Cargo Cults

I'm busy reading Richard Dawkins' latest book, The God Delusion. It's interesting, if quite opinionated and arrogant, but there are quite a few things within its pages that I was surprised to learn of.

One example is the existence of Cargo Cults in the Southwest Pacific. From wikipedia:

Cargo cults have been recorded since the 19th century. The cult participants generally do not fully understand the significance of manufacturing or commerce. They have limited purchasing ability. Their understanding of western society, religion, and economics may be rudimentary. These cults are a response to the resulting confusion and insecurity. They rationalize their situation by reference to religious and magical symbols they associate with Christianity and modern western society. Across cultural differences and large geographic areas, there have been instances of the movements independently organizing.

The most famous examples of Cargo Cult behavior have been the airstrips, airports, and radios made out of coconuts and straw. The cult members built them in the belief that the structures would attract transport aircraft full of cargo. Believers stage "drills" and "marches" with twigs for rifles and military-style insignia and "USA" painted on their bodies to make them look like soldiers.

Utterly amazing! The Cargo Cult demonstrates, in a way more real than any other, how an unexplained phenomenon can spark a religion, complete with rituals, a messiah, and miracles. And it can happen independently, again and again. Dawkins talks about one, the cult of John Frum

The cult is still active today. The followers believe that John Frum will come back on a February 15 (the year of his return isn't known), a date which is observed as "John Frum Day" in Vanuatu. The name "John Frum" is possibly derived from World War II GIs introducing themselves to the locals as "John from America".

Humans will believe anything, and rationalize to continue believing it. I can't wait until the aliens come, and we worship them.

Everyone: Cool it!

I read this interesting article the other day: Thatcher economist de-hypes climate debate

"There is no greater threat to the people of this planet than the retreat from reason we see all around us today."

I, personally, want to poke out my eyes when I read this article - but only because the author has a thesaurus stuck up his ass. What in the hell do ambit and adjure mean? But I do think he captures the subject of his article well. Nigel Lawson's article, The Economics and Politics of Climate Change: An Appeal to Reason is slightly longer at 18 pages, but well worth the read.

Several of his points (he makes others - it is well worth the read):

• the science on climate change is not conclusive
• the debate about climate change is being actively stifled
• the assertion that global warming is all bad is unfounded

I've noticed in all of my interactions with people who feel passionately about global warming that the discussion has taken on the same tone as an abortion debate: emotion rules over reason. Articles that talk about some "effect of global warming" only mention one side of the story. For example: Greenland's Ice Cap is Melting at a Frighteningly Fast Rate only briefly mentions that Antartica's ice sheet is thickening, doesn't mention that melting ice is only a secondary cause of rising sea levels, and throws out a scare about the Gulf Stream disappearing -- an idea that is controversial.

What we need is more nuanced information - The Greenland Ice is interesting - which might actually allow us to think about this. Clearly the extremist argument isn't working - not for the leaders of our nation, and not for the people who continue to buy SUVs.

It's time to sit back, think about things rationally, and cool it.

The Singularity Is Near

Could the biotech revolution finally be producing some fruit? This disease kills thousands every year - have we entered bridge two?

Diabetes Breakthrough

Results Only Work Environment

It's time for a revolution.

I've noticed this for some time: I'm expected to show up for work at 9, but often I don't get into the idea of doing work until late morning. Then I break for lunch, and it takes a couple of hours to get back into the flow.

When I've had consulting gigs, I've noticed that it's much easier to work. I sit down only when I'm ready to work, and I get up when I'm tired. Since I'm fully engaged when I'm working, I can get two hours of work done in two hours.

Contrast this with the work I get done in an average 8 hour day. I don't need to get into details, but it's lower than 8 hours of work.

Enter the Results Only Work Environment. Best Buy has recently (within the last two years) been operating (much of that time without the knowledge or permission of its CEO) under a no meetings, no schedules, no mandatory face time principle. As long as employees get their work done, it's policy not to require them to be in the office. Some of the rules are interesting, too:

No.7: Nobody talks about how many hours they work. No.9: It's O.K. to take a nap on a Tuesday afternoon, grocery shop on Wednesday morning, or catch a movie on Thursday afternoon.

Does this work? Productivity has gone up. Best Buy's stock is up over last year's. It will be interesting to see if they can make this model work for non-corporate employees (like retail salespeople).

Given my inherently lazy nature, would I be able to pull off getting all of my work done if I'm getting up at 10 and going to a movie once a week? I think there's only one way to find out.

But, how do I convince my boss?

Government Theft?

Here was are, a day after the election. The Democrats are rejoicing that they have "swept" the elections, and Rumsfeld has resigned. Finally, say Democrats and liberals, our voice will be heard! Our freedoms will not be run over roughshod!

Or will nothing change?

Normally throwawayyourtv.org has a lot of liberal clips on it, ranging from BBC documentaries to Daily Show clips. This one, however, appears to be focused on the government as a whole. It is a bit of a conspiracy theory, but the dots are well connected. The whole thing is about 2 hours long, but he gets to the point in the first few minutes: Freedom to Fascism

Here's an article which sort of sums up the main points of the film (and throws some Populist BS in there too - watch out!) : Outing the Constitutional Criminals

Is the income tax really not based on law? This guy makes the argument that, while it's not contitutionally based, there are plenty of indirect contractual agreements that make this legal. I find it hard to believe, though, that we're paying taxes and there's no hard solid law to base it on. The Tax Freedom Movement - Establishment Controlled?

Of course, if the government and the IRS didn't have anything to fear, why are there such vitriolic reviews of this movie? Who is out there claiming absurdity, instead of scratching their heads and wondering why people are out there protesting and winning court cases? Two Hit Pieces for "America: Freedom to Fascism"

Once again, I can't wait for Google to amassed enough intelligence for it to be "The Great Validator," because I'm not smart enough to figure all of this out.

A Call for Reason

A recent episode of CNN's Broken Government series, Do Nothing Congress, made claims that Tom Delay was instrumental in creating the current political environment, through his escalation, to the expense of all else, of fundraising and re-election. Whoever caused it, it's becoming more and more clear to me that the center is no longer valued. Extremism, on both sides of the political spectrum, rules.

It's obvious in the media as well. O'brian, Hannity, Colmes, Krugman, and on and on, view the world through their one sided filters. They only nominally defend their positions - whatever they don't have a good answer for, they lob some controversy about the opposition into the mix, and deflect.

My personal conversations quickly lose focus. Discussions with friends degenerate when labels start being thrown around -- Communist, terrorist, draft dodger, incompetent, heartless, inhuman. Politicians and scientists alike are accused of being in the pocket of Big Corporations and activists are accused of being alarmists.

Most surprising to me, I've been accused of being both a Republican and a liberal (separately -- I don't think anyone's calling me a liberal Republican). It's surprising to me because I identify with neither.

In a recent conversation, I was told to get off the fence and stop flip-flopping. I suppose my opinions aren't written in stone, true enough, but I think my opinions are reasoned. I'm not arrogant enough pretend to know everything - so I'm willing to think about something again when I learn something new. Not so the case for people who have strong political identifications: Democrats and Republicans Both Adept at Ignoring Facts, Study Finds

"The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data," [study author Drew] Westen said.

Scott Adams had a recent post about what he calls advocates: Stem Cells. I think he's right when he points out it's not worth it to argue with them.

I read an article in the SB Independent, a liberal stronghold (which, curiously, endorsed Schwarzenegger for Governor over Angelides), which I thought would be appropriate to share: Republican Reason

According to last week’s Angry Poodle column, “True-believers, flat-Earthers, and witch burners,” employing the techniques of homophobia and racism, control the Republican Party. Independent Executive Editor Nick Welsh could not be clearer as to what he thinks about the party that a majority of American voters has regularly elected to office. May a Republican respond? It is counterproductive and beneath the stature of a writer such as Nick Welsh to engage in such personal invective, other than perhaps in jest—but I don’t think he was attempting to be funny here. By way of contrast, the better approach is to affirm the goodness of one’s political opponents’ motivations, while also allowing that reasonable individuals can differ in their views.

I believe that most Democrats are well-meaning on social issues and passionate about some issues, such as the environment. My view is also that they are sometimes misinformed on issues that, if they became aware of them, might cause them to reevaluate their opinions. That is the purpose of dialogue and debate: for us to reconsider our views. Voters who disagree with the positions of the Republican Party should vote it out of office. But we are not all stupid and bad (not even most of us). Honest.
 — Lanny Ebenstein

Would that this advice be followed, by both sides.

Actions and Consequences

In the last week, I've watched several video clips from this site: Throw Away Your TV.

Just now, I watched a few recent posts that really scared me - about the direction our country - the one whose leaders we vote for in a few weeks - is taking us.

Fear in Political Ads
This is a continuing and growing theme in the President's arsinal. Apparently, only our current President can stop terrorism - but he hasn't really done that yet.

Bush - I Don't Believe Religious People Kill Innocent People
Here's how he's going to do it - by torturing people. He's not going to talk about what constitutes torture, or whether particular tactics are torture, or have an open debate about this.

Maher Arar Fears the USA
This is the result, when you torture people, when you remove their access to due process: innocent people are hurt. This guy has no recourse - his life has been turned upside down and destroyed by our government, he's been proven innocent, and the US won't even admit it made a mistake.

Isn't this the reason we fought Communism in the last century?

A lot of innocent people have been killed in Iraq.

Mr. Bush, I thought religious people didn't kill innocent people.

Media Context

I can't help but continue to love Scott Adams.

In his latest blog post, Sunday Blogging, he complains that the media fails to give him all the information he needs to make an informed opinion.

For example, Iran has 25,000 Jewish citizens. The media made a big deal – and rightly so – about the president of Iran’s comments about “wiping Israel off the map,” and of his questioning the Holocaust. For context, wouldn’t you like to know how the Jews living in Iran are being treated?

I've never agreed so much. The first time I can remember thinking this was during the media frenzy after 9/11. At the time, I can remember thinking, "Why did Bin Laden attack us?" Yet I can't remember this question ever being answered. Instead, we got simple sound bites like, "The terrorists hate our freedom." I don't for one second believe that. Even Aljazeera fails to elaborate.

President Bush is still misleading you and hiding the real reason from you, which means that the reasons to repeat what happened remain," bin Ladin said.
--Bin Ladin: Reasons to attack remain

So what are the reasons? Wikipedia has some answers:

[t]he ruling to kill the Americans and their allies civilians and military - is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Makka) from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, 'and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah'.
--Responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks

Reading this, though, it's clear that a lot of people believe Bin Laden did it because he is following his violent Muslim beliefs. But even this isn't the whole story - he wouldn't be on the attack if it weren't for our support of Israel and for our military installations in Saudia Arabia.

Now, that's a reason to leave out context. Bringing Israel into the equation, and the ethics of our worldwide military presence, would bring a standstill to the news. Maybe it would be a good idea for CNN to sit down and present a couple of days worth of programming on Israel - but then, maybe it's just easier to let us continue to think we've been attacked because the enemy is a bunch of crazy religious fanatics.

Nanotechnology: I'm Pulling for You!

Well, the verdict is in: either we're destined to become a super-race living in a post-singularity society, or we're doomed, all in the next 94 years.

Experts: Technology Could Save or Destroy Civilization This Century

I was tempted to launch into a diatribe about how the smartest people all gathered in one room can only talk about the obvious, but then I realized that there was probably a lot more that was said, but was left out of the article.

There are truly some amazing things that are happening right now.

• From the same conference: New Power Suit Amplifies Human Strength
• Propulsion with no moving parts: Microwave engine gets a boost
• Chatbots march ever closer to passing the elusive Turing Test: King of the chatbots Nanotechnology continues its soon to be exponential growth: Improbable "Buckyegg" Hatched
  
• Quitting smoking is about to get a whole lot easier: Anti-nicotine vaccine could help smokers: researchers
• Etc, etc, etc!

A century? I think we'll have a pretty good clue in the next 20 years. By then, the Internet will have evolved into something that permeates our lives, oppressive regimes will have fallen to the irrepressible effects of free speech, some major diseases will no longer be giant causes of death, and computers will be able to match the human brain in computation ability, and we'll have our answer to Global Warming, either by technology, or by finding out it was a sham.

OR the Internet will be crippled by Microsoft's innability to fix its security problems, China and North Korea will continue to be able to block free speech at their borders and keep their populations ignorant, we'll find out that Cancer and AIDS are really friggin hard to kill, the end of Moore's Law will be shown to be a brick wall, and the seas will start to rise to uncontainable levels.

I can't wait!

Clinton VS Wallace Followup

From joshvogel's livejournal blog:

Bush's response to not acting on bin Laden

So, to summarize, we have a former President who sounds like he knows what he's talking about but is possibly factually incorrect, and a current President who makes no attempt to rebut the claims, choosing instead to spin his response into an answer about why he needs the power to wiretap our phones.

Clinton VS Wallace

This interview has gained some traction, and is sparking some intense political bashing.

Wallace-Clinton Fox News Sunday interview transcript:
Fox News Sunday, Interview With President Bill Clinton, 9/22/06

Here's a video, although it's chopped up a bit from the transcript:
Video: Clinton vs. Wallace on “Fox News Sunday”
It looks like you can watch the whole thing on Fox's site as well, but good luck finding it on their home page.

Wallace on the interview, with video:
Video: Fox News hypes 'heated' Clinton interview: 'You'll see the good, the bad and the ugly'

Thinkprogress on whether Wallace ever asked other administration officials about Clarke or the USS Cole:
Chris Wallace Never Asked A Bush Administration Official Why They Demoted Richard Clarke
Chris Wallace Has Never Asked A Bush Administration Official About The USS Cole

A link from Michelle Malkin's site claiming the opposite:
Patterico’s Pontifications » Chris Wallace Has Indeed Grilled Bush Officials About Failing to Get Osama Before 9/11

I can't wait until the future, when the AI inside Google will automatically do fact checking and cross-referencing for you. We can't be that far away; after all, Dvorak thinks we should already have computers that do perfect translation. I mean, how hard can it be?

Updated
This may be what Clinton was expecting (from 9/18/06):
John Stewart interviews former President Bill Clinton

Here's what I think about the Wallace interview:
-Wallace didn't think he was going to spark such an emotional reaction, and that he thought it was a legitimate question.
-The question was biased. "Why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?" should have been, "Critic xyz claims you could have done more to capture Bin Laden, do you feel this is true?"
-Wallace was unprepared: he didn't know his facts, and he forgot or underestimated the former president's spinaptitude and intelligence.
-It's unfortunate that news interviews don't throw out more hardball questions. Unfortunately, if Clinton had expected that kind of question, he wouldn't have shown.

Global Warming and Exxon PR Tactics

Back when I was writing Global Warming Pt III, I noticed that I had trouble finding scientists who supported claims that the evidence on global warming is inconclusive but that were also independent. Nearly everyone I found is involved with some an organization with a sciency name and funding from Exxon.

It seemed fishy at the time, but I tried not to think about it too much - I mean, really, are all of these guys corrupt just because Exxon supports their work?

Now, in a book excerpt, George Monbiot is claiming that the tactics Exxon uses are in fact as shady as they sound: The denial industry. From the summary:

For years, a network of fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies has been claiming that science of global warming is inconclusive. They set back action on climate change by a decade.

The tactic is this: set up/fund a wide variety of scientific sounding organizations (TechCentralStation, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Centre for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change), and let these organizations do the obfuscation for you. Monbiot claims that these organizations do not invent junk science, but they loudly publicize contradictory studies, sometimes even long after they've been disproved.

This reminds me of a movie that was out recently, Thank You For Smoking. In the movie, the main character, a lobbyist for the tobacco industry, explains that to win any argument, all he has to do is cast doubt on his adversary's evidence.

That similarity is more than just a coincidence from the movies: the most damning part about all of this is that the tactics Exxon is using, and even some of the organizations they are paying, were invented by Philip Morris during the smoking debates of the last century.

It's unfortunate that this is the tactic Exxon is using, because it casts them as a bad guy with something to hide. If there was truly strong evidence that global warming wasn't happening/caused by CO2, wouldn't it be better for Exxon to stand up for it and act as champion?

That's where this excerpt reveals a little of its bias: there's a strong implication that the junk science is the only anti-global warming science, and that the only scientists who don't support the global warming conclusions are paid by Exxon. It's unfortunate that this article doesn't attempt to disentangle the junk science groups and the real scientists, because global warming skeptics shrug off these claims. After all, just because Exxon is paying them doesn't mean the science is wrong. And even if there are some groups out there using junk science, there are still thousands of independent scientists publishing sound papers skeptical of global warming.

Right?

Here's a video clip from the BBC with diagrams of what's happening, for my reader who can't read: VIDEO: BBC Reveals ‘Direct Link’ Between Tobacco Companies And Global Warming Deniers

Ethical Stem Cells III

The quest for ethical stem cells continues. After the last flap, which I described in Ethical Stem Cells Pt II, now it's been announced that you can take stem cells from embryos that look dead - that is, have stopped growing for 24 or 48 hours.

The work is described here: Stem cells made from 'dead' human embryo

"Regardless of how you feel about personhood for embryos, if the embryo is dead, then the issue of personhood is resolved," [Dr. Donald W] Landry said.

Problem solved. Closed the book on that one.

Right?

Wait, how do you know the embryos are dead? How do you know that the embryos weren't killed by something in the lab environment, and that if they were implanted into a womb, they wouldn't start dividing again? And then there's the question of whether there's something wrong with the cells - the original embryo did, after all, die.

The Recent UN Speeches

I'm curious about the recent speeches at the UN General Assembly in New York. I'm tired of all this "Chavez claims Bush is the Devil" and Bush vs Ahmadinejad BS.

I think a good place to start would be the speeches that they actually gave:
Chavez: http://www.drudgereport.com/flash2.htm
Bush: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060919-4.html
Ahmadinejad: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iran/2006/iran-060920-irna02.htm

After reading these, Ahmadinejad seems like a smart guy with an evil agenda, and Chavez seems like a militant revolutionary trying to stir up trouble.

I was curious about Luis Posada Carriles, mentioned by Chavez: ttp://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/

Both Chavez and Ahmadinejad think that the UN should be remade so the US doesn't have as much influence.
http://www.bloggernews.net/2006/09/nugget-of-truth-in-chavezs.html
Interesting that if veto power were revoked, maybe there'd be some sanctions against Iran (and North Korea?)

Then again, there's controversy as to whether sanctions actually work. http://www.ima.org.uk/conflict/papers/Hovi.pdf#search=%22do%20sanctions%20work%3F%22

It's interesting that Ahmadinejad keeps appealing to the UN to step up its efforts, and curb US imperialism. He doesn't present any solutions, mention Hezbollah, mention the continuing Taliban resistance or how anyone can solve the civil war in Iraq, but he shifts the responsibility to the UN to sort things out. Sounds like a liberal to me.

He does mention Israel and Palestine a bit - but I'm still not sure what the whole conflict is about. Even after reading this:
http://www.ima.org.uk/conflict/papers/Hovi.pdf#search=%22do%20sanctions%20work%3F%22
Hmmm, this helps a little:
http://www.mideastweb.org/nutshell.htm
Except, this mentions that the UN was instrumental in creating Israel. Wasn't Ahmadinejad asking for more UN intervention?

I normally don't listen to this stuff, but this video is pretty clear: http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005959.htm

At this point in the evening, I think http://www.landoverbaptist.org/ is much more interesting.

3 Format Bliss

As I noted in a previous post, I am confused about the new hi-def DVD formats.

Maybe I no longer need to be?

Three's company: Warner patents all-in-one hybrid disc

Big Brother

Citizens of Middlesbrough, England, have a new Big Brother to welcome into their lives.

Reportedly, police have begun installing loudspeakers on their existing public security cameras, and alerting wrong-doers when they are being watched. So far, the police have broken up fights at bars, stopped illegal bicyclists, and embarrassed litterers, all without stepping on the scene. They have yet to recieve a request to take the loudspeakers down.

On the one hand, I suppose this is eerily like George Orwell's nightmare, laid out in 1984. While the police are so far only watching public places, and the news article doesn't mention any arrests, this could easily degenerate. Right now, the police are watching the cameras manually. But what happens when AI starts to pick up steam, and computers can watch all of the cameras for suspicious activity? And what happens when police no longer limit themselves to breaking up fights and catching obvious criminals, but begin to track political behavior, or log locations of specific individuals?

On the other hand, if the system is restricted to exactly where it is today, this could be a wonderful development. Police presence everywhere crime occurs! Problems in a certain neighborhood, but not enough manpower to constantly police it? Put up a camera and loudspeaker. Boom - crime evaporates.

Or does it? When will the public learn which infractions the police will enforce, and which they won't? Or what the identification limits of the cameras are? Or to only commit crime where cameras aren't around? I will tell you the answer in 10 years.

Alternate 9/11 History

My friend sent me this Newsweek link, An Alternate 9/11 History

This article, I was surprised to learn, is actually offensive to me. I don't know who this columnist is - I doubt I've read him before - but his "opinion" is pure fantasy. I challenge this guy to name one president that has so clearly seen the issues, so effortlessly won over opponents, and so clearly done the right thing. He mentions Lincoln - does he remember that Lincoln's actions split the nation in two, and eventually caused his death? He mentions FDR - but forgets that this "bipartisan" president also tried to pack the Supreme Court, delayed entering WWII (while the Holocaust was occurring), and imprisoned Japanese Americans.

I'm not claiming that Bush has made the right decisions, or that Bush is a good president. However, this guy's article plays off the clear distinction, given a 20/20 view of the past, between an ideal president and Bush. If it sounds too easy -- it is.

Iran's President

I never know for sure where Iran is coming from.

On the one hand, the President was widely reputed in American papers to have stolen the election. He's a reported hardliner. He doesn't say anything when his people shout "Death to America." His country supplies bombs to Hezbollah.

On the other hand, he seems like a nice guy in this Time Magazine interview, and although he supports some radically anti-American views (and used the world Zionist), he doesn't seem like the crazy, warmongering Muslim the western media would have us believe.

Problems cannot be solved through bombs. Bombs are of little use today. We need logic.

So, again, I'm torn. I'm torn between believing that Muslims will lie through their teeth to get the upper hand, where they can kill us, and believing that, really, this would all just go away if we would stop being world police.

Victory in the New DVD Format Wars?

There's been a lot of speculation on tar Interweb about the coming video format wars: HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray.

I'm not an expert on this nerdiness, but my understanding is this: HD-DVD has the advantage of being a cheap to manufacture upgrade to existing DVDs, while Blu-Ray has more storage capacity. I would think cheaper would be better, but with Sony putting their PS3 behind the Blu-Ray, it's going to be a tough call.

Until now? Toshiba develops Hybrid DVD and HD-DVD

The resulting disc conforms to DVD standards and can be played on DVD players as well as standard HD-DVD player too with a firmware upgrade.

But wait... doesn't Blu-Ray also have the ability to play DVDs? Blu-Ray.com

JVC was showcasing their BD/DVD hybrid media (33.5GB), which was developed to ease the transition from DVD to Blu-ray by creating a disc that will play in both BD players and DVD players. The hybrid disc is basically a single-layer BD-ROM (25GB) and a dual-layer DVD-ROM (8.5GB) in the same disc, which can be read in both players as the Blu-ray layer is transparent to the red laser used in a conventional DVD player.

Now I'm just confused again.

Ethical Stem Cell Lines Pt II

Last week in my post Ethical Stem Cell Lines I pointed out that the researchers who did the study actually ended up destroying all of the embryos.

Apparently I wasn't the only one who noticed. Scientists defend "ethical" stem cell experiment

"You made our job a lot tougher," said [Sen. Arlen] Specter

From what I can glean from the media's retarded coverage of this (well this article is a little better: 'Ethical' stem-cell paper under attack), the researchers merely showed that the concept of creating stem cells without destroying the embryo was possible. Knowing already that you can take a cell from an embryo without killing it, as is done regularly in "preimplantation genetic diagnosis" (where the embryo is screened for genetic diseases), the researchers took two "so as not to be wasteful", which does kill the embryo.

The researchers seem genuinely baffled:

"This technique has been used throughout the world for years and years," retorted Lanza. "Everything I said is absolutely correct and accurate."

"It is not fair. It is not right," Lanza said.

I can't tell, without reading the paper, who is to blame for distorting this. Nature magazine claims responsibility for some of the exaggeration, but the researchers themselves put the misleading claim in their paper:

"What we have done, for the first time, is to actually create human embryonic stem cells without destroying the embryo itself."

Again: D'oh!

Telepathy is Real

There have been some amazing discoveries by science recently. The earth is warming, ethical stem cells have been created, a supernova was witnessed happening, and a giant canyon in the Atlantic was mapped.

Now, we finally have the answer to another burning question: Telephone telepathy

Rupert Sheldrake ... said on Tuesday he had conducted experiments that proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even e-mails.

I guess that settles it.

The Unfortunate Consequences of Censorship

I subscribed to some International related news feeds, in the hopes that I would get some non-US perspective about the news. A couple of the feeds deal with Asian news. I found this link today:

Mao Zedong: the God of China

Unfortunately (for my personal goal to increase my own awareness), it appears this was not written by someone Chinese:

Numerous Mao-backed movements, like the "Great Leap Forward," a disastrous attempt at speedy industrialization, and the Cultural Revolution, led to tens of millions of deaths and the persecution of innocent people.

China has recently scrubbed Mao from its textbooks, and indeed much of history, choosing instead to focus on

economics, technology, social customs and globalization.

(from New Chinese textbooks erase history)

I guess we can only hope that in another generation, people will again start to wonder about their history, and stop vilifying the West for their problems.

Ethical Stem Cell Lines

This is a few days old.

Scientists have created ethical stem cell lines, by taking stem cells from embryos without destroying them in the process.

'Ethical' stem cell lines created

Too bad they threw the embryos away anyway.

"Unfortunately what Professor Lanza did was entirely unethical because he generated and manipulated 16 human embryos and then threw them all away."

D'oh!

Nudity in New Zealand

Police Inspector Terry Van Dillen said the issue was one of "common sense".

Hehe. Boobs on Bikes

I don't have a comment on this.

The Real Gibson Story

Mel Gibson was arrested this weekend for a DUI.

Now the news stations are all abuzz about the newest twist: Gibson's alleged racist remarks during his arrest. I've been watching CNN's Headline news for the last 15 minutes, and heard three stories about Gibson.

I can't believe no one cares about the real story here, though: Mel Gibson decided it was OK to get in his car and speed while he was drunk! Drunks kill thousands of innocent people every year -- and we're worried about what he may have said about Jews?

I think Adrianna Casta on Headline News summed it up: people are arrested in Hollywood for DUIs all the time. That's not a big deal.

I think Mel Gibson should go to jail - but I don't care what he said about Jews.

Professional Training

Recenty, in my Making Children Cry post, a reader of this blog (1 of 3!) challenged my credibility, and the legitimicy of this blog:

You are obviously not that intelligent, or trained in a profession that would qualify you to even make such a statement. Having a blog does not mean that your opinion is based on fact. Typing crap on a computer screen (especially worthless drivel like you have said about this matter) just proves that the world is full of people with worthless opinions who will spread them around like they really mean something. When in fact, they don‘t.
--Ralphyboy

I'm sorry he doesn't think I'm intelligent (I try very hard to be - so I'm kind of sad that I've failed at something very important to me), but in this post I'm mostly worried about the rest of what he wrote.

Does one have to be "trained in a profession" to comment on something in a blog? Chris Garret over at Perfomancing.com doesn't seem to think so in his recent post Expertise; Is it Necessary? (I would hope he knows what he's talking about - he's working for a site dedicated to promoting blogs!). Among the blogs he mentions where the author does not talk about his expertise, or where the author talks about something he is clearly not an expert in: The Dilbert blog, BoingBoing, and Digital Photography School blog.

This sort of makes me wonder - if I wasn't intelligent, but was trained in a profession related to my comment, would it make my comment valid?

I can think of several examples where people who are supposedly experts are dead wrong.

It is not the first time that [Senator Bill] Frist [MD] has created a stir in medical and political circles. In December, on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," he repeatedly declined to say whether he thought HIV-AIDS could be transmitted through tears or sweat. A much-disputed federal education program championed by some conservative groups had suggested that such transmissions occur.

After numerous challenges by Stephanopoulos, Frist said that "it would be very hard" for someone to contract AIDS via tears or sweat. The Web site of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says: "Contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV." (from The Washington Post)

Another, this time from published "non-fiction":

An international bestseller upon its release, "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" spurred interest in a number of ideas related to its central thesis. Response from mainstream historians and academics, however, was nearly universally negative. Professional historians argued that the bulk of the claims, ancient mysteries and conspiracy theories presented as fact, are pseudohistorical. (from Wikipedia: The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail)

So it seems clear to me that the old maxim "Don't believe everything you read" is true - I don't know why my critic didn't remember that and move on. Instead he confused fact with opinion, and apparently doesn't understand that a) only 5% of blogs reference actual facts (reference required) and b) blogs are, by definition, commentary. I'm not sure I've ever claimed anything on here was fact - but I am mostly concerned with finding fact (which is hard to do - because anyone can write anything and call it a "blog").

If you find a fact that disagrees with something I've written here - I'd love to see it. But I'll write what I want.

Global Warming, Pt III

My friend alerted me to some interesting links re: global warming.

• Canada's polar bears will be extinct within 25 years, scientist warns

• More species slide to extinction

The assertion that polar bears are near extinction doesn't seem to be free of controversy:
Polar Disasters: More Predictable Distortions of Science

• Here's another of the links, which, on the surface at least, seems more balanced:
  Heatwave in Europe, U.S. But Is It Climate Change?
  

Are the sea levels actually rising? I don't know.
Tuvalu won't disappear

• Another:
  Rising sea temperatures
  

But wait! This article claims the study mentioned above massaged the data to fit!
Man Blamed for Rising Sea Temperatures; Deforestation Blamed for Cooling; Arctic Sea Ice Thickness and Wind

I found several of the skeptical links on www.globalwarming.org. I don't find anything on SourceWatch that is too damning. It seems SourceWatch is grasping at straws, and playing at demonization, when it tries to draw connections to the tobacco industry. ExxonSecrets doesn't seem to have anything juicy about them either. I didn't explore the personel lists.

Sometimes I wish I was a scientist, so I could read this stuff all day, and, you know, be smart enough to sort out truth from BS.

Global Warming, Pt II

I've had some interesting conversations about Global Warming recently. I lamented in my last post on the topic (Global Cooling) that I hadn't seen any skeptical responses to the national report that recently came out.

Fortunately, I have friends that keep up with this stuff.

A Statistician Speaks

Overall, our committee believes that Dr. Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.

The actual report:
AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORT ON THE ‘HOCKEY STICK’ GLOBAL CLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION

Of course, it's tough to quote the report itself:

This committee does not believe
that web logs are an appropriate forum for the scientific debate on this issue.

Global Conflicts

I had a discussion this weekend with a friend about the current era vs The Rennaissance. I think his point was that when you look back at our time, it will be recognized as a time of technological growth, but not of the growth of society or the improvement of mankind. Unfortunately, my memory is bad, so I can't get much further than that.

What I do remember is that a central part of his point of view was that global conflicts are increasing, and that the world is becoming more militarized. I wasn't sure that this was a logical progression, as I wasn't sure that global conflicts were actually increasing. I think it would be hard to deny that the nature of conflicts are becoming more global than they've been - beyond 400 years ago there simply wasn't much global contact between nations, so any conflicts must have been local. However, I don't think this means that the quantity or severity of conflicts is going up.

So I googled "number of world conflicts," and discovered the following helpful links:
World becomes slightly safer as number of violent conflicts falls
The number of armed conflicts has dropped 40% since 1992.
Issues: UN Funding and Peacekeeping

This one is actually derisive in it's denial that things are getting worse:
WW4? Don’t Flatter Them

This link, while slightly off topic, puts the number of American military deaths in perspective:
U.S. Abortion Deaths Compared to U.S. War Deaths

This link tries to document the number of war deaths for a couple of hundred years:
Military and Civilian War Related Deaths Through the Ages

I put together a little chart from what I could get from this site:


But when I was putting this together, things didn't seem to add up. I tried to reconstruct the chart with numbers from Wikipedia, but, well, it's hard.

Since I consider myself a realist, not someone who makes up facts or someone who ignores inconvenient truths, here's a site that claims that some international conflicts are not reported:
The Balkans War Reigns But World Conflicts Rage

So, he may be right that history will judge us as shallow and empty, but I think he's wrong in that we're becoming increasingly warlike.

The War on Terror and The Geneva Convention

Generally, I'm of the opinion that the United States, in dealing with people who are not citizens, should give them the same treatment as citizens with "God given rights." The right to a fair trial, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, etc.

Up until recently, I was bothered by our treatment of captured "insurgents" in Iraq - I mean, shouldn't we give them some status, give them the same rights as Americans under arrest? I was under the impression that, if we weren't bound to do that by our government, at least we're bound by the Geneva Conventions.

But wait a sec... The Geneva Conventions are for the "civilized" conduct of war. I'll go to war with you, and as long as we both play by the rules, I can be sure that even if I lose or you get a lot of my people as prisoners, at least we're all still human and there are certain activities (torture) that you won't make my people suffer through.

The Supreme Court recently decided that the President could not order military trials for Guantánamo detainees without the protections of the Geneva convention and American law. Part of their ruling depends on Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which spells out who retains rights in a war situation.

So we've decided to extend protections of civilized warfare to people who's very methods are designed to explicitly cause pain and suffering to everyday people. We've decided that even though there is a covert organization at war with us, who takes civilian hostages, beheads them, tortures and mutilates soldiers, bombs mosques, blows up civilian buildings, and encourages murder in the streets, we should give them the same rights we'd give prisoners of a war with, say, the U.K. Now the terrorists have another way to whittle away at our resources - though our own court system. Great - like we needed another front.

I'm no longer bothered by our treatment of captured terrorists. I am bothered by the opaque way our government has detained them - we don't know who they are, and don't have any way to verify that they are actually terrorists.

Making Children Cry

Thomas Hawk believes that Jill Greenberg is a child pornographer.

Jill Greenberg is a Sick Woman Who Should Be Arrested and Charged With Child Abuse

Although the children are not sexualized, I consider what she is doing child pornography of the worst kind.

What is he all worked up about? Jill Greenberg's exhibit, End Times, posted in the Paul Kopeikin Gallery, shows small children at the height of emotion - crying, sad, and angry. The pictures are emotionally wrenching, but that's the point.

Hawk believes Greenberg is doing "something horrible." So how is Greenberg getting these reactions from the children? According to Hawk, "[s]he is taking babies, toddlers under three years old, stripping them of their clothes and then provoking them to various states of emotional distress..."

Wait, is this woman beating the children, or telling them their parents are dead, or showing them movies of puppies being killed? Nope. She's giving them lollipops, and then taking them away. With the parents present in the room. These children, as children do, cry like little babies.

Thomas Hawk, you should be ashamed of yourself. To equate this kind of activity with pornography is morally bankrupt. Your arguments make no more sense than those of conservatives who equate gay marriage with legalizing pedophilia.

I see children cry every day, for less than no reason. I've made children cry by looking at them. Parents make children cry every day by denying them their sugar cereal at the grocery store, by making them turn off television, and by dropping them off at school. Maybe we should make all of these activities illegal as well. Well?

UPDATE: In response to the comment below by how can folks toop so low, I'd like to make a couple of points.
1. I don't think I said anything about this piece being art, nor do I deny that it can be gut wrenching (disgusting is too strong a word for me, as I'm pretty desensitized). I don't pretend to know the difference between good and bad art, but I'm pretty sure this falls in the "art" category (as opposed to, say, the "photo documentary" category). I'll leave it to future generations to define whether this constitutes good art.
2. You appear to be making a logical fallacy in equating the experience an adult would have with the experience a child would have in the same situation. While the treatment might be construed as torture if done to an adult (Abu Graib, anyone?), I hardly doubt the experience is as tramatic to a child. Children regularly stip themselves of all clothing, and the naked kids I saw on the beach seemed happy and oblivious. Remember also that kids have not developed the communication skills that adults have, and can often only express themselves with loud crying and angry screaming. These kids that are crying are expressing, in my opinion, the same thing you would by saying, "Hey, that's not nice. Give that back." It's hardly torture.

The Singularity

People who know me know that I consider myself a Singularitarian.  I was first turned on to the idea by Ray Kurzweil, in The Age of Spiritual Machines, and later, in The Singularity is Near.

I came across this link that does a pretty good job summarizing the idea, and also presents a pretty good reason to try to get there as soon as possible:
Staring into the Singularity 1.2.5

I have had it. I have had it with crack houses, dictatorships, torture chambers, disease, old age, spinal paralysis, and world hunger. I have had it with a planetary death rate of 150,000 sentient beings per day. I have had it with this planet. I have had it with mortality. None of this is necessary. The time has come to stop turning away from the mugging on the corner, the beggar on the street. It is no longer necessary to look nervously away, repeating the mantra: "I can't solve all the problems of the world." We can. We can end this.

This reminds me of Dr Aubrey de Grey's plea for everyone to take action now to extend human life.  The Methuselah Foundation has more info about this. 

MPrize-Why Aging?

Because saving lives is the most valuable thing anyone can spend their time doing, and since over 100,000 people die every single day of causes that young people essentially never die of, you'll save more lives by helping to cure aging than in any other way.

It's only a matter of time. Start reading your biology, and make sure you live another 25 years.

Sexual Deception

Is this the effect of the western world on Islam? 

European Muslims resort to virginity ploys - Yahoo! News

Hymen repair, fake virginity certificates and other deceptions, said to be commonplace in some Muslim countries, are practiced in France and elsewhere in Europe, where Muslim girls are more emancipated but still live under rigid codes of family honor.

I guess the true test will be if these women recommend to their daughters that they get the procedure, or if they hold their daughters to looser standards.  This reminds me of how the hippy generation dealt with explaining sex to their children... there seems to be a large number of parents who didn't hold expectations any higher for their children than they conformed to, but also a large segment that continues to preach abstinance until marriage, even if that's not what they themselves did. 

Will these Islamic women loosen their standards, and assimilate into western culture?  Or will they continue to pretend that the old ways are best?  As the world Muslim population is growing more than any other, our future will depends on it. 

Global Cooling

Now that global warming is a fact, with the recent report dismissing the idea that the current rising temperature is part of Earth's natural cycle, it's now OK for scientists to speak out loud about their crazy sci-fi ways of cooling the planet. 

How to Cool a Planet (Maybe) - New York Times

In the past few decades, a handful of scientists have come up with big, futuristic ways to fight global warming: Build sunshades in orbit to cool the planet. Tinker with clouds to make them reflect more sunlight back into space. Trick oceans into soaking up more heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

I'm sort of curious what the skeptics are saying about the recent report.  I tried to find some web sites that debunked some of the claims, but I'm not very good at Googling.  I found plenty of sites that attempt to debunk global warming, but I didn't see any that took into account the latest report. 

Artificial Meat

The future gets closer, again. 

Wired News: Test Tube Meat Nears Dinner Table

Henk Haagsman, a professor of meat sciences at Utrecht University, and his Dutch colleagues are working on growing artificial pork meat out of pig stem cells. They hope to grow a form of minced meat suitable for burgers, sausages and pizza toppings within the next few years.

Would it be weird to eat a burger that you knew was not grown on a cow?  Would vegetarians start to eat meat again en masse?  I have a few vegetarian friends who aren't really opposed to killing the animals; they are most concerned with the health benefits of eating a vegetarian diet.  But then, what if they could genetically modify the meat to have more omega-3 than omega-6 (like fish)?  Asimov and other sci-fi authors predicted this kind of thing years ago, although for them food was made out of algea, not artificial meat. 

Double Your Vitamin D Intake

This should prove healthy:

NPR : Research Suggests Increasing Vitamin D Exposure

In some fracture and bone health studies, patients see benefits with supplements of 800 international units of vitamin D. This is double the amount currently recommended by the government-sponsored Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the book Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, Ray Kurzweil and Terry Goodman claim that the "Daily Recommended Dose" is what the FDA determined was necessary for human to live an averagely healthy life - not what was the optimal amount we can use to be as healthy as possible. 

Perhaps this research will open the door to more vitamins getting an increase in the DRD. 

America: The Next 3rd World Country?

A few things have made me recently question America's future.

First: a national report yesterday found that 3 out of 10 (for those that did not graduate, that's nearly a third!) of students drop out of high school! In Detroit, the graduation rate is almost as low as 20% of students. Overall graduation rate for minorities: Native Americans: 50%, Blacks: 50%, Hispanics: 55%.

Second: Our government is increasingly corrupt. Not just congress, but also White House aids.

Third: Our preventable disease rate is rising. Not just measles, but we are failing to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS, and experts seem to think it's only a matter of time before we all contract bird flu.

These things, combined with our growing dependence on unstable foreign energy supplies, rising pollution rates, soon to be rising sea levels (and the subsequent problems with water supplies and coastal cities under water) lead me to one conclusion: America will steadily descend into Third World status.

What are the hallmarks of a Third World country? Uneducated masses, no respect for the Rule of Law, and ongoing public health epidemics with diseases that are completely curable. I think we should continue doing what we're doing, and it won't be long until we're all being gang raped.

Early Christian Writings and Catholic suppression

I've been involved in some discussions lately with people who don't think there was controversy in the early Christian church over what we are taught today is religious truth.

One of the arguments seemed to deny the possibility that the New Testament that we have today evolved from earlier works and was actively edited, cutting out books that strayed from official doctrine. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com talks about the Q document (the not-extant book of Jesus' sayings, which is claimed to form, along with Mark, a common basis for Matthew and Luke), and also has discussions of many other manuscripts (like the Gospel of the Egyptians), many which might have been heretical at the time. Here's an argument against the Q source, which brings up an interesting point or two:

No-one had ever heard of Q
No ancient author appears to have been aware of the existence of Q. One will search in vain for a single reference to it in ancient literature. For a while it was thought that 'the logia' to which Papias referred might be Q. Indeed, this was one of the planks on which the Q hypothesis rested in the nineteenth century. But no reputable scholar now believes this.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. I've also encountered arguments that the Council of Nicea was basically affirming in the Nicene Creed something Christians believed anyway. However, there are several examples of variant strains of Christianity that defy this logic. For example, in the middle second century, a form of Christianity sprang up known as Marcionism. Marcionism saw the Bible as being from two distinct gods - the wrathful, angry god of the old testament, and the loving and merciful god of the new testament. Marcion was excommunicated from the Church of Rome around 144 AD, and his religion is described as the Roman Catholic Church's greatest enemy.

Another example, of course, is the group known as the Gnostic Christians. This group was in decline by the time of the Council of Nicea, but is still in existence in various forms today.

While neither of these groups were big at the time of the Nicene Council, there was a group led by Arius which disputed the unity of God the Father and Jesus - in effect the widely held doctrine of the Trinity of today's Christian Church. The vote was not close, but any chance this view had of catching on was seriously undermined, even if the controversy lasted another hundred years.

I haven't found any sources that indicate the early Church was involved in hunting down these groups and burning their literature, as common wisdom seems to suggest, but it's hardly deniable that if your doctrine is denounced by the legal, dominant religion, it doesn't have much chance. So I don't find it unbelievable that the early Church might have suppressed a relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus.

Medical Reporting by the Media

Interesting story.  I've noticed some of the issues they bring up.  Political stories have similar problems - a candidate can read millions by stating something false, but the correction will only read a few percent of the original audience. 

Media Omit Basic Facts in Medical Reports - Yahoo! News

# Only 2 of 175 stories about unpublished studies noted that the study was unpublished.
# One-third of the articles failed to mention how many participants were in a study [studies with only a few test subjects are sometimes later refuted by larger studies].
# 40 percent of the reports did not quantify the main result of the research.
# Just one out of 17 news reports on animal studies noted that results might not apply to humans.

Is this why we think a cure for cancer is around the corner? 

Free Speech?

Tamara Hoover, an art teacher in Austin, Texas is about to be fired over some topless photos her partner posted on Flickr.com.

She's got a myspace page, and you can also see some of the other photos of her still up on Flickr (I believe the topless ones have been removed).  (Ooh, I just found a video too.)

Hoover is defending this as a first amendment issue.  From her myspace page:

The school is saying that i was on a pornographic
website
deemed me ineffective


1. The website is artistic photogrphy and very good
at that.
2. I never told kids to "go see me" at the website.
3. The website is not mine and I have no control over
what the photographer posts, nor do i know what she
is going to post
4. The website is not pornographic.
5. I have been recognized by the board year after year (2 weeks before may 19 board recognized me again) for outstanding
achievments as an art teacher..YET I am supposedly ineffective.

This guy seems to think it's the teacher who turned her in we should be worried about. 

I think this puts conservatives in a tough spot.  On the one hand, you've got your moral issues to worry about: there's nudity, there are students, and there's homosexuality.  On the other hand, it seems like this was an art teacher doing arty things, which should be perfectly protected by our constitution, and it appears none of her pictures are any worse than the ones shown to art students in high school anyway, or, for that matter, in any museum or public sculpture. 

I think this is one more example of the backwards society we live in.  Video games and movies can be as violent as they wish to be, but as soon as nudity or sexuality intrudes, they are censored.  Shouldn't we be more interested in eliminating gratuitous felony activity from our public artwork than perfectly natural bodies? 

Online Revenge II

More Revenge Sites

Apparently I'm not the only one who noticed that people are now exacting their revenge online. Avant Game noticed as well, and even coined a term for it: Chinavenging!

Online Revenge

Revenge Posts

I've come across a couple of sites devoted to exacting revenge on someone who has victimized the author in some way.

How NOT to steal a Sidekick
The Broken Laptop I Sold On Ebay

In the second case, at least, the police (in Briton) are investigating the victim (of the laptop fraud) for hate speech.

I'm sure there are many other posts like this, but I think it's an interesting (albeit with high potential of backfire) way to air your grievances. Wheras it might be smarter to go to the police and try to get your money back, these two cases seem to be more about embarrassing the other party.

I wonder how much of this counts as libel.

The Power of Prayer

Why won't God heal amputees?

I found this on The Dilbert Blog: http://www.whywontgodhealamputees.com/

I think it has some strong points, and I can't find many places where I see holes in the logic. I think it's at least an interesting question to think about. The site seems a little too bent on proving God through science, though.

I tried to trap someone using some of the arguments I found. It went like this:
"Do you pray?"
"Yes."
"Do you believe what the bible says about the power of prayer?"
"Yes, pretty much."
"So, you believe God answers prayer?"
"Well, I think prayer works similarly to meditation, in that a lot of it's power comes from your mind's ability to do amazing things."
"Doh."

Scott Adams

I've discovered that I enjoy reading The Dilbert Blog even more than Dilbert comic strips. The reason is that even though Adams makes keen and funny observations about cube life, his insights about politics and religious are just as interesting and always make me think.

Take this recent post about Relativity: "When I hear people say that they know God exists because he healed their aunt’s cancer, it sounds to me exactly like 'Rocks are liquid because 5 is greater than 6.'"

Then there's his response to the commentors who are always pointing out exceptions to his rules. His response: coin a new acronym, BOCTAOE, which stands for "But Of Course There Are Obvious Exceptions," and which he uses any time he makes a generalization which clearly doesn't hold up in all circumstances.

Adams linked to an article in a recent post that pointed out most college students don't know that 50 million people died in WWII. Indeed, I was surprised to see that number when I visited a WWII museum in Paris. Another "fact:" there are more Jewish people than Muslims in the world.

The solution to ignorance, according to the linked article: read more, and watch less TV. Does that include the Daily Show?

Interesting Article About Email

This is an interesting article about email:

The time has come to ditch email

I'm not sure this is practical, but it would be interesting for some big player, with a lot of users, come up with an open standard that is at first available to only the users of their system (gmail, perhaps?), but would catch on like wildfire once people realized it was secure. Of course, is anything secure? A computer in the top 500 might be required now to send out a bunch of emails, but what about in 5 years? And you wouldn't have to have a powerful computer if you used a web email client -- in fact, it would probably be a huge overhead for large email providers like yahoo and gmail. And then there's the fact that nothing will be secure when quantum computers are widespread, so will we have to start from scratch again?

Gay Marriage

A court fight is currently underway in New York over the issue of gay marriage.

Highest Court in New York Confronts Gay Marriage

If the court were to rule in favor of gay marriages, would this be an example of judicial activism, or legislating from the bench? Or would this be an example of the courts protecting a minority group? While I am one who believes that people should be pretty free to do whatever they want, mostly as long as they aren't doing bodily harm to someone else, I'm not sure that marriage is a "right" that people have, and something that the courts should decide is protected for everyone by the constitution. So while the courts deciding that the law is unconstitutional would be pushing society forward, it does seem like this one is still in the domain of the legislature.

Also, doesn't this open the doors to pedophilia and bestiality?

Censored "News"

James mentioned something the other day about liberals taking over colleges. The claim is that the majority of college professors are liberals who are discriminating against conservative students, purging non-liberal teachers from their ranks, and preaching their ideologies to students as fact.

Purely by coincidence, StumbleUpon sent me to the Project Censored page, which claims to highlight news that was underreported, or censored by the media. It's interesting how obvious their political bent is; one of the first articles I noticed was Conservative Plan to Override Academic Freedom in the Classroom,which is clearly in opposition to David Horowitz's agenda. Among the article's arguments is an embarrassing attempt to nitpick the Student Bill of Rights, as well as an attempt to compare the liberalism at universities to the conservatism at military institutions. I can only imagine the destruction that would be wrought if liberals were installed in military organizations. It would be like replacing your rotweiler with a beagle.

Other headlines that betray the bent of the site: Homeland Security Was Designed to Fail ,Bush Administration Moves to Eliminate Open Government, U.S. Uses Tsunami to Military Advantage in Southeast Asia.

Welcome

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