I finally got a new post up on my “scholarly” blog:

♦ The Ubiquitous and Panasonic Kipple: Tracing the Consumption of Death, from Philip K. Dick to Don DeLillo’s White Noise

Kind of sad, really–I have several papers and essays already written and ready, all I have to do is format them and post them, but I can’t seem to do that in a timely manner. =)

The human mind is an absolutely amazing thing. Our frontal lobes, cerebral cortex, allows us to recognize patterns and ascribe meaning to phenomenon. It gave us certain, unique survival skills during our evolution, allowing us to recognize recurring weather patterns and animal behavior of both predator and prey. To codify these behaviors, humans started anthropomorphizing other animals and natural phenomena–ascribe human-like motive and intent and nature to non-human creatures and events. From this feature of our larger brains, we’ve gotten the fascinating stories on the native Americans about Raven, and Coyote, and Rabbit, as myths which served to explain curious natural events as well as teach cultural values and lessons. We have the very ancient Babylonian stories of the Elohim, the family of gods such as Yahweh and Baal and Tiamat to explain the events of their desert culture and pass on their morality. The Greeks, the Maori, the Chinese, the Australian aboriginals…wherever there is human beings, there are myths and stories which they use to explain natural events and patterns, human and animal behavior.
The human mind is awesome!

But our amazing capacity to find patterns and devise explanations for things which we don’t understand doesn’t stop at the ancient world. This ability is what allowed Copernicus to map out the orbits of the planets, Issac Newton to develop his Laws of Conservation of Energy, Einstein to figure out relativity, and every other scientific and medical development from vaccines to that drug that stops “restless leg syndrome.” As a species we’ve used our powerful minds to create gods and monsters, and cure disease and alleviate suffering.

But that ability of pattern recognition, imagination, anthropomorphizing, can also be a hindrance. What once allowed us to track prey, successfully grow crops, and avoid being eaten ourselves, is still alive and well in all of us and threatens the progress and advancement we’ve made as a species from tribals to moderns. People are seeing ghosts in lens flares, UFO’s in street lights, angels in reflections, religious icons in toasted bread. Harmless enough, I suppose. But then there are those who take advantage of our bigger human brains to fool us with psychic surgery, fortune telling, talking with dead loved ones, homeopathy. And then there are the innocent dupes who are victims of nothing nefarious but basic logical fallacies and cognitive biases, and want vaccines to be the cause of their kid’s autism, wish that teen sex was stoppable via ignorance, that peace can be achieved through superior firepower, that all of life’s existential problems can be solved through buying all the right consumer products.

In the realm of our brain’s fertile imagination and pattern finding, the bridge between myth and fantasy, and advancement and progress, is “critical thinking.” It’s a skill that allows us recognize when we’re making false conclusions, finding patterns where there may not be any, seeing form in the formless, attributing the wrong cause to an effect. It keeps us from being lead down primrose paths at our own expense, being taken advantage of by both the crook and the misguided. It allows us to make clear and considered decisions and choices in our lives that have a better chance of being for the improvement of ourselves, our family, our society, humanity. Whether it’s the decisions we make in the food we buy, healthcare we choose, paper or plastic or reused canvas bag, the people we elect to manage our public policies and military, or the morals and values we pass on to our children–the value of good, critical thinking is immeasurable.

All that is to preface this short but wonderful essay from The Skeptoid podcast:

♦ The Importance of Teaching Critical Thinking
(That page has the entire transcript of the article, but I prefer to listen to the program; the “listen” link is near the top of the page.)

A skeptical approach to life leads to advances in all areas of the human condition; while a willingness to accept that which does not fit into the laws of our world represents a departure from the search for knowledge.

Host Brian Dunning does a fantastic job in explaining the necessity of critical thinking, but more than that, how it should be taught and how important it is that the message gets across. He discusses how so often the concepts of logic and Socratic reason are taught in a dry, boring manner that seems unrelatable to the lives of students. If we’re to minimize the pain and suffering of reliance on “alternate medicine,” the foolishness of relying on astrology and divination and New Age “Secrets” to make decisions in life, the waste of money and emotional dependence on psychics and faith healers, and eschew real potential in medical advances and ecological protection, we must teach and promote good critical thinking in our children! I’ve learned, it’s never too late to become a critical thinker, but it’s also never too early to encourage it.

Here’s an interesting article in Wired:

♦ What Our Top Spy Doesn’t Get: Security and Privacy Aren’t Opposites

The author uses the following premise:

You can see it in comments by government officials: “Privacy no longer can mean anonymity,” says Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence. “Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.” Did you catch that? You’re expected to give up control of your privacy to others, who — presumably — get to decide how much of it you deserve. That’s what loss of liberty looks like.

as the basis of his argument that in order to have more effective security, and not just security theater, you don’t have to give up essential liberty and privacy.

But that’s not something the fascists in charge of this country’s security “get.” Or, maybe they do get it but don’t care. Their goal is to acquire as much control over society and information as possible, and will use any flimsy excuse as a reason to limit more privacy, liberty. They use fear and ignorance to exert control and demand submissiveness.

Reminds me of Giuliani’s comment not too long ago:

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.

It’s a good thing he no longer has a chance at the presidency, but boy, he’d sure fit right in with the current administration.

Unrelated title topics–I’m just featuring a couple of YouTube videos on the different subjects.
(Although, interestingly, some of the most strident defenders of the war are fundamentally religious conservatives. So I guess a connection can be made.

Anyway, here’s a couple of very poignant videos that I found fascinating, informative, and from one of them–a little bit horrifying and a lot tragic.

This first one is a shocking reminder of what the real costs of this war have been:

Despite how emotionally gripping the beginning is, toward the middle the list starts to become a bit long–which is an oddly mixed message: the alternatives are so many that the waste is sickening when all these alternative could have been made possible, that one may actually stop paying attention and give up on it.
The point is, stick through it to the end as he makes a very thought-provoking point and observation in the last quarter.

Then there’s this one regarding what it means to deny the fact of evolution:

Again, there’s a list of items that actually becomes long enough that you might tune out; but again, stick with it as toward the end he switches it around and lists things that to be a creationist you have to accept–and like the first half, it makes you think.

Finally, there’s this video which explains:

♦ How evolution REALLY works.

Probably one of the best visual representations and explanations of how evolution works and how we know it’s factual and not “just a theory.” (There’s a small part in the middle where he lets the simulation go on its own for a while that you can safely speed through. )

I listen to a lot of podcasts, most of them about skepticism, humanism, science fiction, writing, grammar, literature…and there’s one I listen to called “Sex Is Fun.” It’s an educational show that focuses on sex-positive health issues, issues of sexual identity, lifestyles, concerns and dysfunction, product reviews, sexual politics, as well as being fun and entertaining.
(If you’re giggling, judging, or shocked, get over it. Sex is a part of life, part of being human, and I think the American neurosis of making sex a taboo and fringe topic is part of what’s lead our culture to be schizophrenically obsessed by and sheltered from it, with some of the highest rates of rape and child molestation and harassment of any modern country.)
OK, to the point of this blog entry…

I’m using this podcast as an illustration of why I disagree with the economic libertarianism, true laissez-faire objectivismist philosophy is unworkable and morally bankrupt.

A year or so ago in the SiF podcast, the hosts discussed those herbal “performance enhancers” that are supposed to increase libido and “male performance.”
(One of the problems right there with deregulation: While over-the-counter medicine is stringently regulated by the FDA, “herbal supplements” are not regulated at all! You can walk into you local Walgreen’s or grocery store, pick up some herbal supplements, homeopathic remedies, and have absolutely no idea of what’s in them and what it does. They could do absolutely nothing, or they could have undocumented side-effects, they could have effects with other medications no one has tested for, and every unregulated capsule can have radically different potencies from capsule to capsule.)
And after trying several that are on the market, (another problem of lack of regulation: You have to be your own guinea pig or trust the reviews of some other guinea pig who may have completely shoddy or non-existent experimental controls, methodology, and data review procedures,) the main host and his co-hosts came to the conclusion that they’re all useless and ineffective. (Herbal supplements don’t have to prove any kind of efficacy to be put on the shelf. They can’t make any specific claims about curing any diseases or illnesses, but other than that, they can say whatever they want and leave it to the buyer to beware regarding supplements with untried and unproven pharmacology (no matter what the Indian shaman says about saw palmeto).)

Except one. There was one enhancement supplement which actually did work! Miracle! Ah, except, it was later found out that the manufacturer was putting in the same chemical that is used in Viagra and was taken off the market.

Now, I’m actually only through phase one of this story, there’s a part two coming. But let me stop to say this is the point in which your market libertarian will jump and exclaim: “Ah ha! See, the market adjusts! Let the free market work and it will adjust. People who do underhanded things will not be able to sell their wares and people will move on to the competition.”

Let’s keep in mind that this example of the unregulated and free market allows some someone to do what they want until they get called on. The manufacturer of this product may get sued, may have a settlement to pay, may even have criminal charges filed (which is only possible in a NON-truly libertarian society, by the way)–but all of it after the damage is done. Libertarians love to use the argument when fighting for gun ownership rights that the police don’t prevent crime, they come in after the crime has already happened to take names and investigate it (actually, this is an argument I myself believe in)–but market libertarians are blind to the fact that their disgust for why police are ineffective is exactly the same reason why market libertarianism, objectivism, is ineffective at anything except encouraging abuse, corruption, greed, people taking as much advantage of other people as possible and doing everything and anything possible to get away with it.

And they will too, for a long time, without regulation and stringent monitoring. How long do you think this supplement company got away with it? How many people possibly took the supplement before someone checked things out? How many people may have encounter heart or vision problems before someone decided to try making a connection with this supplement and pay for a chemical analysis of it? Could have been a day, could have been years. And that’s the nature of the market. It adjusts only after damage is done, and that damage could be great and widespread before someone does anything about it. And by then, the perpetrator could be long gone.

Now for part two. So that enhancement supplement is taken off the shelves, people know about it, they move on to the competition. The SiF podcast hosts come upon another enhancement supplement called “Boom Energy.” They check it out, actually talk to the manufacturer and distributor, and are convinced this supplement is “all natural.” The distributor is quite aware of the other, nefarious product, and assures the hosts and the audience that they’re on the up-and-up. And the product works. Even three out of the four female co-hosts report some marked amount of increase in libido and positive physical changes. Boom ends up sponsoring the podcast for nearly a year.

Then guess what. Yep, you guessed it–Boom is outted as also including low dosage of the Viagra active ingredient in their product.

So, how well did the market react and adjust? Just as one company is shut down for its practices, another one well aware of it and the results, does the same thing. Why? Because the drive of the profit motive is too high for people who care more about money than service or ethics. And the deregulated, open market fosters and encourages that kind of corporate sociopathy. In a deregulated industry, what incentive does the unscrupulous company (it’s owners, operators, R&D, etc) have to not put out a shoddy or potentially harmful product if they know the only thing that’s going to stop them is if finally enough people are hurt by it that a connection is made and a privately funded investigation is opened, when you plan on having made enough money by that time to skip off to the Camen Islands?

And that time is shorter only if there’s potential and significant harm (imagine a world in which over the counters weren’t regulated, and you could and would be expected to buy your heart medication, diabetes medication, anti-psychotics, AIDS inhibitors, liver disease treatment drugs off the shelf from companies that have nothing to hold them accountable to quality control safety and efficacy except possible eventual lawsuits?!) When a company puts out a completely ineffectual product, cognitive biases, placebo effect, confirmation biases, permit that product to sell and make ridiculous despite their ineffectualness. Even private clinical research can’t stop a company from putting out a worthless product and taking advantage of people who because of the nature of the product, can only assume it’s on the shelf because it works. We don’t even have to live in “that world,” it’s all around us right now! Test after test after test have shown the ingredients in Airborne do absolutely nothing to stop or even shorten a cold, homeopathic remedies are water, many herbs do not do what they’re advertised to do (although they may cause unresearched side-effects and drug reactions), and yet our store shelves are filled with it.

The market libertarian assumes that the average consumer will take the time and effort to research every product and company they chose to buy from. Think about it: Do you have time enough to do what you try to do already–work, family, friends, a life and pursuit of happiness, that you have time to research every product you buy from shampoo to peanut butter, to make sure independent laboratory tests (assuming any have even been done, have been published, and been done by someone not paid by the company itself!) show the product to be safe and contain what it’s advertised, and show a consistently better-than-placebo level of efficacy? (Yes, I suppose that may apply to products like shampoo as well *grin*.)

Our level of trust in aspects of the government is pretty low for many reasons. I myself trust the government far less than the average person. But even slightly flawed programs like the FDA, Medicare, the pre-Bush Veteran’s Administration, pre-Reagan banking regulation and housing finance regulations, worked well enough to help protect us to a degree far higher than if they didn’t exist and it was a consumer wild west out there. The neo-cons want to destroy the government and replace it with corporate rule, the objectivists want to destroy government and replace it with a utopian idea of free market rule (that somehow can magically withstand the machinacions and control that could be leveraged by mega-corporations). The problem isn’t necessarily government, it’s government that’s for sale that’s the problem. And that’s been the case for 100 years now, since Presidents Harding and Hoover and the robber barons who literally bought laws to protect their corporate interests at the expense of both labor and the consumer. And it took a giant step forward with Reagan and the Bush’s (and with Clinton as well, lest he’s put on some pedestal. He wasn’t as bad at handing government over to the wealthy and the corporate as Reagan, but he’s not innocent of it either. And neither will Hilary.)

Whether we can return to a truly representative democratic government that’s for and by the people, I don’t know. Instead of the corporate media controlled charade we have now, where each candidate (except a couple who have less than no chance of getting a nomination) is different from the other in only degrees. The power of global market capitalism may be too powerful and the handing over of America to the wealthy elite too far advanced. Some anarcho-socialists believe nothing short of revolution, complete market collapse, or massive environmental disaster of continent-size scale can wrest control of government back into the hands of the people.

One can only hope.

Since I already broke my self-imposed block on religious posts for today, just one more–in the subject of personally affecting issues reason and emotion (two subjects that need not be mutually exclusive!)
Today’s comic from Cectic:

(a near-consistently great comic strip, by the way.)

I’m breaking my embargo on religious criticism for this post, to feature a blog posting that’s one of the most poignant and pointed one I’ve read.
Debunking Christianity has had a lot of posts from its contributors lately on the age-old “question of evil” and the needless existence of suffering and what it means in the context of a supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god.

This post is most striking and personally thought-provoking:

♦ Reasonable Doubt About the Problem of Evil/Needless Suffering As A Test

I want to post quotes from it, but it would do the submission little justice. It’s brief; I encourage anyone reading this to please go read that blog entry and consider.

(I need to hire someone to write my title for me. I sux!)

A few posts out on the blags about presidential candidate Huckabee today; thought I’d pass them along.
Let’s start with a brief one found on Bad Astronomer:

♦ Huckabee = very very very bad guy

Phil Plait’s entry is prompted by an also brief post from science blog, Pharyngula:

♦ Huckabee is a raving lunatic

Both bloggers take great insult and not a little concern and fear regarding the state of society and our political leaders, and rightly so, from Huckabee’s evangelically religious views–primarily regarding this quote:

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”

Bad Astronomer Phil makes a rather astute observation:

Actually, he’s not only demented, he’s wrong: the Bible has been rewritten countless times by small groups of men (that’s why there are different versions, Huck)

Indeed, not only are there various English translation which change meaning and intent in each version, but countless versions with different included books. From the current differences between Catholic and Protestant Bibles, all the way back through the King James, the Wycliffe, the Bishop’s Bible, the Vulgate, the versions proceeding from the Nicean Councils, the literally countless versions that existed in the 300 years before Constantine forced some kind of general consensus. Not to mention the various Hebrew/Jewish versions of Torah and Talmud. The history of the Bible is rife with change and versions. The various different versions of the Gospels, such as Mark, with none of them being “the original,” and most of them being somewhat different from each other. The Dead Sea Scrolls showing that nearly every book of the Old Testament has different and varying versions (which was actually known since before the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls–a fact every Jewish Rabbi is aware of).

If there’s one thing that can be asserted with 100% confidence and certainty, is that “The Word of God” is absolutely not immutable and unchanging.

Then there’s this nice post from Mike The Mad Biologist:

♦ Evolution as Policy, Not Symbolism or Critical Thinking

Mike discusses how Huckabee, as one of nearly all of the Republican candidates who doesn’t “believe” in evolution, would be a threat to science policy and advancement. Advancement that couldn’t be possible without understanding the facts of evolution. Mike spends a few wonderful paragraphs explaining how vital and integral an understanding of evolution is in practical science of understanding his work in disease and its cures. In this world in which we owe it to evolution for our medicine and medical treatments, to not “believe” in evolution is like not believing in gravity even while you’re walking around not flying off the face of the earth.

As some of the commentors on these blogs point out, Huckabee has virtually no chance of getting the Republican ticket, and less chance at the Presidency. But as the commentors also say, and I also agree, he is still a symptom of a serious problem in our culture. When nearly half of our presidential candidates don’t “believe” in evolution (or at least cynically say they don’t in order to pander to the faith-based religious base of the Republican Party) despite the fact that most of them have taken medicine or received treatments for diseases as serious as cancer, which wouldn’t be possible without understanding evolution, is absurd and surreal and scary. The social illness is how most of America places faith and belief that are counter to facts and reality first and foremost in their lives–whether that’s fundamental religious beliefs, or homeopathy, or “complimentary medicine,” or alien abduction, or ESP and talking to the dead…. We have a very, dangerously, sick nation of non-thinking people.

I happen to be writing this post on my knew iPhone! The Web browser is phenominal, and the virtual keyboard works great, even with my fat thumbs! (the auto-spellcheck is way better than Firefox,I have to admit).
Although, the lack of being able to block and copy text is annoying. But, the one huge advantage the iPhone has over the Blackberry Curve (the other phone i was seriously looking into) is the fact it’s software is completely upgradeable, meaning Apple (and soon even 3rd-parties) can add and change any functionality at any time.

Well as much fun as this is, typing long sections does get tiring. Time to go see what else this can do! (OK, the inability to copy textmakes adding links to the blog or images impossible. Oh well.)

Hmm, one difference is at least the Keystone Cops were harmless and entertaining.

So the federal government wants control over the identification of all U.S. citizens, thanks to the Everything Is Different From Now On 9-11 attack which has given the Bush administration incredible mileage in their power-grab efforts. With the Real ID, the feds will make sure all state driver’s licenses conform to their strict regulations, will contain digital information on your identity, and best of all, will be compiled and managed by Homeland Security (your personal information, that is). This national ID will be required by all U.S. citizens in order to board a plane or train (“papieren, bitte”), while there is some leeway supposedly granted (at least at first) if you have a passport and other approved documentation.

OK, now for the real comedy.

The federal TSA has recently gotten into some trouble for outsourcing some of their I.T. work to personally connected and supported contractor (like the State Department and Halliburton, KBR, and BlackWater), which led to the leaking of private information of hundreds of travelers. With this administration, which has a not-at-all-secret desire to dismantle government and privatize all services (a primary goal of Reagan’s and every neo-con since), you can bet your identity that the administration is going to outsource the data collection, storage, and security to private firms with little to no oversight, with little regard to quality versus who gets how much lobbying kickbacks or is personally connected to the contractor.

Add to this the deplorable job the TSA and Homeland Security is doing in regards to personal information versus security, and the citizen’s ability to control how their identity is used and managed (5-year-old Sam Adams isn’t the first kid to get mistaken for a terrah-ist suspect leading to the harassment and mistreatment of himself and his family; see also stories on the mismanagement an ineffectiveness of the No Fly List, more ineffectiveness and silliness with the List, and this excellent summary of all the problems of the government keeping track of people. There are countless stories of people who are erroneously on the watch list fighting ridiculous bureaucracy to get removed–and still not succeeding after months and years of fighting it.)

The feds want to have control of your identity & personal information. They (primarily the Bush administration) have a proven track record of outsourcing based on personal loyalty and money, and not on ability and quality. They have a proven track record of being ineffectual and producing more problems than solving them. They have a proven track record of not caring about civil liberties and citizens’ rights, but doing whatever possible to benefit themselves personally and their corporate interests. This can’t end well.

The worst part is that there are 17 states protesting the enaction of the Real ID program. It’s bad because the concerns have nothing to do with liberties, security, privacy, efficacy, or any of those silly issues, but because of how much it will cost the sate to implement and manage. It comes back to money, screw the of the People, by the People, for the People nonsense.

(Insert Keanu Reeves’ “Whoa” here.)
BoingBoing just posted a link to a fascinating paper on the theory that our universe is a giant VR system:

♦ Our universe as virtual reality

…If the universe were a virtual reality, its creation at the big bang would no longer be paradoxical, as every virtual system must be booted up. It is suggested that whether the world is an objective reality or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve. Modern information science can suggest how core physical properties like space, time, light, matter and movement could derive from information processing….

The linked PDF has some mind-blowing (and easy to read) info and cosmological theory regarding equating the max data transfer speed in our universe, lightspeed, with max computational processing and similar issues of physics in our time-space with analogs in artificial data processing.

But then, there’s some “reality” checks, so to speak, from some commentors like:

Lord Occam walks in the room “Enough!” snip! “There ya go, kids. You’re objectively real as far as you’ll ever know. Now get back to work on something important.”

OK, so my 3rd blog is up and running now:

♦ The GrogMonkey

Here’s the “About” page on the site:

This blog is designed to feature my work in English/Cultural Studies education.

I’m currently working on my Master’s Degree in English with a focus on Creative Writing. While I don’t plan, at the moment, to put any of my fiction up here, I do plan on publishing my non-fiction works–of which I’ve done more this last year and a half than I would have thought I’d have in me two years ago. After my M.A,, which should be finished in another year and a half, I plan on going on for my Ph.D. with a focus in posthuman fiction and cultural studies. (Over on another page I plan on profiling some of the people in the field that I’m modeling my career path on, such as Slavoj Žižek.)

I plan on submitting some of what I will be placing on this site to journals (both academic peer reviewed and otherwise), and some I wouldn’t normally want anyone to see–but there may be something to it that compels me to put it out there for critique, entertainment, or for some twisted sense of vanity. (Yeah, that’s probably the most likely reason.)

I encourage anyone to read what I’ve put out, comment, and even debate or argue some of the presented points with me. Some of what I’ve written and will write about I’m only scratching the surface of my understanding and would love to better my apprehension of the subjects in the crucible of debate (how’s that for some fancyshmancy grad student prose?)

While this blog is pretty esoteric and comments on general issues: tech, news, politics, etc., The GrogMonkey is going to be only for my scholarly work. Probably mostly reprints of papers, occasional posts on issues and events that deal directly with my studies and education. I anticipate that site will have even a smaller audience (than the 2 or 3 this one gets…) but that’s OK. I’m doing it mainly for my own benefit. (What that benefit is, I don’t quite know yet.)

At the moment there’s only one post up there. I have probably around 10 to 15 papers I can upload, but I don’t want to inundate the site just now–I’ll probably upload a file a week. If you’re interested, check it out.