Teaspoon of Skepticism and a Cup of Reason

Education and Politicians: Politicians Are All Wrong. Surprise!

2010-04-11T14:18:00.000-04:00

If it weren't for my Aspergian tendencies, I'd try to become a lobbyist or politician. Or if I knew I could make a good living off of it I'd do it.

I have some relatives that work in public schools, so I get to hear about lovely programs and solutions-of-the-month that are fed into the public schools by administrators and government. Most of the time I'm just left shaking my head, wondering what the politicians are thinking.

I mean...do they actually spend any time in the classroom to see what effect their various decrees are having?

I was thinking about it again when I found a Time article from a researcher who actually studied the effect of "bribing" kids with money in order to increase achievement in schools. The researcher was an economist, which reminded me of a fantastic book I recently finished, SuperFreakonomics. That book continued to build off the first book, Freakonomics, wherein the economist authors provide both entertaining and informative information while reinforcing the idea that people change their behavior based on the proper incentive (well, that's one of the ideas, anyway...he makes several observations and links between various phenomena of people's behavior).

I was thinking about the way the US is currently trying to increase student achievement. The government finds that our population is stupid. Very stupid. As in, on average, we are scientifically, mathematically, and historically ignorant compared to most other industrialised nations. Recent highlight; the NSF hid results of portions of a recent survey of American regarding the big bang and evolution.

Okay, blame schools, they decide. Enter No Child Left Behind, and the ensuing efforts to standardise education. There are lists of what kids must be able to do by certain grade levels/ages, and if schools keep underperforming, they lose funds, and if it continues to happen, schools are shut down or taken over by outside groups. Kids take a series of tests as dictated by various agencies in various state governments at different times of their educational lives.

There are huge numbers of detractors for the way education is attempting to be reformed, but it seems to me that the most fundamental problem is that the onus of "fixing" education is on the wrong entity.

There is no incentive for students to do better. If they perform poorly, the school is punished. Essentially, the teachers are told that if they have students not doing what they're supposed to be doing, then it's the teacher's fault; the teacher didn't "engage" every kid in the classroom to the point where they want to learn.

This places blame for student stupidity squarely on the teachers, as the blame is placed by politicians on the schools which goes on the administrators who then turn around and blame the teachers. And the blame stops there.

The real problem, as I see it, lay in the community. If the kids screw off in school, the school gets punished. Not them. What incentive is there to learn?

The parents of failing kids rarely seem to care. Usually that sub group is just as ignorant as the kids.

The community as a whole doesn't value education. We have a society that wanted to have a George Bush clone for president because he was someone that the "Average Joe" could sit and have a beer with, while "liberal" candidates were overeducated and out of touch with the average American, apparently because they were educated if you listen closely enough to the criticisms. How can you expect students to want to perform well in academia when we pay sports stars millions of dollars while scientists are begging for funding, usually from corporate interests only funding research that they believe with benefit their own interests?

What it comes down to, in my view, is incentive. Students have no incentive to achieve academically. What happens if they fail math or science? They still have their cell phones, ipods, freedoms for the most part...schools can only limit so much. Even things they're not supposed to have the freedom to do teachers will let kids get away with. "It's study hall, it's not worth taking away the cell phone, so if they want to text go ahead..."

Most parents don't care. The helicopter parents are usually the ones in the conferences and emailing about their child's progress and their kids aren't the ones failing or staying home "sick" for thirty days a year.

Since we don't place incentives or punishments on parents and students, and instead focus on schools being punished, of course schools will fail at getting kids motivated to learn. How do you get kids involved when all teachers hear from the students is, "What do these tests matter? It's not like we're graded on them or something."

It's simply another burden for schools to bear. The funny part is that people still think schools are for learning; they're instead a social program for watching kids. Most parents have no idea how much money is spent on so-called IEP's (this may be different depending on what your state has for helping kids) and special-needs. Schools spend tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on purchasing special equipment for kids that will never be able to move beyond the most basic of skills; 18 year olds with the mental development of a five year old. Schools spend resources on counseling kids, sports, and various activities that have little if anything to do with academics. It's disingenuous to label a school as an educational institution when it actually fills a niche I like to call "community spackle;" public schools are expected to fill in all the gaps that parents can't be bothered to perform in raising their kids.

The whole "No Child Left Behind" is simply highlighting the shortcomings that have been cultivated in our society so blame can be allocated onto the schools and politicians are able, for the next several years, to both look like they care about making society less stupid while simultaneously looking like they're doing something about it. What it actually does is add a greater burden to schools, which in turn puts a greater squeeze on their employees, which then makes more qualified educators flee from the field and encourage more mediocre teachers to fill teaching posts, thus lowering education quality even more.

In short:
There's little incentive for parents to pressure students to achieve.
There's little incentive for kids to achieve.
There's little incentive for good, qualified educators to stay in the field.
There's little power given to schools to actually affect any change in the situation. They're simply given a directive, and when they fail, they're punished. Ever been put in charge of something that you have no authority to direct? Isn't that the definition of being set up to fail?

There are several things I've found to be screwed up with public education but until we acknowledge that many of these problems begin and end with the public, our nation will continue to carry a reputation of being among the most mediocre countries for education, per capita, among the developed nations of the world.

Kids Teach Us About Us

2010-03-31T19:29:00.002-04:00

I have a nearly five year old son.

The best part about observing my son as he grows and develops is that he has a lot of behaviors that I think we have learned to stifle as we age, so in a way he's a window into our "true selves." Impulse control issues aside, I am constantly admiring how much it seems he can teach about user friendly design issues and the various thoughts and observations that run through our heads that he'll say out loud while we stifle them at some point from being uttered.

The latest thing I noticed is that, like other people, he lives in a magical world. If it doesn't directly relate to something he wants or something he's directly curious about, he just takes it for granted. He doesn't ask questions about most of the things around him, and somewhere he files it away that that's just the way things are.

I can't for the life of me remember how we got directly on the topic, but I enlightened him to the fact that poop comes from food. Apparently he thought poop just appeared.

Me: "Yes, food you eat turns into poop after many hours. Where did you think poop came from?"
Him: "My butt."

We live in a world where you literally have more knowledge available to you than ever before. The Internet, your library, the bookstores...you can learn everything from how Twinkies are made to how to survive in the woods to how to grow your own food. You can learn about World War II and the sex lives of Romans and ancient Greeks. You have access to knowledge that great men and women in history would have killed to know. It's almost laughable the sheer volume of information that we have access to yet take for granted. And yet today we have people that believe the world operates on a set of arbitrary magical rules. Ignorance is almost celebrated in our culture. It's a sad commentary.

For the most part this quick post is little more than a random observation. I was simply struck by the fact that my son had naively never thought to question why he had to go to the bathroom. It just...happens.

Although now he thinks that when he eats food, he's eating poop.

Oops.

Healthcare System Thoughts: Reform

2010-02-28T15:11:00.000-05:00

I recently saw someone make a half-headed comment about Democrats "ramming" legislation through congress for healthcare reform that "most Americans don't want" and Independents and Republicans are against.

I commented, only half jesting, asking if she had seen the recent bit on Colbert (or was it Jon Stewart?) where they did a news bit on Hawaii's healthcare.

For the most part she stayed out of the back and forth, probably because she doesn't really have a full idea of what she was whining about. She only clarified that if people were against it then it shouldn't be rammed through Congress.

Which, of course, is bullshit.

Primarily because Congress isn't looking out for the people; they're looking out for the popular vote, money, and politics, THEN their constituents. And I usually think most of the people bitching about whatever issue is on the front page of a newsmag probably do not know what a constituent is.

The bit on the "fake" news program brought up that Hawaii has had, for nearly 40 years, a law that mandates employers to provide health insurance for employees who work 20 hours or more four days a week. This means that just about every person in Hawaii is insured. There are wonderful statistics for the state showing that overall their health is among the best in the country. Of course here are problems to nitpick; employer fraud is on the rise, and some have decided to skirt the law by hiring more people to work fewer hours. It happens, of course. Apparently if something isn't one hundred percent effective then it's a failure in the minds of morons. At the same time, the numbers speak for themselves; the NY Times has an article that states that the health insurance premiums in the state tie North Dakota's for being the lowest and medicare costs per beneficiary are the lowest in the country. Hawaii has the highest incidence of breast cancer in the country, yet the lowest number of deaths.

This, of course, didn't stop someone in the Facebook thread, apparently from Hawaii, from being offended at the comment that they have a "socialized" healthcare systems (her tricorder must be missing a 'sarcasm' setting). Quick tidbit...when Republican spin doctors are spinning the ideas they oppose in oversimplified terms for an ignorant population, they like using words like "socialized" in this case to mean that the government is in control of the healthcare instead of the people; I was using the term tongue in cheek, but the fact remains that your state government is mandating health insurance coverage by proxy through the employers. When the government mandates and agent through proxy, it's still government meddling.

But in this case it seems to be helping.

A quick Google on the topic of "Hawaii healthcare" pops up several articles, most of the recent ones about a failed children's health insurance coverage system and many bouncy heads pointing to it as a failure. "See! They repealed it in seven months! We told you government healthcare can't work!"

Actually reading the information seems to show that there are kids who aren't covered with insurance. To help with that there was an initiative meant to cover the population of kids in need. What happened was that a number of people with insurance already dropped their kids and moved them to the new system, so the money allotted couldn't handle the influx.

The actual "unworkable" system has been in place for decades for employed citizens.

On another note, I asked a friend and expat living in Australia what the health insurance system is like. He said that, like most of the modern world, it's socialized, and he'd be afraid to return to the States with the nightmare that is our insurance bureaucracy. The thing to remember, he said, is that your insurance companies are for-profit. They aren't there to help you. They have shareholders to please.

Which is true. It's against the law, last I knew, for a company to act in a way contrary to the interests of the shareholders, or the shareholders can sue. Good luck navigating this information, though...apparently big names like Blue Cross Blue Shield are fractured into a number of for-profit and non-profit sub companies in relationships so convoluted that the only thing more confusing is dealing with them as a customer.

I quickly grew tired of the crap spewing from talking heads and ended my contributions with a summary; I don't care. Any changes made not won't have a significant effect until I'm dead. Why?

Simple. Because part of the reason Hawaii is most likely doing well is because they've had it for decades. If you have state-run or federal-mandated health systems, it's going to have a large budget swell the first few decades because we're a population of gluttonous pigs. We're smokers. We're sedentary. We recognize more McDonaldland characters than we do names of astronauts or federal judges. More people can name more sports teams than ingredients in a soft drink or average calories at their favorite restaurant for their favorite meals (for those that actually provide nutrient information). So if you want to help with health issues, there's going to be a tail effect...the youth will need to grow up with better habits and lifestyles. As they become more prevalent, you'll see health effects slink up the charts, but the initial funding will be going towards those of us that have pissed away our lives in front of the television eating fast food and generally making unhealthy choices.

Offensive for some, but once we, the current generation or two, die off, then you'll see effects of a healthier lifestyled generation.

Of course at the point where we put a strain on the budget there will be a large outcry from the morons bemoaning the reform, and steps will be taken to eradicate it. People want it both ways. We want businesses to sell boatloads of frankenfoods...shakes...burgers...sodium-laden but yummy chain restaurant glop...while people just magically stay fit and healthy.

On the other hand, people living longer and healthier means that we'll have a greater population living longer and the health effects that just come from aging, a whole new ball of wax to debate and whine over.

My take? Like I said, I don't care anymore. I can't make a change. What I say doesn't matter. Any change for the better is going to take time and I'll be dead before I could reap any benefits from it (which I truly think is what insurance companies want). I also don't understand the endless debate we have in this "wonderful country" over healthcare when people literally go bankrupt because they have an illness. There's people WITH insurance that go bankrupt because of an illness. That's simply ridiculous, and the only reason I can think of that this is allowed to go on is because the asses actually being vocal about the debate are healthy or already have excellent insurance coverage, so they couldn't really give a damn about other people without voices in the matter, people who actually suffer the ramifications of these debates and political manoeuvrings, suffering because the talking heads that are supposed to be representing the interests of the constituency are more interested in the money from lobbyists.

Sad, isn't it?

Young Kids: It's Black and White

2010-01-30T14:56:00.000-05:00

I remember when I was younger (way back in the 80's) I used to love watching cartoons like Transformers and Voltron. There were plenty of other series on like Smurfs, G.I. Joe, Dinosaucers, and many, many others.

I remember as I grew up it became fairly confusing how each of the series seemed to follow the same tropish formula. I don't mean just the examples found in series like Voltron, either, where you have a basic premise of the bad guys coming in and launching an all-out assault against the "good" planet (alway focusing somehow on the good guy's base of operations), good guys get into a scrape (how will they get out of it?) then the whole thing is resolved in the last five minutes by forming Voltron and slashing the bad guy in half with the Blazing Sword.

No, I mean the trope wherein these cartoon worlds were always divided into two factions; the good, and the evil. While in elementary school I began to wonder why the good guys always won. It was boring. We never knew why the bad guys wanted to take over the universe (who would want the paperwork involved? And what do you do once you've taken over the universe? Go to Disneyworld?)

Why were bad guys bad? Sometimes there's some trite backstory involving how the psychotic Bad Guy(tm) feels the world wronged him or the hero of the series wronged him, but there was never a decent reason given as to what motivated this Bad Guy to dedicated his life (and make a living, somehow) off making the Good Guys suffer, or why the Good Guys were dedicated to thwarting the Bad Guy.

It was always so simple, so clear cut which was good and which was bad (why didn't the bad guys just wear white? They could easily infiltrate the Good Guy base just be switching colors, it seemed). For no apparent reason whatsoever the bad guy simply perpetuated every "bad" stereotype out there for being bad. It really drove me nuts. Even in church I never understood why the Devil, Satan, Prince of Darkness, was such a trope...if God was infallible, and was the paragon of goodness, why would Satan have crossed Him? What possible reason would have made him think he could "beat" God? And even if it was just because he was jealous, why dedicate the rest of existence to this endless game of screwing with humanity to anger God? I mean, doesn't it get boring after a thousand years, and why wouldn't God just get tired of it and say, as most parents do when they grow weary of a child's petulance, "That's enough, you've had your fun. Now stop it or I'm going to invert the laws of physics holding your molecular structure intact."

The world didn't seem to play by these simple rules of Here's Good, There's Evil, and Good Always Wins, although we were always told that's how things worked. Certain political parties pandered to the citizenry as holding American values, that we're the Good Guys, that we do what must be done for the good of the world. We are the good guys, over there are the bad guys.

As I grew older I read stories of American warriors sent to other countries to destabilize their governments; we assassinated, we tortured, we killed. We reeled in disbelief at pictures held up by our government of concentration camps created by other countries as examples of their evil intentions and behaviors while simultaneously forgetting that America apparently had concentration camps for Asian-Americans during World War II.

The blinders continue to this day, but I'm not entirely sure anymore it's media that causes this viewpoint. Rather, media simply reinforces this notion that the world is a simple matter of black-and-white, good-and-evil. They're playing to an audience in order to sell more stuff to kids.

I'm the father of a four year old. Thanks to our corporate overlords my son was introduced to Lego Wii games in the form of Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Star Wars. I blew his mind when I told him these were based on movies.

So he watched Star Wars. Yes, even three. I'm a bad parent that way. But what I found interesting was his total lack of comprehension for what he's watching. Yes, he's four, but there are some things he latched onto ("Star Wars people are cool!" he'd say, referring to the Jedi with the lightsabers) and other things that flew over his head (understandably so). But in particular, he needed to divide the movie into "good guys" and "bad guys."

Star Wars is not necessarily a shining example of perfect storytelling. But it is rather complicated. It weaves a story together not just of a man's journey from his own failures and shortcomings to redemption, but of a man who plotted and achieved great power at the expense of a democratic republic, all the while the people of the republic supported his ascension to power. It told a story of corruption and of the apathy on the part of the citizenry that were in a position to do something about these things and didn't.

My son talked of the "bad guy" Trade Federation, the army of droids, in the movie. They weren't bad, I tell him. They were oppressed by taxation that they felt was unfair. Not surprisingly this didn't matter to my son.

He doesn't understand how the Republic ended up putting powers into the hands of Palpatine as supreme chancellor, and how he manipulated the events to eventually make himself emperor, or turn a democratic republic so mired in bureaucracy into a smooth if oppressive empire.

He doesn't understand how the "good guys" in the first three movies become "bad guys", or that Vader became Vader because he was selfish but driven to gain power over life and death itself in order to protect his true love (whom he ended up killing anyway).

As I live to observe kids in different ages I see fewer and fewer differences. We are, by most accounts in ways it matters, sheeple. We follow crowds. We are manipulated by television ads and print media, all the while told the television shows and ads and print media are just giving us what we want. Petulance becomes tempered and expressed in other more subtle forms as we get older, but in observing children I see human behavior in its most raw form. I see what we want, and what we want to do, in the most basic form. Children have no qualms about telling someone they're fat. Or that you stink. Or any of a number of things that we learn are social faux-pas to admit to. They want something, they say so, unlike my teenager that tries to manipulate us into getting something for her through other means.

And one of the things children latch on to is the idea that the world is simple. It's black and white. There's good, there's evil. Grey wavy lines in between are uncomfortable and take thought and critical thinking to work through.

That's why I think Star Wars is actually kind of a nice critical thinking test for my son. He doesn't yet understand what is going on in it, but someday he hopefully will. In it's own way Star Wars is a wonderful analytical exercise for understanding and critical thinking despite the obvious tropes and horrible elements put into the story for seemingly no reason (Jar-Jar? Oh geez...)

There are elements that should give pause. Why were the Jedi revered while so arrogant in their own power? Why was so little emphasis placed on the fear they placed on ordinary people, or is it unethical that children strong in the force were simply taken away for training, whether they wanted to or not? Was the Empire truly bad, when they apparently had done some good for the citizens in the Empire? And the rebels were killing large numbers of people who probably were not inherently "evil"...they blew up a Death Star that probably had many innocent people working and living on it. They killed beings whose only sin was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And at the same time, the Empire had held the galaxy in order, and by destroying the central government they achieved what? Plunging the galaxy into a system of regional chaos, overseen by regional governors with their own agendas, while trying to re-establish a central Republican (not American political party Republican) government like the one that had become bloated an ineffectual in the first place? The Empire had drawbacks; being xenophobic, killing dissidents, and a small roster of other offenses to what we consider basic freedoms, but the Empire also brought stability and actual governance where the Republic had failed miserably.

On the surface the movies are simple and appeal to people who, like my son, want superficial simple good-is-good and evil-is-evil and rah rah for the good guy action. But there are skeptics and critical thinkers that want more.

I know this because there is now a growing surge in revisiting the 80's. It seems every franchise is having an attempt at a reboot, and in the process storylines are being fleshed out and revamped, some for better and some for worse.

Not long ago I read a story about the origin of Megatron, the leader of the "evil" Decepticons in Transformers (the real transformers, not the Michael Bay productions). I truly enjoyed it. Why was Megatron bad? He wasn't, really. He was a miner whose job was being taken away through the automation of the plant at which he worked, so Megatron and all the other "low ranking" beings were being forced from a job so a corrupt Autobot government would profit. The series showed how Megatron more or less fell into the position of Decepticon leader after leading a rebellion against a corrupt government. The Autobots were not all clean and clear of fault after all, and the Decepticons, despite having a simplistic set of motives in the childhood cartoons (namely, "we're conquering the galaxy because...well, because.") had actually valid reasons for the spark of insurrection.

Other heroes eventually explored the more complicated intricacies of their backgrounds. Batman is a truly screwed up individual. Iron Man faced his ethical demons in the Civil War story arc, one of the best series I've read from Marvel. Even Voltron has had some light shown in darker recesses that question how wonderful and pure he was as a hero when you look at the original, non-Americanized (and non-Disneyfied) Japanese origin story of Voltron.

This gives me some hope that sometime down the road my son will grow to be a critical thinker. There's hope I can interest him in thinking under the initial layers of simplistic thinking, that the Empire, despite Lucas' efforts to show otherwise, isn't just an evil scourge on the universe. There are complicated undercurrents to the story that can be fascinating to explore and in the process perhaps learn more about the world in which we live.

Self-Assigned Labels

2010-01-17T11:56:00.000-05:00

I've been having a bit of a career funk. I find myself getting increasingly agitated with my job, and as a result I spend more time wondering if there's something that would be a better fit for me at this stage of my life, something I'd enjoy doing more and at the same time generate enough money for us to pay our bills and mortgage.

I decided first to find something I can do in my "free time", defined as an hour here or there over the day that I could use to take initial steps needed to invest in a new hobby or career. I narrowed those options down to trying to write a book or spending time learning a programming language to create a potentially sellable service and opted to try writing a book. It's an ongoing process and I'm writing once in awhile about it on the New Author Chronicles blog.

My next step was to try finding some "career guides" to see what, if anything, would appeal to me as a potential career change. I poked around the shelves of Barnes and Noble, I dug through a Waldenbooks that was liquidating stock (big surprise...didn't find anything), and I skimmed reviews and advice on Amazon and B&N's web storefronts (is there anyone that can compete or come close to competing with Amazon for information despite their awkward interface?)

I decided to get a copy of Finding your Own North Star by Martha Beck. The subtitle proclaims, "Claiming the life you were meant to live."

I haven't finished the book yet. All of what I had just written was just some background on how I arrived at my topic for today.

On page 68 the author is discussing "group everybodies", basically how we tend to have this notion of a vague "everybody" that judges us or dictates standards to which we conform when in fact these "everybodies" are really a generalization based on a very small number of people that we grew up with who were critical or somewhat dangerous to our mental health while we ignored the people who supported us, since the critical people would be the baseline of "Safe."

That's the gist of the part I'm currently in. In the discussion of "everybody" generalizations the author mentions that, "This means that most groups end up with a few very vocal members and a large silent majority. We tend to assume that such silense means agreement, that the groups is totally united and monolithic in its beliefs. We're usually wrong. I made this mistake recently, during a radio interview. I tossed of a remark about Catholicism being more restrictive than mystical Eastern religions, only to have the interviewer gntly inform me that he is a mystical Catholic with a wildly unorthodox worldview, and that I might want to think twice before I lump all Catholics together."

The author goes on to say, "I've met Chinese Communists who talked and acted more capitalistic than Donald Trump, U.S. Marines who were absolutely committed to nonviolence, and devout Mormons who were also lobbyists for gay rights. Of course, they weren't the rule, but they are exceptions I would never have dreamed possible if I'd taken the groups opnions at face value."

I'm sorry but this left me scratching my head a bit. I am the first to admit that I'm ignorant about most topics involved...I'm not Catholic, I don't study Chinese culture nor have I been Mormon (I knew some Mormons, but never was a member of the LDS). But these labels cited are largely self-selected and do tend to have fairly clear-cut definitions attached (and also some common assumptions that go with them).

What right do you have to get offended at being associated with what are commonly accepted archetype for a label you associate yourself with?

The religion one in particular bugged me because I've seen so many people who say they're one thing "Except..." They cherry pick, taking what they like of one religion and branding themselves that religion but then they would get huffy if you assumed one thing that they didn't find convenient, such as the idea that the Pope is to be followed without question for Catholics ("I'm a Catholic, but I don't think the Pope is right about..." Well, how are you a Catholic?)

There are some things you can't say you ARE XYZ then go on to clarify that you're not in certain respects. You can't be a little bit pregnant. I'm told my black and white view of the world comes from my own neuro-atypical behaviors, but really, how can you cherry pick the best features of what you like then turn around and get offended at being grouped in with them, especially if it goes to a fundamental founding of their use?

Nonviolent marines? Why would you join a group that has a pretty clear-cut mission of defending a country, usually using a large caliber weapon to cut the opponent into hamburger, and define yourself as a pacifist?

Communists that are capitalists?

Mormons that are gay rights lobbyists? (I don't know if the Latter Day Saints have an official stance on gays, but if they do, I would assume that you can't be against the official doctrine and still call yourself a Mormon).

Again, I am ignorant of the specifics here. It's very possible that, like with the Mormon disclaimer, there are certain things I'm missing and so I'll take the slap on the wrist for it. But here's my stance.

If you have a group or label you identify with, you can't call yourself that label with "except" for things you don't like if it's part of that label's identity.

I can see where mistakes would happen. I'm an American. Somehow this tends to mean that people may think I can't find France on a map and that I'm a rabid pro-Christian gun nut that loves shooting people. Really I'm an American because I was born in America and am an American citizen. The rest is stereotype and propaganda twisted by perceptions by foreigners and our own internal political parties...well, the Republican party...that cites the patriotic image to shame people who don't conform to what they want.

Maybe other people could point out how these dichotomies are justified. I was simply given pause by the statements in the book. Maybe it was simply the idea of a "mystical Catholic" digging up all the memories of people who cherry pick from the Bible while having no idea what they truly believe (or having a real understanding of the religion they wave the banner of). Sometimes the tenets are kind of hidden so unless you truly devote yourself to a cause or organization you may be ignorant of certain policies, such as the Boy Scouts being anti-atheist (I was led to believe they were mostly about pinewood derbies and camping and helping the community, not condemning others for not believing in the Christian God) and the Salvation Army is anti-gay as a policy. Or these are tenets that aren't hidden but rather tacitly ignored by those practicing in such organizations when it is convenient.

Is that what it's really about? Attaching labels out of convenience instead of practicality?

Hijackers and Body Scanners

2009-12-29T14:08:00.000-05:00

Whenever some goober gets the itch to blow up an airplane there is a small flare of public interest in keeping the public safe without much thought to the consequences.

After the attempted blowing up of a plane by a moron over Christmas via an explosive banana hammock, the news stations were all abuzz over ways to thwart terrorists in our planes. Nevermind that most of our security enhancements added to airport security amounted to little more than feel-good measures that added a ton of hassle for innocent people and very little actual effectiveness (ask Bruce Schneier) in preventing attacks.

The latest push I've seen in the news is for the deployment of full-body scanners. A quick Google turns up a number of articles on them, but this was the first time I heard our "local news" covering the idea in one of their typical short-attention-span-friendly broadcasts.

They seem like a wonderful solution. Basically using backscatter X-ray technology you can see through someone's clothes, highlighting hidden objects. They also let the TSA agents see breast and penis implants, your genitalia, and essentially remove anything that before resembled modesty or personal privacy.

More effective than pat-downs? Yes, probably they are.

Preferred over pat-downs? That's probably a personal question. Would you rather have a "freedom grope" or a minimum wage barely trained McGoober staring at your nubbins?

The TSA swears that the images aren't kept; they're erased in a short amount of time. Oddly enough, nipple slips and upskirt glances aren't visible after a short amount of time as well, but there's nonetheless a thrill from those who get to see these passing slips of modesty and for most of those who were on the slip-per side of the equation the embarrassment doesn't get conveniently erased so quickly.

Does the TSA promise that leering glances and/or smirks are going to be suppressed? Does the TSA mind a nice fat lawsuit when some monkey behind the controls snaps a quick picture with a camera phone and circulates the picture online of the MILF that just went through the line? Or if another passenger gets the image on their camera? And what protection is there for the passenger's privacy? My doctor has seen my gross nudity (lose a lot of weight, you'll know what I mean). My wife's had doctors see her give birth, and she has doctors that explore her nether regions on a scheduled basis with a duck-billed device that I won't pretend to understand. But the doctors and nurses we rely on for care are trusted not to abuse their positions. I don't get that feeling from TSA agents that are hardly considered elite law enforcement personnel. I often worry they're one step above mall security guards in terms of training and professionalism or are recruited from Craigs List.

My parting thought to the news story...my daughter is underage and nearly legal. My son is DEFINITELY underage. What's to keep some pervert from leering at her nether regions as one of my kids go through security? It's that tantamount to child porn? Sounds to me like they're saying child pornography is okay for the government to produce but for everyone else it's wrong. I'd like to know how they're keeping perverts from going through their McTraining program just to get their jollies staring at young T&A in the airport, seeing as they have such fulfilling and upwardly mobile professional options working in those positions.

Hearing these arguments the government entities swore that they would be putting some software graphic-scrambling magic in so that you don't have your junk or nethers necessarily clear in the images. So...doesn't that defeat the purpose of the scan? Shove some of your magic exploding powder up the canal or tape it to your love stick and it'll just be part of a blurred algorithm on the screen (assuming this is actually done, or is actually effective).

I'm not entirely comfortable with this crap anymore. Air travel is becoming a bigger and bigger hassle, and now I have some half-trained halfwits staring at my wiener just to prove that I am allowed to get on a plane. I'm not innocent until proven guilty. I'm a cog at the mercy of a group of ineffectual thugs who get their jollies showing they have power over people who really are trying to get from point A to point B. The vast majority of people are innocent, but thanks to a few goobers that committed a heinous act, the innocent must suffer at the hands of knee-jerk reactions on behalf of the government trying to pretend they're actually making a difference with feel-good measures. The real question is how much more of this are we, the traveling public, going to accept before we give up on the idea that we are a country that values freedoms and privacy?

Reason for the Season

2009-12-27T15:29:00.000-05:00

My wife and I, in a measure to help appease one (both?) of the traditions of the parents, make a trip to my parent's church one week near Christmas. Usually it's the week before the Christmas Eve service, but this year we went the year after.

I am not religious. This may shock you. As such, I don't normally dress up very fancy (clean clothes are fine, thank you...if a church has standards about who they let in, then they're not very Christian, are they?) and I usually keep to myself so as to not be driven nuts by the habits of other people around me and by listening to what I have concluded tend to be propaganda more than an educational sermon.

Yes, other people's habits. Chomping gum like a valley girl drives me nuts too. It's a wiring thing in my head.

The thing that really compelled me to write this was that the minister went over "what is the real reason for the season." Churches really lucked out on having "reason" and "season" rhyme. It helps make ignorance sound clever.

I refrained from saying anything, but Christ is not the "reason for the season". It's the reason for Christmas, but Christmas itself has other origins.

I have run into this time and time again, and every time the people spouting this stuff listen only to what they want to hear. Christmas is not the day Christ was born. Christmas, miraculously, happened to be placed in a pagan holiday to usurp the non-Christians.

Excerpted from Wikipedia:
Dies Natalis Solis Invicti

Main article: Sol Invictus

Dies Natalis Solis Invicti means "the birthday of the unconquered Sun." The use of the title Sol Invictus allowed several solar deities to be worshipped collectively, including Elah-Gabal, a Syrian sun god; Sol, the god of Emperor Aurelian; and Mithras, a soldiers' god of Persian origin.^[53] Emperor Elagabalus (218–222^[ambiguous]) introduced the festival, and it reached the height of its popularity under Aurelian, who promoted it as an empire-wide holiday.^[54] This day had previously been dedicated to Bacchus, in the Brumalia festival. Bruma being Latin for "shortest day."^[55]
The festival was placed on the date of the solstice because this was on this day that the Sun reversed its southward retreat and proved itself to be "unconquered." Several early Christian writers connected the rebirth of the sun to the birth of Jesus.^[6] "O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born...Christ should be born", Cyprian wrote.^[6] John Chrysostom also commented on the connection: "They call it the 'Birthday of the Unconquered'. Who indeed is so unconquered as Our Lord . . .?"^[6]
Winter festivals

Main article: List of winter festivals

A winter festival was the most popular festival of the year in many cultures. Reasons included the fact that less agricultural work needs to be done during the winter, as well as an expectation of better weather as spring approached.^[56] Modern Christmas customs include: gift-giving and merrymaking from Roman Saturnalia; greenery, lights, and charity from the Roman New Year; and Yule logs and various foods from Germanic feasts.^[57] Pagan Scandinavia celebrated a winter festival called Yule, held in the late December to early January period. As Northern Europe was the last part to Christianize, its pagan traditions had a major influence on Christmas. Scandinavians still call Christmas Jul. In English, the word Yule is synonymous with Christmas,^[58] a usage first recorded in 900.

In other words, Christmas was placed in a time when people had a winter celebration of Winter Solstice.

The "reason for the season" was to usurp popular pagan holidays into a Christian holiday.

And it'll happen again, now, too. Regardless of what people will spout about to (and in) the pews and on family specials on television, the custom of giving gifts is as strong as ever. Our US economy is based on you spending money, whether you need to or not. We get things that are sometimes useful, whimsical, wasteful, and/or sentimental for people otherwise may not even think to spend more than ten dollars on for their birthday. You get a gift from Aunt Janice and feel compelled to return the favor. Coworkers spend time and money baking and purchasing trinkets for other coworkers that otherwise they spend their time griping and bitching about (at least in our case it's true). Our retailers depend on the "season" to turn about a nice profit as kids get their shot at receiving usually undeserved uber-expensive toys that they'll play with for month or two before breaking it or losing the pieces.

Once you have stores involved, you get advertisers involved. You get advertisers involved, you get media involved. You get media involved, you get generations of kids slowly growing into teens and adults that will nod their heads at the whole religious side of the holiday and begrudgingly go to services and whatever else it takes...as long as they get the presents under the tree the next morning.

Which is highly ironic. I hear the same people giving holiday plays in churches about the shopping and greedy attitudes being the problem, needing to celebrate Jesus', the warm feeling of helping others...but then these people go home and indulge in an orgy of consumerism. Somewhere the doublethink eludes them.

Now, I'm not against this. I don't have a lot of loose money to throw around, and I'd love to have the spare coin to do these wonderfully generous things like tossing money off the balcony at the mall to watch people claw each other fist into foreheads to grab the money and I will have the fuzzy feeling of knowing I brightened someone's day. I certainly won't turn down free gift cards to bookstores. I enjoy the consumer habits. What I wish is that people knew and acknowledged that today's "season" is NOT a Christian holiday.

It's a celebration of consumerism for stores.

It's a celebration of greed and selfishness for kids, often. We see acts of kindness and selflessness, but when it comes right down to it, I still see the majority of kids looking out for numero uno.

It's a holiday meant to ingrain Christianity into the culture by removing the pagan holiday and inserting a Christian holiday.

It's a conglomeration of secular and non-secular myths and traditions (do you really think Frosty is religious? Rudolph? Yule logs? Even Santa has a mixed origin; the current image of the "jolly elf" is very much an American invention, and apparently America as America is very post-Christian in origin. There are strands of the origin story that go back further, but please, I'm talking about what your average celebrant of Christmas knows and thinks they know about the holiday they're celebrating. If you're going to get worked up about "atheists stilling Christ from Christmas, at least know what you're arguing about.)

Another thing that bothers me is the continued refrain of the Christian being under attack during the holidays. The minister went on to say that it's considered wrong for you to say Merry Christmas and instead have to say Happy Holidays. Personally I don't care. Christmas gets me gift cards. I'm happy as a clam. But there are some people who think it's rather silly to tell someone who is Jewish that they should have a merry Christmas. And now we have Kwanzaa, another made up holiday that will in another few years probably get a decent number of Hallmark cards on the shelf for it.

As consumerism and other holidays and hopefully recognition that our melting pot of a country has people that don't care one way or the other about Christmas (or celebrate it as a means to an end consisting of toys, money, and an excuse to gossip about family at buffet dinners), advertisers are growing wise to the idea of just saying Happy Holidays so they don't tick off their customers. Apparently if you make customers happy, they buy more crap. In the end a lot of people just aren't pissed off at the change from Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays, as long as they're getting a bargain in the electronics department.

You're not under attack. You're simply getting a number of apathetic people who don't care, and a small but growing number of people who prefer not hearing about Christmas every ten minutes while not in their home. Probably it's a side effect of being exposed to Christmas lights and Christmas ornaments and Christmas movies and Christmas specials and Christmas displays starting a week before Thanksgiving! We're tired of it before it gets here! And we have more important things to worry about than whether some dillhole tells us Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas while assaulting us with ringing bells, like what in the !@#$ we're going to find to give Grandma Bessie and whether the cards were mailed on time and whether we remembered everyone on the list and oh crap Aunt Mimi just got us a gift (why? Don't know! Haven't heard from her in ages but now we need to find a cocoa set for her at the ConsumoMart...)

Next time you want to push the "reason for the season", just don't ask me about it. The reason is that it was meant to push a religion on to the masses by stealing their food orgy to the Solstice gods.

I'll leave you with this note, also from the same Wikipedia article:
There is no evidence scripturally or secularly that early Christians in the first century commemorated the birth of Jesus Christ. In fact, in keeping with early Jewish law and tradition, it is likely that birthdays were not commemorated at all. According to The World Book Encyclopedia: "early Christians considered the celebration of anyone's birth to be a pagan custom." (Vol. 3, page 416) Rather than commemorating his birth, the only command Jesus gave concerning any sort of commemoration of his life actually had only to do with his death (Luke 22:19). It was not until several hundred years after the death of Jesus Christ that the first instances of the celebration of Christmas begin to appear in the historical record. According to the new Encyclopedia Britannica, some who later claimed to be Christian likely "wished the date to coincide with the pagan Roman festival marking the 'birthday of the unconquered sun'." The festival was celebrated with similar customs (gift giving, feasting) that are done to celebrate Christmas today.

Are there any holiday irks that get to you? Feel free to share...

Teen Marriage

2009-12-20T08:30:00.000-05:00

I had written about my daughter's friend, Sara. She is the pregnant teen that is going to get married ("sometime")...I wrote more about it here. Read that to get a better idea of the person I'm referring to.

My household of course has people on Facebook. If you're unfamiliar with Facebook then you must not have been using the Internet for more than a month...I'm not saying you need an account on Facebook or actively use it, since I've found it to be useful only in that I've found people I lost track of years ago thanks to Facebook, only to lose them again in a deluge of worthless invites to play some farming game or joining a mafia group and spammed with happy messages that filled time I'll never get back. But I digress.

The point is that Sara has a Facebook account and apparently has her status updates posted online that members of this household see. She recently postponed (cancelled?) her wedding plans. Her mother, also apparently online with Facebook, said that the wedding was being postponed indefinitely (I got this all second-hand, so I'm paraphrasing). They got into some argument and called it off.

That was a few days ago. I asked yesterday whatever became of their canceled wedding plans, wondering what could possibly have caused Mr. and Mrs. All-You-Need-Is-Love to call off their plans.

"Oh, they're getting married now. They think near Valentine's day."
"Huh?"
"Yeah. They made up and they're going to get married again."

Quick time for slow thinkers...if your idea of resolving an argument with your fiance' is to threaten to call off your wedding for a reason short of finding him or her hammering another person in a clear act of infidelity or discovering that he or she will be out of the country or in jail for a stretch of time, and perhaps a few other extenuating circumstances that lead you to a revelation that this person is not the person you thought they were at a deep and fundamental level, you're probably about as emotionally mature as a ten year old and should not be getting married in the first place.

Threatening to call off the marriage because of a spat is pretty much the equivalent to the playground "I won't be your friend anymore!" ploy.

I shudder to think how common this type of idiocy is in our society. It makes me more depressed than I already am having to face the holiday stress.

Teen Pregnancy and Idiots: A Plea for Understanding

2009-11-21T10:58:00.000-05:00

I need some help.

I probably don't have enough readers who follow this to give some advice, but hey, doesn't hurt to ask. If you have friends or followers that might be able to offer (constructive) thoughts, please do direct them here to leave a comment.

I need some guidance on a social issue that probably doesn't have a direct "right" answer but I have definite opinions about and I need to find a way to reconcile these ideas. Since you probably read the title, you should have no problem figuring that out.

My daughter has a friend who is a complete moron. I'll call her Sara. And when I say she's a moron, I mean she really is an idiot...ignorant, lacking common sense, and worst of all proud of her ignorance.

She is a senior in high school. I'm not sure she didn't fail a year and have to repeat; she's 18 now. Her boyfriend is in his early 20's. Sara is a sweet girl, kind, and comes off as being a total bubblehead if you met her. She's one of the kinds of people that hangs around and leaves you scratching your head wondering where her head is half the time, but otherwise seems innocent and harmless enough.

Her boyfriend was supposedly going into the military. Her mother works a job that doesn't bring in a lot of cash, and I guess her father is more or less not in the picture (I never hear anything about her father, I think they may be divorced).

The problem is that before her senior year started, she decided to get pregnant. So she did.

Her mother is overjoyed. Sara gave her a granddaughter! Yay! She also was letting her daughter "live" with the boyfriend all summer. She reported that the daughter lived with her so she'd be in the "correct" school district while she was...is?...living with her boyfriend in a neighboring school district.

Did I mention that she's a senior in high school still?

I have a few problems with this. First, it encouraged my daughter to be an idiot. They're friends, and I can't very well just ban her from hanging out with people because they're idiots or she'd have no friends. My daughter saw no problem with her being pregnant because "they're in love". I suppose this partially fits with the theory I have that part of the Twilight appeal to tweens and teens is that it gives some idealized teenager ideal of romantic love, the idea that a true relationship means finding someone that you physically and emotionally cannot live without to the point where you pine away and die because they decide that they, like, want to, like, hang out with someone else, like, ya'know? Be typical teenagers with so much melodrama in your life that every minor blip in your life is a, like, major life-altering catalyst for altering your entire, like, world?

Where was I? Oh, yes, idiot. They're in love. That makes it okay to intentionally get pregnant at 17/18. That is so not the message I want my teenage daughter to get, which I thought she'd know better since she had to live with the consequences of being the daughter of someone who was a teenage mom. It made life hard for them. It seems she forgot about the first 10 years of her life.

Okay. That brought me to the second reason I really dislike this. Their lives.

Sara has no job. No job skills. No prospects. Not even married yet.

I'm not a big believer in marriage for the sake of children or for any religious reasons (imagine that). I'm look at it practically. Supposedly the father is in the military...my daughter thought he was, but for some reason he came home on leave over the summer and simply never went back, and my daughter is too focused on herself to ever wonder why. She thought that he might kind of sorta work at a factory now. In his twenties with a factory job. Okay. It's something.

The teenage mother? Sara apparently got pregnant, got all the back slaps and smiles from her mother, then decided she was afraid of the stigma of being on of "those" statistics at school and decided to take home schooling or online schooling through her school district so she didn't have to face her classmates with the baby bump.

They're not married yet. "They're planning on getting married," my daughter says. "They love each other." Sorry...statistically speaking, this is sooo common a refrain, yet it means jack until it's really done. And until then you lost the primary practical reasons to get married...namely legal benefits. Something happens to mommy or daddy, there's no money or support available to the kid and remaining parent. I know it's common to believe you won't be "one of those people", that "our situation is different." Of course there's a chance things will work out. In families with more wealth, financial issues never figure into the equation.

But this isn't a family of means. Grandma-Mommy makes minimal income. I guess Grandpa-Daddy is barely in the picture. Daddy works at a factory. Mommy is a student with no marketable skills and hasn't even held a summer job. Which brings me to my next problem...

My taxes will be supporting them. It's one thing when someone is raped. Or hits bad times. Has a rough patch in life, etc. etc...I'm all for the government helping. When someone does something that at the time is reasonable, then the situation changes, that's forgivable. But for the life of me I cannot find any situation where you're making minimal amount of money, have no real skills, and it's justifiable to have a child at an age that stigmatizes you and the child. She intentionally did this. She set out to have a baby, and now that child will be most likely raised at or very close to the poverty line, thus statistically speaking creating the same problem when this kid hits reproductive years all over again. What happens when you have someone in that situation? Typically they're on financial support.

I work a job that is literally stressing my health at times. My wife works hard at her job. We forced our daughter to get a job and she's done a halfway decent job of sticking with that McJob. And it pisses me off to have a third of my income docked to go towards people who are in financial straits and decide it's wise to turn around and have another child in that situation on purpose. Not an accident. Have a child that will in turn be put into a disadvantaged situation with the expectation that they're entitled to a wonderful life at the expense of taxpayers because Mommy and Daddy think it's cool to have a kid.

I've been struggling with my feelings on this because before, I didn't mind her being around. She was sweet. A nice kid. Just...stupid as a rock at times. Ignorant of just about anything going on around her. She was bubbleheaded but harmless for the most part...maybe a slight danger to herself, since she had once stuck a lollipop in her eye thinking she was holding her contact lens (which was actually on the finger on the other hand). Yes, that actually happened, and isn't unexpected from her.

Now I don't want her in our house. Ever.

I can't help but see her as a bad example, and I'm overwhelmed with disappointment at the road she's setting down. I know there are exceptions. My wife was someone who led a life where quite frankly she should be probably dead. From her stories she was far more promiscuous than average in her teenage years. She did things she now regrets. What first drew me to her was that she was determined to make up for those things after she got pregnant and finally realized that she was bringing an innocent life into the world that relied on her to be responsible enough to take are of her. She isn't the nurturing type...she'll admit that...but when she got pregnant her senior year in high school, she stuck with school to graduate. Then she moved out of her parents home, got married to the father (another mistake, she concedes, as he was too lazy to hold a job and she was working whenever she could to make the bills), and then went to college over the next 10 years to get a degree with career potential. Ten years of working nights and part time. She beat the odds, and while she'll always be the statistic of being a teen mom, she's also a statistic in that she beat the overwhelming majority that ends up without an education and living in the poverty level as a single parent. She worked to have her kid have a better life, and that struck me as being someone to really admire.

Sara shows no sign of this. There is absolutely no way, in her shoes, I could see what she's done as being a good idea from anyone with a lick of common sense. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't her being a victim. It was her being selfish and self centered and now I have to pay for it. I'm having a lot of trouble seeing through this obstacle.

I was thinking of this because apparently she asked my daughter to go to Twilight tomorrow with her and her boyfriend and some other friend. Ironic. Twilight is supposed to be all about the romance-without-screwing and chastity, but Sara is going to see it. My wife and I just said that as long as she had money to pay her bills (yes, my daughter incurs bills for her driving and cell phone) as well as paying for her trip to the movie then fine. I don't like her hanging out with Sara as I see her as a bad example and influence now, but like I said...don't wan to block her from being friends with people who are idiots or she'd really have no one to hang around with.

I just need...strike that. I want to find a way to justify liking Sara again as that good kid that didn't cross the line from harmless to a tax burden. As it stands I see her as a financial burden, bad example to society and quite frankly I feel a need to punish her for her idiocy. I feel a need to tell her that she's not welcome in our home, around us or our kids. I want her to understand the immense stupidity in her decisions and understand that her actions are bringing an innocent into the world that doesn't have a choice in dealing with her idiot life decisions, and there will be a point where statistically she will repeat those mistakes for others to have to deal with.

The most difficult keyword there is feel. I could find logical fallacies and justifications to appease the rational side of either end of the arguments. But something about this...maybe it was her being judged a harmless but ditzy person previously...makes me feel anger at her disappointing my wife and I. It's not my place to punish her. I've not even spoken to her since she was dancing around with her joyful news, and I don't think my wife has spoken to her either.

Maybe that's it. I'm utterly disappointed and angry that we misjudged her so much. I have an irrational need to make her understand her foolishness and I want her to get her ass on track to becoming a productive member of society, but she's not my kid. And I'm realistic. She has enjoyed her ignorance and stupidity, and she has no aspirations to do anything in life to be productive. I guess that lifestyle works when the Daddy pulls in cash by the fistful, but when Daddy is a military dropout landing a minimum wage job, I'm thinking that is an indication that Daddy couldn't hack the responsibility and discipline of the military's basic training, Mommy already shows she lacks this, and Sara's own family lacks the means to support the children as well.

I've simply seen this pattern play out too often. My wife's sister has kids out of wedlock and lives with her parents, partially supported by them. Technically I guess it is in wedlock since she never divorced her husband, but the children weren't his. Oh boy. That life would take three posts to explain in itself.

The area in which we live is rife with poverty-level income, with a huge population of underprivileged kids according to the government. Now Sara has added another one. Each of these kids is an opportunity to change and live better and do better in life. Sara has effectively flushed her chance down the toilet.

I hope desperately that she will turn this around and beat the odds. I don't see her as being someone for whom it will happen. My wife happened to be too stubborn to not beat those odds once she actually came to her senses and decided that maybe her lifestyle choices were really stupid. Sara is too stupid to come to her senses.

Can someone give ideas on how to "come to grips" with this? How to forgive when I can't get past the idea of punishing her for her utter stupidity? I can't do that, of course, so right now I simply don't want her around at all. My wife can't offer insight on how to do this because she, too, is apparently too angry and disappointed in Sara to endorse her coming to the home as well. I guess that despite my Aspergian need for rational discourse and her irrational emotion-based decision process we both agree that we don't want Sara around.

Consequences of Using Facebook

2009-11-20T07:55:00.000-05:00

It's funny how teenagers, and adults, have so many "duh" moments with technology. Working in technology, I tend to be aware of the issues that crop up with lack of privacy and forethought when using said technology as a medium to advertise yourself (on purpose or inadvertently).

That's not to say that I'm not going to be guilty of skirting the line once in awhile. I've posted my religious views on this blog and know that no matter what, most communities in the US will frown upon you being an atheist and it could potentially affect your job. I've posted stories that draw parallels to my work life in my tech blog and if I didn't change certain details I could risk pissing off the wrong person over something silly. These are reasons that I don't use my full name and precisely why I chance details to mask such things and in using services like Twitter and Facebook I have to ask myself whether or not my mother seeing what I'm posting would get me in trouble.

Apparently most teens fail to think about the Mommy Test when using social services. In the news today (CBC News, actually) is a woman that got into trouble with something that I would have thought would have passed the Mommy Test.

Nathalie Blanchard was diagnosed with depression and was on leave from her employer. While on leave she had apparently gone on a vacation and had a birthday party and even a bit of fun watching Chippendales dance around. Then her insurance company stopped paying benefits.

Calling them up the agent described photos of her fun that she posted on Facebook.

Apparently the insurance company decided she was no longer depressed because she was pictured having fun. She's confused because her facebook profile is locked to allow only approved people to see the pictures. In addition (this isn't in the story but rather my own take on it, hoping that Canadian common sense is at least on par with American) diagnosis for a disorder like this is usually left up to a psychiatrist or therapist to determine, not some dillhole spying on your online social web site activities, isn't it?

While on one hand this is an example of consequences to sharing your life online and the need to exercise caution in advertising your activities, I also see this as a rather creepy invasion of privacy by a corporation into your private life. I'm hoping that one of her "friends" ratted her out because if not then the alternative is rather chilling.

If she's careful with her choice of allowed friends and who is allowed to view her social media activities then I wouldn't think the things she posted were an issue. If I were diagnosed with depression (whoops...I was...) and the therapist tells me that I need to take a break, and my insurance company/employer are covering a leave of absence, why in the name of Purgatory would I need to sit around at home for a month to recover when I should be doing something to reinvigorate my life and find a reason to get out of bed in the morning? It's not like the woman was out of work for having a wounded back and then photographed carrying heavy boxes. She was on vacation and trying to have a good time. Oddly enough I would think that this is showing recovery in progress, not a tip off that the insurance company should just cancel her coverage.

I would like to think they would tell her they need updates from a mandatory visit to a therapist who in turn would share his or her evaluation of her status and whether she's fit to work again, not turn around and make an armchair analysis of her status from pictures online.

I have no idea why people would hate insurance companies...

Killing Albinos in Africa for Profit

2009-11-15T09:25:00.000-05:00

On one hand, reading this story was shocking. On the other I suppose I shouldn't have been all too surprised given the fact that African nations tend to be rife with superstition, have no currency in science and lack basic education.

The story was about a woman whose daughter, an albino, was murdered in the middle of the night for her legs. Some men broke into the bedroom and held a large machete to her husband's throat telling them to keep quiet and not look at him while in the next room another man slit their 14 year old daughter's throat and hack off her legs while their other two daughters were told to stay quiet or be killed as well.

The husband was later taken into custody for selling their daughter out.

Why? Because witch doctors make potions from albinos for their "magical properties". And it's profitable for the people that get the body parts, whether from graves or people who happen to be unfortunate enough to, you know, not be able to defend themselves from these backwards superstitious animals.

I vaguely recalled that the Sun (a UK new source) wasn't necessarily very reliable. No problem. Quick Google for "africa albino murder" still yielded a bunch of hits, one of which was this one from the BBC.

The initial shock wore away, though, as I remembered that for these people having an epileptic attack was grounds for burning you alive for practicing witchcraft, raping lesbians cures homosexuality, and believe that HIV can be cured by raping kids.

These people are an extreme example of societies that lack science education (or education in general). It's disturbing that the mob mentality is capable of justifying such things but hey...what harm is it to let people hold superstitious beliefs? Just because your neighbor believes that is grounds for hating those people, or that vaccinations cause , or any other belief that flies in the face of facts doesn't mean that it does any harm, right?

But what happens when those beliefs become more and more popular?

I know this is a slippery slope argument. At the same time I can't help but see how easily it could move from, "today it's not believing in your sky wizard that keeps me from winning a school board election or makes me unpopular at the office Xmas party and tomorrow it's a breakout of a disease in some town that kills several kids because these jackarses are too superstitious to get vaccinated." Is it really all that hard to imagine when the nation that prides itself as being superior to any other on the planet is also proud to advocate willful ignorance?

More Drivel Published As Fact-Going Rogue with Sarah Palin

2009-11-14T08:02:00.000-05:00

Apparently the AP checked out some of the claims in Sarah Palin's new book, "Going Rogue", only to find that much like her ability to think critically the book is full of crap.

Harsh, I know, but seems according to the AP to be true. It fits with all the other facts that had been discovered about the woman's behavior patterns before and after the elections that it's hard to write this off as confirmation bias.

The article is found here.

From the sounds of it, this is a pre-campaign rally cry and platform builder, laced with distortions and lies. For people who are already pro-neo-conservatives or don't care about little things like facts the book is preaching to the choir. For those who didn't trust her the first time around and prefer facts over rhetoric the book is yet another example of what is wrong with the current Republican party.

(Thought for the day: while skepticism isn't inherently liberal or conservative, I do think that there are certain things that attract like minded individuals, much like you don't find many Amish doing system administration...)

Giving Kids a Leg Up from Your Own Experiences

2009-11-13T22:50:00.000-05:00

One of the "near universals" you gain when you become a parent...if you like your kids, anyway...is the desire to give your kid the things you didn't have growing up. If you grew up wishing that your parents had given you more books, you shower your kids with Barnes and Noble gift cards at the first sign that they're interested in flipping pages. If you grew up with parents you felt were oh so restrictive then you try to give your kids more freedoms.

We want to give our kids the benefits of our experiences. We feel we knew what sucked from our childhood and don't want our kids to have to endure the things we did, or make the same stupid decisions we made.

But there's a problem with that thinking.

I thought about this after arguing with someone about the latest fads in education making the rounds in the public schools in the area. I lamented that the politicians dictating and mandating rules for schools to follow had little to no experience dealing with kids (or parents) in the classroom. The mandates are impossible to follow.

I was thinking about this recently when I was pondering what I'd do if I won the lottery (who hasn't dreamed about that?). I thought that one thing I would do is sponsor a deserving student in paying for college. I'd have slight stipulations, small conditions that if they broke the rules they would be on their own in paying for the courses, but if they stayed within the rules they'd get a free education. It would be a marvelous opportunity in a time when four years of college cost as much as my house.

Then I thought about the kids that have everything given to them. Kids that had a free Mercedes or Corvette, and if they wrecked it, Daddy would pay for another. The kids that have cell phones and treat them as if they're disposable...drop it in the toilet? Mommy will pay for another one tomorrow. Hell, if they don't like their phone for some reason, some have intentionally destroyed it so they'd get a new one.

These are kids that treat other people as property because, hey, if they're not of any use to you, why bother talking to them?

These are kids that have all the benefits I lacked growing up (and then some). And because they didn't know what it was like to have to experience some of the suckitude of the world they didn't realize just how good they have it.

I didn't have a bad childhood by any measure. Humans are hardwired to find the shortcomings in their lives and make that the "thing" that would make them happy; my family wasn't poor, but we didn't own a boat. I'd really love a boat. We never ended up homeless, but I wanted a treehouse. Things like that.

So if I made sure my kids eventually had a boat and treehouse, I'm pretty sure my kids would be impressed for all of an hour before wishing we had a bigger boat and a treehouse with outlets.

I extended this thinking to the kids that I had in mind for giving the opportunity for a college education. If I won the lottery. That part is important.

Unless they were kids that truly came from families struggling to meet the middle-class level of life, and truly wanted to have that college education and knew, truly knew that they were on the brink of not getting it, they'd never realize the opportunity they had.

Moreover, part of who I am today came from making stupid mistakes and lacking some of the things I wanted. So by depriving kids of some deprivation, I might not be doing them a favor. They'll end up lacking life lessons from their failures because I handed a success to them, rather than letting them fail and having them pick themselves back up.

I can tell my daughter about the things I ended up regretting in life. I can tell her and warn her and she'll still be the "typical teen". She blinks and stares without comprehension. She ignores what I'm saying, focusing instead on excuses for why XYZ happened rather than listening to the point.

She doesn't even bother reading the blog as far as I can tell. And this is full of lessons and ideas I've pondered and observed. If she wanted to know more about me, I'm pretty open on this website about my ideas. Not everything, of course. Some things are best left to discretion. But there's still a pretty honest baring of who I am here in this blog. She could not care less.

So maybe it's best if you have the means to simply spend that inheritance on yourself. The kids will simply squander it, and if you truly care for your kids you'll dole out the benefit of your wisdom in moderation. Let them make mistakes rather than give them the means to bypass what you recalled as a pain. Give them enough that they can stay out of jail, but not so much that they treat computers and game consoles and cell phones as if they were as disposable as paper towels.

I Don't Need God to Be Amazed At Nature

2009-11-12T19:36:00.000-05:00

I've been reading a book called Death From the Skies! by Phil Plait, also known as The Bad Astronomer.

I am only halfway through the book and already all I can say is...wow.

Phil uses his wit and knowledge of science to spread the truth about astronomy the way Bill Nye inspired...inspires...science enthusiasts of all ages. Or Mr. Wizard. And his descriptions of how stars go supernova or condense into black holes leaves me staring at the night sky and wondering just how insignificant we as humans really are.

Can you imagine pressure and heat and gravity so great that electrons are literally ripped away from atoms?

Or having a tidal force so great from a black hole that the difference in pull from your head to your toes will turn you into organic spaghetti? Not that you'd be alive long enough to feel it...

He describes in detail what would happen if a bit of mass the size of Earth were condensed into black hole and then started on a collision course with Earth (hint: it's not pleasant, but you'll be dead long before it briefly orbits the center of Earth for a little bit and continues on its' way).

The power of stars to create through fusion various elements; a sphere of iron thousands of miles in diameter at the heart of a star, the possibility that the iron in your blood came from a star millions or billions of years ago...that you're made up of the stuff of stars. How can that not spark your imagination or your sense of wonder?

Just...wow.

The language is easy to understand. The ideas simplified enough to instill wonder and not get you bogged down in the details of how Hawking Radiation works. It even explains the most likely candidate for the origin of Gamma Ray Bursts (and why they'll kill 1/2 the planet immediately if we're hit by one). Gamma Ray Bursts are being detected BILLIONS of light-years from our planet from all over the universe.

Wow. Grab the book. Read it. Learn about the night sky in a whole new light.

Internet as a Valid Source

2009-11-10T18:34:00.000-05:00

I have a kid in school. This child is old enough to do research papers. Said child has had many teachers say that she cannot use Internet resources as sources for papers and projects; she must cite "paper" sources, like newspapers and magazine articles. Sometimes there are particular web sites that they're allowed to use that are "valid" due to being subscription based or have parent companies that are based in the paper world (Time magazine's website, or the New York Times).

Why? Because any moron can put information on the Internet. Supposedly.

I think that teachers that use this line of reasoning clearly don't understand the nature of the Internet. Or their own chosen "Valid Citation" sources, for that matter.

They still think Wikipedia is inaccurate. There was a study done that compared Wikipedia with Britannica; the results were startlingly close. More importantly, if you are researching anything having to do with fringe or pop culture, Britannica was about as useful as a knife at a gunfight. I searched for the name Optimus Prime on Britannica's website and got a nonsense result (with offers to buy one on eBay...huh?). Wikipedia? Full character history, voice actor information, incarnations in various series...the whole shebang.

Wikipedia has also been making changes to help ensure accuracy in their articles as well.

Most sites that have information seem to draw a particular crowd; as such, the users gain a form of currency in reputation. Sites like StackOverflow and Serverfault have created entire communities based on reputation; the more you participate, the more reputation other users will give you as a reward for correct answers, the higher your reputation, the more authority you have.

There's a tacit acknowledgement in this when these luddites allow for "certain" online articles to be cited in research but not others; authority is the currency that matters. Popular sites on the Internet are popular because large numbers of people continue to visit them and use their information. Incorrect information can be separated out by the community.

But these teachers insist that printed sources carry authority because of their oversight; they have editors, while the webbertubes are governed like the wild west!

Hmm...that doesn't take into account incidents like the sheepskin pulled over Oprah's eyes by Mr. James Frey? Or reporters that make their information up completely? Including for big name news media like USA Today? Where was their oversight then?

The Fake Steve Jobs had an interesting article reviewing why mainstream media is dying. He outlines a story on TechCrunch examining a company called Zynga that was selling scam ads online with those stupid games like "FarmVille". The blog basically heavily slammed the company with proof of their scum tactics including a video clip when Pincus, the CEO of Zynga, told an audience of developers all about the things he did to generate revenue through those games.

The New York Times had a story about Zynga that completely neglected to mention any word about the ad revenue and scam tactics being used by them. It was all sunshine and rainbows being blown up Zynga's arse, and it gave Zynga positive press at a point when people should have been alerted that they're being ripped off.

Here, the online resources were more accurate and arguably more relevant than the "authoritative" New York Times.

It can also be argued that our media outlets are too biased to be taken seriously without a heavy dose of skepticism. Even searching for "media bias" on Google comes up with a site near the top of the rankings that "exposes the liberal bias of the media." The entire site is geared towards not giving you facts to interpret, but rather convince you that the media is run by evil liberals out to poison the minds of conservatives.

None of this addresses the real weakness of my daughter's teacher's view in using online resources; in research papers, you're supposed to use reason and research to back up your claims. You can't just cite one source for any fact and expect it to be taken as a given; you need multiple sources that verify the fact, or a line of reasoning that can lead you to reasonably conclude what the researcher concludes. Any idiot can parrot one thing they heard.

Hell...many of the "published" authorities do. How often do you run across the same articles nearly word for word, then realize they're all from the Associated Press? Five sources all using the same Associated Press as their source isn't five sources for your paper.

Even then, there are times when a clearly satirical news story was re-reported by "valid sources" as being true. Where was their authoritative oversight then?

The fact is that when properly researched (i.e., by applying cross-checking and reason to the topic at hand) the source of information is less important than the brains analyzing it. All the news being reported is coming from people and as such is going to be filtered (read: biased) in some way. Straight information is of little use to an audience; it must be interpreted to make sense, and that is part of the job of the researcher doing the paper. By encouraging students to only refer to and lay their unquestioning belief in certain news authorities these teachers are doing a grave disservice. They teach that there are definite authorities who should not be questioned rather than encouraging students to think and analyze information for themselves, and this is in my opinion yet another reason our students in the US are lacking in critical thinking skills.

Cheerleader Dystonia Update

2009-11-06T19:04:00.000-05:00

Another update from Steven Novella's blog on the cheerleader with supposed dystonia. Check it out here...the plot has not only thickened, I think it started to spoil.

Movies Sway the Masses?

2009-11-04T10:18:00.000-05:00

I was listening to back episodes of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe when they had a news blurb about UFO sightings in the UK that surge when alien-centric movies are released. I did a quick Google and found this story that basically corroborated what they said; example: Independence Day was released, and that year there were 609 sightings when the year before there were 117.

While at my followup for bariatric surgery I read a mini-magazine published by the hospital with various news reports. It said that a study found that teen smoking is finally going down. One of the reasons attributed? Movies aren't depicting smoking as cool anymore.

Of course, correlation does not imply causation. That doesn't mean there isn't a link. Just that it isn't definitive. You can't see that all the accidents in a small town involved a Ford and from that correlation assume that Ford vehicles are more accident prone.

But there is a trend in society that seems to bear out that people are really @#% stupid, or at least too stupid to think for themselves. I think we have some kind of wiring in our brains that likes to outsource stuff we don't like to think about and gradually it worms into our behaviors and attitudes. And it's scary.

Want people to stop smoking? Remove them from popular movies long enough, kids won't try it (fiercely independent, "You don't know me", etc. etc...kids, you're individuals with your own minds who apparently choose to do what everyone else does.)

Want them to see UFO's? Apparently all you need is a good sci fi movie in the box office.

Television has slowly started making science more "cool". Shows like Mythbusters, CSI, NCIS, Numb3rs, and Big Bang Theory make the geek the hero (finally) so it's okay to be the geek. Gradually...very gradually...like, ice age wall of ice creeping south gradually...is making the geek in school someone to regard with more respect than dirt. I don't see them being more popular than the jock but hey it's better than the old-school science nerd stereotype.

I don't know how to regard this. On one hand it's a great illustration of just how intellectually lazy people can be that they are manipulated by television and movies so overtly and yet they'll deny it when it's pointed out to them. On the other, I wonder if it isn't something with the way we're socially wired in the brain, that we need at some level acceptance of the flock, so when it's popular in a big movie and the people at the water cooler think it's great then maybe it's in our best interest to go along with the crowd as a social survival strategy.

Or maybe it's a good lesson to file away for use as a Future Dark Overlord (you listening to that, Mr. Scott Sigler?? Oh, yeah, I'm talking to you...)

What do you think of this? Social phenomena? Or is it just someone noticing that Fords are causing accidents in the home town?

Making Your Own Luck

2009-11-03T10:42:00.000-05:00

I stumbled upon this Telegraph article reviewing making your own luck. Basically it said that people can make their own skill and it was a matter of skill.

Being lucky is a skill?

That's counterintuitive...working at being lucky? And I'm not talking about the skill of being dirty-lucky. Get your mind out of the gutter. Plus everyone already knew that was a skill.

I'm talking about the lucky you get when you find money laying on the ground or winning a contest.

According to the article the study found that people who were "unlucky" tended to be more tense and focused on details. Basically, the people who weren't tense noticed other things around them. Unlucky people were focused on the walk so they didn't notice the pothole. They didn't notice the money laying along the path. They looked for a specific job listing in the paper and didn't notice the unrelated job listing that happened to be a far better opportunity.

The story goes on to say that lucky people are lucky using four principles; they notice and create chance opportunities, they listen to their intuition, they use positive expectations, and they adopt a resilient attitude.

Which doesn't bode well for me.

I tend to be very focused and stuck on my expectations and routine. I am not an intuitive person; I reason things out and follow logic when all else fails. I tend to be more of a realist and cynic than a positive person. And for the resilient attitude...I'm still here and I'm still working on my novel despite my fears, so maybe I might have a slight bit of a resilient attitude, if that can be counted.

The article is actually very interesting. It's older but if true it might be something worth filing away for future use. I might have to return to it and study it some more too...maybe try integrating it into my life in some fashion. There have been a number of times lately where I really need something like this to fall back on.

The Dystonia Cheerleader: a Followup

2009-11-02T08:41:00.000-05:00

Steven Novella posted a followup to his blog entry about the cheerleader that supposedly suffered from Dystonia as a side effect of getting a flu shot. Anti-vax groups appear to be starting to back off as Dystonia advocates are coming forward to enlighten them with how much crap the anti-vaccination groups are full of.

I had pointed to Steve's blog post here a few days ago. It's sad how quickly she was foisted up as a poster child for the anti-vax people, just long enough to get five minutes of fame for their cause, then back off just as the media is no longer paying any attention to the story and so the truth will probably never get advertised. The stigma for getting flu shots will stay in the public awareness while never hearing the followup...basically, "whoops, we screwed up!"

The fact is that she needs help and hopefully she'll get it. The anti-vax'ers aren't the ones to give it, though.

Why Believe in God?

2009-11-01T22:09:00.000-05:00

It's my birthday so I thought I'd post something that was kind of personal. Unfortunately this tends to tick other people off. At least it does in real life if I were to bring it up. I learned a long time ago that religion and politics are two things that people would rather not rationally discuss so I avoid it and pretty much assume it's topica non-grata. I don't get much feedback from the blog on the topic, so I didn't think it would hurt that much to bring it up here. This is kind of an off-the-cuff rant (I think it's called stream of consciousness, or something similar to it) so if the lack of structure is something else that bothers you that's another reason to move on to another day's topic.

I don't believe in a god.

And I don't understand why other people do.

It's a copout to say that perhaps my atheism stems in part from my tendency to value reason over emotion, or the quirk where if I see an inconsistency in reasoning it is something I cannot unsee. I was raised as a methodist but from a very young age I simply couldn't accept Christianity as the answer to all the questions I had.

I have come to believe that people believe in gods because it is simple. If you don't understand it, God did it. And people who profess to believe in a neverending spirit living for eternity will blindly follow whatever religion they feel comfortable with...I don't see them thinking critically about this, they just do it. And it perplexes me. You're gambling on your eternal soul without critically evaluating your religion?

I think this is in part to how complicated things really are and how we're wired to handle complicated things.

People by default use stereotypes as a shortcut for evaluating situations. We assume the guy in a police uniform is a cop. He might be. He might not be. There are stories of women being pulled over by cars with dash lights and a man in a uniform who then proceed to rape them. There are numerous advice columns I've read that say if anything seems suspicious, you should proceed to a well-lit public area to pull over (indicating you are going to pull over and acknowledge the officer) or keep the door locked and window up and demand to see a badge and have them call for another officer to come as well.

We assume things about certain races, situations, uniformed people, and while not true, they often turn out to be somewhat accurate, or accurate enough that we can free our mental processing space for other tasks. People simply aren't willing to ask questions about the universe or take time to understand the scientific method. Unfortunately, our country (the US) is largely scientifically illiterate.

I have heard people say that there's no way for us to know about extrasolar planets (they don't use those terms, though). I don't pretend to know every detail. But I do know that there's multiple ways scientists have verified it. Even if I did, the person that says that probably wouldn't understand lensing, gravity's effects on light, how a large mass moving in front of a star affects the perception of the star from Earth over time, or even how the planetary object of sufficient mass affects light from a star when the object is behind the star. We can even get an idea of the makeup of the atmosphere with very sensitive light receptors and seeing what an analysis of the spectrum of light hitting Earth shows as the planet moves in front of the light source.

See, these are things that scientists cannot make up. they cannot on a whim declare that there's another planet out there. They are using methods and reasoning that can be duplicated by other people. And as of this writing there are over 370 extrasolar planets confirmed using these methods.

Intuitively I cannot follow the religious teachings I have been given. I ask questions and never get satisfactory answers that cannot be rephrased, basically, "Because I said so."

Why did God create us?
What does Satan get from an eternity of picking on God by playing with people?
Wouldn't Satan have something better to do? Or God, for that matter?
Why do you have faith in a book that has been retranslated many many times over a centuries and is still having some translations in dispute?
Why should I believe the interpretation of the Bible from someone who may not even know that Jesus' native tongue wasn't English?
How can the Bible preach love and understanding (which Jesus does, from the versions I have read) be used to justify hate crimes?
Have you stopped to think about where all the water in the great flood came from, or where it went? (Into the Earth really isn't possible. Do some math to find out why.)
If there were one small family on the ark, doesn't that mean that everyone on Earth now would be inbred?
Where is historical evidence of Jesus outside the Bible?
Why does God have His followers interpret (and according to each other, misinterpret) His word and intentions rather than just make a really big planetwide broadcast of His will?
Why did God apparently spend a lot of time a couple thousand years ago performing astounding feats and personally interceding in disputes and society affairs, then disappear entirely?
Why is the Catholic church currently banning sharing a chalice for ceremonies out of fear of H1N1, if they believe that God will protect them in their one true faith?
Why is it that the Bible is held to be the sacred word of God, but there is still so much "wiggle room" for interpretation, or worse, followers cherry pick what they want or don't want and follow their own version of religion, still believing that everyone else is wrong?
If God does not want certain behaviors, why does He allow for them to exist?
If we are allowed to sin because of free will, why would he punish us with eternal pain and torment after spending our entirely lives playing "it was all a test" with my life?
I hear people say "I have nothing to lose by believing in God and everything to gain." Wouldn't it suck to be a careful practicing Methodist to find out the Catholics were right all along? Take your pick...there's only a couple hundred possible religions to follow here.
If the only thing getting me into Heaven is knowledge of Jesus, what happens to the mentally retarded, or those that are raised in a situation where they are never exposed to religion? Do they go to Hell because of ignorance?
If ignorance is allowed...like babies who die young, the mentally retarded, etc...why are you condemning me to Hell by telling me about your religion?
If we cannot possibly understand the nature of God or his will, at what level of understanding are we deemed fit to enter Heaven? On a scale of ignorance, I mean...
If there was no physical union with Mary, was Jesus a clone? How could a male have conceived from the DNA material of a lone woman?
If God loves me, why would he torture me when He won't come down and have a personal chat with me? He surely knows what it would take to have me believe in Him. He can create the universe but not spare ten minutes to say hello without some mediary showing up at my door spouting his interpretation of what He wants?

Those are just some of the questions I've had. I think they're legitimate. Other people think I'm apparently just being snarky. but after not having answers to these things for so long, I gave up listening.

Science doesn't know everything. But I've rarely encountered a rabid follower of a major religion who has tried to understand the nature of the conclusions of science. Their eyes glaze over and they start ignoring the evidence...they never understand that what science does explain cannot be simply written off as a miracle or pulled from a hat. And there are things that it explains that contradict what's in the Bible.

"Well, the stories are meant to guide us, they're not literally true," some say.

I'm pretty sure the Bible was meant to be taken at face value. Over time it has morphed into some morpheous blob that is okay to interpret when convenient for many people, probably to try to reconcile those things that contradict in the Bible and real life experiences while still using it as a handy mental putty for filling in gaps of intellectual knowledge or sense.

Besides, if you can interpret the stories as not really happening or being modified or changed over time, what can you believe as being true versus just stories? Why are parts something to gamble your soul on for eternity while other parts are just myths for illustrating points?

When I was younger I decided to follow religion based on the idea that if I were born in a village with no established religion, how would I know what to believe?

Surely a Christian God wouldn't only base his country club membership policy on who has read his book. Otherwise people who were innocent would suffer.

I look around and see a wonderous world of complicated machinations. And there may be a time where I would have thought of sky wizards creating balls of light, or stories to explain the stars.

But science analyzes how these things work. Based on evidence and sound theories (and there's a definition for the word theory as used in science that does NOT MEAN some untested idea I pulled out of my arse...otherwise you couldn't be able to take a course in college on music theory). Based on evidence science sets out to explain the natural world. We learned the nature of stars. We have math and simulations that explain fusion energy, spectral analysis to verify what our star is made of, and the math to predict how long the sun will last. We have dopplar shift to show how stars are moving away (or towards) our position in the universe.

That's the major difference between religion and science. What science establishes must be based on sound reasoning and logic. Religions can say the planet is held up on the backs of turtles, and if you ask where the turtles came from there is little more than dismissive hand waving.

I can't live with that.

Maybe others can. My priorities lay in finding or understanding truths. I may not get those answers in my lifetime, but I know there is a quest to find them. Religion settles for "good enough", with threats of torture if you question too much.

I wonder if other people are simply content with prioritizing comfort over knowing. It's easy to just say God did it. It's hard to understand fancy things like relativity.

I don't know and the more I think about it the more I think I'm wired to not understand why people do this. As long as it's not affecting me, that's okay. You can believe whatever you want. I only have a problem with it when religious folks start legislating their beliefs on me. I hate laws that make no rational sense or are inconsistent. I mean, sodomy laws? I don't care what you do in your home. As long as I don't have to participate and I don't have to deal with it and if others are involved they are doing so voluntarily, I don't have an issue with it. So why do you have to burden our already overburdened and archaic sets of laws with more idiotic paperwork?

In the end, science works. Religion...I've found no evidence of it. Science gives us microwave ovens, CD's, and cell phones with more computing power than the systems that put men on the moon. The same people that denounce the scientific evidence for evolution and all things contrary to their beliefs have no trouble driving cars with laser-welded frames and watching televisions getting images and data from plain old wires in the ground or satellites held up in the sky by more than magic.

In the end it doesn't matter. I'm one voice in the confusion and chaos and I'll eventually die having left little if any footprint in the world. I'm certainly not going to convert anyone into taking more of a reasonable approach to life or existence. But I will still vent on occasion in forums like this. For better or worse. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

It's probably time for me to go out and not have birthday cake...

God...didn't create the Earth?

2009-10-31T22:08:00.000-04:00

Happy Halloween everyone! I thought I'd celebrate our favorite "evil pagan holiday" by ticking off some of the more pious out there in the blogosphere. This is actually older news from near the beginning of the month, but it was still an interesting read.

Here's the story.

Apparently some academic who studies the Old Testament...she's a scholar and all...is saying that the Bible was mistranslated.

In studying the original Hebrew text and given the proper context, she claims that the actual wording of "in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" should actually be "in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth".

In other words, God created animals and people and plants...life...but not the Earth. The Earth was already there.

Now I don't personally believe either of those for my own reasons. My take on this is that it won't make any difference whatsoever.

People believe what they want to believe. Unless you were forced to face a contradiction in such a way that there was absolutely no way on Earth you could continue to believe what you want to believe, you will find a reason, no matter how absurd, to cling to that which you hold true. There are people who claim to be good Christians who also believe in killing medical doctors. All life is sacred unless it tastes good on the dinner plate. Love thy neighbor as long as he isn't gay. And plenty of others hold the opposite view while claiming to be good Christians, and both sides will use the Bible to justify and rationalize their beliefs.

When there's that much leeway with interpretation, especially using a document that has been translated and retranslated and edited so many times in hundreds of years that the abstractions allow you to justify just about whatever you want to do, I'm thinking it's not quite so useful.

Now this scholar is claiming something that should gain attention from any Bible-loving community. This is something questioning the very foundation of the interpretation of the Bible, and it's not coming from a rabid atheist like Richard Dawkins. This is from one of the flock. An educated academic.

Outside of this Telegraph article I've heard nothing about this.

Which is a real shame. I've often questioned things like, outside the Bible, what third-party proof is there of Jesus and the miracles he performed? Or any of the miracles in the Old Testament? The Romans weren't slouches in keeping records during the Empire. Surely a guy going around creating wine from water and performing healing ceremonies with magic, especially when it was using a deity other than those blessed by the Emperor, would have third-party accounts recorded. So why do most of my questions end up being referred back to the Bible?

Anyway, I thought this was an interesting tidbit in the news that will no doubt flutter away with nary a blip on the radar. I'm willing to bet that asking the local preachers in my area if they've heard about it a few weeks from now, any little blurb, will elicit blank looks. If you're a news junkie or trivia buff, or interested in such matters at all, maybe my small readership could try it out as an experiment in their area! I'd love to hear the results!

Until next time, Happy Samhain!

The Flu Shot and the Dystonia Cheerleader

2009-10-31T20:23:00.000-04:00

It seems that everyone has heard "something" about the cheerleader that had a flu shot then developed a case of dystonia, where her walk and speech patterns are totally screwed up but are normal while running or walking backwards.

It's screwy. It's tragic. It's fascinating. And it's perfect fodder for a group of zealots looking for poster child candidates, namely the antivaxxer's.

I had certainly heard about it. "One in a million reaction." "Something about having the flu shot and getting it." "The flu shot apparently triggered it."

I haven't made it part of my own agenda to follow up on the story; it was just another tidbit that floated by my consciousness and the collective consciousness of just about everyone I know in the area.

Thankfully I outsourced such critical followup to Steve Novella of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. He had a blog post that as I read through it I found myself stopping to realize that, yes, he has some really good points...such as, nowhere has it every actually been shown that there was a link between the shot and the dystonia. The illness she suffered that was believed to trigger the dystonia was never proven to even be the flu, and even if it was, was it the strain that she was injected with for her shot? For that matter, was the dystonia actually a verified diagnosis?

In fact, in Steve's blog post he points out evidence that she doesn't actually have dystonia but rather a psychological affliction.

In other words this woman had a very bad thing happen to her and now she's being used to exploit another group's cause through half-truths and distortions. At this point in the game she may have no choice but to rationalize the possible truth away and it's in her best interest to not reveal whether there exists the possibility that the condition isn't flu-vaccine-induced.

H1N1 Flu Vaccine Nonsense

2009-10-21T22:22:00.000-04:00

I work in a place with a large population of people who have the opportunity-for free-to get the H1N1 flu shot. I was saddened and downright appalled at the amount of ignorance and sheer stupidity being spread about getting the shot.

Like the stupid email scams that keep showing up every few months in my inbox as forwards, these rumors and mistruths are still being spread by the legions of ignorati. The CDC recommends that 80% of our population get vaccinated from the flu. A whopping 40% actually do. (citation)

"The flu shot can make me sick!"
No, the flu shot is a dead virus. It stimulates an immune reaction from the body, but it's dead. It won't make you sick.

"There's mercury in the shot! It'll poison you! It causes Autism!"
No, that ingredient was removed decades ago. And yet autism rates continued to climb. There no mercury in the shot.

The definition of Autism has been expanded so more people are now being diagnosed with Autism (you have any idea how recently Aspergers, part of the spectrum of Autism, was officially made a disorder? Not long ago at all...1992!

Not that a little thing like facts will ever shut some idiot with a platform from decrying the same bull@#$ over and over, the same lies and distortions that will end up killing people. If people actually looked into the background on that flake they might not be so ready to believe what she's spouting.

Worse, there's a concept of herd immunity. Basically there are some people that can't get the shot because of allergy or health reasons. So they rely on you not getting the disease to keep them healthy. People in the US buying the anti-vax rhetoric end up acting as carriers to spread the disease to others.

And it's silly to think that there are children who could die from this simply because you can't be bothered to get a simple shot.

Anyway there are plenty of intelligent skeptics that are rallying to debunk the crap that anti-vaccination nuts are spreading.

http://www.immunizenc.com/FluFactsMyths.htm

http://richarddawkins.net/article,4465,An-Open-Letter-to-Bill-Maher-on-Vaccinations,Michael-Shermer

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2116

http://www.antivaxxers.com/

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=444

h ttp://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=851

Check those links out. No doubt there's always going to be reasons that the fringe will feel justified in perpetuating their anti-science theories, no matter what they're told, but if you're an otherwise reasonable person sitting on the fence after hearing some nonsense about how the shot will end up killing mankind, read those links. They should address your questions nicely. There's no reason to stand by and let others end up suffering because you couldn't be bothered to do something relatively simple.

On Religion: Questions and Doublethink

2009-10-19T22:11:00.000-04:00

I apologize in advance that this is a rather rambling bit. This chronicles a line of thought I was having one morning as I was pondering an idea. I think it's a fair question. Some might find it offensive. Others may think they have an answer. I've yet to hear an answer that truly answers the questions posed. But if you'd like you can leave comments. Maybe it'll give you something to think about. Maybe you believe in something contrary and are comfortable with what I perceive to be holes in reasoning. This isn't meant to change minds.

It was just something I was thinking about in the car one morning. Stuck in construction. So here it is.
*******
I was listening to a podcast that tends to be a bit on the offensive side when a question occurred to me. See, this particular podcast has a bit where the host has a conversation with Satan. The host was talking to him this time because in real life his father was in the hospital and he wanted to make sure there wasn't going to be any funny business by the Prince of Darkness. One comment made by Satan was that the host of the podcast didn't have a soul, so there wasn't really anything he had to offer.

That's when I began to wonder, why is it that Satan is portrayed as doing what he does?

Why does he take souls to Hell? I mean, is it like currency or something?

Is this supposed to be like spitting at God?

But...if God is almighty, he could wash it all away on a whim. I don't get it. It's not raising a fist of defiance at God since He's allowing it to happen. He coudl stop it at any time. It's not an annoyance.

And why would Satan keep doing this for eternity? Doesn't it get repetitive?

It seems as if Satan is providing quite a service, actually, as a boogeyman in stories told to children by religious parents. Behave, or you'll go to Hell! Behave, or Satan will take your soul!

It occurred to me that if Satan wanted to really get more souls, he should make some kind of resort down there in the underworld. Grant wishes. Let me win the lottery. I'll have more than a little loyalty for someone that makes my every financial stress evaporate. I mean, what's with the torture thing? I have never run across any explanation for why Satan has this infatuation with pain and misery. Especially for eternity. What's the deal with that?

It's not like he's trapped in Hell if he keeps supposedly coming to Earth to mess with humans. He could really just chill out for awhile at the Mall of America. I hear it's a fun place to visit.

I guess I don't understand what motivates him to do the whole taking souls thing.

Some had told me before that his motivations can't be discerned, like God's motivations and behaviors can't be understood by mere humans. I don't buy it. It's too convenient to say that; it's a brushoff. Why should humans love or swear loyalty to a being they can't hope to understand.

Also, if you can't hope to understand the motivations behind the behavior, that implies to me that the behavior doesn't follow any rules. It does what it does just...because. That means it's not intrinsically good or bad. It just is. So why is Satan evil, or God good, for that matter? Just because we define it that way? God is good simply because by definition what He does is good.

Why?

Under explanations that follow a rational way of living the act of murder is wrong, bad, because it acts in a way that does not respect an individual. It harms a collective group or community. It makes someone dangerous, and their behavior could mean that if Peter killed Bob without justification then Peter may kill me next. It's not because murder itself is intrinsically bad. We kill living beings all the time, telling ourselves that in that case it's okay because they're lower on the food chain, or it was an accident, or any of a number of reasons. There's always a reason that it's okay to eat that cheeseburger and it doesn't count as ending a life, or we can live with ourselves after we walk away from an accident that claimed someone else's life.

Under religion, it's just bad. There is no reason why other than we arbitrarily say so.

I find this to be a form of confusing doublethink. Maybe others don't. It's just one of a number of questions I've had that I think are quite reasonable but most Christians tend to eventually write off as "it's just the way it is," unable to provide a logical, reasoned answer. Something about that just doesn't sit right with me.

Would You Wear a Murderer's Sweater?

2009-10-03T22:20:00.000-04:00

There's a number of oddball weird things that are just kind of "neat" about people. Things like, have you ever stood in a doorway and tried raising your arms against the doorjambs? You stand there, holding your arms upwards against the frame, knowing that it won't work. Keep trying and keep trying for about a minute to move your arms upwards against these immovable objects. Then relax, and your arms will rise on their own. Weird, huh?

Or the phenomena for amputees where they feel "phantom limbs" in place of their lost limbs, feeling sensations and pain where there's obviously nothing there.

I was listening to an old podcast of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe and they interviewed author Bruce Hood about his book Supersense. I of course haven't read the book, I put it into my Amazon list of things I'd like to read, but this was about some points he brought up that got me to thinking about some odd phenomena about people.

I might be paraphrasing a bit here, but the gist was thus: he said that one of the things he does is go in to a lecture with an old secondhand sweater. He asks the people who would be willing to wear it. Most people raise their hand. He offers them twenty bucks to put it on and even more are willing. Then he says that the sweater belonged to a serial killer, like Dahmer. Instantly hands all shoot down. Why?

He said the fascinating part to him was that it happened almost immediately, before there was any rational thought behind it. We seem to be hard-wired to think that we'll become "tainted" by association, as if somehow that sweater will impart some essence of a murder or dysfunction into us by just touching it.

Would you be willing to have an organ implanted in you if it came from a murderer? There are many people who seem to think that this will impart some part of the donor's personality. There are people who will freak out at the thought of a heart from a murderer being put into them, despite the fact that it's just a heart. No neurological tissue whatsoever, no rational reason to not do it, especially when you are in the market for a heart.

Why do we have these reactions? Or more interesting to me, what happens when you don't do the "norm"?

My wife has accused me of playing the Asperger's card too often, but I think that rewiring in the head does have some interesting side effects such as the fact that when he was talking about the sweater experiment I never thought that I wouldn't do it. Especially for twenty bucks. No second thoughts that I detected in my flow of thoughts; he did say that sometimes people will profess to still go with the "rational" reasoning but brain scans show that there's still a conflict, however momentary.

I'm not entirely off the scale though. I looked online at the table of contents. One of the bits from the book asked the question, to paraphrase, "If I offered to switch your ring or childhood toy still in your possession with an exact duplicate, would you do it?" There's no reason, rationally, not to do it if it is a precise duplicate. The thing is we have some kind of emotional attachment to sentimentality. It's not the same thing that was with us at the ceremony or during our childhood memories. We always know it's a duplicate.

But then I think this has already been philosophically dealt with when talking about the fictitious Star Trek transporter; you're broken down into an energy stream and reconstructed on the other side, your destination. Is that a duplicate of yourself? Or is it the actual you? You ceased to exist for a few moments; are you dead? In between? Is a frequent transporter traveler a copy of a copy of a copy, with the previous versions being killed?

Some things have neat scientific explanations, like the arms rising on their own experiment. Others aren't quite explained, like people's seemingly hardwired reaction towards wearing the murderer's sweater (or reaction to people who would still do it). Still other "neat" things are thought experiments that may not have a straightforward answer outside of philosophy like the transporter question.

Any thoughts on these phenomena? Or do you have some random curiosities that you puzzle over?

Atheism and the Banana

2009-10-02T22:08:00.000-04:00

One of the stupidest anti-atheism bits I had run across in my years came from Kirk Cameron and his buddy Ray Comfort and their viral video about the Atheist's Nightmare: THE BANANA!

They give such wonderful tidbits about the pulltab God placed so conveniently on the banana, as well as the fact that the shape happens to fit so well into our hands and it has it's own packaging.

For me it's funny because it's so hilariously ignorant. In case you didn't know, the Cavendish banana (the kind you normally find in the grocery store) is absolutely nothing like the wild banana. It was genetically engineered the old fashioned way by humans: selective breeding. Check it out here.

Of course it didn't take long for atheists to reply with those pesky facts. There's a YouTube video highlighting their ignorance on the topic.

I'll also point out that if you do research on the Cavendish, they're genetically all the same. There's a disease spreading that threatens the existence of that type of banana and those bugnuts may soon get a lesson in evolution since the Cavendish can't evolve a resistance to the disease...the solution seems to involve creating a slightly different hybrid banana with a slightly different taste and texture. Enjoy the atheist's nightmare while you can, folks...

Lesson: if you're going to take on a controversial topic, make sure you do your homework. Especially if you're going to look as stupid as these two clowns when talking about God's creation: a fruit that has a documented history of domestication by humans.

Water on the Moon!

2009-10-01T22:26:00.001-04:00

Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has a wonderful writeup on the discovery of water on the moon! Take a look here!

What I loved about the post is that he went into detail about how it was found so that non-scientists can understand it. So many laypersons assume that because we don't have someone up there walking around with a sponge that it's impossible to find something like water on another body in space. They don't actually want to do any of the mental legwork to understand what's happening, but they're often quick to denounce it.

Well the post from Phil explains how it's found.

Science is a wonderful tool. Through empirical evidence we're finding more and more understanding of our universe and the wonders within it, from Gamma Ray Bursts that could fry life on the planet to the background radiation from the birth of our universe to the theory that we're actually comprised of tiny loops of energy.

Thanks Phil!

Is the Bible Outdated? Asperger Observations

2009-09-28T22:12:00.000-04:00

This was interesting to me...and it may piss off some others who read it and happen to be religious. If you are religious and prone to getting bent out of shape by someone's opinion, skip to tomorrow's post or yesterday's. If you decide you're curious enough for this post then do us both a favor and read it the entire way through. If you want to respond, go ahead with the comments, as long as they're constructive and preferably have some reasoning to back up and support your view. I'd rather not close comments on the blog because someone wants to be an arse-head.

I mentioned previously that I had a wonderful time reading Look Me In the Eye by John Elder Robison. I really recommend it. I was about to put the book into my sacred storage area where I could have it for reference in the future...a bit of clutter programming in my head, I suppose, wherein I stash things I think I might want later because I really liked them...but instead I passed the copy on to my mother in law (and perhaps father in law) to read in hopes that they may understand me a little better. I believed that while I would love to put it into my storage area the book will be useful only if the words carry on in other people's minds, and the only way to do that is pass it along. So I did.

Moving on...I also mentioned in that blog post that John Elder has a blog. Well, he posted an interesting observation regarding religion. The question seemed to have been posted innocently, but it is one that I've often pondered in my own head and made observations regarding. It's a really touchy subject though. Big surprise. Usually when I've tried to explore it with other people...and I don't personally know other Aspies in realspace, since I'm rather isolated socially (and most Aspies aren't social butterflies anyway, another big surprise) I end up offending people which I find out after the fact. Or right to my face when they get really huffy and start getting petulant or just flat out angry or insulted, thinking I'm calling them stupid. It makes it really difficult to puzzle things out when other people from whom you're trying to get information and understanding aren't cooperative.

He (John Elder) stated that he's spiritual, but not in an organized religion of sorts. He was asked by a researcher why Aspergians tend to not follow religious organizations. On reflection it seemed that other Aspies he's met weren't religious either, and this researcher was actually collecting (or had collected) data regarding this topic and found that apparently most aren't religious. Coincidence?

Here's what I can say:
Aspergers seems to create a predisposition towards reason and logic. We prefer working for results, not warm fuzzy feelings. We prefer working with people we deem effective, not "nice".

I've been told by someone neurotypical and close to me that they have seen the trend where the more educated people tend to be liberal in their beliefs, and the less educated tend to be neo-Republican. The Republican party in the US is famous for their family value platform, Bible values platform, as well as their willingness to murder thousands of foreigners in war (as long as the guys in suits don't have to go and get shot at) and the all too common scandal of yet another affair from Republican figureheads. It's not limited to them, but they're the ones generally telling their supporters they'll burn in Hell on the pulpit...er, campaign platform...before retiring to their office for some alone time with their cute senate page. Have to make it a quickie though...they have to get to the floor in time to vote on the laws they proposed that make what they just did more illegal.

The poor tend to be more religious. Could that be part of the reason that the generally more impoverished live along the Bible Belt in the US?

Religion (speaking of Christian religion in Northeastern USA, since that is the kind I'm personally exposed to) is full of fallacies and contradictions. The Bible is wonderful in that it can justify everything from kindness to strangers and justifying banning abortions for the sanctity of life to killing homosexuals. If you have a view of something, chances are you and someone who disagrees with you will find some way the Bible supports your view.

But Barry! You said religion has fallacies and contradictions, but you talk about the Bible! The above mentioned the Bible in particular, but religion is worse, as it is basically an interpretation of the Bible by people. Many religions are based on the Bible yet there are how many sects you can join? There are the big ones, of course, like the Catholics and Baptists and Methodists. The major religions take potshots at groups like the Mormons for being a cult. But the even The Family is based on the Bible as well. Check them out if you want to see how wild things get.

Hypocrisy is rampant in various organized religions. I've known Mormons swigging caffeinated beverages and downing chocolate. Priests are in the news for turning altar boys into altar men. I know regular church attendees who hate particular people for their features or actions or traits...where's the Christian love Jesus was so fond of? I roomed with a guy in college who refused to utter a single swear word (even though I don't see the difference it made when he simply substituted another word for the curse...other than it annoyed the hell out of me. Frick this, frick that, gosh darnit...I wanted to punch him square in the mouth). This same guy was heard thumpin' the ceiling over the living room area of the common room of the college apartment when his girlfriend visited, and since she lived on campus, it was every, @#%-ing, night. I asked him how he could profess to be so religious when getting more tail than most prostitutes.

"I'm human and have failings. I ask for forgiveness for them."

So it's not religion that has the failings, it's the people...

I've also observed that the religious tend to not understand much of what they're talking about with issues related to their religion. I don't think most have any idea that Jesus, if he existed, didn't speak English. We still have people who every Christmastime insist that "Xmas" is trying to remove the Christ from Christmas. Makes a good headline and riles up the followers, but it's wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Yet even when shown the proof I've had people insist their view was correct.

These are just some of the issues I had with religion while growing up.

If anything, I became a full atheist when I finally realized that with all the hypocrisy, contradictions, and ignorance I was encountering I simply couldn't live with what I felt were too many inconsistencies in the stories. I couldn't live with the idea that I would be living a lie. It came down to basically a question of would you rather be ignorant of what is happening and be happy, or know the truth and be miserable? It turns out that I'd rather know the truth.

I'm beginning to think this may be partially due to the Asperger's. There may also be a correlation between people being of liberal bias and having higher education, and true atheism and education (true atheism since I wouldn't count the people who have a "falling out" with God and thus say they're an atheist for it; they're just being pissy about something that happened to them, not seeking a higher truth). This correlation does not imply causation, but it does give one pause to scratch one's head a moment for some reflection.

This sounds arrogant. I'm simply stating what I've come to believe after a couple decades of observation and my own studies. Of course there's much more to it than I state here, but this is one facet of my understanding. And it pisses people off.

I don't know how to sugar coat it.

Even reactions to this give me a bit of a curiosity since in some cases it incites a lot of vitriol...when in most Christian sects, I'm supposed to be considered a wayward sheep in need of finding my way back with compassion. Another case of hypocrisy? I don't worry about it any more.

I don't know what the answers are with absolute certainty. But I do know what I've observed, and I know I've had many questions of religions that fail to have adequate answers. In the end people don't want to entertain the idea that they're wrong. They are happy with their beliefs. And I don't care what you believe as long as I don't suffer for what you believe. Myths, sky wizards, doublethink, whatever floats your boat. Just don't bother me unless you're willing to have an actual reasoned discussion. I have enough legislated morality to swim through in my world already.

I'll be interested to see what comments John Elder's blog post receives. I worry that some people will dismiss my opinions more then they already do if they associate my atheism with being "brain damaged" with Asperger's when perhaps it should give some pause to the fact that if there is a strong correlation, maybe they should wonder why people who are wired to see things through a nonemotional filter see religion as a sham, in general. But on the other hand maybe it's another reason to just leave my brain-damaged self alone.

Does Democracy Rely on Free Press?

2009-09-27T22:55:00.000-04:00

I was listening to Episode 67 of StackOverflow and heard Jeff and Joel talking about Craigslist. Apparently Joel Spolsky is not a fan. Details are in the show notes if you're interested.

That part that caught my ear was Joel saying that free press is necessary for democracy to work. Countries like North Korea get away with lunacy in part because of state-run and state-controlled press. In the US, he argued, Craigslist was taking away the revenue stream from the press, meaning more newspapers are shutting down and thus are harming our democratic system. At least, I think that's what he's saying. If not he can feel free to comment here and correct me.

I got to wondering about that. What makes democracy work (I should probably note that we're not a democracy per-se, but a Representative Republic or Representative Democracy instead of a Direct Democracy) is participation of the people. If the people care, we find a way to get what we want.

Joel was saying that without the free press, the people aren't informed of corruption in the government. Scandals and atrocities are hidden away.

In my view these things already happen in plain sight. People just don't care. Ever talk to a teenager? They're in many respects not all that different from adults. My own teenage daughter didn't know that the movie Catch Me If You Can was based on a true story. Despite the fact we watched it. And told her that. And saw it in the news at the time.

Oh, sure, one anecdote does not a trend make. The problem is that there are numerous examples. And her friends, too, tend to be on the bubble-headed side. Ignorant of the world around them not just in the stereotypical Americans wanting a familiar McDonalds while touring Japan type ignorance (what the hell is a "mega muffin"??) but rather the ignorance of not having any clue of what's going on right in their home town or in the local news when it's being discussed right in front of them.

There's been a trend emphasized more since the Bush administration was in power (with allegations of his administration being heavily anti-science) that our culture has shifted to having a pride in ignorance. Intelligence was to be mocked; you were "too good" for everyone else if you were proud of having a PhD or being interested in science. What comes of that? Ignorance of what your government is doing, for one.

The fact that most people are struggling now to pay bills and just keep a roof over their heads have taken front seat to caring about how our government is screwing us over. Look at the PA legislature; they've screwed over their budget, still taking vacations and breaks instead of hammering out a budget plan. Schools are taking out million dollar loans with one district saying they may not be able to pay teachers (with the ignorati saying, "So what? They're overpaid anyway" to do a job that you'll notice they themselves aren't willing to do; put up with other people's kids...), government offices are cutting hours, others are cutting staff and doubling up workloads. Strange enough they don't seem to accept my excuse when they want taxes and fees paid that I just didn't have it budgeted right now. Nice double standard.

Yet I've heard nothing of people complaining to their representatives. I've heard no angry protests at this dereliction of duty. No flooding them with phone calls. Worse, come election time, I'm sure plenty of these people will be reelected.

It's not that a lack of free press is necessary for democracy to work. It's the people willing to work for democracy. We've enjoyed a lot of good times and somewhere along the way we gained a sense of entitlement to ignorance that is filtering up to those who are now adults. We willingly give responsibility to think for ourselves up and allow others to think for us. Free press is worthless when the people won't read about the issues unless it's in the form of a textspeak twitterfart online and when anything over a paragraph in length is ignored.

Joel, it isn't Craigslist that threatened people's access to information and democracy. It's the laziness of the people.

But otherwise...keep up the great work, both of you (Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky)...

Taking Advantage of People: Airborne

2009-09-15T22:12:00.000-04:00

I was listening to a podcast that was discussing in part how celebrities are listened to for medical advice; in particular, Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vaccination tirades. The woman has no medical training and yet an endorsement from Oprah somehow makes her qualified as an authority figure for medical advice.

That got me to thinking about other things that are successfully marketed despite the information available publicly that the claims are baloney; they're successful because people want them to be true, and because of this the people making these products knowingly take advantage of the public. It's really quite disgusting.

Case in point: Airborne.

I was thinking of this because, oddly enough, I was in Walmart shortly after listening to said podcast dropping off a prescription and I saw this medication in the aisle. You've probably heard of it. It's a supplement that is supposed to fight off colds and flu, invented by a school teacher (being an elementary school teacher somehow carries over into being qualified to market medications...probably because there's an association between a room of kids and being covered in bacteria and virus laden snot, I suppose).

Now, the fact that they've been sued and lost over claims to their health effects should probably warn people about using it. From Wikipedia, the Federal Trade Commision sued them over false advertising and the company ended up paying 23 million dollars and another 7 million in class-action lawsuits.

Shouldn't it throw a warning flag up when the lab that supposedly tested the product turned out to be a two-man company created for the sole purpose of testing that one product?

Moreover, because it's marketed as an dietary supplement and not a drug there's no federal oversight on the claims made by the manufacturer...it's perfectly legal for them to knowingly sell something that is essentially a placebo. Worse, if you follow the directions you are overdosing on vitamin C which can cause other side effects with your kidneys.

I looked at the label on one of the Airborne products; you can see it here, on Amazon, for $17 (three 10-tablet tubes). Yum, zesty orange! Some facts (click nutrition information):

One pill has 10% recommended intake of sodium. You're taking 10% of your recommended intake of salt with each pill. The instructions tell you to take it every three hours. Is that good?
It has 2.8 mg Riboflavin
8 mg zinc
3 mg manganese
15 mcg selenium
5000IU vitamin A
1000 mg vitamin C
40 mg magnesium
The rest are an herbal blend, which have no scienfic proof of being effective at healing or preventing disease.

All that for 30 tablets in this package for $17.

Let's look at a Centrum multivitamin, okay?

According to the label off Amazon, there's no sodium.
1.7 mg riboflavin
15 mg zinc
2 mg manganese
20 mcg selenium
3500IU vitamin A
60 mg vitamin C (which is 100% of the recommended allowance)
100 mg Magnesium

And of course Centrum has a slew of other minerals and vitamins. This 250 pill bottle is $18.

$18 for 250 pills...versus $17 for 30 doses. And the Centrum has more minerals and vitamins in it. Hmm...

The real difference is that Airborne has herbs in it that haven't actually been shown to do anything, and before you poo-poo me for being anti-herbals, keep in mind that the company that makes Airborne commissioned a lab that consisted of two guys that had nothing to do with medicine (the "lab" was incorporated only to test this product, and they had no doctors, no researchers, nothing...ABC news discovered this in 2006). They never actually had any evidence that their own pills are actually effective under lab conditions. That should make your critical thinking caps start burning.

Sadly the sales of these things are still astronomical. It's a hugely expensive subset of what you get in a plain multivitamin (although...as I stated before...it has a dangerous level of vitamin C in it, which can HURT YOUR KIDNEYS as well as affect your absorbtion of other minerals in the body) for much less money.

I'm seriously beginning to wonder if I'm a stupid person for not coming up with my own supplement concoction and selling it to an unsuspecting public. I could even bypass the whole claims thing from a fake lab so I can avoid bad publicity when skeptics like myself start digging into facts and tell people about the truth...

Wondering About the Nature of God

2009-09-10T22:18:00.000-04:00

I was on a drive with my wife half a month ago when I pondered out loud a question that was tickling the back of my mind about God.

Why would God, an almighty being characterized a as a father figure that loves us (according to Christian tales), able to poot stars and planets into existence and create humans from dirt, only communicate through vague events that are left up to us inferior beings to interpret?

I didn't understand why with "His" infinite wisdom and power and our backwards, primitive ability to comprehend we would be left with vague things to figure out what "His" will is.

When something bad happens, many Christians say it's to test us, or draw us closer to God. It's to show that we need Him. It's to strengthen our relationship with God. Etcetera, etcetera.

So...let me get this straight. God, all-knowing, all powerful, creates Earth and stars in seven days along with all life (and many new-Earthers and Creationists say the Earth is 6,000 years old according to the Bible), isn't able or willing to create a memo for we slow humans that isn't so vague that we can't tell if it is either a vital message about our lives or some coincidence?

Okay, let's take it as not as silly a question as I think it is.

Next, our Heavenly Father figure, communicating through vague signs and signals like our cars dying on the way to work making us horribly late and getting fired or our houses catching on fire or tree limbs narrowly missing us as they fall into the road...we misinterpret signs or don't see them as Him talking to us, so when we die God, who loves us, punishes us but throwing us into eternal torture and damnation.

I don't know about you, but when it comes to father figures, my father wasn't vague. He didn't hint at what he wanted. Which when the recipient of the message has Aspergers that is a really really good thing. He came right out and said things like, "Take out the trash," "Pick up your room," "What's wrong with you, anyway?" and "Why the hell didn't you take out the trash already?!"

The model that I'm under the understanding God uses as our Father is to walk into my bedroom late at night, dump a bucket of sand on me and put a pair of boxers on my head before walking away without a word, then giving me the belt when I didn't know this meant I was supposed to do the dishes.

Just a couple thoughts to ponder. I'm sure there are reasons for this that's I'm simply too dense to accept, and I sure don't accept answers that boil down to "just because". Voices in the head, vague signs and "tests" of hardship in my life and the promise of eternal punishment for something that He didn't come down and actually specifically tell me to do (or not to do), instead relying on his army of followers (who are also flawed and unable to comprehend our Father's nature) to interpret from an ancient text that in itself was created by committee (look it up) and was translated and translated and reinterpreted over centuries.

Jus' saying...

Obama and Expectations on His Administration

2009-09-07T19:51:00.000-04:00

Here are a few random thoughts I've had recently regarding our current President and some of the reactions I've been hearing recently...mostly on TV. Which is surprising given how little TV I really watch nowadays. Anyway, what I'm about to say may actually be a bit of a pot-stirring thing. It's controversial. It's opinionated. And I very well remember what a fraternity brother we named Gomer told me: it's pointless to discuss religion or politics with anyone, because you're never going to change minds. Well, I've already broken the rule about religion, so why not go for broke?

So when I had some random thoughts relating to the current administration, I figured, why not?

I've read and heard quite a bit of the bubbling criticism against Obama and his administration's proposals lately. There's quite a bit I don't think that the American people take into account when they're venting.

First, Obama often acts as a figurehead in these situations. It's easy to pin the blame on the President...he is, after all, the President. But do you remember that there are three branches to government? It was put in place to act as checks and balances. Granted, they don't seem to work very well much of the time, but the point is that there isn't a lot the President can do without oversight, ideally by Congress. Things we can blame on the President: his plans, his initiatives, and things he says and does in public to present himself to the people in a certain light. Things we can't blame: anything that has to be vetted by Congress, and does.

Second, the government is supposed to be for the people. It's an interesting system we have here in that we have a nation of people who like to believe they're part of a democracy and most are too ignorant to realize we're not.

No, not because the government keeps us down.

It's because the founding fathers, both to keep power with wealthy landowners and to belay fears that common people were too stupid to govern themselves, set us up with a representative republic. A democracy means you can vote legislation and have a say in the law. A representative republic means we have people sent in to do it for us by proxy, hopefully in our best interest.

If you want something changed, it means getting people in power that have your interest at heart. Good luck with that, though. Most of our representatives spend more time raising money and campaigning than actually doing their jobs.

Third, the expectations put on Obama were huge. Bush (and his contemporary Congress) sent the nation into a war that cost several times what it would have cost to end hunger and housing debts for our population. After the country got fed up with his BS...let's face it, regime changes occur when everyone finally gets tired of the current BS from the current administration...they handed a shovel over to Obama and told him to fix it, ignoring the fact that it isn't just this one guy that can "fix" everything. Congress needs to get their collective heads out of that tunnel called the rectum and get on track to fix things.

Fourth, health care. After my surgery,...oh hell, before my surgery...it didn't take a genius to figure out that health care isn't in the best of shape. One of the few things I HAVE been lucky with is holding a job with decent health coverage...and it was still and major PITA to keep things straight. You'd have to be a bloody moron not to see how the insurance companies and hospitals play games with each other and that in turn ends up pinching doctors and patients in the middle.

Now we have people, usually conservative Republicans, decrying how this would ruin everything to have government-backed healthcare.

It's interesting to me in that the few areas in the US that try managed healthcare seem to fail, while I don't hear much about Canadians running across the border for our healthcare and Britain has a fairly successful national healthcare system. The brilliant scientist Stephen Hawking credits their healthcare system for saving his life.

I have read stories about Americans getting decent healthcare by flying to India, China, Europe...as well as jumping the border to Canada for prescriptions.

Others point out that insurance companies can't compete against a government business. I don't understand why the post office is failing while I have packages delivered by UPS and FedEx. NASA is now having the space race outsourced to private companies seeking the X-Prize. And burglars and muggers have always competed with the IRS.

I really think that a lot of the anger slowly snaking through media reports at Obama is a combination of "I told you so's" and expectations that were set too high. We're in a deep deep pit as a country. It's taking time to re-emerge. In the meantime, we have Americans too busy blaming someone for their own problems.

Now, to be sure, we had lots of help getting into troubles. We had a lot of companies that should have known better encouraging us to get into trouble. We have a lot of companies that continue to keep us in trouble. And I'm no exception to being put into thumbscrews; watching bills and trying to keep them paid on time is slowly increasing my body pains and aches and there are times where I just sit and wonder how I got myself into such a mess and whether there's any light at the end of the tunnel. But at the same time, we collectively helped dig this pit.

We sat passively by and allowed ourselves to be screwed.
We obsessively followed football and NASCAR stats instead of Congressional debates.
We voted for the pretty, the well spoken, the superficial that knew what strings to pluck when they wanted a congressional seat. And that was just the tiny percentage that voted for their representatives.
We had huge turnouts follow the circus of the stars for voting. Er, the Presidential elections. We all rally around to get "our guy" in. There are two branches we have some kind of say in who gets a seat...one guy that gets his face on TV the most isn't the one with the most influence, people. And yet this is the election that slightly more than usual (and the usual is nearly zilch turnout, as far as I can tell).
Our population is more concerned with who's voted out of the Big Brother house than whether or not their representative knows what the hell they're voting on.
We elected...twice, supposedly...a President that was a failure in business so many times over and funded by his father and by foreign oil interests, a cokehead and one-time heavy drinker, a man who declared we were doing God's will when we attacked Iraq, a man with little regard for law, for the constitution...we reelected him. And this man also coincidentally took about a 1/3 of his presidency as vacation time. And he become that rally point for fundamentalists across the country. How did that happen!?

Obama is an intelligent man. He may be the geekiest president we've had since Thomas Jefferson. The thing we may have going for us is not only the ability to properly pronounce the word "nuclear" (why didn't that scare other people when the guy that controlled our nukes couldn't properly pronounce the word?), but also that he understands one of the most potent ways to be an effective leader: surround yourself with smart people and listen to them.

Some of the most successful people in business and power have followed that formula. While I doubt that Obama can save the country economically within his term, I am hopeful that he can at least turn the boat a little in the right direction. In the meantime...we're in for one bumpy ride.

Excuse me. I have to go forage for bologna. I think it's the only thing we have in the pantry right now. Except for some cat food...nah...bologna.

Centralia (Or, Why You Shouldn't Set Your Town on Fire)

2009-09-05T19:44:00.000-04:00

WARNING: There is some objectionable language in this post. If it will make your head explode, wait to read tomorrow's post instead...

On a recent trip my family stopped in the now nonexistent town of Centralia, PA.

In case you're not familiar with Centralia (I linked to the Wikipedia article about it for a full story) it's a small town...excuse me, was a small town...in Pennsylvania not far from an amusement park called Knoebels. In 1962 a bunch of yahoos decided to burn some waste in an abandoned strip mine that ended up setting a 400 acre coal deposit on fire for the next 250 years.

Thanks largely to politics, the fire raged underground out of control. Had they intervened early on they could have stopped the fire; instead it was allowed to burn on while suits pretended it was a non-issue.

They would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for a little boy falling into a backyard subsidence. Whoopsie.

He survived, though. The town largely didn't.

Eventually the government bought out most of the town and razed the structures. Today only a smattering of houses remain, along with a blocked off portion of route 61 (accessible by foot and motorcycle, if you're careful), cemetaries that have more residents than living people in town, and vents from which smoke and gases rise and a town landfill. Oh, and graffiti. Lots of defacement from resident asshats.

I found it utterly fascinating. This town became a ghost town; utterly and completely barren aside from sidewalks. You can't really tell where anything was except for the upheaved sidewalks, actually. There used to be signs telling you about taking your life into your own hands due to unstable ground and benches and Centralia signs, but they're all gone now, probably taken by souvenir collectors and...well, asshats.

It's quite eerie; I couldn't believe that the town disappeared, completely, in an amazingly short amount of time. It's almost postapocolyptic to see trees popping out of pavement. It's even neater to think that this is the town that inspired the video game (and movie) called Silent Hill. Here's some of the sights we saw...
Here's what we believe is the spot where the time capsule is buried. It's supposed to be dug up in 2016. That's assuming it's not being baked by the fire under the town.

My wife got a huge kick out of this. That smiley face is tarred on the road. Evidently the road crew...often out patching the roads as it's cracking and heaving from the ground issues...was willing to have some fun.
My wife said this little church on the hill is now abandoned and was the last one open for the town.
I was surprised to see so many windmills near the site of the town! This was taken from a small rise in what looked like a town landfill. The landfill's surface had little more than fireworks, broken booze bottles, and a toilet and some other home waste scattered around. By home waste, I mean windows, paneling, shutters...evidently as homes were destroyed some of the remains found their way to the landfill. Oh, and there was a lot of pavement broken up, like pieces of roadway laying around.
One of the few homes still standing and inhabited. The black shadow is a person that was out mowing; I blocked it out since I didn't get her permission to use her in the picture. The brick pylons are apparently there to hide support beams; the homes were part of row houses, and as most sold their homes they were demolished. To make up for the now missing parts the beams were hidden in these brick supports. Neat, huh?
This is part of old route 61. The image blacked out here is my daughter. Did you think I'd expose her image on the site?? Yeah, right.

The tree on the left is coming from the center of the four-lane. I put this one up for scale...my daughter is on the upper range of average height, so you can get an idea how tall that tree is in the picture.
One of the myriad graffiti in the road of abandoned 61.
Some more of old 61. It's blocked off by huge mounds of bulldozed dirt at each end.
See the heaving and cracking from the heat of the ground fire?
More of the cracking and heaving and graffiti. The blur in the shot above is my daughter again. We hiked quite a way down the road to find the cracking. If you look closely you can see some of the gas rising from the cracks. There were a few weird smells in the town too...one of the things to be careful of in the town is the fact that there are concentrations of poisonous gas from the fire.
One of the reasons I hate seeing what people do. Actually I'm kind of torn...this one shows some artistic merit, but still, I hate the graffiti around the remains of the town. This was again on old 61. It's quite evident that kids use it as a party place.
Another shot of the foilage growing in the middle of the freeway.
This reminded me of watching "The Wonder Years."
Hey...where's the crack in the road we were promised? This was near the beginning of the hike my daughter and I undertook on old 61. I began to think we'd never find it.

This was one of the few buildings we found still standing. Kind of. Apparently this was some kind of building used as a bathhouse for miners in the town, and later a storage building. We don't know what was in that bag near the "door" and my wife refused to stop here, fearing we'd find something we didn't want to find in there. I thought it would be neat, but feared we wouldn't find what she didn't want to find in there and would be disappointed. In the end we didn't look for two very different reasons, I guess.

My wife and I had stopped here about five years ago or so and remembered signs that warn people about the danger of wandering around here; those signs were gone. There were apparently other signs and benches and such here as well at one time. Other pictures can be found at this site. I couldn't believe how a thriving mining town of 1,100 people dwindled to just a few people in such a short amount of time...it's mind-blowingly amazing to me. We actually stopped on the way down and on the way back simply because we couldn't believe our eyes, how little there was left to the place. It's like the town just shriveled up in embarassment after letting petty politics keep from taking decisive action to stop the fire when it first started, and the fact that they were warned about violations previously in relation to the burning of the landfill trash and they continued to ignore regulations.

Simply. Amazing.

It's been a long post, and there's plenty of information floating around about Centralia as well as a number of references that can be found off Wikipedia of where Centralia has shown up directly or indirectly (like the previously mentioned Silent Hill movie).

Scooby Doo as a Skeptical Role Model (Oh, and Happy Birthday)

2009-09-01T22:13:00.000-04:00

This year is Scooby Doo's 40th birthday. Hard to believe.

At least he's older than I am.

Scooby premiered on September 13th, 1969. But you know the best part of the Scooby Doo cartoons? No, not the question of Velma's sexual orientation or what Fred and Daphne were doing when they weren't onscreen. Or even why Fred always wore that ascot.

Okay, maybe it was some of that.

What I was referring to was that the original incarnation of Scooby Doo was really an introduction for kids to think in a skeptical manner. Basically, skeptical thinking is just questioning an assertion before accepting it. It's integral to the scientific method; scientists must have proof for a claim and show that the idea is not pulled from their arses.

If you lived in a small island in the middle of the ocean that didn't happen to get television or popular media advertising for various toys in the past 40 years I'll tell you what Scooby Doo was; the premise was really very simple.

A bunch of teenagers (Fred, Shaggy, Velma and Daphne) drive around in a psychadelic van (the Mystery Machine) with their sentient talking dog with a speech impediment (Scooby Doo) until they arrive in a town of the week. In this town they encounter some ghost, creature or monster that is terrorizing some person, people, or townsfolk. This group of teenagers and their dog offer to investigate said monster, creature or ghost. Madcap chases ensue and eventually the monster, creature or ghost turns out to be a very human criminal trying to scare people away in order to commit or perpetuate some theft or scheme, which they would have gotten away with if it weren't for those meddling kids and their dog.

In other words, they encounter some group that claims a ghost or monster is attacking their town and the Scooby gang investigates to find the truth behind the claim. Skeptical thinking for kids.

The early shows were just as much fun as they were formulaic. Later incarnations veered away from this and started getting more into the "woo" factor, incorporating "real monsters" and watering down the skeptical thinking to appeal more to the updated audience (or to distance the newer shows from the older ones).

But regardless of this straying from the concept, the original show was a fun romp for kids. I remember watching it as a kid and later on having fun with the in-jokes and yes, wondering what was up with Fred's fashion choices. I mean, an ascot? Geez, Freddie.

Happy birthday, Scooby. Thanks for the memories.

Education Reform

2009-08-24T22:48:00.000-04:00

The Bush administration tried making education their domestic poster-boy cause as the Obama administration is making healthcare reform their current domestic worthy-cause. Ironic, given the Bush pronounced the word "nuclear" the same way as Homer Simpson. But it's about as fair to pick on Bush's intellect as it is to pick on a snake for losing a thumb wrestling competition, so I'll get back on track with my original topic now.

School reform made a small ripple in the news-o-sphere with the release of a study from the Annenberg Institute and NYCLU recommending making schools less of a prison state in order to increase success of students in academia.

It's kind of important to note that this was done in schools of "at-risk" students.

Their recommendations:

Discourage the installation of metal detectors. Schools can create safe and successful learning environments without relying on metal detectors.

I honestly don't have experience with this. Our school districts don't spend money on this, and personally I never thought it was needed. But I'm not familiar with city schools, especially at-risk schools. I suppose as a deterrent it's a good thing, as a practical thing I don't know how effective it is. Guess it just means the kids wait until after school to shoot each other, and meanwhile a belt buckle is holding up the line of kids trying to get to class on time. If you absolutely have to get rid of that sucka' that be dissin' you girl, time ta' get creative in shop class with the band saw...

The statement is true though. You never hear about schools in clothing-optional communities having problems with kids smuggling contraband drugs and weapons into the buildings, so I guess they can have safe environments without metal detectors.

Restore discipline responsibilities to educators. Minor disciplinary infractions must be handled exclusively by school officials, not police personnel.

That would be nice. In theory. In practice today, administration is beholden to the public, simply because it's a headache to deal with little Johnny's parents. Seems as if in more cases than no little Johnny is always the angel that couldn't possibly have stolen Sally's iPod and the parents have no idea how it ended up in Johnny's backpack, but I'm sure they'll find out in a lawsuit to the school because this suspension means Johnny can't play in the football game.

Okay, I'm overgeneralizing.

My point is that discipline is a...well, discipline in and of itself, and educators having to police the kids while walking a political line to keep parents happy is never a good mix. It seems that once parents start pulling the litigation or harassment card then it's simply not worth the hassle of giving Johnny a life lesson in character weighed against the time that would be invested in educating the parents that life just isn't always fair and that yes, their son can be a pain in the arse, contrary to what they seem to believe.

I suppose that it does end up teaching Johnny a lesson. Life not giving you your way? Mommy and Daddy can make it fair for you. I think that's where No Child Left Behind's brainchild had his life lessons learned, come to think of it...

Assign fewer School Safety Agents to patrol schools. The number of police personnel patrolling the city’s schools should be reduced significantly, creating financial savings and strengthening the educational mission of the schools.

Again we don't have much experience in our area. Growing up, we didn't have them in our schools. I think that our local district did have a police officer or two after I had graduated; the school officials liked outsourcing discipline since it meant that the parents with objections had to take it up with a judge and not infringe on the administrator's time with objections.

I'm not sure what the recommendation means by implying there's a connection between fewer police officers patrolling schools will lead to a greater education mission in schools; perhaps the article linked to simply waters down the bullet points into sound bites and as a result it lost its meaning.

Mandate alternatives to harsh discipline. Restorative justice practices, a conflict resolution method used at several schools profiled in the report, should be implemented in all city schools.

This could be interesting, given that I have no idea what the alternatives are they're proposing. A student court? We can't even get actual tax-paying citizens to report for jury duty; do we really want kids who won't pay attention in class to be in charge of some kind of pseudo-justice system?

My daughter is in student council. She did...well, nothing, to my knowledge. But it looks good on her college application. In that regard it seems as if student government is a lot like actual government. Even when I was in school I couldn't figure out what student government was supposed to do...they didn't have more than a pittance budget and were supposed to...well, I don't know, sponsor dances, maybe? They sure as hell didn't do anything with rules or learning incentives. We had a representative that was supposed to go to school board meetings, but it wasn't like they had a vote or could do anything other than talk to board members who would politely ignore them because I suppose the student didn't pay attention in civics classes in the first place.

For students with an IQ above a toaster oven most of the "student conflict resolution" prepackaged programs probably won't hold much meaning. It's telling that people who are supposed to be in the real world apparently can't just tell kids how to handle situations and instead are told they must rely on pretty posters and handbooks that tell them how to deal with conflicts...apparently educated adults who are considered functional members of society can't share their common-sense strategies on how to deal with the jerk that doesn't know how to properly trade lunch tray items or get their fat arse off the swingset and share.

Ensure students’ input into school rules. Giving students a sense of ownership over the school rules makes them more willing to obey codes of conduct.

This could be a nice laugh-riot. First we get a report that essentially points out that kids are brain-damaged, developmentally, until they're into their twenties, then there's this recommendation that urge turning more control over to these brain-damaged kids.

Do these people ever sit down and talk to these kids, get their ideas, before actually proposing these things? It sounds reasonable. Sounds very reasonable. In practice...um...I'll just say I'm skeptical and leave it at that.

Would it be out of left field to draw a similar parallel to prisons would having happier prisoners if they had a vote in how their punishments and disciplining was carried out? Or patients in asylums? These are extremes, but when it comes down to it, the people in prisons and schools don't have much say in whether they're there, what is done to them there, and they're working in a system which encourages conformity to reduce discipline issues. Usually for a reason.

Institute transparency and accountability in school safety practices. The DOE must disclose raw data to allow New Yorkers to determine the effectiveness of school safety practices. Moreover, School Safety Agents should be subject to the same oversight as police officers.

...because the public is SOOO much more effective at dealing with issues they have no experience in. State and federal legislators have shown this time and time again with all the bureaucracy they've helped introduce into various sectors of society, from education to transportation to taxes and healthcare.

I love hearing people who have spent no time on the other side of the classroom...any role aside from their childhood brain-formative years sitting at a desk...dictating how to fix education. They have no idea what teachers have to put up with and how teachers spend more time dealing with bureaucracy and policies and politics instead of just teaching.

Although I'll also point out that teachers are members of the public too. They seem equally mystified much of the time at matters of intellect and education; there's nothing that seems to prevent sub-intellectual or low-achieving teachers from taking up positions in schools; I've heard stories of teachers that promote the idea that the moon landing were faked being in charge of teaching students and worse. It's just part of the human condition. On the other hand, why would good teachers with solid skills want to work for crap pay to put up with the hassles that are attached to teaching if what they really want to do is teach?

Provide support services for students’ non-academic needs. Partnering with local hospitals and community based organizations to provide students health care and social services addresses non-academic challenges before they develop into behavioral problems.

This one sounds like advocating that schools become a nanny day-care than focusing schools on being schools. Parents already expect schools to act as substitute parents (unless it clashes with whatever subset of obligations they decide they actually want to take care of; "You want to teach my kid about SEX?? NEVER!") Now we want schools to give added services for kids that are lonely, pregnant, gangbangers, mentally ill, bored, overweight, underweight, depressed...

Was there a time when kids went to school to learn instead of form their own miniature nanny state?

Maybe I'm being too harsh or cynical. At this point it seems that we've had decades of "failing education" so...going by track record...there's not much hope that things will change anytime soon.

I've said before that just criticizing without offering alternatives is rather wasteful. I think I do have ideas. Practical? Probably not. But they're something, and the ideas distilled into something that would fit here would probably render them rather trite

Bullying in Schools

2009-08-23T22:47:00.000-04:00

The school district my daughter attends, like so many others now, are actively trying to fight bullying in their halls.

When I went to meet with some teachers I happened to see some of the materials out promoting the pre-packaged program on which the district spent a pretty penny on; posters dotted the halls replete with trite slogans and various papers with crayon drawings and misspelled phrases by the students in the elementary schools.

But the thing that surprised me most was that in this program there are forms where teachers fill in incident reports for bullying. There were a series of labels for which you got into trouble...you were a bully, a henchman (aren't they the first ones to be smacked around by Batman?), or a bystander.

Yes. Bystander.

I remember when I was growing up we called this "minding your own business." I wasn't a victim of bullying...I didn't actively seek trouble, and I didn't actively cause trouble (outside of being a class clown, anyway).

But the current system of education teaches kids that minding your own business makes you an accomplice to bullying.

I talked to a teacher about this; she said that she's torn with her own personal opinion on this issue because while she agrees that children should be active in preventing bullying, she remembers when she was in school and she stuck up for another kid being bullied. She ended up being punched in the nose.

Every day there's bullying. As adults, we call it office politics. Or we call it someone annoying the bejebus out of us. Here's a list of what constitutes bullying (according to this site):

constant nit-picking, fault-finding and criticism of a trivial nature - the triviality, regularity and frequency betray bullying; often there is a grain of truth (but only a grain) in the criticism to fool you into believing the criticism has validity, which it does not; often, the criticism is based on distortion, misrepresentation or fabrication
simultaneous with the criticism, a constant refusal to acknowledge you and your contributions and achievements or to recognize your existence and value
constant attempts to undermine you and your position, status, worth, value and potential
where you are in a group (eg at work), being singled out and treated differently; for instance, everyone else can get away with murder but the moment you put a foot wrong - however trivial - action is taken against you
being isolated and separated from colleagues, excluded from what's going on, marginalized, overruled, ignored, sidelined, frozen out, sent to Coventry
being belittled, demeaned and patronised, especially in front of others
being humiliated, shouted at and threatened, often in front of others
being overloaded with work, or having all your work taken away and replaced with either menial tasks (filing, photocopying, minute taking) or with no work at all
finding that your work - and the credit for it - is stolen and plagiarised
having your responsibility increased but your authority taken away
having annual leave, sickness leave, and - especially - compassionate leave refused
being denied training necessary for you to fulfill your duties
having unrealistic goals set, which change as you approach them
ditto deadlines which are changed at short notice - or no notice - and without you being informed until it's too late
finding that everything you say and do is twisted, distorted and misrepresented
being subjected to disciplinary procedures with verbal or written warnings imposed for trivial or fabricated reasons and without proper investigation
being coerced into leaving through no fault of your own, constructive dismissal, early or ill-health retirement, etc

Wow...most people are bullied just by going to work.

So is it worth the money and time being spent on "anti-bullying programs"? Is it being blown out of proportion? Or is there a genuine need to bring this into the public awareness?

Surely the stories I hear about are those like the one from this guy, now a nearly perfectly adjusted (if not really bitter about his childhood) adult working at Google. I thought these were extreme stories, things that happen to a relatively small number of people, like winning the lottery or managing to get out of debt.

When I was growing up I experienced very little outstanding examples of bullying despite being fat and definitely a nonfan of athletics and sports. I figured that most of those stories were exaggerated, seeing as I was a prime stereotypical target for bullying and I wasn't actually experiencing it. Maybe someone reading this could post comments about their experiences growing up, or as parents with kids in school now.

Is bullying really a big problem?

High School: Geeks and Bullies

2009-08-14T22:53:00.000-04:00

This post (click for link) by a PhD in computer science at Google regarding why he won't go to his high school reunion had me thinking back to my own experiences in high school.

I suppose this is another example of how I've ended up at this point, largely defined by my weight. The only thing is that I never had it as bad as this guy did. He describes having his fingers broken by some other student just so the bully could hear what it would sound like and having a swastika shape burned in front of his house; not that it was anti-semitically related, just that the kid who did it knew it would really bother him (and his brother got some revenge on the perpetrator too; he elaborated both of these details later on in the article). He grew up as a skinny geek and social outcast and his article is wondering what mental defect his ex-classmates have that they would think he'd want to see them at the 25th reunion.

It must have touched more than a few nerves; there's a huge list of anecdotes in the comments section.

I guess I was lucky. I grew up a geek; my first computer that I owned was a Commodore 128D, and I remember playing in elementary school...around third grade or so...with a TRS-80 in the school's enrichment program (or gifted program, whatever other schools would call it. I think it's a dying thing now since No Child Left Behind places emphasis on kids who don't want to be in school and gifted kids are assumed to be fine left to their own devices; a real shame). I wasn't an easy target though...I was overweight and sullen. Not emo. Just looked scary if I got mad, and my temperment was such that usually I left well enough alone. Mind your business, I'll mind mine. Step into my business and I usually used words that bullies were too dim-witted to understand. Or maybe they were afraid of what I'd do to them in retaliation.

Maybe it was the rural area I lived in or maybe it was because fat people were expected to be stupid and I didn't fit the stereotype, but for the most part I had no problem with people bullying me.

I was in chorus in high school. I did a lot of theater work (have a minor in it, actually). I wore a trenchcoat because it was a great utility; at the time, my fat usually kept me pretty warm so a thin trenchoat was just the ticket to protect from the wind without drenching me in sweat, but at the same time it had huge pockets for carrying my things which was necessary because I was too fat to get from one class to the lockers for my things then to the next class in time. I don't know how I'd survive in today's school system where bookbags are a hazard and coats aren't allowed during the day and trenchcoats are a one-way ticket to the guidance counselor, if not the principal. There was also the fact that the coat was almost like a post-industrial wizard's robe or hero's cape.

The fact that the coat draped on an already oversized guy sporting a non-smiling face was probably somewhat intimidating probably helped, in retrospect, send a message to not bother me if I wasn't in the mood.

I was a class clown despite these appearances. My insecurities and social awkwardness expressed itself by making others laugh; I enjoyed performing on stage and in class alike, to the chagrin of my teachers.

I had a small circle of friends. I only hear from a few of them anymore and those I do keep in touch with I usually only hear snippets from via Facebook.

I was fat, geeky, socially awkward, "different", hated sports, strongly disliked school and the institution of public education, resented the people I saw around me to be fools and ignoramuses, and introverted. And I liked computers, rejected organized religion which in itself is a sin in a small rural town like the one I grew up in, and wore a trench coat. What a formula. And of course I didn't date. There were a couple of girls I had a crush on at some point but no one ever wanted to be known for dating the fat social reject. I was far closer to "friend" material than dating material.

(I sometimes wonder if I would meet some of these people on the street if they'd not recognize me and suddenly be open to going out on a date, just so I could reminisce about whether they remember some fatass from high school that they wouldn't give the time of day to...then tell them to go to hell. Not that I'm bitter. My wife might even get a kick from listening to this transpire.)

And yet no one really picked on me. Aside from the expected comments about being fat. Usually I didn't hear them much, either because it was said behind my back or I didn't provoke outright teasing (or they feared that if I did catch up to them at some point, this fatass could still give them an ass whupping, I don't know).

I suppose that while I look back with very little fondness for my public school years I was fortunate in leaving without great mental scarring, unlike the guy that posted the article that got me thinking about this again. I honestly don't recall any great pains inflicted by my peers while growing up except for the occasional teenage melodrama of heartbreak, but that's hardly limited to something geeks have the monopoly on.

See? I've finally found something fortunate in my life to focus on. I'm told I always focus on the negative...now I have an example to point to.

Although now that I've said that I'll probably find a memory I've been supressing...

Anyone else have anything they'd like to share from their formative years?

Trust In Our Government

2009-08-13T19:53:00.000-04:00

This is one of the best talks on the subject of trust in our government that I've ever found.

Lawrence Lessig is a professor of law at Harvard and is well known in copyright circles for his insights and intelligent decomposition of the corporate interests during the various legal scuffles involving copyright. Anything more I say here would just be rehash of his Wiki article or blog, though, so I'll leave it to you to check on the link if you're interested...I'll sum it up by saying that despite the topic of the legalities involved in copyright, he is one of those rare speakers that effectively communicates to his audience and I actually don't mind learning from him.

Check out that speech and see if you agree. From the summary at the site:
***
Only 9 percent of the electorate thinks the U.S. Congress is doing a good job. Lawrence Lessig talks about the damage that arises from politicians focusing on raising funds to get themselves reelected. This constant attention to making money feeds the Washington 'economy of influence'. The morally destitute behavior, foretold by Thomas Jefferson in The Founders' Constitution, undermines the trust of the electorate in the institution of the government.

The Congress have been known for feathering their own nests, voting themselves back into power, developing the sixth sense to get re-elected into tenure, since the 1770s. Barack Obama may fix the presidency in one fell swoop, but the core of the problem is not in the presidency. It is in the loss of trust. People have lost trust in the government because the integrity of politicians is compromised by bribery from influential lobbyists.
***
Again. Download the mp3 or listen right from the website. Check it out and see what you think...feel free to leave comments here about it if you'd like. You just may be glad you did, or at least have something to think about. The talk was less than 15 minutes...

Your Daughter the Teen Mother

2009-08-12T05:55:00.001-04:00

This is a topic that is just something I end up thinking about periodically, probably because I have a 17-year-old daughter with a boyfriend. It's a subject of great debate yet is often kind of couched in a silence at the dinner table; an uncomfortable pebble in your shoe rubbing on your foot. It's simply avoided.

Fortunately my Asperger's and her mother's sometimes lacking skills of tact means this normally doesn't apply to our family as a problem.

If I'm reading this right, the US had a 84 out of 1,000 teens pregnant on average. This report shows that almost half of school-age teens have had sex at least once. Newer information just further convinces me that this isn't a topic that should be ignored.

I've worked around kids enough...with a young one and a teenager in the house, especially...to know that you can't take for granted that they know what they should or shouldn't do. You'd assume that they could figure something out. Then we get questions about things like how to make spaghetti ("The instructions are right on the box!"). For some reason apparently the biological drive to mate, despite fumbling and possibly getting slivers, is strong enough that teenagers manage to figure it out while simpler things like boiling water without disintegrating the pasta...with instructions in hand...escape them.

Lesson: don't take it for granted that they know their parents views, understand those views, and understand the consequences.

My daughter has had exposure to the hardships incurred by unwed pregnancies. She has an aunt that has two children without a father in the picture; she lives with her parents and so the children's grandparents use a considerable amount of their resources to raise the grandchildren. She herself...well, isn't my biological daughter. My wife became pregnant her last years of high school and married the biological father; the marriage crumbled and reached a breaking point nearly ten years later, after which she divorced and met me, so she's my step daughter and she was raised under economic difficulty and had to move around as jobs and money permitted while her mom worked during the day and went to college on weekends and at night to try making a better life for them. She basically grew up seeing what can happen (although I guess her mom was a bad role model for showing the bad side of being a teen mom, since her mom worked her tail off to get through school while raising a daughter with little help from the father and managed to graduate with a degree...she now has a master's degree).

She sees the hardship that her grandparents go through emotionally with having their daughter and grandchildren with them as well as experiencing her own childhood with parents barely scraping by because of balancing family, bills, and education.

But again, we couldn't take that for granted.

My wife wanted to make sure that our daughter was able to tell her...if not both of us (okay, I'm not a teddy bear to relate to when there's emotions involved. I'm cognizant that she'll first go to her mother if something like this happens to have some support before revealing it to me...) that she was sexually active so she could get birth control. Or come to us with questions.

We differ a little here.

She knows I disapprove of her having any relations with someone else before she is married. I know, it's such a conservative view! Weird! But the fact is that I disapprove of it before marriage, I have made it clear to her that she has full support to do whatever she wants to do once she is 18 and out of the house.

See, my philosophy extends from the notion that if you want to play adult, you need to be in a position to live like an adult. Having sex is a big risk; condoms break, they slip, and anything that can get one motile sperm into the uterus can get her pregnant. At that point you are then responsible for bringing a potential life into the world that didn't ask to be here. Taking risks like that means you think you're prepared to go into the world as an independent adult.

She was told that if she got pregnant, she'd be given a reasonable time to move out to her own apartment. She's not disowned or banned or anything like that...she just needs to get her life in order and understand that there are consequences; sex isn't a little hobby thing to do when you're bored or to fit in. We agreed we'd help her out with things when we could, but only as long as she's making a reasonable effort to keep her own head above water...steady job, education if she needs it, pays own bills, learns the joys of keeping her car running, things of that nature.

But we can't swoop in and save her every time. She wasn't living with us rent free if she decided she was living here; she uses electricity, she uses groceries (unless she buys her own), she uses space...she was going to pay a reasonable rent. My parents never told me much as I grew up about finances; I wanted to remedy that with her. We told her that we're paying a little under two grand a month to keep a roof over our heads. We make no secret from her what it costs with our bills and taxes.

But none of this made much of a real-world impact until she was strongarmed into getting a McJob. It was heartwarming to see her read her first paystub and realize how much money was taken out for silly things.

My primary concern, reinforced from the surgery, was that we want her to live on her own if we were to die. We have provisions in our will for her and her brother so that she'd be taken care of while my parents were still alive, and she's nearly old enough that should something happen she can care for her brother reasonably well in about five to seven years, I suppose (we're hoping to change the will should it become necessary later on), until he's old enough to live on his own. But my worry is that if we're always there to keep her protected from the real world she will never mature and lead her own life.

We need her to understand that. Desperately. I need to know that while it may not be pleasant, I want to know that if something happened to my wife and I that our daughter isn't going to be unable to sustain herself in "the real world".

I need her to understand that we will not raise her children for her because she wanted to experiment with her boyfriend because who will raise them if we die? Is it just another generation tossed aside unwanted after we pass away because we're too old to adequately care for her children?

She needs to understand that there comes a time when she needs to face the world and reality. We need to transition from careless teens to parents to grandparents...not perpetual parents. Just as my son and daughter can choose to do.

My wife and I don't want to look back on our lives after sixty or seventy years, just having the last grandchild moving to college from our home, wondering what we could have been doing had we not been raising our children's children or worrying about what is going to happen to our great-grandchildren. What if we had set firmer boundries? Or forced our daughter to take responsibility for her actions?

Of course this is all just one possible scenario. It's a worry, one of many that parents have to face. And like I said...as far as we know our daughter isn't active sexually, and she knows that abstinence is the only way to be sure she doesn't get pregnant, but that she is fully allowed to do whatever she wants when she is of age and we won't judge her negatively for it because we support her living her own life once she is taking responsibility for (possible) consequences. As long as she's happy and making her own way we can die without worrying about how she's going to manage. I told her that no matter what she chooses to do at that point it's fine with us.

Others, no doubt, have different opinions on the matter...

Republicans...Do They Like the Stereotypes?

2009-08-06T19:52:00.000-04:00

It's well known that the Bush administration stifled science on many fronts; as a consequence, the Republican party is seen as being mostly pro-religion and anti-science.

But now apparently they don't mind having some of their more prominent figurehead organizations reinforce the idea that Republicans are ignorant racists as well.

I'm sure there are those who would say that this is a minor thing, that there are always rogues that give a group a bad name. This is true. But every little ripple in the news contributes to your perception of a group or idea and this is yet another ripple that can cripple. Unless, of course, you agree with them...in which case you're probably perfectly comfortable with this kind of ignorance on parade.

It's a real shame.

The Problem of Reasoning With Faith

2009-08-05T22:14:00.000-04:00

There are a few points in my life when I really started to cement my philosophy of personal religious views.

One of them was when I realized the futility in arguing the nonexistence of a god. Primarily this is because theists can cite an argument that takes advantage of a flaw in inductive reasoning; namely, inductive reasoning proves what is probable, not what is infallible. For example we tend to believe that the sun will come up tomorrow because it always has in the past. There's some infintesimal chance that something could cause the sun to explode...but most people don't wake up thinking that is what will happen.

As is outlined in this paper this is a big reason that people will believe in something despite evidence to the contrary; you can't prove that it's not there because it's only probable that it's not there. For people that don't prefer to live by reason this is a perfect loophole.

For example...

Frank and Joe are friends who get together to have a chat. Frank tells Joe that there's a small invisible elephant named Nemo hovering over his head and that he controls the weather.

Joe is skeptical that there's a hovering Elephant named Nemo over Frank's head. "I don't see anything."

"He's invisible," says Frank.
"So how do you see him?"
"He wants me to so he lets me see him."
"Well...I want to see him. Can he show himself to me?"
"Not if he doesn't want to show you."
"What if I throw some paint above your head? Wouldn't that cover him so I could see him?"
"No, it'll pass through him."
"Does he make any sounds? Can I hear him?"
"Only if he lets you."
"So I can't hear him, I can't touch him, and I can't see him. How do I know he exists?"
"Easy! Look outside! Right there's the weather!"

This is how it is with theists discussing the existence of God; it's telling that basically in order for Joe to "see" Nemo he must first, like Frank, believe he's there and that way accept the shortcomings in the lack of evidence. Joe could tell Frank all about what is known regarding meterology; cold fronts, low pressure fronts, heating of oceans and humid air from the effects of the sun heating the ground and water, etc. etc...but see, it's complicated to understand those things. It's far more comforting to just say Nemo does it.

More accurately as science advances our understanding of weather Frank just will fall back on either Nemo wants us to believe that, or those are the mechanisms that Nemo uses to manipulate the weather. It's still Nemo controlling it.

No matter what there's still a fallback to dismiss these arguments. Science provides reproduceable results, testable hypothesis and theories, yet stacked against something whose abilities are believed to be...well, what amounts to magic...it's far simpler for Frank to dismiss Joe with a lot of hand-waving and he'll continue to take comfort in what he's already invested in believing. There's no way to definitively show that there is no Nemo above Frank's head because no matter what evidence Joe brings to the table Frank can dismiss that that's just how Nemo works or what Nemo wants. It's the power of the divine.

It is impossible to argue with people who don't want to hear what you're trying to say; don't even bother. It's uncomfortable for the majority of theists to listen to something that challenges what they've believed all their lives, something that comforts them, and for people like that comfort is more important than seeking truth.

Nontheists, the best approach is to simply be honest with yourself and others if asked. Don't push your ideas upon others; it'll be as unwelcome to them as when they push their beliefs on you. There are others who feel alienated because they are surrounded in their communities by theists and who question themselves because they are a minority in their own community. Finding others who are comfortable standing up and saying they don't believe in an organized religion can help you find others who share your perspective; you're not alone.

Do It Yourself Biology Research

2009-08-04T22:27:00.000-04:00

One of the neat things about people who are making the effort to educate themselves and the availability of information is that there is a resurgence in the citizen scientist.

Not long ago a 14 year old girl discovered a supernova in another galaxy. Caroline Moore is the youngest person to date to do so. She did it with a small telescope.

Biology is now gaining a foothold among homebrew scientists. The site DIYbio is a meeting place for people that are working in their garage to experiment with alternative applications for various bacteria and viruses. From the site:

*****
DIYbio is an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and DIY biological engineers who value openness and safety. This will require mechanisms for amateurs to increase their knowledge and skills, access to a community of experts, the development of a code of ethics, responsible oversight, and leadership on issues that are unique to doing biology outside of traditional professional settings.
*****

Because they use homebrew technology and no research funding, they are more open about what they're doing and don't necessarily have biases that money from pharma companies or the school's interests introduce. They're doing some really neat stuff for everything from cheaply mapping your DNA to creating microbes that can complete simple logic operations.

If you have any interest in biology...molecular engineering, playing with DNA, making peas that taste like squash, I don't know...head to their site and sign up on their mailing list. They're playing with some really neat stuff and hey, who knows? Maybe the next big advance in fighting cancer or creating a wonder drug will come from one of their member's basements. Or the back of my fridge.

The Positive Effect of Negative Thinking

2009-08-01T19:33:00.001-04:00

Here was an interesting article called "Yes, I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking." It explores the idea that negative thinking isn't necessarily bad for you.

See, when you tell someone something that they don't believe, they cling more tightly to their own belief. Asserting that "Sarah Palin is a genius!" will just have your friend believe even more vehemently that she's a moron, or telling a friend who knows he's one of the dimmer of your entourage that he can be the next Einstein will have them thinking even more stubbornly that he's...well, a Sarah Palin.

Indeed, what I took away from the article was that trying to get people to think in a positive fashion can have a more serious effect; they start to see that their lives suck more than they did before the positive outlook.

It was an interesting read. If you suffer from the periodic "blue day" I'd encourage you to check out the link and see what you think of the findings. I thought it was quite fascinating.

Losing Weight Helps the Planet?

2009-07-30T22:26:00.000-04:00

Here's an interesting idea. Edward Humes, author of Monkey Girl, has a new book out called Eco Barons. It's a series of profiles about environmentalists who devote their lives to saving the planet. I was listening to a podcast on IT Conversations discussing the new book and I heard a couple interesting tidbits that he said he discovered in working on the book.

For example, eating less red meat helps save the planet. Yeah, your steak cookouts is contributing to ruination of the planet. I wouldn't have thought of that either.

Articles are here, here, and here to help illustrate the point. I'm definitely not of the hippie tree-hugging variety consumer, but some of what they claim makes sense. It takes a lot of land to raise animals for meat and so there's more deforestation related to farming, but as we increase production of animals for consumption (or overconsumption in the case of the U.S.) there is also an increase in greenhouse gases due to animals passing gas. Yes, all those little puffs of methane add up, apparently.

Guess that can be added to the list of things that are bad about meat along with the obligatory "increases risk of heart attack and stroke and cholesterol and..." stuff we hear periodically.

There was also a claim about losing weight helping the environment. Lose 10 pounds, and you help the environment.

Apparently the production of food is a significant contributor to environmental damage. Think about it; we in the U.S. don't eat food that is in season anymore. The cost of growing food out of season for an area has associated storage and transportation costs, both of which impacts the environment. We also tend to overeat and overconsume, so anything that helps reduce the amount of food that must be produced, stored, and transported would be beneficial to us as a whole.

The podcast (linked near the beginning of the post) is about 1/2 an hour long and Edward Humes comes off as being very moderate in his environmental views. He is sharing in the interview the various things he's learned in doing the book; not preaching that we should all join communes and sing Kum-By-Yah. Believe me. If I thought it was what I've come to call Hippy-Dippy, I can't stand listening to the whole thing. I found his insights to be fascinating, right down to the reminder of Carter's incentives for reducing our country's dependence on foreign countries for energy (we had solar panels on the White House? Yes, yes we did. They were promptly removed by the next administration) and George Bush's endorsement for hydrogen energy as being eco friendly with a twist (yes, it's clean burning, except the technology for producing it isn't...). There were a number of tidbits that were educational and interesting.

I strongly encourage everyone to take half an hour and listen to what was said on the podcast. Go here and download it or listen to it from the page! It's free, no obligations, no strings attached. Go and learn something for the cost of a half hour of your time.

Creationism Bugs Me

2009-07-23T22:07:00.000-04:00

I think I am beginning to understand one of the biggest reasons that the creationism movement bugs me so much. I got to thinking about it while skimming a book called Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul at a bookstore not long ago. It's the story of the semi-recent court battle over teaching Creationism in the classroom in Dover, PA. Sorry, Intelligent Design. Unfortunately there's a long history of bending semantics to try shoehorning the same idea into the curriculum of academia (see the evolution of the phrase "Creation Science").

What follows may be offensive to the more religious-minded. If you don't like having your ideas challenged you might as well quit reading now.

I have seen repeatedly that a significant percentage of atheists understand the Bible better than the majority of Christians. I don't necessarily mean quoting the Bible; I'm talking about understanding it. Anyone with time on their hands can memorize Shakespeare without understanding what Hamlet is really saying when telling Ophelia, "Get thee to a nunn'ry!" (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1) Getting into an argument over Biblical trivia is pointless.

The part that bugs me is quite simple. I would summarize Creationism thusly:
A magic being in the sky one day decided to create the Earth and various creatures on the Earth culminating in His ultimate creation, Man. Why he did it we don't know. He just did it. All creatures are the way they are because the magic invisible being just decided to do it.

This is, of course, paraphrasing. "Magic being" can be replaced with a number of different names, the most common of which in this area is God.

After poring over various Biblical passages the fundamentalists thus conclude that the Earth is 6,000 years old. Six thousand years ago God decided to create everything and at various points told people to record the events in a series of scrolls that later become the Bible (although most professing a strong belief in it don't seem to know the history of the Bible's origins)

That's pretty much it. Uncomplicated. Simple. Magic invisible being waved his magic stick and everything just popped into existence. The magic being has no origin, no end, nothing explaining where it came from. It's pretty simple to understand and any questions are usually dismissed with some vague hand waving.

Ask the good Creationist believer to summarize evolution and you usually get an equally vague explanation. Just some idea of creatures changing over time, if you're lucky, or the common one I had run into was that life just "sprang from nothing."

While the idea of Creationism is fantastically simple to understand...an invisible all powerful magic being who often is depicted looking like Milton Berle or Gandalf just decided one day that this is how things should be...evolution takes actual comprehension to understand. The people who want you to disregard the science usually have no idea what Evolution entails (especially the ones that say Evolution is bunk because life can't come from nothing; it's ironic both because they don't understand that evolution isn't a theory of the origin of life and also because these are the same people that say they believe in a magic being that has no origin, literally popping into existence from nothing. Or some idea of "always existing" or "exists outside this dimension". But evolution is simply way too crazy an idea for creationists to accept.

If you're going to cite that, demonstrate that you understand the math behind such an idea. Otherwise it's about as legitimate as The Force from Star Wars.

Unlike the idea of Creationism, Evolution has actual observable and provable hypothesis creating the foundation upon which it is based. It can be disproven; this is one of the fundamental ideas behind any empirical scientific theory. You can assert whatever you want. But it's not a scientific theory unless in some way it could be proven or disproven.

That is exactly why Creationism is not a science. It cannot be disproven or tested. This is a fundamental idea upon which science is based. How do you prove the nonexistence of God?

You can't.

Rather than rant or rave about that, here's my proposal. If a Creationist can accurately teach someone what evolution is, the actual science of evolution, so that that person understands evolution accurately then I would take them seriously in a discussion. They have to be able to teach evolutionary theory in their own words. Seems pretty simple.

The only way you can teach an idea to someone without simply regurgitating what a book states is to understand the idea. If you can teach someone else an idea in your own words; you understand the subject, and far too many people are proclaiming a strong believe in Creationism without having the faintest idea what they're talking about.

That is another bit of doublethink that leaves me baffled; if you are one of those people proclaiming a belief in an immortal soul, don't you kind of owe it to yourself to make sure you're right about your belief? I mean, that's quite a thing to leave to chance. So why hide behind dismissive hand waving and such when you probably should be devoting time to educating yourself about what you're investing your eternity in? Not just the memorization of Bible passages. Any goof can sit and memorize sequences of words. Rather, dedicate time to finding out what the other side is trying to tell about logical fallacies and mistakes, and understanding the history of the document which you are gambling your "soul" upon.

It's sad...there are far too many people who are entrenched in the idea that they are right about this magical history when they don't even know that the Bible wasn't a single document written in English.

Not that it matters much. True believers are often the move vehemently against exploring ideas that may contradict their belief system; they're too invested, emotionally, in the belief system to see beyond the world of comfort on which they rest their worldview. It may be psychologically damaging for them to entertain the idea that they are wrong about something so fundamental.

Or for many it's just easier to accept the simple explanation...magic, essentially...over learning what chromosomes and DNA are and how they work.

Creationist Museum Seen By Academia

2009-07-19T22:06:00.000-04:00

Those who know me know it's no secret that I'm not big on the whole "creation science" movement. It's not a science. If you don't understand that it's not a science, it's because you don't understand the definition of science.

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about the 70,000 square foot Creationism Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. Apparently some paleontologists topped off a conference in the area with a group tour of the facility.

Some of them happened to be Christian and were still surprised, saddened, and shocked at the material they found in the museum.

My favorite quote from the article:
********
"It's sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn't it?" said Jerry Lipps, professor of geology, paleontology and evolution at University of California, Berkeley.
********

Not a big surprise. Usually the responses I see when academics criticize these things is simply dismissal of their claims. I think it comes from a friction between reason and faith; I can't fully claim to understand it because I'm simply wired differently. I cannot easily take something that runs contrary to observed or reasonable evidence. People who are very much invested in their beliefs...no matter what evidence is shown to the contrary, no matter how much you show that they hold views that conflict with each other...the doublethink will prevail for them. The Creationist museum is a prime example of this.

I mean...the Tyrannosaurus Rex was a vegetarian until Eve ate from the tree of knowledge? Really?

I should hope that the quote I believe is attributed to Jerry Lipps from the article is correct..."Like Sunday school with statues... this is a special brand of religion here. I don't think even most mainstream Christians would believe in this interpretation of Earth's history."

What Is a Christian Nation?

2009-07-07T22:16:00.000-04:00

In the various arguments I've seen regarding religion in the US, I've often bumped into people supporting their views by saying that we're a "Christian Nation". I don't know what exactly they are referring to.

Is it the "In God We Trust" on our money? Became our country's official motto in 1956. It actually has its roots in religious sentiment from the Civil War. But it was hardly because of anything having to do with our country's founding or its founding fathers.

As a bit of trivia, Theodore Roosevelt opposed putting that slogan on money. He considered it an act of sacrilege.

Indeed, contrary to what many of the citizens seem to believe, many of our founding fathers were Deists, although sadly I'm not sure most of our nation's citizens are even aware of Deism. Here's a quick quote from Wikipedia:
*********
Deism is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme god created the universe, and that this and other religious truth can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without the need for faith. Deists generally reject the notion of divine interventions in human affairs - such as by miracles and revelations. These views contrast with a dependence on revelations, miracles, and faith found in many Judeo-Christian,^[1]^[2] Islamic and other theistic teachings.
*********
What got me thinking about this was an article on the Jefferson Bible. Scratching your head yet?

Apparently our 3rd president of the United States extracted the parts of the Bible that he found to be contradictory or unreasonable, creating a version that was purely consisting of the moral teachings of Jesus Christ; it was also arranged in a manner that made a consistent narrative. The result was called the Jefferson Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazereth. The article said that the resulting book was 46 pages long.

It was also Jefferson credited with the idea of "separation of church and state." He was an admirable man; he believed in God, but did not believe in supernatural revelation, and as such didn't feel it was right to legislate his beliefs onto the people he was elected to lead.

Thomas Jefferson was indeed a remarkable man with more achievements than most people could hope to attain in his lifetime. From the Wikipedia entry on him:
****
When President John F. Kennedy welcomed forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962 he said, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
****

Homeland Security Doesn't Understand Comics

2009-07-01T19:42:00.000-04:00

The irony of this is delicious.

Worse, news of it spread like wildfire because you really shouldn't let ignorant morons mess with someone working in a field loved by geeks.

Mark Sable was detained by airport security because he had a script for one of his latest comic book projects, Unthinkable, had information that paralleled the 9/11 attacks. The mini-series follows a group in a government thinktank that comes up with 9/11-type scenarios that are now coming true; the story is based on the real-life proposal from the government asking writers to come up with scenarios for terrorist plots, and in the comic Mark took it to the next step and asked what would happen if these scenarios came true and then the people coming up with the scenarios would become suspects.

Mark Sable is known for his work with DC and Image Comics, as well as Unthinkable under the Boom! umbrella.

He said in the story that the TSA agents had trouble understanding that they were looking at a script for the next issue of a comic book because apparently these macadamia nuts didn't know that comics weren't all about superheros.

That'll teach him. Next time you're going to delve into an issue that requires some form of cerebral interaction, make sure you throw Superman into the mix or some idiots will think you're planning to blow up a plane. A big thank-you to these goofs that are keeping us safe from having convenient travel plans!

Nostalgia and the Transformers

2009-06-26T19:55:00.000-04:00

I was a big fan of The Transformers growing up. I remember it was a priority for me to get to a TV every afternoon back in 1984 to get my fix of the cartoon and later I would pore over the latest Transformers comics.

Non-fans may be surprised to know that the comic franchise continues today, published by IDW comics. Not bad for a 25 year old toy.

Today the live-action version of Transformers is reinvigorating the franchise; new toys, new fans, and reignition of nostalgia for old fans like me. Thanks to the new movie release apparently some of the license holders of the Transformers brand decided to release remastered cartoons of the first season of Transformers on DVD. My wife and son picked it up for me for Father's Day.

I knew there's going to be some inevitable nostalgia rot. I have fond memories of the stuff I liked...but as I grew up the cringing parts sort of disappeared. Now they're captured in detail on DVD for me to relive and wonder, "What the hell was I thinking?"

There were technical mistakes. Color mismatches. Characters that aren't supposed to be there right in the scene ("Where's Bumblebee?" He's standing three feet behind you. Suddenly he's driving up to the group. Whoops.) In the first episodes the Autobots fly. In the third episode, Optimus takes a rocket pack from Sideswipe to fly after escaping Decepticons. So...can you fly, or not?

There were obvious mistakes in science and logic. One episode had Decepticons getting energy by stealing it from some crystal from the Earth's core (Fire in the Sky). As they extracted it the Earth cooled...um...our planet surface isn't primarily heated from the heat in the core, I'm afraid. It would make it hard to stand outside. And how do you have a forty foot robot transform into a handgun?

There's the plain weird...in the first season of The Transformers, I think the easiest way to cripple an autobot in car or truck mode is to tip him over. Every time someone is blown down a hillside or onto their side, someone has to step in to put them back upright before they're asked if they can transform. I'm surprised they don't all transform into turtles.

There were philosophical errors. Optimus believes in sanctity of life and freedom. They made the dinobots, and on the first activation the three Dinobots go on a rampage and "destroy" equipment before being stopped. So naturally, believing in the inalienable rights of all beings, he orders them deactivated forever and stuck into a collapsed cavern. Naturally the Autobots get into trouble, Wheeljack enhances the intelligence of the Dinobots enough that they are sent out to save the day, and now that they're suddenly beneficial to them Optimus graciously allows them to join the Autobot ranks. That's a nice message to send kids...if you're useful, you can live. But we're the good guys.

Which segues into the error of stereotypical cliche's. There is no depth of character; the beings are either good or evil. It's pretty clear cut. The bad guy wants to rule the universe. Why? No one knows. The good guy is entirely consumed by just stopping the bad guy. What happens if the bad guy is stopped? No one knows. Cartoon Optimus would have no purpose if not for that one goal. They're robots...giant computers...yet apparently computers that can't aim since most of their shots miss wildly. If someone's shot, they're fixed within ten minutes if it's not vital to the storyline that the character is mortally wounded. They're apparently not very good with building weapons either since we lowly humans have weapons that will level a city, while these four-story mechanical beings with interstellar travel have weapons that make little pops and sparks and the guy hit grunts a little big before getting back up and declaring himself injured, but would be okay.

There's even the GI Joe cartoon cliche of specialization. Every Transformer has a weapon that does something special. Starscream has null-rays. Megatron's fusion cannon. Who is building these weapons, themselves? They're weapons specialists and manufacturers? Shouldn't they just have a generic gun that just blows the limbs off each other? GI Joe took it one step further...when the one guy on the whole force that specialized in cold-weather fighting has a cold or breaks a limb, apparently the Joes just have to sit back while COBRA executes their latest scheme in the arctic.

But I still loved it.

I think it comes from the cartoon being a platform on which to hitch dreams. The idea of giant robots from another planet that can shift and fold into everyday objects was just plain cool. What if we could transform? Or had friends that were giant robots that could take us places? Wouldn't it be handier than having Mom and Dad hauling us to the mall? Of course the reason for all the shortcomings becomes crystal clear when you realize that as far as the company behind Transformers was concerned, the cartoon and comics were vehicles to sales. Sales slump, they introduce new robots. When The Powers That Be wanted to push sales of a new line of revamped toys they released the 1986 animated movie where many of the key characters...including Optimus Prime...were killed off. Supposedly the execs behind the movie were bewildered at the ensuing backlash they received from fans (they had actual emotional ties to these characters? No way...) (see links here and here).

Transformers obviously struck a chord in many of us as the franchise made enough money that it is still around today. More importantly the initial wave of Transformers had an audience that was static; as we grew up, so did the series. Only not as cartoons. As comics. (Okay, once there was enough of a chasm that the audience of the original series were having their own series, there were inevitable "reimagines" of Transformers like Beast Wars and Transformers Animated...ugh...).

My wife is a big critic of the cartoons from the early years. She finds them shallow and silly with inane dialog that appeals to the most childish of the childish, and I can't say I don't entirely disagree while re-watching the series. But I also handed her a copy of the Transformers Spotlight comic centered on Cliffjumper; a little red transformer that was almost looked like a brother to Bumblebee on the series (the toys were just repaints of each other) and was voiced on the cartoon by Casey Kasem. In the comic, Cliffjumper was stranded on a planet when his ship "had trouble". He befriended a sister and brother left parentless, and he helped around their farm. Eventually some Decepticons appeared and he dispatches three of them before they call for reinforcements and take the native friends hostage; Cliffjumper gives himself up to spare his friends, but in a turn...let's just say that you don't cross Cliffjumper. My wife's height of compliment was to say that she thought it was okay...which for a story about a cartoon series robot, is saying quite a bit. There are nuances in the comic that show more development you'd never see in the cartoons, such as when the flesh-and-blood friends ask Cliffjumper if he hurt other people and he refused to answer...he was an assassin, and the television series would never even allow the phrase "I'm going to kill you" to be uttered. The line between pure good and pure evil is made murky in these stories and makes the story more real in the process.

There have been other comic storylines that flesh out actual characters of dimension; the Megatron Origins series depicts Megatron as becoming a defacto leader of the Decepticons after the Autobot government basically opresses segments of the people and Megatron was an energon miner who traveled down a road of rebellion; he accidentally kills someone during an uprising and escapes imprisonment to fight in the underground gladiatorial arena where his skills were admired and honed. After reading that one I could almost sympathize with Megatron and his desire to kill all the Autobots.

Now the entire franchise has been rebooted with the live-action movie. I wasn't a huge fan of the new movies at first; since then the background has gradually been augmented with more background information and backstory from comic prequels (Alliance and Defiance, as well as a Reign of Starscream from just after the first movie). I've come to enjoy the film franchise as it stands in its own right. I still miss seeing the Dinobots, though. In another way I'm glad not to see them in the film. I'm afraid of what they'd have done to them and I kind of liked the characters as they were in the comics.

A 16 Year Old That Never Ages??

2009-06-24T22:28:00.000-04:00

Okay, this story is something I thought was a prank. But I've checked and rechecked the site and the date...it's not April 1st, and the site is on ABC's news site.

All I can say is that if it's true then this is one of the most intriguing medical cases I've ever heard. It's right up there with the story of Phineas Gage, the railroad worker that survived an accident that drove a rod through his skull and in the process became a pioneering study in the effects of brain injury on personality.

The story at ABC speaks of a girl named Brooke Greenberg. She recently turned 16 and is the size (and has the mental capacity) of a toddler. So far doctors know nothing about what is causing it; she's been diagnosed with no genetic disorders that can explain the condition.

All I can say is...wow. There are pictures of her on the website and she looks just like a little toddler. She could hold the key to how people age...a virtual fountain of youth. Although it looks like completely duplicating the process she's undergoing has a nasty side effect.

According the news story there's going to be a feature on Brooke on 20/20 this Friday (June 26th) at 10:00 PM Eastern. There's also a documentary airing on TLC August 9th at 9:00 PM.

Principles in Character and Reflection on One's Self

2009-06-19T19:38:00.000-04:00

Dictionary.com defines a principle as "An accepted or professed rule of action or conduct", "Guiding sense of the requirements and obligations of right conduct," and "A personal or specific basis of conduct or management."

Character is defined as "The aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing," "Moral or ethical quality," and "Qualities of honesty, courage, or the like; integrity."

Part of introspection...basically observing yourself, your emotional and mental states...is to see if you can find who you truly are. There are many times in my life where I do this. We all change as time goes on, but you should find that you have certain principles that act as a foundation for who you are, the essence upon which you build your character.

When I stop to think about who I am, how I've changed...I wonder if other people do this as well. Not just because I wonder if I'm normal in doing this. Thanks to my Asperger self I've stopped hoping to fit any cookie-cutter definition of "normal". But I find that sometimes reminding yourself of who you really are is a wonderful way to help keep yourself in "check".

I don't think many people...or enough people...take the time to do this or realize the ramifications of what they do. My wife was in a situation where she attended a small rural church and had what she thought were many established friends there. She had been having a rocky marriage at the time. She and her ex were attending marriage counseling services recommended by the pastor which...as you can tell from the "ex" part...didn't turn out well for the marriage.

She ended up separating from him.

Not long after separating and filing for the divorce she met me. We started dating.

At the time she wanted to share her church experiences with me...I had misgivings (as you may be able to tell from previous posts). She insisted I try going because the people were friendly and welcoming, as is the Christian community.

The pastor of that church asked someone to relay to me that if we, my then-girlfriend and I, were to show up together at a service one or both of us would be asked to leave. We were not welcome to come to church functions together.

Many of her friends at the time drifted away, suddenly busy with other things and never bothering to even offer words of support during her divorce period. The couple that did bother offering to go out still continued going to the same church that excluded my wife's attendance.

She still places much of the blame on herself and the pastor only because the pastor had intimate knowledge of the issues in the marriage and still was biased in her ex-husband's favor while she didn't air her own dirty laundry of the things that were happening for the congregation's benefit. Her friends knew of many of the things that had been going on or at least had some idea, though.

I sort of filed it away under validation for what I saw as people claiming to be good Christians while in reality just using religion as a tool for justifying passing judgment on other people. I thought it contradictory to the whole What Would Jesus Do characterization, but hey, to each their own. I found the pastor to be contradictory to the ideal of what a good spiritual leader was supposed to be in several ways and was somewhat baffled by why these people continue to go listen to him.

So what does this say for the principles involved here?

As a friend, if you were in a social group that for one reason or another shunned your friend, do you privately tell your friend you support them while continuing to associate yourself with the group?

What does it say for your principles when you continue with a group whose figurehead acts in a manner that is contrary to the professed values of what the organization stands for?

Do you have a right to protest that you aren't like everyone else when you voluntarily continue to associate yourself with that group, that you can be friends with someone who is ostracized by this group while still being part of that group?

I related this story because it was a powerful illustration of the type of situation that had me questioning the power of doublethink and how people rationalize away the contradictions to their principles, assuming they have them. It's not the only time I've had something related to me as a story or experienced personally that had me thinking about how other people act and react to situations. I think it's difficult, for example, in this situation for some of the principle players (that's another definition of principle there...what a flexible word!) to fully come to grips with their behavior if they were to take time to sit and reflect inwardly on their feelings and reactions to the situation. Perhaps they were just too selfish to consider the effect their reaction had on my now-wife's emotional state or simply didn't consider this to be an issue.

In case you're wondering, today it's largely water under the bridge; it happened many years ago, and the ex-husband the pastor was courting to stay in his congregation quit going shortly after all the dust settled. We were banned from going so we obliged them in not returning to their weekly message of fellowship. I say largely under the bridge because clearly I still think about it once in awhile. I've simply come to terms with it to the point where I'm not obsessing about it nor do I really have feelings of anger at the collective reaction the congregation had. I can honestly say that it reached the point of "Acknowledge, and move on..."

Using Your Computer for a Good Cause

2009-06-13T22:29:00.000-04:00

We're seeing a growing trend in "going green" today, especially when people changed from advertising it as "saving the environment" to "saving a few dollars". Can't blame people for that.

But there are some people...impatient people, or geeks like me, who usually have a computer on twenty four hours a day. While I leave mine going because I randomly use it at different points of the day as well as remotely access my files and have backup jobs running during the night, much of the time it just sort of sits there doing...well, not much.

But what if you turned those unused CPU cycles into something that could help other people?

It's not hard to do. Just mosey over to the BOINC project and download their client to your computer.

See, a lot of scientific work takes huge amounts of computing power. The problem is that these schools and foundations have limited funds for computers. That means that it takes longer to process the terabytes of information they've gathered for their research.

Here's where you come in. In many cases these jobs can be broken down into discrete quantities, kind of like packets of work. What BOINC does is let you sign up for what projects you'd like to volunteer to assist with (you can sign up for one or two or five...whatever you feel like assisting with) and download a few "packets" of work. Your computer then works on the jobs and periodically checks in with the project's servers to upload your results and download a new set of work items. While it may not seem like much, this sets up a HUGE virtual computer for researchers to tap into, greatly assisting in speeding up their research results and ultimately possibly helping many people...possibly even you.

What kind of projects can you assist with?

I'm working with the Rosetta@Home project. That project is working on protein folding...there's a full explanation on their page, but basically it's figuring out how different proteins fit together. This research is helping in finding therapies and drugs to cure HIV, Alzheimer's, and cancer, among other things.

There's a whole list of different things you can assist with on the BOINC page and you can sign up to help with many different one. You can configure how you'd like it to work and most of the time you probably won't notice your computer doing a heckuva lot...I have mine set to "pause" the BOINC jobs whenever the computer detects it is in use by me. I walk away and the system begins modeling proteins again.

It's a small contribution...but there's a slim chance that your contribution could end up curing a disease or at least furthering progress on finding a cure. There's plenty of people asking for your help out there. So why not turn your spare unusued computing power into something that might do some good for little effort?

When Religion Kills

2009-05-25T22:15:00.000-04:00

It seems religious tolerance is in fashion nowadays. There are those who try to spread the myth that Christians in the US are persecuted, as if they're the minority, and that atheists (or Christians of various sects) need to be tolerant of other people's views.

But what about situations where these religious beliefs lead to someone dying?

What if that someone was a child?

That's exactly what happened in this story where a woman was convicted for letting her child die from a condition that was easily and readily curable right up to the very end but instead of taking the child to a doctor she used prayer to save...well, not save...her eleven year old daughter.

I'm all about the philosophy of not caring what you do as long as you don't bother me. I don't care what you do behind closed doors. I don't care if you talk to invisible friends and I don't care about the plain brown wrappered boxes you have delivered to your home. If I don't hear it or smell it or have to participate and you don't disturb me, I could really not care less about what you do with your own time in your own home with consenting adults.

But when a person's religion ends up killing people, innocent people, I have an ethical problem with that. The most convenient bit of religious dogma is that all of this fits perfectly with the family's worldview; they pray for her to get well, and God would have saved her if He wanted her to live. She died, so it was His will to have this happen. Amen.

I see this as being superstitious nonsense akin to the murders in Africa happening today in the name of witchcraft; people are hunting and killing people because they're suspected of being witches. It's amazing what a lack of education can do. How can anyone see video footage like this and not condemn the perpetrators yet still call for tolerance for other people's beliefs leading to the death of children because of a preference for prayer over medical help? You can't have it both ways, saying there needs to be tolerance and respect for all other beliefs (although I'm led to believe that when someone says this, they actually mean respect and tolerance for their beliefs) while condemning some loons on a witchhunt in a remote village.

Unfortunately I would say that if I were to believe in the existence of a single Almighty God, I would have to also believe that since He allows all this to happen that it is all good. Otherwise He would have stepped in and done something about all of this. Since He hasn't, I'm led to believe that either He doesn't, in fact, exist, or it's okay since He's not intervening. One could argue about what He actually wants using passages from various scriptures but I'm afraid that without His clarification there is still room for you to be making interpretations of what is meant, meaning you could be wrong. The only authoritative conclusions would come from the horse's mouth. Seems pretty simple to boil it down. I've seen too many incidents similar to this to not have come to these conclusions.

Columbine and the Cassie Bernall Myth: I Believe in God!

2009-05-25T22:05:00.000-04:00

My wife has been enthralled with the book Columbine by Dave Cullen. I haven't read it but as she hits interesting bits she's been sharing excerpts with me. She highly recommends it.

The bit she shared that really bugged me concerned the story of Cassie Bernall. If you followed the Columbine aftermath at all you heard this story; one of the killers looked Cassie in the face and asked her if she believed in God. She said yes. He shot her pointblank for it, martyring her.

The problem was that this story never happened. It was a myth. Fabricated. With evidence to back it up. And the press knew about it as they reported it. The local papers didn't even come out with the truth until after Misty Bernall published the book She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall about the mythical incident passing it off as truth.

Emily Wyant was an eyewitness, hiding under the table with Cassie at the time of the shooting. She said that there wasn't any such exchange before Cassie was shot...the killer slapped the table, said, "Peekaboo!", and shot her before walking away with a broken nose from the recoil of the weapon.

The Bernall family later came out with a press statement saying "'Our intent was to share Cassie's story in an effort to encourage parents and teenagers. If any of our actions have hurt or offended anyone, we sincerely apologize.'"

The truth is that the story was hijacked from a young woman named Valeen Schnurr. From the Salon article:

**********
Schnurr was down on her hands and knees bleeding, already hit by 34 shotgun pellets, when one of the killers approached her. She was saying, "Oh, my God, oh, my God, don't let me die," and he asked her if she believed in God. She said yes; he asked why. "Because I believe and my parents brought me up that way," she said. He reloaded, but didn't shoot again. She crawled away.
**********

According to Cullen's book Schnurr, when telling the truth of the incident, was accused of trying to steal attention from Bernall. She was ridiculed and threatened.

Worse, the church, despite later knowing the truth, continued to perpetuate the myth because it served their purpose of recruiting more followers on the tail of the tragedy. Members with only a small shred of decency to respect truth over hype at most concede that it's the symbolism behind the story that's important, not the truth (NOTE: the link I put in here is from someone who is reviewing Cullen's book and stated that he regrets perpetuating the myth to a youth group upon learning the truth...this isn't accusing him of being one of those against which I'm spearing here. Read his entry for the section regarding his thoughts on that incident).

This is one more illustration of my "problem" with the state of organized religion in the US. Reason, truth...they don't mean much to the institution. Here it's illustrated that they'll knowingly perpetuate myths and falsehoods in order to further the collective agenda while even marginalizing or denigrating, in this case, a young woman who was actually victimized. They essentially victimized her twice, once through the Columbine incident, once by having a Christian institution try to silence the truth.

It's horrible to me seeing such cognitive dissonance among self-proclaimed believers as well; it hardly strikes me as Christian to see this kind of behavior from the church. Yet it doesn't merit a second thought from congregations.

Shameful.

Lottery Jackpot

2009-05-24T19:47:00.002-04:00

I had a post not long ago where I mentioned the lottery and hope in the context of people perpetually falling for email hoaxes. Coincidentally I ran across this article discussing the American Powerball lottery and at what point it is worth playing, mathematically and statistically, playing the lottery.

I play the lottery sometimes when I have a couple spare dollars in the wallet. I play in casinos once in a great while as well. I am well aware of the statistics, and even if I weren't aware then five minutes of reflection should lead you to the conclusion that the casinos manage to air condition those huge spaces somehow and paying large sums of money to the hundreds and hundreds of people elbowing you away from their favorite lucky slot machine isn't the reason.

The summary of the article should be no surprise. The best way to make millions is to already have millions...

Nutrition Controversy for Skeptics

2009-05-23T22:20:00.000-04:00

The cover story of the May/June 2009 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, a magazine that I rarely pick up unless the cover has a particularly eye-catching lead, held the headline "Science & Pseudoscience in Nutrition."

With a title like that, I had to take a look.

The article was actually titled Science and Pseudoscience in Adult Nutrition Research and Practice by Reynold Spector and started on page 35 and postulated that "Human nutrition research and practice is plagued by pseudoscience and unsupported opions. A scientific analysis separates reliable nutrition facts from nutritional pseudoscience and false opinion."

The article wasn't so much a debunking of various myths and ideas in nutrition as much as it was an analysis of the fact that such myths exist and why; it made me sad to see how much crap is out there more than clearing up some of the myths that exist. I suppose if it was an article trying to spread the truth of various myths then it wouldn't be much different from the articles you can find in most supermarket checkouts, though (except that one of the exceptional features of Skeptical Inquirer is that it does actually have reference notes in articles that take up more than two lines at the end of the piece...I was about to shorten the title to SI, but I really don't think Sports Illustrated is noted for putting in such footnotes).

The article sets out to answer four questions, paraphrasing:

What do we know about adult nutrition?
Is there an optimum body weight?
Why are there so many confusing or contradictory data and opinions in literature, media, and books, regarding things like whether certain foods even in moderation are harmful and are food supplements like megavitamins helpful?
Why are there so many erroneous or uninterpretable nutritional experiments...pseudoscience...in the literature?

The article is surprisingly readable and at 7 pages in length doesn't take long to get through and the conclusions were unsurprising to a cynic like me but may be interesting to the average Joe spending his day being assaulted by various weight-loss and nutrition headlines by magazines and news media. The sad part is that the conclusions won't be anything we want to hear.

Even a healthy skeptic like myself still woke up finding that I wanted to have a weekly trip to Red Lobster for my once-a-week fish serving because...vaguely...it's supposed to be healthy.

I suppose old habits die hard. At least I added a little more to my knowledge store.

The New Enterprise NCC-1701

2009-05-19T19:46:00.000-04:00

My son was playing with a Hasbro model of the new starship Enterprise from the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie and I started thinking about the various starships from the Star Trek franchise over the years.

It suddenly occurred to me that in Star Trek V, the brand new Enterprise-A was depicted as being in a constant state of disrepair. It was "brand new" and as such had all sorts of glitches and problems to work out in a shakedown cruise. It was new, undergoing refit (retrofit?), and that was the excuse given for the running gags of half the ship not working properly.

In the latest Star Trek movie, the eleventh in the series, the Enterprise wasn't even given a proper christening; her first voyage out of spacedock was to respond to a call for help from Vulcan. The ship not only performed admirably but managed to go toe-to-toe with a ship that is supposedly five miles long (heck, the new Enterprise is supposed to be over 700 meters in length...)

I then realized that the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the fresh refit transitioning between the old series and the first movie, worked without problems (except for the imbalance in the engines causing a wormhole...).

Unless I'm missing something, apparently the only time the running gag of "it's new, so it's expected to not work right" was in Star Trek V. Maybe it was such a dud that they decided not to revisit that plot device, unlike, say, time travel screwing up the timeline...

Seatbelts, Smoking, and Our Dignity

2009-05-18T19:56:00.000-04:00

I hope you can forgive this post; it's late, I'm tired, but these thoughts are troubling me as of late. So there may be a little rambling. I'm hoping that as I try to sort the thoughts out you'll find some form of coherent thought threading through the words that follow. Please feel free to leave your thoughts on the matter...

Our society is very troubling in that we tell each other that we live in the land of the free (in the United States) and yet there's a bit of cognitive dissonance where we ignore the fact that we're obviously not free. It's much like our students in school are told we live in a democracy (well...to be honest...most adults seem to think we live in a democracy as well). It's not true. We're a representative republic.

We can get ticketed for not wearing our seatbelts if we're pulled over on our nation's roads. I didn't understand this idea. If you're in a car accident and end up maimed or killed because you didn't wear a seatbelt, who else did you really hurt? Without counting the argument that you harm your family by dying, the fact is you didn't infringe on anyone else's freedom or rights by not wearing your seatbelt. You put yourself at risk by not wearing it. You don't put your passenger at risk of anything more, really, than extreme mental or emotional trauma if they see how the accident affects your body.

It's a simple idea...why don't you have a right to act as you wish if you're not harming or infringing on someone else's rights, within reason?

This same country allows you to purchase sticks of nicotine laced with all sorts of additional poisons like arsenic, tar, and...well,...nicotine. Among lots of other trace chemicals. These things are known to cause cancers as well as aging your skin and increasing your risk for strokes, clots, heart attack, etc. etc...our government even imposes a so-called sin tax on such items to "discourage" customers from using them. There are laws imposing limitations on where and when you can smoke as well as what age you must be before purchasing them. Worse, these do infringe on my lungspace...if you're smoking near me, I inhale your fumes. Yet they're still legal and are a billion-dollar industry.

Hmm...what could be in common with these two things, aside from hypocrisy? Possibly it's the fact that these are both industries with powerful lobbies behind them pushing their interests above those of your rights. We are told that seatbelt laws are imposed to protect you, for your own good. No. Seatbelts protecting you are a positive side effect of the insurance industry lobbying for laws to keep their costs down. On the flip side cigarettes are sold because taking them away would be infringing on your right to make decisions for yourself of what risks are or aren't acceptable, and you should be allowed to purchase these things if you're of age and are willing to take the risk. No. If that was really what the government was trying to do then you wouldn't have seatbelt laws. The truth is that cigarettes are socially acceptable and bring in a metric crapload of cash.

Am I the only one that sees such double-dealing going on? I often stop and wonder about people in our society, wondering if anyone else stops to think about the lies we're told and often seem to accept without question, like the idea that we're a democracy or that the founding fathers of the United States founded this country to be a Christian nation. We're not, they didn't. No matter how many times you find the evidence refuting such ideas you soon find someone else repeating the same lies.

I got to thinking about our rights and people's blind acceptance of contrary ideas because my wife's grandmother is in a precarious position right now, healthwise. She was found laying on the floor of her family's bathroom one morning, unconcious, blood sugar off the charts. She's survived several days so far but isn't out of the woods, and last I knew doctors were saying that it appears she has had several small strokes over time and suffered a heart attack the first night she was in the hospital. She is in her mid eighties and has had deteriorating health.

From my understanding some family members were throwing a fit when they found out Grandma had a Do Not Resuscitate order on file.

This poor woman has been through a lot in life. Her children have been fortunate enough to have a chance to say goodbye in case the eventuality of passing on occurs in the near future; those that wished to take advantage of the opportunity appear to have been able to do so. She has come to terms with the possibility of death.

But there are people who persist in the idea that life, no matter what, must be saved. How can we live in a land of the free when we can't choose our own destiny? It's our own life. If it is a divine gift then it is still nonetheless a gift for us to do with as we please; to not have respect for this idea is to undermine our right to basic human dignity.

The lies we are fed, that seatbelts are there to protect us (says the insurance lobbyists) and cigarettes purchases are exercising our capitalist freedoms (say the tobacco lobbyists) and even the idea of America as a democracy (representative republic! Stay awake in your social studies classes!) are an insult to our human dignity; worse we allow others to keep us ignorant to awareness of these issues, so we're insulting our own dignity. Educate yourselves. Become aware of what is going on around you, and become aware of when others are trying to pursuade you for their own benefit.

Retake your dignity. Because if you're willing to be taken advantage of, there's no shortage of people willing to profit from your ignorance and push their own agendas.

Gay Marriage and History

2009-05-03T22:05:00.000-04:00

Beauty contestant Carrie Prejean was bashed for her silly off-the-cuff answer, which she apparently characterized as biblically correct instead of politically correct, to a question from Perez Hilton about her opinion of same-sex marriage rights in states.

Too often I hear people justify the anti-same-sex stance as being anti-biblical.

Just today I ran across a couple articles that may question the validity of that idea...or at least give a little history lesson on the origins of marriage.

Chilling Effects in Teaching and Offending the Religious

2009-05-03T22:03:00.000-04:00

I couldn't help but be intrigued when I stumbled across another site listing a student as a litigious douchebag. So I started looking around to find out what the hubub was.

Apparently a high school teacher was found guilty in a federal lawsuit of violating the first amendment by saying that Creationism was "religious, superstitious nonsense" during a lecture and thus offending a former Advanced Placement European History student by the name of Chad Farnan.

The news story can be found here.

Predictably this is causing a class A crapstorm, where Christians claim they are under attack in America (despite being the majority) and secular humanists yelling that this is simply rediculous to have such an idiotic lawsuit in the first place. PZ Myers, respected professor and biologist, had an interesting point in that Creationism as a movement is quick to point out that Creationism is a "scientific theory" (it isn't) that is separate from religion (it isn't) so it should be allowed in classrooms, but with this lawsuit finding in favor of Farnan, how can dismissing Creationism as superstitious nonsense offend someone's religious rights?

What perpetually amazes me is we still have people with some form of sense shut off when they decide to become teachers in schools today. This guy was expressing a personal opinion and due to some twerp getting offended gets...this being America...sued. Because of course appealing to a sky wizard to intervene, as is consistent with his beliefs, simply doesn't have any effect. Somehow the law of man must intervene to make an example of him.

Teachers are expected to shut off any sense of self when teaching lest they become the target of some pissed parents or lawsuit when some form of personality offends one of the kids or their overprotective, or in some cases plain ignorant, parents.

Express an opinion contrary to a student's belief? May get sued.

Maybe you are contrary to a student belief. Openly gay? Better watch your opinions being expressed. But you should tread lightly when breaking Suzy and Billy's liplock in the hallway between classes because it may be because you're not the same persuasion.

Just being a different gender carries dangers. Male teachers seeing a thirteen year old exposing her thong have to find a female teacher to address the issue or risk sexual harrasment...for enforcing a (GASP!) dress code!

Don't get overly friendly with students. Don't interact with them outside classes unless you must. Keep doors open. Don't touch them either.

Try explaining why Creationism isn't science in class. It's pretty simple...it doesn't fit the scientific method. It cannot. It does not. Here the application of actually explaining the issue in a class where it has legitimate reason to be taught may offend someone...and cause a royal crapstorm because it offended someone in the class.

I'm amazed there are still people with some form of crazy optimism that they can make a difference in teaching. There's simply too many drawbacks for me to see a positive benefit to doing it; this is just a rant about offending some nutters to feel bad about something you may or imply while going about the course of teaching while suffering from the condition of being human. Teachers are expected to be teachers, counselors, substitute parents, moral pillars, all while be accountable for the utter lack of ambition and getting the blame for parental failures in actually raising their kids while not having the tools for holding the students themselves accountable for their behavior. Oh, and teachers are expected not to have lives, opinions, or personalities of their own.

The Flu and Religion: Offensive?!

2009-04-29T22:17:00.000-04:00

I saw a story in the paper yesterday that had an Israeli official calling for the Swine Flu to be called the Mexican Flu, because the reference to pigs was offensive.

Yeah. "We find pigs unclean, so you shouldn't call it that."

Instead of working on a cure, working on containing a disease...we're worried about ignorant people thinking getting the flu will somehow mean they have unclean pork germs in them.

Maybe twisting the thinking a little more would mean that if God didn't want you to worry about it, you won't get infected...so the stigma or offense you feel for having the affliction is part of His punishment.

Just a thought.

An Exercise in Logic and Proof

2009-04-25T22:00:00.000-04:00

My wife is more religious than I am. Not to the point where she recoils and hisses like a vampire when confronted by something erotic, for example, but she generally goes along with the whole idea of a God and a Christian denomination's ideas of truth.

I, on the other hand, don't.

In our very rare conversations about religion she had said of me that (to paraphrase) no matter what evidence she presented, I'd have an excuse not to believe it, so it does no good to discuss it.

I on the other hand see it as arguing over something that has no foundation on which to believe, and that the idea of me having an excuse not to believe the reasons I'm presented with are actually nothing more than turning the tables on the other person's inability to present such reasonable proof. What am I talking about? This excellent essay by Carl Sagan explains it quite clearly. She accused me of always having an excuse...I say it's the other way around. The essay is very short and lays out the issue in a simple manner.

I realize this isn't going to make any difference; people will believe what they want to believe and they'll always find a reason to cling to those beliefs. What it came down to for me was whether I could accept living with ideas that I had concluded were not supported, essentially living a lie. If I couldn't reconcile the ideas presented to me from the Christian religion...or any other religion...with the voice of reason in my head and experiences in life, then I simply cannot bring myself to follow the belief system imposed by those religions.

Character

2009-04-22T19:40:00.000-04:00

Character is what you do when you know no one is looking.

Most people at some point in their lives encounter a situation where something is going on that is ethically or morally wrong, but in speaking up you can put your job or friendships in danger, or at the very least make you unpopular with people that can make your life hell.

My wife was recently in that kind of situation. This isn't a post about what had happened; it isn't my place, despite how very hard it is for me not to try to get the word out there at how outrageous the situation was.

This is about choices we make in that kind of situation. She chose to speak out. She didn't scream it from the top of the hills but she did do something that could make her unpopular with certain people in a position to make her life more difficult.

She chose to do what is right.

She could have stayed quiet, she could have rationalized away what had happened to help her sleep at night. But she actually chose to do something to try to right a wrong.

And I couldn't be more proud of her for it.

Religulous

2009-04-15T22:56:00.000-04:00

A few nights ago I watched the Bill Maher movie "Religulous", his effort to sell the idea of doubt in established Christian religions.

I actually watched it twice; I didn't think my wife, a Christian, would want to watch a movie whose basic premise is that Christianity is based on fairy tales. After she got home I mentioned that I watched it so she wouldn't need to see it and she told me she wanted to see it. Surprise!

So I re-watched it since it was still in the DVD player.

The movie is basically a series of encounters with various religious settings in which Maher would ask reasonable (and inflammatory) questions of the faithful. These encounters include a "truck stop chapel", a Jesusland amusement park, the "creationist museum", and a jewish institute of science and some Hebrew word I can't recall, among others. Surprisingly the only places that apparently kicked him out were the property in front of a Mormon temple and the Vatican.

Maher made great pains to point out what he finds to be the absurd elements of the Christian religion. He found people who thought the Scientologists and their billion-year-old Thetan boogymen to be crazy while the same people thought talking snakes were fine. He highlighted tools that observing Jews use to jump through loopholes in their laws over the sabbath (self dialing telephones? Air powered wheelchairs?) because, according to them, if the lawgiver is infallible and there are loopholes, then He put them in there for a reason, such as letting them find ways around the laws.

Bill would point out fallacies of reasoning and bring up points such as how oddly similar the story of Jesus is to various deities that predate Jesus, such as the Egyptian Horus and the god Mithras. Every interview seemed to end up with an uneasy silence or two before a (usually) amicable parting; he even got a hug from a minister of a church for "ex-homosexuals" (the minister himself was a reformed homosexual married to a reformed lesbian).

The subjects in the movie never moved from their previous stance on religion, but this film did end up acting as a vehicle for voicing Bill Maher's idea that he doesn't have the answers but the people peddling religion will tell you they do have the answers, and they don't. This isn't a movie that will sway anyone away from their beliefs because faith inherently is unreasonable; as Bill pointed out, there's a cognitive dissonance where other people's ideas make them crazy (Thetans!) while the Christian belief in talking snakes and Great Flood waters and talking bushes on fire are perfectly reasonable, as is buying various inventions meant to keep you from breaking Jewish laws such as the phone that is perpectually dialing all the numbers and you stick a pencil into a hole to prevent it from dialing a button thus circumventing some rule about doing work that would prevent you from dialing a button.

If you're not religious this movie is a great high-altitude overview of some of the more insane ideas that people accept as truth despite being insane ideas. If you are religious, you will probably find elements that are amusing about other religions, but may get offended when your own personal faith is criticized in Maher's tornado-like swath of critiques. He doesn't perform his trademark humor; he simply asks questions worded in a way that almost dares the people he's talking to to not see what he sees as the silliness in their beliefs.

Religulous is entertaining for non-religious people and may be slightly amusing for people who do subscribe to a particular sect. I enjoyed it. My wife didn't protest too loudly. I can't wait to see another of Maher's documentaries.

On Character

2009-04-14T19:41:00.000-04:00

I said I've been using this blog as an outlet; creative outlet, a way to express my worries, things in my life, things that other people probably don't care about but I just wanted to try getting out of my head.

Recently I had a bit of a character lesson about my children. See, we think that the older one has a problem with selfishness.

I have a seventeen year old stepdaughter and a four year old son. That daughter didn't say much of anything leading up to the surgery. No questions. No, "good luck". Nothing. My son had no idea what was going on...I felt he was too young to fully understand, so I thought we'd just deal with his questions as he had them. I left Monday afternoon for the hotel and Tuesday had the surgery.

My wife checked her email and had a message from my boss asking how I was doing. In it he said he had asked my daughter when he saw her in passing during the day and she had said, "I don't know."

Originally my parents were going to bring my son and my stepdaughter up on Wednesday night to visit me. They came up with my son. My daughter decided she wanted to go hang out at her boyfriend's house and watch a movie and play a video game.

My wife had a text message arrive from the daughter on Thursday asking how I was doing. This was the day before I was to be discharged...and the first time she asked how I was.

On the Monday after Easter my wife had gone on an appointment an hour away from the house. The daughter decided she wanted to hang out at her boyfriend's house for the day, since she had school off. I was home alone most of the day.

Then I got a phone call from my wife...she had a flat tire and was letting me know she was running even farther behind schedule. I couldn't drive. I didn't have a car anyway...my daughter had the second car. My wife would be able to change the tire, but it was another emotional punch making me feel useless as I currently am...but self pity is for another time.

My wife called my stepdaughter and her boyfriend, a jock-built treestump that for his faults isn't the worst choice in the world for the daughter to be dating. But my daughter told my wife that they had "just sat down for dinner at Olive Garden". My wife was quite irate that she hadn't told her where she was going other than the boyfriend's house...this was a deal that they had between them that she'd let her know where she'd be in case there was a problem.

At any rate, I had the phone call about the tire, and waited about half an hour before I was about to redial her to check up on her. She was stranded by the freeway where every year a number of people are killed by motorists whizzing by as she'd be working on the car; I was quite anxious to hear from her again. Just as I was about to dial the phone rang. She was okay. A state trooper and another gentleman stopped and assisted just after she got the nuts loosened on the tire and had started getting the vehicle jacked into the air.

After her adventures she got home and told me the daughter had never called again. Never bothered to check whether she was okay, if the car was running again, nothing.

I called my father. Because of schedules I wouldn't be able to get the car into the shop to plug the tire for awhile, and my wife is leaving Wednesday until Sunday on a trip. That meant the family car may be driven by the daughter and we wanted a spare tire available for her, just in case something happened. My parents watch my son overnight Monday into Tuesday so Grandma can visit with her grandson for awhile and also save a little on daycare costs. I called, and my son answered the phone.

"Hello," he said in his hesitant but developing big-boy phone voice.
"Hey, dude!" I said.
"Oh hi Daddy I'm having a fun time how's your boo boo Daddy?"

I was surprised. He asked about my surgical wound? It's been a couple days since he asked, again, to see my boo boo under the shirt. I told him I was doing a little better. When my father got on the phone I asked him who put him up to asking.

"No one. He did it on his own."

My own son asked about how I was doing. My daughter hasn't said much at all.

She then called that night (still Monday) to say she had missed her ride to acting lessons and she decided to go to her boyfriend's house. "Don't you have your ride's phone number?" "No." "Did you tell him you were going this week?" "No." She didn't see a problem with this. Her acting classes, half paid by her, are supposed to help her in the career she insists she wants to break into. She can't be bothered to cover her bases to make sure she makes it there in time for her ride to take her, or if she were running behind be able to contact him and beg for five more minutes until she arrives at the rendezvous point.

My wife had words with her that night. She told her how selfish she has been, how she couldn't be bothered to ask how I was doing after having a rough time after the surgery. How irresponsible she's been about making sure she'd get to lessons on time. How I help keep the house over her head, how she doesn't mind having our food, our money, our help...all in exchange for taking out trash, keeping her room organized (which has been another problem), and for now, dishes and general pickup duty as needed since I can't get around very well.

This morning she had to get a ride to school from her boyfriend. My wife was taking a half-day from work to drive to my doctor's appointment and then after school was picking up my parent's car from the shop, and the daughter was to drive home the family vehicle. I realized that nothing my wife said made any difference to her. She left this morning without so much as a "good luck."

My four year old son had more concern for my condition than my 17 year old daughter.

I know this paints a negative picture of her. She sounds like some street hooligan, a rebellious teen that is out running around at all hours and probably a road to get pregnant by the time she's 18 and strung out on drugs by the time she's 20. But she's not. For the most part, when she's told to do something, very specifically, she'll do it. A general directive such as, "Pick up your room", usually yields a room with two or three things moved to another shelf but still would have crap strewn about the floor and her claiming not to know what else to clean up, simultaneously giving a blank look I've come to call "teentard", complete with a blank stare.

But when she's told to get the trash taken out she'll do it. Told to help the little guy pick up his trains, she does it. She doesn't stay out late; she normally stays close to her curfew. She doesn't argue much unless confronted about something she neglected to do. She gets decent grades in school; not top-tier academics, but not in the bottom either. Since my operation she's spent only the two days with her boyfriend at his house; we just wished she had priorities shifted slightly more towards concern for her stepfather and his health instead of sitting and watching a movie and playing a video game.

Part of me wonders if she just plain doesn't give a rat's arse about me. I'm just a supply of food and shelter and a car to borrow. But that's making it too personal. My wife thinks she's just plain self-centered and selfish.

My wife tried to raise the stepdaughter to be independant, to not rely on others for emotional support. I married my wife when the daughter was barely 12 years old, so most of her personality had been set; she was a good kid, overall well behaved. But now it seems that she was raised to be so independant that she primarily cares about herself. Most teenagers do that to some degree; most people in general display selfishness to some degree. But here I was nervous as hell about this operation, bleeding out the night after the operation, the person that gives her a home and food and even a car to tool around in, and she couldn't ask me how I was until two days after the operation? She sends over one hundred text messages on her cell phone a day, and while it's still a social faux-pas to say something personal over a text message, she couldn't even have sent one text message to me to wish me well or ask if I was still alive.

I'm disappointed in her. I never dreamed I'd feel so disappointed simply because my four-year-old showed more concern for me with a simple question on the phone than my seventeen year old, who is more than old enough to comprehend some of the dangers of this surgery and difficulties I'm facing.

I will say that at least I'm not angry with her. Only disappointed at this point. But que sera, sera...