BlogKinnetic

On the Civic Decay of US Computer Science Programs

2011-12-21T16:47:00.000-08:00

http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-as-a-first-language/

When I saw the above article I could only be reminded of H.P. Lovecraft's description of the Massachusetts seaport town of Innsmouth, a great fishing community before the American Revolution, but which by the early 1900's had become a classic case of civic decay, with bootleg liquor becoming its primary occupation, and the general cultural or educational status descending to the level of the primitive. This is because the approach the article advocates for teaching computer science can only end in one place: the primitive, and by that I do not mean the C primitive variable types of char, float, double, and int, but I mean primitive as in stone-age. :-)

I learned programming a bit ass-backwards. I got a "teach yourself Java" kind of book, went through that, and generally learned things "on the fly" as it were, and, in so doing, in time, eventually was comfortable with the "Java world" of Java SDK (basic Java), XML, XSLT, and some DOS / UNIX scripting skills as well. Still to this day, Java is a language I feel very "at home" in, and would choose if I had to build something up really fast. It is my "GOTO" or "default" language if you will.

Later, though, I started to study C++ and C, first for a job that required me to write unit tests using CPPUnit (the C++ port of Java's JUnit) and just sort of "learning on the fly" began to be able to understand and edit C++ code, though I was not then (or now) as proficient there as in Java. Still later, I studied C proper and read Kernighan and Richie's classic book, "The C programming Language". I think it was then, and only then, that I really understood the fundamentals of programming, by which I mean the principles of it, not just memorizing syntax to get stuff done, but rather having a deep understanding of things like memory allocation, processes, stacks, etc.

The thrill of creating dynamic (re-sizable) arrays using C-style pointers is something that still gives me a bit of a high, because there are many situations in which resizable arrays are needed or desirable, and doing this via C-style pointers is the most efficient way of doing it.

I can say that while today I still would choose Java if I were doing a personal project of some size or complexity just for expediancy's sake, I love C the most, for it is the most efficient (fast, using less memory, etc.).

To make a comparison to poetry: Java is Ginsberg and C is Eliot. Both of whom I love, but they are different styles. Ginsberg is the Jazz musician of poetry - creating crazy yet haunting melodies by going "off the map" if one wills in terms of traditional styles. Eliot is the baroque musician of poetry - using the fewest notes to create the greatest effect - precision is the key word here - no room for an off-note here or there but every note having a purpose. Both have their place. I love Jazz. But in terms of aesthetic efficiency, baroque has something to be said for it. Ginsberg is poetry's Jazz - wild, haunting, all over-the-place in a good way. Eliot is poetry's baroque - precise, haunting as well if more in a subtle way, and always having a precise direction or purpose.

Well, Java is the Ginsberg / Jazz of this analogy. It is easier / quicker to mess around and improvise and come up with a Jazz tune. It takes longer and it is more painstaking to come up with a baroque melody. Both are great and have their place. However, while I would use the quicker thing to come up with something on a deadline (Java / Jazz) there is a certain satisfaction to be had with taking longer and having to put more effort in order to produce precise, efficient, parsimonious code, and by parsimonious I mean not wasting any memory or CPU cycles, but having each bit of memory serve a purpose, just like each note of a baroque piece or each line of an Eliot poem has a precise purpose and taking one line out or one note out would ruin the whole thing.

So, while I still would use Java probably the most, I find a certain nobility in C, much as while I might probably listen to Jazz (or its descendants) the most, I find a certain nobility in baroque, and whereas I love and relate very much to Ginsberg, there is a certain appeal in Eliot's ability to say so much with so little that will always hold an attraction for me.

This is why the above article I came across, in which a computer science professor is talking about using, not even Java, but JavaScript for goodness sake, as the first language to teach students, is so tragic. Like I intimated before, if I had to do it all over again, I would have studied C before I even got into Java. That would have taught me correct principles and just a better "philosophy" of programming. As it was though, I was lucky. I worked with a math PhD who was a C++ whiz, a guy named Dr. Mark T. Lane, Chief Scientist at what is now mobi (mobicorp.com) who imparted to me the basic concepts of efficiency and attention to detail that I could never have gotten from the Java world, so, although it was later that I seriously began to study C, even early on I had some of those benefits, for which I will always count myself lucky and grateful.

But not everyone is going to luck out like me and get to work with such brilliant folks. I can only feel sorry for those aspiring computer scientists who go to a computer science program and get freaking JavaScript as the opening silo in their introduction to the world of programming, and I can only feel contempt for those professors who would advocate such a fool's errand.

When I was a kid, I loved this old 1950's teen sci-fi novel called "The Forgotten Star" featuring a character named Digby Allen who travels to the 50's version of a moon base and a Mars base, and eventually lands on Eros, an asteroid. Turns out in the book the asteroid is a space ship and inside are people from another planet (from a "forgotten star") who long ago have forgotten the knowledge that propelled them into space in the first place. The interior of the ship has a simulated earth-like environment, with a sky, fields, etc., and these people live like primitive savages, in huts, etc. not knowing there is a world outside the interior of their space ship, not even knowing, for that matter, what a space ship even is. They have a cool contraption which can convert atoms into anything asked for, so they get their food from that. The contraption (as near as I can recall) would basically take atoms from space and convert them into the molecules for whatever the user requested, so I could say ask it for bread and it would give me bread. To these inhabitants it was like a magic thing, for they had lost the knowledge that went into producing that contraption to begin with. And I suppose the young space adventurer Digby Allen saves the day and brings them into the modern age, though now I forget just how that ended. But I will never forget the impression which the book had upon me - the concept, the very sad concept, of a people once-advanced who through laziness had allowed themselves to descend into ignorance and dependency upon technologies they could no longer understand.

I was reminded of this tragedy when I saw the above article. Already I had read essays about computer science professors lamenting that C / C++ is no longer at some schools taught, Java being the preferred language. And now, it seems we are descending yet another rung, with JavaScript now being the preferred language. What is next? HTML? How about just forget about teaching kids how to write code and teach them how to use point-and-click tools like say WordPress which does not require any code skills at all to at least be able to use the basics thereof.

If we go down this road enough, we will be in the "Forgotten Star" situation - able to use tools built in the past but not having the knowledge anymore to build those tools again. Because you can only create great Jazz if you also know how to play baroque. You can create mediocre jazz I am sure - hell, a chimpanzee, given enough time, also could. But you cannot play great jazz without the underlying principles that led to it. Neither can we expect great code to be developed without the understanding of the underlying principles which led to our current languages (like JavaScript) in the first place.

Oh, and one more thing, subverting a function into an "object" has its purposes in terms of being able to code things up faster, more easily understanding the architecture, etc., but here is a dirty secret that apparently contemporary self-styled computer science professors won't tell you: a mathematical function is not an "object", sweetheart. Because "objects" belong to "sets" which may describe computational functions, but are not the functions themselves.

Deal with it, Java cultists. :-)

Why Orthodox Judaism is NOT the flip-side to Islamic fundamentalism

2011-12-07T16:44:00.001-08:00

I am very indebted to Pamella Geller of atlasshrugs.com for clarifying an issue for me which I had long wondered about. For reference, I am socially liberal (albeit economically a bit more conservative), that is, and I make no apology for this, I believe in equal rights for women, minorities, gays, etc. I am nearly I suppose a libertarian but don't go "all the way" in terms of economics there, considering myself more of a Tory or "center-right" economically, but that is another point. There was a frankly concerning issue to me a story raised about how some in Orthodox Judaism were sort of (literally, in the case of some bus routes in New York) putting women at the back of the bus (I won't comment on that issue specifically as Rabbi Laura Baum of ourjewishcommunity.org has already commented on that issue in terms of buses in New York). Specifically though, as background, Ms. Geller was asked about similar stuff going on in Jerusalem, the concern being about gender equality, etc. This is a legitimate concern, of course, and I don't wish to minimize that. It should be pointed out that Orthodox Judaism is a minority both in Israel and in the US, and does not constitute the vast majority of Judaism. However, the issue at stake was the issue of gender equality vs. religious fundamentalism. Personally I had wondered about this issue as well - being a proud "feminist", or pro-gender equality, this is an issue of great concern to me. Some can naively make comparisons between Islamic fundamentalism and Orthodox Judaism, both of which do not have very progressive views towards gender equality. However, Ms. Geller pointed out an important, a crucial difference. In Orthodox Judaism, women are not equal, and personally, I deplore that, and, again, that does not constitute most of Judaism by any means (as Rabbi Baum can discuss better than I could). HOWEVER, it is inappropriate to compare Orthodox Judaism with Islamic fundamentalism. It is not two sides of the same coin. Why? Quite simply because as Ms. Geller pointed out, Orthodox Judaism is a voluntary affair - if one does not like it, well, one can always join a different Jewish denomination (full disclosure: I am a member of the Society for Humanistic Judaism founded by the late Rabbi Wine in the 1960's as the fifth denomination of Judaism - the others being: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Revisionist). The point is, Orthodox Judaism is a voluntary religious movement, NOT a political movement. Orthodox Judaism might (literally) have women at the back of the bus, but they are not trying to take over governments, as fundamentalist Islam has (e.g. Iran) and is still trying to do. So the two cannot be compared. Also, the oxymoron of "honor killing" only belongs to Islamic fundamentalism and does not show up elsewhere, not to mention genital mutilation, forced marriages, etc.

There can be no comparison by naive observers between Orthodox Judaism, a peaceful, voluntary denomination (even though I disagree with it) versus Islamic fundamentalism which is warlike, coercive, and political, and by that I mean fascist. I am not saying a majority of Muslims are fundamentalists by any means. What I am saying though is that Islam has a problem that Judaism does not. Judaism can work out issues of fundamentalism in the debating halls - Islam apparently cannot always do so. There can be no comparison between these two.

Don't get me wrong. I support gender equality 100% and would defend that to the death but I also must say that one cannot make naive comparisons between Orthodox Judaism (with whom I have strong and principled disagreements with) and Islamic fundamentalism (with which there cannot be even any discussion or debate, since force is the only language they seem to understand).

I call for civilized discussion on equality issues in whatever form those issues take (gender, race, sexual orientation and/or identity), and I support equality in all of its forms. But I must point out that there is a difference with having voluntary, civilized disagreements, versus dealing with people who want to impose their will by force if necessary. There can be no comparison, then, between Orthodox Judaism, a voluntary movement, and Islamic extremism, for whom the term "choice" apparently has no translation.

I also want to say that I obviously do not want to paint with too broad a brush, and I understand a great many, if not a majority, of Islamic people oppose the darker side of that ideology, so I am not "coming down" on them. I am simply saying that there is a unique challenge there. In Judaism, the road to gender equality can be found in the University debating halls. In Islam the path is more difficult. It is an asymmetric situation, and that is just the "facts on the ground" so to speak. Not all "fundamentalims" are the same, and such is the case here. So, while I say we should never equate naively Orthodox Judaism as being the "flip-side" to fundamentalist Islam, I also say that we should extend a hand of friendship towards anyone in Islam who wants to help their own tradition move beyond the darkness of the past and embrace a brighter tomorrow.

Devolution: The way forward for the Middle East

2011-12-01T17:19:00.000-08:00

There is actually a straight-forward solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. It involves the concept of "devolution", what the UK did with respect to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Island. In Scotland, they have their own parliament, which is roughly similar to a "state legislature" in the US, with some differences. The Scottish Parliament handles things like education, healthcare, law and order, infrastructure, and other Scotland-specific issues, and has their own "First Minister". However, economics and foreign policy still get handled in Westminster, the UK Parliament. And it works out great, and the vast majority of Scots would not have it any other way. They get all the advantages, economic and otherwise, that a relationship with the wider UK involves, but also get to handle their own internal affairs, like criminal Justice, schools, etc., with relative autonomy. This system preserves the concept of a "United Kingdom" in terms of currency, foreign affairs, military, etc., but gives the Scots a sense of self-determination as well. It is the perfect compromise between on the one hand no recognition of Scotland versus Scottish independence, which would be an economic disaster for her, and most Scots realize that. It works, and it it works great.

So too could we have one Israel, including Judea and Samaria (the so-called "West Bank") that would balance the legal right of Israel to all her lands (see Balfour, 1917) with the desire for indigenous Arab populations for recognition. A "Palestinian State" could have its own Parliament and leadership and handle things like healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc. while remaining part of a broader Israeli state, much as Scotland is part of the UK. This could work - there is no reason why it could not - and the economic lot of the Arab populations would be vastly improved as a result, much as Scotland has much better economic opportunities as part of the UK than it would outside that.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair supported the establishment of a Scottish Parliament under the late initial "First Minister" of Scotland, Donald Dewer, during the late 90's. Mr. Blair is now an "elder statesman" who enjoys fancying himself as a "peace envoy" and likes to "opine" about the Middle East. Well, why not take a chapter from his own political history. Why not propose the concept of devolution, which he so enthusiastically promoted for Scotland, and, which has, in all fairness, worked well, for the Middle East situation as well.

The UK will forever be united, as a people of different histories, but with the same underlying ideals. One can only hope that such could come to pass in the Middle East as well. Israel should also be forever united, even with its different ethnic groups. This is consistent with history, international law, and humanitarian concerns.

I am surprised frankly I have not heard of such a proposal before for the Israel - Palestinian conflict. But I am also certain I cannot be the only person to have thought of it.

To me this is the only "legal, moral, and winnable" (to channel Jason Priestley regarding Vietnam) option at this time. To simply have one state of Israel (which I am on record as agreeing with) is in my judgement both legal and moral, but the "realities on the ground" of today call into question the realism of that. Having a "devolved Parliament" for Palestine much as Scotland has seems to me a good way to meet legal and moral ideals with current realism.

Mr. Blair, here is your chance to be the "elder statesman" you really could be. Bring your treasured "devolution" concept to the Middle East.

Can HEB save the colonial economy?

2011-11-03T17:12:00.000-07:00

I have watched the "Occupy Wall Street" movement with various, conflicting feelings of repulsion and sympathy. Repulsion because any "protest" movements ineluctably attracts radicals. On an slightly related point, I have of late become a reader of atlasshrugs.com, NYC blogger Pamela Geller's site, who has done some good journalism on this movement. (In fairness, I am not quite as "libertarian" as Ms. Geller is, being more of a "Blue Dog" by temperament, and that is another conversation, but I applaud and support Ms. Geller's great journalistic work regarding the global threat to the west that "Jihad" still constitutes, and, as a fellow Zionist, I appreciate very much her work, some respectful disagreements along economic lines aside.) So I have been repulsed, concerned, etc., when I saw some Jihadists elements in league with the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters as reported upon on atlasshrugs.com. This movement, abbreviated OWS, I jocularly refer to as "Over-privileged White Sophomores" :-). That is, it largely (radical elements aside) consists of plenty of good-intentioned if naive folks, who are worried that America, "the land of the free, and the home of the Braves" :-) might not be the "land of opportunity" she once was, seeing as how tax payer money goes to bailing out failed banks, but then these same banks continue with dubious practices of things like fractional-reserve banking (where I can lend out more than I take in, thereby creating an effective Ponzi scheme) and derivatives-trading (where I trade investment objects that have no value of their own, but are just linked to things that do have value, like packaged-mortgages, etc.). This scam of course is backed up and sustained by "fiat currency", that is, a pound sterling, for example, used to be just that - a pound, 16 ounces, of sterling silver. Now, we just print money whenever we like, the sine qua non of banana republics. So if a bank's ponzi scheme fails, well then, we can just print more what I would call "Geithner dollars" to cover their ass. Not real dollars - we can't violate physics and create energy from nothing, but we can create fictional dollars to keep the ponzi scheme going. Bernie Madoff is not a criminal in a major sense of the term - he is in jail because he is small time, and not the system, not the government. The entire system can out-Madoff Madoff each and every time. Of course Madoff is a criminal, but he is small change compared to the government-banking relationship which involves Geithner dollars being printed to support fractional reserve banking at the expense of hard working tax payers who get to foot the bill and by that I mean, deal with the laws of physics, which even big politicians and bankers cannot get around. So, does "Occupy Wall Street" have a point when they say "the system" is messed up? Yes, they do. But saying X is messed up does not offer a solution. We need to come up with a positive solution, not just wave signs around in Central Park or blame "the Man" or whatever. Capitalism, per ce, is not the problem. What is capitalism, at root? It means I have a good or service to offer, and I need a good or service. So, say I need cigarette money. That is the good or service that I need. Say also I can code up a mean website. That is the good or service I offer. So, I find someone who needs a website, and they give me money for cigs. :-) It works great. Where it does not work, is when it is abused, when banks are allowed to lend money they do not have, and, when they get in trouble for this (the proverbial "run on the bank") the government can just print more Giethner dollars to bail them out, which does not solve anything in the long run, because, if money is not tied to actual goods and services (energy) than Newton gets unhappy (since energy is not created or destroyed, it only is) and what does that mean? That means somebody has to hold the bag at the end. It means what we are seeing: fewer available jobs, less potential for promotion for those who do have jobs, etc. So, yeah, there are problems. But is it "capitalism" per ce that is the problem? I would argue no. I would say the confusion that Occupy Wall Street has is that they equate the abuses of capitalism (turning it into a Ponzi scheme driven by Geithner dollars) with capitalism itself. Capitalism is not some big mysterious thing. It is just free people trading freely for things they need by giving things others need in return. It is not very complicated. It only gets complicated when people want to abuse the system.

So, to HEB and the colonial economy. What I mean by "the colonial economy" is the American economy - my own personal joke - sorry - "Mass-hole" and "anglophile" that I am, I more identify with the "colonies" of the 1700's than "America" per ce, so that is just my own personal joke - I am a proud American, and by that I mean a proud "colonialist". Shoot me. :-)

HEB is a Texas grocery store chain over a hundred years old now. It is "the" grocery store if one lives in, for example, Austin. It is, to all appearances, one of those "big corporations" the OWS movement is whining about. It has big stores, big signs, it even has super stores, like one in Round Rock, just north of Austin, the Texas Capital, which is to all appearances sort of like a Wall Mart superstore - everything one needs at one-stop shopping. It could not, in reality, however, be more different from Wall Mart. Let me explain. I used to go to an Episcopal Church and - with Richard Dawkins I might add - still have a lot of affection for the Church of England / Episcopal tradition (in fact a close friend of mine at university, whom I won't name on a public blog post, but her grandfather was at one point the Bishop of Oxford, incidentally, such is my connection to that tradition) - in any event if one joins the Episcopal Church one has to "renounce the Devil and all of his deeds". This being the 21st century, "the Devil" is not really much in vogue, and I recall a discussion about this I had one time with some folks, and we all rather mutually agreed that for our time, "the Devil" was roughly Wall Mart, and so "rejecting the Devil and all of his deeds" meant, among other things, do not shop at Wall Mart. :-) Why? Because from everyone I ever talked to who has had a connection with working there or knowing someone who worked there, employees there are essentially modern slaves - they have no say in anything, they are payed minimum wage at best, can be fired for no reason at all, and essentially have no human dignity. This is the "bad face" of capitalism (or its abuses) that the OWS protesters are on about. Perhaps because Wall Mart (or its affiliates) can be traded publicly, and are therefore part of the Wall Street - Geithner bannana republic ponzi scheme, has something to do with this. For the Wall Marts of the world, Geithner dollars are the point, not real value. And of course people become cattle, not respected any longer. So naturally this is a legitimate grievance.

HEB is different. It is a family-owned company for more than a century, and therefore not interested in Wall Street bailouts in the form of Geithner dollars. It simply operates by doing its own thing, creating value, creating good deals for the consumer, and it thrives. Its employees too are taken care of. They do not have lay-offs. Why? Because they do not hire based upon bailouts, but they hire based upon how much (actual) money (not Geithner money) they have to be able to hire. Furthermore, employees have stock options. It does not matter if one is a high school drop-out with perhaps a GED, and starts at HEB stocking shelves. This lowliest of employees still has a stake - if he or she works hard and keeps at it, he or she will eventually be able to share in the stock of the company, and reap a benefit from their labour. And the great thing? Wall Street cannot f*** this up because HEB is a private company and not traded on Wall Street. If HEB succeeds, everyone, even the lowly shelf-stocker, benefits. If they don't, well, that would be because of internal incompetency, which has not in more than a century happened. And in any event, win or lose, they would not be relying upon Geithner dollars to bail them out - they would rely on the ingenuity of their own employees to bail them out. "Such is the nature of achievement", as my friend Howard Roarke might say. :-)

I submit to the reader that the false dialectic between the "Tea Party" protesters and the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters is just that, a false dialectic. Both sides sense the system is f***ed up, and it is. Both sides simply want more opportunity for the average person. The "Tea Party" (rightly in my opinion) focuses on the evils of Geithner dollars being shelled out at tax payer expense to failed ponzi scheme banks. "Occupy Wall Street" also fairly complains about these banks getting Geithner dollars while lots of folks can't get a job, but, wrongly blame it on some abstractions like "capitalism" or "the Man" or whatever.

There is a working model, I think, that can satiate both sides of this false dialectic. It is about having companies, maybe very sucessful companies, having everyone involved in the success or failure thereof. This is not about "capitalism" vs. "communism" or whatever. It is about what works and what does not work. If we can encourage more companies like HEB that have employees as part of the success or failure of the organization, we can eschew the evils of the extremes, on the one extreme, places like Wall Mart, which dehumanize their workers, and, on the other extreme, places like North Korea which also dehumanize their people by not allowing for individual opportunity.

I am not saying all companies should be privately held and should give private stock shares to their employees. This is a free society, and people should be allowed to form whatever sorts of companies they want. However, I am saying, that companies like HEB that do allow employee participation in profits and by being privately held stay away from the machinations of Wall Street and Geithner dollars, are the best bet we have towards keeping the American Dream alive, the ideal of the availability of opportunity, if one has the gumption to reach for it.

This I think is the best answer for both the legitimate concerns of the "Tea Party" and "Occupy Wall Street". Hopefully we can get beyond these stupid dialectics, and start focusing on what actually works: a capitalism that truly embraces opportunity for all and rejects false band-aids like Geithner dollars when times are tough. :-)

A (very) brief account of the theology of Peter Rollins vis-a-vis Humanistic Judaism

2011-10-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

Somebody asked me recently about how I would relate (compare, contrast, analyze) the ideas of Irish theologian Peter Rollins and the ideas in Humanistic Judaism, since I am "on record" so to speak of being a "fan" of Peter Rollins, and also am a "card-carrying member" (to channel George H.W. Bush) of the Society for Humanistic Judaism.

A fair question, and worthy of some brief remarks.

Let me address the ideas of Rollins, first of all, because they are a little more nuanced. For Peter Rollins, the essential "theme" at least in 1st century (pre-1st Jerusalem Council) Christainity (or, followers of Jesus of Nazareth) was, at root, the shared human
experience that transcends cultural boundaries. St. Paul famously said, "there is no more Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, etc.", to which Rollins added the dialectic, "theist nor atheist". What Rollins throughout his thought drives at, in summary, is that the "main
point" of Jesus of Nazareth was not so much about "establishing a new category" (although that happened) but rather counter-intuitively, creating a dialectic to cut across the various "categories" of culture, and, at root, say, that whatever our different cultures, and,indeed, religions are, our common humanity, our shared "existential situation" if you will, is what is most important. That is, we all have "crucifixion", or "dark places" we get into, and "snap answers" finally ring hollow. The idea of "resurrection" for Rollins is not a Disney "happy ending" but rather being able to continue to love and be loved by our fellow man in spite of, or in the midst of, suffering, and that shared experience of suffering (or "crucifixion") and supporting one another in the midst of that (or "resurrection") is the one thing we all share, so, whatever our various cultural situations are ("Jew or Greek") or religious views ("theist or atheist") the common humanity we all have is fundamentally more important, so squabbling over petty differences is counterproductive, in the long run. This is an absurdly short summary of Rollins' ideas, and cannot do them justice, but that is essentially the "nutshell" - Rollins does not present a "new ideology" but rather calls into question the "holding of ideology too
dearly" so to speak, and argues that this was the point of at least the first followers of Jesus of Nazareth all along.

I discussed that first, because the key point to make here is that Rollins does NOT say "abandon your culture" rather he says "fine, have your culture or your 'identity' but 'hold it lightly'", which is to say, that there is nothing wrong with loving our various
cultures and identifications, so long as we keep in mind our shared humanity underlies and transcends all our identities, so, while we hold strong loves and allegiances towards our various cultures, we also are able to interact with and get along with those of a
different culture or point of view.

There is a great scene in "Exodus" where Paul Newman (as Ari Ben Canaan) is showing Eva Marie-Sant (as Kitty Fremont) the valley of Jezreel, and pointing out the various historical landmarks there. It is a very powerful scene, where Newman's character is discussing the "kinship" he feels with the land, the land of his ancestors. At one point he avers that others might not understand, who did not share that same heritage - he says, "People are different. They have a right to be different. They like to be different." Eva Marie-Saint's character is saying that yes, she understands his unique connection to the land, but even her being American, she could perfectly well relate to his point of view, because, essentially, of that common humanity that we share. The scene ends with her saying, "You're wrong, Ari. There are no differences." (This is then followed with one of those overly dramatic Hollywood kisses! :-) )

This scene gets right I think to Rollins' ideas. Yes, we have unique cultures that we are all proud of and we have a right to those unique cultures. But without lessening that, our shared humanity is there running in and through our various cultural differences.

Now culturally, or dare I say, even "religiously" (if the term be properly defined) I have come to "identify" with Humanistic Judaism. I plan to write an essay (or three, ha) about that in and of itself, but right now I just want to briefly touch upon that as it relates
to this dicussion of Rollins, since that was the original question. Now, in a sense, Humanistic Judaism is "religious" in that it emphazises the reliance on human beings to solve human problems (rather than on supernatuarl beings) and is "agnostic" or "ignostic" (to channel Rabbi Sherwin Wine's term) about the supernatural, but it is a postive philosophy, focusing on what we DO believe in (human ingenuity, capability, etc.) not what we do not believe in, or might be more skeptical of. It is also, as its name implies, part of Judaism, and really has its "roots" very much in Jewish tradition which has always been more open to "questioning" things than other cultures and religions (indeed the very name "Israel" denotes "one who wrestles with God", something culturally very radical in the 600's B.C.E., about the time the Torah was put together). So Humanistic Judaism is "humanist" (the religious or philosophical aspect) and "Jewish" (the culutral aspect). I could literally write a book (or two) on why I relate to both of these things and am very proud to call myself a member of SHJ.

This "dovetails" with Rollins in a couple of ways. Firstly, SHJ is not only "humanist" but, if you will, "humanitarian", and therefore concerns about justice for all people, Jewish and non-Jewish is of big concern, which is why it is active in supporting rights of workers, of minorities, of the LGBT community, etc. So this is consistent with Rollins' ideas of not forgetting our shared humanity, even as we celebrate our own particular cultures. Secondly, and building upon the first point, SHJ is not only active for social justice in general, but also is "pluralistic", i.e., recognizing that Jews are a world family encompassing many nations and cultures, and are very diverse, so instead of trying to "enforce" sort of "this is the way to be Jewish", SHJ rather embraces the fact that, for example, Yiddish traditions might differ a bit from those in the Jewish community who don't have a Yiddsh background. So, both in its efforts to be "good world citizens" and, within its own ranks, of embracing diversity of culture (for example, as a Humanistic Jew I can still celebrate - and darn well plan to - Halloween, ha!), this is very much evocative of the themes of Rollins of being proud of our own particular identities, but at the same time seeing that "shared humanity" as well.

Well, that is my attempt to answer that good question, even though several books could be written about the above topics touched upon! :-)

Let me close with some liturgy from SHJ, which dovetails into this discussion:

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Ayfo oree? Oree bee.
Ayfo tikvatee? Tikvatee bee.
Ayfo kokhee? Kokhee bee - v'gam bakh.

Where is my light? My light is in me.
Where is my hope? My hope is in me.
Where is my strength? My strength is in me - and in you.
============================================================

(Here is that scene from Exodus I was referencing...)

iSad

2011-10-06T16:35:00.000-07:00

Eretz Yisrael: Why the two state "solution" is not just wrong but ILLEGAL

2011-07-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1917
I was wrong. I think bloggers ought to admit this when it happens because it shows maturity, like Andrew Sullivan did, admitting he was wrong to support the Iraq War, thinking there were weapons of mass destruction, when there ended up not really being those weapons. I was wrong, not, I think, from intent, but just from not enough information, and my natural "moderate" instincts. That is, in most political issues I try to see a "centrist" path. There are some issues, however, in which there is not a "centrist" path, it is one or the other (e.g. slavery is wrong, and the compromises of the 1850's did not see its inherent wrong-headedness). I was wrong to at first support a so-called "two state solution" for Israel and Palestine. I am naturally a "centrist" sort of fellow, so, not knowing much about the situation, figured, hey, split the baby, no harm done. So long as the Israeli settlements in Gaza and the West Bank were preserved, so long as the Golan Heights near Lebanon were preserved, so long as there was some sort of guarantee from the Palestinian Authority about Israel's security, I figured, what the heck, if the PA wants the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem (part of the West Bank) what the heck, no big deal. A reasonable enough position I thought at the time, but not one well informed I understand now, both from history and international law.

I did not like this emotively, since emotively, I thought and still do, that for historical reasons, the entire land west of the Jordan belongs to the descendants of Abraham forever (or until the earth falls into the sun, anyway, ha). I am not (then or now) religious, at least not insofar as that relates to supernatural beliefs, but religion to one side, it seemed then and now very clear that Israel has a natural historic right to that "brave and ancient land." However, for pragmatic reasons, I was willing to entertain the idea of a "two state solution", including a divided Jerusalem, however unsettling that might be, for the sake of peace.

I understand this differently now. Peace is STILL POSSIBLE but the Neville Chamberlain sort of "peace in our time" which a "two state solution" would be, is no peace. Chamberlain failed to understand that Germany at the time was evil, and evil does not get satisfied with half the pie, it wants it all. Evil does not exist per ce, it exists only as a negation of the light. So, giving Evil half-measures, will not satiate it, it will simply want more. Thus, giving Germany half of Czechoslovakia which Chamberlain hoped would satiate it, did not work, it wanted more, world war resulted, and to the eternal shame of humankind, this world war resulted in not just battlefield casualties but civilian ones as well, including the Shoah, the worst thing that has ever happened, before or since.

A "two state solution" is wrong, for historical reasons (which I understood always) but now I understand a few more things which makes me not support that. It will not work, it will be Chamberlain part two. The Arab fanatics will not be satisfied with it, because they want the end of Israel, because they hate the good, which Israel represents. They hate democracy. Israel is unique, because it has both a strong spiritual heritage, but also it has a strong secular, democratic heritage, both things of which the Arabs in the region despise. They hate secular democracy, and they hate also the Jewish spiritual tradition. Personally, I am more "secular" or "skeptic" and I make no apology for that, but whether one is more spiritual or secular, one can agree that Israel represents that which is good in man. Russell Crow has a great quote in the "Gladiator" movie, he says something to the effect that he has been around the world and has seen the darkness in man, but that Rome is the light. Well, comparatively speaking with its neighbors, she certainly was. But Israel was and is a deeper and more permanent light in all the chaos and misery of history, and those, like Hamas, who like chaos and misery, will always hate the light, no matter how many "bones" like the "two state solution" we throw at it. Please understand I am talking about the hateful ideology unfortunately prevalent in Arab cultures, I am not talking about Arabs themselves, to a man. "Anyone who judges by the group is a peewit" as a Union soldier says in the movie "Gettsyburg" and I do not wish to go down that road. I am saying, matter of factly, that much of the leadership in the West Bank and Gaza are driven by hateful ideologies, and that is just a fact, although there certainly are plenty of good people who are Arabs. It is just that unfortunately, right now and for the past however many years, the hate has drowned out the good in those regions. So just as a caveat there. But, bottom line, a "two state solution" will not work, because of the fact that, as the theologian Karl Barth remarked, evil never exists as a positive entity, that is, an entity in and of itself, it only "exists" as a negation of the good. One cannot bargain with such a negation. One must only resist that.

Another issue must be addressed here. The far-left always complains about the "plight" of the Palestinian populations. Well, prior to 1948, there were not very many Arab natives at all around that region, and it was perfectly palatable for a Jewish state to be established there, without some sort of humanitarian catastrophe that the far-left today drones on about. What happened was that surrounding countries sent in people to the region, in order to create a population problem when there had not been that problem before. Jewish people and Arab people have lived there, long before 1948, for, in fact thousands of years. There is no reason why a single Jewish state of Israel, that includes the contested regions of Judea and Samaria (i.e. the West Bank), the Gaza strip, and the Golan heights, cannot accommodate the Arab populations as well. The counter-argument to that, which I once found credible, but now see it more as a challenge but not insurmountable, was that if there is a single Jewish state, but if also there is a large amount of Arab populations there as well, then, over time, the state will start looking less and less like a Jewish state. This is a fair argument, and one I once thought to be the strongest argument in favor of a "two state" solution. I now see this as easily surmounted. In a single state of Israel, one can have immigration policies that allow only those of Jewish heritage (either by ethnicity or by religious or cultural identification) to immigrate to Israel. Then one could provide tax incentives or some sort of incentives to increase Jewish immigration to the country. One could even (as Japan has) provide tax incentives to have more children. In such ways, Israel could certainly make sure that it remains a Jewish homeland, which is its historic right, without depriving the Palestinians of their fundamental freedoms. To channel an old hippie phrase: "why can't we all just get along". That is certainly possible in a Greater Israel (i.e. an Israel that includes that entire region). It is up to the Arab population as to whether they want to live in brotherhood with their Jewish neighbors or not. For a long time prior to 1948, Jewish people and Arab people lived side by side and there were not too many problems. It was only after that, when the historic right of the Jewish people to have a homeland there was recognized by the UN, when all of a sudden it became a "problem", a "problem" incited not so much by the local Arab populations, and more incited by surrounding Arab countries. It is a made-up problem created by surrounding countries, not an inherent problem. The situation today in the 21st century presents problems not of Israel's making, but rather, it is the work of the surrounding region. This fact does not get much reported, but it is true. So the "refugee" issue which the far-left drones on about, is an Arab-created issue, and it is their problem. There would not be this problem other than the fact that when Israel was created, the surrounding countries created so much fear and hate, that many Palestinians left on their own accord. There was, and to this day still is, lots of open country in Israel, plenty of room for more apartment complexes, and so forth. There would have been more than enough land for the Jewish people and the Palestinians who were there. The surrounding Arab countries would have none of that, and so created a problem when there need not have been one. The mess we have today is not of Israel's doing, an inconvenient truth perhaps for the left, but a truth nonetheless.

The British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Belford, the UK equivalent of the US "Secretary of State" (the current UK Foreign Secretary, incidentally, is William Hague whom I personally had the honor of meeting, during a campaign rally in 2001 when he was standing for PM against then-PM Tony Blair) issued in 1917 what is now known as the "Balfour Declaration" (which I linked to in wikipedia above), formally promising Palestine as a Jewish homeland. This was ratified by the League of Nations in 1922, and was part of the UN charter upon the founding of the UN.

This is a vastly important point. Always, I emotively wanted a "Greater Israel", i.e., a one state of Israel, not this "divided Jerusalem" crap people are talking about now. However, I unashamedly am a fan of the notion of international law, for I feel that the concept of international law, including things like the International Criminal Court, and the like, help to keep dictators in check, by showing that however important national sovereignty is, it is not as important as fundamental human rights. So I believe in international law, and I believe in the United Nations (and earnestly hope and trust that the US will block the attempt this autumn to create a Palestinian "state", which would be a violation not only of history, but of international law). I was concerned that not having a two-state solution might run afoul of international law, and that was my basic concern, even though emotively I did not like such a "solution". I now know differently.

In the 1920's, the British Mandate in "Palestine" existed as a result of WWI. "Palestine" (what is now Israel and the "West Bank", a nice, p.c. term for freaking Samaria and Hebron, the capital of King David, by the way) had in mind a future Jewish state. The Ottoman Empire controlled that area and was defeated in WWI, so the British had to control that area to maintain order, but never intended to be there indefinitely. It was the original intent to control law and order there, and eventually hand it over to the Jewish people, as the Balfour Declaration of 1917 (ratified by the League of Nations, the precursor to the UN in 1922) indicated, among other documented "paper trails" to that effect. The "Palestinian State" talked about today is a legal fiction created by Islamists who want to turn Israel, the United States, and the world, into some sort of Islamic tyranny. They hate Israel because she is a democracy, because she is for freedom, and the Islamists are against it. Simple as that. I am not trying to get on a "soap box" but I am trying to say that not only is there an historical argument, or a moral argument to be made for Greater Yisrael, but international law backs that up as well. If you like, the British Empire backs that up, or, at least, originally did, prior to the deplorable anti-Semitism that arose in the 1930's, where even Britain "backed off" from their original commitments due to the toxic climate of the times.

Now, one might say, legal arguments, or even historical or moral arguments, are well and good, but the reality of our times is that the faux concept of a "Palestinian" state is a reality and we just have to live with that. Well, for now, perhaps. But there are things to be done. Peacefully, through political discourse, this dynamic can be changed. Within Israel, pressure must be exerted upon Likud, Prime Minster Netenyahu's party, to continue their historic support for a Greater Israel. In the US, we need to hold politicians accountable, and that includes the President, whom I incidentally have much respect for. I might disagree with him on some fiscal issues, but he is a good person I think, and not deserving of some of the "flack" he gets, however, he was wrong about Israel, and he needs to be held accountable. I am almost at the point of voting for Gov. Palin, whom I have respectful disagreements with about some fiscal issues (that is, I think she might go too far sometimes albeit I do agree with balanced budgets and so forth), but some respectful disagreements aside, Gov. Palin at least supports Israel, and the current President does not really "get it". I do not think he is anti-Semitic, but he just does not really "get" international law very well. He is misinformed. He is not a bigot, I don't think, because I like to think the best in folks, but I do think he is misinformed. He has not bothered to freaking do a 10 minute wikipedia search about the Balfour Agreement, and things like that. If he had, he would realize that international law can make a strong case for a unified Israel, and not a fictional "two state solution". I get it, I was there, I supported Israel emotively, but wondered about the international law issue, and now I have evolved, and I now know better. One need not be "religious" in any way to understand Israel has an historic and legal right to all her lands, including the "West Bank" and Gaza. These are the facts. So, in Israel, pressure on politicians must be made to support the so-called "settlements" in the West Bank, which is really just Israel claiming her basic rights, and in the US, we need to support politicians, of any party, who recognize this. I freely admit I am sort of a "centrist Democrat" and so am not a natural Palin supporter, but, frankly, some things are more important than tax or spending bills, which reasonable folks can have respectful disagreements upon, and one of those things is Israel, and even though I still consider myself a Democrat, honestly, I think Gov. Palin has more understanding about this issue than the current President, whom, I emphasize, is not a bad person, but perhaps is a bit misinformed. We need to peacefully and through political means, in both Israel and here in the US, to get the notion across that this concept of a "Palestinian state" is not only an affront to history, but is, if that were not bad enough, in violation of the League of Nations, of international law, despite what the misinformed media might tell one.

There is more to be said, in terms of practical, real-world ways to move the ball forward here, but this is already a rather lengthy post, and here I simply wanted to push back against the legal fiction of a "Palestinian state" the media has created. There are humanitarian issues here, of course, and I certainly do not condone, say, exiling Palestinian folks to other countries. There are rational solutions here, in an albeit difficult conundrum. I will hopefully follow up with some ideas there, to balance the need for a Jewish state, with a just and fair and humanitarian approach. Right now, I want to convey the notion that the so-called "two-state solution" is a legal fiction and this has nothing to do with religion, but everything to do with history and international law.

For fun, and to close, here is the immortal Barbara Streisand singing Hatikvah, (the Israeli national anthem, the Hebrew word for "Hope"):

Lyrics:

Kol od balevav p'nimah
Nefesh Yehudi homiyah
Ulfa'atey mizrach kadimah
Ayin l'tzion tzofiyah
Od lo avdah tikvatenu
Hatikvah bat shnot alpayim
L'hiyot am chofshi b'artzenu
Eretz Tzion v'Yerushalayim

(In English:

As long as deep in the heart,
The soul of a Jew yearns,
And forward to the East
To Zion, an eye looks
Our hope will not be lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free nation in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem. )

If we want peace in the middle east, we need to stick with what is right. As John Wayne says, "There is right and there is wrong. Ya gotta do one or the other." I will leave it there for now. Shalom.

The War of 1812: Finally Completed

2011-07-28T21:39:00.000-07:00

The superpower in 1812 was the UK. The United States had some controversial readings of maritime law that caused it to (stupidly) declare war on the UK to defend these controversial readings. Long story short, the US got her ass kicked, Washington, D.C., including the Whitehouse, was burned to the ground, and President Madison (or "Mad"-ison, ha) had to flee in exile. Why was not this the end of the story? Well, because the UK was dealing with Napoleon at the same time, so had to fight the War of 1812 with one hand tied behind her back. In 1814 (or thereabouts) the UK had finished her war with Napoleon. Now "Mad"ison was stupid, but not that stupid. He knew that if Washington could be taken over by a half-hearted war effort on the part of the UK, he knew that now that Napoleon was dealt with, he would have no chance if the war continued. He sent James Monroe, his Secretary of State, to Paris to sue (read: beg) for peace, and the UK, tired of conflict, agreed, with the maritime laws EXACTLY as they were before the conflict. The US had won nothing other than an "opportunity" to re-build the Whitehouse. It was the worst defeat in American history, worse even than Vietnam. It is something not taught in American schools, but the facts remain, nevertheless. The US picked on someone bigger, and got beat, and paid the consequences thereof, and the worst part was its reasons to begin with were dubious at best.

Of course, in more recent memory, the UK and the US share a better history, not least with respect to WWII, in which they worked together to defeat the greatest evil that ever was, and hopefully ever will be, Nazi Germany.

Unfortunately, however, the same hubris which impelled the US to the losing 1812 War remains, all these years later. The Tea Party run GOP is about to force the nation into default for reasons ranging from hating old people and poor people to hating the fact that an African-American person is President. If the President envokes his constitutional right to raise the debt ceiling without the permission of Congress, it is very likely the GOP Congress will impeach him, something they have wanted to do all along, taking unfortunately the word "Whitehouse" a bit too literally.

I hope some last-minute deal will be worked out, but right now I am not optimistic. The United States will go into default, the global stock markets will crash as a result, and a Great Depression, not a Recession will ensue. The President might try to work around Congress to avoid this, and if he does, he will be impeached. He will have done the right thing, and will be impeached as a result. He will technically be impeached for overstepping executive privilege or whatever but really he will be impeached for PWB ("President while Black") and every reasonable person knows that.

The debt is a real issue. And guess what, the answer is a combination of spending cuts and tax increases on those who can afford it. David Cameron, the Conservative PM of the UK, has a 3 - 1 plan on this (3 times spending cuts times 1 tax increases). That is the conservative plan. However, the US no longer has any "conservative" notions. They simply want to wreck the US and global economy simply because of resentment over an African-American President. Sad, but true.

How does this relate to 1812? Two reasons. For one, the "conservative" idea of keeping government in check but still functioning is manifested by the Cameron government, not the US government, anymore. Secondly, on a more sweeping note, if the US defaults on its debt, thereby triggering a new Great Depression, it will no longer be "king of the hill" and the only country left to pick up the pieces of the global economy will be the UK. And this will be the fault of arrogant people who put ideology over pragmatism, who put their pet peeves over the well-being of the people.

Mr. Cameron, the Free World may now be in your hands, since the idiots in Washington have self-destructed the United States. Please, take good care of it, since you might be the only person standing between the current generation and "a new Dark Age".

American stupidity has come to this at last. So-called "conservatives" want to destroy the world economy just to undermine a President who is not of the right skin color. I am all for deficit reduction. But it must be a shared sacrifice. Not a "screw the poor and protect the tax loopholes for big business" sort of platform that the GOP now advocates. As Andrew Sullivan might say, there is nothing "conservative" about the current GOP. They are simply anarchists. Who have finally demoted us from "Leader of the Free World" status.

Again, I hope the Cameron coalition can do better, for now, the Free World rests in its hands.

Excuse me while I dump all my stocks, and shore up for the long, GOP-anarchist-made winter.

The Great Commandment

2011-06-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

The great Rabbi, Hillel, who lived around the same time as Jesus of Nazareth was (as legend goes at any rate) once asked by a Roman Centurion to sum up the Torah in one sentence. He replied: "That which you hate, do not do to another, the rest is commentary."

Those are words I think we can all live by. Jesus of Nazareth also (reportedly) said a similar thing, known as the Golden Rule: "do unto others, as you would have them do unto you." The Buddha - Sidartha - also had similar teachings.

Along these lines, I thought I would "analyze" another quotation from Jesus of Nazareth. He was asked, so the stories go, what is the most important commandment. Now, in his times, there were lots of commandments, the famed "Ten Commandments" courtesy of Charleton Heston :-) which were sort of the "ethical" guidelines such as do not murder and do not covet (the latter being one which we in America seem to always forget, in the age of consumerism, always coveting the latest iPhone, etc., but I'll let that one go for now), and, also more "ceremonial" laws contingent upon their times. Laws of the latter sort were not universal laws, but just cultural things that cropped up for one reason or another - don't eat shellfish, don't mix fabrics, men grow out your beards, etc., etc. (It is, if one will forgive an aside, sadly amusing about how one such ceremonial law, against "sodomy" comes to be so thrown about today - the very word a mischaracterizing of why Sodom was judged - another post, that, but suffice it say it had not the least bit to do with certain types of closed-door activities and everything to do with middle eastern morals of hospitality at the time - i.e., treating one's guests well was a prime principle at the time for reasons left to another day, Sodom violated that by not treating Lot's guests, the angels, with respect, and were duly judged - it hadn't a thing to do with "sodomy" and everything to do with respecting those whom one has under one's roof. The ceremonial law against "sodomy" was in fact a cultural "more" of the time, to do most likely with distancing the Jewish faith from its biggest rival at the time, the religion of Baal Saphon, Lord of Earth - and storms under some renditions - whose temples employed male prostitutes, so, the ceremonial anti-sodomy law was in fact a "distancing" from other rival religions, like many of the others were, so it is really sadly amusing about how some folks try to use the anti-"sodomy" edict to bash the LGBT community, when it was never a "moral", or universal, law to begin with, but only a culturally, time and place contingent thing, and in fact in the Torah is no where near the ten commandments, but is in the section where they are talking about not eating bacon - an aside, but worth the remark, methinks.) In any event, people asked Jesus of Nazareth what the "greatest commandment" was, the one commandment that was more important than anything else, more universal than culturally contingent ceremonial laws and even more universal than the ethical laws, which perhaps "feed into" but do not encompass, such a "great commandment". His reply was, roughly, in the King James version I think (my memory is rusty): The two great commandments are - love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, and mind, and the second is like unto it, love thy neighbor as thyself.

OK, love God, and love one's neighbor. Got it. But let's have a look at that more deeply. Unfortunately I am not a Greek scholar so don't know the original text, but, also, on the other hand, we can look at great texts, like the Gospels or Shakespeare as art, which can invite differing interperations. So what follows is one person's (my own) interpretation and is not meant to be some "scholarly" sort of analysis. Jesus of Nazareth gives two supreme edicts, meant to over rule any lesser edict (e.g. stuff about eating bacon, or "sodomy", for that matter). He says, love God with all one's worth, essentially, and then immediately goes on to say, love thy neighbor as thyself. Now, the King James is a notoriously incorrect translation of the original language, however beautiful it is - I am with "the Hitch" (Christopher Hitchens) on this one as he has remarked how powerful and moving the King James Bible is, agree or disagree with certain religious stuff. It is well known that King James was a paranoic person (Britain's equivalent to Richard Nixon, if one wills), not to mention a "closet case" which no doubt fueled his paranoia. He was convinced that "witches" or pagan practitioners in England were "out to get him", so he often randomly inserted the word "witch" into the King James Bible translation - e.g. if the text says "thieves are bad", he would rework it to say "witches are bad", etc., an unfortunate tradition that has been carried out elsewhere - for instance in the Epistle of I Timothy, there is something about "neither prostitutes nor those who go to prostitutes, nor homosexuals will inherit the Kingdom of God" or something to that effect - of course, the original Greek word that was translated as "homosexual" was, roughly "pimp", and that makes sense in the context - he was railing about prostitution, so it makes sense that he says prostitutes, and their clients and their pimps are "bad news", but it makes no sense to just throw in randomly, and "oh by the way homosexuals are bad as well". This Greek mistranslation was done intentionally in the Wycliff Bible in the 1500's, by someone with an axe to grind (or, perhaps, a closet to maintain, ha). So King James is not alone in editing text for his own political advantage. All that to say, I do not pretend the King James Bible is a good translation, rather, with the Hitch, I think it is a great work of artistic language in any event, a beauty lost in subsequent translations. (As an aside, if you want an accurate translation, the Newly Revised Standard Version - NSRV - the one used in the Episcopal Church is the one updated with the latest scholarship, so personally that is the only one I read if I am wanting an actual, correct translation, even if the NSRV itself is imperfect, it still bests its competitors, but just in terms of poetry the King James has something to be said for it.)

Those "asides", aside, in the King James, Jesus of Nazareth says his second command is "like unto it", like the first commandment, in the NSRV it says "like it" but, well, "same difference" there, as they say. The thought recently occured to me that there is a "deeper message" one could find here. He is asked, what is the greatest commandment, and he replies, love God, etc., and without prompting offers a second commandment. They asked him for one commandment. He gave two. Interesting. He might have said: "Love God, with all your soul, etc." and have been done with it, but, rather, he said, love God and oh by the way here is a similar edict, love your neighbor as yourself. Why would the text read this way, I wonder. The question arises as to why Jesus of Nazareth would give another "layering" if one wills, to a question of what is the greatest commandment.

Now, we all know Jesus of Nazareth liked to speak in parables (and was probably only exceeded in his ability to do so, in my opinion, by two people, Aesop of Aseop's Fables, and much later on, by the contemporary philosopher Peter Rollins, but I'll let that one be for now). So, he was sort of "clever" so to speak in his replies to "gotcha questions" to channel Governor Palin. Jesus of Nazareth always seemed to speak in riddles, if one wills. The greatest theologian of the 20th century, Paul Tillich, wrote (somewhere - it might have been "The New Being" but not quite sure) about the tale of someone crippled whom Jesus healed, but before he healed the cripple, he said, "your sins are forgiven". Tillich remarked about how, really, Jesus had presaged Freud and other great thinkers with similar insights, with the basic concept of how psychosomatic illnesses are often the worst of all, that is, the person who was crippled had a worse problem of feeling guilty about whatever it was, i.e., this person had psychological problems, and Jesus in this tale was prescient enough to understand that it is often more important to heal the psychological pain of a person, than to heal the physical pain, especially since the latter often follows the former. So this healing of a cripple story was far from a "magic trick" story, it was rather an important point being made, that our psychological anguish, guilt, etc., is often more "crippling" than anything physical. Tillich's analysis of this I think is among the better examples of scholarship in recent memory. I mention this to make the point that often there is "subtext" in the given texts about Jesus of Nazareth, and one has to "read between the lines" to draw artistic or ethical inferences therefrom.

So, to come back to the issue at hand: when Jesus of Nazareth was asked what was the "Great Commandment", he characteristically gave a somewhat "cryptic" answer: the first commandment is to love God, and second is like it, love your neighbor (or compatriot, etc.) as yourself. Well, I think one could well interpret this to mean this: love God, or, in other words, love your neighbor. I think the bottom line here is not first love God and then if you get around to it, love your neighbor. I think it is rather saying that "loving God" amounts to loving one's neighbor. That the second is "like unto" the first means, for me, saying the same thing. He is not saying, love God, and also love your neighbor, rather, for me, he is saying, to the extent which we love our neighbor we "love God" or "fulfill the greatest commandment."

The contemporary Irish philosopher (or theologian) Peter Rollins has some interesting discussions about how it is "impossible to love God". I will link to a Valentine's Day blog post Rollins did, http://peterrollins.net/?p=2127 on the related point about how one cannot "love" Love, for love is not an object but is an activity, it "emerges", so to speak, and is not ironically an object of love or worship, but is something that emerges in ACTION. To further back up this notion, I will link one other thing from Rollins, http://peterrollins.net/?p=2340 where he compares "God" to the dog on the 80's Canadian television programmme, "The Littlest Hobo", about a dog who comes into a situation of conflict or problems, manages to fix things, and then goes along his merry way, without ever settling down with any of the folks he helps. (Incidentally as a big Megan Follows fan I would recommend one to search on youtube for that show, since she is in one of the episodes. :-) ) I am brushing up against a lot of "deep" kinds of stuff, but here I want to just put forward a simple idea: the "Great Commandment" from Jesus of Nazareth I think is to love one's fellows, period, and love them as one loves oneself. There is no "space" or "gap" between the terms "love God" and "love one's neighbors". It is the same thing. Rollins goes into that better than I could, but essentially the idea is that whatever the word "God" means to somebody (Creator, Supreme Being, etc., etc., or just a complete fabrication or delusion) there is in fact one way to understand this which everyone can relate to. That "God" IS Love. And for Rollins, that is why he is on about one cannot "love God" because one cannot "love Love", one can only love. And that's it. There is nothing more to be said.

The Great Commandment is to love one's fellows, or, going back to Hillel, visiting upon one's fellows only that which one would want to be visited upon oneself, and nothing else. It is really just that simple, the notion of treating the problems of one's friends as one's own, and so forth, but it does take a lifetime sometimes to figure that out. :-) To the extent that we love others as ourselves, we fulfill the Great Commandment, to the extent that we do not, we do not, and that is as simple as that. T.S. Eliot might say here in conclusion, "Shantih" - I'll go with the equivalent terminology of some of my Wiccan friends and say, "Blessed Be." :-)

(Picture is of Charleton Heston as Moses and Anne Baxter as the Egyptian princess Neferteri in Cecil B. DeMille's epic The Ten Commandments, appropriate I thought for a blog post about "The Great Commandment". :-) )

Orenthal James Simpson: Still INNOCENT, and the evidence is mounting

2011-06-17T14:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.rense.com/general78/oj.htm

Could P = NP ?

2011-06-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem

This is not an exhaustive post on the P vs. NP problem in computer science. Wiki article above is posted to give background. I am just sharing a recent thought I had, in response to a quote on the wiki article by MIT's Scott Aaronson, arguing that P cannot equal NP, intuitively. Here is the quote:

"If P = NP, then the world would be a profoundly different place than we usually assume it to be. There would be no special value in "creative leaps," no fundamental gap between solving a problem and recognizing the solution once it's found. Everyone who could appreciate a symphony would be Mozart; everyone who could follow a step-by-step argument would be Gauss."

A persuasive argument, intuitively. But intuition, as any high school student of special relativity's revision of the notion of time can tell us, can mislead. I had a thought today I wanted to share, that would call the above reasoning into question.

Imagine two abstract "spaces". One space is the space of problems in P and NP, say at one end of this "space" one has P, in the middle there are some problems that could lie in either category, and towards the other end there are NP problems. Now, imagine one has another space of programs one can pick at random to solve these various problems in "problem space". So, one has "problem space" and one has "program space". With me so far? Good. Say I start randomly picking programs out of "program space" for given problems in "problem space" the only selection criteria being that the program I pick can solve the problem I am on. For any given problem, there are many possible programs I could randomly choose. Now, it will turn out, generally, that a majority of the time when I am in the "P" section of "problem space" that the programs I pick out for problems in this area will run in polynomial ("P") time. Occasionally I might pick a "bad" program to solve a polynomial-time problem (i.e. a program that will run in non-polynomial time to solve a polynomial-time problem) but this will be rare. Now, say I move along in problem space to sort of the "grey area" between P and NP problems, and now, programs I randomly pick out of my "program space" will sometimes be polynomial runtime programs, and sometimes non-polynomial (NP) runtime programs. Now, say I move further along in my problem space, so now all the problems I encounter are decidedly NP (e.g. the subset sum problem, or the famed traveling salesman problem). Now it is overwhelmingly probable that programs I pick out that can solve these problems out of my program space will themselves be NP (based on decades of research people have done on this). Probable, yes. Certain? Well that is murkier. It seems to me, that just as it is possible, if not likely, that one could pick out an NP program at random to solve a P problem, it also seems possible (if certainly very unlikely, as nobody has found one yet) to find a P program to solve an NP problem.

This is rather like entropy. In infinite space and time, Boltzmann discovered entropy *generally* increases, but this is a STATISTICAL thing, not an ABSOLUTE, thing, hence "Boltzmann brains", etc. It is POSSIBLE, in infinite space and time, to find someplace where entropy decreases (thus reversing the arrow of time, incidentally) but highly IMPROBABLE.

Therefore I suggest, that it could be the case that whereas it is overwhelmingly probable that in picking random programs out of a space of programs that can solve any given problem, that one will find P programs for P problems, and NP programs for NP problems, this might only be a statistical phenomena, not a necessary phenomena. Therefore, one could by accident every million or billion years of CPU time picking random programs to solve an NP problem, find a P program to solve it. If so, then, strictly speaking, P would in fact be equal to NP, but just this would not have much impact on the "real world" given its statistical improbability, similar to how one might possibly run into a Boltzmann brain, but the likelihood of this occurring is vanishingly small.

As nature herself is sort of a "program picker", using natural selection to find "programs" to solve real-world "problems" for the survival of the gene, even were P = NP strictly speaking, as outlined above, but the chances of stumbling upon a P "program" to solve an NP "problem" were very slim, then the world would in fact look much the way in fact it does look. Thus the charge that if P = NP, all who listened to Mozart would be Mozart, etc., is patently false, because here, P might strictly speaking equal NP, in terms of out there in program space there might be a polynomial-time program to solve an NP problem, but since the chances of nature (or computer scientists) stumbling upon this by accident is so slim, this would not happen much in the "real world" and thus the world would look exactly how it does look, even if P = NP. This is another example of how intuition can lead us astray by giving us something that "feels right" but does not withstand strict scrutiny.

Of course, I have no idea if P = NP or not, and if I did, I would be a wealthier individual, ha. I am just saying that fallacious intuition-based arguments do not get us any closer to resolving this conundrum one way or another, as the above "thought experiment" demonstrates. :-)

Suggestion for proof to establish the correctness of Hawking's 2005 Information Paradox resolution

2011-06-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

Introduction: Hawking in 2005 argued that the so-called "information parodox" whereby black hole radiation cause a loss of quantum coherence (and hence, causality to the eternal dismay no doubt of Laplace), can be resolved by summing over only trivial Euclidean metrics to contribute to scattering calculations in anti-deSitter space. That is, to make predictions for the universe we observe, we can disregard the contributing metrics that have black holes and only use the ones without black holes - no black holes, no information parodox. The issue at stake is whether we can safely disregard the non-trivial (black hole containing) Euclidean metrics in our calculations. We can only do this if quantum corellation functions asymptotically decay on these non-trivial spacetimes, in which case we would have no choice but to use the trivial spacetimes in our calculations, thereby side-stepping the information paradox issue entirely (and resucuing causality - and our friend Laplace - in the process). The below high-level sketch of a proof aims to do just that by demonstrating in broad-outline how this could be done, though certain subtelties no doubt remain for further explication.

Axiom:

Correllation functions on non-trivial Euclidean metrics decay as the limit goes towards future infinity.

Proof:

I. Observers will disagree on vacuum state value depending upon their acceleration by rules of General Relativity.

II. By I., two systems, initially with same vacuum state, may over time in anti-DeSitter spacetime have entirely different vacuum states, depending upon their acceleration, so correllation functions between them will decay as the limit reaches future infinity.

III. Timelike geodesics in the neighborhood of a singularity forever approach it, but do not reach it (a la Zeno's paradox) by rules of General Relativity, therefore, a timelike geodesic escaping to future infinity and going towards a future singularity are in a sense equivalent.

IV. By II. and III. two time-like systems becoming arbitrarily nearer to a singurily will measure more and more diverging vacuum values between them, that is, their correlation functions will decay.

V. By IV., once we have Wick-rotated into a singular (non-trivial) Euclidean 4-sphere, and the geodesics in IV. become spacelike, this correllation function decay will remain in arbitrarily close regions to the circular singularity embedded in the 4-sphere.

:: Therefore, correllation functions on non-trivial Euclidean metrics decay as the limit goes towards future infinity.

Consequences:

If it can be (as above) established that correllation functions decay on non-trivial Euclidean metrics, then as Hawking (2005) said, we should only use trivial Euclidean metrics in scattering calculations in anti-deSitter spacetime (ADS), and if this is done, the so-called "information paradox" goes away, since we are now only dealing with trivial spacetimes (e.g. without black holes). Thus establishing the above, establishes that the "information paradox" may be resolved as Hawking 2005 argued.

If as above outlined above, the relativistic effects on vaccuum states due to different reference frames, are such that they asymptotically impact correlation functions, this ought to have predictable (measurable) effects, that is the effects of various accelerating reference frames upon locally measured vacuum values in those reference frames, and the interaction between these systems, seem to be an avenue for further exploration.

Further explication needed as to above:

The above rests on point II., the effect on correllation functions resulting from the differing vacuum states measured in different accelerating reference frames. It seems a logical inference that asymptotically this effect will cause these functions to decay, but precise research would need to establish this. Once established, the rest falls into place, and the information parodox is resolved.

"The Fall of Man" - An Analysis

2011-05-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

I was thinking to myself today of what "real life lesson" if any could apply to that tired old tale of the Garden of Eden. In the story as handed down, a serpent generally considered of some dubious character or another, convinces Eve to eat a fruit that is "forbidden", she eats it, and gives it to Adam, who also eats it, and then God kicks them out of paradise for having eaten the forbidden fruit. I was thinking, what possible relevance could this story ever have for today's world. The very notion of "it is forbidden" is anathema to reason. As Plato said, "there is no limit set to thought". So the very concept that something is "forbidden" to look into is just b.s. to the modern mind, and rightfully so, in my opinion. Now, certainly, we can apply knowledge for good or for ill (i.e. electricity can be used for light bulbs - good - or electric chairs - bad - for instance). But knowledge in itself is neither good nor bad, it is how we apply that knowledge which counts.

Another "problem" with the "fall of man" tale, at least, how I heard it often related, is the misogynistic character of it. Eve eats the fruit, gives it to Adam, who also eats it, and then boy are they in trouble. A certain self-styled "reverend" whom I will not give credit to enough to mention by name, but at any rate, a self-styled "reverend" whom I happened to hear preach growing up as a child always used to say how the fall of man happened not when Eve ate the forbidden fruit, but only when Adam did, because, since after all the male is "superior" in this "reverend"'s mind, according to him, God did not care two whits what Eve did, but only cared about what Adam, her supposed "superior" did, and so when Adam ate the forbidden fruit, that was when they went amiss, because he should have (presumably according to this twisted way of thinking) beaten Eve into submission and shown her the error of her ways, and then all would have been cool, apparently).

So I have not liked the "fall of man" story as related traditionally, both because as a humanist, I value knowledge and think that knowledge itself is not good or bad, it is simply how we use that knowledge that becomes good or bad, be it electricity (light bulbs or electric chairs ), nuclear energy (cheap power vs. atom bombs), etc., and also because how the story was related to me anyway as a child by a certain self-styled "reverend", it always struck me as misogynistic. So just as an intellectual exercise, as a way of staving off the perpetual boredom which personally I seem to perennially struggle with, ha, I was thinking about whether there is some other way to understand this parable (and it was, needless to say, always a parable, historically, despite what contemporary "creationists" would like to believe, by the way) without its original anti-reason or anti-women connotations.

I then recalled a small detail about the story as traditionally related, and it is this small detail I should like to focus on, for often in the smallest details can the most meaning be had. After Eve has eaten the forbidden fruit, and gives it to Adam who also eats it, God comes along and basically confronts Adam with a loosely-translated message of, WTF. Adam, instead of taking responsibility for his actions, goes something like, "well, it was this woman here that you gave me, she gave the fruit to me, I am not to blame, etc.". In the parable God does not "buy" it, and basically kicks them out of the garden to live "east of Eden" which has since become a literary metaphor for less-than-idyllic places to reside. The detail here that emerged for me when thinking about this was that God came to talk to Adam about the "forbidden fruit" issue, and Adam gave an excuse, instead of "owning up" and in particular tries to "shift the blame". I think maybe one could think about this thusly to sort of re-interpret the parable: maybe God, or how about we spell that,
G-d, here, in deference to the Judeac tradition of not speaking or writing the name of G-d which is another discussion as to the reasons behind that beyond the scope of this discussion, suffice it to say it has to do with the traditions of Sumerian culture circa 2000 B.C.E. with divinities having "secret names", but I digress, at any rate, G-d seems to me to have gone down there to talk to Adam not necessarily to kick him and Eve out of the Garden of Eden but rather to make a determination as to whether this was really going to be necessary. Now, before this event, some traditions relate, Adam and G-d had a sort of "history" there, i.e., this was not the first time Adam had f'd something up. More on that later. I think G-d was trying to gauge the situation and see if he really had to kick Adam and Eve out, sort of like a high school principle who has to see if he really has to kick out a student - he does not want to, but he might need to in order that the school not be infected by the misdoings of that one student. I think it was Adam's pathetic, misogynistic, blame-shifting response that got him kicked out. I think if had simply owned up to what he had done, and not tried to blame Eve, I think all would have been cool, but, as it happened, he choose to blame-shift and be a generally spineless coward. Which leads me to a perhaps radical re-interpretation of this parable...

I think G-d kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden NOT because of the "forbidden fruit" but rather because of the dysfunctional and quite possibly abusive relationship that Adam and Eve had. Let's let that sink in for a moment. We are all told in Sunday School, etc., that some stupid "forbidden fruit" was eaten and Adam and Eve get expelled as a result of that. Well, yeah, pretty stupid to the rational mind for reasons outlined above. Now, THAT would be stupid. But what if, this was not the case at all? What if, instead, the "forbidden fruit" was a test, a test to see if Adam was going to treat Eve properly or just try and blame shift upon her?

OK, now please bear in mind this my personal "story", that is, I am not saying my "reading" of the parable is the "correct" one, it is simply my own "reading" and that is part of what I love about art - painting, poetry, parables, etc. - is the viewer or the reader can develop their own "take" on it. But here is my version of what is happening here. I think Adam and Eve are kicked out not because of some dumb ass forbidden fruit issue, but because of a much more real issue, and that is that Adam was abusing Eve and Eve did not have the self-respect to say "enough". OK, that is my thesis, and so let us look at the preceding events, and see if we can come up with a "what really happened" type of thing, the same way a detective works.

I think this whole "forbidden fruit" thing was a set-up. Bear with me. I think G-d and the snake (whom we will get to momentarily) were in a sort of "collusion". It was a "sting operation", not upon Eve, but upon Adam. It was a last-ditch effort to get Adam to be less of a dick, excuse the language, but that is I think what it was. I think G-d and the snake were trying to help Eve because they both knew she was in bad situation, but they are both limited in their ability to help because they both believe in free will, they cannot force either Adam or Eve to do anything, they can only try and help but they cannot violate free will (as the comedy film "Bruce Almighty" starring Morgan Freeman as G-d very poignantly pointed out that however powerful G-d is perceived as being the one thing he - or she - cannot do, is violate free will). In any event, I think it went like this. G-d basically told the snake (whose identity we shall get to) something like this: "look, Eve is being abused by Adam, and we have been down this road before with Adam in a previous relationship, and you, Ms. Snake, have done what you could do try and get Eve to get out of the situation but have been rebuffed. Tell you what we will do. I will tell Adam and Eve they cannot eat a particular fruit, and then you will come in and convince Eve to eat that fruit, and give the fruit to Adam to also eat. Then I will come in and confront Adam. If he can grow a pair and take some responsibility, then I know he can still be salvaged. If he does not and instead tries to blame Eve, then I will know the situation is currently hopeless, and we will have to eject Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, because this Garden is a place of peace and not of rancor, and we will have done all we could, but we cannot allow rancor in this Garden which is supposed to be a "safe zone" of peace and tranquility." So they put this plan into action, and we all know the result, Adam blames Eve and they both get ejected from the Garden, not out of animosity but because their dysfunction - Adam abusing Eve and Eve just taking it - could not stand in a place that was sort of a "safe zone" for peace - rancorous folks had to take their shit elsewhere, essentially. That is how I think that went down, but let me back it up with more evidence.

Eve was not Adam's first girlfriend. He had had another, named Lilith. Lilith was also a Sumerian deity round about the time these Judeac tales were being generated so was a well-known mythological "diva" already but that is neither here nor there for this tale, but just for historical reference. There was also a brief period in which in some Jewish tales at the time - circa 2000 BCE - Lilith was the wife of the Jewish God Yahweh who later became known as just G-d - another story there - so if we are being creative we could say that perhaps out of love for Adam G-d imparted to him his own wife as an ultimate act of self-sacrificial love, but that is just sort of an historical footnote there. But, hey, let's just have some fun with that one because it imparts a certain poetry to the story that follows. Let's say Lilith was originally the wife of G-d, and that she later agreed to be the wife of Adam, as a symbol of G-d's unconditional love for Adam. Because such a supposition makes the following even more poetic or tragic. Adam had it pretty good. He was in this beatific Shangrela-esque Garden of peace and tranquility and he also has a beautiful companion with whom to spend the days with, communing with his fellow animals, nature etc. Not a bad deal there. But Adam wanted more. He wanted power. He wanted domination. He missed the point of G-d that the goal of life is not power or domination but it is about Love. (We could side-track into the theories of Jacques Lacan if you want me to back that up, but shoot me an email on that for more, ha.) So, Adam was not content at the "sweet deal" he had, but rather he wanted more, and he wanted "domination" over Lilith. Not to get into "too much information" or "TMI" territory here, but by way of giving the full story as handed down in Jewish tradition, essentially Adam demanded to be "on top" if one follows me here in terms of "bedroom" stuff, in order assert his "dominance" and Lilith wanted a "side-by-side" arrangement in said "bedroom" stuff because they were supposed to be equal. Please note obviously the take-away from this is not about what positions are more optimal than others in the bedroom, it is rather the motivation behind that - Adam wanted the "on top" position in order to feel "superior" and that is the point there, so it is the motivation he had, not the actual physical activity involved which is the problem there. So, at any rate, needless to say, Lilith is upset and "storms off" from her and Adam's cave or whatever, and walks through the Garden of Eden. She happens to run into G-d. Now, to give cultural background here, in the Fertile Crescent mythology of circa 2000 B.C.E., deities, be they the Egyptian god Ra or whomever, sometimes will have secret names, and if one can get the secret name of a deity, one will get special magical powers to visit vengeance upon one's enemies. So, Lilith, naturally pissed off, asks G-d for his secret name, presumably because she wants to get back at Adam for his "frat boy" ways. G-d, in a certain moment of ironic humor in this tale, gives Lilith his secret name. That secret name in the Sumerian is "Arammu". In English this is translated as Love. Now, why is this funny? Because in the culture of the time, one gets special powers when learning a Deity's secret name, usually powers to visit upon one's enemies. And in this case, Lilith indeed got special powers - she sprouted wings a la an archangel or something like that. And what did she do? She flew away from the Garden of Eden, and settled in her own "safe place" or her own "Garden" near the Red Sea, protected by a consort of seraphim angels, and, essentially, establishing "her own life" if one wills away from the abusive Adam. This is funny or ironic because Lilith did not use her new-found powers to seek vengeance upon Adam as most tradition would insinuate - if one has the secret name of a deity, one uses that for one's own purposes - rather, because the "secret name" of G-d in this tale was Love, she had the "maturity" to just let Adam be, and not kill him or otherwise seek revenge, but just "get out of Dodge" and have her own life. Lilith, the first girlfriend Adam had sought to dominate, was mature and created her own "Garden of Eden" near the Red Sea, because she understood G-d in a way Adam did not - she knew G-d was all about Love, and not about trying to control or abuse anyone.

Now, back to the original issue of what went on with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden. My thesis here, is this was a "set up". G-d and the snake decided to give Adam one more chance to not be a dick, to be blunt, and Adam failed that, and the rest is history - Lilith made the right choice, to get out of the abusive situation but also not to seek revenge and thusly to this day one might imagine, she has a nice set-up going surrounded by seraphim - and owls, the symbols of wisdom or "maturity" one might think - upon the shores of the Red Sea. In Jewish tradition, snakes, like owls are also a symbol of wisdom - the reason the medical field often has a logo showing a snake on a pole is a throw-back to a story in the Torah in which the people of Israel were plagued by an illness, and Moses (or somebody - my memory is vague) got a snake on a stick and somehow or other that helped to heal everyone - again I am fuzzy on the details there, but the point is, snakes were sometimes a symbol of wisdom (in contrast to the darker metaphor of snakes being a symbol of danger or evil which has I think evolutionary roots but I won't go there just now). There is a line of thought in which Lilith, having had some bad experiences with Adam, tried to rescue Eve, by re-entering the Garden disguised as a snake and trying to convince her to leave but these good-intentioned implorings were rebuffed and Lilith disguised as a snake was unable to rescue Eve, again, being limited, along with G-d, by people's free will.

We come to the conclusion, then, that the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden was the result of a last-ditch effort upon the part of G-d and Lilith to "fix" things. I think G-d had Lilith go into the Garden one last time, and get Eve to do something he had told Eve not to do, just so he could get Adam's reaction. Had Adam taken responsibility, the G-d would have revealed the bluff and have been thankful that Adam had matured in his ways since the time when Adam and Lilith were together. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. Lilith disguised as a snake got Eve to eat a "forbidden" fruit, and Eve gave it to Adam, who also ate it, and was confronted about it by G-d, and failed the test by remaining in his old ways and blaming Eve. At this point, there was no choice. The Garden was a place of peace and not of conflict and abuse, and Adam choose to be his usual charming self, and Eve had not the gumption to do as Lilith did, and get out of the situation, and so, in order to preserve the Garden, G-d had no choice but to banish both of them from the Garden, in hopes that they or their descendants could learn the same lesson Lilith had learned earlier: that we are all equal, that abuse or de-humanizing others is unacceptable, and that, in the face of such things, the right thing to do is to save oneself and repair to friendlier territory, as did Lilith, rather than seeking vengeance, which, again, would have been the "norm" according to the mythologies of this time period of 2000 B.C.E.

To summarize: the "fall of man" perhaps had nothing to do with a "forbidden fruit" but rather had everything to do with the way we treat one another, seeing our fellows a human beings, or seeing our fellows as subjects of abuse or domination. Maybe G-d and Lilith did the best damn job the could, but ultimately could not override human free-will, and had to eject Adam and Eve from the Garden not out of punitive motivation but out of needing to protect a paradise wherein injustice was not allowed.

To shift away from mythological stuff, I have long felt that the well-documented conflicts - killing and cannibalism and taking of teeth and so forth as trophies - that occurred in real life circa 30,000 years ago, between modern-day hummans and their cousins, the Neanderthals, who were close enough genetically to be able to interbreed with humans (and that, incidentally is why some folks even today have red hair because that comes from Neanderthal genes) is perhaps why we have parables like "the fall of man" because somewhere, deep within our genes, deep within out collective subconscious, we know we have "lost our way". Biologically, we need only look to the fact that we have wisdom teeth to demonstrate the point - modern humans (i.e. apes having the same brain-size as us here in the 21st century have existed perhaps as far back as 250,000 years ago) - up until a certain point in our forgotten evolutionary past, we were vegetarians and the wisdom teeth enabled us to be able to chew certain leaves which we could not today, and, some theories say, our appendix which today is useless, used to be an organ to process certain leaves which we no longer eat. Somewhere along the way humans turned from being peaceful vegetarians into blood-thirsty carnivores, and I personally think that because our brains have largely remained the same over the years that this shift has instilled within us a certain sense of a "fall from paradise", somehow, deep within our genetic code, we have a "feeling" that we were once "better" than we are today. And this is why I think various "fall of man" parables have cropped up over the years, whether the Jewish Garden of Eden parable or the ancient Greek's lost "golden age" tradition. I think somewhere, deep within our subconscious, we know we are better than what we sometimes can be, and we want to go back to that better state of being.

In conclusion, I have come to feel that the "fall of man" as traditionally related, had nothing to do with childish issues like "eating a forbidden fruit" or "the woman made me do it", etc., but everything to do with how we - today - choose to view our fellows, whether as human beings worthy of respect and of love, or as simply objects to support our own selfish desires. To end on an optimistic note, however, we do not have to see ourselves as inevitably "living in a fallen world" as the saying goes. We do not have to be like Adam and persist in our own self-serving desires which can only end in alienation from our fellows, nor, do we have to be like Eve and just accept the world as it is. We can instead be like Lilith, and resist injustice wherever and whenever it is found but in this resistance still retain our humanity, that is, we are not resisting against the folks who commit injustice, in its multivariate forms - mysogony, racism, xenophobia (hatred of foreigners or immigrants), transphobia (hatred of transgendered or "gender-queer" folks), homophobia, greysphobia (OK, I made that one up - hatred of "grey aliens", ha), etc., etc., but rather, we are resisting against that hate in each one of us that leads to various phobias. Like Adam, we have a choice. We can remain in our own state of self-serving bigotry or not. Like Eve, we also have a choice. We can choose to not stand up to this bigotry, or not. And, like Lilith, we have a choice. We can choose to not tolerate intolerance but at the same time not become motivated by hate inasmuch as our enemies are, or not. The "fall of man" is not I think either an interesting parable or something related to the war between humans and Neanderthals. It is I think both of these and neither of these. It is here, and it is now. When we choose to abuse or dominate other people, we choose the way of Adam. When we choose to allow this to happen we choose the way of Eve. When we choose to fight against this in such a manner as to become as bad as the people we contend against we choose the way of Sumerian and Egyptian culture circa 2000 B.C.E. But when we choose to respect one another, regardless of differences, and choose to resist those who do not, but also peacefully resist them, and not fall into the "Captain Ahab" spiral of revenge, we choose the way of Lilith, and, indeed, of G-d. And of course, by "G-d" I mean, "Arammu". :-)

As my favorite TV character Wiccan practitioner, Prudence Halliwell, might say, "Blessed Be." (Or, as T.S. Eliot might say, "Shantih", but you get the idea...)

Why pass by reference supporting languages will always be superior...

2011-05-25T14:27:00.000-07:00

Because in pass by reference (pointer) supporting languages like C, for one thing, you can switch the values of two variables, a and b without needing a temp variable, which you cannot in a language without pointers, or, at least far less straight forwardly as far as I can see. See code below. :-)

Signed,

An unrepentant acolyte of Bell Labs' Kernighan and Ritchie's C programming language.

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
char *a = (char*)malloc(sizeof(char)*8); //initializing string a
strcpy(a,"A string");

char *b = (char*)malloc(sizeof(char)*8); //initializing string b
strcpy(b,"B string");

printf("a is %s\n",a);
printf("b is %s\n",b);

printf("\nswitching values...\n\n");

////////////
//a = a + b;
////////////
if ( ( a = realloc(a, sizeof(char)*2*strlen(a) ) ) == NULL ) //Note: realloc only works for strings made with malloc in the first place
{
printf("Error reallocating memory to string a. System terminating with return value 1.\n");
return 1;
}

char *aPtr = &a[strlen(b)];
char *bPtr = &b[0];
while(*bPtr != '\0') *aPtr++ = *bPtr++;

////////////
//b = a - b;
////////////
aPtr = &a[0];
bPtr = &b[0];
while(*aPtr != a[strlen(b)]) *bPtr++ = *aPtr++;

////////////
//a = a - b;
////////////
int i = 0;
for( ; i < strlen(b); ++i) { a[i] = a[i + strlen(b)]; }
for( i = strlen(b); i < strlen(a); ++i) { a[i] = '\0'; }

printf("a is now %s\n",a);
printf("b is now %s\n",b);

free(a);
free(b);
free(aPtr);
free(bPtr);

printf("\nPress any key to continue...\n");
getc(stdin);
return 0;
}

Output of the above code looks like this on the console:

C:\Dev-Cpp\VariableTest>VariableTest.exe
a is A string
b is B string

switching values...

a is now B string
b is now A string

Press any key to continue...

Regarding unilateral recognition of Palestine

2011-05-18T20:24:00.000-07:00

This is a difficult post to write because it concerns complex issues. I am on record as being very supportive of the United Nation, because I consider it to be the "last best hope of mankind". Therefore, unlike say the second Bush administration, were I in politics I would "abide by" decisions rendered by the majority of committee decisions rendered by that august body.

This autumn, the UN will consider whether to grant Palestine unilateral "statehood" recognition, irrespective of Israel's "say" in the matter, notwithstanding the fact that this decision could have deleterious effects on Israel's security, to say the least. I think it would be a grave mistake to just wave a magic wand and grant the terrorists of Palestine the nomenclature of "statehood", overlooking the human tragedy that this "state" has committed, and continues to commit, over the years. This said, if this decision (goodness forbid) occurs, and the terrorists of Palestine get UN recognition of "statehood" which would sort of be an international "reward" for suicide bombings, however deplorable this would be, I would have to live with that, for, however imperfect the UN necessarily is, being made up of imperfect nations comprised of imperfect peoples, it nonetheless remains the one thing standing between our species and nuclear annihilation, and thus sometimes one has to vomit and live with some things, however deplorable they might be to reason.

Let me first say a couple of things about this notion of "statehood" for that motley collection of terrorists groups on the West Bank and Gaza who fancy themselves "Palestinians" deserving of "statehood". First of all, I believe in democracy, and I think people should have their voice heard, in the voting booth, the blogosphere, etc., but not in the form of blowing innocent people up in buses on their way to work. Therefore I do want peaceful people from Palestinian territories to have their voice heard. The problem arises when there are far more violent people in said territories than peaceful people, or, at least, the violent are the more vocal and have more power there, for whatever reason, and whatever the actual statistics might be. So, how best can peaceful people have their voice heard, when their leaders are, frankly, murderers - that is the question. Giving murderers "statehood" without concession seems to any rational person counterproductive. Ideally, and we don't live in an ideal world, but, to me, ideally, the Palestinian groups in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem should be able to have their voice heard in part of a greater Israel, an Israel that encompassed that entire territory, but which was flexible enough on both sides to allow both people living there of Israeli and Palestinian descent to have their voices heard, in the voting booth, etc. That is the American way, after all, the idea of a "melting pot" where people of different backgrounds can live and work and vote and blog in peace and harmony, albeit having disagreements now and again. So this issue of "statehood" for terrorists would not arise to begin with. But that is the ideal world, the American slash Roman ideal, and we don't live in that world, though perhaps Marcus Lacinius Crassus will rise from the grave to save us all one day and restore Roman democracy (OK, inside joke there!). In the real world the facts are these: Israel is a democracy where people have freedom, the freedom to work where they want, to worship as they choose, to love whom they want to love (and yes, that includes having gay pride parades in Tel Aviv). It is a place where women are treated equally, for example, and not forced to wear towels on their heads. In Palestinian regions, this is different. People are enslaved. Women are not free. Gays are non-existent or quickly put out of existence at any rate. It is a slave-state, a theocratic state. (Greg Bahnsen's wet dream, basically, another inside reference there.)

So we have a free nation and a slave society. Now this slave society wants the UN to recognize it, even thought this recognition could endanger the security of the free nation that is Israel. Like I said before, the UN is imperfect but it is preferable to nuclear annihilation, which is its only alternative I think, so, of course, I support, and will continue to support the UN. But I do very much hope it will not reward terrorism with a recognition of statehood that does not also take into account Israel's security.

Now, my personal idea, if we can not have the above-mentioned ideal situation and we must divide up land in some way, is that Israel must have control of both the Gaza strip and the ENTIRE city of Jerusalem, and let the Palestinian "state" reside on the West Bank. This would stop Gaza from being, as it now is, controlled by the terrorist group Hamas, and prevent Israel from being threatened by both the West Bank to the east, and Gaza to the southwest, and she would only have the West Bank to defend against, if push came to shove. Also, any long term peace cannot have a divided Jerusalem, with some of it being in a democracy and some of it being in a slave state, a la the divided Berlin. This is not tenable. Israel must have all of Jerusalem so that freedom can endure, and that Israel can endure. Palestinians now living in Gaza or Palestinian parts of Jerusalem should be integrated into Israeli society with full rights and freedoms, provided they are law-abiding. Those who don't like that can move to the West Bank, wherein a Palestinian terrorism "state" could be established, however non-idyllic that night be, which, at least, would have lesser damage than the one currently being proposed. That is my two cents anyway.

But a unilateral declaration of terrorist "statehood" by the UN this autumn would not only endanger Israel, it would in a sense endanger all of us. Let me explain that. In New Hampshire, there is a slogan, "Live free or die". Well, at least by European or American standards, most of the middle east is not remotely "free". Only Israel is. To compromise Israel is not just to compromise the security and freedom of a great and noble people, it is also to compromise the human race itself, for it is at least in part from Israel, that, historically, notions of human rights and freedom first developed, and, it is in Israel today that these principles are carried forth more so than in its immediate environs.

Remember that old saying, Cadet et Collesseus, Cadet et Roma. Cadet et Roma, Cadet et Mundus. "When falls the Colosseum, then falls Rome. When falls Rome, then falls the world." Well, sweetheart, it happened. Rome fell, and we had a thousand years of darkness, until Roman - and indeed Judeac - principles of science and democracy were rediscovered.

I truly hope the UN does not risk a tragedy on the scale of the fall of Rome by allowing terrorists to pose as being a legitimate "state". I truly also hope the US Presidential Administration has the guts to oppose such a travesty. If they do not, then I would remind them that an election occurs next year, and though in many ways I consider myself "liberal" at least on social issues, I am giving fair warning right here and now that I will reconsider support for the current administration if they go along with this epochal miscarriage of justice now being considered. If heaven forbid this were to occur, and terrorists be given their own seat at the UN, well, I would be disappointed beyond all measure, but I would still support the UN, which imperfect, is still the only hope we have of not seeing nuclear night, in my opinion. I would at least hope in any event that the saner members of that august body continue to work for Israel's security, and, by extension, the security, and more importantly, the freedom, of all of us.

Reflecting on the death of Osama Bin Laden

2011-05-04T17:39:00.000-07:00

When I first heard the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden naturally I did and do take some satisfaction from that. A great threat to the human race has been eliminated, and, as a humanist, as someone who cares about human rights, I have to take satisfaction that a threat against human rights has been destroyed. That said, as soon as my initial elation about this event took place, I very quickly began to harbor some misgivings as to the "celebrations" that were taking place, and feeling that this was not unlike say gorillas pounding their chests at some victory. To me, I felt an ambiguity, whereas, on the one hand, I was happy as we all are that a threat to humanity had been destroyed, I was also at the same time not comfortable at the abject cheering about the death of someone that was transpiring. I felt at the same time elated along with everyone else, and, also, somewhat concerned about what this same elation said about human nature, that is, ought we really to celebrate the death of an enemy in the manner in which we seem to be doing.

I think the correct response to this great victory is to be, as Churchill implored, "magnanimous in victory". Now, I must admit, being a "skeptic" by just my natural temperament, I am not "religious" by any means, other than a deep commitment to love my neighbor as myself, which, as a certain Rabbi once said, is essentially the "great commandment", but that is another discussion. Were I religious, however, I think the correct response is to rejoice in the destruction of evil, as we all do, but not to make it "personal". I recall in church a prayer the priest would say is, "We pray for all who have died, that they may have a place in thine eternal kingdom", and the congregation would say, "Lord, hear our prayer". And by the word "all", it is really meant, "all". Therefore, it is inappropriate and most certainly not in the "tradition" of Jesus of Nazareth to do as former Baptist minister Mike Huckabee has done and to sort of "triumphally" say, "welcome to hell" with respect to the justified death of an evil person. This is not a humane response, in my opinion. Rather, we should be glad that a threat to humankind has been removed, and justifiably celebrate that fact, but we ought not to take pleasure in the death of a human being (which is part of why, by the way, my differences with mainstream religions aside, I am very much in agreement with opposing the death penalty which is just plain simple murder anyway one looks at it, but that is another discussion).

To respond to Mike Huckabee, hell does exist, and it exists to the extent that we create it for ourselves. It is not some "Dante's Inferno" sort of fantasy but rather it exists whenever we dehumanize another person, whenever we fail to see the inherent dignity in our fellows. So, in this sense, Bin Laden entered hell long ago, when he choose to make war upon his fellow human beings based upon an insane ideology that had nothing to do with Islam but upon his own sick mind. I don't know if there is an afterlife, and frankly, I don't think anyone knows. I do know that the choices we make determine whether we are in "heaven" or in "hell". Surely Bin Laden choose hell during the duration of his life on this planet. If there is an after-life, then he will still have to choose whether or not he wants to persist in hell, not caring about his fellow human beings, or whether he wants to choose heaven, caring about his fellows whatever superficial "differences" there might be.

So I think the correct response to the death of this evil individual is first and foremost a sense of gratitude that a great shadow has been lifted from the face of the globe, and we should all, in our own way, be grateful for that. This said, we have no right to sort of dance over anyone's grave, nor sit in judgement, as it were, over who is in "heaven" and who is in "hell", rather we should recall that, after-life or not, these alternatives are up to the individual to decide, and we all have the opportunity to choose "heaven" right here and now, if we but love our fellows as ourselves. Unfortunately, we also can choose not to do this, and choose "hell" instead. If there is an after-life, which, certainly, I am not going to presume to speculate upon, then I am certain that this choice remains, heaven or hell. It would of course be my hope that in the event an after-life existed that one would choose the former, rather than the later, but of course that would boil down to the choice of the individual, and could not be forced just by wishful thinking.

Bottom line, my response to the death of Osama Bin Laden is very much in line with the commentary of Andrew Sullivan: he said that, as a Christian, he was required to pray for the souls of all who have died, even including Osama Bin Laden. Myself, being a "skeptic", if one wills, I have no idea about things like "souls" or "after-lives", but I do share Sullivan's spirit, that is, as ethical people we ought to on the one hand find joy in the removal of a threat to humanity, but on the other hand not be vindictive or take joy in the death of anyone, and, going back to Gov. Huckabee's unfortunate remarks about who all is in "heaven" or "hell", we should recall that these are choices each of us make on a daily basis, and rather than sitting in judgement of others, we should rather focus on the "plank in our own eye" and deal with that, and perhaps let history take care of the rest.

A great evil and threat to humankind is gone, and we are rightfully grateful about that. Let us not lose our own humanity in the process.

Towards a Computational Monism

2010-09-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

The thought occurs to me that Max Tegmark's Computational Universe Hypothesis and Daniel Dennett's computationalist model of the human mind can serve as a basis for a clarified ontological/epistemological standpoint.

Since Democritus, philosophers have wondered about the basis of the world, whether it come down to elementary particles flitting about in the void (Democritus, Epicurus, etc.) or whether there be concepts needing to be added to this perspective like "Prime Movers", etc. (Aristotle, Aquinas, etc.). The word "dualism" has many meanings. There is a particular extremist form of Cartesian dualism I won't get into here. For the purposes of this post, I will use the word "dualist" to refer to any "atoms + something else" viewpoint (to simplify) and monist to refer to a "just elementary components" viewpoint. This over-simplifies, but what I want to do here is to suggest a new monist position to counteract the various dualist, "Prime Mover" type positions out there.

Simply put, the computational universe hypothesis of Tegmark suggests that all computational universes exist. Which is to say, any and all universe models that could be modeled computationally (on a Turing machine, to be technical about it) exist. This is superficially similar to Platonism, except that it says these computational worlds are ALL THAT EXISTS, there is no "Platonic cave" or other dualist notion. We simply live in one of an infinite number of model worlds that can be described as Turing Complete. Turing Machines replace the Democritus/Epicurus "void" in this picture and the bits of information thereon replace the "atoms" of Democritus.

Since by definition one Turing Machine can run any other Turning Machine upon it, the world becomes recursive. The universe we dwell in is (in a sense) a computer program, but so are we (see Daniel Dennett) also computer programs (Turning Machines). And, as some of us are ourselves programmers, we have programs being written by programs within a program. (Where the word "program" loosely means "Turning Machine" - one would have to write a book to be more technical about these matters and I haven't the time or the inclination at the moment, ha!)

This is a "monist" position because EVERYTHING from minds to atoms to the void to everything in between is describable as a Turing machine (possibly, in the case of the Universe, an infinite one). Thus we need not have ephemeral notions like "souls" or "ectoplasms" to account for our minds, since there is no real "objective vs. subjective" distinction here anymore. It is one big recursive Turing Machine, or an infinite set of these recursive machines. Now to play "devil's advocate" here, I suppose one could posit a "Prime Mover" type entity as one of these Turing Machines that are "out there" in the Tegmark computational multiverse. But I will say that while one can certainly do that, it is not an "information additive" operation to make, that is, such a Prime Mover would have nothing to "move", be it the universe or our thoughts. It would be "part of the system", and not something "added" to the "system" itself. So, while one could posit such an entity, it would be an operation such that the "additive value" would be lost so that "Prime Mover" would have as much usefulness as "angels on the head of a pin". But I had to address that issue, since, if philosophy since Democritus has taught us anything, it is that those "Prime Mover" advocates don't go down easily. :-)

There is also a "sneakier" consequence to this view. I have "sneaked time in the back door" by saying the universe could be one big Turing Machine since (by definition) Turing Machines operate "in time" - they are not "timeless". "Time" for a Turning Machine is the operations it makes, and "space" is that upon which it makes its operations (the punch card, whatever). The copious consequences to this means that "in the real world" time is an actual physical entity which can be (as in anti-De Sitter spacetime) distinguished from space. Which is not to say that other timeless models cannot be used (Euclidean spacetime for instance) but that these are models and not the "real world" which always, being a Turing Machine (in this view) has a well defined notion of "time" (if not a well defined reference frame). This applies to us too. It means that the "soul" or the "personality" is energia and not ousia in Aristotle's terms. We are "the computing" not "that which is computed". This might sound like philosophical gibberish with little practical import, but just look at all those AI enthusiasts signing up for cryonics (including Marvin Minksy for goodness sakes). If we are the data, cyronics might work. But if we are the operations upon the data (energia rather than the data itself, ousia) then cryonics could not work even in principle. So in this view the folks who hope to live forever via cryonics are better switching their bets to supporting quantum immortality, not perhaps a likely scenario, but still more likely than cyronics since it is not forbade in principle, which cyronics would be if something like the picture I am proposing is correct.

Well, all of this is probably deserving of deeper explication and perhaps I will later but hey, the title is "Towards a computational monism", not "A definitive guide to computational monism". Oh, and if someone already has this term used for something else, then I could call it, say, "Computational Neurocosmic Monism". How about that?

This intro is admittedly brief, but then again it took me 20 minutes to write and the first three decades of my life to arrive at, so there you go. :-) But, fanciful as it may seem, it is about as good a monist position as I can currently construct, and, if one will forgive a bit of audacity, it is I feel at least as good if not better as the various Prime Mover-inspired positions that have arisen from time to time.

In "Scream" the villain says to Neve Campbell's character Sidney Prescott, "It's all one big movie, Sid". I might say, "It's all one big Turing Machine, Sid." :-)

Tribute to 90210 Day

2010-09-02T17:52:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to some of the old Beverly Hills, 90210 episodes: http://www.cbs.com/classics/beverly_hills_90210/video/.

As one proud member of what I like to call the "90210 generation", today, on 09/02/10, I recall quite fondly the show that was the voice of a generation, of an era, of what may perhaps be known as the culmination of that period of American history of the last quarter of the 20th century, the age of Nixon, "a whole generation of peace".

So to Brandon, Brenda, Kelly, Dylan, Steve, Donna, David, Andrea, Emily, Valerie, Nat, and all those countless others of the 90210 zip code whose triumphs and tribulations touched us all, and gave voice to the existential angst and highest hopes of their contemporaries, I say, thanks for the memories, and from the vantage point of those darker times now extant, let us all with your inspiration retain the hope that peace and prosperity may once again visit Beverly Hills and the nation!

Salve!

Link to Rachel Maddow's trenchant analysis of the Afghanistan conflict

2010-07-16T16:18:00.000-07:00

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/07/15/4687273-maddow-the-hard-choice-in-afghanistan

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow gives the most compelling analysis I have yet come across regarding the war in Afghanistan.

Free Anna Chapman

2010-07-02T16:59:00.000-07:00

Calculating the Impact of Motion Picture on our Waking Lives

2010-06-24T17:36:00.000-07:00

There are 168 hours in every week.

I calculate an average person sleeps about 5 hours per night (if they are lucky), so 5 *7 = 35.

Subtract 35 from 168 and you get 133, the number of waking hours per week of the average person (who does not suffer from insomnia - personally, if I have gotten a solid 5 hours of sleep in a night I consider myself quite lucky, since, really, who needs more than that?).

So 133 hours in a waking week. Say you watch a 2 hour film in this week. Well that is 2 / 133, or 1 / 66.5. My windows calculator gives this to be a percentage of:

1.5037593984962406015037593984962.

This 1.5% (and some change) roughly, is the percent of time one spends watching motion pictures, if one only watched one motion picture per week. Of course, if one watched more than one, this percentage would go up. Furthermore (and I know nobody to whom this would actually apply) if one averaged more than 5 hours of sleep per night, this percentage would also go up. (For me, it is slightly lower, most likely, since this percentage is based on 133, which assumes 35 hours of sleep per week, or 5 hours of sleep per night, which is probably overstating matters slightly, but certainly it is a good average to take, since 5 hours is all anyone really needs - less, and one might perform sub-optimally, and more, well, as the wise man Solomon once said,poverty would creep in, ha!).

Well, I am a "numbers geek" I suppose, so I find this of interest. But I wanted to sort of "run the numbers" to figure out what percentage of waking life is really spent watching motion pictures (cinema, TV, DVD, youtube, etc.). Surely a non-trivial amount, by any fudging of the input parameters. Not a bad thing, of course - I am as big a motion picture buff is one is likely to find. But I do feel this should make one think - if such a non-vanishing amount of time in life is spent watching motion pictures, one should attempt to find ones that have intellectual stimulation. Since otherwise, one starts to descend a rung or two in the old evolutionary ladder. A ladder, which, by the way, I have the vanity to believe I know a thing or three about, ha!

At any rate, this is certainly no polemic against motion picture. It is simply an observation to the effect that one does tend to spend a vast quantity of one's time watching them, and, thus, one ought to be selective about one's choice of entertainment, to avoid, or, more precisely, to put off, the ineluctable neuronal decay which is the fate of all of us apes. :-)

Chimpanzees Exhibit Grief Just As We Do - END POACHING NOW

2010-04-28T16:56:00.000-07:00

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/the-grief-of-animals.html#more

The above link is a very moving article on how Chimpanzees handle the death of one of their own. Much like humans, they show empathy, concern, etc. towards the dying, and will often sit or sleep near the dying animal, much as how human relatives of a dying person seek physical proximity to the dying. Now, sometimes in life there is "serendipity", fortunate coincidences or accidents. Today I saw an article on the Huffington Post, which unfortunately I cannot now locate, about the illegal trade of "bush meat" in Africa, hunting Chimpanzees, Bonobos (a pigmy type of Chimpanzee) and Gorillas. Apparently the Chimpanzee population around 1910 was around 2 million, and now, it is more like 110,000. These wonderful creatures who share something like 98% of our DNA, and whose blood is close enough to our own to be able to be used in blood transfusions, are being hunted to the point of endangerment. In my opinion, it should be a moral outrage that such self-aware creatures such as these should be hunted at all. So, I guess it is "serendipitous" that I read the article about the illegal bush trade, on the same day I saw this article about the very human-like behavior of Chimpanzees with respect to the dying process, since it sort of reminded me of the fact that I have long stood for initiatives like "The Great Ape Project", which seeks a UN resolution calling for basic rights like life, liberty, and freedom from torture to be applied not just to that particular Great Ape, Man, but to the other Great Apes as well: Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Gorillas, and Orangutans. So I thought I should blog about this again. Richard Dawkins and other scientists support the Great Ape Project, and I hope this will garner more mainstream acceptance. This is not some "fringe" or "loony left", crackpot type of concept - it is a more basic concept that self-aware creatures who share our own DNA lineage, and who have many of the same traits we have, like compassion and empathy, should not be subjected to hunting or other forms of malice. It is a bitterly ironic fact that hunting of Gorillas and Chimpanzees by illegal traders of bush meat probably was what introduced HIV into the human population. Any way one looks at it, to the rational western mind, killing these highly evolved creatures is a moral outrage. We know that killing of sentient minds unless it is self-defense is wrong, we even have a word for it, it is called Murder. Well, evidence shows all Great Apes also have (to varying degrees) Sentient Minds as well, so hunting them should not be advocated by any civilized society - after all, they do not threaten or harm humans unless we threaten or harm them, so there is no reason to have hostilities towards them. In fact, evidence shows the Great Apes generally get along fine with humans, provided boundaries and so on are respected. It is the basic "Don't mess with me, and I won't mess with you" sort of notion.

Humans already are responsible for wiping out another fellow race of sentient Great Apes, the Neanderthals, around 30,000 or so years ago. But we had an excuse then - civilization had not yet dawned. But in the civilized (or so-called civilized) world we live in today, we have no excuse. We must not let what happened to the Neanderthals happen to the Chimpanzees or the other Great Apes. To paraphrase President Clinton, "It's [karma], stupid!"

I direct the reader's attention to a website that highlights the problem of the illegal trade of bush meat: http://bushmeat.net/about.html. To those who, like myself, like to think of themselves as children of the civilized west, it is worth a look.

Thoughts on what constitutes "Historical Conservatism"

2010-04-23T19:34:00.000-07:00

Andrew Sullivan has made these points with far more alacrity than I ever could, but I think they are prescient enough to bear repeating, in whatever faltering way I can muster. Namely, the question of what the political philosophy of conservatism has historically meant, and what perhaps it no longer means. For Sullivan, and others, conservatism means, in effect, the government doing the least amount of damage it can do to stave off catastrophe. In other words, social programs cannot guarantee Utopia - only individual choices can. This said, as Albert Einstein once said about scientific theories, a scientific theory must be as simple as possible, but no more so. Which is to say, one must try to make a theory elegant and not overtly complicated, but one must never "dumb down" a theory - if it necessarily has complications (like 11-dimensional string theory) so be it. Actually, 11-dimensional string theory IS in fact "simple" because it unites various competing versions of string theory together into one theory. Still, since it requires 11, instead of 10, dimensions like the five rival string theory versions do, it is "complicated". It is "simple" in that it shows all five rival versions of string theory unite together into one theory, but it is "complicated" because it requires another dimension in order to be able to do that. Thus, historical conservatism. This is the concept that government should stay out of people's lives to the extent possible, but should above all, be PRAGMATIC, and find the right solution for changing times. Thus, Reagan himself raised taxes when the situation demanded it. So did President George Herbert Walker Bush. So David Cameron, the leader of the UK Conservative Party, tells Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats that the government of the UK cannot afford Clegg's proposed tax cut for lower income people due to the deficit. Imagine a US Republican candidate today arguing AGAINST a tax cut. Unimaginable. This is the difference between historical conservatism, which, like scientific theory is "simple" (laissez-faire) but no more so than it has to be, and is above all pragmatic. Sullivan makes a good point that Reagan himself would not have applied "Reagonimics" to today's economic situation. Reaganomics was good for the 1980's because of the stifled economy, but would not work for the out-of-control Wall Street we see today. This is the essence of historical conservatism, and conservatism as seen today in the UK. It is practical, pragmatic, not bound to ideology. It seeks maximal freedom for the individual, maximal opportunity, maximal responsibility. But it does not take the Rovian position of "deficits don't matter", which by definition is not a "conservative" point of view. Reagan once said, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." Andrew Sullivan said, "I didn't leave the GOP. The GOP left me." Now, me? I, for what it is worth, consider myself to be a "Clintonian Democrat". Which basically means a fiscally responsible person who is not bound to ideology, but to pragmatic thinking. "It's the economy, stupid." This was Clinton's 1992 mantra. And this still rings true today. President William Jefferson Clinton was more (historically) conservative than President George W. Bush. Why? Because Clinton turned a record budget deficit into a record budget surplus. Bush promptly took that surplus and turned it into a deficit, using the money to finance an illegal annexation of the (once) sovereign nation of Iraq, something an historical conservative who really cares about individual freedom would never countenance.

Now, who is an historical conservative? Well, David Cameron, for one. In the US, these are difficult to come by. I would say Senator Scott Brown of MA, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen would be a couple examples in the current GOP which has been taken over by so-called "conservatives" who actually are not at all. Because, historically, "conservatism", is not a mindless "taxes are bad, government is bad" mantra. Rather, it is about the government taking the most pragmatic course it can take to meet the moment of history at hand, trying to preserve individual liberty the best it knows how, but also taking actions it must take to prevent anarchy. It is about controlling the "ship of state" to best serve the people and maximize their liberty, whilst also preventing anarchy. So, for example, to do this, one must control (and ideally avoid) deficits. Guess what, sometimes this requires tax increases. That is just fiscal reality. An historical conservative would countenance a tax increase if that were the only way to keep the ship of state afloat. A contemporary so-called "conservative" a la Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin would not. They do not care about the ship of state, and, by extension, the people. They only care about their TV ratings. An actual, historical conservative, is willing to bite the bullet of having to raise taxes if it is the only way to keep government functioning. An historical conservative is a pragmatic person who believes in individual freedom, who believes government cannot solve all problems, cannot control the economy, who believes in free markets, but also believes the government MUST have a role in order to preserve the economy, preserve the markets, and, finally, to preserve freedom itself. Thus, the conservative is a pragmatic sort of animal who will do "what works" to keep alive the ship of state. The conservative is not somebody just out there for TV ratings spouting off absurd sound-bytes like "government is bad", and so on. The conservative knows government CAN be a good thing if its goal is to protect individual liberty, protect the economy, and protect opportunity. David Cameron understands this. Andrew Sullivan understands this. Richard Milhous Nixon understood that. I believe there are even a few Republicans today who understand this, like the aforementioned Senator Brown and Representative Ros-Lehtinen. But most do not. My brother and I joke about the fact that I am more economically conservative than he is, though perhaps in some areas I might be a bit more socially liberal than he is. This is correct I think in terms of the fact that I am proudly "socially liberal" and I always have been - if "socially liberal" means women's right to vote, I am liberal. If it means the right of Rosa Parks to sit at the front of the bus, I am liberal. If it means two gay people who love each other have the same rights of two straight people who love each other, I am liberal. If, heck, it means our brothers and sisters on other planets who may or may not be out there have the same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as we on Earth do, then, yes, I am liberal. But, historically, these things are not what makes or breaks a "conservative". What makes a "conservative" is simply the basic ideals of individual freedom, personal responsibility, and maximal opportunity, the idea that anyone, no matter what social class they belong to, if they come up with a better idea, a better way of doing things, that there is no limit to how far they can go. (And yes, I am "ripping" off from Jeff Bridges in the movie "Tucker" there, but hey, it works!) But the point I am making, is that real, intellectual conservatism knows that opportunity never arises in anarchy, in a world where Wall Street fat cats get to make the rules. It only arises where everyone has an equal shot at success and happiness. The government cannot make you successful. It can, however, provide a stable environment in which you can become successful. It can balance the budget so your interest rates don't go up, for instance. It can, on a targeted basis, ensure certain financial institutions which make vital loans are still in business when you need them to be able to buy a house. In other words, government per ce is not "bad". It is simply that government that tries to control the economy and make people's decisions for them is bad. Yet, it is equally "bad" when there is an absence of government, for then, we are back to early stages of evolution, in which only the strongest survive, and thus the notion of "everyone should have a chance" is thrown out the window. Government needs to play a role, a limited role, but a role nevertheless. This is what Richard Nixon understood, and what David Cameron understands, but something the current American GOP cynically does not understand.

So what am I? Well, I am both a "Clintonian Democrat", or, alternately, a "David Cameron Conservative". But likely I am best described as an "Andrew Sullivan politico". What does this mean? This means I believe on the one hand, government DOES play a role in regulating the ship of state, to maximize opportunities for its people, and preventing anarchy. It also means I do not think that a controlled economy is going to work, because it can tend to suppress innovation. Government does not provide the solutions. However, it can provide the setting, the framework, in which solutions can be found. It must ultimately be a practical institution, adjusting its priorities for the current winds of history, and not be bound to outdated ideologies. In America, the whole "right vs. left" dialectic has become so ensconced that we forget the historical meaning of "conservatism". This does not mean, "anti-government", or anarchy, but rather it means doing the least amount of harm possible, preserving the most individual liberty possible, whilst providing opportunity for the most amount of people possible. You cannot do both to the extreme. You cannot just have government do nothing in the name of "individual freedom", and neither can you have the government do too much in the name of "opportunity". You have to strike a balance. And, in the real world, balance is difficult, it requires compromise, and it is not a matter of ideology. This is what "conservatism" used to be about. It was about trying to allow for entrepreneurship, individual liberty, etc., whilst trying to extend this to the most amount of people possible. But you cannot have economic freedom in the face of deficits and Wall Street speculators. You have to reign in the deficits, through tax increases if necessary, and you have to reign in the speculators, through more regulations if necessary.

In summary, historical conservatism was not about ideology. It was about practicality. It was about giving people freedom, whilst maintaining order. This is hard, this is "real world", this is not pie-in-the-sky-theory. This is about doing the real work every day to serve the people. This is about "vox populi", the voice of the people. It is about letting people pursue their dreams, but also creating the conditions necessary for them to be able to do that. There are no easy answers, and historical conservatism expects none. It is a "long twilight struggle, year in and year out, 'rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation' — a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."

Let us recall, that, "in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside." There are the TV personalities of the world who care only about ratings who call themselves "conservative." Let us keep in mind that historical conservatism was not about TV ratings or money, but was about keeping the ship of state afloat in whichever way possible, to best promote the freedom, and the prosperity, of all mankind.

Frank Erdman
Austin, Texas
April 23, 2010 C.E.

Clip from banned 2001 South Park Episode Featuring Mohamed

2010-04-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

In solidarity with South Park, under attack from Islamic extremists and the Chamberlain-esque appeasement of Comedy Central, I present a clip from a now-repressed 2001 South Park episode showing the Prophet Mohamed.

My thanks to Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish blog for bringing this to our attention (link: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/puss-tv-update-1.html).

To the extremists, I have this to say: We in the civilized west are not afraid of you, even if Comedy Neville Chamberlain Central is. As Mel Gibson would say, you may take our lives, but you will never take our FREEDOM!!!! Or, to quote another South Park episode, F**k-a-you whale and f**k-a-you dolpheene!

"Cameron Girls" video

2010-04-22T19:21:00.000-07:00

Couldn't say it better myself, ha! :-)

Cameron is the new Nixon (in a good way)

2010-04-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

Cameron campaign kick-off speech
I am not the only one saying this, but David Cameron, MP, may be the next Richard Nixon (in a good way), a moderate, fiscally conservative and socially tolerant leader who can get the economy moving again for the average man and woman. His pledge to work for the "Great Ignored" echoes President Nixon's "Great Silent Majority" speech.

Excerpt from speech:

"We're fighting this election for the great ignored. Young, old, rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight. They start businesses, operate factories, teach our children, clean the streets, grow our food and keep us healthy – keep us safe.

They work hard, pay their taxes, obey the law. They're good, decent people – they're the people of Britain and they just want a reason to believe that anything is still possible in our country. This election is about giving them that reason, giving them that hope."

Video here:

I predict not only a Cameron victory next month, but that Cameron will go down in history as one of the great Prime Ministers, along with Disraeli and Thatcher.

You heard it here first, folks!

Postscriptum to my essay, "Why I Don't Believe in a Personal God"

2010-03-11T08:43:00.000-08:00

In an earlier essay, I have proposed consciousness is an emergent property in nature, not a fundamental one, and therefore the idea of a conscious, "personal" god is false.

Here I will broaden this argument to shore it up a bit, since we do not have a fully working theory of what consciousness is at present.

I will say that AGENCY (a conscious being that can act upon its environment based upon rational thought) is emergent, irrespective of what "consciousness" is.

For example, the Jung-Pauli idea that the Jungian Collective Unconciousness may be coterminous with Heisenberg Potentialities (or, in modern parlance, the wave function of the universe), may for all we know be on the right track. The mystically inclined might call this "god", but, even granting this idea for the sake of argument, the wave function of the universe, even if enlisted to moonlight as Jung's Collective Unconsciousness, is not the same thing as Agency. Why? Because if such a Collective Unconsciousness(CU) were extant, it would be a sort of field for agents, similar to how the electroweak field is where one finds electrons from
time to time. The electroweak field is not itself an electron, rather, it creates the condition whereby one might run into an electron. Similarly, if such a CU were to exist, which, who the heck knows, this would not be itself an agent, anymore than
the electroweak field is an electron, rather, it would be a condition necessary for the phenomenon of agents, just as the electroweak field is condition for the phenomenon of electrons. There are plenty of New Age types who would love to call such a CU "god", and hey, it's a free country, and that is just semantics, but the "god debate" is not about such semantics, but rather it revolves around a simple question: Do human agents arise from some sort of supernatural "super-agent". The CU if extant would not count as such a super-agent as it bears no resemblance to the anthroporphic deities that are found in certain monotheistic systems, and around whom the "god debate" rages.

So, I am generalizing my earlier argument: there I said concsciousness is an emergent property of existence, not a fundamental one, thereby precluding a deity. I am now modifying this slightly: now I am saying that agency is an emergent property of existence, not a fundamental one. In other words, even if you had some sort of CU that related in some way to the wave function of the universe, this would not cause thinking agents to pop up just anywhere, rather, they would only pop up in animals with sufficiently complex nervous systems, there, and nowhere else. The relationship between nervous systems, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and so on, can best be left to another discussion. If Jung-Pauli is correct, and that is certainly an if, it could be the case that there is a gradient of awareness, ranging from very protoplasmic levels for primitive nervous systems through to the advanced systems to be found in those hairless apes who managed to bungle their way out of the trees. However this may be, there is always an inextricable connection between awareness and agency especially with nervous systems, so, however a theory of consciousness may turn out, my original point still stands: because agency only arises in emergent things like nervous systems, the idea of a supernatural or discorporal agency is ruled out, in the same way as the fact that liquid water only is found when H2O molecules achieve a certain configuration, and thus the idea of liquid water without its constituent molecules is ruled out. Thus we see, not only is the concept of a "supernatural agency" false, it is also incoherent, in the same way, and as much as, the idea of water divorced from its constituent molecules is incoherent - not only is such an idea false, it cannot even be asserted as a coherent postulate whose truth or falseness can then be analyzed. The concept of "god" as "supernatural agency" is a square circle, rather like a dry bath or free will or other such nonsequitors. That we do not fully understand the nature of consciousness does not make "supernatural agency" any more coherent. Enlisting quantum theory to help explain consciousness is quite interesting, but it does not give one discorporal agents.

Finally, it must be understood that the universe is a closed system, it is neither created nor destroyed, it simply IS. How so? There is no time variable in the wave function equation as it applies to the universe. Therefore the universe is timeless. Well, how do we know we can even apply quantum ideas like a "wave function" to the entire universe? In 1992, the COBE satellite discovered quantum fluctuations in the microwave background radiation that permeates the cosmos, demonstrating that quantum
effects do indeed have large scale, cosmic effects, which is why Professor Stephen Hawking called the discovery by COBE: "the greatest scientific discovery of the century, if not of all time." This is because it for the first time showed that quantum effects do impact the large scale world normally described only by general relativity. But, it actually did more than this, by implication: if quantum effects govern the large scale universe, that means spacetime itself is governable by quantum equations, that is, that the universe itself has a wave function. When you are dealing with the entire universe, the time variable of the wave function equation goes away. What does this mean? It means the universe is in a sense timeless, neither created nor destroyed. That we sense "time" is, like agency itself, an emergent property, not a fundamental one. I won't go into much detail here, but I wanted to bring it up, because it is possible theists might say: well, ok, in the natural world agency is associated with nervous systems, but how do you know the natural world is all there is, that is, how do we know it is a closed system, since, if it is an open system, any number of memes can be smuggled in the back door into our theories, from giant turtles upon whose back the earth is supposed to rest to whatever pseudo-scientific gibberish one hears from the so-called "Intelligent Design" bandwagon. If spacetime is eternal though, there is no singularity or unexplained nook or cranny into which one might smuggle mythological monsters of the various sorts that have popped up over the millenia, however much one tries.

In summary:

1) Agency in the universe is emergent, not fundamental.

2) The universe is a closed system.

3) By (1) and (2) one could never encounter, or even be able to define in non-contradictory terms non-emergent agents.

4) As that which is unecounterable and undefinable even in principle cannot be said to exist in any coherent meaning of that term, we must conclude that all ideas of non-emergent agency, including that of "gods" are not only false, but not even coherent enough to even be called false; such ideas can only be described as nonsequitors.

It is therefore inappropriate strictly speaking to say "A personal god does not exist", rather one may more precisely say, "In a closed system such as our universe whose agents are always and ever emergent, the concept of a personal god is incoherent." God does not exist in the same way as Peter Pan does not exist: both concepts are not even coherent enough to enter into a discussion of their truth or falsehood. Nietzsche said, "God is dead." Richard Dawkins paraphrased this to say "God was never alive to begin with." I will further modify this to say: "God COULD never have been alive to begin with", that is to say, there is no possible universe in which god exists, or could have, existed. I will hopefully discuss the possibilities of a non-supernatural spirituality, or in the term of Chris Hitchens, a non-supernatural concept of "the numinous" another time. Here I wanted to clarify and expand upon my earlier posting regarding the god debate, and, having here dispatched this persistent, pernicious delusion that has plagued humankind, I plan in the future to dwell on other topics, including hopefully at some point the idea of a non-supernatural numinous.

Frank Erdman
Austin, Texas
March 5, 2010 C.E.

Analyzing the Neoconservative Argument for Preemptive Strikes on Iran

2010-03-03T18:30:00.000-08:00

http://www.helium.com/items/510910-the-us-owes-japan-an-apology-for-ww-ii-bombing

The above link is an instructive essay on the unnecessary nature of the Allied bombing campaign against the Empire of Japan in 1945, to whit: the Empire was already economically devastated because its oil supply had been cut off due to the recapture of the Philippines and other Allied victories. It was blockaded, cut off from the entire world. Thus, neither the fire bombing of Tokyo, nor the unmentionable tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were strategically necessary. Japan would have folded in due course. Indeed, discussions of surrender were already underway in the Japanese government BEFORE Hiroshima ever happened, underscoring how needless and tragic the deaths of 140,000 civilians in that city were. The essay calls for an official apology by the US government to the Japanese government for the horrors of 1945, and I would fully agree with that course of action, especially seeing how vital Japan is to both our economic interests globally, and to our strategic interests in the Pacific Rim, in dealing with issues such as North Korea.

There is another, more interesting point here however I wish to make, and this regards Iran. Now the Iranian regime is a despicable blight in the eye of anyone who loves freedom, and we all know that. There is however, thankfully, a strong opposition within that country which is only growing stronger, the longer the tyrannical regime there tries to stop it. This opposition deserves the support of the West, not only through diplomatic channels, but also financially, in my opinion. Just as the regime in East Germany fell without a shot being fired, so too I believe can Iran overthrow its current dictatorship, perhaps with some amount if internal strife, but short of an all out civil war, since the people there, especially the younger generation, are increasingly disgusted with the crimes of the current regime. This is why I think the opposition in Iran needs our support, it does not, however, need the West to step in militarily. Why? It would harden the extremists there, and weaken the reformist position - if the US or her allies were to bomb Iran or otherwise engage in a militaristic way, then the regime would drum up anti-Western sentiment, making it harder for pro-Western reformers to gain traction. Short of an all out, "regime change" invasion, military intervention would only hurt the reformist cause in Iran. Now, I suppose a "regime change" is theoretically possible, after all, we all know how well the transformation of the Iraq Republic into a Vichy satellite arm of the West under the control of Paul Bremmer went. Yeah that went really swimmingly as I recall. Heck, all out civil war there only lasted 4 years, and today the Vichy government of Iraq only requires billions of US tax payer money yearly to sustain itself. So yes, in theory, "regime change" in Iran could "work" if by "work" we mean the chaos we saw under Tribune Bremmer. But I digress. The neocon drumbeat now often takes the form of preemptive missile or ariel strikes on Iran's uranium enrichment facilities and/or missile sites, nevermind that said uranium enrichment facilities are nowhere near the level they would need to be at to produce a nuclear bomb. Incidentally, I find it really rich that the only nation in the history of the world to have ever used nuclear bombs in war is the same nation running around complaining about "weapons of mass destruction", but again, I digress. Since even in the fantasy world of war without end, amen, that neocons live in, occasionally realism creeps its way in, and at least some of them realize the unrealistic nature of a "regime change" style invasion of Iran, some are now advocating preemptive strikes against Iran to essentially reduce its perceived capacity to make war. They are advocating basically taking out a potential military threat to our interests in the region. This again would destabilize internal reformist elements in Iran, which is why I would in general oppose such an action, even though I deplore the Islamo-fascist Iranian regime as much as anyone. I suppose in an extreme case, such as an immanent threat to Israel or something like that, that missile strikes against Iranian targets would be called for, but this is not what we are talking about here, rather, we are talking about "taking out a potential military threat to our interests in the region". A hypothetical threat. Hmmm. This sounds familiar. Where have we seen this before? A powerful nation with economic interests in a particular region preemptively taking out a perceived military threat in that region to try and solidify its interests in that region? Oh yeah, that's right - Pearl Harbor. Japan had economic interests in the Pacific. The US had the bulk of its naval fleet at Pearl Harbor, constituting a potential threat to Japan's interests in the region. So in order to shore up those interests, they decided to take out Pearl Harbor (a military target, by the way, not a civilian target like Hiroshima, but that is another matter). Now, obviously this did not work out so well in the end for Japan, but the point here is this: the rational for taking out Pearl Harbor is EXACTLY the rational now being touted by the neocons for preemptive strikes on Iran. The neocons have vast economic interests in the middle east, as the annexation of Iraq clearly demonstrated. These interests continue to this day. Iran, with its missile program and air force, constitutes a potential military threat to neocon economic interests in the middle east. This is why they advocate preemptively bombing Iran. Japan saw the US Naval fleet at Pearl Harbor as a possible threat to their economic interests in the Pacific, and so she took out Pearl Harbor. Today, the neocons like former Vice-President Cheney and company see Iran as a possible threat to their economic interests in the middle east, and so they want to preemptively disable Iran. As Sean Penn's character says about the Pacific war in the film The Thin Red Line, "Property. This whole f***ing thing is about property." And so it was. And so it is. Pearl Harbor was often invoked to drum up patriotic sentiment in the United States during the Second World War. It is certainly ironic that some in our country are employing the exact same sort of strategical thinking (or non-thinking, as the case may be) that led to Pearl Harbor. And just as Pearl Harbor did not turn out so well in the end for the Empire of Japan, so a pre-emptive strike against Iran will not turn out so well in the end for anyone except perhaps the extremists in Iran who would use such a strike to drum up anti-Western fervor, inasmuch as Pearl Harbor was used to drum up Japanophobia. I really think the current Emperor of Japan, His Imperial Majesty Akihito would have a few choice words about the folly of preemptive war to give to the rabid neocon herd currently yapping for ratings on Fox News, a herd, which, just by the way, owes the His Imperial Majesty a 65 year overdue apology. However, I think they will just keep on yapping for ratings, blissfully ignorant of the fact that their way of thinking has been seen before in history, and rarely to good result.

As the great Keith Olbermann says, "Good night, and good luck."

"Desire In The Time of Google" - A Poem

2010-02-20T19:16:00.000-08:00

For Paul Harrington, "il miglior fabbro"

the oracle is silenced
the bosom of Venus
has slipped into the eddies of time
we who once went to delphi and olympus
sit in lonely mass produced flats
chatting endlessly with myspace "friends"
speaking with more people than ever before
knowing fewer people than ever before
knowing more facts than ever before
understanding fewer truths than ever before
googling information, amazoning aquisitions
information superhighway is our new delphi.

so with the same fervor that once we sought venus
now we seek higher levels in world of warcraft
but like venus, w.o.w. levels seem ever elusive
as we conquer one, only to find the next obstructing
not knowing what we lost, we cannot have what we want
not knowing what we failed to be, we cannot know what we could be
the person the world sees, we know is not who we are
which is nothing but a conflagration of semi-connected memes.

from the bosom of Venus we slipped into paranoia
and thence to masks, illusions of "self", and finally
to the information age, where we download objet petit a
shivering at the feet of the Guardian of the Law.

Frank Erdman
Austin, Texas
20-Feb-2010

"The Sabbath was made for man" - a Lacanian Analysis

2010-02-19T21:01:00.001-08:00

We recall the story from Sunday School about when someone was caught picking wheat or something on the Sabbath and the religious authorities of the day complained to Jesus of Nazareth about this alleged atrocity, to which he remarked: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath", roughly meaning, rules in general are made to prevent anarchy, to make life go smoothly, etc., but rules are not "the point of life", rules are there to facilitate life, life is not there for the sake of rules, very roughly stated.

Now, the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan had a division between the psychotic and the neurotic. The psychotic subject (for example, Norman Bates in 'Psycho') never enters into Freud's "castration phase". To keep it simple, this is basically the phase where the child learns there are rules in life, and he cannot simply do whatever he wants. Now, the neurotic or "eccentric" subject (for example, Howard Hughes), unlike the psychotic subject, does enter into the "castration phase" (i.e. learns there are rules in life) but never emerges from that phase, he is "stuck" in that phase, and thus for the neurotic, life becomes all about rules, he literally lives just for whatever rules he happens to follow (e.g. wash his hands 20 times a day, or whatever). A psychotic, for Lacan, will have delusions and paranoia and so forth because he never accepted "castration" or the presence of rules, and thus lives in a perpetual state of anarchy, where nothing is governed or restrained. A neurotic never moved past "castration" and thus his only reason for being is simply to live for rules, thus, whereas a psychotic lives in a mental state of anarchy, a neurotic lives in a mental state of tyranny. Of course, some people manifest both effects, sort of having one foot in castration (learning of rules) and the other foot prior to castration, i.e., partly rejecting rules, and partly living for them, and thus you have the "borderline" patient. But here, I want to simply look at the cases of the psychotic, the neurotic, and the "normal" person, the person who accepts castration (the fact that there are rules of behavior in life) but also understands that his reason for being is not those same rules.

Now, in the story related, the person picking wheat on the Sabbath may have had legitimate reason to pick the wheat, but for argument's sake, let's say he just felt the Sabbath did not apply to him, that rules in general were for "other people". OK, so the person picking wheat on the Sabbath in this story is Lacan's psychotic, the subject who never entered the "castration phase", who is stuck in the "Oedipal phase" to be technical about it, or, more simply, who just decided that rules were not for him. Now, the Pharisees in this story are Lacan's neurotic, the subject who accepts rules (in this case, the Sabbath), who did move into the castration phase, but never got out of it, and they now therefore live only for rules, and have no other purpose in their rather miserable state of existence, a state hardly above the psychotic who is still stuck in the Oedipal (or, pre-castration) phase. Now, in this story, Jesus of Nazareth would be a "normal" or "healthy" person in Lacanian terms, because he has moved beyond the castration phase, the phase of learning about rules, which is not to say he disregards rules, but he simply understands that life is more than legalistically following rules for their own sake. He understands rules are there to prevent anarchy (or, on a personal level, psychosis, or being "stuck in the Oedipal phase" in Freudian terms), but that if one ends of living only for those same rules one will end up in tyranny (or neurosis, i.e., "stuck in the castration phase").

Thus, here in this story, we have a perfect example of Lacan's analysis of the psychotic, the neurotic, and the "normal". The man picking wheat could be the psychotic, the one for whom rules do not exist, the one who never entered the "castration phase" of child development. He is sort of stuck at age 2 or thereabouts. The Pharisees are examples of the neurotic, the one who entered, but never emerged from, the "castration" phase, the one who lives only for rules, and so probably have an emotional maturity not much beyond pre-puberty, roughly I would think. And here, Jesus of Nazareth is the "normal subject" who, unlike the psychotic who never accepted the fact of rules, or the neurotic whose life revolves around rules, has moved past these developmental phases, and is emotionally an adult, one who accepts rules as necessary in life, but also knows that life is much, much more than simply following rules. Lacanian theories are sometimes difficult to follow, so I hope this small example makes it easy to understand the position of the neurotic, the psychotic, and the "normal" subject in Lacanian analysis.

Palin on Fox - Be afraid. Be very afraid.

2010-01-14T17:42:00.000-08:00

Andrew Sullivan's article here is an excellent warning to sane persons across the political spectrum. Gov. Palin on Fox News is not about fiscal conservatism or even the Republican Party in general, rather, this constitutes a dangerous synthesis of white resentment, religious fanaticism, and poor economic conditions which make people look for scapegoats.

In 1920's and early 1930's Germany, Hitler was dismissed by the intellectuals of the day as being the sorry nutcase he was, but unfortunately, he was underestimated, because the poor economic conditions of his time allowed him to tap into fear and resentment, and allowed criminals to take over the leadership of that nation. Just because somebody is crazy, or even evil, does not mean that under the right circumstances they cannot come to power.

There is 10% unemployment. White people in rural areas are pissed off. They are looking for scapegoats, be they African-Americans, immigrants, Muslim Americans, gays, whomever. They just want to have somebody to blame for the current problems. Add to this mix Christian fundamentalism, which does not seek peace, but rather war, because in their warped doctrines world war is desirable because it will bring about the end of time, the "rapture", or whatever they call it, and you have a very dangerous set of circumstances for men and women who love freedom, be they on the right or the left of the political spectrum. This is not an issue of Republican or Democrat. Republicans like Gov. William Weld or Gov. Christine Todd Whitman I'm sure are at least privately appalled with the fear mongering that takes place on Fox News and is now being spearheaded by Gov. Sarah Palin. This is an issue of the sane versus the insane, and it is up to the sane among us to NOT underestimate this gathering storm, and to call it out now, lest it rise to positions of prominence in government, as happened in 1933 in Germany.

Gov. Palin is insane, but that does not mean she is to be taken lightly. Hitler was dismissed as a crazy and then he actually got into power. We do not want that mistake to occur again. People on both sides of the aisle who believe in secular, democratic government, and not in white supremacist theocracies should stand up now and take this dangerous element seen on Fox News to task. Since heaven forbid if these people actually get into power, but if they do, I suggest moving to Canada, and then building a fall-out shelter since even in Canada one could still be susceptible to the radiation from the nuclear war these nuts would just love to start. In comparison to Palin, Beck, Hannity, et al, President George W. Bush is a paragon of democratic freedoms, freedoms which will become a memory if the Orwellian, theocratic police state envisioned by Palin and company comes into being. I thank Andrew Sullivan for calling this to our attention, and I hope more people start speaking out as well, because to ignore the threat these radicals pose could very well result in America's own Gotterdamerung. And with it, a new dark age for the world.

A Meditation on what constitues "good mentoring"

2009-11-26T07:37:00.000-08:00

This is a meditation on what denotes good parenting versus bad parenting. I would like to relate an anecdote from my life to illustrate the concept. I recall being a teenager, and being prone to the vernacular of teenagers. I was not in any way a sort of bigot or similar ignorant sort at age 17, but I was still prone to the terminologies often employed by teenagers, terminologies prone to being misinterpreted. At age 17, I was, if you will, good intentioned, but perhaps not always well informed, and thus prone to making verbal gaffs and otherwise what one might term "youthful mistakes".

Now, this is where "parenting" comes in. Good parenting entails correcting a mistake, and giving the reason why it is a mistake, but not making it a personal issue. That is, a good mentor will correct an error, and give the information as to why that is an error to prevent it from occurring in the future, but will not at the same time de-humanize or degrade the person one is correcting. That is, a good parent or mentor will correct a mistake and will provide the information as to why that is a mistake, whereas a bad parent will either not correct the mistake at all, or if they do, will do so in an insulting, de-humanizing, sort of manner.

This leads into my anecdote. At age 17 or so, I was (and am) more or less what one might call a "liberal" in terms of civil rights. Fiscally, in terms of deficits and so on, I might be a little more conservative, but certainly, insofar as human rights go (and simian rights, for that matter) I was, and am, proudly "liberal" along those lines. This said, teenagers, while they might have generally good intentions, tend to not always be properly informed, and this is where parents/mentors are needed. A good parent will inform, and correct, not out of ill-will, but rather out of love. A bad parent/mentor will either ignore the mistake, and allow the subject to wander down the path of ignorance, or, will correct the mistake but do so in a way of personal insults, rather than rational conversation. Now, I do not recall the precise context of the conversation in the anecdote I am relating. I was 17, and a friend of the family, Michelle (last name withheld to protect privacy), and her husband, a great and well known artist (again, name withheld), were over for dinner, with myself, my mother, and my brother. Now, somewhere along the way, and I do not recall the context, I employed the "f word", and I do not mean the word "f**k", I mean the other "f word", as in "fag**t". Again, I honestly believe, at that point in time in my life, this was not out of bigotry or, indeed, a state of denial regarding certain personal issues, but rather was simply a term in the generally accepted lexicon of the day. Now, Michelle immediately corrected me on the statement. I recall she asked me, well, would you ever use the "n" word, and I was of course immediately saying no, of course not, I would never use the "n" word to refer to individuals of a "minority" ethnicity. Well then, she said, you should also not use the "f" word, since just as the "n" word is a hateful term against minority individuals, so can the "f" word be employed as a derogatory remark against persons of a different sexual orientation. And of course she was right. I recall, further, that she went on to say, that in each of us, there is a "male" side, and a "female" side, and we all have to work that out, however way we can, and, in the case of gay people, that is simply their particular way of working out that universal dialectic between the "male" and "female" energies extant in each individual. Following this conversation, I was very much better informed about this issue, and never did I employ the "f" word in a derogatory or even apparently derogatory fashion, again.

Now, this comes down to the original point in this blog post, that is, what constitutes "good parenting" versus "bad parenting". Now, I personally don't know if I necessarily would ever myself want to have kids, since I am more of a "career" person by nature. However, if I did, or, if I were advising others who did, I would hold up my friend Michelle as the perfect example of a "good parent". A good parent corrects the child and tells them the reason for the error, in this case, informing me how words matter, and how words can lead to an impression of bigotry, even if bigotry was not intended. A bad parent would either not correct the child when in error, or, if the parent does, would make it into a personal issue, rather than an issue of rational discussion, that is, a bad parent when correcting a child would insult, degrade, and otherwise de-humanize the child, whereas a good parent does not insult, degrade, or de-humanize, but rather, in a calm, rational manner, informs the child as to why they are in error, and why they should seek to correct that error. I am thankful that I was exposed, at least in this instance, to an example of good parenting. A parent/friend/mentor who seeks to correct the child when in error but does so in a rational manner and does not do so in a manner that is insulting or degrading. Thank you, Michelle, for correcting my 17-year old youthful linguistic mistake, and thank you, for providing an example of what good mentoring ought to be, both seeing a mistake and correcting it, but not making it a personal issue, but rather using calm and rational discussion to convey the lesson. I have seen both good mentoring and bad mentoring, and I now see the difference: good mentoring entails using reason to instruct the subject upon their miscalculations, whereas bad mentoring entails either not seeing said miscalculations, or simply using personal insults and degrading behaviors to convey the point. I am thankful I have an example of what a good mentor ought to be, one who uses reason, rather than hate, to bring across a point. I hope such good examples will become more the rule, rather than the exception, in the future.

Frank Erdman
Austin, Texas
November 26, 2009 C.E

Texas homophobes don't understand Law of Identity

2009-11-18T17:28:00.000-08:00

Click here for an interesting article regarding an anti-gay amendment passed a few years ago in the Texas constitution, barring equal marriage rights for gay and lesbians citizens. Elsewhere I have discussed how this inequality is unconstitutional, and I won't belabor that here. The interesting thing is that in the wording of the Texas anti-equality amendment, it bars any unions IDENTICAL to marriage, in an attempt to block civil unions or domestic partnerships from being recognized in Texas. However, a recent legal scholar has pointed out, this additional clause to the amendment actually in a bit of poetic justice puts into legal jeopardy all marriages in Texas, including between straight couples. Because by barring arrangements identical to marriage, it necessarily bars marriage itself. This is the classic case of a boomerang. The homophobes wrote a law to prevent any legal recognition of the constitutional rights of the LGBT community, and in so doing, by their own stupidity in not being able to phrase things correctly, technically made straight marriages illegal as well. They have gone "the way of those foolish men who riding the back of the tiger, ended up inside."

One can hope that a federal court can overturn this state of affairs, though realistically, the federal lawsuit currently being pursued by former Gore attorney David Boies and former Bush 43 attorney Theodore Olsen in California represents the best shot right now to obtain equal rights for all American citizens, gay and straight alike. Certainly however this is most amusing, and most ironic.

Apparently homophobes never figured out the law of identity. A is A. A thing is itself. That which is IDENTICAL to A (in this case, marriage), is itself also A. Too bad Ayn Rand isn't still around. She'd have a field day on this one.

Yet another example of the utter stupidity of bigotry. Where one finds bigotry, one will find stupidity, and vice-versa. The challenge for democracy is, and always has been, that there is no IQ threshold on the right to vote. This is why we have a judicial system, to save us from the tyranny of the often ignorant masses. I am confident that in this matter as in other matters, our august legal system will finally prevail to right injustice. But this will take time. Time which must be spent suffering the banalities of fools.

Source: Marc Christian Is Dead

2009-11-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

According to a source, Marc Christian has passed away.

Please note: BlogKinnetic has obtained this information before CNN.

It appears he was killed, late in the afternoon, on a country road with a learner's permit in his pocket. He swerved to avoid a porcupine, and drove straight into a large tree.

Ille in pace est.

Dr. Loomis discusses Chris Brown

2009-11-06T06:36:00.000-08:00

Vote No on Prop 1 in Maine: Protect Equal Rights

2009-10-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.protectmaineequality.org

One can use the above link to go and donate to the campaign to protect equality in Maine. Earlier this year, the Maine legislature voted to extend marriage equality to all of its citizens, gay and straight alike. Proposition 1, up for vote on Tuesday, would take away these rights. This is unconstitutional, and against America's stance for equal opportunity for all of its citizens. Acts like prop 1 violate the equal protection clause of the constitution of the United States, and should not be countenanced, in Maine, or anywhere else. An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. This is why it is important to take a stand in Maine for equality. Remember, it was a regiment from Maine under General Chamberlain which single handed won the battle of Gettysburg, and thus saved the Union, and freed countless persons living in slavery. Maine has a long and proud history of being on the side of justice and freedom. I am confident the forces of hate will be defeated next Tuesday, and that the bigoted proposition 1 will go into the dustbin of history, along with other discriminatory efforts of our past. Men and woman who love freedom should take a stand against this, because once it is OK to discriminate against a particular minority, then we are all less safe in our civil liberties, whether we are a part of said minority or not. The Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas decisions of the United States Supreme Court make it clear that efforts like Prop 1 are unconstitutional, in addition to being blatantly hateful and discriminatory. Freedom loving persons of whatever background, race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity should come together against the forces of intolerance, wherever they may be found. Help defeat Prop 1 in Maine and send a signal that the days of hate are numbered. Let us seek a more perfect Union, a Union made possible in part by General Chamberlain's Maine regiment. Let us not forget that when some are threatened, we all, as free individuals, are also threatened. Defeat Prop 1 in Maine, and send a signal that all human beings are created equal.

Clip of General Chamberlain discussing the equality of all

"Down Eros, Up Mars!" - Thoughts on why religion opposes human sexuality

2009-10-27T18:49:00.001-07:00

Well I'm sure we all recall the "Down Eros, Up Mars" quote from the movie Ben Hur, pledging allegiance to the god of war, Mars, at the expense of the goddess of love, Eros. I confess at age 12 I thought that to be a cool rallying cry. Now, I find myself bemused by the truth behind it, if a little sad as well.

It is axiomatic that religions, or in particular, monotheistic religions (Islam, Judaism, Christianity) have a particular beef with human sexuality. The evidence for this is so copious, I will not dwell on it. Well OK, I'll dwell on it just a little. I refer the reader to Byzantine Theology which I read at age 13 I think it was, for the proof to the pudding there, at least so far as Christianity goes. It is simply ontological. For Christianity, their myth is that sex arises in an ontological "fallen" state, AFTER the fall of man at the Garden of Eden, as, for instance, St. Augustine claimed, claiming that Adam's "original sin" was in fact copulation with Eve, and that the "knowledge of good and evil" was in fact knowledge of the "birds and the bees". So, in the ontological "state of perfection" before "sin" entered the world (sex obviously being one of these so-called "sins"), there was no sex. Ergo, if sex is not in the "perfect state of affairs" and is only ontologically present to the imperfect state of affairs, it is sinful, or evil, or dirty, or whatever. If to the perfect human sex is not a possibility, but is only a possibility to the imperfect human, only in the "after the fall" state, then it follows that in Christian theology sex is part of the "fallen" state. Now, there is a difference between going 50 in a 30 MPH zone, breaking the speed limit by about 20 MPH, and getting a pass on a ticket, versus going 50 in a speed lane with no speed limit. In both cases, you don't get a ticket, but in the former case, you technically broke the rules even though the cop let you go, and in the latter case there was no rule to be broken. This is why the cop-out one often hears from religious people to the effect of, well, I'm not anti-sex, but I am against pre-marital sex, is just that, a cop-out. Sex in marriage (and only straight, within the same race marriage, mind you) is permissible in Christianity in the same sense as not getting a ticket even though you broke the speed limit. You still broke the speed limit, you just didn't get a ticket - maybe you were injured and rushing to the hospital, for example. Similarly, in Christianity, so the myth goes, man is fallen, so god says, "What to do. I know, I'll send in my very own Prometheus (Jesus) so I can torture him in order to inspire a Mel Gibson film, and that way, once we have enough box office receipts, I'll restore man to a state of perfection, provided he toes the line on rules like keeping his beard trimmed and not eating bacon and so on that I will throw in just for fun. Oh, damn, hang it all, I forgot to magically create my Prometheus. I know what I'll do, I'll put a dispensation on my no-sex rule just so man can breed and produce a Prometheus naturally, but of course, I'll have to do some magic with the ovaries and make sure they are immaculate conceived organic free range ovaries. OK, so, I'll introduce this 'marriage' idea and say if people are married, as long as they don't talk about it and don't take any pleasure in it and are very hush-hush and feel sufficiently guilty and self-hating about it, they can have sex as long as the purpose is for reproduction and not fun, since I do need my immaculate Prometheus popped out of the oven here in order to make my Mel Gibson torture porn film." And after he said this, it was not good, and there was evening and there was morning the 8th day. Of course I am having fun here with the dialogue, but the basic point is all right there in the above mentioned book - it is very clear: marriage is a cop-out like not getting a speeding ticket but sex is still "bad" in Christianity - sex in marriage is a necessary evil for the purpose of reproduction. The smoking gun is what I just linked to, but also it is clear even without the smoking gun - since, if you take the Genesis account literally, it is clear that sex did not get into the picture for humans until after the fall - "they realized they were naked" - so they were innocent, sexless pre-pubescent seraphim before the fall, and then they were dirty whores afterward, essentially, and this is the literal Christian idea, as ridiculous as it sounds to modern ears. The old theologians would even reference a quote from the Psalms ("In sin did my mother conceive me") to totally prove my point that they took their religion consistently and knew that sex was always "bad", even within marriage, but that it was just a necessary evil for the purposes of producing Mel Gibson gore porn stars to get whipped and look hot all at the same time. It is all right there, as absurd as it sounds, and if you hear different, you are either talking to some poor self-hating sod who actually believes the b.s. about "sex in straight all-white marriage is OK as long as it is for reproduction only", or, you are being deliberately misled by somebody who actually thinks you are that stupid. Sorry guys, I ain't, and I have not been for quite some time. Anyway. That Christianity and other religions hate sex is axiomatic which I have amply demonstrated above and even given a smoking gun on in the case of Christianity in particular as if such proof were even necessary. So, being that it is axiomatic that monotheistic religions hate sex and this deserves no further backing up, the question I turn to now is why. What are the evolutionary reasons for religion to so despise sex? Well it turns out to be quite simple really, and it comes down to memes.

Memes, cultural bits of information that get copied about from brain to brain. are "selfish replicators", inasmuch as genes are "selfish replicators". There is an "arms race" (Susan Blackmore's term) between the gene and the meme in human evolution. That is, the gene "wants" humans to have small, efficient brains, focused only on survival and reproduction. The meme however "wants" humans to develop large brains because it is within brains that memes exist and get copied. Indeed, sometimes memes will get hard-wired into a brain (such as the facial recognition template that enables an infant to recognize the human form, which looks quite like the "grey alien" image one often sees). In the case of religion, this is a meme system par excellence. The meme "wants" no time wasted by their carriers (us) in petty things like sex and even physical survival. All the meme wants us to do is copy them around as much as possible, and if we must breed, breed only with fellow meme-carriers (carriers of the same memes we carry, i.e., persons of the same religion). It is still an "arms race". The gene wants us to reproduce and to survive. The meme could give two hoots about us reproducing, and in some cases, even works against such an end. The reason is that the gene gets copied vertically (mostly, except in cases of parasites and viruses), that is, the gene gets copied down generational lines. However, the meme works in both directions. It can get copied down generational lines, such as parents teaching their children to follow the same destructive memes they are infected by, and also by in some cases getting "hard wired" into the brain, such as in the human facial recognition template. But the meme also gets copied horizontally (such as someone going around and getting their neighbors "saved" as happens with evangelical Christianity). Notice though I used the term, "destructive memes". Not all memes are destructive. In fact, when one gets right down to it, language itself could be seen as a system of memes. It should be understood in the case of biological viruses that most are not harmful to their hosts - i.e. at least 90% of viruses a human encounters will not harm the human. It would not be advantageous for the genes of a virus to kill off all its hosts, now would it. It is simply the "rogue viruses" like HIV and so forth that are harmful - most viruses are innocuous. It is the same thing with memes. Most memes are harmless - hair styles, catch phrases, literary styles, etc. But some memes are very harmful. The extreme case of course is the memes of fanatical religion like in some forms of Islam and Christianity.

I suggest that the Christian (and Islamic, and to a lesser extent, Judaic) war on sex is a sort of "rogue meme system". It is a set of out-of-control memes so intent on getting themselves copied that they "want" to disabuse the gene of any competition it might have once been able to assert. Just as a killer virus is a "rogue virus", so too are certain religious memes "rogue memes", in some cases of course literally killing their hosts, as in the cases of suicide bombers, who willingly die for the sake of their memes - Allah, or whomever. Taken to the extreme, if the memes can get their hosts to hate themselves and their bodies and their sexuality to the extent seen in certain religions today, their hosts will have only one function in life, the persistence of those very same memes, in the spoken word, the written word, the digital word, and other various forms. And finally we will have a world filled with crosses and other religious symbols and no people, who would have nuked themselves out of existence in the pursuit of one religious "crusade" or other. Such is the end result of a rogue meme driven world, especially as said rogue memes take the guise of religion.

So in a sense I suppose the anti-sex, anti-human purveyors of Christianity and other rogue meme systems are themselves also victims of the rogue memes they seek to impose upon the rest of us. But the crucial difference here is one of knowledge: they are so brain-washed by their memes they don't even know the "tyranny of the selfish replicators" which they waste their lives serving. At least some of us who have disinfected ourselves of the religious memes by sheer force of Reason have the comfort of knowing who pulls the strings of whom. The religious tyrants of the world think they (or their gods) are pulling the strings. But rather, it has been the memes all along.

So there you have it. The reason religion hates sex so much is because it is the ultimate manifestation of the age-old gene v. meme conflict, one which will last so long as large-brained apes like ourselves or other similar animals exist, and at the rate we are going, this might not be for very long at all. Perhaps in the hot winds of the post-nuclear wasteland which is the only inheritance possible for a world driven by religion, the gene will once again claim supremacy over the biosphere when there are no longer any meme-carriers for its memetic rivals, as the only thing left at that point will be genes carried within the form of bacteria. And that, dear friends, will be the revenge of Eros upon Mars, whose folly will have slain him as surely as it had slain Eros. And that is one scenario my selfish genes can get a kick out of! :-)

Deepak Chopra not incomplete, just insane

2009-10-06T20:03:00.000-07:00

This link here is an amusing piece of fictional dribble by Deepak Chopra which I commmend to the reader's attention if s/he needs a good chuckle. In it, Dr. Chopra claims that Darwinian evolution is incomplete or "outmoded" in the face of contemporary physics. He amusingly claims, having no knowledge of physics as is demonstrable from his article, that contemporary physics "out dates" or "deprecates" so-called classical or Newtonian physics. Now, firstly, physical theories never, NEVER, arise in a vacuum. They are NEVER "revolutions" per ce, but rather only EXTENSIONS or modifications or existing theories to make room for new observations. Thus it was that quantum theory arose to make Maxwell's electrodynamics compatible with the conservation of energy. Thus it was that relativity arose to make the same electrodynamics fit better with mechanics. Thus it is that today, string theory has arisen to make quantum mechanics fit better with relativity. The point is, modern physics does not "over-throw" Newtonian physics, but merely extends it. Relativity on lower energy levels, lower velocities, etc., looks just like Newtonian dynamics. It is only at high velocities, high energies, that relativistic corrections come into play. So in the first place it is amusing how Chopra feels contemporary physics overthrows somehow older physical theories, and by extension this casts an aspersion on the Darwinian facts of life, that biological animals, including ourselves, are here at the behest of the genes and their successors, the memes. Notice I say "Darwinian facts of life" inasmuch as I would call the sexual theory of reproduction a fact, or the slightly-flattened sphere theory of earth's topology a fact, rather than a "theory". The lone-gunman theory of the Kennedy assisination is a theory (in my view, a fact) since one can agree or disagree with it and still be viewed as generally sane. One cannot I believe view the earth to be flat, view reproduction in humans to be caused by storks, or view the universe to have come into being at the magical behest of some "Intelligent Designer" about the time of the domestication of the canine, and still be called sane. Chopra tries to steer some naive "middle course" between sanity and insanity and claim that evolution by natural selection occurs, but is only part of the story, perhaps sort of like saying that sexual mating occurs among the human apes but the stork is what seals the deal as to whether or not conception takes place. Chopra makes three misleading claims and one further claim so patently absured it scarcely is worth refuting, but I guess I'll refute it anyway, since I have long sinced learned never to underestimate the potential for human gullibility.

Essentially he says this:

Evolution is incomplete, and we need to adopt a "biocentric" view of the universe, the arrogant idea that we hairless apes create reality by making observations, forgetting of course that only 7 million years ago we could still inter-mingle with the chimpanzee ancestors whose progeny today throw feces from tree tops when irked, and it is thus from this noble lineage we are supposed to all of a sudden have developed the ability to "create reality" with our "minds" whatever the heck that might be. Seems to me if reality is dependent on the subjective dreams of the cousins of feces-throwers, then so much the worse for reality. Seems to me reality ought to have as a basis something a bit more substantial than our "minds", a notion which Chopra never bothers to define, since the idea of meme-processing machines seems beyond his current computer skill level. At any rate, he says this:

1) The Universe is "fine tuned" with particular laws that allow life to happen
2) This "fine-tuning" is further refined with particular physical constants, like the strength of gravity, that allow life to happen
3) Since the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and other similar mishaps along the way could easily have destroyed all life, then clearly, the universe must have really "wanted" us to be here.
4) The past is "created" by the present - Chopra falsely claims this to be a view held by Stephen Hawking, which is such a libel upon a great man I just don't know what to say about that.

As for point number 1, the idea of laws being "fine-tuned" for our existance, this is analytically false. For instance, F = MA (Force = Mass times Acceleration) is not an adjustable knob on the dial of the Intelligent Designing Flying Spaghetti Monster. It is a LAW. By definition, it cannot be changed or adjusted. If observations come along that require us to better define the LAW, then we do so. But the immutability of LAW remains. Two plus two equaling four does not need a Designer (or our minds, for that matter, in Chopra's vision) to make it so. It simply CANNOT be otherwise. Period.

As for point number 2, the ida of physical constants of nature being "fine-tuned" for our existance, this is simply an appeal to current gaps in knowledge. It is true that only by experiment can we, for instance, know the value of the constant G, that Newton uses for his gravitional constant. But does this constant or any other need our minds to help it out? Most likely not. String theory has 10^500 (that is 10 multiplied by itself 500 times) vacuum values, all corresponding to different energies for the false vacuum in quantum field theory, each of which would correspond to a different (metrically disconnected) universe, or a different region (metrically connected) of one big "multiverse". We just happen to live in a region (or metrically disconnected seperate universe) that is amenable for life. Perhaps these constants do vary, but since most of them won't produce an inhabitable region of space to live in, guess what, we won't evolve in those regions to observe them. Is it mirculous we find Romans in Rome and not in Athens? No. By definition, we could not find them elsewhere than in Rome, otherwise they wouldn't be Romans. Similarly, it is not miraculous we find evolving animals like ourselves in "inhabitible" regions of space, because by definition, we wouldn't find them anywhere else. Some miracle there, Deepak. Next thing you know, you'll be telling me how odd it is that in California, everywhere you look you see California license plates. No kidding. That's far out, man. Pass that joint over here.

Point number three, the idea that any number of disasters could have befallen earth and did not, is another mistake along the same lines. If I have a simple universe with one hydrogen atom - one proton, and one electron, I can think of at least 8 configurations for that and perhaps more, but at least eight. Two for the electron being negative or postive. Two for the electron being spin up or spin down. So 2 times 2 is 4 possible configurations. Now, that electron could be in one of two integer wavelengths in the s orbital of that atom. So that is 2 more configurations, which, muliplied by the 4, is 8. So, in a simple universe with only 1 hydrogen atom and nothing else, I have to sum over 8 possible configurations to get the probability of any one configuration. Now, there are at least 10^80 (10 multiplied by itself 80 times) hydrogen atom equivalents in this universe (proton-electron pairs), or in the part of it we can observe. So that is a boat load of possible configurations. Sure, I'll bet in some of those, life did not survive the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs on earth. But in some of those, it did, and only in those that it did, will we find observers to argue about the event afterwards. Wow. This is really hard stuff. Dude, I need another joint. This is getting real "deep" for me, Deepak.

Point number four is just out of bounds, especially when he falsely charges that Hawking himself would ever claim the past to be created by the present. This is a misinterperation of quantum mechanics, which gets a little technical, but I think I can keep this simple. When I see a broken coffee cup on the floor with coffee running out of it, I can infer that a few moments before, that coffee cup fell and broke on the floor. So, in terms of my knowledge of the past, yes, I can "create" the past in terms of inferring knowledge about the past. But, crucially, seeing the coffee cup broken NOW, does not magically in retrospect make the coffee cup to have certainly broken five minutes prior to the NOW. It only establishes my knowledge of what had happened in previous moments. Now, it is true, that some will say that by observing things, we "set" quantum probabilites, and cause a "reduction in the state vector" or "collapse of the wave function" that determines the past upon our observations in the now, and "prior" to those observations the "past" is not really "set" but is merely some mystical amalgram of possibilities. Hawking sure as hell does not say that. Nor would most serious physicists today. I'm sorry if some of Neils Bohr's contemporaries in the 1940's might have cooked up such nonsense, but that is not my problem. I refer the reader to Max Tegmark of MIT's papers on this issue for more elucidation, but my point here is this: Chopra's assertion that "modern physics says the present creates the past" is based on an outdated philosophical interperation of quantum theory. Tegmark, following Hugh Everett and others, would say that the wave function NEVER collapses. To be more precise, and to follow Hawking, taking gravity into the picture means that there is not just one metric "branching off" into different possibilities over time. There are N number of metrics (in my hydrogen atom universe example, there were 8). You sum over these metrics to get the probability of a past or future directed observation, to infer something about the past, or predict something about the future. But these are actual metrics that are really there. And quantum computing is the proof to the pudding here. How can one get 1000 (or whatever) bits of data computed in the time it would take to normally only compute 10 bits of data? Well, because you are doing those computations in all those other metrics. I won't get into details there, but my point is a simple one. The current trend of thought, as evidenced by recent advances in quantum computing, shows that the proper way to do quantum theory is to do Feynman sums, and in the case where gravity is in the picture, you do Feynman sums not simply over particle trajectories, but over entire metrics themselves. These metrics are really there. Whether the observer is or not. And as quantum computing research makes more progress "mystical" or "New Age" observer-creates-reality b.s. we get from folks like Chopra will be less and less plausible. Because always when we get tangible results (like computational printouts on real paper, that has real meaning) we want a tangible model to underly those results. Getting computational results that can only have been gotten from doing the computations over all the different Feynman metrics will make it harder for people to claim that we "created" these results by "observing them". Give me a freaking break. Maybe I'll just "observe myself" to have a million dollars in my bank account. Hey power of positive thinking and quantum theory together is apparently the new magic. Somehow I ain't "banking" on that.

In summation, Chopra's article is just the latest in a long line of New Age tripe that substitues "quantum physics" for "sorcery", claiming "new science" over-throws "old science" and thus justifies any fantasy world the dreamer wants to conjur. But there is a real difference between quantum physics and magic. The former is based on actual, verifiable predictions, and not just wistful thinking and imagining. The universe does not care, never did, and never will, that we hairless apes are here. It exists whether we do or not. We are utterly incidental to the over-all picture of the universe. We are truly little more than "a pair of ragged claws scutteling across the floors of silent seas".

Lastly, Chopra insultingly says evolution is simple enough to teach to children between recess and lunch. True, it can be explained in short, simple terms, which is the beauty of any scientific theory. But it is far more profound than the mere outline of it would suggest, not just in its details but in its inherent structure. For it is not actually the strongest species that survive. It is rather the most adapted genes. This tells us two counter-intuitive things: first, that evolution is unlikely to produce "supermen" but is more likely to produce "average" individuals suited to the "average" of their environments (more likely to produce a Sweeney than a Phlebas, to borrow T.S. Eliot's characters), and second, that we ourselves are not the center of the game, not the pinnacles of evolution or creation, but rather, we are vehicles, carriers, robots, for our genes, and it is the genenome (our DNA) that evolves, not we as a species. We exist for our DNA, not our DNA for ourselves. Animals will self-destruct if there is a greater gene benifit from that action (mother bears for their cubs, for instance). This is hardly "childish" or "simple" material. Rather, it is perhaps some of the most profound material ever presented by science. We find upon analysis that we are not the stars of the show, rather, it is the DNA, and that the winners of the show are not even the "best" or the "strongest" DNA, but simply the "most adapted" DNA, the average DNA. Far from being the "creators of reality" that New Age witch doctors like Chopra would suggest we find that we are mere spectators of reality, and entirely irrelevent spectators at that.

Source: President Truman, Prime Minister Clement Atlee Covered Up Roswell Crash

2009-09-18T07:05:00.000-07:00

http://weeklyworldnews.com/alien-alert/11286/president-trumans-ufo-cover-up/

[Note: This has not been independently confirmed by BlogKinnetic. Make of it what you will.]

A lesson for the apes from the arachnids

2009-09-15T17:44:00.000-07:00

For some weeks now, and I think perhaps a couple of months, a small brown spider has made its web in an outside corner of my tub next to the wall near the floor. Truthfully I have not gotten close enough to discern particular features, so I don't know the genus and species, but it is small, perhaps a quarter of an inch in diameter, entirely harmless of course, since its tiny pincers could not puncture human skin.

Now, I have a strict policy that I don't harm my fellow living creatures if I can avoid it, unless, say, it is a case of fire ants crawling into my shoe, and then I am a veritable madman, but by and large, I try and leave these sorts of things well enough alone, and to tell the truth, if you want a way to vex me quite quickly, then step on a hapless cricket that has chanced its way into the apartment instead of either leaving it be or releasing it outdoors. A pet peeve of mine, what can I say, but I have had said pet peeve all my life, and so I probably shall always have it. Essentially I have a live and let live policy towards other members of the biosphere, and thus, I have casually taken note of this spider next to my tub over the past month or so, carefully stepping around it when taking my morning shower and so forth. Now, for the past week or so, I thought it perhaps had passed on, for it had not moved at all. It was just there in the same place in the center of its rather finely constructed web. Now, there are the occasional insects that happen by, at least during summer months, but of course a spider making its web indoors might have less a chance of grabbing an insect than one that made it, in say, a barn yard. So, there had not been any "catches" or at least that I noticed, and I thought perhaps this spider had passed on due to lack of nutrition.

Then, tonight, I went in there and idly glanced over at the web, and, lo and behold, there was some fat insect that looked vaguely like a millipede, though I confess my knowledge of insects is not quite what it could be. This thing was trapped securely in the web, and the brown spider, whom I had thought might have been dead, was easily traipsing about its catch, fully fit as a fiddle. I thought it had possibly been dead, but no, it was simply conserving its energy and waiting. Waiting for weeks, possibly months for all I know. It built its web, and then it sat down and waited and never moved. It waited until one day an insect well larger than the spider itself happened along, and doubtless will probably provide enough nutrition to last out the spider's natural life cycle. The ingenuity of evolution is mind blowing and inspiring. It is very simple: it builds its web, and then just waits. It is the "buy and hold" stock strategy - just buy the stock, and hold through market fluctuations and one day if you are lucky, the stock will pay off a dividend. It did not waste any energy for it needed all its energy just to survive until its catch came through. It built its nest, and then just "hung out" in the web, pardon the pun. And tonight, it got its reward.

I thought to myself, if we hairless apes who have the audacity to think ourselves masters of the universe could have even a fraction of the patience that the arachnid has evolved, we would be far more productive and dare I say, happier. The selfish genes have programmed that spider to built a web, sit there, wait for food to come, reap the food, and hopefully lay some eggs to pass its genes along. It's "job" if you will for the gene is to survive and to do that it must have infinite patience. We apes on the other hand can't wait for the pay off and so we get credit cards to pay off the previous credit cards to buy plasma screens we don't need. Personally I am no exception to the pattern of having made some dumb financial decisions over the years, so I am not in any way getting on some kind of "high horse" here. My point is, that we too, are "robots" programmed to carry the selfish genes, and thus, by studying other gene carriers, like in this instance the spider, we might get some insights into how to solve some of life's issues. The lesson of the little brown spider next to my tub is simple - Build. Wait. Reap.

Or put it another way from a Kevin Costner movie I enjoy: "If you build it, they will come."

If you build it, they will come. Not if you get an American Express card they will come. Not if you get the feds to bail you out they will come. But if you build it, they will come.

Just ask the spider.

Analyzing the relationship between a thought and associated neural events

2009-09-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

FACT: When a thought (e.g. "Neuroscience is boring") happens, neurons fire.

POSSIBLE INTERPERTATIONS of this FACT:

1) Mystical/Dualist: The thought caused the neurons to fire.
2) Quasi-Reductionist: The neurons firing caused the thought. (Quasi-Reductionist is my own term meant to convey that this
option is not necessarily the most consistent "reductionist" view to hold due to this option's apparent retention of a certain
dualism, which is made clear below.)
3) Ephiphenomenolist: The thought and the neurons firing happened simultaneously, but independentaly, neither causing
the other, they just happen to always be linked.
4) Eliminative Materialist: The "thought" does not exist per ce, the only "existant" is the neurons firing.
5) Other possibility (Eliminative Mystic/Mystic Monist? (again, my own terms here) ): The neurons firing is some sort of illusion, the
only "existant" is the thought - logically possible I suppose though nobody to my knowledge says this.

Leaving aside the clearly mystical 1) and 5) we are left with 2, 3, 4.

2 is attractive but the idea that neurons firing "cause" the thought still has the existant, the "thought", which is
non-computational - i.e. it might be "computational" in the sense that determining which neurons fired can tell us what
thought happened, so in that sense it is "computational" but the point is, we still have a "something else", the "thought"
which is non-physical, or at least is so by implication.

3 similar to 2, the epiphenominalist view, again, still has an apparently non-phyiscal existant, the "thought" involved.

4 is the only true physicalist option to have, that is, the "thought" does not "exist", the only "existant" we have, is
neurons firing.

Now, Dennett, the computationalist might be in a nuanced way between option 2 and option 4. That is, he might say the
neurons firing "cause" the thought in the sense that the "thought" is IDENTIFIED as a computation resulting from the
firing neurons, so to the extent the "computation" sort of "exists" then the thought would "exist" but it would exist only
as a computational "event" and not as a "thing".

Patricia Churchland would be more precisely on option 4, that is, whereas we could say that a computation performed by the
firing neurons is what is called parochially a "thought", that that is all a "thought" is, a parochial out-dated linguistic
mistake of referring to the neuron computation event. That is, for Churchland, it is not so much as the "thought" is
IDENTIFIED or EXISTS ONLY as a particular set of neurons firing in a particular way or performing a particular
computation, she would say that this is true, but she would go further and say the very word "thought" (along with "belief",
"desire", perhaps even "consciousness" itself) is a linguistic (mimetic) mistake. The thought does not exist in any coherent
sense at all. It is just the neurons firing.

Really I think Dennett and Churchland would agree, would both be on option 4. Dennett is described as a computationalist,
and Churchland an eliminative materialist, but it is just an issue of symantics. Dennett would say that a "thought" is
roughly a particular class of neuron computation. Churchland would agree, but would also say that the attribution of the
term "thought" to define said particular class of neuron computation is meaningless, that is, that "thought" has no
meaningful content whatsoever. I think if there is "daylight" between these views, it is this: for Dennett, a "thought"
might have meaning as a way of seperating out particular groupings of neuron computations, whereas for Churchland, insofar
as I understand it, it cannot even do this.

This is an empirical issue though: if we could define a set or group of neurons that always fired in a particular pattern
whenever the subject had a particular thought, then Dennett would be correct in the sense that a "thought" would "exist" if
only as a computational pattern. If on the other hand a subject thinking a particular thought did not predictably produce
a particular pattern of firing in a particular group of neurons, Churchland would be correct, that even this rather lowly
ontological status, that of a way of grouping neuron firing/computing patterns, cannot be ascribed to the word "thought".

For the purposes of the above, I am not making this rather nerdy distinction between Dennett's computationalist view and
Churchland's more "hard-line" eliminative materialist view - they would both be under option 4, that is, that the only
real "existant" is the firing neurons, and not the thought. The reason is that option 2, that of the neurons "causing" the
thought, still has elements of the mystical, that is, the thought still seems to be some "existant" that is ontologically
different from the firing neurons, that is, apparently non-physical.

The ONLY purely physical, non-mystical (or dualist if one prefers) choice is option 4, that is, that a thought is not a
"really real existant", so the sentence, "When a thought happens neurons fire" is in a sense totally meaningless, sort of
like saying, "When Thor speaks thunder happens" - there is no "Thor speaking", there is just the thunder, similarly, there
is no "thought happens", there is just "neurons fire", that is, if one adopts a consistently non-dualist, non-mystical,
purely physicalist point of view, which presumably is the stated or implicit goal of most scientists. Click here for an article on Stanford's website
outlining the arguments for and against the elimative materialist perspective.

"The King and the Lion" - A Poem by Frank Erdman III

2009-08-29T21:20:00.001-07:00

Before summer had spewed its last heat wave
And subsided at length to cool autumn
Before sounded the last seasonal rave
A distant dirge arose low and solemn.

A dirge rolled in with the Pacific surf
And silenced the beach goers by the shore
For it said that upon the nearby turf
Of Neverland, the King would sing no more.

The summer had turned from idle frolic
Into an inquiry on regicide
Making frenzied the placid, bucolic
drift of days now ruptured by homicide.

And as the summer madness compounded
Orphaned masses gibbering in town halls
Our jaded senses were yet astounded
While fixed on blogs and talk radio calls.

For before the summer had yet gone by
A midst rolled in from the North Atlantic
And the wounded Lion without a cry
Sailed beyond the ocean swells titanic.

And as the dog days of August dragged on
More than the cool relief autumn would bring
I think we wanted to hear the Lion
Sing again with the moon-walk of the King.

BlogKinnetic endorses Dr. Tom Stevens' "In Galt We Trust" Initiative

2009-08-15T09:52:00.001-07:00

Read all about it here: http://drtomstevens.blogspot.com/2009/08/stevens-starts-in-galt-we-trust.html

Dr. Tom Stevens, Chairman of the Objectivist Party has launched an initiative for a grass roots effort to cross out the word "God" on paper money and replace it with "Galt", using a black magic marker, which is legal, and sends a strong message about the separation of church and state, and will get people to ask: "Who is John Galt?"

If I might paraphrase President Thomas Jefferson: "I have sworn upon the alter of [Galt] eternal hostility towards every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Jefferson, Washington, and their compatriots modeled this Republic upon, and only upon, the Roman Republic, based upon the age old motto, "Senatatus Populus Que Romanus", that is that the Roman government was centered upon the Senate, and thereby, upon the people of Rome, and not upon an emporer or a king or a tyrant or a religion. The United States was founded as a secular, democratic, free nation, and not founded upon any religion. That the word "God" has gotten into the currency would be an affront to Jefferson and his contemporaries.

Crossing out "God" on paper money and replacing it with "Galt" sends a strong signal to preserve the secular heritage of our Republic, and not let it get taken over by theocrats on the religious right. Needless to say, "Galt" is only a metaphor, a metaphor for saying we trust in ourselves, we take responsibility for our own lives and actions, and do not expect a nanny state, or a Deity, to take care of things for us.

I therefore proudly support the "In Galt We Trust" initiative by Dr. Tom Stevens of the Objectivist Party, and encourage rational persons who love freedom to do the same.

Frank Erdman
Austin, Texas
August 15, 2009 C.E.

Quote to think about:"If we are not within ourselves, we are without." - Chris Crocker

2009-07-31T20:30:00.000-07:00

Source Video from youtube

I try to keep it varied here on BlogKinnetic, so, if the last few posts I have done have been of more of the serious "essay" type posts, I'll do a couple of posts linking to videos, some serious, some more for comical relief, sometimes somewhere in between. At any rate I don't want to have every post be a philosophical essay as much fun as that is! Now, at the risk of alienating some of my more "serious" or "intellectual" readers, I must confess of late I have developed somewhat of a "school girl crush" :-) or at least a decided fascination with Internet Icon and video blogger often found on youtube, Chris Crocker, who became known for his "rant" against the paparazzi who were profiting from the misfortunes of Britney Spears, a rant I feel was very timely and well placed, as we have known at least since the death of HRH the Princess of Wales what travesties can be caused by sensationalist and unscrupulous paparazzi. Now, as some of the more "tech savvy" might know, one can "subscribe" to people's "channels" on youtube. I have a youtube account, though have not gotten into the whole posting videos thing (yet). I was a relative "late comer" to the blogosphere and I imagine I shall perhaps try out reading some of my rants on youtube aloud one of these days but as I am at the moment still recovering from having to adjust to those noisy horseless carriage contraptions it may be a while yet, ha! At any rate, I subscribe to Crocker's youtube channel and try to catch his videos when I can. The interesting thing about him is whereas on the surface he is your stereotypical over-the-top, super-dramatic drag queen, there is actually a very serious and even deep thinker there beneath the surface if one gets past the occasional well-rehearsed histrionics. Anyway the above video is his discussion on the situation of realizing when it is time to move on from a relationship, if the other person is not as "invested" into it as is oneself, a situation many have to think about from time to time. He often has some very clever, "catch phrase" sort of things, and so at the end of this one he came up with the rather witty, "If we are not within ourselves, we are without." Meaning, if we are not content within ourselves, if we need someone else to sort of "complete" us, then we are "without", we are not a complete individual. I could go into the notions of existential freedom and Nietzsche's "Overman" ideas but perhaps I'll resist the temptation, ha! I think this rather clever quote speaks for itself. It is a simple idea, but people miss it, and it is worth repeating. If one is not happy with oneself for whatever reason, if one has self-esteem issues for whatever reason, if one feels a more than average amount of "angst" perhaps, then one is likely to have issues of co-dependence and so forth down the road. The basic point being, we must like ourselves, and be complete within ourselves - we must embrace our being, and it is only from this stance, only from a stance of embracing our freedom as rational beings free to make choices and harness nature in the pursuit of happiness, can we be in a position to be happy, and indeed, to attract like-minded partners. I think the point is an uncontroversial one, but I thought I'd blog about it because it is easy to forget, it is easy to feel "incomplete" since perhaps we all by nature live in a state of fear, afraid of making choices and determining actions, afraid of carving out for ourselves our own destiny. That is a discussion in itself, which I won't get into, but the point is very simple: we must like ourselves first, and this must not depend on whether or not someone else does.

Ayn Rand talks about the three cardinal values from which all other values derive - Reason, Purpose, and Self-Esteem. We must harness natural resources through productive work using our Reason, we must do this to live. We must have a sense of Purpose, the purpose being ultimately the choice of existence over non-existence, the goal to live freely and to be happy with other free and independent people. And we must have Self-Esteem, we must believe ourselves to be worthy of liberty and personal fulfillment. And Self-Esteem comes through the practice of Virtue, which means to use our reason and our physical capabilities to produce, to create in free trade with our fellows, to be producers rather than parasites. As we are producers we pocess Virtue, which means we may Love ourselves, we may have Self-Esteem. As she said, "virtue is the currency of love", meaning that we love that which is of virtue, and thus if we ourselves have virtue, then we may love ourselves. And it is this Self-Esteem that is needed along with our Reason to achieve our Purpose which is happiness. As this Self-Esteem is based upon our Virtue (in Aristotle's sense of the word), it cannot then and should not then be based upon what a partner or love interest thinks or feels, it must rather be an Objective viewpoint based upon our objective virtues. Damn. I promised myself I wasn't going to get into philosophy. Oh well. :-) Anyway, just wanted to bring attention to that very important point made by Chris Crocker, and thank you, Chris, for the reminder of something that is too easy for people (myself included) to forget, that we must be "within ourselves" or else be "without". [By the way the remarks above about the relationship between Reason, Purpose, and Self-Esteem as the cardinal values from which all others are derived are largely taken from the video I posted previously that someone made adapted from the famous "John Galt" speech from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.]

"This is John Galt Speaking" - Link to youtube video series

2009-07-24T09:11:00.000-07:00

This is an excellent series (6 of them) of youtube videos of approx. 10 minutes each, based upon John Galt's speech in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. Whilst political and economic views differ and are debatable amongst reasonable persons, and honestly I have not worked all those out to my own satisfaction yet, on the other hand personally I have not yet encountered a more cogent epistemology than the one presented by Ayn Rand through her character John Galt. As I recently posted an essay of mine "skewering" the incoherence and false presumptions of Reformed Epistemology, I wanted to present what I feel is a better, and indeed perhaps, the only rational alternative, and so thought I could do worse than to post this youtube series I recently came across. Enjoy!

Link to Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luKo_w-EVmU

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Reformed Epistomology's Fatal Flaw

2009-07-15T21:53:00.000-07:00

Reformed Epistomology is an interesting sociological phenomenon. It is used to lend intellectual underpinnings to some of the most extreme forms of Christain theism. The thing of it is, no matter what lunacy Reformed Epistomology is there to undergird, the epistomology itself is often not adaquately addressed by opponents. Opponents too often point to the lunacy, without addressing the epistomological issues. For example, the late Greg Bahnsen, who wanted to stone to death misbehaving children, along with gays and pagan practitioners and other various "infidels", was perhaps the pre-eminent proponent of Reformed Epistomology (as discussed in wikipedia, for the reader who wants to check into the background here), being a protege of Cornelius Van Til, who was perhaps the most extensive elucidator of such epistomology. Bahnsen, smart if in a psychotic sort of way, sort of like, say, Hitler, took the epistomology of Van Til, and then added his little bit about stoning little brats who didn't eat their vegtables. Only problem was, Bahnsen's opponents were not always very good at debating him, because their arguments often amounted to pointing out his obvious insanity, rather than trying to intelligently address the epistomological underpinnings Bahnsen cleverly employed for his more nefarious ends. Both because I have a general interest in epistomology and philosophy in general, and also perhaps because, as a gay American I would be at the top of Reichsmarshall Bahnsen's hit list along with the other "faggots" - a term favored by Bahnsen comrade-in-arms and revisionist self-styled historian Otto Scott who blamed the Civil War on the folks in the North who very impolitely had the audacity to call for an end to slavery - I sort of am naturally interested in the debate regarding Reformed Epistomology, and I should like to briefly address why I feel it is flawed, due to an unspoken presumption it makes about the nature of the human mind, a presumption that is not a priori, and being not a priori, therefore renders the whole of Reformed Epistmology suspect.

Reformed Epistmology essentially says that our minds are "corrupted" by "sin" and therefore we can't be "certain" of anything, and thus the only way to "know" is through the "Word of God", and by that is meant not simply the Christian Bible but the Bible as viewed through the Puritanic lens of John Calvin, etc. Now the concept of "self-supporting delusion" seems lost on these people. If I say I met an alien, but further more claim that the alien said I could not take its picture because that would violate his personal sensitivities, that would be an example of a "self-supporting delusion" - it is very convenient for me to claim that the reason I have no picture of the alien is because the alien did not want me to take his picture - perhaps simply I dreamt up the alien to begin with. Similarly, it is a self-supporting delusion to say the only "true knowledge" we can get is through John Calvin and company's own personal interpertations of the Christain Bible because we cannot trust our own reason because that is "corrupted" by "sin". How convenient. I can't trust my own mind because of some "sin" you just made up, so now I have to take your word for it on the source of all knowledge. Cute. Maybe instead I should reject your view that human reason is suspect and corrupt to begin with. Reformed Epistomology is a classic example of a self-supporting delusion. But, it gets worse. There is an assumption beyond the self-supporting delusion manifested by its claim that sin corrupts the human mind. It is an assumption related to the mind itself.

Reformed Epistomology presumes a Cartesian Mind.

Reformed Epistomology presumes a Cartesian Mind, setting up a problem to which it then claims to have an answer for. Remove the problem, remove the need for an answer, specifically the rediculous self-serving answers of Reformed Epistomology.

The problem predicated by a Cartesian Mind goes like this: if my internal mental states are not necessarily related to the outside world I am observing, then I could be "tricked" by a kind of demon such as was spoken of in a thought experiment by Descartes. The whole world could be a delusion of some sort, if my internal thoughts do not have to be connected to the world that they contemplate and observe. If I have a Cartesian Mind, a mind with its own inviolate mental states which might possibly be totally disconnected from the outside world, that is, if I have mental states whose origin may not be related to the outside world, then heavans, I could be getting fooled by my own original sin, and I best run to John Calvin or whomever else for advice. A Cartesian Mind is a mind whose internal mental states do not have to originate or be related to, the outside, physical, real world. They could be, but they don't have to. Reformed Epistomology creates a problem in order to solve it. It presupposes that we have Cartesian Minds, that essentially our mental states are such that they don't need to be connected to the outside world. If they don't have to be, then that creates a problem, an epistomological crisis, and in comes Reformed Epistomology to conveniently save the day from the problem it itself has engendered in the first place.

What Reformed Epistomology misses, is that OUR MINDS DO NOT HAVE TO BE CARTESIAN, AND INDEED, IT WOULD BE ABSURD IN THE EXTREME TO THINK THEY ARE. Think about it: if I am hungry, I am probably irritable. My internal mental state is one of irritation, caused by, originated in, the state of hunger. If I satiate my hunger with a good meal, my internal mental state turns to one of satisfaction, rather than irritation. Just as my old state of irritation had the physical cause of my being hungry, so my new state of satisfaction has the physical cause of my having eaten. All the way down the line, we can connect internal mental states to phenomena in the outside world. And we can do this as an objective, not a subjective science. Because the same external causes will cause the same mental states in different people. Take anyone anywhere in the world, and starve them for a day, and guess what, they are going to be irritable. Feed them, and they will be happier. The point is, we can randomly select individuals and put the same physical inputs to them, and get the same mental states as outputs. And of course, the more we know about how the physical state of the brain (blood flow in different regions for instance) alters mental states, the more connected becomes the outside, physical world with our subjective mental states. Only in a fantasy world where people have Cartesian Minds, minds that have the potential to be disconnected from the physical world they think they live in, does an epistomological crisis arise, where Reformed Epistomology can then come to the rescue. But if we do not have Cartesian Minds, that is, if the origin of our mental states is entirely co-terminous with the physical world, and if we would not have internal mental states at all were it not for an objectively verifiable, outside, physical, "real", world, then we do not have Cartesian Minds. If our minds are caused by physical effects, and the states therein are caused by physical effects, there is no way a Cartesian Demon can fool us about the world, and thus no need whatsoever for Reformed Epistomology to sweep to the rescue.

Surely the discussion of Cartesian Minds is lengthy and I am not delving into that here at this moment, but the point is, for Reformed Epistomology to have weight, one must presuppose Cartesian Minds. And whatever else one might say, I think we can safely say that we at the very least cannot presuppose Cartesian Minds. Could we debate it? Perhaps. There are obviously complications whenevrer talk turns to things of minds and consciousness and things of that nature. But the bottom line here is that we cannot blithely presuppose ourselves to have Cartesian Minds, which is precisely what Reformed Epistomology does. Naturalism does not lead to hyperbolic skepticism. It only has this danger for a Cartesian Mind. But if the mind can be shown to arise only from physical causes, then there is no place for hyperbolic skepticism a la the "what is really real" variety. If a mind by definition is an effect of physical causes, and cannot be other than that, then there is never any danger of our minds misleading us as to what is "real", contrary to what sophistry one hears from amateur thinkers, especially of the Hollywood variety fromm time to time.

Much more could be said along these lines, but I just wanted to make this simple point: Reformed Epistomology presupposes without warrant Cartesian Minds, and it is this unwarrented presupposition that one must engage upon in discussions. Future nutcases like Bahnsen will not be exorcised from mainstream society by childish tantrums regarding hateful political views. They will only be exoricsed by engaging the obvious flaws of the philosophy which underpins said hateful political views.

Take home point: next time someone accuses naturalism of leading to hyper-bolic skepticism, counter that this assertion presupposes a Cartesian view of mind, which is also necessarily an essentialist view of mind, points richly up for debate, and points whose employment as axioms can only be said to be profligate intellectual chutzpah.

Frank Erdman
Austin, Texas
July 16, 2009 C.E.

F. Murray Abraham Confesses to Murder of Michael Jackson

2009-07-01T17:27:00.000-07:00

F. Murray Abraham

The King of Pop, Michael Jackson

NEW YORK - F. Murray Abraham, an actor best known for supporting roles in films such as Scarface and Mimic reportedly experienced a mental break-down late last night and was rushed to the hospital suffering from a self-inflicted knife wound to the throat. Details are scant, but witnesses say he was screaming to ER responders incoherently regarding the passing of the once and future King of Pop, Michael Jackson, apparently implicating himself in the tragic death of the pop star. A witness, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that Abraham kept shouting out, "Forgive me, Michael! I killed you! Forgive me!"

Abraham was soon sedated and taken to a nearby hospital where he remains in stable condition, but is being kept on for psychiatric evaluation.

Abraham and his wife, Kate Hannan (pictured below) were reportedly preparing to attend this weekend's public memorial service for Mr. Jackson being held in his hometown of Gary, Indiana, when Abraham experienced a mental break down. Los Angeles police have refused comment on Abraham's self-accusations, citing an ongoing investigation. The L.A. coroner's office likewise refused comment.

Anonymous sources pointed to Fr. Vogler (pictured below) as Abraham's spiritual adviser. Unconfirmed reports say that Vogler mentioned Abraham had fantasized about God looking down on his greatest creation, his greatest gift to humanity, Michael Jackson, in a little coffin, destined for an unmarked grave, the gift snatched away from mankind long before its time, thereby foiling God's plans. Vogler allegedly mentioned that Abraham seemed to have felt that by murdering Mr. Jackson he somehow avenged himself upon God for vague grievances ranging from early rejection in his career by New York area theaters to his later post-Oscar career demise. Fr. Vogler and the Vatican have both refused comment, citing confidentiality between parishioners and their priests.

Sources say his wife, Ms. Hannan, still plans to go to Mr. Jackson's memorial service, and with Mr. Abraham if he is recovered enough by then to attend. Access to Mr. Abraham has been refused by the hospital so no comment has yet been able to obtained directly from him.

However, a nurse who tends to Mr. Abraham says that whereas he has not spoken with anyone (except for possibly his spiritual adviser Fr. Vogler) he did make one request: one black crayon. The nurse alleges that he found scrawled upon the padded walls of Mr. Abraham's cell the following segment of verse:

"Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'alls neighborhood

I'm gonna thrill ya tonight, ooh baby
I'm gonna thrill ya tonight, oh darlin'
Thriller night, baby, ooh!

The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom

And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller"

The nurse swears that upon reading that in the cell, he could hear the faint sound of laughter, almost as if it came from a man whose voice had never deepened beyond adolescence. He claims Mr. Abraham seemed to hear the sound too, and seemed to smile resignedly, as if waiting, the nurse said, "for an avenging angel to arrive sent to smite the man who had taken from the world the greatest musical gift God had ever bestowed."

Kate Hannan, Abraham's wife

Fr. Vogler, alleged spiritual adviser to Abraham

Dawkins lecture on the "Purpose of Purpose"

2009-06-21T11:28:00.000-07:00

Earlier in this blog, here, I have discussed how "Why" questions or "purpose" questions are often misused. In the video below, at Oklahoma University, Professor Richard Dawkins discusses this very issue - how purpose arises, and how it gets put to use or misuse in various respects in human culture. He discusses how there are two types of purpose: "archeo-purpose", and "neo-purpose". Archeo-purpose refers to anatomical features in an animal that have evolved for the "purpose" of a certain function - the wing of a bird has an "archeo-purpose" to fly. "Neo-purpose" refers to human design - the "neo-purpose" of an aeroplane is to fly, that is, unless we are talking about AirBus, whose products seems patently incapable of remaining intact from take-off to landing, but that is another story, ha. The discussion on how flowers mold themselves to attract certain insects is really fascinating - that is, selection molds flowers to attract particular insects for the "purpose" (archeo-purpose) of pollination. Roughly, archeo-purpose is purpose arising from natural selection that requires no "intelligence" behind it, and neo-purpose refers to human inventions that do require "intelligence". A satire early in the talk about needing equal time for "The Intelligent Falling Theory of Gravity" and the "The Stork Theory of Reproduction" is well worth the viewing just in itself. Enjoy!

A Possible 2016 Contender for the Democratic Presidential Nomination

2009-06-04T18:55:00.000-07:00

Chris Kennedy is the President of Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc. in Chicago, which controls leasing for the famous Merchandise Mart building now owned by Vornado Reality Trust. Notably, it is the world's largest LEED certified building, establishing Merchandise Mart as a leading example for "Green" building standards. Mr. Kennedy is being mentioned as a possible Senate candidate next year, since Senator Burris, appointed by former Governor Rod Blagojevich, may not be the strongest candidate in a general election and may well face a primary challenge. Since Mr. Kennedy has been in Chicago for over two decades and is well-established in business, political, and artistic circles there, and generally has a "nice guy/family man" sort of reputation, he seems to be a strong possibility for the Senate race. Clearly, the "Chicago Political Machine" has always been a strong force, going back to Mayor Dalay and is now of course stronger than ever, with President Obama's Administration in place. I think with Mr. Kennedy's connections, he can easily get the Senate nomination, and given the general current trends of Illinois and the general disarray of the GOP currently, I think he would have the edge in the general election. Assuming he wins, then six years between 2010 and 2016 is a long time. If President Obama wins re-election in 2012, I don't see an obvious front-runner in 2016, since Vice-President Biden would be a bit too old by that point. If President Obama does not win re-election (and the only scenario I can think of right now where he would not win is if the economy continues to tank, the Afganistan war goes on without a clear exit, and a strong GOP candidate with middle-of-the-road credentials is put forward, most likely former Governor Romney of Massachusetts or perhaps former Governor Bush of Florida), for whatever reason, if President Obama does not win re-election, then the Democratic field is certainly wide-open.

Now, in the Democratic Party they like looking for the "fresh face", normally youthful candidate (e.g. Gov. Clinton in 1992, Gov. Carter in 1976) whereas the GOP goes with more the "establishment" person (e.g. Sen. Dole in 1996, Gov. Reagan in 1980). Remember Sen. Edwards was a first term Senator when he first ran for President in 2004, and Christopher Kennedy is relatively young, and I think he might be a "fresh face" for the Democratic Party come 2016, provided he establishes a good strong start in the Senate. I needn't mention that his father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York, had only been in the Senate four years when he ran for President in 1968, so there is ample precedant for young Senators making a try for the end zone early in their careers. Christopher Kennedy has a great record as a businessman and patron of the arts over the decades in Chicago, and he needs to run on that for Senate next year. He can avoid the charge of cashing in on his name if he just points to his record of execution at Merchandise Mart as proof of his experience, much as President George W. Bush pointed to his record in business when he sucessfully ran for Governor of Texas in 1994, thus largely avoiding the charge of sort of cashing in on his name. If Kennedy does that, he can get elected to the Senate. But he needs to be his own person, and not seem like he is connected to the "establishment" - of course he is, but I do believe he can be elected just on his own merits of competency in business, a great environmental record, an above-reproach family life, etc. And if he throws himself into the Senate with the same gusto as he has with Merchandise Mart, then who knows what can happen in 2016. I am sort of half-way predicting this. I am not "betting" on a Chris Kennedy for President campaign in 2016, but I am just saying it makes sense, and I would not be surprised. Especially the business experience there helps - in either party, showing fiscal competency is very helpful, especially with the national debt and related issues going on right now. Fiscal discipline trascends party, and helps bring in the independent voters, roughly speaking, people for example like myself, who might describe themselves as "liberal" on certain social issues, but "conservative" on certain fiscal issues. Anyway, I am just floating this as a possibility. But if it happens, you heard it here first folks, ha!

Here is the article from the Chicago Sun Times discussing Kennedy's (probable) Senate run next year: http://www.suntimes.com/news/sneed/1581374,chris-kennedy-us-senate-run-051909.article.

Proposed "Meta-Human Rights" Amendment

2009-05-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

This was originally put forward to the Facebook group of the Objectivist Party. Please visit www.objectivistparty.org for more information on the party. This is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution to include human rights for AI entities and other related issues. AI, in terms of self-aware, thinking, speaking beings, should be here in as soon as a decade. I could back that up, but I won't right now. Perhaps in a follow-up post, since that is a lengthy discussion. At any rate, I strongly believe that any entity, whether it is AI, Martian, or whatever, that is self-aware as we are, has the right to exist, just as we have a right to exist, by virtue of the fact that A is A, Man is Man, Sentient Beings are Sentient Beings. Which is another long conversation. But here I am just re-posting an updated draft of the original proposal put forward. This may sound like science fiction, but I can assure you, it is quickly becoming science fact, and I am completely serious.

Perhaps I am somewhat before the times, as was Zarathustra, but I can live with that. :-) Enjoy!

{As a qualifier: I noticed upon re-reading these articles that I had conflated two essentially different points into one possibly confusing amalgamation and I think I should clarify it: my basic point was that self-aware, thinking beings of whatever sort, AI, Human, Alien, are to be afforded human rights consistent with objectivist principles. That was my basic point. I furthermore went off on my own a bit and threw in some stuff that more generally, even those animals which are not self-aware in the human sense, but nevertheless can feel pain, like dogs or cats or hermit crabs, whereas as these creatures are not to be afforded human/sentient-ai/visiting-alien rights, still these creatures should be protected from pain and mistreatment to the extent possible. This is kind of a separate issue, but I figured while I was at it, I might as well throw that in as well. For example, on the issue of not causing pain or minimizing this, I do understand we need to hunt, and I am not saying not to, I am just saying there are humane and not so humane ways of doing that. Also, for another example, whereas I proudly support Roe vs. Wade, I do not support third trimester - late term - abortion which was not covered by that decision, for the same basic reason as why I would not want to be cruel to hermit crabs. Both a hermit crab and an eight month old fetus can possibly feel pain, and who knows, could possibly dream. And I therefore do not condone harming such creatures unless necessary. So, roughly, I am saying self-aware robots and aliens should have the same rights we do, but down the scale a bit, we should minimize the infliction of pain upon those creatures, like third trimester fetuses and hermit crabs that could possibly feel pain. I'll maybe expound upon this on another post, but I just had to clarify this at the outset. The main motivation behind these articles was the AI issue, but then that got me onto other things too.}

Proposed United Sates Constitutional Amendment Concering the Rights of Sentient Entities Other Than Homo Sapiens Sapiens

Informally called: "Meta-Human Rights Amendment"

Created by Frank Erdman III, Objectivist Party - Austin Texas circa 2009

[Please note: it is the intention of this author that in the event of secession by Texas, as is at present being discussed, that these articles shall be amended accordingly and presented for adoption by the legislature of the Republic of Texas, and this author would hope that Texas would in this event work with the United States in encouraging a similar amendment being passed there, but since the author is a member of the Texas Affiliate of the Objectivist Party, naturally Texas is the author's first concern.]

1) All Great Apes, defined by recognized biological authorities as such and including but not limited to Humans, Orangutans, Chimpanzees, and Gorillas shall not be denied Life and Liberty by any State or by the United States. [E.G. Spain has similar laws in place today.] This Liberty may be confined so as to not interfere with Human Liberty but only insofar as is necessary, and maximal liberty to Simian Species shall be endowed, with reasonable latitude afforded to States as to the what constitutes "maximal liberty".

2) Any communicative/intelligent visitor from another civilization besides planet Earth shall be treated by the United States and by all States therein with all the respect accorded to foreign dignitaries, and the abuse or restrictions of the persons or welfares of extra-terrestrial delegations shall not be tolerated.

3) All communicative non-carbon based life forms, whether they be mechanical or digital, internet-based, or physically imbued in the natural world as a robot, shall be afforded the rights and respect due proportional to the complexity which they exhibit. That is to say, if a robot or internet-based life form has the same level of complexity regarding interaction with its environment as the does the nervous systems of the Great Apes, than said robot or internet-based life form shall have the same level of rights conferred to them as do the Great Apes.

4) Point 3 shall be extended across the animal kingdom in the natural world as well, such that, if an animal show capacity for pain then efforts shall be undertaken to not inflict pain and to not harm their welfare in interactions with them. Thus this ties all preceding points together, namely, that Sentient Entities shall be afforded the same rights, and if such Sentient Entities have the same level of intelligence/capacity for pain/etc. as does Humans, then those Entities too shall be afforded the same rights as Humans, whether these Entities be Extra-Terrestrial, Digital, or Biological in nature, including but not limited too the Great Apes of Earth, and the marine mammals such as Dolphins, Whales, and Sea Lions. The goal of these articles is that all Sentient Life shall be protected and preserved just as we formerly have sought to protect and preserve the Life of Humankind. States have latitude here as well as to particulars of how to approach conservation efforts and protections of various species within the constraints as set forth herein, the idea being that "intelligent/sentient" species have greater liberties, but even species with only limited intelligence but intelligence enough to feel pain, would, by virtue of their being able to feel pain, therefore need to be protected, with particulars left up to individual states, pursuant to the ideals of Federalism.

5) The points herein shall go into effect immediately in the United States, in all States therein, and in all Territories and Protectorates of the same, and furthermore the United states shall work with her allies and the United Nations to peacefully encourage the adoption of these principles by all nations on Earth. It follows that as humankind is forced to reflect upon the rights of AI entities and the like, it will be forced to reflect on human rights abuses which may still be extant.

6) These rights stem from Objectivist first principles that A is A and Man is Man. Namely that all free-thinking rational beings deserve the freedom to pursue their own enlightened self-interest, their own happiness, to be defined as a state of "non-contradictory joy".

7) A person found to be in violation of these articles, shall be punished just as if a violation had been done to a Human. For example, if a Person murdered a Robot that is self-aware, that Person would be tried not for destruction of Property but rather for Murder. The responsibility of an actor is in proportion to his level of Sentience, that is, a person with an IQ of 150 is more culpable by law than a person with an IQ of 70, since the higher IQ person ought to have known better. In dealing with wrong-doers, Human, Android, Alien, or Simian and the like, latitude is granted to state governments, provided undue force and draconian and antiquated penal measures are avoided, for instance, in the case of Murder, whether Human on Android, or Android on Human, the routes of exile or incarceration and/or rehabilitation are to be preferred to capital punishment, though this decision is ultimately and finally a state and not a federal issue.

8) The Sentient Beings of the Multiverse, Human, Simian, Robotic, Marine, or Alien, or any similar Entity, shall not molest nor harm one another and there shall be a live and let live policy amongst them, and each individual sentient being shall have the Moral Right to pursue his or her own happiness and not to intefer with the happiness of another, and this includes the Responsibility to work for one's own needs and wants rather than existing as a parasite with respect to another Sentient Being, that is to say, all Sentient Beings have the right to live in freedom as producers, but this freedom may be revoked in the case of parasites such as televangelists and dictators such as those who wish to enforce carbon emissions standards upon the public by force instead of by voluntary choice.

9) Only if sufficient harm to an individual is deemed to result from various sorts of miscegenation shall miscegenation be limited by law, which means for instance that Human - Android, Human - Alien, and Human - Simian conjugal relations are not to be constrained by law unless sufficient harm could arise to the actors involved and this can be objectively demonstrated by reasonable due process of law.

10) The above points regarding the rights of Sentient Beings also apply to any extinct beings like Neanderthals which may one day be brought back by cloning, the basic point generally being here that if an Entity of whatever form it is has sufficient intelligence to demand its right to Exist, then, just by virtue of being able to articulate said demand, the demand must be granted, pursuant to the Law of Identity and Objectivist Ethics generally, and, in the case of lower intelligences which yet have the ability to experience pain, then these must be approached with all possibility humane treatment, avoiding, to the extent possible, "speciesism" to use the term used by Richard Dawkins. Another way to think about this: if an animal has a nervous system, then its rights go up proportional to the complexity of that nervous system because this relates to ability to feel pain and so forth all the way up to self-awareness and language, whereas an animal, like say a sponge, with no nervous system, would not have "rights" as such, since there would be no particular entity to speak of to which to attribute those rights in that case. These are obviously complex issues with many grey areas, and once again, particulars are left to individual states, provided the broad spirit of these articles is preserved.

"KNOWLEDGE" - A Poem

2009-05-09T15:53:00.000-07:00

We know through words. And these words are symbols.
But the symbol is not the image.
The image is pointed to by the symbol.

The image is the sensate apprehension.
The apprehension of what a later symbol calls "reality".

The real. The image. The symbolic. Words.
And from these sounds and written symbols
meant to manipulate our way in the world
manipulate the environment, each other and ourselves
from these mere replicating changing words
that jump from brain to brain
we are to know that which we fancy as "truth"?

Memes arose to serve the genes who now serve them.
But these memes give us absolute knowledge?

A is A, a thing is itself, sure.
It exists by virtue of being identified as itself
As distinguished from other things,
It exists by virtue of having attributes
For it must have attributes to have identity.
An attribute-less thing, is not.

There are things with attributes
And among these are things which attribute these attributes
if you will, there is identity and there is identification.
And the rest, well, mere memetic muddles.

Frank Erdman
Austin, Texas
May 9, 2009 C.E.

The Anti-Marriage Equality Forces Trample the Constitution

2009-05-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

Much focus in the marriage equality movement has centered around the obvious historical facts that if marriage were not an evolving notion, it would look very different today than in fact it does.

If marriage as a legal concept had not evolved, people would still:

1) Be able to be married at age 14 or 15
2) The male would be allowed to have multiple female "wives"
3) The male could choose to marry a close relative
4) Inter-racial marriage would not be allowed
5) Abusive husbands could still refuse their wives a divorce

These speak for themselves. If society and jurisprudence did not allow the idea of marriage to evolve, the "institution of marriage" would not be "one man/one woman" as religious extremists shriek incessantly to the drones of the faithful. Solomon had 1000 wives. So the "sacred institution" of marriage is closer to one man/up to 1000 wives of the same race who might be underage and who also might be close relatives, even to the point of it being a sister, as some of the Pharaohs had it.

Marriage evolves in jurisprudence. Nowhere in the United States is one allowed to marry one's sister, even though in so-called "Biblical" times this was perfectly fine (e.g. Abraham and his half-sister/wife Sarah). Despite the best efforts of the Mormon Church, polygamy is also outlawed, and thus it appears the Mormons are trying to make up for this defeat by trying to stop the marriage equality movement for gays and lesbians. Only in the state of Alabama can one marry at age 15, the same brilliant state that shot fire hoses at innocent civilians protesting for the rights of African-Americans to vote. And of course inter-racial marriage has only been allowed in all states since the 1967 Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision on the subject. So basically at the time the President of the United States was born, his own parents would not have been allowed to marry in several states in the same Republic their son would grow up to lead. In addition, if marriage had not evolved in jurisprudence, wife-beaters could still retain their supposed right to use their wife as a punching bag because often divorce had to be consented to by the husband. Today this is seen as the mid-evil barbarity it is.

Sorry, religious right, but marriage in jurisprudence is not "one man/one woman" (where the woman is often seen as decidedly the subservient partner in the relationship, as for instance, religious leader Pat Robertson has clearly stated as being his viewpoint). It is an ever-evolving notion. The same folks who worked tirelessly to stop the "civilization threatening horror" of inter-racial marriage as they perceived it, are now using the same existential sorts of terminologies to warn of the dire consequences of marriage for gays and lesbians. Well, guess what, inter-racial marriage did not hurt Western Civilization, and neither is giving committed couples of the same sex the same rights and responsibilities as their straight counterparts doing any harm either, in states where it has already been implemented, including the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

But there is a deeper point here. Frankly, if your religion wants to have polygamy as did the Mormons, or ban inter-racial marriage as did Bob Jones University of the Christian extremist right wing, I don't give a hoot. The point at issue is not what people privately believe about marriage. (Oh, incidentally, another irony is here: whereas for centuries religions including Christianity fought inter-racial marriage, in the book of Genesis in the Bible it talks about the "sons of men" breeding with the angels, whom some serious religious apologists think may have been a reference to space aliens, so, apparently, in certain religious circles, it is wrong if you are white to date an African-American person, but if it is E.T., knock yourself out, provided E.T. is of the opposite gender!!) The point is civil jurisprudence and separation of church and state.

"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

This means the law cannot favor one religion over another. It is fine for people to believe what they want about marriage, but it is NOT fine to side with one religion over another on issues of civil liberties. The Unitarian Universalist tradition for instance supports marriage equality. SO BANNING MARRIAGE EQUALITY FOR GAYS AND LESBIANS IS TANTAMOUNT TO SIDING WITH RELIGIONS THAT OPPOSE EQUALITY OVER RELIGIONS THAT SUPPORT EQUALITY. Full stop. President Washington clearly said that the United States was "in no way founded upon the Christian religion". So, laws passed in legislatures banning equality is favoring one religion's view (e.g. Christianity's) over another's (e.g. Unitarian Universalism). The free exercise clause means the Jerry Falwell's and James Dobson's of the world can continue to spew their hate over the airwaves until the rapture, but the no establishment clause means the law cannot take their side, the law cannot discriminate and violate people's civil rights just because one religion or another tells them to. Legislatures should know this, and the courts should know this, and in my opinion, existing state-level statutes against equality should be struck down by the Supreme Court on constitutional grounds, since it is codifying discrimination based upon nothing other than religiously motivated bigotry. Religions can choose whom to allow into their membership and whom to marry, but the law must be impartial, and this means the law cannot take sides on issues of civil liberties.

The Romer v. Evans (1996) and Lawrence v. Texas (2004) Supreme Court decisions combine to demonstrate that the gay community is a protected minority under the Constitution, and that their rights cannot be taken away by legislative action. These decisions show that "gay rights" are really "civil rights" and these issues fall into constitutional civil rights issues. Denying marriage equality is the same constitutional nonsense as were the anti-miscegenation laws, over-turned by the Loving v. Virginia (1967) decision. Both the anti-miscegenation laws and the anti-equality laws of today violate the equal protection clause in constitutional law. For marriage equality to continue to be denied is a civil rights violation whose only justification stems not from law but from certain religions, and this is not therefore a legal argument, nor a valid line of reasoning to deny equality, especially as one would certainly need a very powerful legal argument to overcome the equal protection clause issues, and religious differences is not this argument. It is my strong opinion that it will only be a matter of time before the above-mentioned precedents combine to causing the Supreme Court to rectify marriage equality inequities once and for all.

In summary, not only has marriage always been "re-defined", re-defined from the incestuous, polygamous, pederast, racialist, mysogonyst institution it often was in ancient times to today's standard of a hopefully equal committed partnership between two consenting adults. Race and gender should not factor in, and if it does, then it does so only because of religious arguments, and to base the law upon those arguments violates the separation clause of the constitution, not to mention the equal protection principle.

UFO Filmed Above London

2009-05-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

On April 15, 2009, this remarkable footage of an apparent sequence of UFO(s) was taken in London:

I don't know what precisely this is. But this actual footage captured only a fortnight or so ago in London gives one pause for thought. David Cameron, MP, Leader of the Conservative Party did well in recent council elections and analysts believe is set to beat Prime Minister Brown whenever Mr. Brown has the guts to call for an election.

Listen, I'm not Fox Mulder. Frankly I have no idea why extra-terrestrials would want to check out London, at least in this economy, but my pet theory is that the Inter-Galactic Council has decided it needs Earth to be a peaceful place, as in that movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, since an earth at war could pose a threat to neighboring solar systems. And thus perhaps they feel Oxbridge educated Cameron is better suited to lead Britain than the person who held Blair's coat tails all the way along to ignominy and defeat with Bush in Baghdad. Britain needs change. Cameron can deliver that change. And I'm thinking, even the extra-terrestrials know that.

[Original footage from my traditionally reliable online sources. Disclaimer: I like David Cameron, but this posting is largely to be taken cum grano salis, for entertainment purposes only. :-) ]

UFO Resembling Octopus Filmed in Brazil

2009-04-30T19:17:00.001-07:00

According to a reliable online news source a UFO was recently filmed in Brazil, which initially appeared to look roughly like a jellyfish, but as "tentacle" like features grew it assumed the shape of a sort of octopus, before reverting to its original shape. I was able to find the youtube link to the actual remarkable footage, which I repost here for the reader's interest.

The tentacles remind me of the radiata-like Elder Things of H.P. Lovecraft, although its apparent ability to change shape might be more consistent with those dubious creations of the Elder Things, the Shoggoth.

What do you make of it? An Elder Thing? A Shoggoth? An extra-terrestial spacecraft that is somehow able to change form like a transformer toy? A secret government experiment? Me having nothing better to do and therefore blogging about a probable hoax? Comments welcome! :-)

In Your Heart You Know She's Right

2009-04-27T17:42:00.001-07:00

In 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater ran for President as the Republican nominee. He had a sign that said, "In your heart you know he's right". I read about this in the book, In the Arena, Charleton Heston's autobiography. Heston, a champion for civil rights, mentions seeing this as being a point in the development of his own political thought, and whereas he always remained committed to civil rights, as a result of the Goldwater campaign, he later became more fiscally conservative during his later years. Senator Goldwater was that rare Republican, who was committed to the ideals of his party, the ideals of the free market, personal responsibility, and de-centralization of government. But he was not a bigot, he was not a homophobe, and indeed in his later years spoke out strenuously against the religious right as he saw it starting to hijack a once great party, a party that had formerly been committed to fiscal discipline and individual liberty, but was starting to be hijacked by bigoted demagogues who wanted to turn our Republic into a Christian-Taliban theocracy. History will show whether or not the Republican Party will return to its Goldwater ideals. The increasing prominence of blogger Meghan McCain gives some hope to this end. Ms. McCain is committed to personal liberty, individual responsibility, and not giving tax payer dollars to crooked bankers and volcano monitoring systems. She also supports marriage equality for gays and lesbians. In short, Ms. McCain represents the Goldwater ideals of personal freedom and responsibility, freedom from religious hate and bigotry, and responsibility towards taking care of oneself without undue red tape from an overly bureaucratic government. Indeed, the legacy of Senator Goldwater is long. For example former U.S. Senator and current Secretary of State Clinton got her start in politics while still a Wellesley College student working on Senator Goldwater's campaign.

Today, CNN had an article on how the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand has seen a resurgence due to the current economic crisis, appropriately so, since the ever deepening deficits of our day parallel eerily with some of the situations warned about in her magnum opus. I thought to myself of the Goldwater campaign slogan, and thought that for me at any rate, I could apply this to Ms. Rand: "In your heart, you know she's right." Since this recent economic meltdown has seen a bit of an evolution in my own thought, similar I suppose to how Charleton Heston's thought evolved as a result of the Goldwater campaign.

Elsewhere on this blog I have discussed some aspects of the economy, the role of market altruism and how that is not good for the economy, and how an endless stream of government bailouts will not be a long term solution. So it is not my purpose this evening to give a full-out defense of Objectivist philosophy. It is more just to note some quick thoughts by way of overview.

Objectivism starts with the basic Law of Identity, A is A, and Man is Man. Man, the rational animal, must act according to his reason in order to effectuate his survival. His reason belongs only to him, not to anyone else, and it cannot act under coercion. Man's use of his reason must be done by his own voluntary choice, in free exchange with his fellows. Man's purpose is to be happy, happiness being defined by Ms. Rand as a "state of non-contradictory joy", but he must be happy himself. Just as there is not collective reason, there is no collective happiness. For thousands of years, history has seen the results of every other philosophy besides that of the free market. Man as the Rational Animal freely trading goods and services to bring about his own well being, free from intimidation and coercion, man fulfilling his own potential, and not wasting it in the service of the Collective, this finally, is the only stable state of prosperity in human affairs. Something like this, though imperfect, was had in Athens. Something like this, though imperfect, was had at the founding of the American Republic, a Republic founded on the ideals of Reason, and not founded upon any religion. Religion running things gave us the Dark Ages. Collectivism running things gave us Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

And now, now we are working longer hours than we were when Atlas Shrugged was first written, and we have less to show for it. We are in debt to the Collective. One of the most irrational doctrines ever handed down to corrupt Man's Reason was Original Sin, the notion that somehow a human child was born less than innocent, that somehow a human child had to pay back an old debt because of stuff that happened in the Garden of Eden. Well, that is a pretty sick idea to me personally, and I won't belabor that now, but the reason I bring it up, is now we sort of have an economic version of that same idea. My generation and one following it, Generation X and Y, have a sort of "original sin" in the form of debt. We inherit nothing, but yet we owe debt. Previous generations started off with a clean slate, but we do not. We start off with a close to 11 TRILLION national debt. The consequences here are interest rates and inflation - basically, things like houses and even apartments cost more than they did in previous epochs, and wages cannot keep up. Simple as that. We work more for less. Well, thus is the record of philosophies other than Objectivism. Perhaps it is time for a change. Perhaps it is time for our leaders to take a hard look at the state of the American Republic and perhaps they too will look in their hearts and know that Ayn Rand was right. Society must serve the individual, or rather allow the individual to serve himself. The individual cannot serve society. By definition. An individual in slavery to the state, or to religion for that matter, is not a free individual anymore. He is grovelling, mindless slave, unworthy of the title Man. Ayn Rand in her philosophy of Objectivism gives us a choice to shake off our shackles of slavery, slavery to the Collective, slavery to the religious guilt trips which help to keep the nanny state in place. She gives us a chance to be free thinking men (and women) as the Greeks were. The choice is up to each of us. Well me, personally, as the Hon. William Hague once said - "I want to be free".

Gary Cooper as Howard Roarke in the film The Fountainhead summarizes the ancient conflict between the individual and the collective far better than I could, so I will post it here for the reader's edification.

I don't know about you, but like Howard Roarke, I too do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. The Howard Roarkes of the world will not be enslaved by anyone, anything, or any idea. They are an end to themselves. And if the American economy is to turn around, it will do so by recognizing that uncoerced competition is the only way for free men (and women) like Howard Roarke to operate. The choice before the body politic could not be more clear: allow A to be A - allow Man to be Man, to be Free, to trade as equals in voluntary exchange, or watch Atlas shrug, and "return to the primitive."

Frank Erdman III - Secretary, Objectivist Party of Texas
Austin, Texas
April 27, 2009 C.E.

Thoughts on the Miss California controversy and re-thinking the war on terror

2009-04-23T16:16:00.001-07:00

There has been some controversy of late of Miss California losing the Miss USA title because of a fumbling (and I would argue misguided) answer to a question on marriage equality. Now I will not here get into a lengthy discussion on the issue of marriage equality (see an earlier article of mine on this subject, written to oppose the divisive Proposition 8 in California: http://blogkinnetic.blogspot.com/2008/10/no-on-prop-8-civil-rights-must-not-be.html). Basically to recap she was asked if she supported marriage equality for gays and lesbians and she gave a semi-incoherent ramble about being able to "choose" in America but that at any rate she supported only "opposite marriage", i.e., that she opposed equality - now first of all I do wonder how being able to "choose" sits with denying people their equal rights to choose, that is to have choices legally available to them in all states. I also shudder to think what her thoughts would be on miscegenation - luckily for her that question was not on the table, perhaps because Loving vs. Virginia, the Supreme Court case on the matter settled the issue in the late 60's, or perhaps because the Leader of the Free World biologically descends from miscegenation which the same people who oppose marriage equality also opposed - indeed, only after the controversy in 2000 during the G.O.P. primary debates between then-Gov. Bush and Sen. McCain over the issue of Bob Jones University did said University finally rescind its ban on inter-racial dating. But be that as it may. Miss California has the right to her opinions that the Aryan genome needs to be preserved. This is after all a free country where people have free speech rights, and I would fight for Miss California's right to continue to spew her ignorance. (For what it is worth this is how she could have held on to her bigotry but not created such a faux paux - simply say that "marriage laws belong to the states and I don't think it is appropriate for the federal government to tell states what to do on those issues, and I don't think it is appropriate for a national competition like this to be telling states what to do on those issues" - by hiding behind the legitimate position of federalism she could have continued on with her own private views but not embarrassed herself on national television either, but hey nobody asked me!)

Really though I will let blogger and contestant judge Perez Hilton lay into Miss California - I won't "pile on" here. In fact, in fairness and in equity, I must say that I think Mr. Hilton did neither himself any good service nor the marriage equality movement in general any good service by resorting to name-calling against Miss California in subsequent interviews. Employment of the "b" word does not make her kind of ignorance go away, but rather it only adds to her kind of ignorance. Mr. Hilton, as one gay blogger to another, please, I must ask you with all due respect, "Back off, girl, you're embarrassing us all!" :-) If one wants to get into the subject of marriage equality in more depth, again, I refer to my earlier post last October on the issue of California Proposition 8 for my thoughts there. I will simply say here, that, rather naturally, being gay myself, that I agree with Mr. Hilton on the issue at hand, but I disagree with his descent into name-calling. It is unnecessary, crude, and stupid. 'Nuff said there.

So how does the war on terror relate? Well I just had the thought that insofar as a number of civil rights issues are concerned, not just those relating to the LGBT populations, but also to woman's and children's rights, that a bigger issue or impediment insofar as civil liberties go is Islamic extremism. Now I will not get into religion again here (my previous post on the "God" debate already covered that I should think). Nor will I get into a big long discussion on the war on terror, such as for example in the issue with the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, trying to re-assert itself in both countries. I'll save more detailed observations there perhaps for another day. I am just making a passing remark that those concerned with civil liberties, including LGBT issues, ought to be more concerned with the international stage, and less concerned with what goes on with beauty pageants. The ignorance of the religious right in the United States is a problem of course, but it is not quite the same problem as situations in other parts of the globe where women cannot walk down the street in broad daylight without a towel over their face for fear of being whipped or worse. Things like this are bigger problems than the incoherent stutterings of a backward thinking beauty contestant. And I guess while I am on the subject, as sort of a "mea culpa" sometimes people focus too much on what they don't like about somebody than on some of the positives. In the case of President George W. Bush, I have blogged often about my vociferous disagreement with his decision to annex Iraq in 2003. I continue with this disagreement. However, in fairness I must say that I concurred fully and still do with his earlier decision to work with the Northern Alliance resistance groups in Afghanistan to drive the illegal Taliban regime out of power. This action has made the world a far safer place, and I must give President Bush credit for that, even though I continue to strongly disagree with some other actions taken by his Administration.

Again, I probably will return to issues of the war on terror and the problems of Islamic extremism the world faces more in later postings. This evening however when reading about this ongoing foo-foo-rah about Miss California, it occurred to me that we in the self-styled progressive or "forward-thinking" communities need to get our priorities straight. (Which by the way I do consider myself "progressive" or "liberal" in a number of areas, except in certain fiscal areas I do tend to be more conservative - see my David Cameron For President piece for more elucidation on fiscal issues.) Whereas it is regrettable that views such as those of Miss California's abound, that is not even close to among the bigger problems the LGBT community or the world at large face today. I am less concerned with what bikini-clad beauty queens pontificate and more concerned with those pernicious ideologies which in some parts of the world would want to make those same beauty queens exchanged their bikinis for towels. Yeah, much more concerned about that. And Mr. Hilton, love you man, but puh-leeze, let's focus on real problems in the real world. :-)

Why I don't believe in a "Personal" God

2009-04-04T19:49:00.001-07:00

As I posted in an earlier posting, the "God debate" really is about a "personal God". To me "God" is a word for "the sum of all things", an "ultimate reference point", etc. It can be variously described as Necessary Being, Ground of Being, Power of Being, etc. I like the theologian Gordon Kaufman's discussions of God as being coterminous with Creativity, that God can be a word we use for the Creativity of Nature that allows life to evolve. But people don't have debates on these nuanced ideas. Rather, they debate the question of, "Is there a personal God?" In other words, is there a sentient, self-aware, thinking being much like ourselves who is "out there" in some sense? Books have been written on this subject, and I will not add to it here. However, I do have a basic, elemental reason for not subscribing to the "personal" God idea. I don't consider myself an "atheist", although if one defined "atheist" as someone who does not believe in a personal God I suppose I would be. I don't call myself an atheist, because to me, that word is a "glass is half empty" phrase, it just says what somebody does not believe in, not what they do believe in. I much prefer to call myself a religious naturalist or scientific pantheist, interchangeable terms, in the tradition of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ursula Goodenough, and others, who see the divine in nature, who see the ultimate in physical law, who see beauty and inspiration in the observable, empirical world. I see "god" in the quantum density perturbations in the cosmic microwave background radiation, perturbations in the fire ball of the big bang which lead to galaxies being able to form, and life being able to evolve, in other words, perturbations which were the seeds of creation, or, if you will, creativity. Pantheism, as Richard Dawkins has said, is "sexed-up atheism", which I would concur with if atheism is to be understood as "non-theist", though I still am more comfortable with the term "scientific pantheism" or similar terms, rather than "atheism" as I like the emphasis to be on the positive, not on the negative. But that is all another post. The purpose here is to state clearly, simply, and non-hysterically, why a personal God is not something I find reasonable, although of course this question is one of those things things upon which reasonable people will disagree.

To do this by way of analogy: we could imagine having a debate regarding the existence of Elrond, the King of the Elves in J.R.R. Tolkien's novel, The Hobbit. We could discuss his supposed attributes, we could discuss his supposed habitat, we could discuss supposed sightings of Elrond. But really, if you were to ask me why I didn't believe in the existence of Elrond, King of the Elves, my answer would not have anything to do with Elrond himself. My answer would simply be: I do not believe in Elrond, King of the Elves, for the very simple reason that I do not believe in elves. They are mythical creatures with no paleontological evidence to back them up. If there are no elves, there can be no Elrond.

Similarly, if you were to ask me why I do not believe in a personal God, my answer would be basically because I do not believe in the idea of a "person" as traditionally understood, as something irreducible, something that has an "essence" or an "ectoplasm" in and of itself. If I do not believe in such a thing as a "person" as generally understood, then it follows that I would not believe in a personal God, for the same reason that if I do not believe in Elves, I would not believe in Elrond, King of the Elves.

I would have to get into a lot of neuroscience and technobabble to explore what I am talking about more thoroughly and perhaps I will in a follow-up post, although I myself must confess I do not consider myself an expert in said neuroscience, having a background in software testing, rather than neurology. But I want to keep this simple. Essentially, prior to research done in the 1800's, it was thought that the mind was something run by a "soul" or an essence of some kind. Indeed "ectoplasm" was a sort of vaporous "stuff" meant to contain the soul of a person. Then it was discovered the brain ran on electricity, with the work among others of the English physician Richard Caton who in the 1870's used a galvanometer to detect electrical signals from the brains of test monkeys under various situations. The more we found out about the brain, the more mechanical the idea of a person became, and also, more reducible. In other words, you can't divide a soul into parts. But you can "reduce" (divide into parts) a brain. The idea of a "person" as some irreducible ectoplasm is fading more and more, the more we find out about how we actually work. For the intellectually inclined reader, here is a good run-down on the ideas of Daniel Dennett, http://www.consciousentities.com/dennett.htm. Dennett is a philosopher of consciousness, and has developed the "intentionalist stance". This basically means a conscious entity is something we perceive to have intentions. If we see somebody get up in the morning and make coffee, we see him to have intentions. But these intentions need not come from some irreducible ectoplasm or soul. Rather, they are the result of billions of unconscious, simple nerve cells called neurons firing in the brain, and their average result is for the body they are in to get up out of bed and go make coffee. A "person" is like a center of gravity. It is a mathematical convenience to simplify a model. A sphere like the earth is not quite a perfect sphere, and in any case its gravitational pull is more complex than a single point of force moving through space, and so has no real one point in the middle that is the "center of gravity". However, for most purposes, it is useful to think of the earth as having a center of gravity in the sense of treating the earth's interaction with other cosmic bodies as being the interaction of a single point of force. Similarly, a person isn't really one irreducible entity having one train of thought. Rather what we call a person may be the result of billions of nerve cells firing all at once, creating random thoughts and images all of the time, and some of these "average out" to dominate the others. A thought that achieves sufficient dominance in the cacophony of firing neurons to actually control a signal to the muscles, and thereby cause the subject to move (like to get out of bed) counts as the intention of the subject. But that dominant thought arose from no soul, it merely "won out" in a race of randomly generated patterns of the firing neurons. This is over-simplified, and another post will have to go into this in more detail, but I would recommend the link I posted to Dennett's theory of consciousness for more elucidation on this matter. Also, relating to the idea that there is no single stream of consciousness but rather in a sense many different threads of consciousness going on all at once in the brain, I refer the reader to Professor Susan Blackmore's excellent essay on the subject.

The point here, is that if there is no irreducible ectoplasm, no soul, and if what we call a "person" is finally one big mechanical neural network run on electricity, and if thoughts and consciousness are sort of an accidental byproduct of this and essentially nothing more, then there is no reason to believe in a "personal" God. Because that notion is predicated on the notion of a "person" as being an irreducible, fundamental entity, and not an accidental byproduct of nerve cells firing randomly in the brain of a ridiculous hairless ape lately out of the jungles of Africa. If indeed the human "person" turns out to be a little more complex than current intentionalist models, all evidence currently points to "persons" arising from lower-level, more fundamental cosmic processes, whatever these processes turn out to be, and again, the dualist notion of the person as some kind of "ectoplasm" will almost certainly not be involved. If you think of the possibility of having "persons" as some kind of probability function spread out through all space and time, then where one ends up with "persons" will be in those areas in this probability function where that function has higher values than the average based on various biological conditions perhaps not now entirely known, and these areas of spacetime will be those of low entropy. That is, whatever a "person" may turn out to be, whatever probability functions may be involved, whatever various nervous system structures may be involved, all these functions and systems are not themselves self-aware, rather, they one way or another lead to self-awareness. This is the key point. As we better understand what a "person" is, we understand that self-awareness and language is unique to a few higher mammals in the history of earth, and possibly to some equivalently evolved creatures on planets or systems yet to be discovered, and possibly present also in AI systems that could one day or even possibly now are being built. A person is an emergent phenomenon. Self-awareness is an emergent phenomenon. Such being the case, if "personhood" and "self-awareness" is not a fundamental property but rather is based on lower-level processes, there is no reason to believe in any Deity with self-awareness, for if there were, this Deity would Itself be based on these same emergent, evolutionary processes, and would not be the eternal, unchanging, fundamental Deity of traditional religions.

[

By way of a qualifier, to put this more clearly: what I am saying is a "person" is not something fundamental to the universe, like gravity, it rather is something that emerges from a long and tedious sequence of molecular processes, rather like water is not a fundamental element, it is rather the result of a jumble of molecules arranged just so in the arrangement we observe in the oceans. Water is not a fundamental element, it is not irreducible, and neither, I would submit, along with Dennett and others, is a person. There is finally no such thing as a person, traditionally understood. It is simply a convenience or a simplification of thought, like the center of gravity idea is a convenience for calculations, and nothing else. Thus, if there is no such thing as a person, then definitionally speaking, there is not a "personal God". If God be "the greatest or most excellent" thing, but if we have established that a "person" traditionally understood is an illusion, then whatever this "greatest or most excellent" thing is, certainly it is not personal. If one likes, one can say "God" is the universe, or nature, or the like, or my own favorite, Creativity, but "God" can no longer be something self-aware, sentient, etc. One might say "God" is not a "thing" at all, in the sense of having "thinghood" or "being" or "substance", but rather is "Being" itself. One might say this, and I am not a philosopher, so will not comment on whatever "Being" might be, or if that notion has any coherence at all, which I am unclear on, but that is outside the scope of this discussion: one might perfectly well equate the word "God" with the word "Being" if they please, after all these are just words, subject to definition.

Indeed, in my own mind, I sometimes equate the word "God" with "Creativity", since again, not being a philosopher, I think I know what "Creativity" is, at least roughly, however "Being" I am rather suspect about. Emeritus Harvard theologian Gordon Kaufman has written extensively of the use of "Creativity", or precisely, "Serendipitous Creativity" to be a new meaning for the word "god", which has outlived arguably its old usage as referring to some sort of "personal" entity. Being is a bit more dicey, at least to me. Is "Being" something like substance as Aristotle and Aquinas and others had it? Is "Being" a sort of "coming to presence" with respect to the observer by particular things, and/or the "space" in which this "coming to presence" happens as Heidegger (as far as I understand) had it? Is "Being" the same thing as "identity", that is, if we can distinguish one "thing" from another "thing", then by said distinguishing, we attribute "Being" which is something like what Ayn Rand to the best of my knowledge argued as to the definition of Being? This is outside the current discussion, although I strongly suspect "Being" might be a red-herring. Measurable "events" in spacetime, such as the intersection of two particles, might be termed "coming to presence" if one likes, but personally I prefer to take the measurement, and then move on with my life. Again, though, this is not in the scope of this discussion, so "be" that as it may, pardon the pun, the only point here, is the question of "God" being "personal". That is what I am taking specific issue with, not so much whatever philosophical labels like "Being" and the like one might want to pin onto the word "God". In the future I should like to discuss "Being" and "coming to presence" and so forth further, but will not right now, at least not until I have digested the subject matter a little more, since I don't like to comment on things from an uneducated standpoint, obviously.

I do again feel that there is still a use or a sense of meaning for the word "god", and that has to do with the eternal creative processes of the cosmos, a la Gordon Kaufman and others. However, I will leave that for another posting, since the purpose of this posting is to discuss why I feel the "personal god" idea just doesn't fly in today's world. I refer the reader to Kaufman's In the beginning...Creativity for a brief and lucid summary of his views on cosmic creative processes, and how perhaps these processes may replace old meanings for the word "god" and give us a fresh usage for the term.

[As a sort of qualifier within the qualifier here, I must note that Kaufman's work is cited by some "emergentist" or anti-reductionist philosophers, like Stuart Kauffman - no relation I don't think anyway to Gordon Kaufman. In fairness and in deference to "reductionist and proud of it" thinkers who have influenced much of my own thought, such as for example the retired Oxford chemistry professor Peter Atkins, I need to say that whereas I like the general "game plan" of Gordon Kaufman, in re-formulating the "god word" as coterminous with creative processes, and indeed his work is cited by some in the religious naturalist "crowd" of today which I would consider myself a part of, and I don't know really Kaufman's view necessarily on the whole reductionist vs. emergentist debate, I must insert as a "disclaimer" that I do consider myself a "colors pinned to the mast" reductionist and also damn proud of it. Technically, I believe that system S can be entirely understood through its components, A,B,C, etc. and more generally that causation happens "upward" not "downward", i.e., little things come together to cause bigger effects to happen, bigger effects do not conspire to cause little effects - i.e. reductionism is "bottom up", not "top down". That itself is another conversation but the only point here is that I do not want to be misunderstood as making a call for emergentist notions when referencing "Creativity", rather, I simply mean that there are vast numbers of perfectly reductive, "bottom-up", processes in all spacetime, in all "infinity" if you will, and these processes are not all well understood and may never be entirely, due to Godel's incompleteness theorems as Hawking has pointed out. But some of the processes, may rightly be termed "creative" since from these ubiquitous bottom-up processes do arise from time to time the insects of the Amazon river basin and the angels of Victorian higher society, if one will forgive the reference to the motion picture Angels and Insects starring Kristen Scott Thomas. At any rate, the nuances of cosmic creativity belong to another post, I only mention it here in passing as an alternative to the "personal" god idea I am here taking issue with and also I had to be careful not be misunderstood as supporting emergentist notions in the sense of anti-reductionist notions. In fairness I am still sort of in the midst of formulating my thoughts on ideas such as "Creativity" and so forth and hopefully in the future I will have some more clarity on these notions enough to blog about them. Right now, I will not delve into that, pending further thinking upon these areas. It was worth a brief, tepid mention though since I just wanted to point out to the reader the fact that there are alternative ways of thinking about the "ultimate" whatever that may be, besides the "personal god" view, and that there are worthy alternatives out there other than the vacuous nihilism which proponents of theism constantly warn against as a supposed consequence of rejecting their views. Nihilism is not I think the only alternative, and I wanted to be clear on that, even if this is not the moment to engage more thoroughly along these lines.]

[Oh, one more qualifier: a "person" is possibly non-fundamental in two ways, that is a person is necessarily as many including Heidegger has said, within time. But time itself could be a thermodynamic and emergent property, and perhaps is a fourth dimension of space really, eternally existing. So a person may be emergent in the sense of being based on lower-level processes, like for example water, and also may be emergent in the sense of being within Time. In both cases, this eliminates the "personal god" idea. God as sentient being not based on lower-level processes is not believable for reasons stated regarding our better understanding of human intelligence, and also, self-awareness is something within time, and so the idea of a non-reducible timeless personal god just is self-referentially incoherent. To be clear: I am saying the human is "emergent", based on more fundamental processes, like firing neurons. I am not an "emergentist" which would say well yeah but there is something "more" going on, the whole is bigger than the parts, and all that. The reductionist says systems are explainable by their parts, period. We don't know all the parts about the consciousness yet, and it even may turn out to be the case that there is something more complex going on that the intentionalist stance. There may, *may* be some kind of thermodynamical process going on relating to information theory which I am not currently versed enough in to remark upon. But even if thermodynamics is involved, this is still a reducible process. That is, even if it turns out to be the case that we cannot reduce human consciousness to having a particular nervous system structure, and that we may need for example some insights from things like probability functions relating to heat transference in thermodynamics, we are still "reducing" human intelligence to these thermodynamic or other processes. The simple thesis here remains unchallenged: that conscious entities appear more and more to exist only as the result of and in relationship to non-sentient entities, and are not "fundamental" in any irreducible sense themselves.]

]

This post is more of a "preview" of my thoughts on this sometimes delicate or sensitive subject. I would like to further elucidate, not to mention further understand myself, Dennet and others' work on consciousness, the intentionalist stance, and the evolving notion of what it means to be a "person". I would also like to post more about religious naturalism, and how I believe that divinity and beauty and related concepts need not be thrown out, even as ideas like the soul, the irreducible person, the personal God, and even perhaps the after-life, are left behind in the tide of history. So this is not seeking to be an all-encompassing, air-tight argument. It is merely to outline briefly my thoughts on this subject. Essentially, the idea of a person as traditionally understood is no longer believable in my view, and as a result, the idea of a personal God cannot be either. I bring this up not to sort of start a debate for the sake of having a debate, but rather, I think as I've mentioned in an earlier posting that there is too much hysteria, and too little civility whenever the word "God" comes up. I think it is important to understand what this debate is really all about. It is not a debate on Necessary Being. It is really a debate on the idea of a personal God. My own view is that basically, there is no such thing as a "person" traditionally understood, therefore, there is no such thing as a "personal God", necessarily. Although again, certainly this is an area in which reasonable people may disagree. I think one can be "spiritual" and have a concept of "god" without this being a "personal God" concept, which is what much of the "religious naturalist" tradition along the lines of Ursula Goodenough and Ralph Waldo Emerson is all about, including the recent ideas along these lines of Gordon Kaufman's, whose work is certainly referenced by religious naturalists, though I don't know if he himself would describe himself as such. I would like to explore religious naturalism/scientific pantheism further at some point. But basically I think we need as a species a civil debate on the "personal God" idea, and I stress the word civil, because either way this is important: if there is a personal God, then, presumably, he or she would want us to be civil to one another or at least one would hope that to be the case. If there is not, then we also had better be civil to one another because each other is all we may finally have in a vast, beautiful, yet sometimes lonely universe. One might ask, well, why have a debate at all? For fun? Well, surely I enjoy a spirited debate as well as the next person. But on a deeper level, I do care about what is true, and I care about what is true more deeply than I care about that which I would like to believe. For instance, I would love to believe in reports of enlightened aliens abducting selected humans for a brief period of time in order to impart to them a higher wisdom, but, even though I think there are other intelligences out there in the universe, and these may well have visited earth for all I know, I still don't know if the alien abduction stories we read have an objective truth to them or if they fall more into the area of psychiatric disorders. Thus I do not share the post-modernist view of "all truth is equal". For instance the flat earth model is not the equal of the slightly-flattened spherical model of the earth. It just is not. Thus I think we need to discuss these things, because the pursuit of truth is part of that which separates us from the other great apes of our planet. This discussion is also important because of the fact that our ideas and world views have practical consequences upon the world. They shape actions for good and ill. NATO was attacked by terrorist and illegal regimes on Sept. 11, 2001. This is an historical fact. It is also an historical fact that were it not for the personal god view, this attack never would have taken place. Uneducated and desperate men attacked innocent people who had never done anything against them, due to the fact that said uneducated and desperate men felt they had been ordered or called by their own understanding of a personal god to commit mass murder for the sake of this god. See, this is the danger of "personalizing" the ultimate. When we read human factors into our gods, we also project human failings into our gods, including hate and jealousy (e.g. the psychotic Hebrew god Yahweh who famously remarked: "I the LORD THY GOD am a jealous GOD, visiting iniquity upon the third and fourth generation of them that hate me", taking the old adage of "an eye for an eye" to truly new, trans-generational levels of sadistic infamy). And we are so very good at reading human traits into things, what philosophers term, "anthropomorphizing", for example anthropomorphizing or projecting human traits, into insects gives one the mythology of fairies, such as the lovely "Tinker Bell" in the children's story, Peter Pan. Unfortunately though when we anthropomorphize god or "the ultimate" we come up with things decidedly less benign than Tinker Bell. So this is not just an arm-chair debate to have for fun. This is about the pursuit possibly unique to the human ape among the great apes of earth, the pursuit of truth. But it is also about not projecting human traits and failings onto our ideas of the ultimate. Because men hate, and men kill, and yes I do say "men" for the male of the species does tend to be the more violent of the genders, due to testosterone overload quite often. And thus if we think of god as some kind of "man", some kind of person, some kind of being imbued with something akin to the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's enigmatic phallus, then at times our idea of god may hate and kill as well as our species might, or cause those who subscribe to this idea to hate and kill, as we saw so awfully on Sept. 11, 2001, or for example as on a more prosaic but still tragic level is seen in the occasional case in the United States where religiously motivated persons murder doctors at woman's health clinics, these murderers doubtless acting for the benefit of their god's and their own, lost and quite possibly minute Lacian phalluses. So on the one hand I do strive and call for a civil discussion on a subject which has caused much acrimony over the millenia. But I do feel a discussion must be had, not merely because it might be fun, but rather because we are Human, and Humans ought not to allow other Humans to kill and be killed for the sake of erroneous ideas. We are Humans who should care about truth. Thus because I care about truth more than I care about that which I should like to believe in, and even more than this, I care about Human life and dignity, I respectfully submit that this discussion is needed, if epochal days of infamy like Sept. 11, 2001 are to be avoided in the future.

In Howard Phillips Lovecraft's "The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadeth" he mentions an ancient deity, Azazoth, which commentators have felt was Lovecraft's metaphor for the Big Bang, or at least, has been used by Lovecraft's successors as such a metaphor. I have often thought of Azazoth because I feel it is an interesting picture on an emerging view of what divinity is, abstracted or divorced from the idea of sentience. In Lovecraft, Azazoth is a creature outside the known dimensions, somehow viewing our own time from a vantage point metaphorically "before" or beyond when our time began. But Azazoth himself seems to be only an entity of some kind, and perhaps not even self-aware. Vastly powerful, and vastly different from common experience, Azazoth stands for mystery, for the unknown, and, perhaps, stands for the primal fires of creation in the Big Bang. Lovecraft, a materialist himself who debated astrologers in his time, has a certain irony to be found throughout his works - even though they are filled with monstrous deities from higher-dimensional voids, these seem always to be either races of alien creatures, rather than supernatural entities per ce, or, in the case of Azazoth, to be metaphors for natural phenomena, or metaphors to the limited understanding of mankind compared with the vastness of the universe. I have often thought Lovecraft's metaphor of the mindless, gibbering Azazoth might be a metaphor for more than the Big Bang, that it might well be an interesting way of looking at divinity in our age. We have moved beyond in some cases traditional ideas of a sentient Deity. But we have not moved beyond our fundamental finitude compared with the vast and sometimes mysterious cosmos we find ourselves in. Thus, Azazoth is sort of a good metaphor I find for thinking about divinity or transcendence in the world today. From Lovecraft's "The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadeth":

[O]utside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity — the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.

Through the poetic language which could be meant to describe the fires of creation, we get a picture of the vastness and mysteriousness of the cosmos we are privileged to live in, and try to understand. And this is sort of getting at what I mean when I say that I find "god" in the density perturbations of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which a lovely art work at Berkeley, "The Atheon", recently displayed as a ground-breaking work in religious art and contemplation. What I am attempting to drive at, is that in studying the cosmos and finding out how our universe, and ultimately how our species evolved, we find the same sort of awe and wonder that the prophets of old felt when they spoke to their gods, and perhaps, beyond awe and wonder, we can find understanding too, understanding of where we came from, who we are, and where we are going. And this quest, the quest to understand, even when standing in face of ultimate mystery, is perhaps the noblest quest of all.

Thus, for you 'Charmed' fans out there, as one Prudence Halliwell might say, "Blessed Be".

Frank Erdman III (Austin, Texas - April 4, 2009 C.E.)

Cryonics: Buy the stocks but think twice before signing up

2009-03-24T16:56:00.001-07:00

Cryonics. I have been fascinated by the concept, ever since that film Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz, about a man who despairs of his life, signs up to be frozen, commits suicide, and then finds that his dreams post-internment in the cryonics lab were not exactly bug free, that in fact, the Utopian dream world he had envisioned was not all it had been cracked up to be. Having thought on this subject quite a bit, I think I have concluded that the very issues brought up in that film are really the very concerns I think need to be discussed. Basically, for the sake of argument, let us say in the future technology is developed to "reanimate" a frozen brain, give its former owner a new (possibly synthetic) body, and in effect bring that individual back from the grave. Now, I am a big believer in technology, and I would never say this is prima facia impossible, given our current knowledge. It may turn out in the future to be impossible, but given the limited state of knowledge of neuroscience, one cannot say right now that such a concept is impossible. I do however have reservations, which likely would cause me to personally not sign up to have my brain frozen upon my demise, and these reservations are not anything to do with philosophical or theological concerns, but are rather of a practical nature.

To whit: the are approx. 100 billion neurons in the human brain. Let's say conservatively that we could approximate this programatically with 500 billion lines of c++ code, probably a low estimate, but a ball park one nevertheless, of about 5 lines per neuron. Well, I have years of experience in software testing, and it is well known that the "bug rate" is about 1 in 100 lines of code, even in the most rigorous of environments, that is to say, no matter how careful one is, one can expect at least one software bug for each 100 lines of code. Well, do the math. 1 / 100 of 500 billion is 5 billion. 5 billion bugs for a 500 billion line program. Even if one were really careful and really lucky, and only had a defect rate of 1 / 1000, which is very rare, but for the sake of argument we can allow it, then that means for a 500 billion line program required to simulate a human brain, we have in the most optimistic scenario 500 million bugs. Don't know about you, but I don't know if I would want to be "re-animated" with 500 million bugs in my wetware, as Tom Cruise's character found out in Vanilla Sky. This error estimate is relevant, because to "reanimate" a brain, surely, a software model would have to be employed, and the consequent result would be a brain highly augmented by bits of nanotechnology, microscopic robots to replace brain cells that had been irreparably destroyed upon the subject's death. It is an engineering problem, and this is why I would never say reanimating a brain is ipso facto "impossible". Engineering problems can be solved. Unfortunately, the probability is that the first few thousand or even tens of thousands of attempts at "reanimation" will bring disastrous results, with the subjects not the people they once were, but either barely functioning systems with very limited capacity (read: "retarded") or simply quite insane. The overwhelming probability is that for the first century or so of trying to reanimate human brains nothing but disaster will follow, from the simple mathematics of probability of software/hardware engineering defects. I am an optimist, and maybe someday in the far distant horizon such issues could be overcome, but not in the nascent phases of cryonics at any rate. Thus, even though I freely admit I do not relish the notion of my own annihilation any more than the next man, I must be a realist and say that I think I should prefer it to being reanimated as something entirely other than what I had been in life. Obviously cryonics is a deeply personal issue for people, and far be it from me to tell somebody what to do. I'm just saying that personally, I think I'll pass, given the overwhelming odds that, if reanimated at all, it would be as a being of vastly limited or misdirected capabilities or both.

All that said, cryonics should be a good vertical as far as long term investments go. As people become more educated and more enamored with things like nanotechnology, people are going to be more interested in cryonics, and may not have the same reservations as I have, and it is likely that over the next few decades the cryonics industry will boom, and by that I mean, people signing up for it and getting their brains frozen upon their passing, not necessarily in terms of anyone being successfully reanimated. More companies will spring up, both in the United States and Europe, and in the more educated parts of Asia no doubt, such as in the Pacific Rim, such as in Japan, and so forth.

Bottom line: I think buying stock in publicly traded cryonics companies could be a good bet over the long term, and I may just do that myself one of these days. As for signing up for it oneself though, again, I would encourage one to at least think twice about such a course of action. I think if you take the natural interest and excitement in technology and combine that with the equally natural desire to prolong and enhance life, that makes for a good combination for the long-term profitability of companies dealing with cryonics, and I think one can very well take advantage of that, in terms of the stock market. As far as the chances of success in terms of cryonics actually delivering what it suggests, it may well turn out to be yet another fountain of youth, another El Dorado, another northwest passage. And I say this strictly from an engineering, not a philosophical or religious standpoint. It may be the next El Dorado, but it likely will not be the last, since as noted psychologist and science historian Michael Shermer has said, "Hope springs eternal, even if life is not."

BlogKinnetic is calling the market bottom. Jump in. Now.

2009-03-13T18:11:00.000-07:00

After sinking to historical lows (since 1997) on this past Monday, March 9th, the DOW climbed back up with a vengeance all week, in its best run since November.

I am calling this right now. In my estimation, the markets have already bottomed. Now is the time to get in. Maybe not in automotive and financial sectors, but technology generally remains strong, as it has throughout this whole mess. I will not pick particular stocks, I am not a financial analyst. But I wanted to post my prediction that the markets have bottomed, and we are on our way back up. So, if you have a 401K, great, keep contributing to it. If you don't, now would be a good time to get one while things are still under-valued (e.g. the DOW is still below 10,000).

Do I still think (see earlier posting) the stimulus was coals-to-Newcastle? Yes I do. But markets have a way of correcting themselves, despite what pork is thrown around in Washington. That is to say, Citigroup for example was pushing down towards a dollar a share, meaning it could not go much lower. Broadly, financials corrected as far as they could correct, taking everything else down. Now, however, with money still available (in money markets) for investing, things are primed to go back up, albeit with some fits and false starts no doubt. I predict a year from now we should be officially out of recession if not before then, and well on our way back to 2007 levels. Provided banks are not forced by the government to make stupid loans, and that generally the John Galts of the world are allowed to produce, I have every confidence that we have already seen the bottom. Then again, we could always earmark some more money to volcano monitoring, driving up the deficit some more, which as President Clinton has said more than once causes trade imbalances to go up as well, and main street could be left footing the bill and the recovery could stall.

I am calling this now: we have hit a bottom and are moving towards recovery in terms of the industrial averages of the equities markets. Provided the markets receive no more "help" from the Collective, we should be rockin' and rollin' again well before the mid-term elections. At which point both parties will try to take credit for something that was really after all purely a Darwinian phenomenon of memetic market competition. But that is a post for another day.

My advice: tune into SquawkBox on CNBC next week and get some good advice on taking advantage of this market recovery. Oh, and, uh, f*** Jon Stewart and the other commies at Comedy Central. They don't know what they are talking about disparaging CNBC, a fine if imperfect network of financial news from which many continue to benefit. The Objectivist in me would say to get into this market for yourself (selfishly, ha!) but the imp in me would say to get into this market just to stick it to the Daily Show. Yeah, that works too.

Good night, and good luck.

The Stimulus Bill: A laxative when we need an suppository

2009-03-03T15:57:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the "catchy" title, but that is the analogy. When one is severely constipated, a laxative, such as e-lax or the like, might take up to six hours to "kick in". When one is writhing in agony, that just is not good enough. In such a situation, one needs a suppository which has, shall we say, a more immediate effect.

The best way to communicate sometimes is to use a visceral, readily available analogy and that is what I am doing here. I am not doing this to be gross, rather, I am making a point that sorely needs to be made.

800 billion dollars of the money which the child of that unfortunate offspring of backseat adventures in high school which we would prefer to forget about but is still out there someplace, replicating his DNA, that money which this unfortunate's own DNA copies will have to pay up, so that we can have the pleasure today of building magnetic levitation trains between Disney World and Las Vegas (no doubt for use in an early "retirement" to Vegas if all else fails), and volcano monitoring systems, is like taking e-lax when one has severe constipation. Its effect will be negligible at best, and if we are lucky, it may start to have a small impact in perhaps the "mid-term" as they say in finance (2 - 5 years). That does 0 for the problems right now. It does not solve the problem, but it does ensure that our illegitimate grandchildren will have to buy cheaper Chevy's we they get to high school than we had in our day.

I just saw a big story about how 60 jobs were created by the stimulus package as a result of a new highway resurfacing programme in Maryland (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/03/stimulus/index.html). This of course has nice PR advantage, but distracts one from the real problem. The problem is not potholes in Baltimore. The problem is toxic assets which are giving the banks a chronic case of constipation.

Hidden in President Obama's state of the nation address was an *additional* 750 billion for the banks.

So before I pass out let me recount this:

- Stock market crashes so King George II after working hard for 8 years to erase the surplus President Clinton had created and go back to the good old days we had under King George I of massive deficits, decides to shell out 750 billion dollars in hand-outs to the banks.

- HRH George II is replaced by President Obama who must be qualified over Senator Clinton's 35 years of experience because whereas she had taken on the lawyers of Richard Milhous Nixon while just out of law school, President Obama had done community organizing in Chicago, clearly a more challenging task. President Obama proceeds to shell out a stimulus bill of 800 billion or so. But cheer up, now we can get those pot holes in Maryland fixed.

- President Obama sends Senator Clinton on a series of trips to the middle east so one of the few voices of reason in the nation will be conveniently absent while he proceeds to plot ANOTHER 750 billion to give to the banks. We might need that, because whereas the first 750 billion were needed for corporate jets, the second 750 billion may be needed to hire Johnny Cochran's ghost to defend Bernie Madoff in his upcoming pyramid-scheme trial.

The point of the title of this post is that 800 billion to make levitating trains, volcano monitoring, and pothole fixes is like taking a laxative when you need a suppository. It does not address the problem. The problem is not volcanoes, the problem is bank toxic assets. The banks need to be healthy in order to get credit flowing again. Simple as that. One could argue that if more jobs are created, that puts money back into the economy, people can afford mortgages and so on, and that will start the markets towards becoming more confident and credit restrictions to ease up. Yes, that is true, but it will not happen fast enough to stop the current spiral (the DOW has gone from 14000 to under 7000 in a matter of months, back to 1997, pre-dot-com-boom levels, just to show how bleak things are). We need an economic suppository for immediate relief, not a laxative for 6 - 12 hour relief.

Well the 800 billion is history. Future generations will have to deal with that. I only hope I have enough sanity left when I reach my dotage to produce some sort of income enough to pay for my oxygen tanks because social security will be a quaint memory by that point. But, we can still give a suppository to the banks. You know that 750 billion dollar hand-out that the Administration wants to give to the banks? (I guess this must be a male-ego thing about who has the bigger, uh, bailout, yeah, bigger *bailout* must be the word I am looking for. President George W. Bush handed out 750 billion to the banks, so the current Administration can't be outdone with that - they wouldn't want to look, uh, small, or uh, not very well endowed, or anything.) But yeah, that 750 billion. I have an idea. Don't spend it. Hang on. Bear with me. This might be a little hard to follow. Don't spend it. Just hang on to it. Put it into a trust. Use that trust to insure investors. Gosh, you know, this might be getting a little complicated. I know, a bulleted list might work. Here you go -

1) The administration puts the 750 billion dollars they want AFTER the 800 billion coals-to-Newcastle stimulus they just passed into a 10 year trust, or put it under a mattress for ten years.
2) Then they announce the creation of an investment fund for banks that is federally insured. Kind of like CD's, save for the fact that in this fund people could pay up to say 10 or a 100 million worth of federally insured CD's, CD's that have a maturity rate of 10 years. This fund is over-seen by Congress, with full transparency, but the actual investment decisions go to professionals from the banks. In fact I'd make Senator Clinton's daughter Chelsea, who works in finance run the thing. Fact is I trust her because I trust her mother a hell of a lot more than I trust most people in D.C.
3) Then we find investors. It is real damn simple. The investor buys a million dollar federally insured certificate or coupon or whatever. The fund then allows the banks involved in its administration to put that money into canceling out toxic assets. The banks recover over time.
4) Ten years later the banks have recovered, and pay back the investors. The 750 billion earmarked by the government to insure investors and inspire confidence to invest in the first place never has to be payed out and could actually go towards - horrors - paying down the bloody deficit. I am using 10 years here in my example but maybe it could work in as little as 5 years, who knows, I am not a financier, but somewhere in that ballpark sounds reasonable.

Now that is the suppository we need. That addresses the problem of toxic assets in the banks that is dragging everything down. Magnetic trains to Vegas do not address toxic assets. An investment fund to clean those up would however address those problems.

We have just authorized an 800 billion dollar spending bill that does not address the problem. Well that is life. Maybe however instead of pouring an additional 750 billion down the drain we can think outside the box and actually address the problem. This is not rocket science guys, it really is not. 750 + 800 = 1550 - that is 1.55 TRILLION. Adding another 750 to that would be 2.3 TRILLION. 1.55 TRILLION for corporate jets and volcano monitoring is bad enough. Let's quit while we are behind. Let's stop digging the hole. Let's find private sector ways to get out of this mess. Let me put this really simply: the hope of liberal, secular democracy over and against religious tyranny like the Taliban or police states like North Korea is largely driven by the United States. If the United States becomes a failed state, or breaks apart like the Soviet Union did, that would set back the cause of freedom and human rights for generations. Because really, this after all is not even about the United States of America. This is about the freedom of the human race. The freedom to build a better mousetrap. The freedom to create, to think, to speak, to love, hell, the freedom to blog. This is what this is about. It is not the end of the world if the United States goes the way of the Soviet Union. But it could signal the start of that "new Dark Age" which Churchill warned us about because without the "bully pulpit" of the United States, tyrannical regimes would be emboldened upon their anti-human agendas, whether those agendas be the ignorance of Islamic extremism or those twin sister collectivist strangleholds of communism and fascism. So that is what this is all about. It is not so much the rise or fall of one country. This is really whether the human race will continue towards the age of Reason and the Enlightenment, or slink back into the darkness of fear and superstition, toward what Ayn Rand might call a "return to the primitive". How the United States manages this current economic crisis could really have an impact on that choice of eventualities. Let us hope the leadership in Washington can bear this in mind.

I endorse Joseph Wendt for FL State Rep District 60

2009-02-26T06:22:00.000-08:00

http://votewendt.blogspot.com/

I am pleased to announce my endorsement of Joseph Wendt, Objectivist Party candidate for Florida State Representative, District 60. Please visit his campaign website linked above to learn more about his solutions for the economic crisis, and to make a campaign contribution.

Joseph represents my personal ideals of reducing wasteful spending, including needless perks for state government officials, with the goal of balancing government budgets, whether that be on a state or on a federal level. His plans for Florida include a number of pro-active measures to reduce the state budget, cutting property taxes for home owners, freezing mortgage rates, eliminating adjustable rate mortgages, and other creative methods to cut costs, drive state revenue, and lift the burden of taxes from Florida home owners.

Joseph also opposes the bailouts being discussed on the federal level at the moment, since that will place the burden on future generations, and, as Jack Cafferty of CNN says, "this is not your father's country" anymore, due to the burden placed on the citizenry of the national debt and deficit.

Pursuant to Objectivist principles of individual liberty, Joseph also supports marriage equality, since no one should be deprived of that right based upon gender or sexual orientation. On a personal note, I can say that we in the LGBT community are especially appreciative to see that fiscal restraint and responsibility is not the purvue of the far-right alone, but is also a position set which can be held by progressive, open-minded people.

Florida is suffering the mortgage and credit crisis like few other places in America. It is imperative that fiscal discipline be restored to state government there, and that the bill for drunken spending on the part of government and banks not be sent to hard working Americans. For the sake of the Sunshine State, and this country, I see few better ways of supporting economic recovery and fiscal responsibility than to support Joseph Wendt for Florida State Representative, District 60.

Frank Erdman
Secretary, Objectivist Party Texas
Feb. 16, 2009 Austin, Texas

The Origins of KFC

2009-02-24T18:00:00.000-08:00

Bet you never knew how exactly the restaurant chain KFC got started...

Automobiles safer form of travel than Aeroplanes

2009-02-15T12:59:00.001-08:00

The crash of Continental Flight 5407 in Buffalo New York last week, killing all 49 aboard plus 1 person on the ground, has gotten me to thinking: is one safer in an automobile than in an aeroplane? My conclusion is that one is safer in an automobile.

I approximate the next time you get in your automobile, you have a 1 / 600,000 chance of dying. I approximate further then next time you get in a commercial aeroplane (not even counting private aeroplanes) you have a 1 / 60,000 chance of dying. In other words, you are TEN TIMES more likely to die on your next aeroplane trip than in your next automobile trip. This, coupled with the fact that at least death in an automobile is usually relatively quick, compared with being roasted alive an aeroplane explosion, makes me quite certain that automobiles are much to be preferred.

There are 100 million households in the United States, which, on average, a bit of internet searching tells me that they might have 5 automobile trips per day, which is 500 million per day, which, say times 300 for the total number of automobile trips in the United States per year, is about 15 billion. On average, there are 25,000 automobile crash fatalities in the United States per year. So, dividing the total number of fatalities per year by the total number of automobile trips per year, gives 25,000 over 15 billion, or about 1 / 600,000.

There are about 20,000 commercial air flights give or take per day in the United States, which, times 300, is 6 million. Of these, it is probable at least one will crash, killing an average of say 100 people. So 100 divided by 6 million is about 1 / 60,000.

I look at the last 8 years. 5 commercial planes went down in 2001 alone. Over the past few years there was a crash on take-off in Kentucky because of a control tower problem, there was a crash on take-off by a US Airways flight from Charlotte because of some mechanical issue or other, and now there is this Continental crash in Buffalo. That is 8 years, 8 crashes, with easily 100 fatalities on average, hence the 1 major crash per year in commercial flight average that I am using.

I have a background in software quality assurance, and have some thoughts as to why quality control is better in the software industry than the airline industry, even though one would think it would be the other way around, given that software bugs rarely lead to human fatalities, but aeroplane crashes nearly always do (that is of course, unless one has a super-hero pilot as the US Airways flight that recently landed in the Hudson with no fatalities was lucky enough to have, and I am not counting that one in this analysis because there were no fatalities there). However, I will save those thoughts for another posting, as to why or in what ways quality control more or less sucks in the commercial aeroplane industry, at least when compared to the software industry.

For now though, I thought it worth pointing out that hard numbers demonstrate that it is an order of magnitude safer to travel by automobile than by commercial aeroplane. Your chances of not making it out alive in a commercial aeroplane is NOT 1 / Million. It is more like 1 / 60,000 whatever the propagandists of commercial heavier than air flight might tell one. And that, as they say, is that.

Cute video on tech bubbles

2009-01-26T12:48:00.000-08:00

This is set to the tune of Billy Joel's "We didn't start the fire". It is quite insightful as to the nature of economic bubbles.

A song in honor of the inauguration of President-elect Obama

2009-01-17T18:36:00.000-08:00

I wanted to remark in some way upon the inauguration of the 44th President of this Republic, Barack Obama, and felt I could do no better than this clip of a December 13th, 1963, television broadcast of the one and only Judy Garland, singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, in memoriam to the slain President Kennedy, who had been assassinated only a few weeks before. I feel it is appropriate, because this song was sung by the soldiers of the Union who fought to end slavery during the civil war, and is here sung by Judy Garland in tribute to President Kennedy who did so much to advance the cause of civil rights. Now, on Jan. 20th, 2009, the same Republic which once had slaves will inaugurate the first African-American President, in what is a truly historical occasion, a moment which has been forged in the blood of martyrs, from the soldiers of the civil war, to President Kennedy, to Dr. Martin Luther King, to Sen. Robert Kennedy to Huey Newton, to Tupac Shakur, to so many others whom I could never have time to name.

The slain San Francisco City Councilman Harvey Milk, so movingly potrayed recently by Sean Penn in the film Milk, once said, "All men are created equal, no matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words."

The inauguration of President-elect Obama does not end hate and discrimination in this Republic, as for example the passing of the discriminatory Proposition 8 in California so sadly demonstrates, but it does mark more progress than can be well put into words. To paraphrase Prime Minister Churchill who remarked about the success at D-Day, "this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is perhaps, the end of the beginning." Thus we may hope that the ascendancy of President-elect Obama, who has arguably inspired more hope in the populace of this Republic and around the world since President Kennedy, may mark a milestone in the fight against hate, intolerance, and injustice wherever it may be found.

Incidentally this is the 50th posting here on this blog, and I think it is well to use that marking to remark upon such an historical milestone as this. As a personal Judy Garland fan myself, I think she can put much better context to the pathos of this moment here at the dawn of the new millennium than any blogger, including myself, ever could. Enjoy, and may history shine favorably upon our 44th President.

Video killed the radio stars

2009-01-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=cosmic-radio-background

This a link to an article on recently discovered radio waves that may be the signature of primal stars, the first ones ever formed. If confirmed, it would provide a new way of discovering the early evolution of the universe. In the wake of these early "super-stars", the more recent galaxies were able to form. Just as the cosmic microwave background gives insight into how the universe looked shortly after the Big Bang, this radio background could give insight into the distribution of the earliest stellar formations. Fascinating stuff.

Trivia: Dr. Angelica De Oliveira-Costa of MIT who is quoted in the article is the wife of Prof. Max Tegmark, also of MIT, of the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, which I have blogged about before, the idea that there may be parallel universes with different mathematical structures, and therefore different laws of physics, than our own. Bet you didn't know that one. :-) (Tegmark's site: http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/)

The title is a reference to the first music video ever shown on MTV, the song, "Video killed the radio star". This is a pun on the fact that the cosmic microwave background radiation shows up in the static of an analogue television set, but does not show up in a digital television set. Cute, huh.

For fun, here is the music video, "Video killed the radio star":

OK, I admit it, I LOVE Rod Blagojevich!!

2009-01-09T16:08:00.000-08:00

Statement of Gov. Rod Blagojevich regarding the Illinois House Impeachment

Admittedly, living in Texas, the first I heard of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was when he was indicted on an alleged "pay to play" scheme regarding appointing President-elect Obama's Senate replacement. The legality of that is murky, since in fact the only evidence there is some overheard conversations, which may have been taken out of context, and certainly no monies or other favors ever changed hands regarding Sen. Obama's eventual replacement, former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, even though the white Senate establishment still had to get the Illinois Supreme Court to weigh in before they would allow the African-American Burris to be appointed to the seat. But be all that as it may, I won't comment much on rumors regarding on-going legal proceedings.

I post Gov. Blagojevich's inspirational and moving rejoinder to the impeachment action of the Illinois House, posing himself as a populist fighter for the "little guy" against a do-nothing establishment in Springfield. I don't know enough about Illinois politics to comment too much, but by God, I love this guy! He is a fighter. He is not a quitter, as a view of the video here will clearly show. Even if there were some discussion of a "pay to play" scheme (which never happened), this does not take away I think the essential decency of this man. He came from nothing, worked hard all his life, and when he ascended to political power, he never forgot where he came from, and whom he worked for. He never forgot that he worked for the common man and woman of Illinois, not the establishment power brokers in Springfield. He never forgot that the job of a Governor is not to be popular, but rather to fight for the interests of his constituency. He never forgot that history is the final judge of our deeds, and that sometimes one has to become unpopular in order to do the right thing by history. Long before the federal indictment, the Illinois House wanted to impeach him because he had the daring and the audacity to use the executive branch of government in Illinois, NOT for personal profit, but to expand health care coverage for those who could not afford it, including breast cancer scanning and treatments for the uninsured, and in so doing, literally saved countless lives. For this, the House wanted to impeach him, because he did not ask their permission first. When people's lives are at stake, as they are every day for the uninsured, waiting for the bureaucratic red tape of government isn't going to help. The Governor used his legal authority to expand health care for those who needed it the most, to make sure the people who voted for him had the same opportunity for health and life as the lawmakers in Springfield had, and for this, the House wanted to impeach him. The federal indictment was just a convenient excuse. They wanted to get this guy all along because he put the people first, not the egos of politicians.

Rod Blagojevich is a hero. And mark my words, history will adjudicate him as such, in much the same way that now, more than thirty years after the third-rate burglary that was Watergate, people look back and realize that President Nixon, who himself expanded health care coverage, founded the Environmental Protection Agency, ended the Vietnam War, ended the draft, ended the "cold" part of the Cold War by commencing good relations with the Kremlin and bringing us away from the brink of nuclear annihilation, opened relations to China, started affirmative action opportunities for minorities, was, you know what, not such a bad President after all, third rate burglaries be damned. And similarly the people whose lives have been helped and in some cases even literally saved by the hard, courageous work, against all odds, by Gov. Blagojevich, will see him to have been a true person of principle, "pay to play" allegations against him by those same people who fought to keep African Americans out of the U.S. Senate aside.

Anyway watch the video, and you'll see where I am coming from, as I am far less eloquent an orator than is Gov. Blagojevich. But gosh darn it, I love this guy!

The Geysers of Enceladus

2009-01-08T07:31:00.000-08:00

Note to AirTran: Discriminating against Muslims won't offset your poor safety record

2009-01-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/01/family.grounded/index.html

AirTran, the classic "you get what you pay for", "discount", air line has thrown a Muslim attorney and his family off a flight to Orlando, where they were flying for a professional conference, and refused to book them onto another flight, even after the FBI cleared the attorney and his family of any wrong doing.

The blatant violation of civil rights speaks for itself, and I will not belabor how wrong this is on the part of AirTran.

I will take this opportunity to remind the reader however that I would rather walk, hitchhike, use quantum teleportation, stowaway on a box car, or use any other means of transport available to me than to use AirTran. Remember ValueJet? The "discount" airline that in the late 90's had a malfunction causing a crash into the Florida Everglades, not only killing all aboard, but so thoroughly disintegrating the craft that no intact body parts were ever found? Yeah, well, shortly thereafter ValueJet purchased a small outfit called AirTran that had all of two small planes in one hanger someplace, and that was the whole operation, and then following the purchase of AirTran and its two planes, ValueJet renamed itself to AirTran, apparently thinking the consumer was that stupid and would forget that ValueJet and its atrocious record had ever existed. Sorry, AirTran, I'm not that stupid. And furthermore, this recent display of "being concerned about safety" by discriminating against an innocent Muslim attorney and his family who were cleared by the FBI, but then still discriminated against, does not remove your poor record. Muslim attorneys and their families en route to Disney World poise no threat to my safety, AirTran. Your "discounting" of aircraft maintenance costs however does.

So AirTran, while you go about making a big display of "being concerned about safety" (which is a little late for those poor chaps whose microscopic body parts are fertilizing the everglades), by assiduously throwing all non-Aryans off your flights, the sane among us will continue to fly airlines, that say, bother to inspect their aircraft once in a while, even if said inspections might force ticket costs up a penny or two. Discounting by removing safety procedures literally just doesn't fly. And covering that up by changing the name of your airline, and by removing minorities from your flights doesn't change that darling.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to beam back to the Enterprise.

The GOP has some choices to make

2008-12-31T11:45:00.000-08:00

Nixon's "southern strategy" of capitalizing on southern white discontent in the 1960's has served the GOP well in terms of electoral victories, but now, this Rovian strategy seems to have run its course. Basically it is a "divide and conquer" idea, that if we divide Americans across racial and cultural lines, the GOP "slice of the pie" will be bigger and therefore will win elections. However, the demographics of America are changing, and the Republicans, as shown by the '06 and '08 election cycles, are being left out. The positive ideas of balanced budgets, restrained spending, federalism, and security, that traditionally have been the "conservative" ideas are still ideas worth running on, but unfortunately, instead of talking about spending and deficits, Republicans are more likely to talk about divisive social issues, like affirmative action, gun control, abortion, and so on. Only problem is, Americans aren't listening anymore. They want to talk about issues that matter, like the deficit, like the problems on Wall Street - the GOP "red meat" issues like gun control and what adults do in their own bedrooms are just not important to the average voter anymore. Soon, within the next decade or two, white people will no longer be the majority, and so "race baiting" is going to be a losing strategy for the GOP. It needs to expand its tent, and become more inclusive towards minorities. It needs to talk about fiscal issues, issues relating to security, issues relating to state and individual autonomy from the federal government, it needs, in other words, to talk about issues that anyone, regardless of race, can relate to. The Pat Buchanens and Rush Limbaughs of the GOP might have worked 20 years ago, but their constituencies are shrinking, and people just are not buying anymore. The proof to the pudding here is the utter non-manifestation of the so-called "Bradley effect" in this past election, the effect where people will tell pollsters they are voting for an African-American candidate, but really they are not. I wondered if this would hurt Senator Obama. It did not. It never manifested itself, which shows progress for this country, but is bad news for the cultural and race baiters of the GOP.

So, looking forward, who are standard bearers the GOP should adopt? Well, they can go back to their roots of fiscal conservatism and social tolerance such as found in the Goldwater mold of their party. Or they can circle the wagons and continue to appease the reactionaries, and continue to lose elections. Rudy Guiliani is somebody who could lead the GOP back from the brink, because he is fiscally conservative, but is also socially moderate - pro-choice, for instance, supportive of gun restrictions, largely supportive of LGBT equality. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida is another such Republican. She is of Hispanic origin, and has a track record of fiscal restraint and social moderation, which is what the GOP needs to expand its tent, go back to the "Goldwater" mold of politics, and get away from the divisive "southern strategy" which might have worked in the past, but just no longer applies in today's day and age. If the economy continues to flounder, and the American people are discontented with the way things are going, say in 2012 or 2016, a Guiliani/Ros-Lehtinen ticket would be just what the GOP needs to speak to the growing majority of Americans who are concerned with the drunken spending of Washington and Wall Street, but don't want to be preached at over certain social issues. Or, the GOP can circle the wagons and continue its "southern strategy" targeted towards an ever-shrinking minority of southern whites, and can continue to lose elections.

The GOP is not running for control of the Confederacy, it is supposed to be a party of the United States of America. Therefore it is time they start thinking outside the box, get back to their socially conservative, socially moderate roots, stop trying to divide people over race and gender and the like, and start offering real solutions to the American people. A Guiliani or a Ros-Lehtinen could move the GOP in this direction. A Romney or a Palin could not. Somehow I suspect the GOP could be in the political wilderness for the next 20 years or so, because the "red meat" element in it is so strong. For 40 years, the GOP has been targeting itself towards white discontent, blaming the nation's problems on everything from blacks to immigrants to single moms, to gays and lesbians, to those who have the audacity to think the universe is somewhat older than the time of the domestication of the dog. It is time to stop this childish pettiness, and move forward. So this is my New Year's message to the GOP: the southern strategy is dead. Get over it. Nominate Rudy Guiliani, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, both, or people like that. Or watch the GOP go the way of its predessors, the Whigs - actually that is a good analogy - the Whigs were unable to agree on opposing slavery, therefore the GOP was formed out of its ashes with a firm anti-slavery platform. Now the GOP is splintered over the extreme right wing nut cases of the Rush Limbaugh ilk, versus the saner fiscally conservative/socially tolerant wing of the party. If they can't deal with their radical fringe, they will go the way of the Whigs, becoming a footnote to history. The choice is theirs.

If you think times are tough...

2008-12-28T10:57:00.000-08:00

just think what the dinosaurs had to deal with:

Happy Yule Tide! Here is a link to Lovecraft's "The Festival"

2008-12-24T19:01:00.000-08:00

The Festival

In the spirit of the Yule Tide, that ancient observance of the winter solistice, which "is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind", I am linking above the text to Howard Phillip Lovecraft's short story, "The Festival", about a man who returns to his ancestral home in the coastal city of Kingsport, Massachusetts, for an ancient ritual required to be observed once a century in his family tradition. And then things get weird. Enjoy. :-)

"Why is there something rather than nothing?", or, "Why do people have too much time on their hands?"

2008-12-20T16:36:00.000-08:00

The question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" has wasted a lot of time over the years, among philosophers, and even among scientists. It has already wasted too much of my own time, and it shall waste no more time. Because the question, is, essentially, a non-question. Philosophers are great at inventing questions that they can spend time mulling over rather than say, getting a real job, or even, say, getting laid, and this question is one of them.

We can easily see why. Let us consider the breakdown of this:

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" equates to:

"To what end is there is-ness, rather than not-is-ness."

Now, I will here not get into what "the definition of is, is". I have thoughts there, but will leave that alone. The word, "Why" can equate to, "to what end", or, to what purpose. There are so many things wrong with this, it is hard to know where to begin.

But to keep it simple. "To what end" means a direction, "to", and a destination, "end", and a query as to "what" destination this is. The content of the phrase, "to what end" implies direction, specifically, a temporal direction. "Why do I go to the corner store?" "To what end to I go to the corner store"? Perhaps the answer is, to obtain a pack of camels. There is the "now" in which I do not have a pack of camels. Therefore, I go, perhaps a short hop skip and a jump to the convenience store to get a pack of camels, and perhaps it takes me five minutes. Five minutes later from the aforementioned now, I have fulfilled my purpose of going to the corner store, I have my pack of camels. So to have purpose, to have a "why", to have an "end" or an objective which can be queried, I have to be within a temporal framework. I have to be "in time".

But time itself is a "thing" in the sense of being something physical, that can be measured, like space, and it differs depending on your speed and your gravitational field. It is a physical quantity just like space or energy or mass or charge or spin, or momentum or quark colour or whatever else. It is a "thing", it is "something", it has "is-ness". So to say, "to what end is there is-ness" presupposes "is-ness". To have meaning, that question must be within time, or must pre-suppose time, and, since time itself is a thing, the question falls into vacuity. It pre-supposes already the object of its enquiry. It would be similar to asking, "I wonder how people played American football before the pigskin was invented." Well this question is clearly absurd: one cannot ask how people played American football before the invention of the pigskin, because, by definition, there was no American football before the invention of the pigskin. The invention of the pigskin, and it subsequent popularization by the great Native American running back Jim Thorpe, was what created and popularized American football. Sitting around asking why there is something rather than nothing, and then thinking that makes one really clever, is the same logical thing as sitting around wondering however did the cavemen manage to watch Super Bowl Sunday if they did not have cable. It is a self-evident absurdity, a non-question.

I could go into the point that "purpose" requires "intention", and "intention" requires thinking beings, and since the universe is not a thinking being, it cannot have "purpose" or "intention", and just because some hairless apes on a small planet around a mediocre star in the fringe arm of a mediocre galaxy evolved the notion of "intention" and started asking the "why" about each other's intentions, does not mean the universe herself has any such notion. But that would rather be almost a small footnote, and unnecessary. Once one understands that the question of "why is there something rather than nothing" presupposes intention, which presupposes time, and since time is something, then it presupposes something already, and the question is meaningless. Then there is also the fact that according to quantum gravity, an empty-set geometry is ruled out by virtue of the uncertainty principle and therefore "nothing" can not "be", but that again, is an entirely gratuitous point, shooting the horse long, long after it has been slain. The question itself simply has no meaningful content, and that is just that, full stop, end of discussion.

The real question to ask, is why do so many philosophers have so much time on their hands? Boy I really hope my tax dollars aren't paying for them!

:-)