a lot of smug LOLing among them, and I simply can't stand "LOL". "Breaker breaker 1-9 good buddy." Just rubs me the wrong way.

Anyway, nice right-wing tits.

======================

I've never considered myself "liberal" or "conservative". I've been around brilliant people of both self-descriptions. Invariably though, I find myself very much at odds with both sorts, enough to feel alienated from their respective camps.

For example, I'm 99% atheist so that's one strike against the presently ruling "conservative" party (who don't seem all that conservative to me, frankly). For another example, I'm pro-nuclear energy, so that's one strike against the "liberals" (who seem pretty damned conservative at times).

I'm stereotyping and simplifying, sure, but it's useful.

I'm pro-death-penalty so I'm at odds with the liberals. I'm pro-abortion so I'm opposed to that conservative mindset.

I'm a conscientious objector in the war on drugs so neither liberal or conservative thought in that arena holds much appeal to me.

I've watched enough of Fox News to turn away, having concluded they're a propaganda arm of the republicans. I've watched enough of the the major network news to turn away because of the lowest-common-denominator nature of their content (they titilate rather than inform, they don't cover a lot of very important stuff while devoting time to trivia). I still watch enough of both to confirm my conclusions.

I can't stand Ann Coulter, but I didn't much care for Al Franken's "Lying Liars" either. I very much like William Buckley and David Brooks, but I also like Bob Herbert, Frank Rich and Doonsbury (which I think is eloquent political commentary more than just a comic strip).

I'm suspicious of operatives like Carville and Matalin, especially because they're married.

I suppose I'm sympathetic to the old lady who, when asked how she'd vote, responded, "Vote? That would only encourage the bastards!" (Actually, I don't know whether that line was a joke, from a real old lady, or by a motorcycle journalist called Gordon Jennings, to whom I saw the quote attributed in a now apparently defunct forum.) The assertion that though our system was a mess it was still the best system around used to seem reasonable, but I'm not so sure anymore.

I've had libertarian tendencies all along, but when I read a little deeper into libertarian stuff I find it impractical, so I'm not a libertarian. I'm certainly no communist though some smart people have been.

So what the hell am I? Sometimes I think I'm basically a fatalistic, non-anarchic nihilist, meaning that I am driven to conclude by what I perceive as present and likely-future reality that it doesn't much matter what I am - that events have a course of their own over which there's very little hope of control. I am not a determinist because I don't believe in destiny, so the qualified "nihilist" seems to fit me.

Lately I've been paying more attention to blogs and similar outlets than to mainstream media. I don't read everything at each of the links I've collected, but I try to balance my collection of links and diversify my sources somewhat. My collection seems to be a little lefty, though, so I've blogged this site because they have a long blogroll of conservative sites I can check out.

Right off the bat, though, I like Pip Wilson's collection of founder's quotes better than theirs.

So Long New York Times <-- TimesSelect: Overview

I don't understand the New York Times' move to start charging for access to their editorial content. Were I in the business of propagating memes I'd want them to travel as widely as possible, including to those minds unwilling to pay for the privilege of reading them.

Looks like Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, John Tierney, Nicholas Kristof, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, David Brooks, Frank Rich and others will have to find other avenues to my eyes. That's a shame. They are all brilliant writers. Were I one of them I'd be pissed at this move by the New York Times, because there are plenty of other brilliant writers out there unimpeded by this new hurdle.

Am I just being cheap? Maybe, but you've got to draw the line on expenditures somewhere. I'm already paying subscription fees to the New Republic, Scientific American, Skeptic, the Atlantic Monthly and others. I'm more inclined to cut the Atlantic Monthly and the New Republic than I am to start paying the New York Times another fifty of my finite bucks, for which I have plenty of other uses. I already tossed the Wall Street Journal a while back, but that was for another reason - their editorial stance became too much to stomach with their adoration of the charlatan Lomborg and their climate change "skepticism".

I can understand the Times' need to increase revenue, and if I used their archives a lot I would not mind paying, as I have not minded once or twice when I've done so. I could not care less about their sports content, and I have no use for their other Select services. Sorry, but if they want me to read their editorials they'll have to cover their expenses with advertising revenue.

Thanks, but no thanks. It's been swell, but I guess it's over. So long, New York Times. So long, esteemed opinion page authors. Maybe I'll read your stuff elsewhere some day.

Pernicious Complexity

Bruce Schneier linked to Marcus Ranum's "The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security". It's all interesting, but what sets me off this morning is this sentence from the discussion on Schneier's page, in which Ranum says

We can make systems that are more powerful but less complex. I absolutely believe that to be true. It is, however, easier to build systems that are more complex and more powerful.

That's the problem.

Joseph Tainter's 1996 paper, "Complexity, Problem Solving, and Sustainable Societies", beautifully lays out the consequences of the lure of utility at the expense of complexity. [link] [Wikipedia] [Google]

Tainter's paper does not even contain the word "computer" (it's about energy and sustainability) but the central theme applies perfectly to the computer world. The point of Tainter's paper is that complexity and utility are related, and that the relationship over time is predictable. It starts out where you fix a problem by adding some complexity and get a great deal of utility in the process. Later on, when you have another problem you've got also to deal with the complexity you added before. Things are a little harder now, but you add more complexity because you can get more utility. Things continue this way for a while.

Eventually though (and this is where Ranum trails off) you start getting less and less utility for each increment of complexity, until it reaches the point where you're just dealing with the complexity and keeping things afloat somehow. The utility/complexity curve has levelled off. If you stay on this track, if you keep doing what you're doing, you'll start heading down the back side of the curve, adding more complexity to keep things going, but losing utility. Now you're on the road to eventual failure.

Read the paper. I'm not doing it justice.

If I were in charge of something like an IT shop, nobody would work for me that had not internalized Tainter's message. If I were in charge, internal customer service would "suffer" because internal customers would no longer automatically get what they want. All requests for new functionality, and all proposed approaches to existing problems, would have to be examined with respect to their impact on complexity. Very little would be adopted unless it somehow resulted in a reduction in effective complexity.

Of course, I wouldn't be in charge for long.

Read Tainter's paper.

Daniel C. Dennett: Agent of SATAN!

Daniel Dennett will surely BURN IN HELL FOR ETERNITY for allowing SATAN'S CLEVERNESS to reach his pen. In his adoration of Satan, Dennett even wears a beard like Satan's!

Satan has used Dennett to compose a piece filled with as much trickery as the leftist New York Times could decently publish in its ongoing attempts to prevent the teaching of humanity's REAL origins.

Children must be protected from tricky screeds like Dennett's, especially if their "open mindedness" makes them vulnerable to the arguments of these "scientists." I urge you to block the ENTIRE NEW YORK TIMES WEBSITE from your home computer, and make sure any library or school computers are also blocked from the Times' evil influence before letting your vulnerable children be exposed to Dennett's blasphemous tirade.

Pat Robertson made a mistake recently. Hugo Chavez! Give me a break! Daniel Dennett is the one we should assassinate! What was Brother Robertson THINKING?!

If you must know the enemy, and if you are confident of the protections of your prayers and tithes, the offensive op-ed is here (or see the whole thing (Fair Use) in the first comment to this post). You are forewarned: BE WARY OF SATAN'S CLEVERNESS.

Phoenix OzzFest 2005

I went to the tail end of Ozzfest with my friend Chris on Thursday night. We saw sets by Mudvayne, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. I wasn't familiar with Mudvayne; they sounded good and I'd like to hear more. Iron Maiden I was familiar with, of course, but to my surprise I didn't have any Iron Maiden on the computer. Now I do, having downloaded the greatest hits Edward the Great album, which is playing as I type, Apple having received some money from me via this marvel of modernity, iTunes.

Wow! What a show! What a crowd!!

A couple of weeks ago I went to see Queensryche and Judas Priest at the same place, Cricket Pavillion (west side Phoenix area). That crowd was a third the size of this one. The demographics were markedly different, too. This was a surprise because, after all, the four bands, Judas Priest, Queensryche, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath, all hail from similar times and climes.

This event had been going on all day though. I suppose that make some difference. Had we come to Ozzfest earlier we would have seen Rob Zombie and some others I wasn't familiar with. Oh, well, work you know.

At the Priestryche show I had no problem spotting people my age or older, but at Ozzfest I must have been the oldest guy there. In addition to a much larger and quite younger crowd at Ozzfest, they were more aggressive! There were as many as five different bonfires going simultaneously after dark. Trash fire bonfires. I saw several attractive young ladies topless, having had their breasts and torsos artistically painted. They looked good! Toward the end of the show we headed to the top of the grass to better walk over toward the exit (Friday being a work day for Chris). From the top the view was pretty impressive. Some great song was blasting its way through the air, lit by what seemed like one lighter in every other attendee's fist. A LOT of people had lighters going, and it was a cool sight. Great music. Ozzy was great. Looked great. Sounded like Ozzy.

Ozzy and Black Sabbath put on a great follow to Iron Maiden, who'd also put on a great set. Iron Maiden set a great stage for Black Sabbath! It was all just great. Great show.

I could have done without the fires. Burning plastic's aroma is not particularly pleasant. Might even be toxic. Anyway, people wanted their fires to dance around. Participants at one particular fire as we were headed out had apparently just run off a group of security people, who were headed the other way with angry young men yelling unpleasantries after their retreating asses. Apparently the fire dancers just wanted to be left alone - they weren't messing with people that I noticed.

I studied my hearing aids for a while. They are definitely providing some protection from loud concert sound levels. If I turn off the hearing aids it's like wearing some hearing protection. Not industrial grade hearing protection, but some. When I would take off the hearing aids it allowed some very high intensity higher-frequencies to come through that were actually uncomfortable for me. With the hearing aids turned on, I still got some protection from those high-intensity -higher frequency sounds, but I could hear the lower frequency stuff almost as well as without the hearing aids, during which I thought the automatic dynamic range compression was doing what I'd like it to do.

Anyway... Jolly good shew!

The 98% Red Hammer

There's this Internet email meme, I think of it as the "2%-98% red hammer meme". Click directly to the comments to read it. You might want to read it first, then return to the spoiler below. That is what I would have opted if presented with a spoiler before reading the thing.

Anyway, the email arrives (thanks Rick), boldly proclaiming "This is really weird." Then it gives instructions to scroll down the page doing some simple additions along the way. Toward the end it primes you further with "Just a little bit more". When I reached the punch line, it did have a weird effect on me for a moment. I hope it is "for a moment" with others on whom this trick works, but I suppose some people may go on misunderstanding the reality.

Here, I already wrote this in an email (OK, now I've edited it a little bit):

No, it's just a trick.

When I read this thing and did the additions and scrolled down and then it asked for the color and the tool and I thought "red hammer" and then scrolled further down to be told I was part of a certain important group of people, I felt . . . . impressed. When I came to the part where it says "You were thinking "red hammer" weren't you?", I got a really strange sensation for a minute. Complete incredulity. How the hell...?

It's just a trick that works sometimes.

First, I think the 2% / 98% claim is bogus. It's a lie for effect. It's to increase the stickiness of the meme. Which will work better?

1. Telling them they're in a highly significant and, by extension, prestigious group, or
2. Telling them they part of a large but probably non-majoritarian group, but that the grouping itself is irrelevant?

If they'd said the more-true number 2, the trick wouldn't work as well on those for whom it works. Even if it doesn't work on most other people, the ones likely to think something other than "red hammer", the trick would still play on a lot of people, whose who will say "red hammer".

So the number is bullshit.

Then, apparently they have researched the likelihood of a person answering a question a certain way out of the blue ( "they" being the scientists). The majority of people (a large number of them anyway), when asked for a color out of the blue, will say "red". It's the same when people are asked to name a tool out of the blue. Most, or a large percentage, will say "hammer." They're just two thing that are likely to come to mind first, except these are more likely. Put the two together and you get some percentage (not necessarily a majority) of people who'll think "red hammer". For that group of people this thing can work (at least the first time they see it). For some people the most likely answers are not "red" and "hammer", but who cares. Then they give you the false 2% / 98% statistic and prime the ones who answer "red hammer", they are primed with the apparent (though explainable) weirdness that the email "knows" you were going to say "red hammer". Some of the supposed 2% wind up wondering what's wrong with them.

If you are falsely primed for an answer to an unanswerable question about an unknowable truth, you'll stand for something so won't fall for anything. Besides, those other people may be stupid. HA! Let's make that meme more sticky. Bullshit can be sticky.

The purpose of having you do the additions as you scroll down the page is to put you into concentration on something else, so that your answers to the questions actually do come from out of the blue.

Maybe some day scientists will discover subtle neurological differences among different types of different sorts of people's brains. I wonder what they'll find different about some people, who read the red hammer meme in the email and pick the color "fuck" and the tool "you" and wonder why they read this far. Why they did the additions. Why they forwarded the email.

Anyway, it was an interesting diversion. I thought the momentary initial reaction when the trick worked on me was pretty cool, and I think the explanation (though there's more to it, I'm sure) is pretty cool, too.

Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design

What is ID, and does it have a legitimate place in the high school science curriculum?

Of course not, because it is not science.

People behind "intelligent design" are taking a stab at memetic engineering, it seems to me.

The New Republic Online: Creations

The New Republic Online: Creations: "The cunning souls who propound intelligent design are playing with fire, because they have introduced intelligence into the discussion."

HA! That's just the opening line.

Actually, the opening sentence is softened a bit by the one following. The author, probably being a nice guy, may prefer that I place the two in continuity:

"The cunning souls who propound intelligent design are playing with fire, because they have introduced intelligence into the discussion. It is a standard to which they, too, must be held."

Here are some more gems:

[I]ntelligent design was prompted by the consequences of literalism in the interpretation of Scripture.
...
Sanctity is not an excuse for stupidity.
...
Truth is never heresy, except for those who make their religion vulnerable to truth.
...
The gates of figurative interpretation were opened in my face, and I grew up.

"..., and I grew up." Yeah!!

And finally:

For His agents on Earth have cultural uses for anti-Darwinism. They think it will make us good, because Darwin makes us bad. No doubt this is why President Bush wants "to expose people to different schools of thought," and have intelligent design taught alongside evolution: to retard our corruption. But isn't the idea that morality is founded in nature itself a sin of materialism? And are we to teach other false ideas alongside other true ones? I do not want my son to waste his time on phlogiston. I mean, what is truth? The question is begged yet again, this time by the pomo of Crawford.

What is truth? The question is begged yet again...

...the pomo of Crawford.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Berners-Lee on the read/write web

BBC NEWS | Technology | Berners-Lee on the read/write web:

When you write a blog, you don't write complicated hypertext, you just write text, so I'm very, very happy to see that now it's gone in the direction of becoming more of a creative medium
Tim Berners-Lee

Well, I seem to be enjoying it, along with about 9 million others who are being joined by a new blogger every second or so.

TBL: ... My goal for the web in 30 years is to be the platform which has led to the building of something very new and special, which we can't imagine now.

ML: Tim Berners-Lee, thank you very much.

Indeed.

The Politics of Ignorance - Sam Harris - Huffington Post

The Politics of Ignorance - Sam Harris - Huffington Post
Great piece.

"Because it is taboo to criticize a person’s religious beliefs, political debate over questions of public policy (stem-cell research, the ethics of assisted suicide and euthanasia, obscenity and free speech, gay marriage, etc.) generally gets framed in terms appropriate to a theocracy. Unreason is now ascendant in the United States -- in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world."
...
"Garry Wills has noted that the Bush White House "is currently honeycombed with prayer groups and Bible study cells, like a whited monastery." This should trouble us as much as it troubles the fanatics of the Muslim world."

Dawkins seems to like Harris' piece, too.

There's one part of Harris' piece that gives me pause:
"According to several recent polls, 22 percent of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to earth sometime in the next fifty years. Another 22 percent believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44 percent who go to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews, and who want to stop teaching our children about the biological fact of evolution. As the President is well aware, believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and motivated segment of the American electorate. ..."

I pause not because Harris is wrong but because he's right, and because actions that weaken this dominant superorganism weaken it in comparison to other, rising superorganisms that are inherently stronger. Look how Sistani has been able to contain Iraq's Shia population, commanding them to go to the polls and so on. Not that Sistani or the Shia pose any threat for the time being or necessarily in the future, but I am somewhat ambivalent about the weakening of the dominant superorganism, the one I live near.

I'll have to explore this and try to put it to better words some other time, but right now it's past my bedtime.

Taliban Go Home!!

What a bunch of BS.

I like and respect many of the religious people I know, but I can't stand the ones so deeply hooked by their own particular memeplex that they'd shove it down everyone else's throat by force if they could get away with it.

In case my graffiti obscured too much of the sign I'd love to have sprayed it on, the sign reads, "Whatever force is legitimate to defend the life of a BORN child is legitimate to defend the life of a PREBORN child."

No, Fool! A fetus is not a child. It has no soul because its brain has not developed sufficiently to produce a soul. In any event, the soul you believe in, which exists independent of the brain, is a figment of your imagination.

Believe in myth if you must, Taliban, but leave my female friends and relatives the hell alone.

Hat tip.

Art prankster sprays Israeli wall

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Art prankster sprays Israeli wall
I like Banksy.

"Brain-dead woman dies after birth" - No, she died three months ago.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Brain-dead woman dies after birth:
"... she was brain dead, but they offered to keep her alive ..."

If she was brain dead, then she was dead.

Susan Torres did not die when life support was removed after giving birth. She died three months ago when an undiagnosed cancer reached her brain, causing the stroke that killed her. Since the time of her death, the deceased woman's body has been kept on life support in order that her unborn child might survive.

The soul is what the brain does. When the brain dies, the soul dies with it and the person is dead.

Ms. Torres' death three months ago was a tragedy. That people think she died just yesterday represents another.

USNews.com: Culture: Atheists claim discrimination (8/2/05)

USNews.com: Culture: Atheists claim discrimination (8/2/05): "'We should not be tolerant of people who exercise such intolerance.'"

I am about >this< close to being an atheist, and though it may be pissing in the wind, I support the Brights and the Universists. I've met some great people through their meetings and in their online fora.

I have also met many great people of genuine faith with whom I could coexist in cooperation and harmony or even be friends. I understand that world views are as varied as the people who hold them.

The problem is that some religious people assume they are under orders from the one true god, and that people who think otherwise are somehow ... wrong. Well, if you have people of different faiths all claiming the authority of the one true god, then if follows that most of them are wrong. It is impossible for all of them to be right, right?

Well, actually, I see one out, which is that an omnipotent god can be all things to all people. But that clashes head on with the dogma most such people adhere to. These people, in effect, imply that their omnipotent god is not omnipotent because it cannot be all things to all people.

In other words, they are full of shit.

Having said that, and since humanity is seemingly hard-wired for belief so that the faithless will forever be a minority, I'd prefer to live in a relatively secular society with a Western-style god in the wings than in, say, an Islamic theocracy. The former may tolerate secularism and even encourage it out of self interest, but the latter will kill me if I tell them my truth.

Here.

Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation & Risk Management

The_Hirsch_Report_Proj_Cens.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Apparently, Richard Heinberg feels that someone may be suppressing this report.

I don't know. I suppose it's possible, and I have been puzzled and concerned over the lack of coverage this issue receives in US press.

Heinberg complains,

Here, then, is a significant report produced by an independent research company for the US Department of Energy, warning of a global problem of "unprecedented" proportions with economic, social, and political impacts that are likely to be extremely severe. The authors forecast "protracted economic hardship" for the United States and the rest of the world. It is a problem that deserves "immediate, serious attention."

Yet, half a year after its release, the Hirsch report is nowhere to be found. ...

I think that by "nowhere to be found" Heinberg must really mean "nowhere in the mainstream". The report is out there, but you'd never know it without stepping outside the mainstream, which is too bad because it again implies a number of possibilities, none of them particularly agreeable.

Hat tip to Energy Bulletin.

[Update to add a link to Resource Investor's piece on the report.]

[Update to add a link to The Oil Drum's take on the missing report. One of the comments posted to The Oil Drum's piece contained a working link to the Hilltop Lancers' cache of the report, which was said (in Heinberg's piece linked above) to have disappeared. I think it was probably just a typo on Heinberg's part, and then the consequences of cut-and-paste. The link to the Hilltop Lancers site in Heinberg's note starts out with "htto://" not "http://", so of course it didn't work. Hey, I didn't catch that typo the fist time I tried the link either. Maybe Heinberg's eyes are getting old like mine, on top of which the link, as it appears in Heinberg's note, excludes the "http://" part at the beginning.]

Sysinternals Freeware - RootkitRevealer

Sysinternals Freeware - RootkitRevealer
I hope it is not offensive to any possible deity for this old heathen to say, "God bless Bryce and Mark at Sysinternals," but this really pisses me off.

This rootkit shit essentially means that nobody should have confidence in the security of their machines, irrespective of the efforts they expend to keep the operating system up to date, to keep the anti-virus, anti-spyware, boot monitoring and registry guarding software up to date, and all that other horseshit.

It makes me want to just stop using the computer as anything other than a dumb terminal. I'm already doing that for email, having I switched to webmail a few months ago. I've got a few other programs I like, but I might as well toss all that shit, download Knoppix 4.0 and use it exclusively from the CD-Rom to do a few things online.

Whether evil bastards who'll sneak around and take what's not theirs, or computer and software manufacturers who make the products such that the evil bastards can do their piggish thing, some people should burn in hell.

Or, I could just do what I have taken to doing is various other areas - simply decide not to give a shit any more because it does no good.

I might have to modify this post when I'm less angry.

Natural Gas Supply, Demand and Pricing - EnergyPulse

Natural Gas Supply, Demand and Pricing - EnergyPulse

Overall, the expectation that relatively untested (on a massive scale) sources of NG will offset the issues mentioned here is a high stake gamble. Like the Greek tragedies of old, salvation may arrive from out of the blue but submitting our energy future to a complex and fragile series of unverified assumptions is risky indeed.

Here's a good article followed by a discussion thread illustrating, in part, how some people place great faith in what I ignorantly think is economic dogmatism while others are more reality-based.

Interesting reading for while we sail ever closer to the falls.

Robert G. Ingersoll - Wikipedia

"What an organ human speech is when employed by a master." Mark Twain on Ingersoll.

Thanks to Effect Measure for the tip.

Skeptacles: Atheists and Patriots Under God

Skeptacles: Atheists and Patriots Under God: "'I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.'

Stephen Roberts"

OK, so here is the origin of the quote I blogged about in the previous post. Thanks to Keith, a member of the Brights forum, who posted the quote's author's website in this forum thread.

At first glance, Stephen F. Roberts' website seems well worth visiting again, but now I've got to go to work.

Atheists and Patriots Under God

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

Stephen Roberts

My first reaction to this quote was that it was spot on. Upon reflection, though, in isolation (as I found it floating around the internet) I think it is lacking.

The quote addresses a person of monotheistic faith who, presumably, rejects all other gods as a tenet of his faith. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

Surely the speaker is not atheistic on the basis of dogma.

Or maybe he is. ThoughI tend to doubt it, maybe that's the proper context. I'll try to learn a bit more about the context of quote.

This next quote, which I happened upon while looking into the one above, bothers me a bit more:

"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God."

George Bush - 41st US President

This one doesn't seem to require much context.

The Hyprogen Economy?

The Daily Telegraph | Hydrogen to 'solve energy crisis': "In Brisbane for the Austmine Mining Innovation from Downunder Conference, Mr Macfarlane said he believed hydrogen fast fusion technology, under development in the United States, was the only viable alternative energy source."

Various sources have uncritically picked up on this comment by the Australian federal Industry and Resources Minister Hon. Ian Macfarlane.

Trouble is, what is this thing he is said to have called "hydrogen fast fusion"? Every Google or Clusty or Lexis Nexis search I did found nothing except in reference to his comment. If I exclude "Macfarlane" from the search ("hydrogen fast fusion" AND NOT "Macfarlane") I get no hits at all.

A site search at his Departments web site yields no hits.

It seems either the term is Mr. Macfarlane's, or he was misrepresented. I'll email him to request a clarification.

Test of Russian Courts

BBC NEWS | Europe | Russian sues Nasa for comet upset

Let's see if this Russian court can come up with a higher-quality ruling than some of the decisions the US Supreme Court has been delivering lately.

Penetrating the Fog, or, He Said She Said

A person I have reason to respect recently suggested that I was not following the hockey stick argument in the right place, and suggested I see an alternative source of information on the topic.

The Hockey Stick is a graph showing the reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperature for the past 1000 years. It's the subject of considerable controversy.

This controversy is a perfect example of the difficulty in trying to make sense of the world, and why I so like the line from The Quiet American that goes something like:

Sometimes, in order to preserve your sanity, you just have to pick sides.

The climate scientists behind the Hockey Stick run a blog called RealClimate.org.

Some of the chief Hockey Stick detractors run another blog (the alternative I was referred to) called ClimateAudit.org.

I decided to add ClimateAudit to my regular rounds because among the very few certainties I hold is that I am frequently mistaken. Maybe I'm too easily impressed with the Hockey Stick.

Well, it turns out I had read ClimateAudit before, and after a while had turned away. Now that I've again invested several hours in seeing what they have to say, I intend to read their stuff for a while longer, but frankly, I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn away again. I'm just not persuaded that their arguments are as likely as RealClimate's Hockey Stick to represent reality.

How do I make that determination? Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Turning Point, wrote another book, Blink, reporting on how human beings deal with complex situations through a process of rapid cognition involving a process called "thin slicing". Gladwell's book is about snap judgments and first impressions, whereas the process I appear to use in deciding how to pick my side is longer-term. I think there's still some "thin slicing" type of stuff going on between my ears, and I think it's a valid enough mechanism. Valid enough, but subject to error, which means I always have to entertain some uncertainty about my positions.

Why turn away though? Because I only have a certain amount of time, and I don't want to spend it all trying to penetrate the fog enshrouding the issue of climate change. I have other interests and concerns, too.

Based on what I know and read and see, I think the odds are quite high that the scientists behind RealClimate.org are more credible than the minerals consultants and economists behind ClimateAudit.org. I agree with Scientific American, whereas my referrer probably agrees more with the Wall Street Journal.

Scientists and economists. Maybe they're all priests. I'll stick with the scientists for now.

For every expert there's an equal and opposite reexpert. - Anonymous

Onward through the fog together.

What he said. Kinda.

BBC [To] pretend this emotional, ad hoc response to the complex and chronic problem of famine in Africa made a positive difference was naive, rooted in a fictional idea that rock changes the world.

I'm so sick of Bono.

Debunking the Debunkers - American Prospect Online

Debunking the Debunkers - American Prospect Online

The Wall Street Journal lost me as a subscriber a while back because, thought their reporting on events was good, their editorial policy was, well, not to my liking.

What precipitated my departure was their support for Bjorn Lomborg and their adoration of his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, which I read and though was clearly bullshit (along with a bunch of other people whose views I respect).

When WSJ's support of Lomborg extended to their completely ignoring news of Lomborg's censure by the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (not one syllable in the WSJ), I left.

Now WSJ is debunking climate change science on their editorial pages, and their Rep. Barton has scheduled hearings in the House to that end.

One can only hope that the Barton hearings will trip them up on the basis that when you call hearings, you have to actually listen to testimony.

Or maybe that's the catch.

Only 85 years of Uranium Supplies?

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY BLOG: Only 85 years of Uranium Supplies?

James in London publishes one of the blogs I regularly visit and whose RSS feed I subscribe to. He's got a good blog and puts out good information. I clicked on one of his Google adds because the company it linked to is preparing to market roof-top heliostats, which are a particular interest of mine. I built a small heliostat back in 1978, and then again in college about eight years later. It worked, too. I think heliostats make a great deal of sense and I wish them all the success in the world.

In the post I link here, James reports on the position of some anti-nuclear people, the New Economics Foundation. I think the position of the NEF is unwise, so I tried to make a case to that effect. I only regret that there were a couple of things I didn't say (possibly due to haste in the service of domestic tranquility).

What I should have included was that my support of nuclear energy in no way is meant to denigrate any clean energy source. I support anything that makes sense on the energetic front (I worry that some popular renewable schemes don't provide substantial positive net energy, but that's the subject of a prior post).

I might have included that a joule of nuclear energy might displace one from coal, and I might have mentioned support of conservation. I can always think of ways I might have said things more better, eh? Oh, well, maybe some of James' other readers will make those points for me.

Corrupt Hypocrites, and Stupid, Too

"I hate to ask your help with something so silly," Jack Abramoff wrote to his friend Daniel Lapin on September 15, 2000. Abramoff, of course, is the now-disgraced Republican lobbyist who stands accused of defrauding several Indian tribes of millions of dollars and trying to buy off various Republican congressmen. Lapin is a Seattle-based rabbi who is a close friend and spiritual advisor to Abramoff. Now Abramoff, at the time still hustling his way to the top of Washington lobbying, was coming to him for help:

I have been nominated for membership in the Cosmos Club, which is a very distinguished club in Washington, DC, comprised of Nobel Prize winners, etc. Problem for me is that most prospective members have received awards and I have received none. I was wondering if you thought it possible that I could put that I have received an award from Toward Tradition with a sufficiently academic title, perhaps something like Scholar of Talmudic Studies?... Indeed, it would be even better if it were possible that I received these in years past, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I think you see what I am trying to finagle here!

Indeed he did. "Mazel tov, the Cosmos Club is a big deal," Lapin replied. A few days, later the rabbi wrote again:

Let's organize your many prestigous awards so they're ready to 'hang on the wall.'... I just need to know what needs to be produced. Letters? Plaques? Neither?

"Probably just a few clever titles of awards, dates and that's it," Abramoff replied.

Clever indeed. ...

These guys were around when Ollie North [*] got himself in trouble over emails he thought he'd deleted. That they were so free in their email exchanges shows them to be stupid. Maybe that's why they are corrupt.

[*] "...self-incriminating computer notes that indicated his deep involvement in drug trafficking, as North did; ..."

If there's a Hell, there's got to be a special corner just for assholes like these.

"Iraq is gonna get it."

All this talk about the 2002 Downing Street memos again brings back a memory seared into my brain by the surprise I felt at the time.

This was a week or two after the WTC attack on September 11, 2001, a time during which all sorts of closed-door meetings were being held in the Senate and elsewhere. The media, it seemed, had reporters and cameras parked outside these closed doors at all times.

At the conclusion of one of these meetings (probably a meeting of the Senate Intelligence or Foreign Relations Committees), as the members streamed out from behind the massive doors, a camera at about shoulder height recorded the sights and sounds of the distinguished gentlemen passing by.

As Senator Jesse Helms walked past the camera he looked at it and said, "Iraq is gonna get it."

I was floored by the indiscretion of the statement and because it was the first mention I'd heard of Iraq in connection with the WTC attack. My sense is that Iraq was always "gonna get it" and that the WTC attack only added further cover.

As the Iraq invasion drew closer and closer my position became that the war was probably necessary. The real reason had to do with bringing about change in the Arab Muslim world, to increase the chances for democratic change, which would, in turn, make the governments there more answerable to the populace, thereby reducing conditions leading to Islamic radicalism and terror. Something like that. In other words, I thought the neocons might be right.

I thought the neocons might be right in the sense of John Perry Barlow's brilliant "SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL". Barlow was trying to understand events, and came up with his Mexican-drunk-driver-ploy analogy (sorry, you'll just have to read his piece).

I don't know if Barlow's take is correct, whether the neocons were right, or much of anything in this world. But when Helms quipped, "Iraq is gonna get it," I was stunned.

I'm puzzled, now, by the fact that I can't find any references to his quip. I'd have though someone besides me registered it. Hell, maybe it was a dream.

Edge: THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE

AN EDGE SPECIAL EVENT
THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE
PINKER VS. SPELKE
A DEBATE
[5.16.2005]

...on the research on mind, brain, and behavior that may be relevant to gender disparities in the sciences, including the studies of bias, discrimination and innate and acquired difference between the sexes.

Harvard University • Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative

Hansey RIP

It was my greatest displeasure today to have to put down another pet.

Hansey, our 15-year-old or so long-haired dachshund went down literally (count them, as I did) in five seconds, peacefully, with not the slightest twitch of discomfort.

Actually, it was more like four and a half seconds. I shit you not: it was just that fast.

We should treat people with such humanity.

The vet and his assistant were both, individually, highly compassionate and professional. The vet, rightfully, reserved for himself the decision of whether the time was right. That he immediately agreed made the act a bit less bothersome for me, and made my wife (who bore the burden of decision) feel better about her decision. He warned me that in older dogs with poor circulation it might take a bit longer than usual, but afterwards he also told me that the rapidity of the transition was further indication that Hansey was "ready to go." Nice man. Nice assistant. It's got to be hard on them, too, to provide this service, no matter how many times they've done it.

Our son has been around for the passing of two of our other dogs (one by accident, one by euthanasia). Now, though, Eddie's probably old enough to understand better what goes on. I think this marks a milestone in his development.

Sleep tight Hansey. Onward and upward.

SCOTUS Motivates NORML Membership

Join NORML

The idea that private, intra-state, non-commercial, medically driven provision or acquisition of marijuana (in a state that has deemed such things legal under its own laws) is enough to justify the federal government's exercise of federal law enforcement powers under the commerce clause of the federal constitution, as the US Supreme Court just ruled, is a ridiculous travesty.

NORML can thank the Supreme Court for at least one new membership.

The New Republic Online: Joint Venture

Here is a different take on the medical marijuana ruling. The New Republic's Editors think the decision was correct because, had the Supreme Court ruled against the government in this case, it would have opened the door to challenges of many other regulatory schemes.

So?

In essence, TNR's editors are arguing that slavery should not have been addressed because it might have threatened other property rights. (Yeah, yeah. Close enough.)

What a weird conservatism.

The notion that private, non-commercial, entirely intra-state medical marijuana activities impact inter-state drug traffic enough to validate federal commerce clause authority is just asinine. What the court has done is validate scoffing at the law, which in this case is an ass.

Commerce Clause, Supreme Court and Bullshit

Though the Supreme Court's decision on medical marijuana is pretty much what I expected (cynic that I've become), I am thoroughly disgusted. The idea that traffic in medical marijuana impacts overall drug trade enough to invoke federal commerce clause powers is contemptible and nothing more.

As Prof. David Bernstein writes in his post at Volokh, there's a lot of hypocrisy going on. Actually, Bernstein wrote that "The five-member majority of the Court simply does not take federalism seriously", which is close enough for me.

Nothing's necessarily changed in the practical sense, but something should have changed. I was hoping for a little honesty, a little sanity, but no. Power and money talk.

In San Francisco we have the chief narc saying We respect state law and we're not going to shut down all the medical marijuana clubs tomorrow. Well, why the hell not? It's the law! Shut them down, damn it!

Prosecutorial discretion - what a crock.

Selective enforcement of the law is a tool of the tyrant. Got a rabblerouser on the loose? Bust him for a joint and put him away for 30 years. It's happened, and it'll happen again. It ought never happen. That's why selective enforcement of the law is evil, prosecutorial discretion is evil, and why laws ought not exist if they're not to be enforced uniformly.

God! I am so disgusted.

The usual suspects urge us to urge our representatives to back the Hinchey-Rohrabacher measure to prohibit the spending of federal money to undermine the will of the States, and the Truth in Trials Act, which would allow victims of federal meddling to introduce testimony that they followed State law. I've done that, but it probably amounts to no more than log flogging. My representative is on the dark side. I'd be shocked to hear he'd reconsidered.

FOUL FELT - Yahoo! News

FOUL FELT - Yahoo! News: "As evidence accumulated of wrongdoing and crime, he reported not to the director of the FBI (his immediate superior), not to the Justice Department, but to the two journalists."

Jesus Christ Bill! What was he supposed to do? The two you mention were IN ON IT!

I can't believe this is from Buckley. Had he suggested that Felt should have gone to Congress, OK, but to those two?! Come on.

EnergyPulse - Insight Analysis and Commentary on the Global Power Industry

This piece is notable because it mentions population as part of the energy problem, something which is so obvious it should go without saying. It goes without saying, though, because of a taboo about raising population issues.

The perfectly reasonable projections here and here tell the story very clearly.

Matt Miller - Is Persuasion Dead? - New York Times

"Is persuasion dead? And if so, does it matter?
...
I'm not the only one who amid this mess wonders if he shouldn't be looking at another line of work. A top conservative thinker called recently, dejected at the sight of Ann Coulter on the cover of Time. What's the point of being substantive, he cried, when all the attention goes to the shrill?

But the embarrassing truth is that we earnest chin-strokers often get it wrong anyway. Take me. I hadn't thought much about Iraq before I read Ken Pollack's book, 'The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq,' a platonic ideal of careful analysis meant to persuade. It worked. I was persuaded! So what should we conclude when a talent like Pollack can convince us - and then the whole thing turns out to be based on a premise (W.M.D.) that is false?

If serious efforts to get it right can lead to tragic errors, why care about a culture of persuasion at all? On one level, everyone needs a good rationalization at the core of his professional life; mine holds that the struggle to think things through, even when we fail, is redeeming.

But beyond this, the gap between the cartoon of public life that the press and political establishment often serve up and the pragmatic open-mindedness of most Americans explains why so many people tune out - and how we might get them to tune back in. Alienation is the only intelligent response to a political culture that insults our intelligence.
..."

Alienation is the only intelligent response to a political culture that insults our intelligence.

That was worth repeating. So is this: "... the struggle to think things through, even when we fail, is redeeming ..."

This is compatible with my basically nihilistic outlook. Little matters outside my own sphere. I do it for myself.

(Nihilism is another of those terms you'd better define when you use it. "Nihilistic" refers, in this instance, to the reality that little or nothing of what I do or think matters outside of my own experience of life. The word is just a description, not a label for some philosophy.)

I think Miller overestimates most of those who are tuned out. A distinction exists between those who never tuned in and those who tune out. I don't think many of the ones Miller refers to care about Paris Hilton. Unfortunately, those who do seem to vastly outnumber the ones in Miller's scope.

Milton Friedman: Legalize It! - Forbes.com

"'I've long been in favor of legalizing all drugs,' he says, but not because of the standard libertarian arguments for unrestricted personal freedom. 'Look at the factual consequences: The harm done and the corruption created by these laws...the costs are one of the lesser evils.'

Not that a man of his years expects reason to triumph. Any added revenues from taxing legal marijuana would almost certainly be more than spent, by this or any other Congress.

'Deficits are the only thing that keeps this Congress from spending more' says Friedman. 'Republicans are no different from Democrats. Spending is the easiest way to buy votes.' A sober assessment indeed."

The whole piece can be read at the link above. It's cached here, too. Hat tip to Pete Guither.

Drug prohibition is so damned stupid.

Stuff About Reifying

I've been taken for several years by the notions of memetics, memetic engineering, superorganisms subject to certain natural impulses and so on. But I've been worried that my thinking might be somehow fallacious because a number of people I like and respect have more or less dismissed this stuff on the basis that it involves reifying. I've thought about it, but the question basically was like a boil that needs to be lanced. So I took another stab at lancing this boil by posting a question on the sceptic forum and by spending the better part of a day reading various things about reifying.

In a nutshell, I feel that I've solidified by footing and validated my thinking, though I could still be wrong (and I'm sure I'm wrong from the points of view of some people). Maybe nothing has changed, really, but I feel better about the legitimacy of my thinking as influenced by the likes of Wilson, Blackmore, Bloom and lots of others down the years.

The following is nothing more than some notes I took while looking into this stuff. Maybe they'll come in handy down the road sometime.
..............................................................................................
http://www.locksley.com/6696/logic.htm
REIFICATION
Description: To reify something is to convert an abstract concept into a concrete thing. Reification is a Fallacy of Ambiguity. Reification is also sometimes known as a fallacy of "hypostatization".

http://www.answers.com/topic/reification
Several definitions there. Most include the concrete aspect.
From the Wikipedia section:
Fallacious arguments based on reification may be committed when manipulations that are only possible on concrete things are said to be performable

on an abstract concept. A fallacy is also said to be committed when an abstract concept is referred to as if it bore no relation to the concrete

things of which it is an abstraction. Examples of fallacious statements arising from reification are:
* "That country doesn't have any democracy. We should give some of ours to them".
* "Just because we don't have any music, dance, paintings, drawings, or drama in this city doesn't mean we're devoid of art".

Also: hypostatisation

Alternate uses of 'reify' on the Wikipedia page don't have to do with fallacy.
Knowledge representation:
Statement: John is six feet tall.
Reified statement: Mary reports that John is six feet tall.
Computer science: Reification is the act of making a data model out of an abstract concept.

http://www.theology.edu/logic/logic23.htm
f. Reification
To reify something is to convert an abstract concept into a concrete thing. Reification is a fallacy of ambiguity. Reification is also sometimes called the fallacy of "hypostatization."

http://attrition.org/misc/ee/logical_fallacies
REIFICATION
Description: To reify something is to convert an abstract concept into
a concrete thing. Reification is a Fallacy of Ambiguity. Reification is
also sometimes known as a fallacy of "hypostatization".

http://www.counterpunch.org/goff08132004.html
...to reify means to change concrete historical social relations and processes into universal categories or eternal natural laws...
Not applicable to my questions. Something to do with Marx rebutting Malthus.

http://www.szasz.com/sharma_ch2.html
Perimeter Of The Medical Model
by Sohan Lal Sharma, Ph.D.
Need to read it fully, but he seems to find fallacy in application of the medical model of mental health, and writes in the section entitled THE LOGICAL FALLACY OF THE CONCEPT, "Moreover, it can be seen that if mental illness is like physical illness, which occurs in an entity, the body, i.e. a physical object, then mental illness must occur in an entity, the mind. The concept of mind, however, is acknowledged to be an abstraction; whatever else it may be, it is not a physical entity (Ryle, 1949; Szasz, 1966a). How, then, can a mind, i.e. an abstraction, be ill or sick in the same way as a physical entity (Szasz, 1966a)? If the illness or medical model is to be used, we must indeed first reify an abstract concept, and then treat such intangible non-entities as character neurosis as tangible disease entities. In so doing, the comprehension
and solution of human problems can be subject only to reductionistic and indirect approaches. This is evident in the numerous scholarly endeavors which attempt to comprehend social and interpersonal relations and group behavior by studying the biological or physiological substratum. It becomes obvious that in such a context where psychiatrists and psychologists continue to pursue an illness model, with its inherent irrelevancies and inconsistencies, the real worth and effectiveness of their professional contribution to social and human well-being must continue to be in doubt."
Looks like Dr. Sharma's definition of 'reify' does not necessarily include the 'concrete' part.
(The site is dedicated to advancing the debate about the ideas of Dr. Thomas Szasz, a "psychiatric abolisionist". Probably worth a return visit. (Lots there.)

http://www.ul.ie/~philos/vol2/cashell.html
A piece about UNDERSTAND WITTGENSTEIN'S PICTURE THEORY OF THE PROPOSITION by Kieran Cashell
"'There is indeed the inexpressible', Wittgenstein writes, 'This shows itself; it is the mystical [es ist das Mystische]' (6.522, my emphasis).

Traditional philosophy errs in its attempt to reduce das Mystische to language. It is guilty of misunderstanding the logic of language in ways foundationally damaging to itself. Fundamentalontologie and Naturalistic ethics (for example) violate the rules of logic by attempting to make language do something it cannot do: namely, to represent metaphysical, transcendental or existential ("Subjective") experiences adequately in intentional ("objective") or scientifically accountable propositions. Such linguistic attempts to hypostatise (or reify)
the metaphysical experience, as Wittgenstein says in the ante-penultimate proposition of the Tractatus, cannot signify; that is, the ambiguous signs of such language cannot do the work of hypostasis demanded of them. (Conversely, the Tractatus also shows that the positivist affirmation of the irrelevance of metaphysical, religious and aesthetic values from the episteme of philosophy is a facile and precipitate gambit.)"

http://www.oncaesura.com/journal/333/whats-wrong-with-dale-peck
From someone's personal blog about literature. I'm not sure what definition of 'reify' applies below.
"The one period of literature that I find emulated with less and less frequency is the very one that Peck cites as the source of all the trouble —
modernism, specifically High Modernism as practiced by Joyce and Eliot. Granted, some books still appear every year cited as paying homage to Ulysses but those aren't the one's winning the awards or capturing anyone's attention, not even the critics. Peck says that Joyce and his style were the bad influence that's ruined everyone since, and I'm tempted to agree, at least about Joyce. I find Joyce, even in Dubliners, nearly unreadable. Peck insists that his contemporaries
reify Joyce and High Modernism as the ultimate in literary art. What Peck fails to grasp is that each "age" of literature attempts to repudiate its predecessor more than embrace it. The early post-modernists with their tricks and absurdities were exploding the arch-seriousness and overblown ambitions of modernism more than completing the modernist project. Reifying the modernist project would have made it impossible to escape from, just as Peck laments, but I don't see anyone but critics doing this. Novelists, if they're any good, know better."

http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/Douglas/DOUG5.HTM
This is a philosophical critique of one E.E. Hirsch who wrote something called "Validity of Interpretation". It's actually chapter 5 of "Film and Meaning: An Integrative Theory" by Ian Douglas, which "is concerned with the intersection of film and philosophy". In this piece the critic says Hirsch reifies a process into an entity. It's all very highbrow, and seems to exclude the 'material or concrete' from the definition of 'reify'.

http://www.durbinhypnosis.com/frankl.htm
Several references to reification here (towards the bottom of the page in the section entitled A MEANING TO LIFE) apparently as a fallacious opening of the door to manipulation of people by denial of their self-transcendence. Something like that. The operative definition of 'reify' here also seems to exclude the 'concrete' or 'material' aspect of the 'thing' an abstract is considered.

http://www.serebella.com/encyclopedia/article-Reification.html
Very similar to other sites such as Wikipedia, but since I'm here I'll snag the following:
"The term is often used pejoratively by epistemological realists as a criticism of epistemological idealists. Epistemological realists often regard reification as a logical fallacy. Fallacious arguments based on reification may be committed when manipulations that are only possible on concrete things are said to be performable on an abstract concept.
...
Epistomological realism is a philosophical position, a subcategory of objectivism, holding that what you know about an object exists independently of your mind. Opposed to epistemological idealism.
...
Epistomological idealism is a philosophical position, a subcategory of subjectivism, holding that what you know about an object exists only in your mind. Opposed to epistemological realism."

The Ass and The Scofflaw

H.R. 1528, Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005, by Wisconsin's Republican Representative James Sensenbrenner, is an offensive piece of trash. Shame on Wisconsin.

This would be yet another law that creates scofflaws. Rightly so.

I agree with the perspectives given here and here because I am a conscientious objector in the war on drugs, which means this law would make me a criminal, subject to strong penalties, for failing to do things I would never do.

Leave people the hell alone!

WHY STOP -- ANYWHERE? - Buckley

Buckley writes in his latest op ed, about embyonic stem cell research, that "Practically everybody says that we should not clone. Why not? What's the matter with trying to produce another Marilyn Monroe, or another Vladimir Horowitz? Or, as we perfect the refinements of the trade, another Einstein? One runs the risk -- we'd have to admit this -- of cloning another St. Paul. But when he began to preach, we could inject into him some kind of serum designed to correct antediluvian thought."

He concludes his typically thoughful piece with, "[Embrionic stem cell] research may or may not end cancer, but it will certainly revolutionize, or seek to do so, laws and conventions that set bioethical limits on medical explorations."

Seems likely to me. I just hope the antediluvian mindset (*) Buckley refers to does not prevail. It is the source of the controversy, refusing to recognize, as it does, the link between the "soul" and the brain.

(*) Yes, I know Buckley's tongue was in his cheek with the "antediluvian" comment, but mine isn't. Separation of soul and brain is antediluvian though.

No brain, no "soul". No problem.

I don't know whose work this is, but I think it's wonderful.

Science & Technology News - Creation Museum Sparks Evolution Debate

"Despite his communication skills, Ham admits he doesn't always make a good first impression. But, that doesn't stop him from trying to spread his beliefs.

'He'd be speaking 20 hours a day if his body would let him,' said Mike Zovath, vice president of museum operations.

Ham's wife of 32 years agrees. 'He finds it difficult talking about things apart from the ministry,' Mally Ham says. 'He doesn't shut off.'

Ham said he has no choice but to speak out about what he believes.

'The Lord gave me a fire in my bones,' Ham says. 'The Lord has put this burden in my heart: 'You've got to get this information out.''"

So how come the words "obsession" and "madness" don't appear in this article? The man is crazy.

"When that museum is finished, it's going to be Cincinnati's No. 1 tourist attraction," says the Rev. Jerry Falwell, nationally known Baptist evangelist and chancellor of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. "It's going to be a mini-Disney World."

This is the "museum" where one of the exhibits is a saddled and bridled dinosaur, as humans rode them like horses. Oh, well...

Evolution vs. Creationism, Redux (6 Letters) - New York Times

"To the Editor:

While 'The Evolution of Creationism' (editorial, May 17) is basically sound, I beg that you please, please, please stop referring to 'intelligent design' as a 'theory.'

It is not a theory. It is not even a hypothesis. It is not testable. It is not falsifiable. It is not science.

David E. James
Alexandria, Va., May 17, 2005
The writer is a senior staff geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington."

Hear! Hear!

Intelligent design is not science. It should not be taught in science class.

Talcum-trained sniffer dogs on par in the war on drugs

"'It's embarrassing,' Mr Evans told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.", referring to some sniffer dogs that had apparently been mistakenly trained to find talcum powder rather than cocaine.

What really ought to embarrass Mr Evans is his personal involvement in the drug war.

The talcum-trained dogs were just as effective as the war on drugs itself.

The fact that the WOD goes on and on despite any justification for its continuance - aside from the preservation of entrenched interests on both sides - is the real embarrassment.

The Huffington Post | The Blog

Blogging about blogs and blogging seems like such a waste, but...

I've been blogging for a couple of months now. Why? I don't know. It's just a forum for self-expression, I guess. Doesn't matter if anyone but me ever sees what I post. It's just for me.

The reason I looked at Arianna Huffington's new blog is that Eugene Volokh posted on his blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, that he'd been invited to post there, and because I've kind of liked some of what I've read from Huffington in the past.

Some time back it occurred to me that one reason I like Angry Atheist's blog is that, though she doesn't post frequenty, when she does it's generally quality stuff. She's an intelligent individual posting intelligent stuff. Angry Atheist doesn't waste my time with tripe.

So I looked at Huffington's new blog and saw that I'd have to sift wheat from chaff, which wastes my time. Dimes and pennies under tape ends... Give me a break.

I don't know if I agree with the wheat I linked above, but it made me think. If Huffington (and any blogger for that matter) wants to keep my interest they'll have to show some respect for my time.

I'll try to keep that in mind myself.

Energy and Despair

Is it possible to be serene and yet despair at the same time? In my experience Yes, but only in fits and starts because I am not a man of faith.

People I know who have religious faith don't seem to have this trouble (at least with respect to the things that bother me), which is something that has been observed and commented upon for a long time. The way I see things might best be summed up by a quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw, "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." (Yes, a faithful one's happiness is different from a drunk's happiness, and the quote is less about relative happiness than about the applicability of the proposition that the faithful are happier, but you get my drift. If you think this world is nothing but a stepping stone then you don't have to worry about it as much.)

I try to pay attention to the things I think most important. My thinking style involves looking for trumps - to look for aspects of an issue that dominate the issue - to find the most sensitive variables - to identify the things that render the rest inconsequential.

The problem is that in looking for trumps I think I find them, and they frequently seem intractable - there's not a goddamned thing that can be done about them. Not reasonably. Sure, you can always tilt at windmills but that's not my style. (I got in trouble with a respected elder relative once when, in the context of a discussion about a development project he was working on in the Third World, I accused him of tilting at windmills. He angrily replied to the effect that if nobody tried then the end was certain. Sure, but sometimes hope is misplaced - wrong even - and resignation is appropriate. Whatever...)

The energy situation is dire. Everybody says "Renewables! Hydrogen!" but nobody cares about net energy. Politicos don't care (or can't be seen to care) about energy efficiency or anything beyond the cost of gasoline next week. We still get tax credits for buying Hummers, and every energy development effort is met with NIMBY or BANANA.

Serentity through apathy? Naaa. That worked for a while, but I wasn't able to remain apathetic because I love my son. Serenity through medication? Naaa. Serenity through religion? Naaa, I don't want to try to lie to myself (which is not to say that people of faith are lying to themselves).

Imagine finding out that Chicxulub 2 is headed our way. Could you be serene in the face of the near certainty of upcoming calamity?

In fits and starts, maybe. I'd hope the impact calculations were off, just as I hope now that I'm wrong in my interpretation of what I think I see when trying to pay attention, when I think I see nearly certain calamity ahead.

Serenity through doubt? Hey, whatever works.

Power

At the height of the cooling season these wires carry enough energy at a high enough power rate to launch half a dozen (probably more) fully loaded jumbo jets all at the same time.

Power lines are among the must under-appreciated tools of modernity, to say the least. But let these two poles fall down this summer and it'll make the national news. People's lives and livelihoods depend on these poles.

Mas Vida

This is algae growing in the water flowing down a wall at SRP's Arizona Falls hydro power plant.

Visitors, surrounded by water on three walls in the water room, may sit on large boulders as they enjoy the cool and soothing sounds of flowing water.

The New York Times > Kristof: Day 113 of the President's Silence on Darfur

Mr. Bush might reflect on a saying of President Kennedy: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality."

Mr. Kristof might reflect on the saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

"Mr. Bush doesn't see any neat solution"

If so, Bush is right. Pragmatism should prevail over moral anguish. I'm sure Kristof is a good, moral person, but he's wrong.

Population pressures exacerbate cultural enmities whenever the two coincide. Sometimes you just have to let events run their course because the sort of action that would be required to deal effectively with situations like Uganda, Darfur and so many other places, without bleeding us to death, are politically impossible.

It's better to do nothing than to do something ineffectual in cases such as these.

As population pressures increasingly focus resource competition and shove together cultures best kept apart, we're going to see more and more of this sort of thing. If humanity is lucky enough to make it through the next several decades, it will probably be partially as a result of pragmatic bloody-mindedness.

Unless science develops some sort of brain pill to address the problem, you have to kill people, and lots of them. I'd start by making an example of Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army, then move on to his backers in Sudan, which might temper the Janjaweed problem in Darfur. Invade full-force, kill them all, then get out just as quickly. Fight fire with fire, then stabilize.

Yeah, right. Not in my lifetime. Not even in fantasy.
====================================
The Conqueror Worm (Wikipedia) (Wikisource)

Author:Edgar Allan Poe

Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

Stuck in Lincoln's Land - New York Times

Stuck in Lincoln's Land - New York Times: "Lincoln's core lesson is that while the faithful and the faithless go at each other in their symbiotic culture war, those of us trapped wrestling with faith are not without the means to get up and lead."

Brooks' thoughtful piece concludes with a reference to a symbiotic culture war between evangelicals and the faithless.

I don't think it's symbiotic at all; rather, the evangelical superorganism is playing the pecking order game. Howard Bloom is right.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Florida girl's abortion allowed

BBC NEWS | Americas | Florida girl's abortion allowed: "'It's a tragedy that a 13-year-old child would be in a vulnerable position where she could be made pregnant and it's a tragedy that her baby will be lost.

'There's no good news in this at all,' he said on Tuesday."

I can agree with most of what the Governor said, but not his use of the word "baby" and not his final sentence.

A three month fetus is not a baby, and there is some good here: that I was wrong about the likelihood of this developing into another Terry Schiavo-style crusader fest.