So, I'd hoped to avoid it, but I realize now that I'll look very dense if I don't at least acknowledge it.

There's a certain string of hexadecimal digits spreading like wildfire through the blogosphere. If you speak the incantation aloud, it casts the magic spell "Summon AACS Lawyers", who give you a cease and desist notice.

In the event I get one, this article will disappear, and be replaced by a copy of the notice.

But here's the various news:

• Digg was deleting posts containing the incantation, and, as I understand it, banning users who posted it. The users rebelled, and Digg decided "T'hell with it. We're gonna back our users." So yay, the users win. One of those huge popular web2.0 things turned out to not just be a corporate shill masquerading as a countercultural free-for-all. Of course, if Digg gets shut down by the AACS, I kinda wonder how the users will react.
  
• Google received a cease and decist letter, demanding they remove all links to the magic incantation. Google, whose motto these days has sort of drifted from "Don't be evil" to "Don't make waves" may well do as they're told, but some friends of mine helpfully suggested that Google write them back demanding that they provide every single URL they want expunged.
  
• The AACS is basically threatening everyone they can find. Isn't it weird how a business model can become "Scare the hell out of your customers and try to hurt them," for a business other than a bondage club?
  
• For that matter, a business model of "Create a product consumers do not want and which does not give them any value, which, in fact, reduces the value of a product to the consumer, and then use legal threats to force them to buy it anyway," does not sound very capitalist.
  
• Ed Felten, over at Freedom To Tinker (look left) says that the AACS will probably realize this is stupid, pointless, and making them look cartoonishly evil, and will eventually give up. Though he also reminds us that, every once in a while, big businesses will sue the hell out of you for no reason other than spite.
  
• Here's a question: the root of the magic number thing is not simply that AACS claims to "own" this random number which they picked out of a hat. It's that they claim that the number is a "circumvention technology", which is illegal under the DMCA. See, under the DMCA, it's not just illegal to sell a bootleg copy of something, it's not just illegal to make a bootleg copy of something, it's illegal to even possess any sort of device which could hypothetically be of some use in creating a bootleg copy of something -- in fact, it's illegal to even talk about how you might go about making such a device. That said, this magic number is the key which decrypts HDDVD movies. Its purpose is to allow the player to play the movie. Is using the number whose purpose it is to make the movie viewable in order to make the movie viewable really circumvention? Should I worry about the fact that I carry around the key to my house, because that key could unlock my front door?
  
• In addition to the number of note, AACS claims that a number of other magic numbers are also theirs. They won't tell us how many, and they sure as hell won't tell us what they are. Math teachers of the world: be careful. Next time you ask your students to multiply 367 by 72, you may be unwittingly asking them to produce an illegal number.
  

I'm not going to post the infamous string of hex digits. And, just to be clear, we're not talking about some kind of magical code. It's a number. Like 7. Or 42. Or 790,815,794,162,126,871,771,506,399,625.

Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As you may know by now, there was some news recently about A guy dying of a toothache because he didn't have insurance. I hadn't been planning to comment, because, hey, it happens. Even at my most financially destitute, I could have swing $80 for a tooth extraction, but it's entirely possible that I'd have fallen victim to the same fate, not because I couldn't afford health care, but because I'm stubborn and don't seek medical assistance for anything less serious than dismemberment.

And it does seem to me like those least able to afford health care seem to want the most out of it. A few years back, I was with someone who was, I think I have mentioned, crazy. It seemed like once a week, she went to the hospital because she had some minor complaint that, had it been me, I'd have just toughed through. In fact, she left a voicemail for me a few days ago, and one of the things she was proud to report was that she'd been in a car accident a few months ago, and therefore was now getting a disability check.

Anecdotal evidence is, as we all know, the best kind. Many of my friends have absolute faith in capitalism, and overlook the fact that all of the nationalized health care systems in the world are far more efficient than the private US system. Heck, even the nationalized US system is far more efficient (Medicare is one of the most efficient medical systems on the planet. In fact, it's one of the most efficient anythings on the planet). Anyone who tells you different is plainly and simply mistaken (or lying. Some of them are lying. Not all, but the last time I tried to be nice and pretend I believed they were all honestly mistaken, a conservative friend insisted I was being naive, and that, beyond the easily mislead sheeple, all the "real" conservatives knew these were lies, and pushed them because oppressing the proletariat is good for the rich capitalists, and, via the magic of trickle-down, therefore also good for the oppressed proles).

But anyway, you can believe that the masses should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. You can believe that welfare is inherently paternalistic. You can believe that private charities should be responsible for taking care of the poor rather than the government (That, as it turns out, is provably false. Until fairly recently, the government didn't get involved in taking care of the poor, it was left to private charities, mostly the churches. Poverty was a lot higher back then. Not just a little higher. Not lower.) You can claim that welfare moms are all deadbeats who pop out babies in order to keep those checks rolling in at the expense of good honest working folk (This is also false, but, hey, anecdotal evidence). You can claim that you don't beliueve the poor are lazy and stupid and deserve what they get, but that the system rewards laziness and stupidity and therefore unless we stop giving the poor a hand, they'll never learn to take care of themselves (That's got some truth in it; a perpetual problem of systems like welfare and unemployment is that you lose the benefits as soon as you start to pull yourself up, rather than once you've finished pulling yourself up). You can claim that privitizing everything will be good for everyone. But.

Medical benefits are hard to come by and getting harder. They will continue to get harder to come by. This is not the fault of the government. This is not the fault of the poor. This will not be improved by more privitization. This will not be solved by litigation shields which allow insurers to savagely roger their customers to death without feat of being sued for it. This is not the fault of deadbeats who insist on expensive procedures when dying would be a whole lot cheaper. It's the fault of the fact that they need to make money. And they're failing to do so (Several major health insurers are in some bad financial places right now). They're failing to do so for a lot of reasons. None of them can grow big enough for the economy of scale to really help them out. They all have to waste resources competing with each other. They all have huge administrative machines that are lubricated with pure money. And, of course, health insurance is an inherently losing game: they wager you'll never get sick, or at least that you'll die quickly and without much fuss, you wager you will. Everybody loses. Monopolies make things efficient. Competition makes things honest. You can't have both with private industry.

You can, if you like, suppose that a government monopoly would be corrupt, evil, power-mad. Hey, why not? But everything you can say about a government monopoly, you can say about a private one. The converse is not true. Once you've got a government monopoly, profit is out of the equation. A private monopoly has a good reason to be corrupt and evil: it wants money. It can also be corrupt and evil for abstract cartoonish reasons like being bent on world domination. Only one of these applies to a government monopoly, and, frankly, it's the one I find a little more believable. I'm all for capitalism in the 99% of cases where we can suffer some inefficiencies. All I'm saying is that if you've got to have a monopoly, I think a government-run one is a better idea.

And when it comes to health care, we need a monopoly. We need universal coverage.

I said in the beginning that I hadn't planned to comment. Maybe you're wondering why I did. The thing I didn't tell you before about why January was rough for me is this: I have diabetes.

It's a serious but very controllable disorder. So long as I keep it under control, it's unlikely anything bad will happen as a result of it. It means that I have to watch what I eat and I have to exercise more, which would have been true regardless of this condition. It means that I have to take a pill every day, and I have to poke a tiny little hole in myself a couple of times a day to test my blood sugar. And I have to see a doctor every three months.

For the rest of my life.

My insurance covers almost everything. So I don't have to pay most of the $300 dollars a month that my medicine costs. I don't have to pay most of the $150 that a doctor's visit costs. I don't have to pay the $100 that test strips cost.

For about three years, I did not have health insurance. I managed to get away without seeing a doctor for that time, though it was pretty hard the last time I threw my back out. Actually, I pulled a muscle in my foot about a week before my coverage started, and that was a lot of fun let me tell you.

Money was tight for me during that time. In an emergency, I coulda swung $80 to have a tooth pulled.

But I couldn't have swung several hundred bucks every month for medication.

Last night, I got the invoice from the hospital, for meeting with a diabetes educator who was very helpful in showing me how to not end up going blind, having a heart attack, losing my legs, and y'know, dying of diabetic ketoacidocis. My insurance covered it, of course. But if this had happened a year ago, when I was self-employed, living from check to check without any insurance, I could not have paid this. I could not have swung $500 in hospital bills. I could not have swung whatever they'll charge me for my followup visits.

So, as I was saying. I have type 2 diabetes. It is a serious but very controllable disorder.

Unless you don't have insurance, in which case it is a death sentence.

There's your anecdotal evidence.

Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I swear, what kind of country is this?, Leonard Pitts Jr.

So, as you may have heard, we've got a new Congress. The Washington Post had a very poorly thought out picture of Speaker Pelosi on the front page of the Style section which will probably be a future IT.

You may also have heard that a certain congressman swore his (not actually legally mandated) oath not on the traditional bible, but on Thomas Jefferson's Quran, prompting speculation that Thomas Jefferson owned a Quran.

Anyway, this is all little more than a historical footnote, as it wasn't really an oath required by law, and it's not like lawmakers haven't been sworn in on other things before. Pierce took the presidential oath of office on a law book. In fact, at the same time as Congressman Ellison was being sworn in on a Quran, a representative from Hawaii was being sworn in on nothing at all.

But, as always happens, a couple of people went apewire. In an act that threatens to turn "macacanated" into a word, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va) macacanated Ellison by launching a tirade about how we need to tighten immigration laws to stop muslims from being elected by the will of the people. Ellison is a native-born American. I'm guessing he's a third or fourth generation native-born American (Admittedly, I haven't looked into it).

The most mind-breaking attack, and the reason I am pointing you toward Mr. Pitts's article, is that of Roy Moore, who, despite his name sounding like it, is not a Wild West-era Texas Hangin' Judge, but rather the Alabama judge who causes all that commotion a while back over a big rock with the ten commandments engraved in them.

He claimed that freedom of religion demanded that Ellison be blocked from using a Quran (Quick precis: "<Roy_Moore_Voice>In America, we have freedom of religion. In Islam, you don't. Therefore Islam is incompatible with America</Roy_Moore_Voice>"). The argument isn't too far afield from the ones that (my dad tells me) were made when Kennedy was running for President -- that a Catholic would be bound by his faith to do whatever the Pope told him to, Constitution and the good of America be damned. Which is not a bad argument for limiting positions of power to atheists, but no one's making that argument (well, except for the atheists, but they've got a vested interest).

I think I'm with Pitts on this one: "Moore's argument refutes itself so effectively he must have been drinking when he wrote it."

Pitts goes on to talk about the "strain of intolerance" that hides out inthe American spirit. I think he's missing something important, though. This doesn't feel like real intolerance to me. It doesn't feel like real bigotry. Why? Because it's too flavor-of-the-weeky. It's not really that we've got a deep-down hatred of muslims, or even that we're all secretly waiting to reveal our prejudice against the abstract "Other". Right now, it's Islam that piques our fear. It used to be Communism. And so on and so on. Actually, I think America's been pretty good on the actual longstanding-prejudice front. You don't see "No Irish Need Apply" signs any more. We've stopped systematically erradicating our aboriginal population. We've got one or two longstanding racial problems, but we've kept them on a comparatively low simmer, nothing like the many years of institutionalized oppression in South Africa. Nothing like what went on in Europe in the early 40s. Real prejudice, real bigotry, is something very deep and longstanding. It's the way your grandmother uses the "N-Word", because she's been using it since she was a little girl and her daddy always used it -- and she can't even quite compute that it's wrong to use it. That's why they're so insidious and hard to get rid of -- they're burned in, and the people who have them don't even feel that they're wrong.

No, I think that prejudice and bigotry are just convenient labels for what we're really very susceptible to: Insane Fearmongering. We weren't raised this way. And we know things oughtn't to be this way. Some folks justify this (Roy Moore did) by trying to say that these are special circumstances -- that as it happens, we're at war with Islam right now (We're not, of course, but the people doing the fearmongering either think we are, or want us to think we are), so it's "justified in this special case". That's totally bogus, of course, but it's telling to me that they think they need this justification. Real racists don't feel the need to excuse or apologize for their racism. They may try to "scientifically" prove the white man superior or the black man inferior (Watch one of them try it some time, it's pretty funny), but they'll always start from the assumption that they aren't making an extraordinary claim, that their racist beliefs are obvious and inherently good. I don't think I recall ever having a notion of a person "becoming" a racist before -- racists were racists because they'd been raised that way. Now, though, we have people who weren't raised that way, people who never had any problem with this culture and this faith before, who, one day in September, half a dozen years ago, suddenly developed an unjustified distaste for a certain religion. What we have here is people who quite clearly understand that they are standing in the face of what we as Americans are supposed to believe in -- they present this sort of prejudice as a necessary evil (Actually, read that last clause twice, once with the emphasis on "necessary" and once with it on "evil"). That is, they know it's wrong, but they feel like they have to do it anyway.

I'm not sure which is worse, now that I think about it.

Deep Thoughts/Politics

By Ross at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So, unless you've been living under a rock, you know by now that a little while ago, former presidential hopeful (some people who are not me would say "former presidential winner") John Kerry commited what might generously be described as a bit of a faux-pas by superhero Incredible Understatement Man. Basically, thanks to a missing word, Kerry answered the long-standing question: Given all the hot water the Republicans have been in over the past month, what will the Democrats do to blow this oppertunity?

What he said was:

Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.

What he meant to say was:

Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get us stuck in Iraq.

Now look, I think it's pretty obvious that Vietnam Veteran John Kerry did not actually mean to insult our troops. Aside from the fact that doing such a thing is rather counter to the man's general political views, it would be such a ridiculously dumb thing to do that there's no concievable political advantage in doing it. Even if you did believe it, no one with any political saavy at all would get up and say "That Hitler chap had some nice ideas," because there is no way that saying this would help your political carreer (Well, okay, there are probably some isolated communities where calling someone a "Macaca" would actually win you votes). This is why politicans lie so much -- because if they got up and said what they really thought, no one would elect them. And, again, that's if he actually thought that our troops were dumb. Which he doesn't.

This is part of a concept we cynical folks call "Hanlon's Razor": Never attribute to malice what could be equally well explained by stupidity.

Now, Fred Clark, one of the most reasonable and levelheaded thinkers in the blogosphere says that Kerry's intention was perfectly clear and that anyone who claims otherwise is being dishonest to score political points. Well, I agree at the end of the sentence, and disagree at the beginning. I do think it's obvious that Kerry wasn't trying to call our troops stupid, and I think that's obvious, and I think that the people saying otherwise break down into the usual two groups: liars and dupes-of-the-liars.

What I disagree with is that it was in any way obvious what he was trying to say. Those little words are important, and it wasn't until I heard the "corrected" (or "retconned") version of the quote that I understood how what he said could have been meant as a direct insult to the administration.

Those of you who aren't comfortable with shades of gray will no doubt be saying at this point: "But how could you think he wasn't insulting our troops if you didn't see how he could be insulting the administration? It's got to be one or the other!"

As usual, it doesn't, and that is the lie that the pundits are selling America: that if you don't buy that he was slamming the administration, he was obviously slamming the troops (Of course, the perrenial lie of this group of pundits is that the two are one in the same, which makes for some interesting metaphysics)

In fact, what it sounded for all the world like to me, this quote in its original form, was a morally neutral warning that was bizarre in that it was being delivered in the mid twenty-aughts rather than in the late ninteen-sixties. What it sounded like, to me, was a line out of Hearts in Atlantis (The book, not the movie. I haven't seen the movie, but as I understand it, whatever its merits, it only covers about a quarter of what's in the book; the book Hearts in Atlantis is an anthology of linked stories. The film is based on the first story, "Low Men in Yellow Coats", about a guy who can read people's minds. The actual story "Hearts in Atlantis" is about a bunch of college kids during the Vietnam war, who become obsessed with playing a card game amid the social upheavals of the period. Well, okay, it's about a lot more than that, but I'm already way off track. The salient point for this discussion is that the protagonist is in college, and he spends so much of his time playing hearts that his grades are suffering). Our hero comes home for some holiday, and his grades are bad enough that falling out of college is a real possibility, and his brain-injured father channels Forrest Gump to drop on him this little bit of wisdom (Heavily paraphrased on account of my copy of Hearts in Atlantis is not ready to hand): "Boys who don't do well in their studies are dying in Vietnam."

That's what Kerry's comment sounded like to me. Not an insult, not "If you're stupid, you join the army", but a very direct warning: "If you get thrown out of college, you will be drafted." Let's face it, getting drafted can't be much fun. I think most people would agree that one of the things most praiseworthy about our troops today is that they all chose to serve our country.

And that's what made the whole thing seem surreal to me. Because people aren't getting drafted, and they did away with college deferrals anyway.

"But," one of you says (you know who you are), "That's just a silly thing for it to mean. Why didn't you reject that interpretation out of hand and assume he was insulting our troops instead?"

Well, obviously, I did reject that interpretation. It didn't make sense in context. Neither does the suggestion that Kerry wanted to call American troops stupid. But this was enough to convince me that what he meant was not in any way obvious from what he said. And I find it troubling that the folks in power are advocating this (with apologies to the many fine people in a certain Baltimore suburb) "Dundalk attitude" that looks, desperately, for any possible derrogatory meaning in a vague sentence, then assumes it's true, because they like the idea of kicking your ass for talking shit about their momma.

Because if you don't pay attention to Hanlon's Razor, someone's going to get cut.

Deep Thoughts/Politics

By Ross at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-30-abstinence-message_x.htm

Turns out that the administration wants to include folks all the way up to the age of 29 in their "abstinence-only" agenda ("Abstinence only" being code for "Not taking any responsibility for your own sexual health and comfort").

I have all kinds of angry and reasonable reactions to this, but there's this one little silver lining that I want to share with you:

Civil disobedience has never looked so damned good.

Deep Thoughts/Politics

By Ross at 05:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Courtesy of http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2006/10/06/coming_soon_kitten_with_a_eula.html

A company called Allerca will be, in the near future, selling cute little kittens. What could be wrong with cute little kittens?

Well, these have been genetically engineered. Now, my first thought was "Eeeagh! Genetic supercats with superhuman cat powers that will enslave us all!" My second thought was, "I for one welcome our new kitten overlords."

But it turns out that this is genetic engineering used for the boring old purposes of good, not evil. These cats are hypoallegenic. Finally, science has invented a cat which will not inflame the allergies of unfortunate cat-allergy-sufferers.

But every sliver lining's got a cloud. We've got CUTE LITTLE KITTENS (good), we've got KITTENS OF SCIENCE (good), we've got HYPOALLEGENIC KITTENS (good). That's plainly too much good in one place. Fortunately for universal karma, the fluffy goodness is exactly balanced out by the fact that we've got one other thing: we've got KITTENS WITH A EULA (Eeeeevil! Eeeevil from the Dawn of Tiiiiime!)

For yes, dear friend, if you click on their convenient Buy-a-kitten link, you are presented with their clickware license, whch explains that:

1. These kittens have a dominant hypoallegenic gene, and could pass it on to all their progeny. This is why they will not sell you a cat that hasn't been neutered, so you can't breed your own.
2. You are not allowed to let the cats out of your house, where they can interact with inferior mundane mortal cats.
3. You can not sell or give your cat to anyone else (excepting family members). You can not buy one of these ubercats as a gift. If you tire of your cat, you cant give it to anyone else.

That third one there gets rid of what we call the right of "first sale", that little thing that lets you divest yourself of your own property in the way you see fit. You see it a lot with software licenses, but there's some legal debate as to whether they can actually do that. Could you imagine buying a car or a house, and being told you were not legally allowed to sell it again later?

I can imagine the scenario: Johnny had a cat that he didn't want to keep. He tried and he tried to give the cat away, he gave it to a man going far, far away. But the cat came back, he didn't stay away; he was sitting on the porch on the very next day. The cat came back, he didn't want to roam; the very next day, he was home sweet home. And he brought his lawyers.

Oh, any my third thought?

Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't subscribe to the local newspaper, being one of the newer hipper generation who finds it grossly inefficient to deliver the news in the form of several pounds of dead tree, most of which is news and advertisement you don't personally need.

I, of course, get most of my news from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. But, since it seems impossible to avoid it, I do, several times a week, get The Baltimore Sun's free sampler. I don't usually read much more than the first page headline, but for whatever reason, I read the entire article today.

Close as I can work out, this was a reprint of an article more than two weeks old, so it's hidden from The Sun's free archives, but here's the Univerity of Maryland's faculty newspaper article on the same subject.

Quick Precis: A University of Maryland professor -- an efficiency expert no less, so I keep imagining him as Frank Gilbraith -- has, after four years of trying, finally got himself a street-legal Smart Car. That's the tiny little magic car you may have seen Inspector Clouseau driving in The Pink Panther.

But, and I realize that without the original article, it's going to be hard for you to follow along, I notice some strange things about this story:

• The reason it took him so long to get this car is that it doesn't meet emissions standards. If you've got a car that is amazingly fuel efficient, but it's not environmentally friendly, doesn't the one cancel out the other?
• Professor Robinson notes that the car does not come with a print manual, only a DVD, which will not play on his computer. My gut reaction: Damn you region encoding!
• But to me, here's the ultimate irony: This article about a car whose major selling point is that it's well tiny was Continued across five pages!

Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Previously, on AMOV, I talked a little about dramatic podcasts.

Well, this past weekend, I drove up to see my beloved. This is why my not-really-random-ten and my silly picture of the week haven't been posted this week (And they're not gonna be. It's not really easy to come up with a funny picture every week without spending way more time on it than I can really afford, so I'm just going to add last week's to the queue and develop myself a little stockpile).

But the reason I tell this story is that it's a very long drive up to see my sweetheart. Now, I always used to enjoy long drives, and when my girlfriend is at the other end, they're even better. I fill those long hours on the road with the help of my tiny little Rio Cali MP3 player (The Rio Cali is a cheapish solid-state MP3 player which I endorse half-heartedly. Of the cheap MP3 players I have used, it is the friendliest to use, gets great battery life (It ran for the whole eight or so hours of the round trip on a single triple-A battery that was only half-charged when I left), has a good screen and backlight, is expandable via SD card, and supports playlists. On the other hand, it's not MSC compatable, can only be loaded with music via its proprietary software, and, absent a playlist, it adds files to its default playlist in a first-fit order (The technical term for the order you end up with is "no meaningful order", but that's not really descriptive of what you end up with. If you add five files, then delete the second one, the next file you add will be the second one in the resulting playlist. For the sake of convenience and on the advice of John Cater, I will from now on describe this order as "tharglian"). So it's a mixed bag.).

So I packed it full of dramatic podcasts and listened to...

• Desolate Metropolis: I'm not sure what to make of this. It's a very modern-art-y sort of play -- and you can tell it was written as a stageplay and not for audio. It might well be very good but I'm too gauche to appreciate it. On the other hand, it might, and this seems rather more likely, be utter tripe designed by someone who's trying to sound artsy. But I have a hard time telling with modern art.
• Blood (episodes 1-3): This is a professional production, with all the goodness that implies. It's pretty well put together, but it's not easy to follow. But it's not easy to follow in a kind of lovecraftian-this-is-meant-to-be-beyond-mortal-comprehension way. So it's successful, but is this really a good thing to be successful at? But it's good enough that I actually tried to understand, rather than just giving up.
• The City Burns At Night: Lightning Bug Films, which is apparantly some kind of proper production house, churned out this noir-style production. It's not bad, and they've really captured the classic-age radio feel. On the other hand, the production is a little rough. The laugh track, though allegedly a "live studio audience" sounds artificial, and the recording quality leaves something to be desired. The story isn't great, but it's no worse than radio drama of the period they're imitating.
• Forever Fifteen: I only listened to the first chapter of this. The production is pretty good. It's a slightly amateurish Anne Rice-style vampire novel. Personally, I think this school of Harlequin Vampire Story is almost as tired, cliche, and generally unimaginative as the faux-Tolkein that makes up most of modern fantasy or the faux-Gibson that makes up most of cyberpunk, but folks who like that sort of thing are liable to like this.
• Other World News:Something in the vein of The Twilight Zone meets The Name of the Game, supernatural stories pursued by tabloid journalists. It's not bad, though at times, the actors seem to be showing off; a lot of the characters are affecting voices that don't really seem right for the characters.
• This One Time: A now-defunct radio show out of Bard College. Production is very good, and it kinda reminds me of some of NPR's offerings. The scope of the show varies wildly. To give you an idea, the third episode is college students telling their vacation horror stories. The second episode is a physics professor discussing the practicalities of doing theorhetical physics (It seems his PhD thesis relied on work done by a computer program which, years later, turned out to have a critical bug that invalidated all his findings). The first episode is people telling the stories of how they lost their virginity.

So that's the current roundup. I just found a short series of Doctor Who dramas which I'll comment on once I've listened to them. As always, suggestions for new stuff is welcomed.

Till next time...

Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Abortion is one of those subjects that has always made me uncomfortable. Even my discomfort with the subject makes me uncomfortable. Not being a woman, I don't feel qualified to speak on the matter. But then, if I say "This is a women's issue and men shouldn't involve themselves," I'm not sure that's a healthy attitude either, just because it sounds too much like a way to trivialize the issue, saying "This isn't a Real Issue; it's some little Women's Thing," which is bad.

Anyway, one of the biggest issues I've had in my own mind is that I've got a very low-level aversion to the notion that there are people out there who consider abortion to be just another form of contraception. It's much easier for me to accept abortion as an unfortunate necessity in cases of rape, incest, even contraceptive failure, but when I consider the case of someone just saying "Eh. We won't bother with a condom; She'll just have an abortion if she gets knocked up," something at a viceral level just squicks me. I have always known that my squickage is not a good basis for legal and ethical policy, but low-level squicks aren't really responsive to reason. What I really needed was an equal and opposite base reaction to put my concern to rest.

I finally get it. It's right here: Mike the Mad Biologist: Forced Childbirth Versus Pregnancy Shouldn't Be Punishment

Pregnancy should never be punishment. No one should be forced to give birth to a child who doesn't want to. And, for that matter, no child deserves to be forced to be born to a parent who doesn't want them.

That's it. Not going to rail about politics. Not going to talk about what's wrong with the other side. Not going to go on at length expounding and reasoning through things. Read Mike's article. This is now the beginning and the end of the argument for me, the question that silences all the others in my own mind. Whichever side you're on, think about that question: should pregnancy be a punishment?

Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 01:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It has already been extensively documented what I think of Intelligent Design, but I'll say it again: As a person of faith, I am deeply offended by the assertation that faith and science are incompatible, and I am deeply troubled by a faith where God is defined by a set of cheap parlor tricks. And I am even more deeply offended by the assertation that my faith is somehow lacking because I don't buy into this perversion of both science and religion.

But it just keeps getting worse, doesn't it? Creationists are going after the Big Bang. Insisting that "theory" be added to every mention of it because "The Big Bang is not proven; it is just an opinion."

Here's the thing. I don't agree that evolution and religion are incompatable. But I can at least understand how someone might hold that belief. But the Big Bang is even less incompatible with faith. Mr. Deutsch (You know, I am not quite sure how that's meant to be pronounced, but I have a theory that I like. Because he is one. Possibly the Biggest One In The Universe [.5 points]) suggests that "It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.”

Where does the Big Bang theory say that? Where does it say what caused the Big Bang? See, evolution makes a good choice for IDers to pick on because it explains where human beings came from, and it's an explanation that does not require a divine being (Neither, of course, does it preclude one). It explains a series of natural processes which have resulted in there being humans. The Big Bang, on the other hand, does not do this. There is no "First there was something else, then these processes caused the universe to exist." The Big Bang theory starts with "And then the universe started existing." There was no time or space before the universe started existing, so it doesn't make sense in terms of the theory to talk about something "causing" the universe to happen, because there weren't any things around to cause it beforehand. For that matter, there wasn't even a "beforehand", because time hadn't started happening yet. It doesn't say the universe could or could not have come into existence without a God -- it makes no claim as to what triggered the creation of the universe, and instead makes it very clear that there can't be a scientific explanation for what actually made the universe start existing.

All the Big Bang theory says (well, actually, it says quite a lot about the complex details about which order various things happened in, but for the sake of this argument, I don't think they matter or have anything to do with the creationist ire) is that the universe had a beginning. That it came from somewhere (or, well, actually, from nowhere), and hasn't always existed in its present form. So, let's see. You've got a theory which says that "At some point in the past, the universe came into existence, and there is no natural process pre-existing the universe that could have caused it". Or, if you prefer, In The Beginning, there was nothing, then the LORD said "LET THERE BE LIGHT" and there was light.

This conflicts no more with religion than the theory of universal gravitation conflicts (After all, it gives an explanation for the mechanics of how gravity works that goes beyond "God does it").

And as usual, you don't have to take my word for it. The Catholic church accepted the Big Bang theory decades ago. There are Islamic scholars who find the Big Bang to be in keeping with the version of creation told in the Qur'an. Hindu and Buddhist scholars have even come up with models which allow for the Big Bang. Evolution is incompatable with a certain kind of (IMHO very naieve and small-minded) faith structure. The Big Bang is not incompatable with ANY KIND of faith structure, at least, not one any sane one.

I think it's time to start asking what the creationists are really trying to accomplish. It doesn't have anything to do with faith. It must be something else.

Deep Thoughts/Religion/Intelligent Design

By Ross at 02:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

[4 points]

I'm not really sure why it didn't occur to me sooner.

I think I've mentioned, or at least implied, that I'm kinda interested in audio drama. Books on tape. Golden-age radio drama. A Prarie Home Companion. Big Finish. That sort of thing.

Now, I had made one or two half-hearted searches in the past, but it wasn't until someone added the penultimate paragraph to the tvtropes.org article on Radio Drama that something occurred to me that should have been obvious.

Podcasts. Surely, the podcasting phenomenon must be a free, limitless supply of drama in audio form.

Podcasting, for those of you who aren't very hip, is a new fad made possible thanks to the explosion of cheap reasonable-quality home digital recording and playback. The basic idea is that you record something to a handy digital audio format (that is, MP3), and stick it on the web, often through some kind of syndication format (that is, the same kind of format as this here blog), so that users can download that audio to their portable audio players (one well-known brand of which has the word "pod" in its name, hence the term "podcast") and listen to it. Some people think there's an important and meaningful distinction between "Just sticking a bunch of MP3s on your website" and "Podcasting", but every time they try to explain the difference to me, I fall asleep.

Anyway, podcasts are, for the most part, so far as I can tell, a way to stick all the trappings of listening to the radio -- hit-or-miss DJs and commercials -- back into your music experience even though such things have been obsoleted by modern digital music players. You hear neat stories about 14 year old girls from Pittsburg whose podcasts display ridiculously good taste in music, and that's all very cool and sure to enrage the RIAA.

As you can guess, I quickly found that paragraph I wrote about four up there to be overly optimistic. As I said, most podcasts are "Here is me introducing some songs I like." Most of the rest are "Here is me reading my blog". Some of these are indeed quite good. Not most, of course, since free publishing always demonstrates Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap). But some are. Still, even the 10% that's good really has very little to do with what I'm interested in.

I looked long and hard to find me some proper audio drama podcasts. And now, I've exhausted my supply. So, gentle readers, please point me at whatever you've found, to help me fill this audiovoid.

Now, I should point out that there is some stuff out there. For one thing, I've found several people rebroadcasting vintage radio drama. The folks who are into Old Time Radio are sort of pathologically generous. I mean, you can get a boatload of stuff for free, and if you're willing to pay a pittance, you can get several lifetimes worth of the classic stuff; I shelled out about $30 for approximately 800 episodes of a particular radio drama. You read that right. Eight Hundred. The first season of the new Doctor Who is supposed to come out in the US pretty soon with an asking price of $100 for thirteen episodes. So when I say this stuff is cheap, I mean it's cheap. Like matchsticks (Ever price matchsticks at your local supermarket? If you bought a box of matches, you end up paying, I once calculated it, about 1/20 of one cent per match).

And there is some original stuff. There's just not much. At least, I think there's not much. The internet being what it is, there always ends up being lots of stuff you just haven't found yet. Heck, I haven't even tried usenet yet. So, folks, I'll show you mine, in the hopes that you find something interesting. You, in turn, can hit the comment buttons at the bottom of this article, and show me, well, yours.

Here's what I've found (oh, and don't let my cynicism turn you off anything. I'm just cynical like that):

• Sean Kennedy Chronicles: Tales from the Afternow -- this is what got me into the whole shebang. It's well produced, even if the story itself is a little rough in places. Toward the end, I kind of lost my ability to tell whether this was still a work of fiction, or the author's paranoid conspiracy theory rantings. Uneven, but listen to "Rachael's Mutt" and "Open Your Eyes" before you decide to dismiss it.
  
• Darker Projects -- These guys make a combination of original and fan fiction productions in what they call "a darker shade", though, frankly, to me, it sounds like a bunch of really cheerful kids who have to keep telling us that they like goth culture because we'd never suspect it otherwise. "Night Terrors" is a Twilight Zone-esque series where all but one of the twist endings were so obvious that you'd almost think it was a parody (It turns out it's man [2 points]). Their Quantum Leap production is a pretty good yarn, with the worst Dean Stockwell impersonation you could imagine. The fellow they have playing The Doctor in their Doctor Who series is quite good though, sounds like a sort of cross between Peter Davison and Simon Jones. The production values are middling; all the actors are fairly good individually, but there's no real sense of them acting "off" one another. I know this is a tough thing to do when there's no studio for them all to be in at the same time, but more professional productions manage it somehow. I blame post production. Oh, and no one in their ensemble can fake an accent and do anything resembling acting at the same time.
  
• Children of the Gods -- A serial novel about... well, I'm not sure yet. I've only heard the first episode, which consisted of 99% expospeak as the narrator gives us a detailed history of the very very generic sci-fi setting. Production values are weak, but beggers can't be choosers, and for all I know, it gets much better in the next episode.
  
• SITFUSO -- And we have a winner. SITFUSO is a sketch-comedy show whose masterminds include Charles Daniels, the author of the "Alternative" Doctor Who program guide. Something in the vein of Python or The Goon Show. Amateurish, but lots of fun.
  

Now, while I am steadfast in my cynicism, I want to point out that while none of these are "professional" grade productions, they're not crap by a long shot. Could I do better? Probably not. But, well, watch this space. I think I gots me an idea.

So, what have I missed so far? I've listened to just about everything I've found, and, well, I've only been at it for a month. Come on gang, step up.

Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Courtesy of Hainsworth.com...

So, MyHeritage.com has this thingy wherein you can upload a photo of yourself, and they'll use Sophisticated Image Stuff to work out what famous people you look like.

It's neat, if a little fanciful. So I'll wait here while you go try it out.

You back? Good. Get anyone good? No, me either. For what it's worth, I tried it with two pictures, and here's who it thought I looked like, in order by confidence:

• Olusegun Obasanjo
• Kim Jong Il
• John Major
• Sania Mirza
• Milton Friedman
• Roy Orbison (Okay, I do kinda look like that picture of Roy Orbison)
• Brad Pitt
• Cesar Franck
• Amrish Puri
• Bruce Lee
• Richard Nixon
• Sonny Rollins
• Jacques Chirac
• Anton Bruckner
• Yehuda Levi
• Ole Bull
• Hector Beriloz
• Carl Neisen
• Henri Philippe Petain
• Russel Crowe

Here's the $6 question: Who's more troubled by the similarity: me, or Brad Pitt?

Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 01:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cultists disrupt traditional values

Judea, AD 1 // Visiting foreign dignitaries caused some controversy this weekend in a meeting with King Herod. Three visiting kings, who have asked to remain anonymous, claimed that an infant child born recently in Bethlehem is the true king of the Jews.

When questioned about the purpose of their visit, the dignitaries explained, "We three kings of orient are. Bearing gifts, we come from afar." Sources close to the administration report that King Herod has dismissed the kings as "A bunch of Wise Guys."

The infant, Jesus of Nazareth, has already gained a strong grassroots following, particularly among members of area livestock unions, who claim the child is the son of God and the fulfilment of ancient prophesy. The Roman governor could not be reached for comment, but is allegedly "very concerned" that this new cult may be developing "Weapons of Divine Wrath-related program activities."

The parents of the child have thus far refused to allow Herod's Messiah Inspection Teams access to the child, further fueling fears about their intentions, and speculation about possible links to other radical religious groups in the region, including the sect led by John The Baptist, whose whereabouts are still unknown despite massive search efforts throughout the holy lands.

But the emerging cult, who have taken to calling themselves "Jesus Freaks", claim to be committed to total pacifism, and are interested in nothing more than giving each other gifts in honor of their leader's birth. However, not everyone considers their message of peace to be quite so harmless. Well known political commentator Punditus Maximus has written a series of scathing scrolls in which he accuses the cult members of engaging in activities incompatable with traditional Roman family values. In his most recent work, "They do WHAT to their penises?", he claims that their decision to celebrate the birth of Jesus in December is a shameless attempt to undermine Roman tradition. Accusing the cultists of waging a "War on Saturnalia," he calls for a wide-scale boycott of any store where shopworkers use the new greeting "Happy Holy Day," in place of the traditional, "Lo, Saturnalia." Boycott is, of course, a Gallic word meaning "To feed to lions."

In what may be a related story, King Herod has denied rumors that there are any plans for a "slaughter of innocents" and suggests that parents of infant boys contact their local magistrates for important information related to a new anti-terrorism program known as "No Child Left Alive".

----
[DISCLAIMER: The story you have just read is made up. Any similarities to real events are totally... Well, okay, they're all intentional. But they're just here for the sake of making a joke. If anything sounds suspiciously parallel to actual news stories, that's just because I thought it was funnier that way. Fuck em if they can't take a joke]

Deep Thoughts/Religion

By Ross at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Courtesy of Mike the Mad Biologist.

You know, for a long time, I didn't really understand why evolution "mattered", from a pragmatic standpoint. I mean, yes, it's always better to be right than to be wrong, but what with evolution taking many many times the human lifespan to do anything remotely interesting, it seemed like it might be very good at answering abstract hypotheticals, and not very good at doing anything practical. Not that there was anything wrong with that, since I happen to be a big fan of abstract, impractical intellectual pursuits. But, so far as I could tell, if you wanted to disbelieve in evolution, the worst that would happen is that those of us who are actually interested in reality would make fun of you, and that would be so far as it went.

And this is one of the problems that those of us on the reality-based (that is, "right") side of the argument face: evolution is a pretty complex subject, and most people who aren't in the relevant field only understand its most basic parts. And one consequence of this is that it doesn't seem like there's much at stake.

I suspect that fewer people would be fooled by anti-evolutionary pseudoscience if they understood what the principles of evolution really were (or, for that matter, what science really is).

So here it is, here's why it matters: Avian flu evolution. If evolution doesn't happen, then we have nothing to fear from the avian flu. Flu vaccines can be developed only by understanding how viruses evolve.

I see a lot of very angry, very wrongheaded bumper stickers these days of the form "You CAN'T be a christian and believe in (thing the religious right disapproves of)!" as if they were declaring themselves the sole arbiters of God's will. These bumper stickers piss me off.

But what the hell. I'll say it: You CAN'T be a creationist and believe in vaccines.

Well, actually, you can. It's not logical, but it's the way things are. See, most of the people on that side of the argument don't really have a systematic way to structure their beliefs. They're just a random assortment of facts. They don't believe in evolution, and they think those of uis who do are doing Satan's work. But they won't bat an eyelash at benefiting from things that can only work if evolution is true, because it's advantageous for them to do so. This is one of the reasons we need theologians on our side in this argument: they don't believe in rationality, so a logical argument isn't going to work (at least, not in the usual way).

But it's a place to start. It's a thing to bring up. When a creationist friend mentions their concern over avian flu, tell them that creationism precludes the possibility of an avian flu epidemic. It's a place to start.

Deep Thoughts/Religion/Intelligent Design

By Ross at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mike the Mad Biologist once wrote an article entitled "I Wish I Had Said This". And now, thanks to him, so have I.

Confessions of a Lasped Creationist IDer, itself a commentary on this, reiterates the point I keep making: Intelligent Design isn't just bad for science, it's bad for religion.

And more, he says some of the things I haven't gotten around to. This goes beyond ID. I'm getting steadily more and more annoyed by the tacit acceptance that my side of these arguments keeps showing for one of the fundamental claims of the other side.

Namely, the bit where they insist we're all atheists.

I keep seeing it over and over again. In the evolution debate. In the gay rights debate. In the school prayer debate. The people on the other side say "God says this," and the people on my side come back with, "Well, we respect your beliefs, but we don't think we should rely on God in matters of public policy." In other words, "Okay. I'll grant you that God is on your side, but that shouldn't matter."

Folks, this is a losing argument. For one thing, we're not fighting on equal grounds. They keep accusing us of atheism and we keep letting them. We're also not going to win over any converts if we keep saying "God shouldn't matter." We need people of faith on our side -- we need people to stand up and say "No, you are wrong about the will of God. You don't know the mind of God, you're just usurping Him to promote your own agenda." We are just as mistaken to try to attack a religious argument on purely non-religious grounds as they are to attack a scientific argument on purely religious grounds.

When we win the evolution argument isn't when we make those simpleminded religious fools realize there's no God. When we win is when we make people of faith realize that evolution isn't a treat to their faith. When we make them realize that you can too believe in God and trust in evolution. When we make them realize that science isn't about denying God, or looking for ways around God, but about finding out how this universe that God made for us works.

We're not doing our part. We're saying "God is not on our side, but choose us anyway," when we should be saying "God is too on our side." We're granting that it's either/or, when it's not. Science does not ask nor answer theological questions -- science can no more disprove God than it can prove Him. Religion does not ask nor answer scientific questions -- and when some people try to pretend it does, we really ought to call them on it.

I'm just glad I'm not the only one who's noticed.

Deep Thoughts/Religion/Intelligent Design

By Ross at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, so I somehow overlooked the fact that The 11th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition started on October 1 of this year, and finished today. But I guess it's my duty to advocate it all the same.

The Interactive Fiction competition is an annual even sponsored by the denizens of rec.arts.int-fiction. It started back in the mid '90s to encourage the writing of short text adventures, and has (for better or worse) sort of become the centerpiece of the text adventure community.

That's right. I said text adventures (though we prefer the term "interactive fiction"). People still play those. In fact, people still write those. In fact, there were 36 entries in the competition this year, and there are still more games released that weren't entered in the competition. I'd go as far as to say that the IF community is one of the most prolific and consistently talented indie-game communities.

And these aren't your father's text games. We've been at this for a good twenty years now, and we've gotten good at it. Thanks to the tools that exist today, even a novice can produce something fairly professional (Which is not to say that you don't need to be a programmer. Some of the less advanced systems will make this claim, but writing a game -- any game -- requires the kind of systematic thinking that not everyone is good at. It has nothing to do with knowing where to put the semicolons, but it has everthing to do with thinking like a programmer). Gone are the days of a two word parser where you have to get the phrasing exactly right (well, most of the time, anyway). Gone (well, most of the time, anyway) are the days of random, plotless dungeon crawls without any sense of character or narrative, and puzzles with no motivation. Authors of these games are half writer, half engineer, and some of them are very good at it.

Also, you can play them on your PDA. Some people like that.

It's no longer strictly true that these games don't have pictures -- many of them don't, but an increasing number of IF games are illustrated, but these images are in addition to the text, like an illustration in a novel -- sometimes even approaching the level of a graphic novel.

But yes, Virginia, people still write text adventures -- even in this day and age where polygon counts and framerates are king. And I actually find it a little strange that people find this hard to understand. Is anyone surprised that people still write books even though the moving picture has been around for over a century?

And we're getting some media attention. No less a publication than The Wall Street Journal recently ran a piece on Interactive Fiction.

Why, there are even people who think they can make money on Interactive Fiction (They're wrong, of course, except maybe in the cellphone market. If your further meanderings mention Howard Sherman, I'd suggest you avoid his games: they're crap. And the claims he's made about the sales of his games are almost certainly misleading. If his claims are correct, he's sold 100,000 copies of his games, and at $20 each, that's a better way to get rich than helping Nigerian businessmen smuggle money out of the country).

Anyway, there was, as I mentioned, a competition. Somehow, I failed to notice this year, but a bunch of people didn't, and I think it says more about me being all hung up in my own life than anything else. This year's winner was Vespers by Jason Devlin. Tied for second were Beyond by Roberto Grassi, Paolo Lucchesi and Alessandro Peretti, and A New Day by Alexandre own Muniz. Congrats, guys.

Now, as previously mentioned, I've sold out (if you don't believe me, check those Google ads at the bottom of the page. And if anything sounds remotely interesting to you, please click on it.). So I'd be remiss if I stepped down from my bully pulpit without mentioning that a few years ago, I myself took second place in the IFComp. The page for the game I did it with is here. So if you're looking for a game to vitalize your own interest... Well, actually, mine might not be the best game to start with (It's not really representative of the format, and it's got some bugs that I can't fix, having lost the source code in a crash a few months ago). But it's a game to start with, and I even built a self-installer for it.

>POST ARTICLE
You can't do that yet; you haven't come up with a clever one-liner to end it.

If you seriously do want to get into IF, a good place to start is with the collected works of Adam Cadre, who happens to have written several of what I consider the best IF games ever written. http://adamcadre.ac/if.html

But there's a lot out there, and I haven't really kept track of my own favorite games in years. You can Google for yourself to find some good ones. Here's just a few links to get you started:

The Interactive Fiction Archive: This is the beginning and the end of where all IF comes from. The official clearinghouse for modern IF.
Baf's Guide To The Interactive Fiction Archive: A huge index of all the games on the archive, most of them with reviews.
Grand Text Auto: A blog frequently about IF and related things, and the thing on my blogroll that I was checking when I discovered that the comp had ended this year.
ifMUD: A MUD (Technically, though for our purposes, just a chatroom with props) frequented by folks who like IF -- discussion rarely stays on that topic for long, but if you want to find some people who can point you in the right direction in real-time, this is the place to ask.

Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

[2 points]

So, a little while ago, I posted this: The design IS intelligent. My premise was simple and threefold:

1. "Intelligent Design" is bad science
2. "Intelligent Design" is bad religion
3. "Intelligent Design" isn't actually all that intelligent of a design

But, of course, all I can say doesn't mean a whole lot to your average creationist intelligent design proponent, because they've already decided that I am:

1. Too deeply invested in the massive conspiracy of scientists to hide all evidence of the One Truth
2. An atheist
3. Possessed by Satan

None of these things are true, and I'm offended that they think that. But, well, reason is not the strong suit of ID proponents. In my last article, I referenced a few people even smarter than me, but I doubt their opinion counts for much either. Maybe this one won't either.

But guess who else agrees with me.

The Vatican.

No, really.

THE Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin, voicing strong criticism of Christian fundamentalists who reject his theory of evolution and interpret the biblical account of creation literally. (Martin Penner, The Austrialian)

That's right, folks. The Church back in Rome says that Evolution is perfectly compatible with the Bible. The mechanics of how the universe got created are outside the scope of the Bible. Science is about how; religion is about why. Incidentally, the Church also accepts that the Big Bang theory is completely in keeping with the Bible. Maybe it was just where I came from, but when I was younger, that used to be the hot topic between "believers" and "unbelievers".

So, maybe this helps, maybe not. I suspect that most of the folks on the ID side of the debate don't really recognize the authority of the Vatican, but I'd like to hope even they couldn't accuse a Cardinal of atheism with a straight face.

It's not supposed to be religion vs. science. We're the ones who made it that way. Maybe when I get the nerve up, I'll try to speak to why we made it that way. But it's not the only way, and it's not the right way. I've said it. Cardinal Poupard said it. For that matter, St. Augustine of Hippo said it: we want to understand what it is we believe. When we turn our back on the inconvenient bits of science, we stop trying to understand the world. God created an awful lot of world. Seems kind of rude of us to ignore it.

Deep Thoughts/Religion/Intelligent Design

By Ross at 05:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes. Yes. To hold in my hand, a capsule that contained such power. To know that life and death on such a scale was my choice. To know that the tiny pressure on my thumb, enough to break the glass, would end everything. Yes. I would do it. That power would set me up above the gods. And through the Daleks I shall have that power!
-- Doctor Who, "Genesis of the Daleks"

Suppose you had the power to destroy the world. I'm not saying you asked for it. You just sort of happened upon it. And now it's yours. What would you do?

Because the power to destroy the world has been found. It's here: plotpatents.com.

Boing Boing and GrokLaw have reported on the fact that a clever little law firm has come up with a clever little idea. They've applied for a patent on a plot.

I've hung out in various fandoms over the course of my life. Many of these are slightly, well, crazy places. One of the phrases you hear from time to time fits the formula of "The producers of [object of fannish obsession] should sue! That episode of [show other than the object of fannish obsession] ripped off the plot of [episode of object of fannish obsession]!" They say this a lot, partly because they don't know better, but mostly because they don't care, and don't really expect anything to come of it.

Because: it's not illegal to rip off someone else's plot. You can't copyright a plot. You can't own a plot. For that matter, very few people actually invent new plots. This isn't because people lack creativity or invention, but because plots are fairly simple creatures. Depending on who you ask, there are only between ten and thirty distinct plots. Shakespeare didn't invent any of his plots.

Patents are a good idea, or, at least, they were. Giving the inventor a decade or so to make his invention commercially viable is a great way to (a) encourage people to invent and (b) encourage people to not keep their inventions secret. But as the rate of technological advancement increases, we start running into problems: things that get patented these days stand a good chance of being totally obsolete by the time the patent expires. But that's not really the point.

The point is, that the purpose of patents is right there in the constitution. It's to encourage invention. But that's not what they're being used for. They're being used to stifle invention. And in this case, it's the end of everything. With just a few patents, you could completely sew up all of creativity and make it illegal to compose any art without a license for the next couple of years.

And, of course, that's their goal. Well, not to actually stop people from creating, but to force people to pay them to do it. Which means that only those who can afford to will be allowed to. Nothing new under the sun. Ever again.

This can not be allowed to happen. It shouldn't happen, but how much can we really expect from the Patent Office? The folks who work at the patent office can't seriously be expected to have the range and depth of expertise to handle everything that comes at them, as evidenced by some of the recent software patents. These are very dedicated people who work very hard, but can not possibly keep up. Which means that, especially with the weight of Money behind them, some plot patents are liable to slip through at one point. At which point it's game over.

Pity. I rather liked having an imagination.

Deep Thoughts/Politics

By Ross at 03:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm kinda foaming at the mouth just now. I have to think a lot more before I have some solid concrete thoughts on this, but I ought to blog it, because those whom it concerns directly, well, can't

My gf just read me the text of this article, as it's the high school she attended not so many moons ago...

Daily Record - Local News - Blogging ban provokes a debate over cyberspace

Reader's Digest Version: If you go to Pope John, you are not allowed to blog. Not on school time. Not on your own time. If you are a student and they catch you having a blog, you will be suspended.

So, the first thing I'm going to point out is that this is a private school, so a lot of the usual legal objections don't apply. Of course, pretty much all the usual moral objections still apply.

One of the many great things about the way we've set up our country is that its public schools could not pull a stunt like this.

Maybe you're having a hard time understanding why this is a cause for concern -- I'm not even all up in arms on a First Ammendment basis. It's not like that. This time, it's not even about freedom of speech. It's about overreach. To illustrate my point, here are some things that they could equally well suspend you for doing (these are not, to my knowledge, actual offenses at Pope John, but there is no legal reason they couldn't be):

* Wearing clothes which violate the dress code. Not at school, but, say, at the mall with your parents on a Saturday.
* Watching an R rated movie in your living room on a school holiday
* Working on Sunday
* Having sex with a member of the gender of your choice outside the bounds of holy matrimony
* Reading an unapproved book on your summer vacation
* Listening to that heathen and devil noise called "Rock and Roll"
* Having an unacceptable Body Mass Index (Pope John High School: No Fatties)
* Living in an orange house.
* Proposing, on your own time, that the Earth goes 'round the sun, and not the other way around

I half-salute their intentions; who doesn't want to keep kids safe? But me, I happen to think the school's control over the lives of its students should extend no further than the final bell (excluding school sponsored extracirricular events). (Cliche time: Shouldn't what the kids are doing on-line be their parents' call? I am very troubled that if I wanted a blog, and mom wanted me to have it, my school could veto it.)

Think about it, won't you?

And remember, Thoughtcrime is death.

Deep Thoughts/Religion

By Ross at 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By request, my results at politopia.

Deep Thoughts/Politics

By Ross at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I love a good parody.

Boy do I love a good parody.

I also like good theology, even if I disagree with it.

World O'Crap has reported
on Hairy Polarity and the Sinister Sorcery Satire, a sort of big budget Chick Tract about the "very real dangers of sorcery and witchcraft."

This is not good satire. It is not good theology. And at $2.50 a copy, it's not even a good value.

The material basically writes itself. This is a 32-page piece of propaganda designed to teach our children that magic and sorcery is real, and that it's dangerous and evil and you should not read or learn anything even tangentially related to it. World O'Crap has already taken it to task more than enough, and I wouldn't bother restating the obvious (except to point out that if you do manage to convince children of the premise, you've blown your chance to convince them of the conclusion), except that there's this one little thing that really speaks to why the theology is bad.

Page 5. This is where it happens. The password, letting you into the Evil Inner Sanctum is "knowledge". That's right, folks. Knowledge is evil. Now, our hero does go on to reframe this in a sound byte that, if you don't think about it too much, sounds convincing:

The search for knowledge over wisdom was a big mistake to begin with.

That should sound familiar, because it's a paraphrase of a pretty well-known adage. The problem is that the emphasis is all wrong. While they attribute the line to Proverbs, it's actually an old Japanese proverb. Their point: knowledge (actually knowing stuff) is bad. "Wisdom" (that is, what the people in power tell you) is good. Knowledge without wisdom isn't great, no. Wisdom and knowledge are supposed to work together. But that's not what they want. They want "wisdom" to the exclusion of knowledge. Knowledge without wisdom is useless. Wisdom without knowledge is opinion.

Even though I place it in the spot of prominence, that page wasn't really the one that triggered my attention. What got me was the middle frame of page 3:

Then again, mom says just reading about witchcraft is how she got into, too -- and I shouldn't fill my mind with this stuff.

Same problem as before, and it runs deeper if it's less overt. When I read this line, I knew what we were in for. Knowledge is power, I think most folks would agree. But it's an evil power for the folks who wrote this. What can you say about a belief system that tells you that even the simple knowledge of something will pervert and corrupt your soul? What you don't know can't hurt you, I suppose.

This just doesn't make any sense. If something is dangerous, shouldn't you try to learn as much as possible about it, in order to steer well clear? Let's extend this philosophy. Take navigational hazards off of maps, because the knowledge will, siren-like, attract navigators to their watery grave. Get rid of poison warnings, because they'll only tempt you. And for the love of God, don't tell people about safe sex. Oh, right.

Once again, the message is: ignore reality. Knowledge is bad, it'll only lead you astray.

Like I said before, if you accept that God created the world (because if you don't, there's no problem), then it's important that we pay some attention to it. That's what we're for. Getting rid of knowledge is a form of denying the world. And that's not good theology. At the very least, it's not good Christianity.

You can know about things you don't approve of. It doesn't turn you evil to know about witchcraft (insofar as it exists). Knowing how a condom works isn't going to compell you to have sex. The fact that nice Mr. Johnson next door seems exceptionally friendly with nice Mr. Smith isn't going to fill you with an insatiable thirst for the manlove.

I don't happen to think these things are particularly evil, but, despite my knowing a thing or two about them, I feel absolutely no desire to engage in a full two-thirds of them. So, if I, who think that none of these things are particularly evil (maybe a little evil, but so many things are. Like, "wearing a garment woven of two cloths" evil) don't feel any desire in that direction, how in the world would someone who actually was convinced these were "eternal brimstone" evil, be swayed?

And since a lot of folks would question my Christianity, I'll lend a little force to it by finding more or less the same sentiment by someone whose faith is harder to dispute than my own:

Evil into the mind of God or Man
May come and go, so unapproved, and leave
No spot or blame behind; which gives me hope
That what in sleep thou didst abhor to dream
Waking thou never wilt consent to do.

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 5

Deep Thoughts/Religion

By Ross at 05:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you're God. What kind of a universe would you make? Aquinas, not knowing about inertia, thought that God's constant input was required to keep the universe from popping back out of existence. This is because Aquinas was an Aristotelian, and therefore believed that all things naturally "wanted" to return to a sort of "default" state. That's why things fell: they liked being on the ground. It was home. Aquinas's theology told him (and the science bore this one out) that the universe hasn't always been here, so for Aquinas, "existence" was not the default state of the universe. So, applying Aristotle's methods, if the universe's default state isn't existence, it should naturally return to non-existence, unless some force is applied to prevent this. That force, said Aquinas, is God.

This all makes a kind of sense, as Aristotelian arguments tend to, but it turns out that the premise is flawed. A few hundred years after Saint Thomas was writing, Newton got beaned by an apocryphal apple and worked out that things don't fall because they like the ground. It's the falling that requires a force, because, in the absence of an external force, things tend to stay where you put them.

Which means that, even if the universe still required a miracle to set it in motion, it does not require a continuous miracle to keep it in motion. Now, some people might say that this detracts from the glory of God, since in this view, the miracle of creation happens just the once, and does not require a continuous miracle to keep it here. But I think Aquinas would have approved. Why? Because Aquinas was acutely aware of the fact that God is really good at His job. That's how he proves that God didn't outsource the creation of the universe. Sure, a persistant universe only requires one miracle as opposed to infinity miracles, but it's a much better miracle. Would you create a universe that required constant effort to keep it from popping out of existence? Would God?

Aquinas also says something else interesting about God. He says that God doesn't break the laws of the universe. But surely God can do whatever He wants, right? Well sure. But He's the one who made the laws. If He ever found himself wanting to break them, that would imply that the laws weren't the way he wanted them, which would, in turn, imply that he'd botched the job. And God did not botch the creation of the universe, because, as previously stated, He is very good at His job.

You might have noticed by now that we're well on our way to deism. Because all we really need out of God is the one big miracle right at the beginning that summoned the universe into existence. Anything God were to do afterward would be tantamount to a patch (Critical Update: God has released a Hotfix to address security issue KB 2 Cor. 2.11), and would imply that God hadn't done adequate beta testing.

Fortunately, there are ways out of this line of thinking (Good old Free Will to the rescue), but that's really beside the point. Personally, I am not a deist, but for the purposes of this argument, I will assume that the universe would appear essentially the same to us whether it be the product of the god of deism, the god of theism, or, for that matter, no god at all (at least, to those persons who had not received the gift of the Holy Spirit).

My point is this: when God created the universe, he did it right. Which means that He set it up in such a way that it did not require constant divine fiddling to keep it in order. It is no less miraculous, no less amazing, that God should create a universe with physical laws which give rise to a system by which a whole lot of hydrogen can, given enough time, eventually turn into advanced lifeforms like engineers than it is that He would create a universe that all works and hangs together, and then goes back later and God-blasts humans directly into existance. In fact, it seems even more amazing to me. Which do you think is a greater feat of engineering? Cobbling together a widget, or inventing a machine that produces widgets? Whose name comes to you more quickly, the first guy to separate cottonseed from fiber, or the guy who invented the cotton gin [2 points]?

So, no, people who believe in evolution aren't de facto atheists, and we'd really like it if you'd stop calling us that. And evolution isn't opposed to God, or even to Creation (insofar as "God zapped the universe into existence out of nothing). The only thing it conflicts with is one fairly particular -- and peculiar -- interpretation of scripture. And no, it doesn't dismiss scripture out of hand. Only a bizarre interpretation of scripture whose proponents insist is "literal" (No, it's not. The Bible is a mixture of parable, history, metaphor, and editorial. Self-proclaimed "literalists" don't take everything in scripture literally, they just use the term to give force to their own interpretations). "God would have said something about us coming from monkeys," I've heard. Well, how clever of you to know what God would have done. But more to the point, what exactly would you have Him say? Scripture isn't a biology textbook. In order for a concept like that to make any kind of sense at all, Genesis would need a 200 page preamble explaining the basic principles. Have you ever noticed how much the bible doesn't say? It doesn't say a lot about the other planets, or about computational linear algebra, or nuclear physics, or quantum mechanics, or the Americas. Or football. Sagan pointed out that the absence of evidence isn't the same thing as the evidence of absence. The Bible isn't a blueprint for the universe, it's not trying to be. In the best case scenario, it's just a summary of those things God judged relevant to our salvation (In a less good case, it's a heavily editorialized transcript of what some devoted people might have thought God wanted us to know that bears as much resemblance to actual revelations of Divine Will as your average FOX made-for-TV movie).

Those of us who believe in evolution aren't trying to oppress anyone's beliefs. But Creationism, Creation Science, Intelligent Design, and all the other titles it goes under isn't science. It shouldn't be presented as science, it shouldn't be presented in the context of science, and it shouldn't be presented on the same footing as real science. I deny all the claims of anti-evolutionists: evolution is not de facto irreconcilable with religion; even if it was, this wouldn't mean that you had to choose sides. But most importantly, I deny that faith is served by ignoring the evidence of science. I don't mean that "you have to choose, so choose science." I mean that you don't have to choose, and ignoring the evidence of science isn't just bad science, it's bad religion. Really. When you start saying "Yes, science says this happened, but that conflicts with scripture, so science must be wrong," you're ignoring the reality of the world. That's not religious devotion, it's lunacy -- and it's borderline heresy.

When I was very small, my mother, whose religious education was a little spotty, but probably well inside the mainstream, told me that God created man because He was lonely. Of course, that doesn't jive well with our notion of a perfect God, and it's not really supported by scripture. I can't exactly recall where I got this notion, it was either in my "Philosophy and Theatre" class or my class in St. Thomas, but my understanding of why God created man is this: we are here to witness the universe. Not, as some have concluded from similar starting points, specifically to be impressed by how cool God is (God, being perfect, does not need us to stroke his ego), but because, having created a whole universe, God thought it was proper and fitting that there be someone around to enjoy it. As a writer of sorts, I rather like the idea of God as a Divine Novelist, though like all analogies to God, it's not a tremendously accurate one (But, as Aquinas himself said, when we speak of God, we must perforce only ever do so analogistically). If the universe is God's novel, we're the readers -- and if you're a good writer, your goal is less for the audience to read your book and think how great you are for having written it, and more for them to read the book and, well, like it. And understand it. What I see a lot of the big religious arguments turning into these days is a lot of people who like to go on about how great the Author is, but who keep skipping over the bits in the book that are too complicated for them. God created the universe. Evolution is one of the things he put into it. And it's a really, really amazing book. I recommend it to all my friends. I like to think that the Author wanted me to read it, not just leave it on my shelf and admire the binding, and I hope He's pleased that I've taken such a deep and critical interest in it. I've even written a few book reports on it.

Oh, and that quote at the beginning? From the man who killed God himself: Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, a pretty interesting monograph on the big Book.

Here are some other people who have thoughts at least as good as mine on the subject:

http://iamachristiantoo.org/?p=194 points out that the rejection of evolution is based on fear, not faith
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2005/07/creationism_sna_2.html has something to say on the rejection of reality in the name of faith
http://www.livejournal.com/users/bradhicks/118585.html on the matter of God performing tiny continuous miracles to keep the universe afloat, and why this is a lame idea.

Deep Thoughts/Religion/Intelligent Design

By Ross at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

So, even though I don't normally hang out there but once a week (I've been reading the review of Left Behind), I saw this on slacktivist when I hit "reload" today, and since this was the first I'd heard of it, I read on.

I very nearly held this back for Sunday's Inappropriate Thoughts, but I couldn't come up with a clever picture, so instead I'll have to think deeply about it.

See, what interests me about this turn of events (For those of you disinclined to click the link, here's the capsule version: The Klan endorses a non-Klan anti-gay rally. The folks responsible aren't happy with this, even though, at least on this issue, they agree with the Klan, because, well, no one wants to have "supported by the Klan" on their resume) has less to do with the actual content, and more to do with the first thing I thought when I saw this article:

Wait. I'm quite sure this was the plot of an episode of South Park.

The exact details of this particular episode (#408: "Chef Goes Nanners") aren't really relevant, aside from the key scene. Jimbo and his vocal-cord impaired friend Ned are horrified to find themselves on the same side of a particular debate as the KKK, so they go undercover at a Klan meeting to suggest that they change sides. Their argument, which is actually pretty good, considering, is this:

Jimbo: Look! We have to accept the fact that most people in the world hate us! Right?!

KKK: Yeah!

Jimbo: So whatever side WE'RE on is the side that's gonna lose! Right?!

KKK: Right!

Jimbo: So why don't we all say that we want the flag changed! That way, most folks will vote
to keep it the way it is!

(Pause for thought.)

KKK Member #1: THAT'S A GREAT IDEA, BROTHER!

One of the many, many things that troubles me about this exchange is that it really seems like it could work. The reason I know this could work is that it has worked. Consider this article from several years back. Down there at the last paragraph. The very place of my birth got rid of a pretty successful and useful program, because they didn't want the taint of the Klan on it. Well, it's hard to blame them, but it worries me.

Just about the only good thing you can say about the militant extremist groups out there is that they seem to be much better at making enemies than friends. It's as true of the Klan as it is of Al Qaeda. This is, of course, a problem when the militant extremist is on your side. Not long ago, while driving through Virginia, I saw a billboard showing Michael Moore and several other overly-vocal liberals emblazoned with the slogan "Thanks for four more years!" making the implication that people voted Republican who otherwise wouldn't have to avoid being associated with their lot. But I can live with that, because, at least in an ideal world, there would be at least as many people running to the left to avoid being associated with, eg., Pat Robertson and his Angry Supreme Court Justice-Accursing Being as running to the right because Al Franken is kinda a loudmouth. What worries me is the possibility of collateral damage. They could do more to help their various causes by just, every once in a while, pretending to support the other side. The Klan could fund a gay rights bill. Al Qaeda could donate money to Israel.

Another television citation, and more evidence that the real world and the TV world are converging. Consider this bit from The West Wing ("The Portland Trip")

You know, I never understand why you gun control people don't all join the N.R.A. They've got two million members. You bring three million to the next meeting... call a vote... All those in favor of tossing guns - [Snaps fingers] - Bam! Move on.

My inherent notion is "We wouldn't do that because that would be wrong." But I suspect that when you get a bit farther out on the ethical spectrum, this would matter a lot less.

What's the moral? I don't actually know. I think maybe it's "Hate the message, not the messenger," but I'm reluctant to suggest that groups such as the Klan aren't worthy of some moral outrage. Maybe it's, "Even Satan can quote scripture to his own purposes." Hm. Still not quite there. With life becoming so much like a TV show, you'd think the Aesop at the end of the story would be a lot easier to identify. Where's Bog Saget or Shipwreck [1 point] when you need them?

Because, after all, knowing is half the battle.

Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 05:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've got friends who love the south, at least in principle. And as with all things people love, it's not based on a deep critical understanding of the finer points of social and political protocol (Witness 80s nostalgia. World on the brink of nuclear destruction. Wall Street Junk Bond Traders making themselves uberrich by savagely rogering retirees out of their pensions. AIDS. Crack. Bernie Goetz. [1 point]. But people love the 80s. Did they love all that stuff? Nah. I asked my friends. They liked the big hair, the tight jeans, and Tommy Tutone.), but with the vairous trappings. People like the south because they like the artifice. Warm lazy days, southern hospitality, honeyed accents, the fact that you can get any foodstuff you like deep fried. At least, I hope that's what they like about the south, and not the poverty, racism, heart disease, bible-thumpin' redneckery, and the quality of their schools.

Because it's down in the great state of Kentucky where a Zombie massacre amounts to terrorism. You can read the link, but the gist of it is that a high school student wrote a short story about zombies attacking a high school, and was arrested on "second-degree felony terrorist threatening charges".

Do what now?

Yeah. It seems that if you write a story in which zombies attack a high school, this is legally "close enough" to writing down your own personal plans to blow up your own high school. Quoted in the article, the relevant police detective said, "Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it's a felony in the state of Kentucky."

Assuming, of course, that this article is not being misleading, it doesn't sound to me like any actual threat was made (It's possible, of course, that the article, for the sake of sensationalism, glossed over the fact that while the zombie story alerted the suspicion of the student's grandparents, *actual* threatening material was later found, but I'll take the folks at LEX 18 at their word and assume for the moment that all the kid did was to write a zombie story.), so it's the second clause "possess matter involving a school or function." Obviously, this is sloppliy constructed, and I won't take the cheap shot of supposing that, as a school handbook "involves a school", it too would be taboo. But the following people had better steer clear of the derby state:

• JD Salinger
  
• Joss Whedon
  
• Adam Cadre
  
• Me (See below)
  
• Hundreds of horror movie and book writers. Also, people who wrote non-horror movies where something bad happens at a school
  

[In eighth grade, me and my entire class had a week-long creative writing assignment wherein we had to write a five-part story about how kidnappers had abducted our class during a field trip and stranded us in our choice of: the north pole, the Sahara desert, the Amazon rain forest; with only a swiss army knife, some rope, pencils and paper, a cigarette lighter, several army blankets, and our bag lunches. We were not only allowed but actually encouraged to kill off anyone we wanted (In a 26 person class, incidentally, I died 20 times. Which was frankly quite good. People didn't hate me, they just thought I made an interesting death scene.) while we MacGyvered our way back to civilization (My well-known MacGyvering skills are what kept me alive in the remaining six stories).

Furthermore, in my sixth grade reading class, we were ordered to write a horror story in which a fellow classmate was the victim. I think we were actually *assigned* victims, because I only got murdered once, by the same guy who I had fall victim to Kent Island's infamous and much missed Pac Man Tree (see below).

Thus, in Kentucky, I would have not once but *twice* committed a felony, under orders from my school. Seriously.]

[All through my youth, there was an old tree that stood by the side of MD-8 in Stevensville, Maryland, my hometown. Because electicity and telephone service relies on these overhead wire things, some wires had to run through the space in which the tree stood. Because the tree was sufficiently old to be Historically Signifigant, it could not be chopped down to make way for the wires. So a big notch was cut out of the tree's very large and round and unusually symmetric crown, which was pruned yearly to keep the tree's natural desire to have its crown be round and symmetric from pulling down the power lines. So as you were cruising down the main (read: only) road that got you from the north bit of the island to the south bit (and vice versa), you would pass this tree with a big, round, green crown with a big chunk missing such that it looked exactly like the tree was about to eat the power lines. Many people noted the resemblance to the famous video game character, and thus, insofar as anyone ever needed to refer to the tree by name (I am possibly the only person who ever needed to do this, since I wrote a story [see above] about it coming to life and eating one of my classmates), the tree was called, "The Pac-Man tree". Sadly, in the late 1990s, the Pac-Man tree was knocked down by a bad ice storm that also put an anonymous tree through the side of my parents' house and through the windshield of my dad's car. It was not a good year for trees. The Pac-Man tree is no more, but on the spot where it once stood now stands the Pac-Man Tree Memorial Coffee and Smoothie Chuckwagon. Only I'm the only one who calls it that.]

[Length of the footnote now exceeds length of the article. Beat that, Garrison Keillor [.5 points].]

So remember kids, Nudity is bad. Violence is okay. As long as schools aren't involved.

And don't go pissing off any Zombies or trees. --------

Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 07:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a result of a recent conversation on ifMud, I've decided that, while "retirony"is a perfectly cromulent word [.2 points], there is room in this universe for some more specific terms to refer to particular types of retirony:

"Retirony", as previously mentioned, describes a kind of poetic justice, best known for the phenomenon where a character in a film (usually a cop) wistfully speculates on his upcoming retirement, thereby ensuring that he will meet an untimely end in the next scene. It is, more or less, the layman's incorrect definition of "irony" that is so often used these days (It's, in fact, like Ray-ee-ain on your wedding day), not simply "a bummer", but one of those cases where a highly unlikely and unexpected thing comes to pass after it has been it has been sarcastically predicted. It's not an easy phenomenon to describe, exactly; it's tempting to dismiss it as "that's not irony; it's just a bummer." But it's more specific than "a bummer." "Ross gets hit by a meteor and killed on his way to the car," is a bummer. "Ross gets hit by a meteor and killed on his way to the car after mentioning the possibility in a blog entry," is "retirony". It's not true "irony" because I wasn't hit by a meteor as a result of steps I'd taken to prevent getting hit by a meteor -- though in a way, we *think* of it as such, because (I blame Hollywood), we have a cute unscientific notion that we can summon bad things to happen just by *wanting* them not to. We think that if we "tempt fate," fate will take the bait. I think that's why we confuse "retirony" with real irony.

So, I've decided that "retirony" refers both to the specific case of making your own demise a poetic nececessity by talking about it, and to the general case of "Making any bad thing happen by saying that it won't." Retirony is the layman's irony.

So, here's some new perfectly cromulent words to refer to things more specific:

Expirony is the retirony that kills you. It's when you say "I'll be fine unless a meteor hits me." and then it does.

Lirony is the punch-line from Sartre's The Wall. It's when you tell what you think is a lie, but it turns out to be the truth. That, or it's expirony involving lions. (LIONS!!!! [3 points])

And finally, Karmageddon is retirony that dooms the entire planet. Like when the President Of Earth insists that our new Alien Defense System is Totally Infallible.


Please spread the words and let them embiggen your vocabulary. I'll see you later, unless I get hit by a meteor.

--------

Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm going to spend a lot of time working on this article, and it'll probably go through several revisions, but nonetheless, it's probably going to end up being fumbly and awkward and offensive, like a twenty-one year old virgin the first time he gets to third base (ie. You). Some of that's intentional, some of it isn't. I'm going to be offensive in new and exciting ways from the ways I've tried before, though, so hold on to your hats and read on.

I'm going to start, of all things, with Neitzsche. Now, a lot of what Neitzsche was getting at in Beyond Good and Evil translates nicely to a justification for anti-semitism, but more charitably, his complaint applies to a lot of modern religion and to a society which, whatever you think about religion, has been heavily influenced by the Big Religions.

Now, Herr Neitzsche's thinking -- and while I agree with him on a lot of things, I want to stress that these particular thoughts are his and not mine. Or, at least, they are what I think he thought and not what I think I thought -- runs something like this: 'evil' in our modern sense got created by a group of people in Rome who were disenfranchised under the current system (specifically, Jews and Christians), and, since they couldn't dominate the Romans through force, they tried to win the spiritual game, by first reversing Greco-Roman morality, and then dubbing the old virtues "evil". See, "evil" didn't mean for the Greeks and the Romans what it does to us; the word means something closer to what we'd call "bad" or "unfortunate". The things the ancient bigwigs valued, stuff like cleverness, strength, magnaminity (Which Aristotle calls one of the highest virtues, but moderns have a hard time separating from pomposity), attractiveness, wealth, are all qualities that are awfully darned useful. They aren't "bad" or "unfortunate", so trying to call them such in this reordered morality is obvious fiction. So, says Neitzsche, the slave morality invented this notion of "evil" -- Someone with "unfortunate" qualities got dealt a bad hand and is pitied. Someone with "evil" qualities has a dark and black soul and deserves our Righteous Condemnation. Being bad means that nature screwed you. Being evil means that God hates you.

So what are the Good Christian virtues? The ones that Neitzsche tells us were created by taking the ancient sense of good and bad, and reversing it: humility (Aristotle warns us that an excessively humble person will never accomplish his potential), modesty (The Greeks loved beauty. The Victorians put a fig leaf on David. The Americans went insane over a wardrobe malfunction), meekness, patience (Code for "Just live with it instead of trying to change things"), poverty, and what my Neitzsche prof called a kind of "Holy Foolishness." The sort of detatchment from worldly knowledge that says, "Don't think too hard about things. God has handed down the Gospel truth, just shut up and obey." Also the kind of disinterest in worldly knowledge that tells you to throw Galileo in jail for supposing that the Earth goes around the sun, that anyone who tells you the Earth is any older than Dick Clark is the spawn of Satan, that Darwin was the antichrist, and that the Bible is exact literal truth (Except for the bits they find personally inconvenient).

Now, I don't personally believe that Religion Is All About Not Thinking Too Hard (And many religions Officially Agree with me. A lot of them even say you're supposed to think long and hard about your faith, and also other things.), but a lot of the actual practitioners do seem to believe this. All that suff about Neitzsche was a little bit of a tangent, but I'm getting back on track now.

We live in a nifty time in history. If you're reading this article, you can read. You probably got a substantial number of years of public education, and even if you got it by virtue of your parents throwing money around, you know that even if they hadn't, you were legally entitled to some education anyway (Sadly, this isn't true worldwide, but I imagine that my readership is extremely limited in the third world.). Many of you have probably had some kind of college experience. I can make speculations like this (except for that first one. That was good old Cartesian logic) because we live in a period where education is commonplace, where literacy is expected, and even a college degree is considered a possibilty for most folks of at least moderate intelligence from an at least lower-middle-class background. Before World War 2, only the super rich and the super smart got into college. Before the industrial revolution, only the rich and priveleged went to school at all. Before the printing press, only scholars and scribes knew how to read and write.

We are the only animal with the power of reason (more or less). Some would say that having been made "In God's image," means "With the power of reason." (Others, of course, say it means "With testicles."). I don't mean to keep coming back to religion, but I don't think I'm going to be able to avoid it.

Today, in America, we have so much potential to live the life of the mind. We've got more internet users than just about anywhere else in the world. We've got more TV than you can shake a pointed stick at. There are like fifteen colleges within a 20 minute drive of where I'm sitting right now.

I want you to stop now, go to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, or do something else for about twenty seconds. Because I want a long pause for the next line.

We really hate intelligence.

I'll start with the sublime. Another one of my college professorsonce said that we live in a country with a "Homer Simpson mentality." Our heroes tend to be folks whose hearts are in the right place, and whose heads are up their asses. I'm old enough to remember that The Simpsons used to be about the loveable scamp Bart Simpson, but which character became so popular that the show's focus has drifted toward him? The loveable moron. Who's the only Friends character who got his own spin-off? The loveable moron. Who won the 2004 presidential election? The loveable moron. We like dumb people.

And what's the flip side of the coin? Who's the kid who gets beaten up in school? The smart kid with glasses (No one ever actually beat me up; I was bigger than them.). Who's the character we mock and who never gets the girl? The smart kid with glasses. Who's the styleless geek? You guessed it. What does the smart ugly girl in every teen movie have to do to get the guy? Take off the glasses and start acting like a bimbo.

Here's a snippet from an NPR interview back when California was having their little Recall thing. I want to make it clear that I'm writing this from memory, so I can't vouch that it's entirely accurate. The host asks a voter for his rationale: I don't really care about the issues or politics or that stuff. I'm voting for Arnold because HE'S THE TERMINATOR. An author I know whom I'm sure will deny knowing me if asked had this to say.

We're zeroing in on my point now. How could the citizenry of California elect Arnold Schwarzenegger? Because they weren't thinking. Because, folks, thinking isn't cool. Another political example -- and politics isn't really the whole of my point -- is President George W. Bush on Bill O'Reilly's 'The Factor'. O'Reilly asks (and answers) a tough question about those who oppose the views of the conservatives: You went to Yale. And they're all pinhead liberals.
Bush: I didn't spend too much time trying to figure out why my professors thought the way they did.

Maybe, Mr. President, because they're much smarter than you. But, see, this is my point. If a smart person disagrees with you, why in the world would you just dismiss that with such blase? The Daily Show's Jon Stewart summed up the exchange with the same sentiment I heard: Seriously, education is for jackasses.

What the hell kind of message is that? "Don't trust smart people!" "Vote for me, I'm folksy and plainspoken! You can't trust my opponent with his book larnin'!" Time after time, I see this dumb hick mentality: "You and your fancy ed-you-kay-shun! You don't know anything!" How many times has someone said to me: You just think that because you've got a fancy Master's Degree. In the first place, most of the time, the person saying it is accusing me unfairly. Very rarely do I whip out my education as a trump card. Generally, I get that response when I've espoused an opinion the speaker does not share, and I've supported it with facts that are not open to dispute. But, frankly, being falsely accused isn't what upsets me. What upsets me is their reasoning. Even if I was claiming that my point was more valid because of my education, why is that wrong? Why shouldn't the fact that I spent four years at a Jesuit school mean that I have a little more understanding of Catholic theology than the average person on the street? Why shouldn't the fact that I've read Neitzche, Sartre, Aristotle, Heidegger, Plato, and Saint Thomas Aquinas mean that I've got some grounds to speak on the meaning of life? I don't pretend to be an expert on things I'm not an expert on, but why is it that your irrational argument based on half-truths and gut feelings better than my argument, which is based on the fact that I spent the past eight years pursuing higher learning?

Another example. My dad used to work for people who were not very smart. More than once, my dad explained very clearly and rationally why some kind of move was not well-considered (My dad's a chemist. Sometimes, these were issues like "If you mix these two chemicals together, the building will blow up." He quit this job shortly after a cinderblock made its escape from the roof and nearly beheaded him.), he'd be told, "Now, don't you go using that logic crap on me!"

There's recently (past hundred years or so) been consternation over the teaching of the theory of evolution in schools. Religious Fundamentalists don't want it taught, because it conflicts with their worldview. Thing is, this isn't about "scientists are trying to oppress our religion." Some textbooks are being required to carry disclaimers mentioning that evolution is "only a theory." This is technically true, but it doesn't give the right impression. There is very little in science that isn't "just a theory," and Relativity doesn't have to carry a disclaimer.

My issue is this: Science is not (despite what even some scientists think) about truth. Science is about models that let you make useful predictions. Even if evolution is not true, it is a model which is useful for making, well, all of modern biology (Newtonian mechanics is a model of the universe which is useful, but not true, or, at least, not accurate outside a certain range. Aristotelian physics is similarly useful and not true). Creationism, even if it is true, is not useful for scientific purposes. Put another way, even if the account of creation given in Genesis is accurate, it is nonetheless the case that God, in His infinite wisdom, created the universe in such a way that it behaves as if evolution was true. How is it that they don't get up in arms that science texts claim the earth goes around the sun? In the intest of keeping people happy, here's the disclaimer I'd go with: "The purpose of science is to find models which describe observed phenomena and can be used to make predictions about the behavior of the universe. Nothing in this text should be taken as anything more than explanations which fit the facts. New facts may be discovered at any time which discredit existing models. These models explain the observed world and are useful in making predictions about it, but this has nothing to do with abstract notions of Truth. If you want Truth, consult a priest or a philosopher."

When President Bush fared poorly in the first debate against Senator Kerry (I am going to try to refrain form using the dimutive form of the president's name, because whatever I think of his policies or of his public persona, I have respect for the office of the presidency. Whatever the Right might say, the fact that I'm a liberal doesn't mean I'm unpatriotic. It's just that my patriotism isn't blind. Even unconditional love doesn't mean that you just accept that your kid is failing in school and likes to torture small animals. True Patriotism, like True Love, means that you want what's best for your country and you try to bring it about. Here's one of those not-tremendously-great analogies I'm so often forced into. Man walks down the street with a Blue State Patriot. Man doesn't see the open manhole up ahead until it's too late for him to stop. Blue State Patriot grabs him bodily and pushes him out of the way. Same setup, but with a Red State Patriot. Man falls down the hole, breaking both legs. Man looks up, says to the Red State Patriot: Hey, why didn't you push me out of the way? Red State Patriot says, "Because I love you. People who love you don't go around pushing you.") among the republican spin responses were things like (another paraphrase), "Well what did you expect? It's a debate. But America doesn't want a good debater. They want a good leader." We don't like you smart boys 'round these parts.

I really didn't mean for this article to be about politics, but I think politics is the arena where, recently, the American Hatred of Intellect has been at its most clear. It's only been the past year or so that I've held any particularly strong political convictions, and a big chunk of the reason is that I've started to feel that the Right (I'm going to try to use 'Right' and 'Left' whenever I can instead of 'Republican' and 'Democrat' or 'Conservative' and 'Liberal' because I don't think that these views are (a) part of the Official Party Stand or (b) Intrinsic to conservatism. Those are primarily political descriptors; when I say Right and Left, I'm talking about more of a social descriptor. Bible-thumpers and Latte-drinkers) hates me for what I am. I'm an intellectual. And it seems like they hate me as much for that as they would if I was gay, black, or non-christian. Maybe even more. (I can't really be bothered to look up the details, but there have been regimes through history who hated intellectuals. I have anecdotal evidence that when Pol Pot came to power, he ordered the execution of anyone seen wearing a wristwatch or eyeglasses, perceived indicators of intellectualism).

So I'll stay on politics a bit longer. There was one moment during the second presidential debate where I was really and truly disgusted by an exchange. The question was abortion. President Bush pointed out that Senator Kerry had opposed a ban on so-called "partial-birth abortions." Senator Kerry countered by explaining that his opposition was grouned entirely in the fact that the bill in question made no exception in cases where the life of the mother was jeopardized. This seems like a very good reason to me, and I think there's even a lot of serious pro-lifers out there who would conceed that some exception should be made in those cases (But I could be wrong. It seems like a very reasonable position to take, but it may just happen that very few people hold this view. And nothing wrong with that).

Here's what happened, though. Here's what's amazing. Senator Kerry said "It's just not that simple." And President Bush turned around and said "It is too that simple." I don't really fault the President for saying that; he was, after all, just playing to his crowd: nothing really mattered beyond establishing Senator Kerry to be "pro-abortion." That's how you win elections. Who I do fault are the people to whom the argument was crafted. Senator Kerry said that (will wonders never cease?) abortion was not a simple issue, and the President countered with, "Oh yes it is!"

In other words, "Don't think too hard about things, folks! There is a simple answer to everything." We do not live in a world of simple answers. This is not to say that we live in a world where there are no answers, just that there aren't simple ones.

It's the same thing with the claims of flip-floppery. There are two problems I have with the rhetoric used by the Right about Senator Kerry's penchant for flip-flopping. Bizarrely enough, the least serious of these problems is the fact that it's not a true claim. Most of the issues on which Senator Kerry was accused of flip-flopping were, well, false. In the example above, President Bush suggested that Senator Kerry was flip-flopping because he claimed to support the banning of partial-birth abortions when he had in fact opposed the bill. No one has been adequately able to explain how that constitutes flip-flopping to me, absent the "Oh yes it is that simple!" excuse. The fact that he voted against one specific bill does not constitute a 'flip flop' in his position. Suppose the text of the bill had been "Partial birth abortions are banned, and Senator Kerry receives 50 swift kicks to the man-sack." I don't think *anyone* would claim it flip-flopperous for Senator Kerry to vote against such a bill, not unless his position actually were "I will stop at nothing to see partial-birth abortions banned, though it cost me great pain to the scrotum!" Senator Kerry voted against what he took to be a bad bill which just happend to also accomplish something he supported. The argument on his view toward the war in iraq is argued the same way. Senator Kerry said, roughly, that he voted to authorize the President to use force. The Right claims that the position he espoused in his campaign, that the war was wrong, is a flip-flop. In fact, they would say this in direct response to his explanation (Which was, by the way, that he felt the President needed the threat of force. In other words, he voted to give the President this authority, but didn't expect him to actually use it. In retrospect, this seems like a silly thing to expect, but it's not flip-floppery. By the Right's standards, anyone who voted to build nuclear weapons intends for us to use nuclear weapons. More on this later.) The standard flip-flop claim goes like this: Senator Kerry says X. But Senator Kerry also decried/voted against related-but-not-identical-issue-to-X. Therefore, he flip-flopped. It's the 'related to but not identical to' that's the important thing here. Here's a Right-wing sylogism:
I want to get rid of the mice in my house.
I refuse to blow up my house, even though that would get rid of the mice.
Therefore, I am a flip-flopper on the issue of mouse removal.
For the flip-floppery to be true, you have to oversimplify the world: there has to be no such thing as a bad law that accomplishes a desirable thing. There has to be no such thing as threat-of-force-used-as-a-deterrent. There has to be no such thing as nuance. Senator Kerry had explanations for the claims of flip-floppery, and what's the response? "It is too that simple!" Why, those are just fancy-pants college-boy "explanations". A real man of principal wouldn't *have to* explain. Don't go using your fancy-pants "logic" on me.

But like I said, that's the least (or, more gramatically, lesser) of my problems with the claim. The big problem is: if the claims were true, if Senator Kerry had indeed changed his mind on certain issues (And I'm sure he has. It's hard to imagine anyone going through their entire life without changing their mind on something), um, so what? You're supposed to change your mind when new evidence disproves your prior judgment. If you never change your mind, it means either that you believe yourself to be infallable, or you wilfully persist in a point of view that you know to be incorrect. I would hope that even the most bible-thumpin' of President Bush's fans would believe infallability to be the exclusive purview of God. President Bush has repeatedly said that, in light of the new evidence, he would not change the way he pursued the war in Iraq. This is different from, "Even after this experience, I think I made the right choice based on the evidence I had at the time." This is, "Even if I had known at the time that these justifications were invalid, I still would have used them." If I put my money on red, and it comes up black, that's one thing. If I *already knew it would come up black* and I still put my money on red, that's just stupid. It seems that it is better to be consistent than to be right. (I wonder if this is related to my thoughts on the Evolution/Creation debate: the Right confuses science's goal because they live in a world where the notion that a new fact could be discovered which demonstrates the previous model to be incorrect doesn't exist.)

America's Security is an important and complex issue. The future of Social Security is an important and complex issue. Health care is an important and complex issue. The War on Terror is an important and complex issue. The war in iraq is an important and complex issue. Whether the one is part of the other is an important and complex issue. The two candidates in the recent election represented two very different philosophies on these issues. Neither one's position on any of these issues was totally without merit (I happen to believe that one candidate's position on each of these issues was utterly mistaken, but even so, not totally out in left field). So, what was the deciding factor? Gay marriage.

Some people on both sides think that the "answer" is for the two Americas to go their separate ways (Google for "The Unites States of Canada" and "Jesusland" for a proposed map). On the right, these advocates think that God's Chosen People would be better off without the Jesus-hatin' , gun-hatin', queer-lovin', latte-drinkin', higher-educated Hollywood-New York fancy-pantses (They wouldn't; the blue states subsidize the red ones). And on the left, the advocates think we'd be better off without the bible-tumpin', gun-totin', hate-mongerin' hillbilly rednecks (We wouldn't; the red states feed the blue ones). It won't work, and it won't solve the problem. But neither is the answer for both sides to run to the middle in order to offend the smallest number of people possible (Which is what the Democratic party has been doing). This is not a matter of differing viewpoints or differing lifestyles. Smart is better than stupid. Engaged is better than unengaged. The Homer Simpson Mentality is wrong. I don't want the people on the Right to Just Go Away, I don't wish them physical harm, I don't want them relegated to second-class citizenship (Though two out of those three did occur to me in fits of pique). I don't want a violent solution, I don't want to overthrow the government. I want these people to realize that they're wrong on this. I want them to realize that faith doesn't mean stupidity. I want them to realize that being smart is something to be proud of. I want them to start accepting that people who are smarter than they are *do* have grounds to question your judgment.

And most of all, I want the geeky kid with the glasses not to lose his lunch money. Because nearsightedness runs in my family.

I just wish I could figure out some way to do it.
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Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 09:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been working for some time on a new blog entry. It's full of anger and spite and vitriol and self-righteousness. But I'm not done yet, and I may still come to my senses and not post it.

In the mean time, so that I'm not a total killjoy, I'm going to talk about something happy and life affirming.

I'm going to talk about Mr. Rogers.

I had a dream last night wherein Peter Jennings and I were working on a news piece about a Mr. Rogers best-of anthology. Being a dream, a lot of other weird and inexplicable things happened (But, I assue you, nothing weird and creepy that was directly Mr. Rogers-related). A while ago, the world lost Mr. Fred Rogers, and I think most people who have any opinion at all on the subject would have to concede that the world is a worse place for his loss.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most kids shows today suck. It's not a total wasteland (Between The Lions isn't bad), but still. A lot of sucking. I'm sure that this is mostly me being an Old Fuddy Duddy. Kids shows of today seem less clever than kids shows of ages past because I'm smarter than I was in ages past (But, eg. Square One TV and 3-2-1 Contact really *were* unusually smart for children's educational programming). Whatever I think of Pokemon, it's really no more a shameless excuse to justify merchandising than GI Joe or the Transformers were (I did something bad when I was a kid, and my parents forbade me to see the Transformers movie. It was my own personal Itchy and Scratchy Movie [.01 points]. I finally did get to see it in 2001, and was amazed that I'd been so disappointed at the time for what was a painfully obvious rip-off of Star Wars.). But I think that there's at least a little more going on than my being Old. Kids shows today seem to be all about the Speech Impediment. Sesame Street, which I think has for a very long time been the archetype for children's educational programming, is little more than a life-support-system for Elmo these days. All the great monsters of ages past are playing second-banana to a cast of younger, hipper, and, for some reason, speech-impaired morons (Elmo himself is totally unable to use pronouns. Baby Bear has a lisp. And there's this little cereulian thing that whines all the time).

Kids shows didn't used to have to condescend. I'll grant you, every kids show had a monkey. Not always a literal monkey, though they were popular. I'm talking about the not-human-but-anthropomorphic sidekick who was nonverbal or barely-verbal who had a penchant for getting into trouble, but also frequently saved the day by virtue of the villain ignoring them when they tied the hero up. But Snarf, Copper Kid, Chimp-chimp, and Slimer [2, 3, 1, and .7 points, respectively] were never the focus of the show: they were the comic relief. And, perhaps more importantly, we always hated them. It was the network execs who liked them (Like clowns. Kids hate clowns. Parents take their kids to see clowns because *they* think kids like clowns.). Now, they're running the show.

I think the key difference that I'm working toward is that there's two competing philosophies. The Elmo Character is the infantile simpleton who is discovering the world with the viewer. In current shows, the focus is on the audience-avatar; the character who is supposed to be doing the learning. In my day (God, I sound old), the focus was on the character who was doing the teaching. The mature character (Yeah. I just called Grover a mateur character. Compared to Elmo, he is) was the focus, and it was the kids at home doing the learning. And the reason I think this was better is that kids don't need "guy just like you". Kids need heroes.

But I've gotten side-tracked. Mister Rogers is a lot different from Sesame Street. Sesame Street is all about the Letter and Number of the Day. And that's fine, but I think that what really made Mister Rogers something special was that he wasn't really about teaching kids something specific. Mister Rogers was about love and respect. Big Bird taught you that 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ' wasn't a word. Mr. Rogers taught you that you were special. He taught you that it was okay to be sad sometimes, and that your parents loved you even when they were mad at you, and that you were a good person and deserved to be loved. Also, he had a trolley.

I've looked, though maybe not as hard as I should, given the dire pronouncement I'm making on modern children's television, but I don't see anything coming out today that has so simple, so important, and so beautiful a message. You are special. It's you I like. It didn't matter to Mr. Rogers if you were rich or poor or black or white or Jewish or Christian or Hindu or Muslim or Hispanic or disabled (Did you ever notice that on Children's Television, being something other than a white middle-class christian more or less defined you? If you were Hispanic, it meant that you were fluent in Spanish, and occasionally slipped into Spanish accidentally. You were incapable of eating anything other than mexican food. If you were Jewish, you'd whip out a dreidel given any opportunity. Ethnic superheroes, like Miss Piggy, were somehow unable to use personal pronouns in English (You know the word 'neutrino' but not 'I'?) They taught us white kids not to be prejudiced, because when we were asking ouselves "How prejudiced should I be?" we'd say "Well, not as prejudiced as the guys who write Captain Planet." [0 points because I'm going to give it to you: http://www.seanbaby.com/superfriends/eldorado.htm]): Mr. Rogers's love was unconditional. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a home with parents who, for their other shortcomings, loved me a lot and told me so on an approximately daily basis. But some other kids were not so fortunate. I think it's really something that, so long as Mr. Rogers was around, every kid had someone out there who would tell them they were a worthwhile person. And even kids who did have loving parents, I think, benefitted from knowing that they could be loved for something other than an ingrained biological imperative.

I have three personal heroes (Though I might add some more if I think really hard about it.). One is Hugh Hefner (Not for his money. Not for the women. That's all really nice, but what really does it for me is that he gets to go to work in his pajamas. Whenever he feels like it.). The second one is my dad (Because he taught me a good 55-65% of everything I know, and he's one of the first and only people to teach me that being smart and being knowledgable are good things. And because when I went off to college, he warned me about the temptations of partying, drinking, drugs, and sex, and then said "Just remember: everything in moderation, son."). And my third hero is Fred Rogers.

Mr Rogers's last public appearance (If memory serves) was a monologue recorded in 2002, explaining, for the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, that the scenes children were seeing on their televisions weren't actually happening then, so they didn't need to get scared all over again. Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

Won't you please? Won't you please? Please, won't you be my neighbor?

[Updated: 7:40 PM: On this date in 1969, Sesame Street Premiered. Happy Birthday.]
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Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay. I promised not to make my next entry about sex (Which is why I'm not going to tell you the story of what happened to me this past Friday -- except to say that I won Suicide Karaoke again), so I'll choose a nice safe topic. Religion.

This is already making the rounds, but hey, every little bit helps. I was just handed this link about an exceptional incident on the subway.

If you're too lazy to read the article yourself, here's a quick precis: Subway Evangelist decries the inherent satanism of homosexuality (The Dark Prince is a little light in the hooves, it seems. Come on, folks. It doesn't count as gay sex if satan shoves a red-hot poker up your ass. Unless you like it.). Author responds with show-tunes. And then it happens again, with the new preacher claiming that "Gay devils are controlling New York" (And here, I thought it was the five jew bankers [2 points]).

And this, in my opinion, is a victory for freedom of speech. At this point, you're probably asking yourself: What's this guy smoking? But though this be madness, there's method in it.

A lot of people, in their outrage at the hatemongers, would go as far as to say that the racists, the homophobes, and the religious nutcases (I want to make it absolutely clear that "religious" does not imply "nutcase". If it did, I wouldn't have to use both words) should not be allowed to espouse their beliefs. There's some merit to this argument (There are several European countries where they've decided that the need to protect the public from hate speech outweighs the freedom of expression, and have banned, for example, Nazi propaganda), but it's not one I support. I just have a problem with the fact that the people who preach tolerance and acceptance have so much trouble tolerating and accepting those who don't share those views -- It's wrong to oppress someone's beliefs, unless their belief is that it's okay to oppress someone's beliefs. Maybe even more importantly, your friendly neighborhood hatemongering evangelist often comes armed with an unfounded persecution complex -- thinking that a mostly-atheistic world is trying to crush and oppress the word of God (And ban the bible). The most important thing about this belief is that it's unfounded. The last thing I want if for them to be right.

So, the first triumph of Freedom of Speech here is that, as much as we may disapprove of what our Urban Apostle was saying, we accept her right to say it.

But that doesn't mean we have to just sit back and take it. Now, you're probably thinking that a rational discourse and debate would be a more mature way to deal with this situation. The problem is that you're dealing with someone who believes that the world is run by a conspiracy of sub-human homosexuals who actively engage in servitude to the source of all evil, and that the perfect and omnipotent creator of the universe has personally chosen them to decry this evil, and, despite the weight of biblical evidence, sanctions their righteous hate of those who disagree with them. This is not an argument within the domain of logical discourse. Their argument isn't based on logic and reason, and to respond with it isn't just ineffective -- it's not really apropriate. So the second triumph of free speech is that the author responded in kind to what was, in essence, an attack as logically absurd as, to give a totally random example, singing showtunes.

And when you've got rhythm, and you've got subway fare, who can ask for anything more?
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Deep Thoughts/Politics

By Ross at 06:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One key feature of a three-part series is that it has... three parts. This is why you're about to get double-hit from the bong that is my journey through the Mainichi Daily News. Yes, once again, the news from the land of Raw Fish, Bear, Porn, Wasabi, A Joke That Was Tired Two Articles Ago, the Rodan who isn't a French sculptor, Power Levels, a way to show appreciation to Mr. Roboto, and Mr. Friendly.

It seems that Japan has a problem -- less silly than the hide-and-seek thing, more subtle than yet another giant radioactive monster, and, of course, amenable to me making unsubtle dirty jokes:

"Japan's infamous Sex Volunteer Corps is being swamped with frantic calls for its dispatch from growing numbers of desperate 30-something virgins." No, really. From the first line of the article, we can deduce two amazing things:

1. Japan's got a lot of desperate 30-something virgins.
2. Japan has Sex Volunteer Corps.

Damn it. I had to lick envelopes for the community association to get in my mandatory high school Service Learning requirement. If only I had known. (Bet you thought I was going to make a joke about "licking." So did I, but nothing I could come up with seemed quite funny enough.)

But here's the amazing part: They're not talking about men who live in their mothers' basements (ie. you). They're talking about women. More than that, they're talking about 30something women who have never known the firm embrace of a man, and who are so desperate to change this that they've called in professionals (Professional Virginity Removal Service: We won't go down in history. We will go down on your sister).

Truly, the land of Japan is a strange and mysterious world. Now, I'm not one of the considerable number of Ugly Americans with a particular fetish for asian women, but this seems kind of extreme. Maybe it's a cultural thing. Or maybe I'm just deluded, but I've always been of the opinion that adult women are only ever virgins by choice, while adult men are only ever virgins by happenstance. But seriously, folks, I call on everyone who happens to be in the far east to do our friends from the land of the Iron Chef a favor: swing by and deflower someone, because these Volunteer Sex Corps folks are amassing "Considerable experience" in introducing women to the joys of the generative act.

And that's just not fair.

Fortunately for the yang of the universe, this may be a passing problem. There's a good chance that the next generation of Japanese virgins will not make it to their thirties (Wow. Is there anything I can't make sound like a horror movie premise?) A recent study (The most spurious of all sources, but I don't need to check my facts. I'm commenting on the news. The news happened even if the thing it covers didn't) suggests that 34% of Japanese High School Students have been paid for sex (The headline doesn't mean anything to me either. For a funny headline, see here.) . Truly, capitalism has triumphed. Yay capitalism.

So, here ends my trip through the magical land of Japan. For those of you who are getting suspicious that the articles I've referenced here are made up, I'll say only this: I didn't make it up. I also didn't check too hard to find out if this is some kind of Japanese equivalent of The Onion, because if it is, I wouldn't be justified in having the fun of writing this three-part series.

If you're concerned that the past few columns have been a little sex-obsessed, bordering on lecherous... Well, get over it. I decided to do a three-part series on wacky news from Japan after being handed a URL, and so I scanned down the list of articles until I found some that I thought were funny enough to comment on. And they happened to almost all be about sex. Sex sells. I promise, my next article will be deeper, more insightful, and shy away from topics of a mature nature.

After all, I haven't made any poop jokes yet.

If there's one thing I've learned from my brief study of Japan, it's this: Gamera is a friend to all children.

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Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In light of the overwhelmingly positive response to my last column (which is to say, I haven't gotten a single hate mail for my good-natured ribbing at the expense of those elements of Japanese pop-culture which pimply american fanboys worship with a level of adulation usually reserved for Britney's Used Gum.) in the past hour, I decided to offer up another heaping helping of literary Iron Chefery from the home of jailbait in sailor suits, Mighty Jack, Miso Soup (For the life of me, I can't imagine why people like it), paper houses (Well, if you had to rebuild every time Godzilla got hungry for today's theme ingredient: Tokyo, you'd choose cheap building materials too) and Pork Joy, the magical Land of Japan.

It turns out that in the small Japanese town of Mikata, some folks are pushing to have hide-and-seek made an Olympic sport. And, as usual, I'm not making this up ("Life's bad enough without needing to invent more of it," [1 point]).

And why not? In Mikata, they have institutionalized the local past time by handing out awards to tourists who distinguish themselves by locating the locals (Oh, those wacky non-westerners. Here in the states, it's the out-of-town visitor who comes to the small town so that no one can find them.). But in recent years, Mikata has been beset by an unexpected plague (No, not zombies, though this whole town seems like it'd be a great setting for a horror movie. Think about it, folks. Tourist comes to a town where everyone's mysteriously absent, only to find that they're all hiding -- from ZOMBIES): students. These grad school experts, no doubt taking time off from their grueling curriculm of Giant Robot Piloting, Mothra-wrangling, and pubic hair sciences, have been spoiling everyone's fun by, well, being too good at the game.

I know that sounds like a silly complaint, but, come on. This is for the kids, isn't it? It's like what would happen if Tiger Woods and Jack Nickalus decided to show up and enter the local putt-putt golf tourney, or, more realistically, what happens when the other team gets that one guy on the dodgeball team who takes the whole thing way too seriously.

On the other hand, what relief is there for folks who enjoy the thrill of competitive adult (by which I mean "not child", and not "naked" -- though.... Hm.... Naked hide and seek... I must think on this some more) hide-and-seek? The Baltimore Orioles don't need to come down and ruin the local sandlot game, because, there's, y'know, Camden Yards (First person to suggest that the Baltimore Orioles might be better off playing on the sandlot will be bound, gagged with a can of Natty Bo, coated with Old Bay, and submerged in the Chesapeake Bay, where blue crabs will gnaw at their bones until the end of time.). Many childhood pleasures are denied to adults (I particularly miss those little Gerber biscuits), but why should hide-and-seek be among them?

And there's the argument for making hide-and-seek an olympic sport. The article mentioned above ends with an enthusiast's quote: "It's our dream to have hide and seek included as an Olympic sport, probably in the Olympiad after the Games following Beijing."

My dream includes hide-and-seek too. Naked hide-and-seek.

See you at the 2012 games -- if I can find you.

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Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In spite of the title, this isn't another post about my karaoke habits (Though I'm suddenly down to one a week, thanks to latency as the regular gig relocates. Man, I'm jonesing for some Tom Jones). Instead, I'm going to speak a little about the best job ever.

No, it's not my job, which eludes rigorous definition. It's the job of the person whose research led to the article I'm about to cite for you.

Now, I am not the worldliest of men; my own experience of the subject matter (a) not exhaustive and (2) none of your god damned business, so I will defer to an expert, and by expert, I mean the guy with the afforementioned (cue reverb'd annoucer voice)best job ever. From the mysterious Land of Japan, the empire where the sun rises, the land that gave us Ichiro, Godzilla, Nintendo, My Car, Tamagotchi, Pokemon, 70% of the Power Rangers, illegible stereo instructions, Wam Monkeys, and World War 2 comes the one thing every man on the planet has been longing to know ever since our ape ancestors fell out of the trees and started going bald. Yes, thanks to one man's dedication, we finally know what a woman's pubes say about her as a potential spouse.

That's right, folks. The man with the (cue reverb'd announcer voice) Best Job Ever is a pubic hair researcher. And I thought that my degree (Master of Science in Security Informatics) had a silly name. I went to the wrong school. (But, hey, praise be the Japanese Education System. I now know that in addition to Giant-Monster-Fighting, you can also get advanced degrees in pubic hair. Piloting a Giant Robot, is, of course, not a college degree since this is clearly taught at the elementary school level)

This Professor of Pubology informs us that the ideal wife (And, by an amazing coincidence, a large percentage of Japanese women, according to his research) has a pelt-below-the-belt reflecting a lack of concern with ethics and morality, which means that she'd be willing to take a lot crap from her husband, but also displays the apropriate level of wantonness in the sack. ("My mother never quite managed the combination of traits essential in a housewife. She was a whore in the kitchen and asleep in the bedroom." [3 points]).

Sadly for many of you, dear readers, the article fails to say what completely shorn equipment reflects, so you'll just have to go on wondering what kind of wife Jenna Jameson would be.

And now, if you don't mind, I have to go find out if Tokyo U offers correspondance courses. --------

Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 06:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm Catholic, insofar as I can claim any particular faith. Now, our founders thought separation of church and state was a pretty good idea, but they thought a lot of things were good ideas, and I can dig how a person's faith could affect their politic.

Now, whichever side of the political Roy G. Biv you fall on, I don't think you can deny that religious convictions are having a lot more of an effect on US politics nowadays than they have in recent history.

Fortunately for those of who didn't jump ships when Martin Luther invented protestantism, you can now find out whether or not you vote like the bishops.

And if you think I'm being a little wishy-washy about my own politics: 33%/-57%/35%: Bishops, Bush, Kerry. I was most in alignment with the Church on matters of Global Solidarity and Social Justice, and most out of alignment on Family Life.

The reason I'm blogging this isn't just in case anyone else wants to find out where they stand in relation to the candidates and the Vatican, but to make an observation. And instead of explaining it in painful detail, I'll just reduce it to a friendly little sound byte:

Folks, the question should not be "I'm a Catholic. How should I feel about the issues?" It should be, "Here's how I feel about the issues. What does that say about my faith?"

Oh, and the title of this article? Some folks at Republican events have taken to displaying that motto, reinforcing the association between American Fundamentalist Christianity and the Right. Why do I care? It's made the rounds, but I'll say it anyway. I'm not proposing a conspiracy or anything other than an unfortunate coincidence, but try translating "God's Own Party" into Arabic. I'm not making it up.

God will have His little jokes.
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Deep Thoughts/Religion

By Ross at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been watching a lot of (very very bad) horror movies recently. I think we need a name for that phenomenon in film and television where (usually) minor characters doom themselves.

There's a few ways you can do it, and I don't want to lump all of them together. For instance, you can pretty much doom yourself to death in certain genres by using racial slurs, smoking, being a bully, being sexually promiscuous, or being the only african-american, but I don't want to count these surefire tickets to a violent death -- for no particular reason other than that there are only so many things I can cover at a time.

So the class of dooming statements I'm interested in is a subset of the general Fate-Tempting kind of doom. If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's because we don't have a word for it yet, but it comes up all the time. Since it would take longer to explain it, I'll just give some examples:

• Cop-movie sidekick shows our hero a picture of the boat he just bought (preferably with some life-affirming name like the SS Live-4-Ever [.1 Point]), where he will spend his retirement just as soon as they crack this case.
• War-movie sidekick reads a letter from his sweetheart back home and vows to marry her just as soon as his tour of duty is over.
• In the recent Angel finale, while all the other characters are resigned to the fact that their chances of survival are negligable, Wesley keeps making comments about how he has no intention of dying in the coming battle.
• Anyone in a horror movie says, "I'll be right back."
• Anyone in any movie says "I am invincible!"

Any of these, and a host of other similar statements pretty much guarantee that the character will die horribly, a little moral reminder that life is short and fickle, and God does not like it when you forget that he can put the smackdown on you at any time.

So, by now, you all know what I'm talking about, but, much like the goatee, it's annoyingly difficult to describe it without falling back on examples (G'head. Try to describe a goatee without touching or gesturing toward your chin). Maybe Hollywood is trying to pull a bit of Orwellian Newspeak, keeping us from realizing just how cliche the phenomenon is by not giving us a word for it.

That's why I've decided to take every opportunity that presents itself to use my own preferred term for the phenomenon. I dub it "Retirony." This is not a name I can actually take credit for inventing; it first appeared in The Simpsons, where Chief Wiggum explains that he will surely be fatally shot three days before retirement. Of course, Chief Wiggum places the emphasis on the impending retirement, while I place it on the statement. While this is a huge difference (The gods smote Kreon for his pride, not for having something to be proud about), I'm just going to ignore it, because I like the word.

Now, I'll admit that the road to coinage is not an easy one. Pretty much every time I use the word, "retirony," I then have to go on to explain what it means, so it ends up taking longer than if I'd just explained it in the first place. But it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the sake of future generations, who, between popping food cubes and enjoying syntho-lovin' with their robot sex machines (Shall I sing you to syntho-sleep/After the techno-lovin' [3 points]), will be able to use "retirony" unmolested.

And in case you think the movie world is too far afield from our own, The Word Detective informs me that as far back as the bygone days of World War II, pilots were frequently heard, before a dangerous mission, wistfully speculating on the day that they'd be able to go back home, marry their sweetheart, and settle down on a parcel of agricultural land out in Oklahoma.

Which is (maybe) why a pilot who didn't make it back could be said to have, "bought the farm."

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Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is actually an observation I made years ago, but since I didn't have a blog back then, I'll make it now as if it were something that only just occurred to me.

Now, I am not much of a polyglot -- I can struggle my way through written French and Spanish, so long as the topic of discussion is "Things found in a classroom", I can spit out enough non sequitir latin phrases to look pretentious, and I know about six phrases in ASL (I do speak about 20 programming languages, but that's neither here nor there).

That said, have you ever noticed that languages, as a whole, have a sort of character about them?

This perception of mine is, of course, fueled by my honkey 'merkin arrogance thinking that the world revolves around our little section of the western hemisphere (Though it was in a British program(me) that it was speculated that back-up controlls to all the world's nuclear weapons could only be entrusted to the British, because "The rest of them were all foreigners." [2 points])

However, having admitted that what I'm about to say is just Ugly Americanisms, I'm going to say it anyway. (But there might be some objective truth to it; it's a well known and popular fact that certain sounds tend to prompt certain emotional responses, which is why men named Matt tend to score more than men named Paul.)

Languages have a character; if you take a random phrase in a certain language, it will just inherently sound like something. For example, anything you say in latin is going to sound sort of mysterious and sage. Carpe canis ergo id est ad majorem veritas vidi carborundurum sounds like some kind of magical spell of great power (Actually, it means something like "Seize the dog therefore that is to the greater truth I saw them grind," but I'm sure it's not even gramatically correct, since I just strung together latin words. Xander, do not speak latin in front of the books [.1 point])

Thus, anything you say in spanish ends up sounding slightly dirty (Donde esta la biblioteca, Biotch). Likewise, anything you say in Italian sounds, well, delicious (Belladonna, in Italian, means "beautiful woman". In English, it's nightshade (The stuff the eye doctor puts in your eyes to make them dialate, incidentally), a deadly poison. Some have taken this as evidence that the two languages are fundamentally similar.). Furthermore, anything said in german sounds mildly threatening (Especially if the thing being said is "Hogaaaaaaan!").

And French, ah French, is the language of l'amour, so what else, anything you say in French sounds romantic (and really, this is the whole reason I'm writing this article). To prove this, I offer the following example of a beautiful, romantic phrase in French:
J'ai un poisson dans mes pantalons

It means "I have a fish in my pants."
Bon Appetite

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Deep Thoughts

By Ross at 05:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)