Human on Human

This is how Hannah and I occupy ourselves these days

2008-05-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

Guilty Pleasure

2008-05-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

So the collective hate-boner for Hillary has seriously died down, as it should. Now that she's been put away--and is no longer attacking our boy--I can definitely feel myself take that much-needed deep breath and start to let go of all my irritation and frustration.

BUT, The New Republic's exclusive report--direct from anonymous HRC campaign staffers--of what "went wrong" is still the sweetest kind of sweetness. Sweet like running into your ex when you're working some hot cleavage. Sweet like watching your asshole boss trip and fall down the stairs. Sweet like finding out your old high school bully is on welfare. There's really no excuse for how gratifying it is to linger on the details of the failure of others--other than the fact that it is delicious.

Big Gay Love in California

2008-05-15T11:56:00.000-07:00

So California finally got their shit together, and in 30 days same-sex couples will have the right to marry. The Schwartz says he won't veto this time. It could potentially get fucked up in November, if conservative groups get an amendment to the state's constitution on the ballot. But, let's be honest--what can't get fucked up in November?

I have a hobby, which is to try to stake out a unique position on partisan issues that I view as having become too polarized (meaning, predictable) to provide me with the level of entertainment necessary to keep me interested and engaged in the public discourse. Basically, if I simply take the 'left' position, any time the topic comes up I am limited to an already well-established set of arguments, and consistently encounter the exact same counter-arguments. Boooooo-ring.

On the issue of same-sex marriage, my position is this: The state should not recognize same-sex marriage. Additionally, I don't think that the state should recognize hetero marriages, either. Marriage is idiosyncratic and personal. All of the legal functions that a spouse serves could be handled by a partner of your choice. You could update your partner online, just like you update your address with the DMV. Seriously, how easy is that!?

However, there is your ideal position, and then there is your real-life position that is informed by the conditions present in the real world. So, of course I think this is a good thing.

Millennials Again

2008-05-13T21:38:00.000-07:00

Bob Herbert, who I am normally not that fond of, has written a column about my generation that is pretty interesting, if for no other reason than it is not horribly offensive (as is every other thing I have read or seen about 'millennials'). The piece is at once depressing and vindicating, saying that because our generation has gotten royally fucked over by the government and conservative politics, we are more progressive:

Often saddled with debt, and with their job prospects gloomy, young Americans feel their government ought to be doing more to enhance their prospects. They want increased investments in education, health care and initiatives aimed at expanding the economy and fostering the growth of good jobs.

I think it's interesting that Herbert doesn't mention civil rights issues as being potential contributing factors to our generation's progressive stance. Unlike the older generations, we have grown up in desegregated schools and communities, with gay friends and classmates. Also, many of us are sluts and cherish our right to have an abortion (kidding?). Conservatives running around trying to limit or infringe upon the rights of us, our friends, and our loved ones has taken its toll. Also, I know that every generation thinks that the world is going to end (my mom told me that when she was a teenager she was positive that the world would be blown up by 1980), but I'm gonna go ahead and pull the global warming card and say that I at least feel like the older generation (and I often consider myself to be part of the older generation, here) has really dropped the ball on some pretty important shit. Old, oil-grubbing conservatives do not help themselves by denying the existence of a problem that threatens to fuck up our lives and our children's lives.

Any way, this entire post is really only intended to give me an excuse to share one of my If-I-Was-Ruler-of-My-Own-Country fantasies, which is this: wouldn't it be cool if your vote was weighted in proportion to the number of years you would have to live with the effects? Like, if you're 65, you've got like 20 years left. I've got a good 60 years left in me. Shoudn't my vote count triple what yours counts?

Then again, if I was the ruler of my own country, it wouldn't matter because I wouldn't let anyone else vote anyway...it'd just be me and the cabana boys, who are just there to look pretty and work the palm fronds.

This is why I don't watch TV

2008-05-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

I saw this commercial on TV today. Perhaps the most exquisite and beautiful piece of treachery that I have ever seen.

"The "Human Element" showcases Dow's commitment to addressing global economic, social and environmental concerns."

See also: Dow Chemical fucking kills and maims people on a regular fucking basis by permeating the planet with toxic poisonous deformity-creating bullshit

See also: Whoever created this ad spot, I hope you drown in a giant pool of money and dioxin

Interestingly Enough

2008-04-18T21:33:00.001-07:00

So little uneducated me always assumed that the reason why obesity is a health risk is because you have to cart around so much extra body weight that it strains your heart. Or something. But I just read this article in Science Daily about metabolic syndrome, which is code for "death by fat."

"Most people today think that obesity itself causes metabolic syndrome," said Dr. Roger Unger, professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study. "We're ingrained to think obesity is the cause of all health problems, when in fact it is the spillover of fat into organs other than fat cells that damages these organs, such as the heart and the liver. Depositing fatty molecules in fat cells where they belong actually delays that harmful spillover."

So basically your body stores fat in fat cells, the ones that make beer bellies and ghetto booties, for as long as it can pack it in there, but when it runs out of room the fat starts encroaching into--INTO--your organs. So your organs are filled with fatty fat fat. Which makes it hard for them to perform somewhat important functions like, oh, i dunno, pump blood to your entire body. And then you die.

So not to bag on fat people, but seriously, that shit is disgusting.

Love and Healing

2008-04-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

Shannon: i am in a coffeeshop
Shannon: and i just overheard
Shannon: the following conversation
Dan: k
Shannon: girl: "what was your novel about?"
Shannon: guy (solemn): "my novel...my novel was about a guy who was in love with a girl who died in the twin towers."
Shannon: "so it's a love story, but also about healing."
Shannon: girl (earnestly): "wow, i'd really like to read that."
Dan: wow, i would really like to read it too
Shannon: totally
Dan: you should ask him to send it to me
Shannon: it's also about healing
Dan: that is the part that got me interested
Dan: i mean , love stories .. are just love stories
Dan: but add healing
Shannon: love + healing = ALL YOU NEED
Dan: finally, someone is starting to talk about 911
Shannon: talking is the first step
Shannon: to healing
Dan: healing
Dan: is .... love
Dan: thats the twist in the end
Dan: what if
Dan: though
Dan: the healing
Dan: was about
Dan: actual healing
Dan: like
Dan: physical
Dan: healing
Dan: like regeneration
Shannon: like
Shannon: the whole thing is about him recovering from rotator cuff surgery
Shannon: and also btw his gf died
Shannon: but that's a sub-plot
Dan: in 911
Shannon: it's really about healing
Shannon: see, what a lot of people don't realize
Shannon: is that physical therapy can be intensely emotionally demanding
Dan: and so can love
Shannon: exactly.
Dan: hey , is that guy cute?
Shannon: not really
Shannon: moderately cute
Shannon: i'm actually not wearing my glasses

Call it, Friendo

2008-03-27T20:53:00.000-07:00

Paul Krugman, who I have been eyeing ever since his bludgeoning support of Hillary's healthcare mandates, issued a pretty bold challenge on Monday:

Now, I don’t expect presidential campaigns to have all the answers to our current crisis — even financial experts are scrambling to keep up with events. But I do think we’re entitled to more answers, and in particular a clearer commitment to financial reform, than we’re getting so far.

And, more specifically:

On the Democratic side, it’s somewhat disappointing that Barack Obama, whose campaign has understandably made a point of contrasting his early opposition to the Iraq war with Hillary Clinton’s initial support, has tried to score a twofer by suggesting that the war, in addition to all its other costs, is responsible for our economic troubles....Hillary Clinton has not, as far as I can tell, made any comparably problematic economic claims. But she, like Mr. Obama, has been disappointingly quiet about the key issue: the need to reform our out-of-control financial system.

When I read that, I put down my guns a little--because I agreed with him. And today, not three days later, Obama let loose with what in my eyes went above and beyond the call of duty in responding to the challenge. I read his entire speech on renewing the American economy, and it took me almost two hours because I read each paragraph like, three times, and had to look up all these words I didn't know. But there it was: not only a commitment to reform, but a clear demonstration that he has the necessary understanding and judgment required in order to follow through with that commitment. Clinton, too made a speech (on Monday), which consisted of her reciting everything that she has already proposed--i.e. proposed prior to Krugman's assertion that she has not proposed enough. And, frankly, she hasn't proposed enough. Her plan amounts to little more than a bail-out combined with punishment for those that exploit the system--not a reform of the system itself.

I'm waiting, now, eager to see how Krugman fields this. His refusal to acknowledge that there was any value in Obama's healthcare plan without once even mentioning the portion of the plan that sought to reform our healthcare economic system made me very suspicious--he's supposed to be fucking economist, after all. So here we are: the moment of truth. I can't wait to see what he says.

UPDATE: Here it is...http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/opinion/28krugman.html BLAH

New Study

2008-03-27T08:28:00.001-07:00

Shannon: 1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says
Shannon: it always annoys me
Shannon: when they call that a study
Shannon: "study"
Shannon: like
Shannon: oh really
Shannon: so you took the total prison population and divided it by the total US population
Shannon: that's a study?
Shannon: because it sounds like fourth-grade math
Roy: hahaha
Shannon: it's called a ratio
Shannon: i should start doing "studies"
Shannon: like...
Roy: according this STUDY i just did, 4 plus 5 equals 9
Shannon: right?
Shannon: now give me one million dollars.
Roy: hahaah

Suffocation Roulette

2008-03-27T08:14:00.000-07:00

I was reading this NYT blog post about a dangerous choking game that kids play to get 'high' (the sweet, sweet euphoria of brain cell death is apparently such a staple of teenage entertainment as to be sought well outside the trusted illicit sources of drugs and alcohol). The post is intended to educate parents about this game, as may kids don't realize that it could kill them. Quote:

In addition to discussing the dangers of the game with their children, parents should look for signs that kids may be playing. The game has several aliases. Parents should listen for names like Blackout, Flatliner, Fainting Game, California Choke, Dream Game, Airplaning, Suffocation Roulette, Space Cowboy and the Pass-Out Game.

I'm not trying to make fun of the post, because I agree that this is an important thing for parents to be aware of. But I just thought it was funny. Hey Mom, hey Dad...we're going to go play suffocation roulette. Okay, honey--WAIT. IS THAT A DANGEROUS GAME? I THINK I READ ABOUT IT IN THE NEW YORK TIMES.

No, but seriously parents. Suffocation Roulette is not a shitty Ozzy rip-off band. It is a dangerous game that could kill your child.

Intelligence in America

2008-03-19T19:52:00.001-07:00

My favorite thing about Barack Obama is how smart he is. Honestly, I think that he's great because of the hope and the integrity and all that, but I really do believe that all that stuff is really just a function of his intelligence. People keep talking about how his speech was risky and brave...I don't agree. I think that once that speech began to form in his mind he lost all fear of how it would 'play out,' because he knew that he could write a speech that was exactly what the country needed to hear. Not many people can do that.

I've been scanning the news and the blogs for reactions to his speech, and I kept stumbling across some really kooky shit. We've got the people who got it. But, then, you've got people who say unintentionally ironic things like "He avoided the real issue, which is the comments of Rev. Wright" (paraphrasing an NPR commentator my boss told me about today). Or the people who continue to try to make an issue of Rev. Wright, by saying things like:

"The more I think about what was actually said in Obama's speech, the more infuriated I am. As if I, as a white person, have something to answer for when it is OBAMA that's been mentored by a hate mongering racist!"

Okay, that was a little unfair. Who knows who that fucking guy was, I found that in the comments section of some random thing. BUT it illustrates my point, which is that when you have someone making speeches this intelligent (more importantly, when the President of the country makes all his speeches and decisions with this level of intelligence), it casts a much-needed light on the intelligence of everyone else. Valuing ideas for their intelligence has become pretty rare in our public discourse--or, if not rare, warped beyond recognition.

So when I hear people talk about Obama, it's amazing. It's like I've got a heat-seeking radar for intelligence: Wow, she's smart. Wow, he's a moron. Smart. Moron. Moron. Smart. And to be honest, I'm a bit surprised at times. Like Huckabee, who I had assumed (due primarily to my own bias towards the religious community, it's worth noting) was a complete idiot, had some pretty intelligent and open-minded things to say on the issue of Rev. Wright.

Valuing intelligence is very important. I'm not saying that stupid people should be deported or anything like that--most of these people are not even really stupid, they're just saying stupid things (and who can blame them? Saying stupid things has made many a lucrative career in this country). Many (MANY) of the things that are wrong with the country and furthermore with the world can be attributed to people just not thinking. If we put people's ability to think intelligently back in the spotlight, not only will those ideas with the most merit rise to the top, but those aspects of our collective stupidity that are largely self-imposed (choosing not to think as opposed to not being able to) will begin to right themselves. That makes me excited, for sure.

The Speech

2008-03-18T22:07:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen the speech yet, watch it. And read it. Really, I think you should both watch it AND read it. It is easily the best speech by a public figure I have ever heard in my lifetime. I'm pretty sure I could still say that if I was twenty years older. I don't know, whatever, this speech has completely transcended anything that I have ever witnessed in American politics.

I'm not even going to link to it. Seriously, it's the fucking internet, it's not that hard. Google "best speech ever, period."

Oh, and one more thing, prompted not by the speech itself but by all this white-person rage over Jeremiah Wright's comments: If I ever hear another white person complain about 'reverse racism,' I am going to punch them in the face. Seriously. Get the fuck over yourselves. "Black people blaming stuff on white people is racist." Really? Do you even fucking KNOW what racism is? No, you fucking don't. Racism as a concept (oooh, it seems like the opposite, but really it's the same thing!) and racism as something that you fucking experience as a limiting and oppressive force throughout your entire life are two totally different things. So shut. The fuck. Up.

Stupidism

2008-03-16T10:35:00.001-07:00

Obviously a presidential nomination contest that pits the first viable woman candidate against the first viable black candidate will shake things up a little bit in the standard discourse about race and gender. We've seen questionable comments slip from the mouths of supporters of both sides, and we've seen quite the media stampede to denounce them time and time again.

I think it's important, though, to note a pattern. From Joe Biden's slip over a year ago to the "pimping Chelsea out" comment on MSNBC and now to Geraldine Ferraro's "lucky to be black" shitstorm, we've seen some pretty ridiculous comments that have aggravated already sensitive relations. Let's look at Ferraro. She said that if Barack Obama were not black, that he would not be where he is today. Then, defending herself later, she said that of course this is the truth. If she hadn't been a woman, she wouldn't have been selected as Mondale's running mate. Likewise, if Obama weren't black, he wouldn't be where he is now. It's the truth! She said. Then she spun reverse-racism, and the feeding frenzy began again.

As much as Ferraro's comments irritate me, I think there is a critical distinction here that a lot of people are missing. Her comments are being touted as racist. I don't think they're racist--I think they're just plain stupid. I don't mean stupid as an empty insult--I mean literally stupid; unintelligent. If Obama weren't black, she's right, he may not be where he is now. If he had stayed in NYC when he was young instead of moving to Chicago, he may not be where he is now. If he had not slept in one morning and missed the train on his way to class, he may not be where he is now. All of these comments are potentially true and simultaneously completely worthless. So I agree with Ferraro's defense of herself that she was not being racist. I think that there is a difference between a person making racist comments and a stupid person making stupid comments that have to do with race. These people are not trying to demean others because of their skin color or gender--they are trying to show off their logical reasoning skills (however flawed they may be). The fact is that race is a hot issue right now, as is gender. ("Pimping Chelsea out"--sexist? Really? Or just idiotic, like something a drunk frat boy might say if he were allowed an appearance on national television.) And that means that a lot of people are going to be speaking up with their original position on the matter--and a lot of these people are going to be stupid, and their positions will follow.

The reason I think this is important is because there IS some major, widespread "-ism" going on with this election. And it's happening everywhere--the mainstream media, in private conversations, in mass e-mails, in blogs. People are saying that Barack Obama is a muslim, and people are defending him by saying THAT'S NOT TRUE!!! I can count the number of times I've heard the response "no, actually he's not, but so what if he was?" on one hand. The muslim label is being invoked and rejected as though it categorically defines a person's fitness for office. That, my friends, is what we need to be fighting. That is what the dissolution of racism and sexism in this country has revealed as the next frontier of bigotry--bias that nobody is fighting, that both sides reinforce, as though it were an aspect of reality rather than our own minds. Check this video where they get Barack's reflection on an Ohio voter's mispronouncement of his faith:

The worst part of this video is not the sad, sad ignorance of the voter they interviewed, but rather where it ends: Cutting Barack off in mid-sentence as he tries to explain how this rumor is offensive not only to him, but to muslims as well. I guess that's not part of the story of bigotry in America today.

Mixed Reality

2008-03-11T19:04:00.000-07:00

Scientists have finally grabbed their balls and done something to blur the line between reality and virtual reality. This is the kind of science that it's really beneficial to know about because you sound really cool at parties when you casually say things like "mixed-reality state" and "bidirectional instantaneous coupling":

Using a virtual pendulum and its real-world counterpart, scientists at the University of Illinois have created the first mixed reality state in a physical system. Through bidirectional instantaneous coupling, each pendulum "sensed" the other, their motions became correlated, and the two began swinging as one.

Awesome! Right? Uh....

From flight simulators to video games, virtual worlds are becoming more and more accurate depictions of the real world. There could come a point, a phase transition, where the boundary between reality and virtual reality disappears, Hubler said. And that could present problems.

As cool as that sounds (note: it sounds really fucking cool) I think that anyone who understands science knows what the most probable outcome of this type of experimentation is:

Oh, Ohio

2008-03-05T10:06:00.000-08:00

So according to MSNBC:

In Ohio, 1-in-5 Democratic voters said race was an important factor in making their decision. In that group, 8-in-10 voted for Hillary Clinton.

So, that's sixteen percent of Ohio Democratic voters that are racist. Democrats. The non-racist party. Not only are they racist, but they are SO racist that they will flat-out state that they are racist--no subconscious shit bubbling to the surface, no latent shit emerging, they flat out stated their preference for white people in an exit poll. Hillary won by ten percent of the popular vote, as of this morning's count. Congratulations, Hillary! You won Ohio because you're white.

So I was talking to Dan and Roy about this last night, as ichatting on primary/caucus nights is my new preferred social activity, and I was thinking if I was interviewing someone for a job, and I didn't hire the person, and then I told the labor department or whatever that race was an "important factor" in making my decision, I'd get fucking sued. Why? Because it's illegal.

Last night I told Roy:

I think seriously on the ballot
they should put questions like
"do you think that black people should be allowed to marry white people?"
"do you think that women should be legally allowed to hold a job?"
"do you think it's acceptable for a black person to make as much money as a white person for doing the same job?"
if you cant agree with the current laws
you shouldn't be allowed to vote on new ones

and then it could make a noise
when you put your ballot in to be counted
like the noise on game shows when you lose
and it could say
I'M SORRY
YOUR VOTE DOESN'T COUNT

But now, looking back, I'm realizing how much more complicated it is. If you don't agree with the current laws OF COURSE YOU SHOULD be able to vote on new laws! That's precisely how we got civil rights in the first place, and that's how we will continue to secure civil rights for those that need them. But in that gut-instinct place of my stomach that cries unfairness first and loudest, I feel like there should be a certain cutting-off point with regards to the progressiveness of our society. We ARE moving forward, aren't we? Can't we all agree that this is forward? I mean, "all men are created equal" DOES actually have a concrete meaning in the world.

If this race was closer, I'd be beside myself, afraid that racists would decide the future of this country--as though they didn't already do that, when we invaded Iraq. Please, please please racist voters. This country is growing up, please come with us.

UPDATE: I have been scolded by a coworker who says that the above MSNBC quote does not automatically equate to 16% of Ohio voters being racist. She points out that someone could both consider race to be important for civil rights reasons and have voted for Hillary. I think she's right, and happily conceded the point to her. However, some of those motherfuckers are racist, I'm sure of it.

Us and Them

2008-02-25T21:56:00.001-08:00

I was just reading about how Obama's support has grown and had an odd moment. Through the last couple months of this election, I've become more and more alienated by Hillary's campaign, and as I follow the polls I have seen her stronghold demographics winnowed down further and further. It's her strongest stronghold that's all that's left: white women.

And while he has made progress among women, he still faces a striking gender gap: Mr. Obama is backed by two-thirds of the Democratic men and 45 percent of the women, who are equally divided in their support between the two candidates. White women remain a Clinton stronghold.

As I read this I became exasperated, as usual. Those fucking white women! Every time I read that I get annoyed, because I feel like these white women are choosing Hillary just because she's a woman. This bothers me even though it doesn't bother me that black people may be voting for Barack just because he's black. This is partly because I think that it's more important to have a first black president than a first woman president (maybe I will explain this later), but primarily because I am a hypocrite.

So I'm reading the article and I get to this part of the article:

Even among women, Mr. Obama made strides. He had the support of 19 percent of white women in December and 40 percent in the most recent poll. White women, however, remain Mrs. Clinton’s most loyal base of support — 51 percent backed the senator from New York, statistically unchanged from the 48 percent who backed her in December.

And I'm like, reacting to this, and the train of thought went something like God, these fucking white women are so fucking stubborn. Everyone else can see how amazing Obama is but them! What is it about white women that makes them unable to see it? And then I tried to imagine a white woman, to see what was going on inside her stupid, Hillary-supporting head, and it was only then that I realized that I myself am a white woman, and also that I am totally fucking crazy and racist and sexist and stupid.

Recession! LA LA LA LA LA

2008-01-31T12:50:00.001-08:00

So I'm sure you've all heard about the Fed's scrambling attempts to stave off a recession....

And I'm sure you've hear the White House's take on the situation:

"I have not heard at all that we have changed our outlook, and we are not forecasting a recession," White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters traveling with President George W. Bush to California for the start of a tour of western states.

Anyway, Roy had a twitch of deja-vu and sent me this link about a 2004 statement made by our administration's favorite hulkish dialysis patient, OOoooooOOOoosama bin LADEN. Pertinent quote?

"We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said.

He also said al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration."

As Roy put it, "dude, nobody, myself included, really pays enough attention."

The worst part? I kind of don't even know what a recession means. Like, I know conceptually what it is, but like...what's going to happen? Everything will get more expensive? Our dollar will be devalued? If you're in a recession long enough, then our big corporations can't compete in the global market and the US job market begins to crash? These are guesses, and I'm sure they're only part of the picture. I hate shit like this, when you realize, oh, hey, I'm a fucking grown-up, this is actually pretty scary.

Mean Science

2008-01-29T09:30:00.000-08:00

You may remember the naked mole rat from studies a while ago on longevity: they live to be like, 30. Also, they are the only known coldblooded mammal, which may explain the nakedness. Scientists have now found that the naked mole rat is immune to certain types of burning pain, including the sting of acid and chili peppers. These findings may help scientists working on chronic pain management solutions.

"Their insensitivity to acid was very surprising," Park told LiveScience. "Every animal tested — from fish, frogs, reptiles, birds and all other mammals — every animal is sensitive to acid."

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some orphans that need stabbing.

Honestly, animal testing is one of those things where you can argue either side. I get it. But something like pain management--honestly, if you have so much pain that you need to manage it, then you have some kind of underlying problem. Making the pain go away will only make the problem worse because you won't be able to feel what's going on. The field of medical pain management has produced more prescription-drug addicts than any other field of medicine. Yes, I know there's no point in blogging about this. It's the least of our billion too-complex-to-solve problems. Blah blah blah blah blah.

God sometimes the hardest thing to admit is that I just don't care.

Good Morning! You're a Drug Addict.

2008-01-28T21:05:00.000-08:00

New studies show that caffeine is Bad. How bad? Like...Super Bad.

But only if you have type-2 diabetes.

Or if you're pregnant (and not hoping for a miscarriage, aka free abortion).

Okay, let's face it, it's gotta be bad for everyone, they just haven't found enough things to test yet in a controlled study.

It's like, coffee is my last bastion of sin. I barely smoke cigarrettes anymore, they make me sick after one night. Alcohol has gotten really annoying. All the real drugs are just too much trouble to bother with. But coffee, I still love to love coffee. This is even after I discovered that soy milk is bad for you (not because it makes you gay, but because it lines your stomach with soy-wax, preventing you from absorbing nutrients), so I am drinking not-as-scrumptious cow's milk lattes, but STILL. I still love it. So, so much. So so so much.

Consolation: at least I've still got premarital sex. FOR NOW.

Archetypes

2008-01-27T21:09:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking recently about the President. No, not him. Just the role of President, specifically of the United States.

I've been thinking that for some reason, most presidents seem to be former lawyers. Like, they're lawyers, and then they become prominent and then they go into politics and then they become president. I'm not actually sure if this is true or if this is just what I've always thought, but whatever, go with it. I mean it makes sense that a lawyer would go into politics, because they have to learn a bunch of stuff that relates to civics in general just to practice.

One of my friends who is a psychologist was telling me that he thinks the reason that Hillary won't get elected is because archetypally she's a fighter. And we are all really, really sick of fighters--Bush is a fighter too. We're sick of having our country led by someone who wants to defeat everyone.

So I was thinking, like...what is a lawyer but a fighter? I mean that's what lawyers are paid to do. A client gives them money, and they go on to use every resource at their disposal to defeat the opposition so that their client can win. To me, this is creepy. Because that's what the presidency has become in a way. That is bad, even if the 'client' were the American people, which it isn't. I think we're all well aware that the client in this case is people with money. You know, big soul-less corporations, Saudi sheiks, other jerks. And I'm not just talking about the Bushies, because economic neoliberalism gets its rocks off in the democratic party too. Sure, it's a benchmark of neoconservative policy, but that shit went down in the Clinton era too, and it goes down in Congress as we speak.

Honestly, that's one of the things I like a LOT about Obama. He was a lawyer, and he quit to become a community organizer. He was working in poor communities to organize people. In fact, I quote: "What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer?" (Barack Obama, quoted in the Chicago Reader 12/8/95) No, SERIOUSLY. What is the president but an organizer of people? The organizer of this big community of Americans? The fact that Obama sees himself as an organizer and not a fighter is apparent in his speeches and his policies. Because to a fighter, there is always us and them. To republican fighters, the them is the immoral, the muslims, the hippies. To democratic fighters, the them is big business, the religious right, etc. Obama never tries to polarize shit like that. To him, everyone is part of the community that he must organize to help itself become better.

On that note, here is my favorite part of Obama's SC victory speech:

What we've seen in these last weeks is that we're also up against forces that are not the fault of any one campaign but feed the habits that prevent us from being who we want to be as a nation. It's a politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon, a politics that tells us that we have to think, act, and even vote within the confines of the categories that supposedly define us, the assumption that young people are apathetic, the assumption that Republicans won't cross over, the assumption that the wealthy care nothing for the poor and that the poor don't vote, the assumption that African-Americans can't support the white candidate, whites can't support the African-American candidate, blacks and Latinos cannot come together. We are here tonight to say that that is not the America we believe in.

I am insane

2008-01-26T16:12:00.000-08:00

So I was talking to Roy today and he asked me a random question about my memories of family road trips when I was a kid, which led me to recount a story that made me realize something important: I'm crazy.

Here's the story I told Roy.

When I was a kid we used to always drive up to Pinetop to see my grandparents, and to get there we had to drive through Salt River Canyon. So on the way through the canyon, the road was ultra-windy (not windy like the wind, windy like it winds), and I'd always get carsick because I was afraid to look off into the distance because of the plummet-ous valley below. And because the roads were so windy (jesus, is this a real word? Windy? It looks so weird to me) I could only see like a few cars in front of and behind our car, not like on an open stretch of highway where you can see a ways out in front of you. So I used to get really scared that, because it appeared that many many more cars were traveling away from our destination than to it, that maybe there was like a war going on, or a nuclear attack, or maybe like virus outbreak, and all these cars were fleeing from it. I'd get really panicky as soon as this though entered my head, which it always would.

So, to calm myself down, I'd start calculating. Now I was just a kid and I didn't know much math, but I'd start to try to prove to myself mathematically that there were in fact just as many cars traveling in the same direction we were than from it. So I'd keep count of the cars we passed going in the opposite direction, and then try to calculate the distance between the first car i could see ahead of us and the last car i could see behind us by watching a landmark as we all passed it and then determining the distance using our car's speed, and then because I had memorized how long the canyon was I would try to divide that distance into the total distance of the canyon and then multiply it by the number of cars going the same way we were, all the while keeping count of how many cars we passed. This got very difficult and obviously made no sense, and at some point the math would start to fall apart in my head and I'd get confused and not know where I was in the calculations, and I'd start to panic again so I'd just start over and start calculating from scratch, and also try to peer into the cars passing us to see whether or not their faces looked like they were fleeing from a quarantine zone.

And then I realized, I always do that when I get nervous. I start making meaningless calculations. Like during the New Hampshire primary, when Barack was way up in the polls but then with 50% of the votes in Hillary was ahead, and I was online talking to Roy and Dan and they were like "yeah, it looks like Hillary" I started getting really anxious and so I started feeding the votes into an excel spreadsheet every time the count refreshed and calculating Hillary's lead to 5 decimal places because CNN was only calculating to the whole percentage point and I didn't feel like that was adequate. And also, when I was a kid, I don't remember this but my mom told me that when I was about three I was just sitting there staring at the ceiling and when she asked me what I was thinking about I was all "mom, did you know that three eights are twenty-four?" like THAT was what I had been sitting there thinking about, which actually makes sense. I was probably nervous about something and was like, counting numbers in my head. I remember when I was in second grade we had these tiny metric blocks where each block was one square centimeter and after we learned the metric system in school sometimes when I was nervous I'd sneak those blocks to my desk and try to figure out how many centimeter blocks I had to slip quietly into my pocket in order to have a whole number of inches.

Obviously all of this is stupid, but I'm slightly concerned. Roy says it sounds like an OCD tic. I think he might be right. Or does everyone do this? Maybe they do? I think I'm a high-anxiety person anyway, which is reason enough for concern, but until today I've never thought about this weird little habit of mine. The funny thing is, when I'm calculating, it actually makes me feel much much better. It's very comforting. Which to me is cause for alarm because there's no reason to be comforted. Like with the NH primary--it's not like me knowing a more precise figure was going to change the lead. But I felt like it did.

Ok that's all I just felt like venting.

The Whale Hunt

2008-01-23T21:25:00.000-08:00

You know what's beautiful? 3,000 photographs of a whale hunt.. Particularly the end of the series of photographs, where you see all of these people, it seems like the whole village is out there to help. And then the colors, of the blood and the whale skin and the meat and the snow. I've got that color palate stuck in my head now, I think that when I finally getting around to designing my website I'm going to use the whale hunt colors.

I recommend auto-play at first, and you can use the timeline to skip around. From the about section:

Running along the bottom edge of the screen is a timeline, representing the entire whale hunt trip, beginning with the taxi ride to Newark airport and ending with the butchering of the second whale, seven days later. The timeline is pictured as a medical heartbeat graph whose magnitude at each point corresponds to the photographic frequency (and thus the level of excitement) at that moment.

(From Shane)

The top four sickest things about being on the rag that no girl will ever tell you

2008-01-10T19:09:00.000-08:00

1. Pooping
You have to time your pooping. Why? Because there is a string hanging out of your vagina. It's like a little tail, and it's also like a little poop magnet. If you try to poop without also changing your tampon, you risk getting poop on the tampon string. It's not super common, and you can avoid it by being careful, but it's a lot to manage when you can't even see most of the area in question. Also, it is so so disgusting when it does happen that it's worth being hypervigilant. So you have to like pull the string up, poop, wipe very carefully. Sometimes when you poop the tampon starts to come out a little, like it's pushed out by whatever kind of intravaginal pressure results from the poop coming out. Then you have to change the tampon, because having it partway out hurts. So it's important to time your poops so you can just change tampons at the same time and not have to worry about any of it. But, as a coffee drinker, sometimes this is not so feasible. Even if it is, there is still the toilet full of bloody poop.

2. Scraping
The reason you have to time the poops is because if you take the tampon out too early it scrapes. This is not so much painful as just gross and unpleasant, like imagine filling your mouth with cotton balls. The tampon has to be soaked enough with blood so that it's moderately lubricated when you pull it out, otherwise it's rough cotton dragging across dry parched vagina. This is not such an issue on your heaviest days, but there are a good 3-4 days every month where you have to be careful of this.

3. Chunks
It's funny because like you would imagine the blood coming out of your vagina during menstruation to be a bit like the blood that comes out of your arm or leg when you get cut or scraped. But it's not. It's got all sorts of chunky tissue in it. Mostly they look like little jellies, or little blobs of glue, but sometimes they're more textured. These chunks don't sink into the tampon, but rather just kind of cling to it, so when you pull the tampon out they like to wave and say hello. Sometimes I just sit on the toilet and peer between my legs as they hit the water. They look like some kinda sick cross between a jellyfish and a maggot, only blood red, and when they hit the water they sink to the floor of the toilet, leaving a trail of bloody water coming off of them. It's kind of pretty, only also disgusting. I read once that 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage in the first trimester, and that the women don't even know it because they're passed with the menstrual flow. Consequently, I always wonder when I see those chunks if one of them may be my son or daughter.

4. Cramps
Yeah yeah yeah. We've all heard how bad they are. You know what? No you fucking haven't. Menstruation is the lining of your uterus--all those chunks we talked about--being shed. It's sort of like an internal scab being ripped off--and that's what it feels like. Imagine the lining of one of your internal organs being sloughed off. The closest thing that I can direct you to for an example of what this feels like is when you are bleeding from a wound. Do you know how when you cut yourself, the aching feeling of losing blood? Great, now imagine your entire pelvic area feeling like that. If you let yourself focus on it, you will inevitably think Oh god, I am going to bleed to DEATH.

Conversations with Rudy

2008-01-09T19:37:00.000-08:00

How do you feel about your sixth place finish in Iowa, Mr. Giuliani?
None of this worries me. September 11, there were times I was worried.

Would you care to comment on Hillary's emotional moment, Mr. Guiliani?
This is not something I would judge anyone on. The reality is, if you look at me, September 11 — the funerals, the memorial services — there were times in which it was impossible not to feel the emotion.

Would you like paper or plastic, Mr. Giuliani?
It's interesting that you would ask that because one thing I learned on September 11 was that nothing--not paper, not plastic--will make up for the lost lives of innocent American citizens.

Mr. Giuliani, would you like fries with that?
Yes, I would like fries with that. For who am I to the victims of September 11 if I do not honor them by living every day to the fullest? If I do not relish in the small pleasures? Make those chili fries, good citizen. Supersized.

Obama on Healthcare

2008-01-06T14:17:00.000-08:00

You know, I can ignore most of the bullshit that comes out of Hillary Clinton's mouth. But now she's getting I think a bit desperate and is attacking Obama on healthcare. Hillary says that Obama's healthcare plan will leave 15 million people uninsured. When she said that all I could think was Oh, warping the facts to create fear. Familiar strategy.

There are two major differences, in my mind, between Hillary's and Obama's healthcare plans, and this "leaving 15 million people uninsured" soundbyte refers to the first difference. That difference is that while Hillary's plan makes it mandatory that all Americans purchase health insurance, Obama's plan does not. They both will make it cheaper for poorer Americans through subsidies, etc.--but Hillary's plan states that you will be punished (with a fine) if you do not buy this new cheaper subsidized health insurance. Obama's plan says that yes, the government will help out, but if you don't want it or still don't think you can afford it then we will not force you to purchase insurance. So yes, Hillary, Obama's plan may leave people uninsured, because he won't have forced them to do something against their will. Fuck you.

The second difference between Obama's healthcare plan and the plans of both Clinton and Edwards is subtle but massively important. Obama's healthcare plan has a real and viable strategy for lowering the ridiculous costs of healthcare that pad the wallets of insurance and pharmaceutical company CEOs. The problem with healthcare in this country is that the system is fundamentally rigged, and Obama demonstrates not only an understanding of that and a willingness to go to work on it, but also that he knows how to work on it. These issues are complex and largely invisible to the public, but he totally, totally gets it--more than I do, more than you do, more than anyone else in Washington does. Check it:

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter on why Obama's plan is better than not only Clinton's, but also Edwards' strategy of overruning the special interest groups by excluding them from the discussion:

Obama's idea is a better one: Get every special interest out in the open on television, where the new president can cross-examine them and expose their phony rationalizations for charging $100 a pill or denying coverage to sick people...Then, having triumphed over the drug and insurance companies in the court of public opinion, the legislative victories will follow.

Also, here is a long but easy-to-read blog post that does a great job of explaining why Obama's plan for healthcare reform is a-fucking-mazing. If you want to really understand his plan (without the burden of working in the healthcare field for years and years), you should definitely read this. Quote:

Most amazing of all, Obama’s speech shows deep understanding of health-care economics. It recognizes that real solutions to real problems require more than just points on a list. Obama seems to understand the quantitative effect of his proposals—i.e., how much each point will likely improve things—and his priorities reflect that understanding. That fact alone puts him so far ahead of most politicians that he seems to be from another species. It is as if he were Homo sapiens, and the rest Neanderthals.

The thing that's driving me nuts here is that people, like Hillary and this guy Paul Krugman from the NY Times, are criticizing Obama's plan not because it's bad but because they don't understand it. And Obama doesn't waste time trying to explain the complex nuances of his brilliance: He's got the platform he's chosen to be elected on and the brilliance will sneak in the back door. Sadly, in this country, you can't be elected on the merit of being smart enough to comprehensively solve major, seemingly unreconcilable problems that ever American citizen faces. That's not a good soundbyte.

holy crap

2007-12-19T07:50:00.001-08:00

I was searching for sperm-and-egg pictures because I think they're pretty, for example

When I happened across the most sexist thing I have EVER SEEN:

FUCKABEE!

2007-12-18T16:57:00.000-08:00

Since the separation of church and state has become a cliche now, I decided to not even bother writing anything about Huckabee's new TV ad. Instead, I will simply post the reactions of a completely random sampling of American citizens.

I hope he dies. I hope he dies in a fire.
Shannon M.

What a fucking cocksucker. Fuck that fucking motherfucker.
Roy W.

Fuck you. Fucking Huckabee. What a fucking piece of shit. What about the Jews? THE JEWS!?!?!?!?
Derekh F.

I hate Jesus.
Charlie P.

Get it?! Fruit Flies??! Ohhh!

2007-12-14T21:10:00.000-08:00

Here we have it: the perfect illustration of the scary implications of the disconnect between science and the public.

Scientists have figured out how to turn homosexuality (or, you could say, heterosexuality) "on" and "off" in fruit flies by giving them a drug that changes the way their brains register pheromones.

“It was amazing,” Dr. Featherstone said. “I never thought we’d be able to do that sort of thing, because sexual orientation is supposed to be hard-wired.”

Uh, did you hear that? Scientists are so convinced of the fact that sexual orientation is hard-wired that they are now amazed to have stumbled across the possibility of altering it. Meanwhile, something like 40% of the American population is still convinced that homosexuality is a choice.

Not that a fruit fly brain is the same as a human brain or anything, but make no mistake: this is Big News. Dr. Featherstone then went on to say that he thinks that it's theoretically possible to develop a drug that will let people choose their sexual orientations. He then goes on to drop some Dr. Ian Malcolm wisdom, suggesting that the important question is not "can we," but "should we."

So wait! We are in for a real treat! Science says that homosexuality is not a choice now, but it MIGHT ACTUALLY BECOME A FUCKING CHOICE in the future. And when it does, that 40% that we're so blessed to share our country with will have completely missed that pretty important step in the middle and will, I can only expect, begin demanding the right to make the choice for us. Mandatory de-programming! How will they justify this logically, I wonder? Oh wait, silly me.

God, I can't wait to be gay.

Who speaks for Earth?

2007-12-13T09:13:00.000-08:00

Here is an article in Seed Magazine that reveals a debate about the implications of seeking contact with extraterrestrial life. This Russian scientist is sending out messages into outer space, and some other people are like "Excuse me, sir, but who are you to make this decision for the entire Earth? The aliens you seek could be total douchebags."

This debate just boggles my mind. I start thinking about trying to get the entire world to agree on something, and it's like something short-circuits in my brain and I'm upended by a barrage of frenetic thoughts:

We can't get a global energy policy together
We can't get global human rights principles enforced
We can't stop thousands of children from starving to death every day
We can't even get everyone in our country, let alone the entire world, to read the fucking constitution
We can't get people to stop buying poisonous sweatshop toys for their spoiled brat kids for christmas

But YES, let's align ourselves around whether or not to contact aliens.

I am not trying to be critical of the debate, because I think that the points are all valid. But I just cannot CANNOT give a shit. I can't make my brain do it. I can't worry about being attacked by aliens when the entire world is already being conquered by the Big Mac. PLEASE, RUSSIAN GUY. CALL THE FUCKING ALIENS. I don't think they could do anything worse to us than what we're doing to ourselves.

You called my children animals!

2007-12-11T14:03:00.000-08:00

Like Mike, if I could be like Mike, I wanna be, I wanna be like Huckabee!

2007-12-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

Chuck Norris Fact #128: This Video

Remember the funny Chuck Norris Facts website? Well Chuck Norris has apparently sold his soul to politics. Apparently Huckabee has a sense of humor. I give him that. Not that this spot is funny, but it's trying!

Once again, the wisdom of the commentors soothes my aching wounds.

Utuber709: ohhh myyyy goddd america's days are over.

spicEYOfeLiAEe: wow this video is boring as shit!
If anyone wants some real entertainment
Check out my Boobs on my channel!
Unless your gay that is...

Esialpha: Did you guys know that Huckabee doesn't believe in evolution? Does that concern anybody?

Burntrice192:it doesnt matter, what chuck norris says is law.

And on the eighth day, god created mica

2007-12-05T08:56:00.000-08:00

A new hypothesis that the first biomolecules on Earth originated as proteins contained between primordial sheets of mica has been developed by Helen Hansma (chick!), a research scientist at UC Santa Barbara and a program director at the National Science Foundation.

This hypothesis is only slightly more compelling than the Jar of Peanut Butter hypothesis presented by leading scientists just a few years ago:

MAN-Power

2007-12-04T14:11:00.000-08:00

As if we weren't already convinced that sperm powers the universe...I'm gonna become a mad-scientist-engineer and design a fuckin flux capacitor that's powered by my vagina, so there.

Energy Supply That Drives Sperm Could Power 'Nanobot'

My better life would include dinosaurs

2007-12-03T22:19:00.000-08:00

This 16 year old kid in North Dakota found this mummified dinosaur with like tons of tissue intact. That's it. My childhood memories are all ruined, forever tinged with the bitter glow of not having found a mummified dinosaur.

The cool part about finding a mummified dinosaur as opposed to just a fossilized one is that scientists can calculate muscle mass and density. Also they found that the vertebrae were further apart than previously assumed--there's some kind of spacer tissue in between them. They figured out that this dinosaur (and perhaps a lot of other dinosaurs) are quite a bit bigger than we thought. That means our estimation of their running speeds changes, which starts to change the way we think about predator/prey dynamics. I kind of wish I was a paleontologist or other kind of Dinosaur Scientist. It's like you make one new discovery and the whole world changes. Think of all the imagining they get to do.

Also, this month's National Geographic has a whole thing on dinosaurs. There's a free poster and it's awesome. Sometimes I fantasize about decorating my entire apartment with dinosaur posters. To shit with having nice fancy grownup things.

mmmm Fractals

2007-11-28T08:51:00.000-08:00

Because I work around a bunch of living systems people, I keep bumping into fractals. I've always liked the concept of fractals. The way they were explained to me was very simple: in nature, a fractal is a pattern that you can find underlying chaos. Nature follows the simplest and most efficient path. Therefore, you have the same pattern over and over, expressed in iterations and sort of nested within one another. For example, a piece of broccoli or cauliflower is these tiny florets within florets within florets, all of which were shaped by the same material flows and thus have the same pattern. Here's a broccoli-cauliflower hybrid, which is a nice example:

So anyway, that's how I understand fractals, which is sort of a simplistic natural systems view. There is this whole fractal geometry thing that I don't get, though, because I'm bad at math. But basically, fractal geometry corresponds to actual stuff in the real world, whereas euclidian geometry is all about abstract shapes like triangles and squares. This is cool: someone was recently telling me about this law of fractal geometry which is basically when you're measuring the perimeter of something, that as your instruments become more and more calibrated your measurement will grow closer and closer to infinity. The example that was used was measuring a coastline--imagine walking along the coast with a measuring tape, which would give you one measurement. Then, imagine walking around with a string and measuring around each individual grain of sand. Your measurement would be much higher even though it was the same coastline.

So anyway, that got me thinking and googling. I was reading this thing on Mandelbrot, which was interesting, and kind of lifts up some stuff about fractal geometry vs. euclidian geometry, so I thought I'd pass it along. What frustrates me is that when they're teaching younger people math, they teach them euclidian geometry, which seems much more abstract and boring. I mean, I'm not saying you shouldn't teach euclidian geometry, because obviously it's very very difficult to get through life if you don't know how to calculate the area of an isosceles triangle. But if they were teaching kids in high school fractal geometry then I'd think that they would be much more interested, right? Because you can just run outside and find some shit to play with. Plus, it would help prepare these kids to make the most of their first acid trip. Goddammit our education system is failing us.

Missing Links. HYPER-Links! Ah ha ha, um, (cough) hee . . . mmmm . . .

2007-11-27T20:36:00.000-08:00

Really though, we've added a new feature to Human on Human: our suggested links listing!

There is so much good news out there, and I feel there's so much I should be posting, but feel like a hack writing posts that just regurgitate what someone has already written better. So right over there on the left, above our post history, is now a list of what Shannon and I have found online.

Want some teasers to the links that are there now?

Rock of Ages, Ages of Rock : Forget Intelligent Design. Let's bring this shit back old school with Creationism, and not only Creationism that attacks Biology, but Geology as well. Meet the real scientists who believe the Earth is only like 6 thousand years old. "Granite deposit: Where were you the night of Novemeber 27th, 10 billion years B.C.?"

My Genome, Myself: People want freedom, and yet they keep finding smart new ways to talk about how unfree they are! I think my genes wrote this sentence.

Who's Afraid Of "Soulless Scientism?": George Bush created a bioethics committee in 2001, and its first president thinks that science should be a humble science that doesn't ask questions. A really interesting read. This topic will be back. I promise you, yes, YOU!

Judgment Day: The 2-hour Nova special all about the Dover School case several years ago all about teaching ID along side Evolution in science class. Really, I got emotional at the end. You can watch the whole thing for free online. Also, I feel this single Nova episode preemptively debunks anything that the Ben Stein diatribe coming out soon can say about Evolution.

...which is why I'm such a slut.

2007-11-20T14:39:00.001-08:00

Scientists have done a study on pigs (whose reproductive systems are very similar to that of humans) that provides:

possible biochemical proof that the reproductive system of female mammals can "sense" the presence of sperm and react to it by changing the uterine environment.

And evidence for:

a detection and selection system that alerts females to the presence of different kinds of sperm and then triggers mechanisms in the oviducts that control sperm transport, binding and activation for fertilization.

So what does that translate to, in the natural world?

"We know sperm selection exists in nature, especially in promiscuous species, when females mate with several males," Fazeli said. "Baboons are a good example. During one reproductive cycle, if the female mates with several males, most of the time the offspring belong to one of the males -- not a spread between all of them... We are now seeing what can be the molecular basis for this effect."

So let me just re-capture the awesomeness for you, in case you missed it. This study suggests that after sex, my vagina observes what kind of sperm she got, and then she decides whether she wants to make it easier or harder for that sperm to fertilize her eggs by altering the uterine environment. We are well-aware that women select mates based on their fitness, by evaluating things like strength, status, facial symmetry and pheremone content. What this study suggests is that after a woman has sex with a potential mate, her body goes through another evaluation process based upon sperm quality. And that, pure and simple, means that it is biologically advantageous for women to be promiscuous. BAM.

The pressure to be thin (sad!)

2007-11-19T11:01:00.000-08:00

I hope you find the time to read this article about how models keep dropping dead from not eating enough.

And don't forget that teenage girls see this warped image of how women are "supposed to look" and they get really really confused about their bodies! They get eating disorders! They get low self esteem! The fashion industry is totally evil, and all I can say is that I'm really really glad that I am secure enough in my femininity to keep a healthy perspective on this as I shop for this season's skinny jeans and scoop-neck tunics. If it weren't for women like me staying grounded, we'd never have a shot at overcoming the patriarchy.

Shoes.

I feel like, in Life, I have graduated past being upset by this. Sure when I was fifteen and chubby and getting oriented to feminism I was outraged by the fashion industry and its many transgressions against Womankind. But I am over it. You know why? Because if you as a human being are willing to let the fashion industry affect your judgment so much that you stop ingesting the nutrients necessary for your survival, then fucking good. Now you're fucking dead, and your weird, neurotic, insecure, self-absorbed children will never be born. Jesus Christ I love natural selection.

Anyway, while the Feminist Lite view is that the fashion industry is evil or bad or wrong, I think it's worth noting that this is an industry full of people that have evolved the ability to kill themselves with clothes. I think the problem is not any kind of genuine malevolence but just the natural output of a system being run by a bunch of shallow idiots. I mean, look at the fashion photographer (in the article) speaking out against the industry. Go ahead, sweetheart, fight the good fight. Those models are dying, goddammit! Let me know when we start losing rocket scientists and I'll start caring. K?

Oh, by the way, this video is still funny after approximately 700 viewings.

Terror

2007-11-15T11:10:00.000-08:00

When I was little I used to have nightmares about The Bomb. They were pure figments of my imagination...I'm really glad I never saw these photos (French nuclear test, August 24, 1970).

(via my friend Shane Amaya)

Political Science, or, Amateur Human Nature Theorists and Practitioners (Politicians)

2007-11-14T07:14:00.000-08:00

“It’s interesting that that question would even be asked of someone running for president. I’m not planning on writing the curriculum for an eighth grade science book. I’m asking for the opportunity to be President of the United States.”

This was the beginning of Senator Mike Huckabee’s response to the question, “You’re on record saying you don’t believe in Evolution, but if not, then what? Is it the story of creation as described in Genesis?” Huckabee goes on to state that yes, he does believe the story of Genesis, and that the particulars of the method and duration of this creation he doesn’t know.

Yes, Huckabee isn’t planning on writing the curriculum to a science class, but he is volunteering to be a primary decision-maker in a scientific experiment with irreversible consequences.

I was thinking about what the essence of politics was the other day, and when you strip away all the jargon politics (and government) is just the practice and theory of how to manage and control human beings. Every time a politician opens his or her mouth, he/she is stating their preferences in government, but digging deeper, they are saying what they think motivates and influences the actions of human beings, and how government can harness, inhibit, encourage, or snuff this behavior.

What makes human beings tick?

Are we creatures that were created to love and serve our creator, creatures that each house a struggle between spiritual godliness, and ‘animalistic,’ desires of the flesh that include greed and lust? Or are we animals that, like every other animal, operate under an evolved nature that promotes behavior resulting in the largest amount of children? Somewhere in between?

Mike isn’t writing a science class book, but he is aspiring to manage and control a vast community of these creatures about whom he has theories (scientific we could say) on how they operate. What if Mike is wrong about his science? What if his theories about what makes humans tick isn’t correct? What’s at stake?

There is one big reason why Huckabee, or any other brave amateur ‘human nature theorist’ (politician) should be concerned about science today: the continuation of our species on this planet. Paul MacCready puts it perfectly in this quote: “Over billions of years on a unique sphere chance has painted a thin layer of life, complex, improbable, wonderful and fragile. Suddenly we humans, a recently arrived species, no longer subject to the inherent check and balances present in nature, have grown in population, technology, and intelligence to a position of terrible power. We now wield the paint brush.” Science informs us of our world, and if we don’t understand how our world works how are we to make informed decisions on how to interact with it? (See Dan Dennett's speech as it relates to MacCready's quote here.)

Global warming and nuclear war at the hands of terrorists (or nations led by men who don’t understand the ramifications of their actions); these are the two big political questions in America today that have everything to do with science. On the most powerful country in the world, in an unprecedented period of population and technology, having the proper information about how our planet, and how we as an animal work and relate to one another is important. This president doesn’t have to be a scientist to properly rule this country, but this president should at least have the respect and understanding of science to realize that in this age, science is synonymous with power, and whoever wields this power will be able to do or undo everything our species, and life in general, has worked so hard to achieve.

Millennial fury

2007-11-13T15:58:00.000-08:00

Shannon: i am both flattered and offended by this
Derekh: millennials?
Derekh: is that us?
Shannon: apparently
Derekh: huh
Derekh: what is the purpose of this article?
Shannon: it makes me feel stereotyped
Shannon: but also, feared
Shannon: so it's kind of a wash
Derekh: i just don't understand what the point of categorizing this group is
Derekh: so you know how to interact with us?
Derekh: so you know what to talk about?
Derekh: i mean, i don't get it
Shannon: i dont' get it either
Derekh: oh well
Shannon: i hate America
Shannon: oh shit
Shannon: watch this 60 minutes thing
Shannon: "Come now as our reporter walks a mile in their flip-flops"
Shannon: ok that's it
Shannon: fuck these people
Derekh: wait what?
Derekh: it says that?
Derekh: i love 60 minutes
Derekh: so much
Shannon: they're making us look like a bunch of snotty idiots
Shannon: who only understand the internet
Shannon: or like
Shannon: we're a bunch of slackers that are going to take over the world through no other virtue than that we are internet savvy
Shannon: or something
Shannon: i don't know
Shannon: also, note the link to that mr. rogers thing
Derekh: well
Derekh: that is true
Derekh: oh my god, is that the thing that blames mr. rogers?
Shannon: yes.
Shannon: fucking yes.
Shannon: these fucking people better watch it, because in 20 years we'll all be holding public office and we can implement policy measures for euthanizing old people
Derekh: nice
Derekh: ok, watching this millenial vid
Derekh: i hate this woman
Derekh: who is judging us
Shannon: lol
Derekh: 'rolling in with their ipods and flip flops around noon'
Shannon: omg
Derekh: fuck these people
Derekh: fuck these dinosaurs who feel that by labeling us they are somehow controlling us, something they know in their heart of hearts, they can't fucking do, ever
Derekh: because when they die, we inherit the earth
Shannon: there it is!
Shannon: i was trying to unlock your anger
Shannon: finally
Derekh: i feel labeled
Derekh: i don't like it
Shannon: yes!
Shannon: me too!
Derekh: this woman is a bitch
Shannon: it's infuriating!
Derekh: who doesn't know shit
Shannon: these people are totally threatened by us
Derekh: like we're that different from her
Shannon: it's so retarded
Derekh: they should be
Derekh: our WPM typing skills are unbridled
Shannon: lol
Derekh: you know what i'm going to do?
Shannon: what
Derekh: throw away my flip-flops and give my ipod to a baby boomer
Derekh: i'll show them
Shannon: lol
Derekh: i'm going to start writing checks
Derekh: WRITING CHECKS FOR THINGS LIKE GROCERIES
Shannon: hahaha
Derekh: never use my check card again
Derekh: i'm also going to not use tivo or cable, but just use reception from an antennae
Shannon: and then slowly entering the purchase into your check register with a shaky, arthritic hand while people impatiently tap their feet behind you in line
Shannon: use radio
Derekh: tape my favorite shows using a timer on a VCR
Derekh: exactly
Shannon: vhs? or BETA.
Derekh: beta
Derekh: man
Derekh: i don't know
Shannon: lol
Derekh: i've never used consumer betamax
Shannon: that's like the going vegan of acting old
Derekh: nice
Derekh: oh well
Derekh: i do hate the internet
Derekh: (i don't)
Shannon: i do too (me neither)

Spamku

2007-11-12T13:38:00.000-08:00

I was cleaning out my spam folder and realized that some of these lines are perfectly suited for the haiku form.

the ladies will say
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with megadik pills

at last your new life
your sexual dreams come true
real man, real penis!

"oh it's so tiny!"
did it make you feel so sad?
feel the action, man!

disappointing babes?
new special medication
now, attract sweet chicks!

girls giggle at you?
real sexual formula
bigger than "average"!

give her real pleasure!
be proud in public toilets!
make order today!

momma nature

2007-11-12T08:58:00.000-08:00

25 weird animals for you to love

Does your name start with an R? Because you are Retarded!

2007-11-10T19:19:00.000-08:00

I would like to please draw your attention to a new study that sheds light on that wacky, wacky human nature by applying two well-known statistical principles for rigorous study: 1. Blowing Your Results Out of Proportion, and 2. Ignoring Obvious and Simple Explanations for Your Data. Yay, science! (Note: italics denote extreme sarcasm).

The authors of the study have found that people tend to express preferences for things that begin with the same letter as their name--i.e., Tom likes Toyotas. I would like to first point out that it is in fact highly likely that this obviously definitely is the case within a certain sub-population of homo sapiens that science refers to as Losers. So obviously these Losers are skewing your results. But okay.

But wait! The researchers say. We have found that statistically, people express this preference for things that are NOT desirable--which means that it is an unconscoius preference. One of their examples of these undesirables is a strikeout in baseball (which is recorded on the scorecard with the letter K). Behold:

Based on data from 1913 through 2006, for the 6,397 players with at least 100 plate appearances, “batters whose names began with K struck out at a higher rate (in 18.8% of their plate appearances) than the remaining batters (17.2%),” the researchers find...Granted, 18.8% vs. 17.2% is not a huge difference, but it was statistically significant—that is, not likely to be due to chance."

Oh my god, there were 1.6% more strikeouts by people whose names began with K. You're right, that is not likely due to chance. But with 6,397 players and 26 letters in the alphabet, about 500 of them will have K as one of their initials (K is probably one of those averagely common letters, yeah?). So basically it could have been like one fucking guy who is accounting for this entire "statistically significant" difference. Like maybe in Little League mean kids called him Kenny Strikeout or something. Or whatever, maybe I'm exaggerating and it's more like five guys--either way, a 1.6-percent difference manifesting within a sample size of five hundred people seems pretty tenuous to me. I'm not even going to get into how the word "strikeout" actually begins with a fucking S--whatever. So that's Blowing Your Results Out of Proportion. Moving on.

The other shocking trend they found: People whose names begin with A and B get higher grades than people whose names begin with C and D--in fact, the Cs and Ds on average get lower grades than people with neutral initials (M, W, etc.). Again, this could be a sub-population of weirdos skewing the results, but just for fun let's pretend it isn't. Let's pretend it's actually true across the entire population. How do the researchers explain this?

The [students with initials of either C or D] had such “an unconscious fondness for these letters, [they] were slightly less successful at achieving their conscious academic goals than were students with other initials,” write the researchers.

I would just like to point out that half of these people are qualified here by their last initial, and that teachers often alphabetize their students by their last names. People with the initials A and B are probably frequently the first to get called in attendance, sit at the front of the class, and get graded on a test by a teacher. People with the initials C or D are probably frequently near the top but never first. This might very well have a psychological impact on both students and teachers. An analogy would be a race, say a marathon--The guy who finishes first is the happiest, the guys who finished second and third are the least happy (so close!), and everyone else is just happy to have finished at all. So that's Ignoring Obvious and Simple Explanations For Your Data.

So thanks Leif Nelson of the Univ. of California and Joseph Simmons of Yale. Oh that's funny. Your initials have nothing in common with what school you went to. Oh what's that? Leif? You own a Lawnmower?! Oh my god that's so amazing.

Dude, dude!

2007-11-07T19:18:00.000-08:00

I was reading this article, which is about how cigarettes are bad (groundbreaking) and marijuana is good. At least, if you believe the Swiss. They are neutral. We can trust them.

Instead of reading the whole article, because obviously you're at work and supposed to be working, allow me to supply the pertinent quote:

"In contrast to those who shunned both substances, the pot-only crowd was more likely to be male (71.6 to 47.7 percent); have a good relationship with friends (87 versus 83.2 percent); and play sports (85.5 versus 76.6 percent)...they do not seem to have great personal, family or academic problems."

The study also pointed out that potsmokers were less likely to have good relationships with their parents, but I think that we can pretty safely attribute that to the taboo.

I don't really partake in pot any more, but it's more because I'm too lazy to go find some than due to any real aversion. In fact, side note, I don't know if you know this, but marijuana binds to the receptor for a naturally occurring ligand called anandamide. That's the chemical that's thought to be released during runner's high, and also interestingly enough has a whole lot to do with pregnancy: it plays a role in getting the egg into the womb and is a key chemical communicator between a mother and her embryo.

So to recap: smoking pot will make you more likely to have good friendships, and the high is like your very first experience of your mother's love. Good thing that shit's illegal!

Is the existence of suffering in the world the reason why you don't believe in God?

2007-11-07T07:39:00.000-08:00

That's a good reason, as discussed in this New York Times article, but I like this commenter's reason too!

'” I came to the point where I simply could not believe that there is a good and kindly disposed Ruler who is in charge.” “The problem of suffering,” he recalls, “became for me the problem of faith.””

I’m a much more simple man. My problem of faith was talking snakes.

— Posted by jambo'

Snakes get a really bad rap, n'est pas? It's species-profiling. Do you know how many snakes are wrongfully accused each year of eating babies, hypnotizing children, and offering forbidden produce to women who don't see the big problem with grazing between meals? My grandma was a snake, dude.

Can you identify all these 'bad' snakes from popular culture?

What's that? You don't recognize the third snake down on the left? Oh, that's because HE DOESN'T EXIST. I just drew him up to prove a point; no where in media are snakes represented as benevolent, friendly creatures. As far as Hollywood is concerned (and let's be honest, global consciousness) snakes are lower than the dirt they slide on.

I still think the best writing on how you reconcile a suffering world with the existence of loving god comes from C.S. Lewis's 'The Problem of Pain.' It's short, it's smart, super-duper smart, and it does an excellently intelligent job of addressing the issue. I just found some quotes online from it.

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

"We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it."

And me without my colander helmet and spatula sword...

2007-11-05T12:30:00.000-08:00

NASA has a bunch of recordings up of sounds on Saturn. So what does Saturn sound like? Well, first of all, it sounds awesome. That aside, Saturn sounds exactly like we expected it to sound like: like Outer Space.

No seriously. We all watched enough MST3K to know what Outer Space sounds like. Every cheesy sci-fi movie ever made makes Outer Space sound the same way. It goes something like weeoo weeoo weeoo glub glub wzzzle wzzzle weeoo blzzle bvwooOOooOOooOOoot! Which, it turns out, is 100 percent scientifically accurate. Did we already have Outer Space recorded and I just didn't hear about it? Or should I start piecing together a major conspiracy theory involving Area 51, mutants, the inventor of the synthesizer, and the Directors Guild of America....

"The Golden Compass" Debated on Fox News

2007-11-04T17:06:00.000-08:00

The priest gets the last word, out of respect, because anyone who doesn't believe in Judeo-Christian concepts deserves less respect obviously.

So much to say . . .

Bored online? Have you checked your email five times while reading this headline? Find religious debates online!

2007-11-04T16:08:00.000-08:00

Who loves reading the comments posted on movie reviews, opinion articles, or YouTube videos online? Do you love reading pedantic arguments that try to find that perfect balance of intelligent argumentation and 'Yo Moma's SO FAT-style' disses? Are your friends tired of you going on lengthy drunken diatribes about what the real purpose of life is, and what's wrong with religion, and what you REALLY think about God?

What's that? You answer 'Yes' to all three of those?

WELP, this New York Times Article "God and Man on YouTube" points out several religious video superhits that have elicited mountains of debate in the form of comments. There is also is apparently a website called GodTube (broadcast him).

OMG, I just very briefly glanced at the GodTube page for the first time, and the first video on there is talking about the "Golden Compass" movie and is asking if it promotes atheist to kids!

Ok, I gotta go join the fun!!!!!

See you on the message boards!

Barack Obama Is Way Smarter Than You

2007-10-25T19:49:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I'm sure everyone knows the deal. Obama was all "I need to make sure Hillary doesn't win the black heartland vote so I'm gonna go on a gospel tour" and then someone was all "Wait a minute Obama, isn't that guy Reverend McClurkin that you're touring with a giant homophobe who has said fucked up things about gay people?" and then a bunch of people were all "Obama we are appalled and we demand that you kick this guy off your gospel tour immediately" and then Obama was all "I'm not gonna do that but what I will do is add an openly gay minister to the same tour so that everyone's views are fairly represented" and a bunch of gay rights people were all "Noooooo that's not goooood enough, you have betrayed us and WE ARE NOT VOTING FOR YOU!" and then Dan Savage was all "I am feeling reactive today."

Ok, people, here's the deal. There are a lot of fucking people in this country that do not agree with us (that would be you, me, and Barack Obama) that gay rights are important and should be upheld. There are a lot of fucking people in this country that think that being gay is just plain wrong. Is it fucked up to think that? Yes, in my opinion it is. So I think that we can all agree that the most important thing that we can work towards is getting the people who are intolerant of homosexuality to become increasingly tolerant of homosexuality, so that, ultimately, these people will support gay rights. Homophobic people do not need to be defeated--they need to be educated.

Let's quickly run through an alternate scenario. Let's say Obama did kick McClurkin off the gospel tour. Now imagine all the people who are fans of McClurkin and likely not huge fans of homosexuality. They'd be all "Hey, how come McClurkin's not on the tour anymore? I really like that guy." And then someone would be all "Because the gay rights people demanded that he be kicked off."

Pop quiz: which response do you think would be most prevalent?

A: "Well gee, I've never really cared much for homosexuality seeing as how my religion condemns it and all...but now that gay rights advocates have ruined my gospel tour I think that maybe I will be more open-minded in the future."

or

B: "FUCK those gay people! (Only we mean that figuratively because we are not into sex with gay people, and also not at all because we do not say the F-word.)"

Here's a clue for those that desperately need it: Bringing together McClurkin fans and fans of the gay minister in the same crowd to watch an inspiriting gospel show that is tolerant not only of different lifestyles but also of different beliefs about those lifestyles is perhaps the single most progressive thing that a politician or public figure could have done in that situation to advance the gay rights movement in America today. It reeks of sheer, unadulterated brilliance. In fact, I think that this whole debacle is a fucking blessing--and the only reason it turned out that way is because Barack Obama is smart enough to know that when you take sides with one constituency, everyone loses.

I am not going to try to say it better than the letter released today by Obama's campaign from 16 supporters in both the African American and LGBT communities:

"We believe that Barack Obama is constructing a tent big enough for LGBT Americans who know that their sexual orientation is an innate and treasured part of their being, and for African American ministers and citizens who believe that their religion prevents them from fully embracing their gay brothers and sisters. And if we are to confront our shared challenges we have to join together, build on common ground, and engage in a civil dialogue even when we disagree.

We also ask Senator Obama’s critics to consider the alternatives. Would we prefer a candidate who ignores the realities in the African American community and cuts off millions of Blacks who believe things offensive to many Americans? Or a panderer who tells African Americans what they want to hear, at the expense of our gay brothers and sisters? Or would we rather stand with Barack Obama, who speaks truth in love to both sides, pulling no punches but foreclosing no opportunities to engage?"

If You Think Science is Bullshit, I Will Rip You To Shreds: Installment 1 (with more to come no doubt)

2007-10-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

This morning I was linked to a graphic design blog, where this graphic design blogger was noting the overlap between science and graphic design, and the importance of recognizing that science does overlap into the humanities. A good call to arms.

Now, the thing that got me all self-righteous and heated up was a comment someone left on this posting. The comment is a perfect example of someone who gets the functioning and importance of science all wrong. Let's go bit by bit, to extract every ounce of misunderstanding from this nincompoop.

(WARNING: MEAN-SPIRITED WRITING ALERT)

"Why do designers need to apply their skills to this arena? What signals out science for preferential treatment? Why not politics, psychoanlysis, art? When did science become the mandate of all that is true and worthy?"

Why don't designers apply their skills to art? Really? Why don't designers (and here I believe the writer is using the word designers to mean in particular graphic designers), and apply their skills in visual communication toward a medium that is primarily visual communication? Why don't scientists apply their skills to science while we're at it. Brilliant observation.

"When did science become the mandate of all that is true and worthy?"

Um . . . because Science (capital S Science), as a mode of thinking, is the only system of knowing reality that works, BY DEFINITION. Maybe we could try having a world with politics but without science. Great idea. Maybe this chode works for the Bush administration.

Onward (and please note, the spelling mistakes here the author's):

"The DNA code of which you noted is an intersting discovery, but we should be wary of laying down our critical faculties in awe of such revelations. All knowledge is created within the sphere of social values and thus requires constant assesment of its intent and purpose. Immediately we can see that this information has dramatically shifted the perception we have of ourselves, our expectations and limitations. Our value is increasingly judged on this inherited set of bio-chemical data. In a scene reminiscent of the most horrific book burnings, our socio-historical narratives fade ever faster in the glorification of numerical order. We have been reduced to code. The ramifications on our social realm have yet to fully play out, but already we can see the discussion turn towards categorising, segregation, and elimination."

I agree that all knowledge is GAINED (not created) within a sphere of social values and therefore can fall into the ideologies of the society. But good Science, the only Science that deserves the title is the Science that stands the test of time.

"Our value is increasingly judged on this inherited set of bio-chemical data."

Wow. See now I'm starting to think this writer is just some junior high liberal. We're all numbers, man. It's like, we're just chemicals and there's no such thing as love. Strawberry fields. Nothing is real.

"We have been reduced to code."

I'll reduce you.

I have a real conflict with actually wanting to argue with this person. On one hand I feel some of these postulations are so ill-formed that they don't deserve comment, but on the other these are real thoughts and feelings. So, why is discovering DNA reducing us to code? It explains how life works, but where in there does that reduce us? You would maybe rather us not discover DNA and continue to think we are made of bile, blood, mucus, earth, wind, and fire?

"Indeed a much more profound insight on the decoding of the human genome is the fact that the information itself has been incarcerated in intellectual isolation. This information that builds our physicality has been stolen from us all and turned into a profit potential for a few. We have been infiltrated, examined, calculated and summarised in the good name of science and understanding only to be hoodwinked by the concerns of another. In short our beings have been propertised."

No one wants to buy your DNA. Sorry junior high liberal. Again though, yes, the decoding of the genome is a scary idea, in that can someone copyright your DNA? If anything malicious is done it's not Science doing it. It's people.

"How can designers work against such imposed immaturity? By taking part in the arena which determines all others, namely the political. Not the bounded ham acting of party politics, but the politics of relations between justice and truth-both private and public, local and global. We should therefore ask how and why science, creativity, and thinking in general, are being driven in such directions. What is the motivation? Who is it that is benefiting? Who amongst us is being forgotten, who has been lost? Who decides this is a price worth paying? Why do we accept so much and question so little? Why do we wish to find comfort rather than resistance? When did we lose our sense of the social, the common, and the shared, to become the docile, domestic, easy to manage statistical objects so beloved of commerce?"

Shut up. Go read Marx, listen to your Bob Marley and smoke a bowl.

"Why do we accept so much and question so little?"

What are those guys called in the white lab coats who question things for a living? Like, they spend all day long questioning things . . . and like, trying to find answers, and even once they've found answers they keep questioning those too? Fuck. I wish I could remember.

"These are some of the crucial concerns for us today, all of which demand the retrieval of our politicised identities, over and above the concerns of any scientific ones."

What is a scientific identity? Does he mean REALITY? As in, the proven fact that we are animals made of DNA and proteins?

Drugs.

2007-10-24T10:45:00.000-07:00

This was sent to me by my friend Shane, who said "i don't know if this is genius or retarded...like if the makers of teletubbies did a daytime soap about three subversive lesbians and something about a lakehouse."

I've watched it twice and, like...it's weird because it reminds me of total garbage, but in actuality I think it may be completely amazing. The thing that impresses me the most about it is that while watching it, it's impossible to form a complete thought. I'm serious. Try.

Also, it gave Roy a flashback. Just a warning.

A Belief in Evolution without a Higher Power leads to Genocide, and other tidbits about the 'Expelled' Movie

2007-10-24T06:23:00.000-07:00

"He said he also believed the theory of evolution leads to racism and ultimately genocide, an idea common among creationist thinkers. If it were up to him, he said, the film would be called ''From Darwin to Hitler.''"

This is a quote from Ben Stein from a New York Times article about his new movie
EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED

(That is the real fucking title of this movie. Grown adults who want to make a documentary about censorship in the scientific community want the subtitle to be 'No Intelligence Allowed.')

Also, here is the THREE PAGE article in the New York Times investigating how this production company misled scientists like Dawkins to be interviewed for the doc, without their knowing its ideological objectives.

I got in a heated discussion with my friend Mike a few weeks ago when I sent him this quote from Ben Stein. I personally disagree with Stein's comment, but Mike saw some truth in it. I think that the dialogue that it opens up is an interesting one, in that it seems that a lot of people do think that if you believe solely in a scientific explanation of evolution and life, that it will lead you to concepts like social Darwinism. These misunderstandings I feel need to be addressed.

Ben Stein on Bill O'Reilly (that's all you have to say)

2007-10-23T21:19:00.000-07:00

...
Derekh: that would be a weird society
Shannon: forget that
Shannon: we've got bigger problems
9:55 PM
Derekh: hahaha
Derekh: like what?
Derekh: global warming?
Shannon:

Shannon: like the two biggest douches on the planet together in one room
Derekh: OH YES
Derekh: WATCHING
Shannon: i think that planet earth is about to melt
Derekh: oh my god
Derekh: lighting striking a puddle
Shannon: I KNOW
Shannon: fuck
Shannon: i will wait for you to finish before i launch
10:00 PM
Derekh: wow
Derekh: ben stein
Derekh: total idiot
Derekh: who knew?
Shannon: holy fucking shit right?
Shannon: omg
Shannon: how are these people claiming the first amendment??
Derekh: these people just don't understand the issue at all
Shannon: HOW DID THAT HAPPEN
Derekh: i know, that's a brilliant tactic
Derekh: actually
Shannon: it boggles the mind
Derekh: total red herring
Shannon: AAAAGH
Shannon: i love how bill oreilly said
Shannon: "they (xtopher hitchens and bill maher, et al) would say you don't have the right to talk about a higher power"
Shannon: and stein like
Shannon: i mean it's a wiffle ball
Shannon: goes into first amendment from there
Shannon: like
Shannon: WTF
Derekh: yeah, really insane
Shannon: would bill maher EVER SAY
Shannon: you don't have the right
Shannon: to do anything?
Shannon: NO
Derekh: of course not
Shannon: he would literally NEVER SAY THAT
Shannon: jesus
Derekh: it's all this assumed passive aggressive bullshit
Derekh: dan dennett even says
Derekh: religion should be taught in schools
Shannon: in religion class
Shannon: lol
Derekh: which of course these guys won't bring that up
Derekh: exactly!
Shannon: hahaha
Derekh: in a religion class
Derekh: but NO
Derekh: a religion class is like too limiting
Shannon: i just think it's amazing that they're framing this as a first amendment issue when it's clearly an educator competence issue
Derekh: for these people
Shannon: people are losign their jobs because they are NOT teachign science
Shannon: in SCIENCE CLASS
Shannon: wtf
Derekh: i can't wait to see this movie
Shannon: it woudl be like firing a teacher who told her kids that like unicorns were real
Derekh: i mean, i just don't know
Shannon: and then saying "ooooh first amendment, she can say wahtever she wants"
Derekh: totally
Derekh: exactly
Shannon: well yes she can but taht doesn't mean i can't fire her fucking ass
Shannon: jesus
Derekh: what doodoo heads
Shannon: god i hope i can pirate this fucking movie off the internet
Shannon: i really don't want to give these fucks my money
Derekh: yeah, me neither
Derekh: you will be able too
Derekh: to
Shannon: lol
Shannon: ok ok ok
Shannon: *breathing*
Derekh: relax

Evil plan alert

2007-10-21T19:11:00.000-07:00

Check out this article about how a team of scientists from the University of Florida and the Museum of Natural History in Berlin have discovered that amber resin from trees in swamps may have trapped and preserved a bunch of prehistoric insects and swamp critters.

A direct quote (my italics):

"Studying organisms that were trapped for millions of years in amber may help scientists to recreate prehistoric water ecosystems and learn how these life forms changed over time, [paleo-botanist David Dilcher] said. While no one is claiming that the entombed bugs will be brought back to life through genetic splicing, the discovery may give clues about the evolution of microorganisms, he said."

This assurance is a bit out of place, as nowhere in the article is there any suggestion that anyone would want to bring prehistoric bugs back to life. Is this a poorly-contextualized Jurassic Park reference, or an accidental slip that reveals the secret evil plans of a team of evil evildoers posing as scientists?

We're just going to try to find some bugs is all. Nobody's saying we're going to create a super race of face-eating zombie insects. We're just, you know, studying evolution...definitely NOT for the purpose of genetically splicing these bugs into a new and terrifying species that will take over the world. Muahahaha. I mean, ahem.

Aren't we amazing

2007-10-18T21:12:00.000-07:00

About five years ago I caught one of my coworkers gazing out the window and when I asked him what he was staring at he pointed at an airplane flying overhead and said "don't you think that it's amazing that man designed his own wings and learned to fly?" (I'm serious, that's actually what he said. He was kind of a nerd.)

"No," I said.

I wasn't trying to be a jerk. I just don't think it's all that amazing. Or rather, it's not the kind of thing that amazes me.

I think that we as a human race tend to have a very expansive view of what is incredible or amazing. We glorify technology and fantasize about building space ships and colonies on other planets and like a robot police force made out of nanomachines...it's weird but I don't really get excited about that. I remember when I was a kid I liked Star Wars as much as the next person but the thing that really would enrapture me was hearing about how in the deep deep ocean there were organisms that we haven't even found yet, there are a ton of ancient life forms right under our noses and we don't even know that they exist or what they could possibly be like. I guess I tend to have a more concentrated view--to me the coolest thing is not how far you can go or what you can build but how deeply you can see into something that's always been there, something that we might not even find to be particularly interesting.

So all of that is just a long-winded way of explaining why this video gave me a total Science Erection.

This is a super-awesome animation of what goes on inside a cell. Like, one of the billion trillion or whatever cells that you have in your body right now. I mean I know we all learned about this stuff in school but this video is just nuts--it's like there's a whole fucking universe in there, and it's cooler than any universe I've ever seen in any science fiction film. I've posted the music video version because it's kind of cool and beautiful, but if you'd rather watch the full-length educational version (watch out, it'll make you feel stupid) then you can watch it here.

Created by XVIVO science animation studio (how cool would that job be)

How do the machines know what Tasty Wheat tasted like?

2007-10-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

Like a lot of people, I am pretty obsessed with consciousness. Ever since I was like 20 years old and I used to get high and stay up all night drawing (completely inaccurate) schematics of how the human brain must process information and emotion, it's been very easy for me to accidentally slip into this fantasy world of trying to "figure it out," with no formal training or expertise whatsoever.

So in the Pinker + Goldstein interview I posted, Steven Pinker reminded me of David Chalmers' work. Pinker said:

"I'm also sympathetic to Chalmers' view. It might not be the actual stuff of the brain that makes us conscious so much as it is the information processing. I don't think Chalmers' view would give much support to a traditional religious view about the existence of a soul. He says that consciousness resides in information. So a computer could be conscious and a thermostat could have a teensy bit of consciousness as well. Still, the information content requires some kind of physical medium to support the distinctions that make up the information. And the Cartesian idea that there are two kinds of stuff in the universe -- mind and matter -- doesn't find a comfortable home in current views of consciousness, even those of Chalmers."

Which is as good a synopsis of Chalmers' work as I think you'll ever get.

Anyway, I was thinking about that all night and for most of yesterday. I was thinking about how yes, obviously there is no one material place in the brain where consciousness "lives" (a concept illustrated beautifully in Dan Dennett's book Consciousness Explained, which I never finished reading but still recommend), but it is rather an emergent phenomenon. I was thinking about how consciousness is really the interaction of the mind and the body, because as we know from Candace Pert's work (which I'm not sure is mainstream yet, but is definitely groundbreaking and should be fucking paid attention to), "emotions" are not all in your head. They take place in your body at the molecular level, as neurotransmitters and hormones (like seratonin and testosterone) are not acting simply in the brain but being dispatched to all parts of the body (which is why when you feel that happy love feeling, your heart gets warm--happy juice is binding to receptors on the cells in your heart).

It's interesting to think of drives and desires from this perspective. Think of your body as a machine. So you've got the evolution juices--oxytocin, seratonin, dopamine, adrenaline, testosterone, endorphins, all the other ones...the ones that are designed to keep you alive and breeding. And then you've got a body that's designed to receive those juices to achieve particular states, and then a brain that's designed to document information about what situations lead to what states, and strategize about which states are desirable and which states are to be avoided. So when you consider Chalmers' "information" to include the concept of drives and desire that your body/mind feels, as well as memories and conceptualizations that your brain tissue is storing, then that's a pretty explosive theory of consciousness. It makes you think well no wonder people feel like they have a soul--there is information pouring out of every cell in your body and organizing itself into a coherent strategy for existence--and part of that strategy btw is that your brain tells you a narrative about the whole thing.

Obviously none of this makes any sense here as I'm babbling about it, but it made sense in my head. I have terrible habit of reading just tiny bits of people's work and then sloppily ripping off their theories (I like to entertain the illusion that I can figure all this stuff out for myself). ANYWAY, after thinking about this stuff for the better part of a day I went on TED and, for some relief, decided to watch a talk on robots. Well THERE IS NO RELIEF, because these fucking robots are conscious. Or, approaching consciousness. By introducing desire (through reward mechanisms) into robot design, this Hod Lipson guy and whoever he works with has created robots that learn and evolve. It's fucking cool and also terrifying in that potential-Matrix-style-apocalypse sort of way. Watch--it's only 6 minutes.

Hod Lipson: Robots that are "self-aware"

This Is It

2007-10-15T21:20:00.000-07:00

The interview I have been waiting for. The interview that is so amazing, I would never have even dared to hope that it would actually happen. The interview full of questions and answers so perfect, I will have the entire thing fucking memorized into my DNA because after I have read it seven billion times I will burn it and inject the ashes into my bloodstream. Like, seriously, when I saw it I almost fainted.

It's Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein on their relationship, the mind, religion, and what it's like to be awesome.

I totally believe in true love right now. I will find my Steven Pinker and we will have a billion and five amazing brilliant genius babies, and it's gonna be fuckin sweet.

Seriously, if you only read one interview for the rest of your life, read this fucking interview. Please please please please please.

Women's Studies

2007-10-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I ran across this study about ovulation and strippers. (Excuse me, I believe the scientific term is lap dancers.) This study is actually really interesting: they compared the ovulation cycles and tip earnings of 18 lap dancers and found that ovulating women made about $70/hour, compared to $50 per hour for non-ovulating women and $35 for bloated cranky menstruating women. The study claims to be "the first direct economic evidence for the existence of estrus in contemporary human females." (Kinda lofty for a paper-clipped stack of 18 questionnaires turned in to an anonymous drop box).

I don't know exactly how well-researched this field of study is, but there is sort of an already established debate out there about why, in the process of human evolution, estrus was dumped in favor of menstruation. The main behavioral difference between the two is that estrus females are generally only interested in sex while they are fertile (you know, like cats in heat), whereas human females that ovulate are down to bang out whenever. There are all sorts of hypotheses about why this evolved, most of which annoy me. Regardless, there are a lot of implications in there for things like monogamous behavior, societal power distribution, etc.

What bothers me about this is that the paper claims that this economic evidence suggests that men can detect when a woman is ovulating and will thus be more attracted to her (or at least spend more money to see her in a sexual context). This may very well be true, but it feels pretty limited in its perspective. Stripping is a performance art, and while I've never been a stripper I think that any woman who is in touch with her body would agree that you feel a lot sexier--both actively and receptively--when you're ovulating. Some would say downright horny. So wouldn't that play a factor? I mean you've got all kinds of baby-making shit going on up in your uterus, you'd think you'd be a little bit more enthusiastic about waving your vajay around. I don't think it matters whether the women are actually attracted to their patrons--it's a state-of-mind thing. I bet if they did a study about how often single women masturbate they'd find that that increases with ovulation, too. This is of course not an official hypothesis, but I am a single woman, so I think you can count that as data.

The study's authors didn't not think of this, they just found it irrelevant. They say that because previous studies have never resulted in lap dancers' reporting that they noticed menstrual cycle effects on tip earnings, that it is more likely that it is their "attractiveness" to men rather than their own increase in sexual receptivity and proceptivity (i.e. horniness) that plays a role. I don't get this logic at all--just because you don't notice your influence on something doesn't mean that the influence doesn't exist. They also say that the female's increase in sexual receptivity might lead to a bias toward certain men with good genes, but that it was "unclear how this bias would lead to greater tip earnings." To me this also sounds like bullshit--stripping is not the same as choosing a mate. Just because something (ovulatory horniness) evolved in one context (the evolutionary context in which it would be advantageous choose a mate with good genes) doesn't mean that it will play out the same way (only being directed toward potential mates with good genes) in a completely different context (a strip club, where not to disappoint you or anything but the strippers are not there to find men to mate with).

I do agree with the study's general point that whether or not a woman is ovulating plays a role in the chemistry between two members of the opposite sex. The thing that bothers me--about this study and about previous studies that this data challenges--is when people try to form these discrete cause-and-effect hypotheses about complex phenomena by discarding those aspects of the phenomena that they could not find a way to measure. Obviously things like how horny a woman feels and how attractive a man finds her do not lend themselves to causal explanations as they are blurred by lines of feedback. To me, conclusions like that will always be pretty useless and easily challenged by different interpretations of what is essentially the same observation.

The Catholic League denouces 'The Golden Compass' Movie, to which you may say 'Big F'in Surprise' . . .

2007-10-15T11:43:00.000-07:00

. . . but you know, it's just the beginning of the joy that will be the epic culture clash that hits America when the movie is released. If you're not familiar with 'The Golden Compass' or the trilogy from which it is the first, here's what The Catholic League of extraordinary gentlemen have to say about both:

"The trilogy, His Dark Materials, was written to promote atheism and denigrate Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism. The target audience is children and adolescents. Each book becomes progressively more aggressive in its denigration of Christianity and promotion of atheism: The Subtle Knife is more provocative than The Golden Compass and The Amber Spyglass is the most in-your-face assault on Christian sensibilities of the three volumes."

Read the rest here. 'The Golden Compass' movie comes out this winter.

The thing is, the Catholic league is exactly accurate in their assessment of the goal of the books. It's not like Harry Potter, where godless themes can be perhaps subtly alluded to (Time Magazine article 'Who Dies in Harry Potter? God.'). In His Dark Materials we aren't even talking about godless themes woven into the literal world of the book. The world of the books is anti-god.

As long as we're on Philip Pullman's books, let's check out what kind of man writes atheist fantasy books for kids. British men. Obviously.

Pullman is right in step with other British atheist smarty-pantses like Dick Dawkins and Chris Hitchens, in that he's kind of a prick. Here are some great quotes from Pullman's website:

Q: What inspires you?

A: Three things. (1) Money. I do this for a living. If I don't write well, I won't earn enough money to pay the bills. (2) The desire to make some sort of mark on the world - to make my name known. To leave something behind that will last a little longer than I do. (3) The sheer pleasure of craftsmanship: the endlessly absorbing delight of making things - in my case, stories - and of gradually learning more about how they work, and how to make them better.

Q: Who do you write for - children or adults?

A: Myself. No-one else. If the story I write turns out to be the sort of thing that children enjoy reading, then well and good. But I don't write for children: I write books that children read. Some clever adults read them too.

Money is his inspiration, as is his desire to make his mark on the world, and he only writes for himself!?

Ayn Rand would love Philip Pullman.

I once didn't believe in evolution either, and the misconceptions about the 'March of Progress' gives clues as to why

2007-10-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

A great little article from ID Magazine about the famous 'March of Progress' image, and why it misrepresents what evolution actually is. Even the title is misleading; 'March of Progress' implies that evolution has some kind of end-result in mind, when in reality the only end result is to not die, and anything that doesn't die the most successful is the only progressive thing there is. Taking that into consideration, an earthworm is just as progressively equal to a human being considering we're both all alive today. By this same token, we could argue that earthworms are more successful than Homo Erectus, or any other proto Homo Sapien.

The article also has some amazing pictures, a few of which I've posted here.

Poop on Sam Harris

2007-10-12T08:28:00.001-07:00

A Response to Sam Harris' Talk at the Atheist Alliance

This so-called atheist movement is pushing me further and further into the fringes of society. I used to call myself an atheist, thinking that the term “atheist” referred to a simple lack of belief in a higher power. I used to comfort myself on lonely godless nights by telling myself that there were other wonderful and caring atheists out there, waiting for me to join their joyous, science-loving brethren. But then I was forced into a shocking realization: to be an atheist, you have to be a total fucking asshole.

Or that is what Sam Harris and his legions would have the world believe.

I think that we godless folk can all admit that we have succumb to the temptation of mocking the religions of the world, even at times making unfair generalizations about the devout themselves. Religious beliefs are unscientific and illogical, which makes them an easy target. But so are most human ideals—think of true love or world peace. Our beloved science tells us that religious belief is a byproduct of evolution—a natural phenomenon among human beings. Are we really so foolish as to believe that we can magically (to use the word that Harris so snottily wields on the faithful) undo a natural phenomenon by arguing with people and calling them stupid?

Frankly, I find it appalling that a group of such undeniably brilliant men and women as those at the forefront of the burgeoning atheist movement have devoted so much time, thought and energy to an effort that amounts to little more than militant cheerleading. While there is a real and valid need to create a society that values inquiry and the free exchange of ideas, those working to do so do not seem privy to the commonly held wisdom that the best possible way to firmly entrench a person in their opinions—however illogical they may be—is to attack and insult them.

The justification for this attack on decent people is endlessly fueled by Harris’ assertion that religion is a fundamentally destructive force that is responsible for violence, torture, war and countless other atrocities. Well, I am going to point-blank disagree with that. The most destructive force in society—in all societies—is polarization. The polarization and exploitation of the ideology of the masses has been the true underlying phenomenon driving every war, every violent crusade, every transgression that we can point our finger at and shout “religion”—and many that we can’t. Because religion exists pervasively throughout human societies, it is often exploited. But there is a difference between something’s source and its vehicle—and it is an important difference.

I doubt that this is any revelation to Harris. I propose that the reason why Harris is able to find such penetrating insights into the effects of the exploitation of religion is that he himself is an exploiter. He is using the tremendous power of human ideology to further his own interests and his own notoriety, all while exacerbating the conflict that he claims to be trying to fix. If Harris wins his war we will not have a reconciled society, but rather a larger and more vicious divide than ever before. Don’t believe me? Look at how many commenters were eager to jump up and commend Harris for comparing religious belief to racism (specifically, lynching). Faced with rhetoric like that, those reasonable and tolerant religious people who have not yet declared us their enemies are surely running out of good reasons not to.

Sam Harris Sucks

2007-10-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

A Response to Sam Harris' Talk at the Atheist Alliance

I don’t understand Harris’s greater motivation for wasting so much time philosophizing about what would be an appropriate thing for Atheists to call themselves. If his goal is to minimize the individuals who believe in a God then I can’t imagine a much more ostracizing act than his continual belittlement of their most important values. I understand that his need to criticize as acidly as he does is because so many are too polite to critique one’s own value system, but Harris’s problem isn’t what he’s saying, but how he’s saying it. His choice of language when speaking about religion is so laced with negative rhetoric and ideological slants it’s comical someone like him would consider himself an objective and scientific thinker. His arguments are clearly focused toward the disgust of the caricatures of the religious that he’s built up in his mind. He is attacking a people, and not an idea.

Harris’s proposal to have all atheists not refer to themselves by any title is outrageously self-centered and naïve. Every minority group has always been labeled from the outside more so than the inside. It has nothing to do with the spreading of rational thinking, but seems to just be another way Harris can feel that it is him versus the world.

Harris needs to give up his scapegoating of Islamic terrorism as a violent mindset propagated only by the ethos of the religion. This is a perfect case of chicken and egg thinking: are the poor and oppressed people of the Middle East militant primarily because they believe in Islam (making Islam the cause of this immorality)? Or does a specific homegrown militant version of Islam thrive in the Middle East because the people are poor and oppressed, those conditions themselves being the cause for the immorality and Islam itself being a red herring result?

I am embarrassed to have someone like Harris representing such a smart and generally open group of people. In a time where we need to bridge the gaps that separate people, and increase our understanding of one another, Harris does nothing but aggravate already tender lesions.

One of the most powerful brain systems on Earth...

2007-10-04T21:51:00.000-07:00

I Love this quote from Helen Fisher (attached as an audio file to get the full effect), and if you like it, check out the whole podcast, via those crazy TED Conference peeps.

the most infuriating thing i've seen in forever

2007-08-01T08:29:00.000-07:00

so animal rights groups have come up with a "humane" way of solving the pidgeon overpopulation problem in hollywood.

so this is great. really. let's put contraceptives in birdseed all over the city. fantastic. so when the birds poop all over the place, or when it rains and the water rinses the birdseed, where does that contraceptive go? um, everywhere. it'll go where water runoff goes, the path of least resistance. it'll end up in the ocean and in the parks and probably in the drinking water depending on the nature of the city's water treatment system. so you're threatening the reproductive capability of every species that interfaces with water (read: all of them) throughout the entire watershed. it's not unforseeable that humans could be affected by this as well, as we eat fish caught in the ocean, swim in the ocean, etc.

it's a known fact that human use of oral contraceptives has had severe unforseen ecological ramifications. when a woman on birth control pees, it gets flushed into a sewage system that is then often treated and released into an ocean or bay. fish, salamanders, and other species have suffered extreme gender imbalances and reproductive stress from being exposed as eggs and little babies to hormone-disrupting compounds. there are lots of things that we could do about this--we could, for instance, find a better way of treating sewage than to dump it into an ocean containing an innocent ecosystem. but i'm not complaing about that--that's an innocent mistake, the product of two seemingly unconnected things interacting in a way that it was no one industry's responsibility to predict. but putting CONTRACEPTIVES IN BIRDSEED is just stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, STUPID. and fairly endemic to the typical short-sightedness of those lobbying desperately for the rights of a single constituency (i.e. animals, or pidgeons) without looking at the network of interactions it's a part of. Great job, PETA.

now you may be feeling all conflicted. "whatever will we do? it's a paradox! there's no solution!" well, i have a solution. fucking DEAL WITH IT. lots of bird poop, WAH. the fucking pidgeons wouldn't even be there if it weren't for urban development anyway. it comes with the territory. and if you positively cannot stand them, then i will go officially on record with this advice: kill the fucking pidgeons. they're an invasive non-native species. PETA, stop bitching about the sanctity of life. living things die all the fucking time. if you want to protect life, you should think about the bigger picture.

The Best Political Speech I've Heard In A Long Time

2007-06-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that religion, and in particular our own American home-grown version of Christianity, has been a major source of division within American politics for the past 7 years or so. The rise in the Christianification of American politics has resulted in the aggressive counter movement of outspoken and outraged atheists and agnostics, giving birth to books like 'The God Delusion' and 'Letters to a Christian Nation,' which has then birthed the counter-counter Christian movements embodied by pundits like Ann Coulter, and her book 'Godless: The Church of Liberalism.'

It's a total culture war, where each side does very little to try and understand, let alone even tolerate, the other. But in a healthy democracy, isn't it a given that not everyone will share the same beliefs as you? and you accept that, live and let live, and do your best to increase the common good by way of discourse and conversation. Both secular and religious people have demonized their opponents, making each unable to listen to the perspectives of the other, resulting in two angry, brooding, militant, judgmental, self-righteous sides.

Considering this, I was inspired after I watched this speech by Barack Obama (himself a Christian), who is addressing a group of America's Evangelicals on what else, but the subject of the religious potency in American politics. To listen to Obama speak about religion in such a calming, intelligent, and pensive way is such a contrast to George Bush's thoughts that I can't believe Bush ever became a poster-child for a Christian in politics. If anything, the leader of a democracy has to recognize that he is governing a diverse body of people, and be able to bring people together despite their differences, instead of divide. Barack appears to be a reconciler.

Here's the speech. I got it off Barack's website. I don't know enough about the guy yet to fully endorse him for president, but it's nice to come away from a politician feeling lifted and refreshed.

‘Evolution and Politics’ is the new ‘Paris Hilton Goes to Jail’

2007-06-26T21:55:00.000-07:00

So just a week or so ago I posted this video of three of the Republican presidential nominees giving their two cents on evolution, them being (in order of appearance), Huckabee, Brownback, and McCain. Then back in late May, before these debates, Brownback wrote an opinion article for the NY Times (that bastion of liberal New Yorky nonsense) entitled ‘What I Think About Evolution,’ (which could’ve also been titled ‘What I Think About Evolution, Even Though I Don’t Think That Much About Evolution’).

Now this week The Times has released a whole Science Times section which could be titled ‘What Scientists Think About Evolution.’ How interesting it was to find a reference in one of the articles, ‘Science of the Soul? ‘I Think, Therefore I Am’ Is Losing Force,’ not only to Brownback’s comments at the Republican debate, but to his opinion article that had run in The Times just months before. Ahem, and I quote:

“Nevertheless, the idea of a divinely inspired soul will not be put aside. To cite just one example, when 10 Republican presidential candidates were asked at a debate last month if there was anyone among them who did not believe in evolution, 3 raised their hands. One of them, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, explained later in an op-ed article in this newspaper that he did not reject all evolutionary theory. But he added, “Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order.’”

Anyhoo, aside from the politics of it all, the ‘Science of the Soul’ asks a lot of questions about what a soul even is, like, maybe it doesn’t have to just be your spirit. Does it have to be something separate from the physical brain? If not, then does anything with a brain have a soul? Can all our physical brain functions and machinery end up creating our soul, thus being more than the sum of its parts? As philosopher Dan Dennett playfully puts it, “Yes, we have a soul, but it’s made of lots of tiny robots.”

Evolution is a slow process, clearly, sometimes taking millions of presidential terms to result in well-adapted species

2007-06-22T22:07:00.000-07:00

Check out this video: Republicans on Evolution

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Wanna fight?

2007-03-22T22:10:00.000-07:00

It’s official; the meek shall inherit the Earth, but only after they fight everyone else and win.

Steven Pinker has some great thoughts on the decline of violence in the western world in this month’s The New Republic. It’s nice to cut past the reactionary screaming of Midwestern mothers lamenting about how violent and uncaring ‘the media’ has made their sons and the friends of their sons. There were times when mothers were cheering for their sons to be the deadliest killers out of all their peers, and those boys who couldn’t hang were ridiculed at best, or killed eventually at worst. (God knows I wouldn’t last long. I felt remorse after the first and only time I boiled a lobster.)

Here’s an except:

“The decline of violent behavior has been paralleled by a decline in attitudes that tolerate or glorify violence, and often the attitudes are in the lead. As deplorable as they are, the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the lethal injections of a few murderers in Texas are mild by the standards of atrocities in human history. But, from a contemporary vantage point, we see them as signs of how low our behavior can sink, not of how high our standards have risen.”

A History of Violence