Hot Needle of Inquiry

WARNING WARNING WARNING

2005-08-09T19:45:00.000-07:00

GENERAL PRODUCTS HULL ENGAGED IN STASIS MODE

Avoid contact with hull.
The captain of the Needle will be unavailable for the forseeable future.
Bye.

GENERAL PRODUCTS HULL ENGAGED IN STASIS MODE

The Little Mermaid

2005-07-12T23:59:00.000-07:00

Well, this is me, and this is my favorite place in the wide wide world. I won't say the name, but some of you know it. I like it the way it is, sleepy and genteel rundown...no publicity please. You could visit me there, right before the start of high season, when the frangipani and patooie trees are in bloom. We could walk upbeach to billie's, and get cracked conch and a calik for lunch, and then scuba with the wild dolphin pod in the bay. Shhh...we've been going there for twenty years and it hasn't been discovered yet.
Mostly I've had a swell time here--sure, the stones and knives hurt my feet some, and the fake legs I got from the Sea Witch weren't that awful good--the fins and scales are already growing back! And I didn't wind up with the Prince. He was taken.
But I loved it. An enchanted kingdom of ideas and information peopled with Meme-lords and Idea-Princes, true knights in memetic armor, fell trolls and scary demons. A magic place.
I always believed you really write for your self, because you have to, so I never had a blogroll. But I was influenced and inspired by many. In a year here I met at least six people that changed my life--how long would it take you to do that in fleshspace? Here is a list of those to whom I owe gratitude, in order of go, not neccessarily of importance.

Charles Johnson
Dr. Michael Ledeen
Amritas
Joe Katzman,
and Armed Liberal, Lewy14, Dan, Trent, and Robin
Praktike
Wretchard
Steven Den Beste
David Boxenhorn
Jeff Percifield
Razib Khan, Godless Capitalist, and Scorpius
Steve Sailer
Dr. Aziz Poonwalla
The Baron and Dymphna

I hope all that read this realize what a wonderful place the blogverse is.

This is me too. I will always be looking back at the land.

I will be back eventually--how could i stay away? But I will be different. Maybe i will just be a reader, or maybe I will meld with my beloved web, like Major Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell.

From the Rubiyat:

When thou like her, O Saki, do pass
Among the guests star-scattered on the grass
And reach the spot where I made one,
Turn down a glass.

I'm turning off comments. You can email me at jinnderella@gmail.com, if you like. I won't be able to respond for a while.

I will miss you all.
May your information never grow less.

Best Witches,

jinnji

Ghosts of Quantum Consciousness

2005-07-11T06:41:00.000-07:00

If our Gods and our hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then let us admit it must be said that our love is scientific as well.
I just bought Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence (Inosensu: Kokaku Kidotai). Wow, it is so visually gorgeous. And rich and dense with meaning.
It seems to me to address the questions about consciousness and the existence of souls raised by Descartes, Batou even quotes him.

Of course, i thought alot about the orchestrated objective reduction model of quantum consciousness proposed by Stuart Hammerhoff and Roger Penrose. In Innocence, the gynoid dolls are enhanced by the addition of a "ghost", a consumeable extracted from actual human girls. The ghost makes it possible for them to do non-robotic things, like killing their masters and commiting seppuku. Is there a place for a soul in quantum consciousness? Is reality more valuable than virtual reality? Anton Zeilinger says they are the same, "that reality and information are the same."

Penrose proposes that the physiological process underlying a given thought may initially involve a number of superposed quantum states, each of which performs a calculation of sorts. When the differences in the disnibution of mass and energy between the states reach a gravitationally significant level, the states collapse into a single state, causing measurable and possibly nonlocal changes in the neural structure of the brain. This physical event correlates with a mental one: thecomprehension of a mathematical theorem, say, or the decision not to tip a waiter.

I wonder how we could verify the presence of a soul. We don't have the compute power to validate the Hamerhoff/Penrose model...yet. Perhaps with quantum computing we will be able to.

I won't give up that ghost
It's sick the way these tongues are twisted
The good in us is all we know
There's too much left to taste that's bitter
Na na na na na na na (x4)
E-pro by Beck

Two Somebodies

2005-07-08T19:58:00.000-07:00

Just Somebody left this comment on my Meme Kleptarch post--

why do you say that women are oppressed in Islam. i think some of the comments made here are due to a lack of knowledge about Islam; its very easy to get influenced by the media or what a few people say, if that's your inclination to begin with.

I am thinking about this, and perhaps she is right. Take the hijab for example. I thought that was oppressive until i considered one of my own passions, english riding. We all dress the same. Because the horse is the star.

Perhaps in Islam something else is the star. ;-)
Anyways, i'm posting this in hopes of inspiring some discussion and exchange of ideas. Please put your two cents worth in.

Weaponized Wretchard

2005-07-07T07:19:00.000-07:00

This is how I imagine the mysterious Wretchard, garbed as a tribal combat poet. ;-)

I've been hanging out here in known blogspace for about a year, and this is my alltime absolute favorite essay, Memo to Osama by Wretchard. It is an exquisitely sly mock of Islamist strategy, based on C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters.
I wrote just recently about the arabic tradition of tribal combat poetry and poetry contests in The Snow Queen's Mirror. I always wonder how we could use culture and history to help win the Terror War, so i was thinking about humor weapons, like Wretchard's satire and Cox&Forkum's hilarious cartoons.
Then I got this email epiphany from the redoubtable Brian Tiemann.

Heh-- great post. :) Of course, regarding the final paragraphs, I'm unavoidably reminded of that Monty Python routine where Allied forces in WWII developed the Funniest Joke Ever, which when told would make any listener fall down dead with laughter. Of course, weaponizing it (translating it into German) was a particular challenge...

Oh! What a freakin' awesome idea! We need to weaponize this armament-- translate it into arabic, and massage the content and context so it is relevent. Humiliation is the greatest weapon we have in our arsenal. Why do you think we have all the furious squalling over Abu Ghraib and the head panties? It is a traditional weapon in tribal warfare, one they understand. If our great memetic warriors can craft hilarious satires of OBL and Zarqawi, won't the arab world fall from their saddles laughing, and then turn and ride away?

The Snow Queen's Mirror

2005-07-05T16:42:00.000-07:00

Some people here in known blogspace have recently written about the biology of belief, like Steve Sailor, and how it applies to red state/blue state orientation. I also read this post at winds, on how humor is winning the culture wars. I have a severe disagreement with that premise, and the blogger's rather puerile argument seems to be "the right is cooler, so we win". Whoa, i hate to disabuse this dude, but emo-fans are never cool.
The thing is, humor cannot win the culture wars in the way he describes. Humor is not a persuader, it is a weapon, a sword. Have you ever seen anyone persuaded to change sides by being mocked? No, it just infuriates them. Humor can be a cluestick, to bash someone over the head with, or a handful of salt for an open wound, or a subtle blade under the ribs, but will it change anyone's mind? Never.
And here is the reason. Do you know the story of the Snow Queen's Mirror? Sweet scandinavian children Gerda and Kay are captured by the Snow Queen, the frozen hearted goddess of winter. She wants to keep Kay, so he gets a piece of the Snow Queen's mirror lodged in his eye, and one in his heart.
I think there are two kinds of belief--intellectual belief (the splinter in the eye) and emotional belief (the mirror splinter in the heart). The intellectual splinter is much easier to remove--by argument, logic, and facts. But none of that works on the other one. Humor and mockery only serve to embed it further.
Here's a great example of humor being unpersuasive. The immortal Iowahawk brings us this beautiful satire of the dKosians via LGF, Zarqawi: Stop Comparing Me to American Moonbats. And the the ever astute Brian Tiemann records their response in The Hatred Gap, again via LGF. Was a single mind changed by this satire? Nope. Do you think Iowahawk's mock was written to persuade? Hell, no! It was a weapon, a spear, a blade, a scourge.
Here is a great example of humor used effectively as a weapon. In the Jahilyyah (the ignorance) of pre-Islam, warfare and bloodfeuds among the bedouin tribes were conducted according to strict protocols. Opening of hostilities was always the same. The na'qaat, or tribal combat poets, would stand between the arrays of opposing warriors, on the plain of jizziya combat, and declaim original odes. Sometimes the poetry was so scathing, beautiful, and hilarious, that the opposing tribe would fall from their saddles over come with laughter, and turn and ride away. Now that is effective use of humor.
What if we could make fun of OBL or Zarqawi, make them look so foolish that the other tribesmen would mount and ride away, laughing?

Werewolves

2005-07-05T16:40:00.000-07:00

Normally I adore the company of wolves. But I pity them too. I wrote before about becoming a demon...i think that is a choice. But werewolves don't choose. Becoming a werewolf is accidental, the poor werething is forced every moonlit night to change, through no fault of its own.
The new Harry Potter book is due soon (i can't wait to gobble it up)...I wuv them all, but my favorite is the Prisoner of Askaban. I love Lupin's character, how he tries hard to overcome his curse, and do no harm. In the end he can't manage his infection, and nearly kills his friends, so he chooses to leave Hogwarts forever. Every time there is a new Harry Potter book, i hope for Lupin to come back.
Lupin is tortured constantly by his curse. I can imagine that--on constant guard for the monster to break out and take over, spreading agony and ruin. But what if Lupin had had a choice in the beginning, to become a monster or to just wink out of existance? I know what I would have done.

Sparks Flying in the Dark

2005-07-02T22:31:00.000-07:00

I really love the Front Range. And I really really love country and western music and dancing. (well, i love all sorts of dancing). I feel so sorry for you if you haven't cotton-eyed joe'd and texas-two-stepped the night away someplace like the Grizzly Rose. Some people complain about how C&W permeates the airwaves here in Colorado, but not me. It is the perfect accompaniment for a grrl driving an F250 diesel pick-em-up with a four horse slant on behind. I love Toby Keith-- he rocks. Most C&W stars are strongly pro-America and real patriotic. Fourth of July is a great time to listen to C&W.

I hope every American takes just a minute on the fourth to really love their country. To love their neighborhood and the cities and towns and forests and farms that make up our wonderful country. To love the spicy ethnic mix that divides us and unites us, and makes our genomes and memomes strong and rich with hybrid vigour.

I love the mountains and the foothills here in Colorado, and all the wide open spaces. I love driving out early when the alpenglow lights the notch in the Hogback like the trail to the lost valley of Paul-ul-Don.
And I also feel sorry for you if you've never been to a real branding, with open fires and ear notches and blackleg vaccine and rocky mountain oysters on the grill. And I feel sorry for everyone who's never been to a real rodeo, with clowns and brahma bulls and the Westernaires and reining horses and team penning (but don't clap! that's only for tourists!). You should go soon before PETA shuts them all down.

It's not always easy being a cowboy-grrl and doing the right thing. My hip-hop friends think C&W is whack (but not as bad as emo). This Sara Evans song is my favorite right now. The sparks flying up remind me of campfires and fireworks, and how much I love my whole country this time of year--but mostly it just reminds me of someone that I am about to miss the rest of my life.

Hey, you know what we cowboy grrls always say--
That's the way it goes out here in the West. ;)

A Real Fine Place To Start(Radney Foster/George Ducas)

I'm gonna do you darling
I could waste time trying to figure it out
But I'm jumping in anyhow
I've never been this far
Didn't know love could run so deep
Didn't know I'd lose this much sleep

Holding you close chasing that moon
Spending all night
Loving just who you are
Sparks flying in the dark
Shooting out lights running down dreams
Figuring out what love really means
Baby giving you my heart is
A real fine place to start
Something is going on
I can't explain but I sure can touch
It's calling both of us
Stronger than any fear or doubt
It's changing everything I see
It's changing you it's changing me
Right here right now's the perfect spot
The perfect time
The perfect moment when your skin is next to mine

Holding you close chasing that moon
Spending all night
Loving just who you are
Sparks flying in the dark
Shooting out lights running down dreams
Figuring out what love really means
Baby giving you my heart is
A real fine place
A real fine place to start

Orgasm in a Bottle

2005-07-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

Posted at Gene Expression.

Meme Kleptarch

2005-06-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

Muhammad rides into the seventh heaven in this Islamic portrait, his face appropriately veiled.

I suppose that I am alone among my conservative contemporaries, but i have to confess that I find parts of the Qu'ran quite beautiful. The Short Suras, or Desert Suras, are exquisite. Reading translations of the Qu'ran don't do it justice--arabic is an oral tradition language--its songs and poetry well formed before the first arabic letter was scrawled in the sand. I think the power of the Qu'ran resides in part in its development from the strong tradition of bedouin poetry, and the sound-vision poem that it represents in recitation.

It is important to remember that the bedouin were viewed as the authentic bearers of culture. Arab originally meant a "pastoral nomad". Every year the tribes gathered at special sites for trade and religious observances...and poetry contests. This tradition eventually was to become the hajj, or pilgrimage. Mecca, home of the ancient Ka'ba shrine, figured centrally in this tradition. When the tribes gathered, all warfare and bloodfeuds were forbidden, and trade fairs and poetry contests were held just outside of Mecca, in a place known as 'Ukaz. The seven most admired poems were embroidered in gold on rare black cloth and hung from the walls of the Ka'ba--these were known as the Mu'allaqat, or Hanging Odes, and respresented the pinnacle of pre-Islamic cultural values and verbal expression.

Poetry was also important in the tradition of intertribal warfare. The na'qaat, or tribal combat warriors would stand on the plain of jizziya combat, between two lines of warring tribesmen, and declaim combat poetry. Sometimes the poets were women, like Futayma and the Jashiriyyah, and sometimes the poetry was so beautiful, biting and witty, that the combatants would fall from their saddles, overcome with laughter, and turn and ride off in defeat.

The poets, the rawis, na'qaat and sha'irs, the bearers of the cultural values, were the most dangerous and obdurate opponents of the prophet Muhammad.

From Michael Sells, Approaching the Qu'ran--

At some point Muhammad found a circle of poets to support him as well, and the ancient poetic tradition then became a central part of the struggle. One of the most important figures in the Arabia of Muhammed's time was the poet K'ab bin Zuhayr. As the son of Zuhayr (author of one of the celebrated "hanging odes") and a great poet in his own right, K'ab was viewed within bedouin society as a cultural authority. His opposition to Muhammad continued until it became clear that Muhammad's political and cultural authority could no longer be challenged. By the standards of tribal code, as the spokesman for the losing side, K'ab was in grave danger. In a famous episode, K'ab went to the prophet Muhammed, offered his allegiance, and presented a poem in honor of the prophet. Muhammad then gave K'ab his mantle (burda), and the poem has since been known as the burda or Mantle Ode.

The five pillars of Islam all derive from the original values of bedouin culture. Muhammed discarded the parts of the culture that he saw no value in, like wine songs. But if women were so important and valued in the Jahilyyah (literally "the ignorance", pre-Islam), why is Islam the religion of opression of women and of misogyny in general?

Here is my hypothesis. By all reports Muhammed genuinely loved Kadijah, his older wife. It is possible that he blamed her infertility on her age: she was some fifteeen years older than him. When she died, Muhammad took on a series of younger and younger wives, even needing to change the islamic code for the number of allowable wives so that he could exceed it. He even took the wife of his adopted son for his own. I think that Muhammed began to despise women in general, because not a one of them could concieve with him.

Mathematical Democracy and the Fourth Level Multiverse

2005-06-27T21:17:00.000-07:00

Visual differential equations...aren't they gorgeous? ;)
To read about fourth level multiverses, go to gnxpscifi.

My favorite MaxTegmark quote:

In other words, our successful theories are not mathematics approximating physics, but mathematics approximating mathematics.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

2005-06-27T19:15:00.000-07:00

I always loved this story. Do you know it? This story is so potent for me, because I love to dance. I can think of no more seductive pasttime than to dance holes into my slippers in a secret underground kingdom every night.
The King of a far country has twelve daughters. He despairs of ever being able to marry them off because they are afflicted with a strange illness--they are always tired, and everynight their little dancing slippers worn full of holes. So he sends out for expert advice--anyone that can solve the mystery can have one of the princesses and a share of his kingdom. But there is a catch--if the hired expert cannot solve the mystery in three days, the King gets to chop off his head. I find this is often true in Faery--you get one chance, and if you blow it, off with your head! It does sort of tend to emphasize the seriousness of choice. Making the wrong choice has strong consequences in Faerey.
So, of course, comes a hero--a retired soldier who is helped by a disguised witch, because he is kind. Again, this is a strong component of Faery...virtue is rewarded, vice is punished. So the soldier's kindness is rewarded with the gift of a cloak of invisibility. Which he uses to solve the mystery.
This is my very favorite part of all, when the invisible soldier follows the princesses down a flight of stairs hidden under one of their beds, to a magical underground world of incredible beauty and splendor.

Then they came to another grove of trees, where all the leaves were of gold; and afterwards to a third, where the leaves were all glittering diamonds. And the soldier broke a branch from each; and every time there was a loud noise, which made the youngest sister tremble with fear; but the eldest still said, it was only the princes, who were crying for joy. So they went on till they came to a great lake; and at the side of the lake there lay twelve little boats with twelve handsome princes in them, who seemed to be waiting there for the princesses.....On the other side of the lake stood a fine illuminated castle, from which came the merry music of horns and trumpets. There they all landed, and went into the castle, and each prince danced with his princess; and the soldier, who was all the time invisible, danced with them too; and when any of the princesses had a cup of wine set by her, he drank it all up, so that when she put the cup to her mouth it was empty. At this, too, the youngest sister was terribly frightened, but the eldest always silenced her. They danced on till three o'clock in the morning, and then all their shoes were worn out, so that they were obliged to leave off. The princes rowed them back again over the lake (but this time the soldier placed himself in the boat with the eldest princess); and on the opposite shore they took leave of each other, the princesses promising to come again the next night.

Of course, the soldier outs the princesses to their father, and claims his reward. The enchanted stairwell is filled with rubble and bricked up. And everyone lives happily ever after.
But I always wondered what happened in the underground kingdom when the princesses came no more. Did the handsome princes no longer shout for joy, and row precious burdens across the magic lake with their strong arms? Did the orchestra fall silent and the illuminated castle grow dark? Did spiders web the wine goblets and the dance floor? Did the handsome princes grow old and decrepit, waiting by the coracles on the lakeshore? Waiting and waiting for someone that never came...
I think that is what happened. And it still makes me sad.

Whorehouse on First Avenue

2005-06-27T05:39:00.000-07:00

Wretchard's latest take on Oil for Food scandals at the UN is appropriately titled The Big Sleeze. For over a year, waves of scandal have lapped at the foundations of this once esteemed institution. I argue that the corruption is so pervasive that the UN needs to be completely dissolved, and an entirely new organization built up in it's place.
The UN's original charter has long been forgotten. In this Belmont Club piece, the gradual devolution of the UN is mapped from the original point of failure, the abject inability of the UN peacekeeping force to discharge its mission on the eve of the Arab-Israeli war.
If the original charter of the UN post-WWII was to prevent future holocausts, what does the report card look like? Pretty dismal: Rwanda, Bosnia, Saddam's Iraq, Kim's North Korea, Dafur, the Congo, Somalia....millions of people are dead.
So what is the industry of the UN today, if it is not preventing holocausts? I think it is misery. The UN administers misery, and Kofi et al are misery pimps. Since this is the main industry of the UN, there is really no incentive to eliminate it, or even to try. The UN keeps misery at a nice stable level, managing it and skimming off a respectable profit. And that is just basic misery management--not including the perks like sex with underage children in Dafur and the Congo, and giant managment bonuses like Oil for Food bribes and contractor kick-backs. This will not change. Expecting the UN to stop misery is like expecting divorce lawyers to stop divorce--it is their livelihood-- and it will never happen.

Geisha, Hetaerae, and Firefly Companions

2005-06-23T09:15:00.000-07:00

I have a new post up at gnxp scifi on the theory of evolution of mistresses.

Evil Satanic Chain Email from the Ninth Circle of Hell

2005-06-18T14:56:00.000-07:00

Here is a letter from Dymphna to me, for a switch. ;)

Jinnji,
If you haven't gotten this...well, here it is now.
I've been tagged twice so I finally did the darn thing.
Here's the orthodox version, though I had to hammer it to make it fit in to categories I could think about.
The Book Meme:
Make a post linking your tagger, and answer these questions
Total Number Of Books Owned Ever:
Last Book Bought:
Last Book I Read:
Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me:
Then you're
supposed to tag someone else, also with a link. Or maybe it's fivesomeone elses.
I forget. I added another category:
Five Books I've Given to Someone:
Anyhow, good luck.
~D

Total Number Of Books Owned Ever: huh? does that mean all the books i will own in the future, and all the books i already own and all the books owned by parallel copies of me in parallel universes everywhere in the multiverse? i guess i have to say aleph0.

Last Book Bought: Neal Stephenson, The Confusion--second book in his Baroque Cycle.

Last Book I Read: Read and finished-- The Time Travelers Wife, Audrey Neffenegger
Reading in a continuous distribution-- The Road to Reality, Roger Penrose.

Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me:
Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce
Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
Heretics of Dune, Frank Herbert
Ringworld Engineers, Larry Niven
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card

Five Books I've Given to Someone:
Cryptonomicon, Stephenson
Snow Crash, Stephenson
The Light Princess, McDonald
The Possibility of Time Travel in Einstein's Universe, Gott
Chapters of the Sages, Bulka

hmmm...i don't know yet who i will tag yet -- be afraid, be very afraid. ;)
As for you Dymphna, you know very well who populates the Ninth Circle--betrayer!

Open Question for the Terri-Bloggers

2005-06-15T08:32:00.000-07:00

FOX News has just aired the autopsy results from Shiavo. I am just curious to see how the terri-bloggers will cover the information. Will they admit that they were had by the Schindlers and the MSM, and that they never actually read the medical reports and trial transcripts? If you look at my past posts you can see i started out undecided, and reached my conclusions by reading the evidence--there was plenty available here, for anyone interested.

I think the most telling conclusion from the autopsy is that Terri Schiavo was blind. Kind of puts a stake through the heart of the "balloon video", non?

I thought this place was supposed to be the well of truth, the center of fact checking in the known universe. Here is Discarded Lies list of Terri-blogs--will any of them (including 'Lies) admit that they were wrong? Is is truly possible that all these blogs were suckered by the Schindlers and the MSM? And that now not a one of them will admit it?

I'm betting we will hear a lot of conspiracy theory rants. Exactly like before.

Religion of Testosterone Poisoning

2005-06-14T07:27:00.000-07:00

Dymphna posts here on the charming practice of throwing acid. This isn't new, it is just an improved version of ritual scarification or face cutting for unfaithful wives. It has been around a long time. This sort of stuff isn't just Islamic--women have pretty much been in for this all along--child brides, suttee, and divorce by immolation have been around in India for a long time, for example. A rejected guy/stalker threw acid in the face of the object of his affections here in the states. But maybe Islam has significantly more of it, and it is codified as Shari'ia Law.

My friend Razib Khan once said Islam should be gelded. I wasn't sure at the time what he meant--should Islam be prevented from reproducing? But now I think he was really talking about reducing endemic testosterone poisoning. Islam is basically by, for and about men. Mohammed built a special caste of warrior celibates (like the Turkish Jannissaries) with the plural marriage concept--reducing the number of available women. Mohammed established a slave class--women. Women were evil, untrustworthy and basically sub-human. They were the source of evil and wrongdoing through temptation.

I reccommend a sort of radical solution in my satire, A Modest Proposal: Y Not?. But I think we do not need to be so Draconian. In order to change the balance of power in Islam, just change the testasterone/estrogen ratio. How do we do that? I would argue that it is already happening--but not fast enough to suit me or Dr. Ledeen. In Letter to Dymphna I talked about giving Islamic women folk heroines and cultural icons that are women. Newscasters and movie stars, singers and female qu'ranic recitation artists, all the above. But perhaps the most important is protection of women under the law. Imams need to soften Shari'ia law towards women, and shed the archaic symbols of repression--debunk hair-rays! Shed the hijab. Use science as a wedge.

Here's what taspundit had to say in the Letter to Dymphna comments--

Jinn, there is another thing you didn't mention - ethnocentrism.In countries with a lot of intertribal warring, ethnocentrism is selected for. I think that there is going to be less shame felt by Muslims due to our efforts (to castigate them for an inherent part of their ESS) as opposed to what Westerners felt due to the Malthusian overpopulation scares.

He is on to something important there i think--we cannot shame Islam into treating women better or giving them a fair share of power--but we maybe can shame them for being unscientific. The fundamantalists love technology, and Tarek Heggy has pointed out here--

Deep feelings of inequality with others in terms of results and achievements makes for a sense of inadequacy that is sublimated into an exaggerated and unfounded pride;

Mocking hardline fundamentalists with scientific refutation of hair-rays and frog-births will shame them more than direct attacks on their treatment of women.

Testosterone is the drug of aggression. Let's soften Islam with an estrogen infusion.

Translation to the Paradise Plane

2005-06-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

Do you know what today is? The day after Hayao Miyazaki's newest anime opens in Denver. I love Miyazaki the best! You can see the trailer here. Naturally I will see the movie tonight with my anime posse--my 8- and 12-year-old girl cousins and my 9-year-old niece. ;)
I suppose you might think it sad that I am seeing a movie with a bunch of pre-teen girls on "date night", but it's not. As far as Miyazaki is concerned, I'm really just a thirteen year old with a drivers license. That is part of Miyazaki's appeal--every film I have ever seen perfectly captures the intense wonder and discovery of being a child again. So the current arrangement works fine for me.

I want very badly to go to the Miyazaki Museum in Japan some day. Pictures are not allowed anymore from inside, but here are a few from the opening in 2001. Someday I will go.

I hope Miyazaki never stops making films. There is no one that can do what he does. And I am very, very grateful that he does it!

Mathemagicians

2005-06-10T07:16:00.000-07:00

I really like to hang out at Little Green Footballs. The whole place has the ambiance of an elite battlegroup ready to spring into action on the WoT at anytime. But while waiting around Charles' campfire, the comrades-in-arms have all sorts of fascinating discussions. But this one sort of dismayed me, largely because i think it reflects the views of the majority of Americans.
You can see what i read here, Sarah D. Hates Calculus, read down. Now Sarah is a pretty popular commenter, and pretty soon most of the other lizardoids on the thread are chiming with why they hate Calculus, too. Since i happen to LOVE Calculus, this makes me really sad.
I know I was lucky to have gifted teachers. The thing about math is, that if you can do math, you can make four times as much doing it as teaching it. So few people teaching math have really experienced the magic, the beauty, and the power of mathematics.
But my ninth grade algebra teacher was one. Lucky for me.
He showed me how to change mundane physical descriptions of ordinary situations into an abstract language of incredible power, algebra. Just like a medieval Alchemyst he magikked up universal solutions that could be mapped onto all sorts of intriguing puzzles. It was there i first learned the maxim that would benefit me so much later, when i studied Artificial Intelligence--Representation is All.
In college i had a wonderful teacher for Advanced Calculus. AC is the first class were you get to see the beautiful bones of theory peeking through the mechanics of differential, integral, and multivariate calculus. My East Indian professor was no example of sartorial splendor--he wore plaid golf pants from the bargain bins at Sears, and horrible gnarly sweaters (for the cold Michigan winters), that looked like he had scavanged them out of dumpsters. But I will never forget how he would cover the board with some elegant, exquisite proof, and then step back, his broad brown face shining radiantly, and exclaim, "See the Beauty!"
Because of him and my other gifted teachers, i can see the Beauty. And i know how lucky i am.
I am reading a terrific book, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose. My friend Razib Khan reccommended it. It took Penrose eight years to write it, so it will take me a while to read it. And yes, Razib-- i am working some of the equations-- for fun! Why can't mathematics be fun for most people?
Penrose says in the preface,

"...there are some who, when confronted with a line of mathematical symbols, can only see the stern face of the parent or teacher who tried to force them into a noncomprehending parrot-like apparent competance--a duty, and a duty alone--and no hint of the magic or beauty of the subject might be allowed to come through."

Yes! But are all those people never even to catch a glimpse of the magic and beauty of Mathematics? Penrose describes himself as an incurable optimist, and offers four different levels for readers to experience his book--so even the Calculus Challenged can experience the glories of this other dimension--spacetime, quantum field theory, supersymmetry and string theory, twistors and electrotweaks, time travel, loop variables, and spin networks, exotic particles and Calabi-Yau spaces, M-theory, dark matter....c'mon Sarah D.--you just have to try! ;)

SHUT UP! And Play the Music

2005-06-09T19:02:00.000-07:00

Dear Trent Reznor;
I have had such a tremendous case on you, ever since i was a teeny-bopper. Pretty Hate Machine rose like a monolith over all other music, and pretty much informed my taste forever. I never minded that you were a jerk to all your otaku, after all, being a dark genius is tough! One never expected to see Baudelaire or Poe signing autograph books. But this is outside of enough! Why do so many musicians with a modicom of talent expect to be able to terraform the political landscape with their personal ideas? I am not interested in your political views--you have no creds!! You have never served in the armed services, studied law, or managed a Fortune 500 corporation!! So stand down on this Bush thing. Or else.
Do you think i am going to stop listening to you in disgust? No way! I will still enjoy your talent--i am just not going to pay for it anymore. You see, i figure you have broken your covenant with me with all this sermonizing. So in the future, i will not buy, i will pirate, i will share, i will steal and disseminate for free. We can go back to our previous arrangement at any time, but until you knock off this 60's style pretentious sermonizing, you're not getting another dime from me!
So there!
Best Witches, jinnderella

disclaimer: ok, ok, i haven't actually done anything yet--but is thinking it as bad as doing it, just like in catholic school?

Star-Crossed

2005-05-24T17:19:00.000-07:00

"How do you like falling in?" said the prince.
"Is that what this is?" the princess said.

It is no secret that i am interested in the idea of True Love. I posted on it here, and here. I have to agree with evolutionary psychologist David Buss, author of The Evolution of Desire, that regular love is common, but True Love is rare. Consider the probability that a particular set of genes and environment are somehow sculpted into the perfect natural mirror of your every need, every desire, and then, that these two reflectors actually connect! Improbable! And that is prob'ly a good thing. Because I think True Love might be deadly. Romeo and Juliet? Tristan and Isolde? Even Clare and Henry in The Time Traveler's Wife. Tragedy and doom.

As a child, I read constantly. In my Treasury of American Short-stories, one story about True Love particualarily impressed me--The Pearls of Loreto. Ysabel, la Favorita, the Star of Monterey, vows to marry no man until he should bring her a lapfull of pearls. Of course, she falls in True Love with a handsome stranger, and would willing forego her vow--but he brings her the pearls anyways! This exchange sums up the concept of True Love, I think--

"Thou has murdered thy immortal soul--for me?"
"Ay, Ysabel!"
"Thou lovest me like that! Oh God, in what likeness hast Thou made me? In whatsoever image it may have been, I thank Thee--and repudiate Thee!"
She took the cross from her throat and broke it in two with her strong white fingers.
"Thou art lost, eternally damned: but I will go down to hell with thee." And she threw herself on him and kissed him on the mouth.

The important part here is, Vincente did not need to provide the lapfull of pearls that results in eternal damnation for them both--he wanted to, he needed to, to demonstrate True Love.
I love the old song, Bar'bry Allen. I know all the words by heart, because i sing it often, while feeding, or hand walking an injured or collicky horse. And i wonder, is that yet another consequence of True Love? If the lovers can never be together, does it always have to end like this?

Young Jemmy was buried,
In the old kirk yard.
And bonnie Bar'bry
In the choir
Out of his breast
There grew a rose
And out of hers
A briar
They grew and they grew
Up the old kirk wall
Until they couldn't grow no higher
And there they twined
In a true lovers knot
For all true lovers
To admire

And I don't actually think one gets a choice. I think True Love happens, like a cliff falling on you. But would you escape if you could, if given the choice not experience the other dimension of pleasure and pain, and just live a normal life?

"Dostoevsky, who faced a firing squad and spent years in Siberia in prison, once remarked that people don't realize it is possible to have a momentary experience that is so powerful that it can outweigh an entire lifetime of ordinary experience."

I think I will try for it. ;)

Memetics 101

2005-05-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

I see a lot of abuse of the word meme here in the blogverse. Here's the wiki. That is fine, but there are some parts of the wikidef that i would like to clarify, (and contradict).
Wilson's original concept was called a culture-gene . That implies that memes are analogous to genes. The most important way that the wikidef fails (IMHO) is that a gene is defined as the smallest discrete unit of genetic inheritance, so a meme should be defined as the smallest discrete unit of memetic inheritance. The Wiki talks about songs and religions as being memes-- not so-- those are meme complexes and memomes. The analogy is, of course, gene complexes and genomes.
The other place the wikidef is lacking is the concept of receptors. Now these are virtual receptors, capable of accepting or rejecting a particular meme. The hypothesis is that receptors are tuned to the existing memetic environment, to allow similiar memes entry, but reject radically different ones. Most of the research being done now is on building "universal memes", memes that will pass all or most aperatures. But Lurker, famous Winds of Change commentor, gave me a different idea. What if memes could be engineered to change the receptors, to widen the aperature of acceptance? Wild. ;)
So that's my meme rant. Feel free to disagree. ;)

Nausicaa

2005-05-16T01:48:00.000-07:00

Although Full Metal maybe my current favorite serial anime, Kaze no Tani no Naushika (Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind) is definitely my current favorite Miyazaki. Nausicaa lives in the distant future, where the earth has been largely turned into a toxic wasteland in the aftermath of a great holocaust, where the giant God-soldiers nearly destroyed the earth in "The Seven Days of Burning". Nausicaa is the daughter of the King of the Valley of the Winds, a small kingdom on the edge of the vast desert that separates the liveable territories from the ever encroaching Toxic Jungle.
I identify strongly with Nausicaa-- her life is about animals! She even has a rapport with the terrifying giant Ohmu of the forest, who look like enormous mutant pill bugs.
I want to be like Nausicaa in other ways, too. She has no fear. Twice during the anime she opens her arms to onrushing death, ready to sacrifice herself to make things better. And twice she succeeds. And here is why. She always tries to do the right thing.
Her vision is clear. The right thing to do is to preserve life, to end suffering. To be kind. To love science and learning. And revenge and anger and fear just don't enter into it. At all.
I won't write spoilers for this. I think you should watch it, and experience it yourself. I've been into revenge, been angry, schemed to get my way. I've been really afraid.
But not anymore, I am going to just do the right thing.

Chimeras

2005-05-13T09:15:00.000-07:00

My absolute favorite anime right now is Full-Metal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi). (Well, except for Nausica) Den-Beste-sama would hate the way i'm watching it, i'm sure-- the first disc became available in the US in February, and i just got the second one yesterday. I watch it also on adult swim, and since there are 51 eps on 13 discs, i will prob'ly have seen all the eps on the terebi before I can buy them.
Yesterday's eps, five through eight, include The Cry of the Chimera. It is so sad. The chimera of the child Nina and her dog is heartbreaking, beautiful, but in terrible pain from the forced merge of two disparate biologies, and horribly sad from the knowledge of what has been done to it.

I get plenty of crits about my obsession with anime and science fiction. But I think science fiction is a vehicle for test driving the fantastic theories and paradigms of science, before we have the actual ability to implement them. And I think anime is a powerful visual paradigm for analysing legend, myth, and humanity.

New guidelines set by the National Academies of Sciences would permit the development of human-animal hybrids. The creation of these new species would be allowed for the sake of research. According to the standards, this would be permitted "under circumstances where no other experiment can provide the information needed." The standards also recommend "strong scientific justification" for experiments where human cells are used to develop major aspects of the brain of the new animal. In addition, newly developed human-animal species are not allowed to breed with each other. These standards are voluntary, and human-animal hybrids are already under production.

Now just when does a research chimera become sentient, and perhaps even human? Will it be based on the relative percentages of human/animal cells? Where is the "Bioethics" Council to tell us what to do? If a sixteen cell cleavage stage is a human being, what about a mouse with a human brain?

The Island of Dr. Moreau
sheep chimeras

Philosopher's Stone

2005-05-09T07:50:00.000-07:00

I guess it is no secret that Full Metal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) is my current favorite anime. Den Beste-sama will not like it, I fear. It is too dark. But for me, the series embodies some of the most powerful conflicts between science and humanism.
The anime opens with young Al reading the First Law, in his hushed, childish vioce.

Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain something of equal value, something must be lost. That is
Alchemy's First Law of Equivalent Exchange.

Al understands this well, since he and his brother Ed lost significant parts of their physical bodies in a failed attempt to resurrect their mother with alchemy. The series relates their adventures in attempting to fabricate the legendary Philosopher's Stone, the magikal talisman that could restore the boys to full human status. However, Ed and Al discover that an element of the construction of the Stone comes at too high a price-- the price of a human life.

At Joe Katzman's, on this thread, I had an argument with Raymond. I envy him, it is all so clearcut and clean to him, life begins at conception. It is a matter of principle, and one must draw the line somewhere. But then I think of the awful tragedy that has just befallen some dear friends of mine, and how biotech and ESC implants could possibly help their baby, and I am not ready to give up on the quest for the Philosopher's Stone.

I am only halfway through Full Metal Alchemist, but I already have the suspicion that Ed and Al, like Alyosha in the Brothers Karamazov, will find the price too high to pay.

"Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that," said Ivan earnestly. "One can hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance—and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."
"No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly.

I am hoping that the scientific community does not so find. And I don't believe we have to make Alyosha's choice. What if, instead of human lives, we can craft our Stone by offering a different exchange, paying a different price, a price of education, empathy, discipline, research, and compassion? Instead of turning away in fear of the Stone, terrified that the manufacture of it might cost us our souls, we have to understand it and embrace it, to make it part of us and our humanity. I still have hope. And hope is a powerful thing.

Young Lion

2005-05-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

My friend Chip's beloved son is in the hospital. We all called Alex "the miracle baby", because Chip's beautiful, brave wife went through so much to carry him and have him. If you pray, please say a prayer for Alexander, and his parents. They could use another miracle.

A much loved friend sent me this lullaby.

Sing a cradle song now as the light fades around us
And you breathe like the ocean, lying small in my arms
See it all in a moment, you so young and unclouded
Shining bright as a lion, feel the motion of time
As the world rolls away from the sun.
I can feel your life burning,
unlived moments within you
Further than I can see.
Chorus:
May the fire be your friend and the sea rock you gently,
May the moon light your way, till the wind sets you free.
I remember your face as you cried for the first time
The cold air of the world and the fierce light of day and the cruel separation
In a world washed with tears, numbed with pain to unfeeling
May you hold to your truth as you walk the dark light of unreason
The stone walls which surround us - may your spirit fly round them
Like the wind from the sea.

Chorus
May you never know hunger, may you
live with a full heart
The light stay in your eyes.

Chorus

Tarot-head

2005-04-27T08:23:00.000-07:00

I really love to argue with Robin Burk at Winds. She opens up my head with the canopener of epiphany, augmented with her magnificent online wetware bibliography. Here is where we argued about the meaning of burnt heretic Giordano Bruno, the neo-platonists and symbolic thought. (I lost) Robin sez:

Bruno was the last flowering and a holdout for a PRE-scientific way of thinking, by analogy and symbol rather than by deduction or induction from concrete facts. He's a bit like the Tarot or the i Ching....

But to me that makes perfect sense! I'm a Tarot-head!
I love the Tarot. Everyone that comes to our house, I pester them to let me do a reading-- I'm trying to get good, and I love the experience of reading. I hardly ever get a reading for myself; I would use the Web-readers, but I've never been able to figure out how they establish the querent without the querent being able to touch the cards.
Anyways, Strength is my favorite card-- oh, I am so happy when it shows up in the layout for me.
From Juliet Sharman-Burke--

The card of Strength depicts a beautiful maiden in flowing white robes, her hair adorned with a wreath of flowers while a garland encircles her waist. She stands in a lush green meadow, the very picture of feminity, yet incongruously she is bending over a lion, firmly yet kindly closing his jaw. Once again, this imagery shows the blend and union of opposites in the maiden who represents the Moon and femininity, with the lion who represents the Sun and masculinity. The maiden is not trying to kill the lion, only tame him, and the lion, the symbol of strength and power, is submitting to her. There is no evidence of force, yet the lion meekly obeys the maiden's firm command....In a reading, the card shows courage, strength and determination.

Courage and strength, two things I love. I want this card to be the symbol of me.
Since I am a Tarot-head, is it any wonder that I find the symbolic thought of the neo-platonists so appealing?
Here's a thought-- since women are better at reading The Cards, perhaps we are better String Theorists and New Metaphysicians?

Memetic Accelerant

2005-04-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

It really makes me angry when LGF is criticized for being a "hate site". That just demonstrates a complete and total misunderstanding of the value and importance of LGF, and of its essential function in the WoT.

Let me explain; the confrontation between Islam and the West is really a "clash of civilizations". The respective philosophies are antipathic-- Islam advocates "submission", the West advocates "free will". You can't get more diametrically opposed than those two concepts. But Islamic societies are undergoing incremental change-- the osmotic pressure of western civilization under globalization is irresistable. Still, the change is very slow. Especially when the MSM seems so ready to supress stories it reguards as too inflammatory, too ugly, or as emblematic of "religious discrimination".

So how do people change their minds about what is unacceptable behavior? First, they must be shown graphically what the behavior is.

We are engaged in memetic warfare. And sites like LGF, and I Could Scream, that showcase horrific and inhumane actions, feature stories that are memetic accelerants. They speed up the process. And we can certainly use a little more speed. In the words of the legendary ME analyst and think-tank guru, Dr. Michael Ledeen, "faster, please". Much faster.

Addendum: While Wretchard's new site is hors de combat, I Could Scream is hosted at The Gates of Vienna-- Oh, King John Sobieski , where are you now that we need you so?

Stable Strategy Set: Defectors

2005-04-20T14:39:00.000-07:00

So far I have talked about several stable stragtegies in my description of Islam as an ESS, Blame Israel, Slave Class XX, and Forced Reproduction. This entry at LGF reminds me of one of the most important and powerful strategies of Islam, supression of defection. Charles Johnson points out an article about a Pakistani man accused of blasphemy who is chased and shot dead by an angry Islamic mob. If you consider the case of Salmaan Rushdie, still under a fatwa of death for his subversive authorship of The Satanic Verses, this is not an atypical Islamic reaction to criticism of the Qu'ran. Honor killings also are a special case of punishing female defectors, as is stoning and ritualized rape. Of course, defection from the gene pool is even more serious than defection from the meme pool.
Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by Pascal Boyer is one of my favorite books. Boyer gives one of the best definitions of fundamentalism that I have read-- "fundamentalism is a return to the religious values promoted by the religious guild and supposedly perverted by further developments."

Boyer also states-- ...fundamentalism is a modern
phenomenon and mostly a reaction to new conditions. But this does not mean that the movements are just a reaction to modernity. Indeed, as many specialists have pointed out, groups of this kind are not enemies of theings modern in general. They use modern mass media- schools, newspapers, radio/tv and the Internet--just as much and often
better than other religious movements.

That is why the Islamic fundamentalists can make use of the Internet, cell phones, and bioweapons without compunction.

Boyer goes on (pay attention! this is important!)--

The message from the modern world is not just that other ways of living are possible, that some people may not believe, or believe differently,or feel unconstrained by religious morality, or (in the case of women) make their own decisions without male supervision. The message is also that people can do that without paying a heavy price....The "message" may seem so obvious to us that we fail to realize how seriously it threatens social interaction that is based on coalitional thinking. Seen from the point of view of a religious coalition, the fact that many choices can be made in modern conditions without paying a heavy price means that defection is not costly and is therefore very likely.

I think the ferocious punishment in Islam for any sort of defection is one of the strongest stable strategies of the Islam ESS. It makes defection very, very expensive. Boyer sums it up perfectly--

fundamentalism is neither religion in excess or politics in disguise. It is an attempt to preserve a particular kind of hierarchy based on coalition, when this is threatened by the perception of cheap and therefore likely defection....Indeed, the fact that the price is pushed so high clearly shows that these groups are well aware that popular sentiment does not lean in their direction. Which, unfortunately, is no obstacle to political
domination if the coalitions are cohesive enough.

A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

2005-04-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

I love Neal Stephenson a lot. Except for Joyce, he is my favorite author, and Cryptonomicon my ultimate favorite book. But I like The Diamond Age too, Stephenson's paen to futurist nanotechnology. And my favorite literary device in Diamond Age is the Primer.
The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a sort of magickal interactive book, capable of delivering an unlimited series of what the guys in my group at work like to call "growth experiences".
The Runcible Program, the design for the Primer, is contrived by a man called John Percival Hackworth, an artifax (or sort of super-engineer) in the Bespoke Division of Machine Phase Systems. Only the very finest engineers wind up in Bespoke, and most of them have had "interesting lives". Runcible becomes a sort of design for giving a young lady the rawmaterial for an interesting life.

Lord Finkle-McGraw couldn't prevent his granddaughter Elizabeth's parents from sending her to the very schools for which he had lost all respect; he had no right to interfere. It was his role as a grandparent to indulge and give gifts. But why not give her a gift that would supply the
ingredient missing in all those schools?
It sounds ingenious, Hackworth had said, startled by Finkle-McGraw's offhanded naughtiness. But what is that ingredient?
I don't exactly know, Finkle-McGraw had said, but as a starting point, I would like you to go home and ponder the meaning of the word subversive.

I think the interstitials between the big blogs in the internet are very like the Leased Territories. Big blogs like daily kos and lgf protect their integrity with dog pod grids and immunomites-- but in the blogverse, these immunomites aren't nanomachines, but memes.

Several times as they rode through the streets of the Leased Territories, Judge Fang made a peculiar gesture; He curled the fingers of his right hand into a cylinder, as though grasping an invisible stalk of bamboo. He cupped his other hand beneath, forming a dark enclosed cavity, and then peeked into it with one eye. When he stared into the pocket of air thus formed, he saw the darkness filled with coruscating light--something like staring into a cavern filled with fireflies, except that these lights came in all colors, and all of the colors were as pure and clear as jewels.

The blogverse is filled with tiny sparkling memes instead of nanomites, and we have toner wars and memetic surf, just like the L.T. And I think the Web is my Primer. In the year I've been here, I've conversed with gods and demons, seen monsters and fell trolls, weathered blogbursts and opinion storms. I can help myself to pubmed articles, or the Physics Review Section D. I can view great works of art, listen to music, read poetry. Read in other languages, meet and enjoy people from all around the world, read the philosophy and analysis of the greatest minds of the 21st century. The Internet is my Primer, with all its rich variety and dense information. And is it working? Am I having an "interesting life"?
Famous Belmont Clubber Buddy Larsen said this about me on this thread.
"you're good--and fun to read. If a bit subversive. ;-)"
That just may be the finest complement I have ever received.

Attack of the Kanly Trolls

2005-04-15T08:31:00.000-07:00

A while ago I wrote a post on the biological basis of revenge, The Art of Kanly. Little did I know I'd soon be serving as my own case history. Certainly, I got carried away. The neural-hormonal cascade for revenge is possibly as powerful as those for sex and opiate abuse-- it has the same cortical map origin. So there I was, swinging my ego sword, and chopping adversaries off at their intellectual knees, having just a swell time. Pretty addictive. But possibly wrong.
So in expiation of my sin, I'll propose two new entries for The Wandering Monster Table: Kanly Trolls and Parasitic Kanly Trolls.
Some useful dunefinitions.

KANLY: formal feud or vendetta under the rules of the Great Convention carried on according to the strictest limitations. (See Judge of the Change.) Originally the rules were designed to protect innocent bystanders. A kanly negotiation, or formal battle in a War of Assassins. ... producing the meaning: "Nothing good, never good, good for nothing." ...
WAR OF ASSASSINS: the limited form of warfare permitted under the Great Convention and the Guild Peace. The aim is to reduce involvement of innocent bystanders. Rules prescribe formal declarations of intent and restrict permissible weapons.

A KANLY TROLL embedds itself in the host blog that it plans to practice kanly against. It will not leave until it has satisfied the objective(s) of the vendetta, or gets banned. Usually the Kanly Troll has declared kanly against the blogmaster, but the target may also be the servitors of the blog. It is usually a singleton, and clever enough to take any side of an argument, endorsing the one perceived as doing the greatest damage to the host.
A PARASITIC KANLY TROLL embeds itself in a host blog with purpose of directing attacks against a target blog. Parasitic Kanly Trolls travel in multiples more often than non-parasitic kanly trolls, since it is more difficult for them to achieve satisfaction. Parasitic Kanly Trolls must neccessarily be discreet and subtle about the objective of their kanly, since a formal declaration would get them banned by the host blog.

I have always loved the honor-codes of the Age of Chivalry, where formal symbolic warfare like single combat protected innocent bystanders to some extent. I think reducing the number of combatants is always a good idea. Perhaps the blog pile-ons I've seen recently could be solved by single combat, in the Iron Blogger tradition. Each of the warring blogs could propose one champion to meet in mind-to-mind combat. What do you think?

"Throngs of knights and barons bold
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold
For store of ladies whose bright eyes
Rain influence and judge the prize." --Milton

Return of the Shortlifes

2005-04-11T17:37:00.000-07:00

/begin transmission/
Greetings, Past-people, from the shortlifes of the Life States of America of the Level III Branching Path Multiverse. Things have gotten much worse here in the Life States of America since our last tachyon beam transmission.
The passage of Mae's Law in your year of 2005 by Tom Delay in an attempt to curry favour with his disappointed constituency is a disaster for us shortlifes. It did nothing to prevent the Jihad for Terri-Culture of Life Revolution, and we are suddenly burdened with hundreds of thousands of brainstemmed organ sacks, which are prevented from being terminated by Mae's Law, even if they should have existing DNRs. Our resources cannot support these sacks in addition to the heavy burden of over-population you have imposed on us.
Please, we beg you, if you really care about Life, care for us, your descendents, and stop this idiocy!
Yours in Life, the shortlifes of the Life States of America of the Level III Branching Path Multiverse.
/end transmission/

/begin transmission/
Greetings, Past-people, from the shortlifes of the Life States of America of the Level III Branching Path Multiverse.
Now things are going from bad to worse here in the Year of Life 2105. Not only are we innudated with with brainstemmed organ sacks as a result of the passage of Mae's Law, and of course our population problems devolving from the passage of the Anti-Contraception Law in 2010 (after the Jihad for Terri Culture of Life Revolution), but now we suddenly have no doctors, anesthesiologists or pharmacists! Please, we beg you to stop this manic dogma of Life-- we cannot support our dependent population and brainstemmed organ sacks without skilled healthcare professionals!!
The next thing that will happen is that you will outlaw Science itself and all the scientists! No scientist will exist to invent the tachyon beam we supplicants employ to reach you past-people! Please do not doom us to the stone-age, we beg--BBBZZZZZZZZZZWWWHHHHHAAAAPPPPTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
...........*hissing gaussian noise*

Message from the Multiverse

2005-04-07T09:42:00.000-07:00

/begin transmission/
Greetings, Past-people, from the Shortlifes of the Life States of America of the Level III Branching Path Multiverse. We transmitt to you from nearly 100 years in the future, the year 2105. We abjectly plead for your help.

In your year of 2008, the Holy Randall Terry split the republican party with his introduction of the theocratic party, and their slogan, Jihad for Terri! The resulting massive democratic victories swept the democrats to power such as they had never known, and enabled the passage of pro-choice, pro-gay, and pro-euthanasia legislation. The resulting backlash among the the theocrats was awful to behold-- the Holy Triumvirate of Jesse Jackson, Randall Terry, and Rick Santorum was carried to power on the bloody wave of the Culture of Life Revolution.

It is now the year 2105. At great personal risk we have stolen this tachyon beam transmitter from the more scientifically advanced Canadians to send our plea for help. Life States of America is a dismal place today, and we shortlifes suffer mightily. Contraception became illegal in 2010, and the resulting burden of over population has caused massive famine, poverty and disease. Citizens of the Life States of America are not allowed to emmigrate by edict of the Holy Triumverate or many of us would leave. The world outside our shores teems with miraculous biological enhancement therapies that have raised the world average lifespan to 200 years of active health, but those "unnatural" technolgies are banned in the Life States of America. We would buy them on the blackmarket, but our GDP has sunk so low that we cannot afford them. The rest of the world calls us shortlifes for this reason. Yet even though our lives are short the burden of mandated unlimited reproduction swamps us with burgeoning population.

We have researched your history exhaustively, and our scholars and historians think our situation could be remedied if only the incipient theocrats could be convinced that Terri Schiavo was in truth, braindead, negating the neccessity of the Jihad for Terri! Culture of Life Revolution. We have attached the trial transcripts and medical reports for your edification, as these were apparently not reviewed in your original decision. As your descendents we pitifully implore you, please make the right decision this time.

Sincerely,
the Shortlifes of the Life States of America,
of the Level III Branching Path Multiverse
/end transmission/

Stable Strategy Set: Blame Israel

2005-04-06T21:52:00.000-07:00

I confess, I don't really see history the way Wretchard and the Baron see it. I basically think history is a giant laboratory for the biological processes of evolutionary psychology and population genetics. So if I can deduce the biological underpinnings of historic events, well, that gives me a better understanding of the mechanism, and possibly a prediction of future system behavior.
I have said before that I believe Islam can be described as an ESS-- all religions can. You can see the definition of an ESS in this post. I am interested in what stable strategies define the set for Islam, and what mutant strategies could over come them. In Letter to Dymphna I described two, as I see them-- Forced Reproduction and Slave Class XX.
A really good place to find stable strategies for Islam is LGF. Here is one I took from this post, we'll call it Blame Israel.
I once heard a dissident Egyptian professor say, "Democracy cannot be forced, yet it is highly contagious". Yet, there is a democracy in the middeast that has not spread-- Israel. How can this be? Simple enough. The local tyrants innoculate their populace against the spread of democracy with Jew hatred. Blame the Jews, blame Israel is the mantra. But now we have an invading mutant strategy in the ME-- an Arab democracy in Iraq. How will they innoculate against this virus? They cannot.
Hmm...perhaps I will make this a regular feature. ;)

The War of the Gargantuas

2005-04-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

I admit, I was mesmerized by the whole Shiavo affair. I don't agree with Amritas and Steve Sailor, that it was an unfinshed courtroom drama screenplay, or a trifling soap-opera dealing with percieved injustice and cheater detection. I mean, Congress passed a law over it! In three days!
I observed that the terribots were incentivized by two things-- profound distrust of the legal system, and profound distrust of the medical system. Those that distrusted the legal system seemed convinced by the Michael Schiavo character assassination broadcast by the media, and those who distrusted the medical system seemed convinced that Ms. Schiavo was not PVS, on the basis of viewing the "balloon video". Amazingly, many people whose scholarship and erudition I had previously admired lost all perspective on these issues. For example, the "Best of Terri" video samples comprised 4.5 minutes of the thirty hours of video tape viewed by the 6 courts and 20 judges during the four trials and myriad motions. That is less than three tenthousandths of the available video data. Can you say sample size?
And examination of the legal history of the case shows that the Schindlers repeatedly attempted to have Michael Schiavo removed as guardian, only to be consistantly ruled against on merit. Is our judiciary hideously flawed, and capable of spawning a death cult conspiracy of over 20 judges, not including the supremes? Is our medical system (widely accounted to be the best in the world) so horribly innacurate that many, many neurologists and radiologists arrived independently at the same wrong diagnosis? Are there really no checks and balances?
I think the real issue is that poor Terri Schiavo became a cartoonish icon for many people's deeply held beliefs about medicine and government, and about pro-life and pro-choice issues. Terri Schiavo became a Cause. Now people that believe in a Cause are very similiar to people that Get Religion.
Here is cognitive scientist Pascal Boyer's (Religion Explained) partial list of "departures from normative reasoning". Note that these mental processes are present in exactly the situations where people acquire strongly held and unshakeable beliefs: consensus effect, false consenus effect, generation effect, memory illusions, source monitoring defects, confirmation bias, and cognitive dissonance reduction. Any and all of these processes will tend to cloud rational collection and processing of empirical data. How many of these do you see operating in the combatants in the Schiavo affair?
This worries me, a lot. People making hard-held, emotional decisions on the basis of urban legend, myth, tabloid-style exposure and non-representative data samples scares me. And those on the left didn't argue from science and law either. They made it into a pro-life/pro-choice dichotomy, and a red state/blue state ideological divide. People that don't believe in science and law are Hobbesian barbarians. And Schiavo is just the opening skirmish in The War of the Gargantuas, the impending mega-battle over abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, and biotechnology.
I love junk horror movies. I saw The War of the Gargantuas on Creature Feature years ago. The very best part was when the japanese scientists opened a big picture book (The Golden Book of Monster Science, I assume) to a picture of the red gargantua fighting the green one (I guess it would be a better analogy if the green one was blue). Then the head scientist gravely intoned from the caption--"If these monsters should ever meet and fight, they will destroy the world". Gee, I sure hope that doesn't ever happen.

Lysenko's Revenge

2005-04-05T13:31:00.000-07:00

I really love George Bush. I'm charmed by his native intelligence, far vision and deep pragmatism, his clear view of good and evil, and his basic desire to keep me safe.
But I loathe the "Bioethics" Council with the fire of a thousand suns.

Trofim Lysenko is widely reguarded as one of the most destructive scientific influences of the 20th century. The Soviets official policy was that genetics did not exist until 1964. Lysenko had control of what science of genetics was left. He used his position to impose his own peculiar brand of Lamrckian inheritance as the official state science, which involved amputating the legs of frogs to grow one-legged frogs and refrigerating wheat seeds to create winter hardy wheat. Natch, any desenters were gulagged, and Russian genetic technology lags at least 25 years behind the rest of the world.

Via Ramez Naam-- "In 2000, President George Bush created the President's Council on Bioethics to advise him on issues of biotechnology. To head the council he appointed Leon Kass, a U of Chicago professor of bioethics with a twenty-five year history of opposing infertility treatments, cosmetic surgery, organ transplantation, and other technologies that, in his view, violate the natural order of things. Under Kass's direction, the council has released report after report condemming the use of new biotechnologies to alter the human mind or body.
The council's 2004 report, "Beyond Therapy", argues that genetic and reproductive technologies undermine the value of life and disrupt the natural relationship between parents and children; that slowing human aging will cause social stagnation as the old cling stubbornly to power; that instant performance enhancers would reduce human drive and hard work.......etc., etc. Ultimately the council argues that...to seek to improve on what we have is hubris, and that biotechnical alteration of our minds and bodies threatens our unique human dignity."
In his book, Our Posthuman Future, the execrable Francis Fukayama (council member) would like to restrict more than just technologies for genetic engineering, arguing that that governments need to "draw red lines" around technologies in general, and that "certain things should be banned outright". Great. The problem is that other countries are not going to be observing Fukayama's red lines and banns.
We are competitive in science as a nation. The problem with the Council's approach is that the minute it is your personal relative that could benefit from say, ESC therapy, all your ethical objections are out the window, and you are paying the big blackmarket bucks for a remedy. And since it is blackmarket technology, no safety belts.
Check this! Politics does not belong in science. We need to throw those luddites and flat-earthers out! With the "Bioethics" Council in charge we are soon going to be a second class nation in biotechnology, where once we led the world. Who knows, perhaps someday we'll be reduced to buying biotechnology from the Russians? How old Trofim must be laughing in his grave.

Letter to Dymphna

2005-04-04T13:17:00.000-07:00

Sango the Demon-Slayer.

My friend Dymphna has this terrific new blog-- I Could Scream, a part of Belmont Club!

Rather unfairly, I asked her this three-part question the other day:

In your opinion, how can the process of memetic evolution be
accelerated in Muslim societies? What are the most important factors operating on it? What are the greatest obstacles to progressive change?

Little did she know, that this has been an ongoing topic at WindsofChange, in discussions with my friend Le Roi Soleil. It seems to me that the weakest point in the organic unity of Islam, must be the oppressive treatment of women. This point is under constant attack already in media, and we westerners should be cognizant enough of our recent history to come up with good strategies. So I have given it some thought, and here are my answers.

Greatest obstacles. There are two. In our country, suffrage was advanced first legally. Women got the vote, could own property instead of being property, and were protected from rape and forced marriage. So the first obstacle is equity under the law.
The second obstacle is reproductive equity. This is really the most basic obstacle, but during American history we did not have the technology to implement this. So we used the law as a proxy to prevent women from being made pregnant against their will.
This is the most basic right of equality, the right not to reproduce. Yet even today this is not a right within the Catholic Church. Note this, Islam and Catholicism employ the identical Stable Strategy, "forced reproduction". The way this has changed in the western world, is that a Mutant Strategy has crept in on little cat feet-- that it is fine to use birthcontrol.
So, to benefit women in Islam, we must give them reproductive equality and equality under the law. Those are the two greatest obstacles.

Now, for the last part. My friend razib says in his Daughter of Enlightenment post;

I have known some women of Muslim origin (the children of
immigrants) who I have had an acquaintance with since childhood who have "fallen away" from the faith, and I can attest to the fact that the tensions, strains and expectations that they have to satisfy are on a different level than what I as a male have had to deal with. "Boys will be boys" has some cross-cultural resonance. While my brother and I went off to attend university without any objection from our parents my sister has already been told by my mother that she will have to attend a 2 year college and live at home because this country is "bad for girls."

We need a memetic accellerant to create memetic equity between sexes within Islam. So I propose an infusion of hero-grrls. I learned to read with comix, Supergirl, Wonderwoman, Batgirl, Storm, Jeanne Gray, Rogue. Even the villian girls had stature. They were equal with men! Hero-grrls should populate the media-- not just comix, but movies, terebi, books, legend and song. Flood radio stations with female singers and female qu'ranic recitation. Showcase the legends of the female na'qaat, the tribal combat poets of the Jahiliyya. Give young girls confidence and dreams. Protect them with law and reproductive freedom. And Islamic oppression of women will either morph into something bearable (like Catholicism), or quietly melt away.

Pak Protector Pope

2005-04-03T08:08:00.000-07:00

Pak Protectors have an in-built need to look after (or protect, hence the name) their "parent" breeder species.
Let me preface this with my standard disclaimer. I don't write for you, I write for me. I write things I feel compelled to write. I understand that this does not win friends and influence people. So be it.

I come from a strongly Irish-catholic family. I learned early of the infallibilty of "God's Face on Earth" (the pope) in CCD class and parochial school. When I was a freshman in college, my father had the Maryknoll Missionary magazine sent to my dormroom.

As a radical teenager I was constantly appalled by the Church's stance on birth control. Here was an issue that caused overpopulation, hunger, poverty, and misery throughout the third world-- why wouldn't John Paul do the right thing here? Don't give me that family values crap, in the western world, birthcontrol isn't even an issue-- most western women take our pills or use other methods without even a blink. Abstinence? It is a sin for a catholic woman to refuse her husband. This only affects the poor and uneducated.

Glen Wishard and Wretchard take the same tack-- that it was admirable for John Paul to hold the line and refuse change. Glen says--

John Paul II obviously saw his crusade against communism, his ecumenical openness, and his defense of Church doctrine as part of a single seamless mission.

Heh. But he mistakes the mission. The Pope's mission was not to bring health and prosperity and freedom to the world in general, but only to Catholics, and potential Catholics.

Like a Ringworld Protector, John Paul advanced the cause of his breeding population. Birth control? Are you mad? The church needs that reproductive edge. Look how successful this ESS has been. Why was John Paul against communism, and also against Reagan's arms build up? Why for the overthrow of Saddam, the cruel butcher, but against armed intervention in Iraq? Because an external enemy is good for a population, as long as they cannot possibly win. Even extending comraderie to other religions was not altruistic-- jews, muslims, hindis, buddhists were all prospective converts and allies. Conversion at the point of a sword doesn't work anymore-- John Paul needed subtlety.

That is not to say that this is not admirable-- there is a biological basis for all behavior-- from the biological perspective this is a successful ESS. But to say John Paul held the welfare of all the world's poor and down trodden in his heart, well, that just ain't so. This issue is rife with rationalization and hypocrisy. John Paul worked hard to keep poor uneducated women enslaved to their reproductive processes, to preserve them as a class of slave breeders for the benefit of the Holy Catholic Church. Can muslimahs use birthcontrol? How is this issue any different in Catholicism than Islam? Why is it fine for Catholicism to oppress the XX, but not for Islam? Feh. You know the answer to that.

Many Universes

2005-04-02T00:10:00.000-08:00

Definitely at Gene Expression SciFi.

The White Snakes of Darkness

2005-03-22T20:40:00.000-08:00

It was one of those dreadful creatures which few have ever beheld-- the White Snakes of Darkness.

I thought I was finished with terri-blogging, but two early releases of articles to be printed in the April 21 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine showed up in my emailbox. They are both really good, and answer a lot of the somewhat hysterical arguments I've witnessed here.

EARLY RELEASE
To inform the current debate about decisions at the end of life, these articles were published at http://click.nejm.org/ct/click?q=ed-j8RvQgVbRk6kZVnsvBBQMoOwS_nHBUcR on March 22, 2005. They will appear in the April 21 issue of the Journal.

Perspective
Terri Schiavo — A Tragedy Compounded
T.E. Quill

Legal Issues in Medicine
"Culture of Life" Politics at the Bedside — The Case of Terri Schiavo
G.J. Annas

Since these are registration articles, I'll quote what I think are the salient points.

Computed tomographic scans eventually showed severe atrophy of her cerebral hemispheres, and her electroencephalograms have been flat, indicating no functional activity of the cerebral cortex. Her neurological exams have been indicative of a persistant vegitative state, which includes periods of wakefulness alternating with sleep, some reflexive responses to light and noise, and some basic gag and swallowing responses, but no signs of emotion, willfull activity or cognition.

Sound familiar? This explains a lot to me. Continuing...

Having viewed some of the highly edited [emphasis ed] video-taped material of Terry Schiavo and having seen other patients in a persistant vegetative state, I am not surprised that family members and others would interpret some of her apparent alertness and movement as meaningful.

Explaining the other "miracle" recoveries....

There have been only a few reported cases in which minimal cognitive and motor functions were restored three months or more after the diagnosis of a PVS due to hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy; in none of these cases was there the sort of objective evidence of severe cortical damage that is present in this case, nor was the period of disability so long.

This was important to me.

There is no evidence that Mrs. Schiavo is suffering, since the usual definition of this term requires conscious awareness that is impossible in the absense of cortical activity....If and when her feeding tube is permanently removed her family can be reassured that dying in this way can be a natural humane process....

And yes, FOX news reports that Terry is being given medication so that she will feel no pain from dehydration or hunger.

I had long suspected the White Snakes of Darkness were active among the left, who seemed more than willing to distort facts to further their own ends, who shunned scholarship and research, who did none of the fact-checking that we on the right so pride ourselves on. Now I see we are all just the same.

Update: 2005.03.23 blogsforterri and discardedlies still mustering massive denial. I don't have the heart to check elsewhere.

Sea Change

2005-03-22T07:55:00.000-08:00

I was up early this morning for foal watch, so when I got back to the house, I flipped on FOX news. Non-stop terri-coverage on Whittemore's decision, right up to the point where the network polls data began to permeate the collective conscious of the media. Whoa! 70% of Americans are against the congressional intervention into a traditional states rights issue. Then I began to see a coverage change. More emphasis on other stories, the Red Lake school shooting, Michael Jackson, statuatory rapist XX teachers, Amber alerts, etc. The pressure is easing off, the viewers have had their say. Programming execs look for other news.
Now will we see a corresponding drop off in the intensity in the blogverse? Have to watch.
Traditionally I'm a right blogger. If you look at my social network diagram (if i had a blogroll, that is), you would see me connected to mostly right blogs. However, that has probably changed somewhat. A lot of right blogs became very shrill and partisan, even obsessive. They became emotionally involved. That causes a loss in perspective. So here is the 411.
The current tenant of Terri Schiavo's body has a moral and ethical right to live. But not a legal right. My prediction is that the 11th circuit court will find with Whittemore. The supremes have already turned this down once-- I doubt they've changed their minds. I fully expect that they will rule by refusing to rule.
I think perhaps the congress has taken damage over this. Delay burned political capital to force the compromise through, and they were at the limit of what they could do. How much hope could there be in just tossing it back to the judiciary, after the supremes had already turned it down? I think also, that Congress has taken damage over this.
The American people have spoken. Expect the air to bleed out of this story like a pierced balloon. And expect the Lidless Eye of the MSM to turn away in search of fresher agonies.

Terri Schiavo's New Tenant

2005-03-21T06:29:00.000-08:00

Well, I read the whole thing. I asked questions of both sides, I watched the video, I listened to the audio, I looked at the CAT scan, I watched Congess on CSPAN, I read neurologists' reports.
I noted that the bloggers I most respect, Joe Katzman, Charles Johnson, Wretchard, Razib Khan, avoided the issue like the plague. It is messy, ugly and invasive. Only the abortion issue raises this kind of hatefilled furious invective on both sides. People that disageed (even mildly) at blogsfor terri were called "stupid/ignorant" and "spawn of the devil". Some were deleted and banned for expressing alternative opinions. Doesn't that usually only happen on the other side of the blogverse?
It is really no one's business but the family's. Or is it?
All the wrangling over whether Michael Schiavo and Judge Greer (and actually anyone that disagrees with the "terri-life" position) are killer-monsters is sort of irrelevent to me. I want to know who terri is now.
Here is what it boils down to, for me.
I believe that Terri said that she didn't want to be kept alive on life support. Haven't you said that? I've said that dozens of times. It's my worst nightmare. To be trapped in a flesh coffin with no interface. But I was never inspired to get a living will made up until I saw what happened to Terri.
What makes a person who they are? I believe that the personality, "soul", whatever you want to call it, is an energy pattern created by the bio/electro-chemical properties of neural connections in the brain, the neo-cortex to be specific. Who you are is an edifice built of thought and memory, unique and unreproducible.
If you look at the CAT scan, the center of terri's brain is a crater filled with dark fluid. You can argue about about what functionality remains to her, or how much she can relearn, but I don't think you can argue that she is the same person that she was. She is not. A big chunk of that person is gone. This is bourne out by empirical data. The new Terri, the diminished Terri, can't really speak intelligibly. I don't think she has good enough control over her voluntary muscle groups to learn a gestural protocol, or they would have taught her one. I don't think the diminished Terri can understand abstract concepts like life and death. But the new Terri is alive, and not just in the brainstem sense. She recognizes and reacts to environmental stimuli. She can move in response to stimulus, but not consistantly. She can make sounds. She is a tenant in the house formerly occupied by Terri Schindler Schiavo.
My question is, does this house belong to the tenant now? If the old owner is gone, and even if the old owner left instructions to have the house burned down if it became unuseable to her, doesn't the new tenant deserve to live?
I don't actually have an answer, but I think this question should be asked.
I read this great new book by Ramez Naam, More Than Human, about all the marvelous new transhuman technologies that are trembling on the event horizon. Soon, we may be able to fix people like Terri, to restore the original tenant . So here's my other question-- given new technology, will the State decide to keep my body alive contrary to my wishes, if my family petitions to override my living will on the basis of technological advances or partial recovery? I never agree with Barney Franks on anything, but he's right on this-- "a can of worms".

Mercy for Terri Schiavo

2005-03-16T09:17:00.000-08:00

There is an enormous amount of terri-sympathy, and terri-indignation, and general terri-advocacy in the blogverse. See blogsforterri and discarded lies for samples. I'm not really up on all the moral and legal ramifications of this story, but I sort of wonder how Terri feels about all this. After being trapped in a flesh prison with munged controls for fifteen years, what would she really want at this point? I can't say for her, but for myself I'd be dying for a graceful exit. I've always thought that if I couldn't read, or understand being read to to, I'd prefer to just step on. The life of the mind is the most important thing to me (see my post on Tribes) and I don't think I'd want to live without it.
But what if there could be, some miracle, a recovery for Terri? Here's another reason for me to want to step on. I had a really good friend, we grew up together. Our dads were both surgeons, and our families shared vacations and summers my whole life. I still remember sneaking a six-pack up to the tree house with him during a pool party. We were thirteen.
Time passed and we both got accepted into the honors programs at our colleges of choice. The future was so bright we needed shades. Then something awful happened. On his way out to his parents cabin on Silver Lake, his motorcycle skidded on a patch of gravel and he slammed into the pavement. He was wearing a helmet. No one missed him until the next morning.
He was in a coma for eight months. We didn't know if he'd wake up or not. I would go to the hospital and hold his limp hand and read science fiction to him.
And then one day he woke up. But he wasn't my friend anymore. He couldn't learn. He has had a terrible sad life for the last ten years. College being out of the question, he enrolled in the Army. Dishonorable discharge. Since then he's been a heroin addict, a "jesus freak" (sorry, I don't know what else to call it), a male nurse, in-and-out of jail, a janitor, and always, a drunk. He broke his parents' hearts a thousand times. There is nothing left of the bright boy so full of promise, that I once knew. My friend isn't in there. Someone else is the tenant. It is almost like demonic possession.
So, I wonder, even if Terri can learn to smile and laugh and lift up her leg, is the real Terri still in there somewhere? And what would she want?
Update 2005.03.18: Apparantly they have removed the feeding tube. Now, stepping on for me definitely does not involve dying horribly of thirst. Thank-you, Terri. You were only 26 when this happened. I'll take your lesson to heart. I'm getting a living will and a suicide kit.

String Theory 101 Part II

2005-03-14T13:54:00.000-08:00

If you are at all interested in string theory, supersymmetry, dark matter, and exotic particles, please come and put your two cents worth in at the Nerd Nexus (Gene Expression Scifi ).
thanx!
--jinn, proud nerdette since birth (or maybe conception?) ;)

Ward Churchill and the Baby Gap

2005-03-11T12:09:00.000-08:00

If you think the blogverse in general and PirateBallerina in particular are obsessive on the Ward Churchill issue, you oughta try living in Denver. Talk radio, local tv news, our strange, schizophrenic local newspapers (two during the week, one on Sunday), magazines, non-stop endless coverage. And like ripples spreading outward from a thrown rock, Hoffman's resignation, the date rape/sexual harrassment/football recruiter scandals and calls for Coach Gary Barnett's resignation. In spite of what loyal CU fan and local talk show host Dan Kapliss says, I think I see a connection. And that connection is the Baby Gap.
If you haven't read Steve Sailer's terrific Baby Gap post, I suggest you go read it now. It is, IMHO, the most important piece of analysis to come out of the post election traumatic deconstruction. Steve says,

Among the 50 states plus Washington, D.C., white total fertility correlates at a remarkably strong 0.86 level with Bush’s percentage of the 2004 vote. (In 2000, the correlation was 0.85.) In the social sciences, a correlation of 0.2 is considered “low,” 0.4 “medium,” and 0.6 “high.”

OK then. The CU Buffalo football team has been a scandal for twenty-five years. Date rape, gang bangers, DUI, violence, sexual harrassment, at one time 19 members of the team were in court, waiting to go to court, or on probation. This culture has been tolerated and excused for over two decades. Ward Churchill has been a faculty member for fifteen years, consistently spouting idiocy, lying and plagarizing, the very epitome of a credentialless con-man. No wonder Elizabeth (Hoffman) got the hell out of Dodge.

Why is this happening now, here, in my town? I think the wind is changing. Prepare to come about!
I think the 2004 elections has opened the eyes of parents, and they now have belief in their own effectiveness. Parents have power. Parents pay tuition bills, parents pay taxes. Out of state (most lucrative) enrollment applications are way down. Follow the money.
The other force that will drive this "take back our universities" trend is the hopped up information fusion process spawned in the blogverse. For many years fudging your academic credentials was perfectly safe, especially if you were a female or a minority. No one could actually discuss it! But this year, the only year I've been here, that's not so safe anymore. The membrane between the blogverse and the flesh world is so much thinner than a year ago-- in some places semi-permeable or wholly porous even!
So, the hallowed halls of academe, unchallenged sanctum of the liberal left for decades, had best take heed. Otherwise academia will be overwhelmed like shell gatherers at the beach with a tsunami of conservative, tuition-paying, tax-paying wrath towering over them.
And Dr. Dean and the Democrats better be reading at iSteve.

The Theory of Error-Correcting Codes

2005-03-08T21:45:00.000-08:00

I just read Cicero's beautiful essay, Faith, at Winds of Change. In turn, this essay was inspired by the Baron's three-part series, The Enemy Within, which I had already read, but which now acquired a fresh polish in the context of Cicero's post.
I was reminded of a class I had taken, on Error-Correcting codes. The idea behind ECC is to encode data in such a way that it is self repairing, containing reps of the data or instruction for regenerating it, in case of corruption or loss.
Now, I am both a transhumanist and a posthumanist. I believe in individual enhancement that could yet be part of some uber-hive mind unaware of my existance, like the Baron's analogy of a brain cell reading a newspaper. I believe in many-universes, and that someday we'll be able to build full neural imprints with quantum computers, protect them with unbreakable codes, and teleport them to the farthest reaches of known (or imagined!) space.
But in the onslaught of the staggering post- and trans- changes we are about to face, how to retain the "humanist" part? I like Cicero's answer of faith. If we look at religions, world-views, rules for life, even rationality, we can see they are not unlike Error Correcting codes. The data might get corrupted, but it is capable of regeneration, and I would say astonishingly robust. Perhaps all my examples are variants of a single ECC, one that preserves a message for the sustainment of humanity. And I maintain, even in the face of the great adventures that lie before us, our faiths will be preserved.

Alchemysts

2005-03-08T11:51:00.000-08:00

"Any significantly advanced science is indistinguishable from magic."

I have been watching Full Metal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) lately. It is my favorite. The perfect fusion of science and magic, and the wonderful Winry, someone I can completely identify with. The story begins about two brothers, Al and Ed Elric. Ever since they were young they had practiced the science of alchemy. You follow their journey of being alchemists and their quest to regain that which they have lost.

Their father was a well recognized alchemist, which is where their skill comes from. However, when they were young their father left, and they remained in the care of their mother. One day their mother died, and in their innocence and ignorance, they attempted what was forbidden, human alchemy.

What happened next, they were obviously not prepared for, and in the aftermath the brothers lost more than just their mother. In the freak accident Al loses his body, and in a moment of panic Ed ties his brother's soul to a suit of antique armor. Edward himself loses an arm and a leg, a costly reminder of what has happened.

In their world, the highest level of skill is rewarded by the position of State Alchemist, and the military is made up of wizard/warriors, who are supposed to use their power for good. So Ed becomes a State Alchemist, and he and Al become involved in a quest to recover their physical bodies.

Winry is the girl next door, but she is also an automail expert, and helps replace Ed's lost arm and leg. She is a total technogeek (like me) and technology is a complete turn on for her. She gets a chance to examine Ed's State Alchemist's watch, that amplifies his powers, and she is beside herself with joy. These kids are growing up together, and the character development of their interaction is wonderful.

The series deals with a lot of heavy philosophical questions, like whether it is ethical to bring back the dead. Human alchemy is forbidden, and it is easy to understand why. The "Chimera" episode made me cry.

There are 51 episodes planned. I have been watching the tv series on adult swim-- only the first dvd (1&2) is available in America currently. The dvd series will have the japanese version on one side, and the american on the other. I ordered the first one.

I watch a lot of adult swim, and tech tv is also good for anime. I've seen all of Read or Die, Last Exile, Hellsing, and Wolf Rain, all of Stand Alone Complex so far. I don't expect I will ever see all of Inuyasha-- there are just too many eps. ;)

I don't mind the two episode per week format, it gives me something to look forward to, and better analysis and anticipation. Sometimes I rent series thru NetFlix, but there is always an annoying hole in the series, where dvds haven't been released yet.

But Alchemist is the best so far. Some characters become corrupted by power in the traditional scientist-plays-god model. There is always a conflict in the military organization between those who wish to do good, and those who just wish to obey the rules and have control. But perhaps I like it best because I can so totally identify with Winry. ;)

Icarus

2005-03-04T09:51:00.000-08:00

I always go to the Cirque when it's in town. This year the production was Varekai, the story of Icarus. He falls broken, with melted wings, into an amazing enchanted forest of strange acrobatic creatures. Poor Icarus! His wings cannot be mended and the forest creatures are terrified of him. Fortunately, he is saved by a brave and beautiful caterpillar/contortionist, so there is a happy ending. Like all Cirque performances, the music, costumes, and acrobatics were just stunning. I especially loved the Russian Swings and the Georgian Sword Dancers.

Afterwards, in the swag tent, I deliberated over a pale grey velvet half-masque frosted with ice-coloured jewels and dripping with pale grey ribbands (ok, i really wanted it), and a copy of the DVD. I choose the DVD, and was very glad of it, when I played it and heard the story of Anton Chelnikov. Anton is seventeen, and has been with the Cirque for five years. He plays the main character, the character of Icarus, in Varekai. He has a moving story. Anton and his family came from Russia, with a huge circus. When he was five, the producer just abandoned the whole troupe in the street, stranding them. Anton says, "we had no money, we did not know the languange. The only ones who would help us were the Jews, the Jews took us in. That is why I dedicate this piece, the story of Icarus, to the Jewish people."
Yes, it's always about the Jews. One way or another. ;)

As the time gets closer for me to go back to real life, I think about less saying and more doing. But who can speak of Icarus without something from Joyce?

The spell of arms and voices: the white arms of roads, their promise of close embraces, and the black arms of tall ships that stand against the moon, their tale of distant nations. They are held out to say: We are alone. Come. And the voices say with them: We are your kinsman, making ready to go, shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible youth.
Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

Boxing Day

2005-02-28T19:36:00.000-08:00

We always ride out the First Sunday after Christmas, on Boxing Day. It is a tradition. I started writing this post after riding that Sunday, but never finished it. Until now. Today I heard that four people in the UK are being arrested for hunting with hounds. The news media calls them "dogs". They are not "dogs". They are pack animals with their own noble code and their own language.
Once I saw the Master of our local Hunt send the whole pack up to crowd onto the top of a piano bench jump with just a couple of special words. I asked him how long it had taken him to learn the "hound language". He said, "My whole life."
The countryside is under attack, not just in the UK, but here in the States. Suburban sprawl, PETA, "townie" legislation, the enemies of the Hunt are legion. And more than that, the Hunt is losing it's constituency. There is almost no one my age. Everyone is much older or much younger.
I love the Hunt. It seems very fragile to me though. Most hunts are "drag", or scent hunts anymore. Too many fences. But even the live hunt kill is not an evil thing-- the hounds break like a wave of surf over their prey, instantly snapping it's neck.
Farmers and ranchers have a different view of vermin than the townies. I especially loathe prairie dogs. Someday soon I am going to livetrap a bunch of them and release them on some PETAite's lawn. Let their horses break their legs, let their children contract bubonic plague!
I think it is worse for the UK, though. The delicate symbiotic web established long ago between the farmers and the foxhunters is being wrecked. The whole industry, the glorious tradition, the breeding packs of hounds and bloodstock (horses), ruined and discarded.

But while we have it yet, here in the states, I'll try to give you a taste.

It is early, cold and still in the valley. Dozens of horse trailers are parked in the field, threads of mist from the creekbed curling between them. Everyone is parking, unloading, tacking, and getting up. This is a Pony Club hunt, so excited youngsters run between the trailers, borrowing warmer gloves and stock tie pins. I was a Pony Clubber, so I know how they feel. About to burst with excitement.
Everyone swings up, and the Master brings up the hounds, flanked by the Hunt Servants and Whippers-in, their pinques blazing scarlet in the first bit of sun, and the Field falls in behind. The hounds catch the scent and bell and cry, the Huntsman blows Tally Ho, and we're off!

The hounds are keen, they have been bred for generations to do this. They love their work. My horse was bred to this too, he grew up in Ireland and hunted with the Galway. He loves to jump and never stops out. I was told that young horses in Ireland learn to jump the stone walls between pastures so they can move to fresh grazing. Jumping is the best. My horse weighs nearly two thousand pounds, and has size seven feet, yet we can fly over a coop in the fence line like thistledown.

I freely admit to being an anachronist (and, yah, SCA member too), and the thought of a world without the Hunt saddens me. We will all be poorer. The bulldozers and the PETA people will come, and the townies will pave our Huntgrounds and put up streetlights, and the countryside will be crushed and tamed, and moulded into yet another town. But I saw the Hunt while still it lived, and no one can take my memories from me.

Frequency Rising

2005-02-28T13:57:00.000-08:00

My blogfather, Joe Katzman, is getting married! Read here for the most wonderful, romantic, tender, charming love-story ever!!!
But this means that I have to recalculate my True Love and Happily Everafter probabilities!
Not that I mind. ;)

The Hero Gene

2005-02-23T13:59:00.000-08:00

Ok, really, I know there's no such thing as a hero gene-- I'm borrowing the trick from sleazy sensationalist/geneticist Dean Hamer (The God Gene, The Gay Gene) to get your attention. But I do believe in a hero meme complex.
This is one of my alltime favorite Joe Katzman discussion threads, on who is the biggest hero in Spiderman 2. The comments are really a treat, and one thing I learned, is that even ordinary people, sans superpowers, can have a chance to be heroic. Why do some take that risk, and some do not? David Blue thinks it is duty.

And Peter Parker, Spider-Man, is the one person who absolutely can't fail. Anybody else might hope for a hero, but when he falls short, in anything from fighting crime to delivering pizza on time, the consequences fall due. He shoulders the burden, metaphorically and literally ("This is really heavy."), and that makes him the hero.

Wretchard blogs on AEW Mason's The Four Feathers . Feversham becomes a hero, and saves his comrades in an effort to get Ethne to take back her feather. This is why--

And it was for the chance of 'afterwards' that he followed them into the Sudan.

The Hope of Heaven. That can make heroes.

And simple love for one's fellow man. Call it kin selection, tribalism, nepotism, whatever-- it is the value that Nameless gives up his life for in Hero, to give up personal vengence to heal The Land.

This is a good time for making heroes. Opportunities are many.

The estimable David Blue weighs in: "The hero at the gate is a big, primal image for me, whether it's the hero as a threat to break in ("Hannibal at the gate!" or Homer's Greekheroes at Troy) or as defender/counter-attacker (Brasidas at Cerdylium, Horatius at the bridge, Tolkien's heroes at Helm's Deep),or breaking out (Joan at Orleans, Harry Houdini), or, as in this case, holding the gate closed against what wants to break out - the anti-Pandora. "

That is one of my favorites too, the "rough men with guns keeping off the dark".

Consider Cuchulain, or Setanta, the Hound of Chulain, the hero of the The Red Branch Cycle. From an early age he was recognized at being the physical superior of all, and he grows up to rescue Ireland nigh single-handedly.

What makes someone sacrifice to spread their genetic advantage, whether it be clear vision or outstanding physical capacity across a population?

We see a lot of heroes these days. I think heroics are newly popular. Our soldiers risk death to plant a sapling of democracy in Iraq, Iraqis risk death to vote, GW makes himself a target to promote his radical ideas of world freedom. I think it means something to be a soldier or a citizen these days. A chance to "do the right thing", to stand up and be counted on the side of the angels.

The Cemetery Pasture

2005-02-17T09:37:00.000-08:00

Cemetery Pasture With Ghost
I really admire people who can be open about posting pictures of themselves on their blogs. They are really brave. But that's not me. This picture is the measure of my courage for that. You can see I'm fairly dark, fairly young, maybe even fairly tall, but that's it. You couldn't recognize my face.

And I doubt you'd recognize the background. This pasture belongs to a neighbor up the road. It is called the Cemetery Pasture not just because of the old graveyard, but because the bones of many horses litter the bottom of the ravine in the background. Dead horses are hard, logistically. They are so big. People in the county who cannot afford to bury a beloved pet, and don't want to have the carcass hauled off by the renderers, can bring it here. The sun and the snow and the wind and the rain, and the coyotes and foxes and magpies and turkey buzzards pick the bones clean.

It is a quiet place, and more than a little sad. They still bury people in the old graveyard. I knew two men that were recently buried in the cemetery there. One was an old man who died of the "farmer's disease" (melanoma), and one was a young man who committed suicide. It seems a good place for the long sleep. Maybe I'll be buried there myself someday.

Or perhaps like Major Kusanagi in the holy "Ghost in the Shell" anime, I am already my own ghost.

Happily Everafter

2005-02-11T06:56:00.000-08:00

a happy ending....
Sometimes there is so much bad stuff going on that we forget the good things that are happening all the time. This is the best thing. Two of my friends recently found each other. Yah, two tiny grains of sand on life's vast beach triangulated on each other and snicked together like two magnets. They have amazing chemistry. It seems like a miracle to me.
Let's consider just how lucky they really are.

There are approximately 6,396,000,000 people in the world right now. There are 293,600,000 in the US. I'm not especially chauvinististic on nationality, but what is the probability that you are going to have a chance to meet everyone in the world? Let's try to confine the statistics a bit. Approximately half of the people in the US are male. Let's say 25% are in the right age window. That is 36,560,000 guys. How many of those guys do you have a chance of meeting in your breeding window? And what is the chance that you will meet one of the 100 or 1000 or (insert arbitrary number here) or so guys that you have a chance of falling in love with? And what if you plan on holding out for True Love? That would be 1/(some really enormous number here). Now, a really enormous number divided into 1 is limit zero, yeilding a tiny number indistinguishable from probablity zero.
Wow, those two are lucky. And I just know, that they're going to live happily everafter. :)

Ladies' Choice

2005-02-06T22:30:00.000-08:00

I have a new poll (with pictures!) up at Gene Expression, called Ladies' Choice. If you are of the XX persuasion, please vote. :)

A Plateful of Mystery

2005-02-01T04:54:00.000-08:00

My friend Chip got this plate from his father. Not exactly a gift, but more like a geas, or burden. This is Chip's blog, where he goes into detail about the plate's history, and what he currently knows about it. I think it is fascinating, a real-life clue to what may be a Da Vinci Code style mystery.
A monk and a maiden, some sort of secrets, rose lines, a mysterious urn....like something in a novel. So I'm putting this picture of the plate up to ask for help divining the meaning of the Plate. It is a "singleton", meaning only one original was made by the French china company inscribed on the back-- probably a commission. If anyone has any insights, please comment here or at Chip's blog. Merci mille fois!

Many Holocausts

2005-01-27T09:01:00.000-08:00

There is a blogburst going on right now, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the opening of the deathcamp at Auschwitcz, and the Wannsee design for genocide (no, it was not a "conference"). My favorites, like LGF and Clarity and Resolve, are doing a stand-up job. Never forget. It is good to remember, in the hope that this may never happen again.

But is it enough just to remember? Rishon-rishon has a slightly different take--

There's a certain kind of remembering that I think is unhealthy: it keeps us from moving forward. It's for this reason that I'm far from enthusiastic about the various Holocaust-related suits that are going on. Not because I think the defendants are innocent, but because I think it's unhealthy for the Jews: It's time to move on.

I'm with David. While it is good to remember, it it better to plan and prevent.

Holocausts are with us always. The Jewish holocaust was not the only one. Holocausts pop up with horrifying regularity and dreadful frequency in history. See what Bad Eagle has to say about the Commanche holocaust, the Trail of Tears. In just the past decade we've borne witness to holocausts in Rwanda (800,000), Bosnia(300,000), Dafur(100,000), North Korea (3 million), and Iraq(1.3 million). The Aztecs once slaughtered 25,000 Tenochtitclan indians in three days. I can't really bear to enumerate all the holocausts, but I do know their cause: human nature.

As a scientist and a pragmatist, once I understand the mechanism, I can design ways to prevent holocausts. My beloved Neal Stephenson has this to say in Cryptonomicon

:"Human nature doesn't change. The most educated people in the world can turn into Aztecs or Nazis, just like that." He snaps his fingers.
"So what hope is there?"
"Instead of trying to educate the potential perpetrators of holocasts, we try to educate the potential victims. They will at least pay some fucking attention!"

Exactly. In the book, Avi, "a Man with a strong elvish glow about him", proposes a kit distributed over the internet, for holocaust prevention. And the main element of the kit, is instructions for acquiring parts for and assembling a rifle.

What would you do if jack-booted thugs knocked on your door in the middle of the night? If you knew some holocaust history, and possessed a weapon, wouldn't you stand them off? And the next day, wouldn't you form a militia of your friends and neighbors? The framers of the constitution knew what the right to bear arms meant. It meant freedom. But could it mean freedom from holocaust?

Stock Show is for Red State

2005-01-24T07:10:00.000-08:00

Well, the 99th annual Denver Stock Show wrapped up last night. Stock Show is one of my absolute favorite things, and a time honored tradition in all my family. It's like a mega-state fair indoors, in the dead of winter. Stock Show weather is always freeze and thaw, and this year was no different.
The very best thing is to be an exhibitor. Or a friend of an exhibitor. You get great parking, exhibitor's passes, and an excuse to hang out all day. This year my aunt showed paint breeding stock "on the line" (halter classes) and my trainer rode some of her sale horses in the "baby greens", so I had groom jobs all last week.
The exhibitors' stalls are all beneath the stock show complex, a strange underground world of pens and stalls and wash racks, populated by all manner of bipeds and quadrupeds. Tiny kids run between the pens, guiding enormous, freshly washed pigs with a stick, on their way to some judgement. It's loud, and it smells good from the heaps of fresh sawdust everywhere. The 4H and FFA kids keep their their stalls spotless.
There is lot to see-- horse events run all day in the Equestrian Center, every thing from from the "baby greens" (who's the prettiest for low jumpers) to "gambler's choice" (speed event with self-plotted jumps of varing difficulty and worth). Halter classes for everything from minis to percherons. Draft horses and draft mules.
And cows-- every exotic flavour of cow you can imagine! My favorite is the Belted Galloways, scottish cows that look like oreo cookies. Pigs, goats, sheep, chickens, rabbits, even peacocks and wood ducks get judged.
And rodeos! And Grand Prix jumping! And stock dogs! And the shopping! You can buy absolutely anything, from a John Deere tractor (made in the USA!) or a whole Cleary building to a ginsu knife or a pair of rattlesnake rattle earrings.
One thing the Stock Show is mainly about is Food. High honours are paid to the FFA and 4H kids, because they are the ones that will be building America's groceries for the next half century. I have friends in Europe, so I know how cheap and good America's groceries are. And also about Eating. There are amazing and wonderful things to eat at Stock Show: barbeque, funnel cakes, dipping dots (a kind of ice cream), brats and hotdogs, kettle corn, nachos, burritos, tamales, cotton candy, a hundred kinds of chile, and the infamous "Heart-Attack-on-a-Stick" (a deep-fried twinkie).
But the most important thing that Stock Show is about, is Families With Children. Children are everywhere, from the exhibitor's pens to the Hall of Information. Strollers, back-packs, toddlers, pre-teens, more or less attached to their parental units, and whole tribes of 4Hers and FFA kids winging it alone.
Steve Sailer says in his classic "baby gap" article,

Among the 50 states plus Washington, D.C., white total fertility correlates at a remarkably strong 0.86 level with Bush’s percentage of the 2004 vote. (In 2000, the correlation was 0.85.) In the social sciences, a correlation of 0.2 is considered “low,” 0.4 “medium,” and 0.6 “high.”

What does this mean? Well, the red/blue gap is nothing compared to the white baby gap. It's predictive! "When the average fertility goes up by a tenth of a child, Bush’s share normally goes up by 4.5 points."
The Stock Show families I observed had a minimum of two kids, and more than half had three or more. Next year I may poll the FFA kids and 4Hers on sibs-- that should be easy, because they wear distinctive clothing. I bet they have at least one sib apiece.
What does Stock Show mean to me? Genetically speaking, it validates two of my most basic principles- interaction with animals is bred into us, and reproduction is all.
I can't wait for next year. :)

True Love

2005-01-21T19:55:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed the Edge question, especially when razib blogged on it at Gene Expression. The answers were all good, but I have to point out my favorite, the possibility of true love. David Buss says--

I've spent two decades of my professional life studying human mating. In that time, I've documented phenomena ranging from what men and women desire in a mate to the most diabolical forms of sexual treachery. I've discovered the astonishingly creative ways in which men and women deceive and manipulate each other. I've studied mate poachers, obsessed stalkers, sexual predators, and spouse murderers. But throughout this exploration of the dark dimensions of human mating, I've remained unwavering in my belief in true love. While love is common, true love is rare, and I believe that few people are fortunate enough to experience it. The roads of regular love are well traveled and their markers are well understood by many—the mesmerizing attraction, the ideational obsession, the sexual afterglow, profound self-sacrifice, and the
desire to combine DNA. But true love takes its own course through uncharted territory. It knows no fences, has no barriers or boundaries. It's difficult to define, eludes modern measurement, and seems scientifically wooly. But I know true love exists. I just can't prove it.

I can't prove it either. I blogged on the three "scientific" kinds of love, here: lust, romantic love, and long-term attachment. But I think true love must be a fourth kind.
Look at the literature-- no, not the scientific literature, but mythology and folklore-- Kilwich and Olwen, Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, Lancelot and Guenniviere-- that is what Buss is talking about. And those stories are the case histories, the prototypes.

In my experience what usually happens is more like this. From Michael Sells' translation from the arabic: Al-Asha's "Bid Hurayra Farewell"--

Hurayra said
when I came to pay her call,
woe to you, woe,
you woesome male!

I fell for her by chance.
She fell for another
who fell for another
other than her.

For him a girl was falling,
he didn't desire,
while a cousin on her father's side
was weakening for her, and dying.

Then for me there fell another,
not to my liking,
love in love on love,
beside itself, entangled, mad,

Each of us afflicted,
raving to this friend or that,
approaching, backing off,
ensnared, ensnaring.

What if you could cut through the clutter, the tangle of the noisy environment where everyone might be the one, and find your true love? Rishon-rishon has some advice.
I say, if you have a chance, put all your effort behind it. Believe.

Athena and Ares

2005-01-21T06:08:00.000-08:00

I just finished Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. It is just packed with brilliant ideas, engaging characters and exquisite metaphors. Glenn Reynolds chose a quote here, relating to red state/blue state values.

The book is thick and dense with information, and I know many will not read it. So I want to share an excerpt on greek mythology, and the way the world works, because Stephenson says it so beautifully, and because this is exactly what I believe.

If you think of the greek gods....as patterns of neurological activity that the mind uses to represent things that it sees, or thinks it sees, in the outside world....so Athena isn't a supernatural being that lives on a mountain in Greece, et cetera, but rather whatever entity, pattern, trend, or what-have-you that, when perceived by ancient Greek people, and filtered through their perceptual machinery and pagan worldview, produced the internal mental representation that they dubbed "Athena"...

Instead of calling Athena the godess of war, wisdom and metis (cunning or craftiness), we should call her the goddess of war and technology. And here again we have the problem of an overlap with the jurisdiction of Ares, who's supposed to be the god of war. And let's just say that Ares is a complete asshole. His personal aids are Fear and Terror and sometimes Strife. He is constantly at odds with Athena, even though-- maybe because-- they are nominally the god and godess of the same thing-- war. Herakles, who is one of Athena's human protegees, physically wounds Ares on two occasions, and even strips him of his weapons at one point! You see the fascinating thing about Ares is that he is completely incompetant. He's chained up by a couple of giants and imprisoned in a bronze drinking vessel for 13 months. He's wounded by one of Odysseus' drinking buddies in the Illiad. Athena knocks him out with a rock at one point. When he's not making a complete idiot of himself in battle, he's screwing every human female he can get his hands on, and--get this--his sons are all what we would today call serial killers. And so it seemd very clear to me that Ares really was a god of war as such an entity would be recognized by people who were involved in wars all the time, and had a really clear idea of just how stupid and ugly wars are.

Let's face it, Randy, we've all known guys like Ares. The pattern of human behavior that caused the internal mental representation known as Ares to appear in the minds of the ancient Greeks is very much with us today, in the form of terrorists, serial killers, riots, pogroms, and aggressive tin horn dictators who turn out to be military incompetants. And yet, for all their stupidity and incompetance, people like that can conquer and control large chunks of the world if they are not resisted.

Remind you of anyone? That is why we are going to win, because we worship Athena, and the bad guys, like Saddam and Osama, worship Ares. Our technology will slay them in the end, just by creeping into their cultures and freeing the slaves. But we must resist. That is why Iraq is so important. The act of Gulf II which deposed Saddam was only a prelude to our deployment of metis, in the upcoming Iraqi elections. Hail Athena!

Cryptonomicon

2005-01-20T09:20:00.000-08:00

My review is up at gnxp-scifi.

Chicks Who Fight: Double Redux

2005-01-19T08:47:00.000-08:00

I complain a lot about about being like River Tam, a seriously damaged character from my favorite cancelled tv series, Firefly. I'm weird, people don't understand what I'm saying, my emotional stability is perilous, my relationships are fractured with serious misunderstanding. If you read the Needle, you can see I'd much rather be Taarna the Taarakian or Resident Evil Alice. Those grrls can fight, and take care of themselves.
Razib wrote the original Chicks Who Fight, and then I riffed on it here. River never fought. But I am about to get happy about being River, because of this link-- River review. As long as I get a sword, I'll be happy. :)

At Gene Expression we've all been taking the Myers-Briggs Type Indicater (MTBI) test from this David Boxenhorn post. I'm an ENTP (Extrovert iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving), according to the test. (take it, it's fun!) But I'm puzzled over how I can identify so strongly with River, and test as an Extrovert? I think my extroversion is compensation for being a strange introvert geek. :)

Most gnxpers seem to be INTP. Perhaps I'll do a poll. :)

Anime-blind

2005-01-16T07:35:00.000-08:00

I got the last disc for my Hayao Miyazaki collection last night, at least until Howl's Moving Castle comes out on DVD. It is Castle in the Sky. I find Miyazki's animes incredibly powerful and moving, and I tend to watch them over and over. Yet I have no luck at infecting others with my enthusiasm for anime. My passion for anime actually contributed to a break-up, umm, he just couldn't get what I saw in it. Yet there are many otaku (fan-boy) in the world, and mostly otaku are male. There is no analogous word for fan-grrl.
So I wonder, is there some sort of correlate between liking anime and the sort of "mindblindedness" or "systemization" that we talk about at Gene Expression? That is, a correlation between a preference for the hard sciences and aptitude for math and physics with ability to enjoy anime? Hmmm....
I always read Den Beste on anime, and he recently linked Pixy Misa's top 25. I think Pixy Misa is a guy, because I was sternly corrected on my Firefly post about his gender. I agree with a lot of what those guys recommend, but I'll add a few of my favorites that they didn't mention.

1. Absolutely everything by Miyazaki.
I have periodic favorites that I watch over and over. Right now it is Castle in the Sky. The fall of cities reminds me of Ringworld. And I have an abiding affection for Totoro. I apply it as a medicine for melancholy.
2. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex I and II
Den Beste reviewed Ghost here, but I really reccommend the follow-ons. Major Kusanagi just gets better and better.
3. Last Exile
About pilots and air-battles. The visual for this is a mixture of CG and classic anime that is quite distinctive. I got a good feel of flying., and the plot is convoluted and interesting.
4. Witch-Hunter Robin
Witches as an exploitable psychic resource. I especially love the Inquisitors, and Robin's "do".
5. Perfect Blue
Cop show.
6. Inuyasha
The adventures of a contemporary human grrl and a half-demon in medieval times.
7. Ruoni Kenshin
Wandering Samurai with a great sense of humor. Very picaresque.
8. Wolf Rain
Human wolves searching for Paradise.

I also have a taste for anime horror, Pixy Misa mentions Hellsing, which I really liked. I also liked--
1. Ninja Scroll
2. Mermaid Flesh
3. Curse of the Yoma
4. Demon City Shinjuku
5. Vampire D

I wonder if there is also a gender component to anime appreciation. Like, I think Tenchi Muyo is good, but it wouldn't make my top ten. Harem commedies aren't as appealing to grrls, I guess.

Restoration

2005-01-12T07:09:00.000-08:00

Gene Expression is up! Yay!!
But the scifi blog is not. *sob*. I really wanted to argue teleportation of macro-objects with Thrasymachus.
Mebbe later.

Update: GNXP and all tributarty blogs are up!! Yay!!

Au Secours!

2005-01-11T06:29:00.000-08:00

Gene Expression is migrating to a new host, and will be hors de combat for a couple of days. So I am inviting all my fellow gnxpers to comment here on my humble blog if they so desire. I've enabled comments on the first page, hopefully there is something gnxpers may be interested in, and this post can be an open thread, and i'll post something on Tangoman's interesting "stealth media " hypothesis in a bit. :)

So, everyone that whines about me not having comments (jeff, david, this means you!), here's your chance!

Foot Fetish

2005-01-10T07:56:00.000-08:00

Jeff's new Foot Fetishist's Guide to the Blogosphere is up. Wanna see my feet? :)

String Theory 101

2005-01-10T05:51:00.000-08:00

At our scifi blog we're starting a series on String Theory. Drop by if you are interested, and read the first installment, Entanglement. :)

Orthogonal Hyper-Planes of Thought

2005-01-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

My teammate tc blogged about the Edge Question on our science fiction blog. Edge asked 120 scientists and intellectuals this question-- "What do you believe in that can't be proven?"
There are a lot of good answers (and yes, David, I read them all!!), but I was especially isomorphic with some of them; David Buss on the possibility of true love, Stephen Petranek on intelligent alien lifeforms, and Anton Zeilinger on the realizable promise of string theory. Zeilinger says,

"... quantum physics teaches us to abandon the distinction between information and reality..... So if reality exists and if we will never be able to make an operational distinction between reality and information, the hypothesis suggests itself that reality and information are the same. "

His opinion counts for quite a lot with me since he headed the team that proved quantum teleportation in 1997.
So I asked razib the edge question, and here is what he said:

"hm.

i would transform "believe" into "hope"...i think....

the only thing i would offer is this: there is perhaps an order(s) ,truth(s), beyond our conception because of the congitive limitions of our reality as an evolution-shaped mammal which somehow managed to slip over the hill which hides various insights from the rest of the animal kingdom.
i believe there are many other hills which hide many other truths. i don't think we have the equipment to really scale those hills...so i have hope in transhumanism and other such developments with which we might transcend the limitations of our minds.as wittgenstein said, "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." speech is a constraint on insight, but i we are too dumb to figure out ways around these constraints. for now. i believe the day might come when "man" might take wing and lift himself above the hills which hide the full expanse of all that is from our sight and take in the fullness of it all in one fell swoop.
perhaps."

I think Zeilinger describes one hill in razib's topology. I can believe that. And to me that is a wondrous prospect.

So I would like to know what every one here believes that they cannot prove. And to that end, I'll turn on comments for the first (and prob'ly last and only) time ever. If you are passing through, please tell me.

And who would I most like to ask? Why, Den Beste of course!
But I won't. :)

Rappacini's Garden

2005-01-09T11:18:00.000-08:00

Well, I guess this is really for Joe Katzman, 'cause Once Upon a Time, he told me to try. :)

Do you know the story? A young and handsome Tuscan medical student arrives in Padua to further his education. The highlight of his rather dismal lodgings is the view from his window-- it overlooks the strange and mysterious garden of the mad botanist, Dr. Rappacini. And also the fair Beatrice, Rappacini's daughter. As it turns out, Beatrice has been nutured and raised with poisonous plants, so that the very texture of her being is poison. Yet both Beatrice and the garden glow with health and beauty. Beatrice is not just beautiful, but terrible. Her breath slays, her touch burns, a tear or a kiss can kill.

Here is the analogy to Islam: The precepts of Islam are both poisonous and incomprehensible to western society. How can there be suicide bombers, beheadings, cruel oppression and torture of one's fellow human beings? By being raised with it. Like Beatrice Rappaccini the jihadis are steeped in poison, yet it does not harm them. Islam is only healthy for islamists.

The integrity of Islamic culture is based on kin selction and competition, like all cultures. I have said before that Islam might be described as an ESS, an evolutionarily stable strategy, (or Sir Richard's term, a CSS or culturally stable strategy). In his magnificent book, Evolution and the Theory of Games, John Maynard Smith defines an evolutionarily stable strategy.

"A strategy is a behavioral phenotype; ie, it is a specification of what any individual will do in any situation in which it may find itself. An ESS is a strategy such that if all the members of a population adopt it, no mutant strategy can invade."

But what are the particular strategies that define Islam, and armor it? Two I have considered are the concept of a religion-language, and the implementation of a slave class, in this case, women.

Amritas planted this meme seed-- what if cultures develvop both religion and language simultaneously? What if religion and language are essentially inseperable? The memes are strongly reinforced by learning languge and religion at the same developmental stage, surely a great advantage to survial in the EEA. I think this strategy is well nigh impervious to penetration. In Islam there is only one book-- children learn to read through the short suras of the Qu'ran. Arabic is the most "godly" language I have ever learned-- greetings and farewells, and the building blocks of everyday conversation, are heavily veined with references to Allah. I was interested in Amritas' description of Morman and Jehovah Witness missionaries learning arabic to proselytize, but I doubt the missonaries can gain much traction, except with the young. It is well known that the easiest time to acquire a language is under the age of seven-- for example, I can still think in French, even though I rarely use it, because I learned it very young.

Charles Johnson draws our attention to this debate on gender apartheid in Islam. From the outside, it is obvious that Islam opresses women-- but how does it become obvious from the inside? I think this an easier strategy to overcome for two reasons-- 1) the strategy is already mutating due to the osmotic pressures of western civilization, and 2) we understand it better since woman's rights are a common and fairly recent development in all Western Societies.

Of course, there is no happy ending for Rappacini's Daughter. A rival scientist concocts an antidote for her condition-- "a medicine most potent...and almost divine in its efficacy. It is composed of ingredients most opposite to those..." that make up her nature. But for poor Beatrice the antidote is the deadliest poison, and she falls lifeless to the ground. "As poison had been life, so the powerful antidote was death".

The tenets of a free society are just as deadly to Islam as Baglioni's antidote. That is why the jihadiis fight so hard. But the vote at the end of January is the death knell for totaliterian Islamic culture, and they know it. Viva mutation!

Gratuitous Linkage

2005-01-09T01:00:00.000-08:00

This is a gratuitous link to godless' Guns, Germs, and Gonads posting on Jared Diamond, in case anyone missed it.
I hope he's having a good time in Merry Auld England. :)

The Prostitution of Science

2005-01-03T06:16:00.000-08:00

I got Jared Diamond's new book, Collapse, for Christmas. Not as rich a data feed as Guns, Germs, and Steel, but ok for an afternoon's read. My problem with Collapse is the rather one-sided view of evolutionary history. Like godlesscapitalist says,

Contra Diamond, in reality, most societies down through history died because they were conquered. Generally speaking, not suicide, but homicide was the fate of most extinct societies. Diamond cites the Maya, but I cite the Aztecs and the Incas. He cites the Anasazi, but I cite the Cherokee, the Sioux, and countless others. He cites the Easter Islanders, but I cite the Maoris, the Tasmanians, the Australian Aborigines, the Chatham Islanders (exterminated by the Maori), and so forth. He cites the Vikings in Greenland, but I cite the Saxons in Britain and the Arabs in Sicily, both conquered by the descendents of the Vikings. We can go on like this all day. .

If one considers Diamond's more 'scient' work, as in this paper critiqued here on Gene Expression, Diamond is an hbd-believer. Why leave that evolutionary force out of his new book?

I think this is a trend. Let's call it intellectual dishonesty. Consider Norm Chomsky who uses his preemminence in linguists to push a sketchy political agenda. This year we have seen Dr. Krauthammer and the Council on Bioethics judiciously tailor the description of the utility of existing embryonic stem cell lines to render their policies more palatable to the electorate. And on the other side, John Edward's ridikkulous claims that quadriplegics will rise from their wheelchairs with just a mass of increased funding. I've already cited razib on Spengler, here is the famous "fox in the chicken coop quote" in my post on the Passion.

But this guy takes the cake. In razib's post on David Berlinski we see an extreme example of intellectual dishonesty. Berlinski sez:

a well-posed differential equation achieves a coordination among continuous quantities that is determined for every last crack and crevice in the manifold of time. And is this the standard I am urging on evolutionary psychology? Yes, absolutely.
Nothing but the best.

Aaargh! Any undergrad math student knows differential equations can have one solution, a family of solutions or no solutions. Berlinski (author of A Tour of Calculus, a book I cannot recomend) is using his math creds to make a sophist argument about evolutionary psychology.

Maybe next someone will find a way to pimp String Theory for idealogical traction. :)

Flogging Molly

2005-01-02T16:42:00.000-08:00

No one plays The Music for me anymore, and even Wretchard seems to have sworn off posting lyrics. I got the new Flogging Molly CD for xmas. In case you don't know, they are just the most awesome Irish bar band ever! So I settled down with my headphones for a productive blogging session-- But what is this?!?!?
Where I was expecting a bunch of songs about drinking too much and getting really sick, losing a gf or maybe some irish folklore (like their last album), I was completely stunned by the new Flogging. The lyrics are dark, evocative, brooding and fierce. Here's a sample--

So God how come every wrong's been done?
With deals no Christ should allow
Once the communist now the terrorist
With blood as thick as yours
Now a caravan of clouds
Warns us all of winter showers
Then the rattle comes the rain
With each bullet screams your name

So how come this gathering storm pours little on the truth?
Where the smoking gun's a familiar song let loose
With the bombed out cars
Come the falling stars
From a heaven we'll never know
And the nameless names
On the mispelled graves grow tall
We're still screaming at the Wailing Wall

--Screaming at the Wailing Wall

And this, from Queen Anne's Revenge--

You can't see the demons
Till the demons come calling for you
You're deaf to them screaming
Till they're standing right behind you
Blind to flames glowing
Till they're growing all around you
Numb to fangs gripping
Till they're ripping into you

Wow. Party's over. I guess we all have to grow up sometime.

City of Brass

2004-12-27T09:17:00.000-08:00

Aziz Poonwalla at City of Brass is crafting a poll on the Best of the Islamosphere. You can nominate blogs here. A lot of my old favorites like Iraq the Model and Zachary Latif have been nominated, but I was enchanted to discover all the terrific blogs I have never read!!

Go and see for yourself, but I want to make a special mention of Aziz's group blog, Dean Nation. If you are seeking a voice of reason on the left, you cannot miss this. Dean Nation may be alone in the leftblogs in supporting Spirit of America. Don't be put off by the name, I am not a fan of Dr. Dean myself. I think he had an unfortunate slip into the morrass of Bush Derangement Syndrome during his campaign. But I am willing to give him another chance, in the interest of having a sane and healthy voice on the left. Perhaps The Doctor can yet deploy his awesome powers for the force of good. And I'm hopeful of Barack Obama. :)

Here are some terrific grrlblogs that have made my permanent hit parade--
A Dervish's Du'a
Sister Scorpion
Sunni Sister

Hmm.....how come Aziz has a best female blogger category, where Wizbang, etc, do not? I thought Islam was supposed to be more repressive of women, not less! Can it be that we are (gasp, shudder) too PC to have separate blogging awards on the basis of sex? :)

addendum: 1.10.2005 Time to vote!!!

Code of the Lifemaker

2004-12-26T18:56:00.000-08:00

You can read it here.

Merry Christmas, Steven Den Beste

2004-12-25T23:28:00.000-08:00

I really wanted to give you something for Christmas. I know I am not alone in how much I like you, but you just work for me on so many levels.

I don't understand why you think anyone would pity you, though. Sure, you suffered for your art, but you crafted beautiful things, inspired and changed peoples lives, gave pleasure to many, and shaped the fabric of a new medium. You became a hero and a legend. And when the gods weigh your great heart on the Scales of Maat in the Underworld, you will not be found wanting. You will go on.

I know you've heard this a lot this week, but I want to simply give you my admiration, my gratitude, and my undying affection. Good journey, Steven Den Beste!

addendum: Here is David's link. Nope, I'm not alone.

Tribes

2004-12-21T19:27:00.000-08:00

My friend David Boxenhorn wrote a wonderful essay on tribes, Maladjusted to our Habitat. He says we need tribes to protect us from our toxic environment. I like David's tribe very much. My friends that are observant Jews seem very happy, and have an exceptionally high "goodness coefficient". But I am not an observant Jew, so I often feel like an outsider looking in. If you are not born into it, how do you recognize your tribe? I did not think I had tribe membership.
But then I was epiphanied by what razib said in this post. I love this part the best, so I am stealing it and keeping it forever.

I am not a utopian, I don't believe that all the world can be university educated and have a greater love of ideas than of cousin, evolutionary psychology tells me that won't be so. My aim is to make the world safe for my people, who are not defined by blood or belief, but a quirky disposition to dance with ideas and explore the bounds of our brains as if that was the end of life itself. I have suggested that my people should not deceive themselves into thinking that all are as they are, that ancient and deep bonds of belief, family and ethnic blood will be worn away by the application of ideas or the distribution of texts or even the compulsion of the gun. But neither should we accept our fate meekly and be bound again by dogmas, rites and rituals, in the straight-jacket of custom and tradition.

Razib's people are my tribe. They do not choose me, but inherit me as I was made. I had met other tribemembers before, at work or school, and we were instantly in empathy, but I didn't understand why. Until razib put it into words. I was born into razib's tribe before I knew such a thing existed. Perhaps one is always born into a tribe, and the puzzle is to find it.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

2004-12-20T14:54:00.000-08:00

"The Manticore, a sort of chimera...."

Godless doesn't post much at Gene Expression anymore. But that's ok, he still comments. His comments are way better than most people's posts. His comment on the open thread about chimeras really opened up my head.

"However, in the few years between now and when we have the spare technological capacity to embark on such an effort, it would be easier to simply make chimeric primates rather than doing selective breeding. Doing genetics on organisms as large and slow to develop as primates is a real obstacle, but it's not impossible in theory...and while slow, it would be much faster than selective breeding."

Then he points this article about mouse chimeras. This is wildly exciting stuff, but surely the Council on Bioethics will not be pleased. For instance, you cannot keep a wild animal in captivity, yet wolves are interbred with domestic dogs to produce "wolfdogs". As long as the wolf percentage is less than 95%, the wolfdog is legal. But what percentage of human cells will make a chimera a legal human? If, as in the article, we can grow human brain cells in a mouse crainium, will the mouse become a human with a mouse body and a human brain? And, destructive testing-- if human gametes hook up in a mouse host, the resultant embryo will die of space constraints if not terminated. Is that termination an abortion of a human life?
And will we introduce legislation to regulate "hu-man-zees"? Nestor weighs in--

"What would be the legal standing of a hu-man-zee? Animals have no rights for the same reasons they have no responsibilities. Ever try to sue a cat for trespass or vandalism?"

I remember seeing The Island of Dr Moreau on creature feature when I was small (the old one, with Burt Lancaster).(also, read the book! by HG Wells) Even then, I was struck by the Law of the House of Pain. If the manimals did not act manlike enough, they went back to the House of Pain for re-engineering. Human behavior was good, animal behavior was bad. If we are going to play god, and create new species, shouldn't there be fresh rules? I think science fiction is a vehicle for test driving the fantastic theories and paradigms of science, before we have the actual ability to implement them. If we can carry chimera research forward, we need to have some good ideas about dealing with the results of our experimentation.

I hope this research can go forward, I see many opportunities for life saving advances. And maybe, instead of searching the stars for alien intelligences, we can craft our own, right here on earth. I still believe in the Turing Heresy. :)

Addendum: godless is back, and better than ever! :)

Thirteen Swords

2004-12-18T03:53:00.000-08:00

At GNXP-scifi.

Light Princess

2004-12-17T19:44:00.000-08:00

"...it was very amusing to see her run, if her mode of progression could properly be called running..."

This was the first book I ever received. My godparents-to-be brought it to my baby shower, while I was still in utero. Of course, I couldn't read it for years, but how I loved the illustrations. Gorgeous Aubrey Beardsley styled black and white art deco, with definitely an eastern flavour-- the Prince wore a turban! I read early, and the story was just as good as the illustrations.

If you know Faery, then you know princesses nearly always have some deep flaw-- they are locked in towers, cursed or enchanted, and prevented from marrying by laundry lists of impossible tasks. The Light Princess was enchanted out of her gravity at her christening by her paternal aunt, who also happened to be an evil faery. Now, that may not seem like such a terrible problem. But it was--

"Light of spirit, by my charms,
light of body, every part,
never weary human arms,
only crush thy parents' heart."

So the remedy to restore gravity was the ability to cry. That seemed like a good trade to me! Being able to fly offset by not being able to cry? Sign me up!

Unfortunately, I was soon to discover the gravity requirement in my own life. I started school at four, and two years later got promoted a grade. That made me very young in comparison to my classmates. I think my parents and my teachers hoped I would be crushed into well-behaved seriousness beneath the weight of my supposedly awesome intellect, but alas, that was not to be. I only became more frivolous, more silly, more flighty and more light-headed. I devoted little time to my schoolwork, because I didn't need to-- nothing was hard. I was wild and rebellious, trying to prove to my older classmates that I was mature. I was weird. The combination of excessive intellect, rampant immaturity, and unlimited unsupervised reading caused many to "not understand what I said".

But now I'm tired of it. I'm tired of people telling me to grow up, and asking how old I am. I'm tired of answering the phone, and having the caller ask if my mother's there, and I'm tired of being carded. I'm tired of being turned away from the really good parties.

I guess this is my "Who Am I" post. I can accept it-- I'm a light princess. I've skated through so far, pretty enough, smart enough, well-supported by my upper middle class family. But I've never been tested, never been tempered. I've never had my heart broken badly and learned to really cry. Every day in this place I read stories of heroic sacrifice and courage. I read the works of brilliant wordsmiths and great memetic warriors. What have I contributed? What have I made? Whose life have I changed for the better?

I could enlist. I can see myself in a TEMPEST tent in the desert, sitting crosslegged with my laptop, processing tadil messages and enhancing sat imagery. Would that make me "real"? Could I make the choice Pat Tillman made, and give up my fun and comfortable life and die for something I believed in? Can a light princess ever really earn her gravity and grow up? Stay tuned, maybe sometimes she can.

addendum: I don't usually take comments here, but this one from my friend lewy14 is so exactly right, that I had to include it.

Jinn,
Your post reminded me of Eowyn's lament in LOTR2:
"But I do fear to stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire."
But what is greatness?
--"Lewy"

Yes. Exactly. Thanks, lewy. :)

The Pathological Physiology of The Passion

2004-12-04T08:44:00.000-08:00

While I was skiing last week, razib began his series on Deconstructing Spengler at Gene Expression. (Note the comment from the Acutal Spengler on razib's post!) I enjoy the deliberately mysterious Spengler's writing very much, and read him religiously (ha!), but razib made some salient points. I also see evidence of the clever, gleeful, sleight-of-hand and misdirection of the audience. My appreciation is actually enhanced by realizing this! It is like watching a gifted magician perform. And Spengler, like any true magician, is not about to give up the secrets of the trade. But razib himself is not exactly unintiate to these secrets--

I feel the man has a tendency to spin his erudition to purposes other than explicitly stated. I say this as someone who has engaged in the same thing, I can recognize a fox because I've gone into the chicken-coop myself...

-- let the Wizards' Duel begin! I can't wait!

However, in re-reading Spengler's essay on the The Passion, I was reminded that I fundamentally disagree with every review I have read about Gibson's motivation in making the film, and Spengler is no exception.
I wasn't around for the original debates, but I've read some of the discussions. The issue of the meaning of The Passion is as least as divisive as abortion. Opinions volleyed thick and fast, and furious scrimmages resulted everywhere. I was struck by the observation that Christians and Jews seemed to be seeing two different movies. And actually, they were!
Gibson recounts an "apocryphal experience", that "changed his life". I believe this. And I also belive that Gibson is attempting to deliver this same experience to his audience. In the 14th century, the penitenteagite, an Italian schism sect, sought enlightenment though poverty and the "moritification of the flesh". They would actually self-flagellate with a cat-o'-nine-tails, wear hair shirts, and physically emulate the Stations of the Cross. Can it be that Gibson is really trying to deliver a virtual flogging and scourging to his audience, in order to inspire the "apochryphal experience" that made him an evangelical Christian?
Of course, the epiphany can only arrive if the viewer's background is significantly similiar to Mel's. That is why, IMHO, Jews and Christians were seeing two different movies. A virtual scourging is just not relevent to Jews. But "mortification of the flesh" in search of spiritual enlightenment works!
If we consider recent research, especially experiments where pressure on certain locations in the brain appears to deliver "out-of-body" experiences, this makes sense to me. The group of biochemicals delivered to the CNS on watching torture and agony seems like a likely trigger for an apochryphal experience.
Still, I could be wrong. I have not seen the Passion, and do not intend to. Not desiring a virtual flogging for myself, I think I'll pass. Anyways, I am too unredeemably pagan for the effect to take.

Kimba

2004-11-11T19:39:00.000-08:00

Amritas blogs on anime, 4 5 6 7. He hits the touchstone creater/craftsmen of the artform, bam, bam, bam! I had forgotten Tezuka Osamu and Kimba the White Lion.
I was small, and I think Kimba was on only once a week. That only made him more special and wonderful! Kimba ruled the jungle, and he was a confirmed vegetarian and benevolent despot to the other animals. However he was death on hunters and poachers, and woe betide any that entered his domain. Kimba was only a cub, but he was very fierce and brave. He protected all his tribe. Kimba is the first anime I can remember seeing, and must have contributed strongly to forming my tastes.

I also grew up with Voltron and Robotech. My brothers were really into mecha. How I loved Robotech! I was mezmerized by Rick Hunter, Lin Min Mei and her drunken cousin Lin Kyle. Lin Kyle was my special favorite, he was so entertainingly bad. I just rewatched the Holy Macross II. Is it "good" anime? I don't know....I wonder what Den Beste thinks. He is very wake no wakaranai. :)

I still remember Kimba's theme song!

Who lives down in deepest darkest Africa?
Who's the one that just won't turn and run?
Who's the King of Animals in Africa?
Kimba the White Lion is the One!
Kimba, Kimba,
Kimba, Kimba,
Kimba the White Lion is the One!

Update: someguy is Kimban too! Here is Kimba's site, courtesy him. Very kewl. :)

Live Forever!

2004-11-06T08:10:00.000-08:00

Posted here.

The Honor Test

2004-11-01T18:45:00.000-08:00

In Faery there is a lot of testing. There are tests for real princesses and princes, tests for witches and true love. Tests for courage and loyalty. But I had not read of an honor test.
I really liked what USMC_Sgt said to his daughter about honor. "Honor is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching." I think one reason John Kerry lost was failing the Honor Test. His most devoted fan cannot say that Kerry always did the right thing.
I think that the new emphasis on values also plays to the Honor Test. Values and culture have suddenly become political issues.
Honor is part of our cultural value set. Discipline, the work ethic, the concept of family, all played a part in this election. But in wartime, honor and courage become more important than ever. Clinton failed the Honor Test-- yet he could be a non-wartime president. But George Bush passed with flying colours. That's why he'll be our president for the next four years.

Spook House

2004-11-01T06:46:00.000-08:00

"Pay to get in, pray to get out!"-- conventional

I really love to be scared. That delicious frisson of terror that lifts the hairs on the nape of my neck, the sparkly bloodstream conversion of nor-epinephrine to adrenalin, the elevated pulse and heart rate-- too wonderfun! And I am not alone-- for, example, The Grudge is topping the boxoffice for the second week in a row.
It is a tradition in my family to "do" the big professional spook houses on Halloween weekend. You wander from room to room of a themed warehouse, drinking in scare after scare. All the traditional supernatural enemies of mankind imprint on your visual cortex-- aliens, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, monsters.
Why is this enjoyable? Why pay money to be scared? I'll argue that our onboard flight-or-fight mechanism needs to exercised and kept finely tuned, and horror movies and spook houses are one way to do that. Wouldn't that be a selective advantage in the EEA? Since the whole world has become one big spook house post 911, I believe it does. It makes us more aware.
That's one reason the Wolves commercial should be terribly effective. The wolf pack was a fell enemy in the EEA. By contrast, the eagle/ostrich commerical is vague and confusing-- exactly like the Kerry platform. Were we routinely attacked by eagles and ostriches? Doubtful.
But wolves have a fear legacy for homo sapiens. We pay attention automatically to things that are historically dangerous. And wolves are everywhere.

"As you are pretty, so be wise
For wolves may come in any guise
As fairest form hides shape beneath
So sweetest smile hides sharpest teeth."
--The Company of Wolves

False Sir John

2004-10-28T10:48:00.000-07:00

Forgive me, May Colvin. :)

The Ballad of False Sir John

False Sir John a wooing came
To a maid of beauty rare
Electorate was that lady's name,
Her country's only heir

He wooed her but, he wooed her ben
He wooed her in the ha'
Until at last he obtained consent
To get the ballots a'

Electorate rode a milk white steed
Sir John a dapple grey
On they rade to a lonesome part,
A rock beside the sea.

"Leap off the steed" says false Sir John,
"Your bridal bed you see;
Twenty electorates I have drownded here
The twenty-first you shall be.

Cast off, cast off your tax-cuts so fine
And lay them on a stone
For they are too fine and costly
To rot in the salt sea foam

Cast off, cast off your military might
The UN stands alone
And we shall be protected
Both abroad and at home."

"Oh turn about thou false Sir John,
And look to the leaf o' the tree;
For it never became a gentleman
A naked electorate to see"

He turn'd himself straight round about
To look to the leaf o' the tree;
She's twined her arms about his waist
And thrown him into the sea.

"Oh hold a grip of me, Electorate,
For fear that I should drown;
I'll give you back all that I've ta'en
And safe I'll set you down."

"No help, no help, thou false Sir John,
No help, no pity from me.
For you lie not in a caulder bed
Then you thought to lay me."

She mounted on her milk-white steed,
and led the dapple gray,
And rode till she reached the Republican gate,
At the breaking of the day.

Up spake the pretty parrot
"Electorate, where have you been?
And what became o' false Sir John
That went with you yestereen?"

"O hold your tongue pretty parrot
And tell no tales o' me;
Your cage shall be made o' the beaten gold
And the spokes o' ivorie."

Out From the God-Door

2004-10-25T06:06:00.000-07:00

I can't remember how many times I have watched Ghost in the Shell. Amritas tributes the author, Shirow Manasume, here. Manasume is a great mangaka, from Kobe, the city named God-Door in kanji.
Den Beste cites Ghost as the inspiration for his classic 'What am I' post. Now that post inspired others, like Amritas and David Boxenhorn and I am sure, many, many more to write their own versions of 'What am I'. I myself am not sure about what I am yet-- but the idea of a post inspiring like behavior in other nodes intrigues me.
In the November Wired, it is reported that Ars Electronica (the big festival of electronic arts) featured dazzling and elaborate diagrams of social networks, drawn from social network theory. Social network analysis maps the connections between nodes to see who exchanges information. Hubs of influence, opinion leaders and the flow of ideas can be mapped. Social networks are not easily modelled by hand, in the same fashion that fractals are nigh impossible to hand-model, but computer visualization yields highly meaningful and exquistely beautiful artforms. One description: "a bucket of Mardi Gras gems scattered among an overturned bowl of fruit." I like to think of this place diagrammed as a social network. I can image Den Best's post flowing through the network, changing connected nodes as it went. Would there be a huge virtual chasm in the center, dividing the Left from the Right? Or are there a few fragile connections (like WindsofChange) bridging the void?
Did the ideas from Manasume's Ghost flow through this place and cross the chasm to bring 'What am I' ideas to the Left?
I cannot say.
And I cannot say 'What am I' yet, for all the times I've watched Ghost. I hope I have a few jinn particles in me, at the very least!

Fear Junkie

2004-10-24T20:25:00.000-07:00

At GeneExpression's Sciencefiction blog. More ultrascary Japanese movies.

Quantum Mechanics and Jinn Particles

2004-10-23T20:56:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in the symbiotic relationship between Science and Science Fiction, you can read about it here.

The Nature of God

2004-10-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

Well, I too read Hamer's new book, The God Gene. Razib blogs on it here. It made the cover of Time. It should raise a lot of controversy and make a lot of money. But I was disappointed in it. I had hoped it might support my own theory of the god-in-the-genes. I don't believe in Hamer's "God Module", a supposed unit of heredity that makes people more or less "religious".
What I do believe is that we are programmed to believe in the supernatural. Boyer and Atran have both done significant work in this field. I touched on it in my Ghost Theory post. My question was, given that we are more likely than not to believe in the supernatural, what selective advantage did that confer in the EEA?
What if the god-in-the-genes evolved as a set of subtle rules that benefitted the tribe of the individual organism? For the purpose of hypothesis we'll call those the "god-rules". Tribes that naturally obeyed the god-rules would propagate and spread. But tribes that could readily believe in supernatural enforcement of the god-rules, would be far better advantaged.
To me, this does not preclude the existance of god-- just a change in definition. It explains how many people I admire can claim aetheism, yet still instinctively follow the "god-rules", honor, loyalty, kindness, generousity, right thought and action. Perhaps heroes are just especially good at following the "god-rules".
And I am not one that is disillusioned by glimpsing the mechanism. Knowing how something works does not lessen the awe I feel for the intricate and marvelously beautiful processes.

What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! --
William Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act II, scene 2)

The Grail

2004-10-21T01:45:00.000-07:00

The Great Khan of GeneExpression has decreed a new branded extension-- GeneExpression Science Fiction. You can read The Grail there. :)

The Plot to Kill Evolution

2004-10-20T16:03:00.000-07:00

Definitely at Gene Expression.

Helix Magix

2004-10-17T22:50:00.000-07:00

Whew! Den Beste recently blogged on politics and linguistics, but he has not stopped blogging on anime. Many prefer Classic Den Beste, but I like the New Otaku Style, myself. :)
This post on Magic Users Club is great! I want my own magic diagram! I agree that Sae's spiral/helix builds power-- but mine would be far more powerful! Can you guess it? LOL, a double helix!!

"Genes are the language of God"-- saying of the Bene Tleilax,
from God Emperor of Dune

This One Cried

2004-10-17T01:26:00.000-07:00

It was the closer for Wolf's Rain tonight. After 30 weekly episodes I was pretty heavily invested in the character development and story line. And then absolutely everyone died, except Kiba, exactly like a Shakespearean tragedy. They died heroically, gloriously, and graphically as Fire Eye mowed them down one by one. Cheza the Flower Maiden was the last. I was shitsuren over a cartoon. I cried. But Cheza said in every ending there is a beginning, a rebirth. Cheza dies to bring the hope of Paradise to the next cycle. And Kiba lives to tell the tale. And to have hope.

This cycle is dying for us. Wretchard quotes Yeats-- "What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born..." He predicts a tough time ahead.

But I'll remind you of what was in the bottom of Pandora's box-- hope. Hope will be an attendant at this birth. And hope may save us all.

Hanging at Belmont Club

2004-10-16T16:23:00.000-07:00

You know the drill-- read here.
(You too can get consilience) :)

Flesh Doll

2004-10-13T22:31:00.000-07:00

Now that I am learning the Way of the Otaku (courtesy Steven Den Beste), I have begun to wonder about something one of my coworkers once said to me. He said that I would be his ideal of the perfect woman, if only I were pithed. "Yuck!" I said, "A flesh doll?" But now I realise he probably didn't really want me pithed, just programmable. :)
I understand that I am drawn to the Way of the Otaku (fan-boy, notice there are no fan-grrls) in the same fashion that I am drawn to the Masons and my dad's Men-only "eating club". Someplace exclusive I can't go. We'll see about that.
I've been an anime-head since I can remember, so it is not so difficult to imagine designing, building and possessing my very own PC-DIY. Hmmm, I think he should look something like Amon in Witch Hunter Robin, and of course be fully programmable. :)

Firefly Quiz

2004-10-13T22:21:00.000-07:00

You are River.

Duh, I knew that before I took the quiz.
Who are you?
Firefly Quiz

(hattip: Pixy Misa)
Pixy Misa didn't want to be the Captain, so he changed his responses. Of course, he really is Kaylee. But wouldn't it be great if we could do that in real life?

Secret Israel

2004-10-11T21:19:00.000-07:00

I feel great sympathy for Israel. A tiny, brave island built of technology and faith in the great seething ocean of fierce hatred that surrounds it. What has Judaism done to deserve such unswerving persecution over the ages? I think it is envy. Judaism is an exclusive club. Consider the relative SES of Israelis in the middeast, yet more cause for envy.

It is hard to be a Jew, but it is also hard to become one. Judaism is matrilineal (just like the Bene Gesserit!), and the children of a jewish father and a non-jewish mother must convert to be Jews. It is difficult to convert to Judaism. Jews do not proselytize or seek converts. It is hard to marry into the tribe, especially in Israel. There is a price for becoming a Jew, the price of persecution, and real possiblity of death for Israelis.

I see comparisons between Christianity and Islam all the time, long tedious rants about scriptural differences between the Bible and the Qu'ran. But the telling contrast is between Islam and Judaism. Both are ways of life, so compare and contrast can actually be relevent. But the single greatest significant difference is in how both systems treat defections. We are very familiar with how defectors are treated in Islam. Consider the pressure exerted on Islam by western civilization. Pascal Boyer says in Religion Explained--

"The message from the modern world is not just that other ways of living are possible, that some people may not believe, or believe differently, or feel unconstrained by religious morality, or (in the case of women) make their own decisions without male supervision. The message is also that people can do that without paying a heavy price."

This means that defection is not costly and therefore likely. Which leads to extreme punishment for defectors in Islam.

I am mostly interested in the punishment for defection. Are there defectors, apostates, heretics in Judaism? Rarely within the last century, and then just for convenience, like Disraeli. And what happens to them? Nothing. Nothing happens to them. Defection does not need to be costly because no one defects.

So Judaism is a religion without modern defectors. A religion so appealing to its constituency, and to "outsiders" looking in, that it needs no safeguards against defection. Wow.

From one of my favorite scifi novels, Chapterhouse Dune, the sixth book of the Dune cycle, set thousands and thousands of years into the future-

Lucilla dropped the ridulian crystal into its receptacle and pulled the security hood over her head. Immediately words formed in her mind, an aural sense of extremely old accents clipped for recognition. "The people to whom your attention has been called are the Jews. They made a defensive decision eons ago. The solution to recurrent pogroms was to vanish from public view. Space travel made this not only possible but attractive. They hid on countless planets-- their own Scattering--and they probably have planets where only their people live. This does not mean they have abandoned age old practices in which they excelled out of survial neccessity....But their secrecy is such that you could work a lifetime beside a Jew and never suspect. They call it "Complete Cover"...."

So, is this to be the fate of the Jews? A new Diaspora?
I don't want "Secret Israel". I want Jews to be cherished and respected citizens of the world. I want them to be able to go on vacation without fear of their hotel being blown up, to be able to get on a bus or go to a restaurant without death stalking them. Last week six Jews won the Nobel prizes for Physics and Chemistry. Think of the contributions made over time to literature, science, government and arts by Jews. Species Homo Sapiens needs these people badly.

The only way I can think of to avert "Secret Israel" is to stand for the Jews. Never tolerate an anti-semetic slur. Never avert your gaze. Be fierce against anti-semitic language. It cannot be tolerated. Our government must do the right thing for Israel. Who cares what the UN thinks? They all hate us anyways. Write letters, cancel subscriptions, buy kosher. But stand for the Jews, stand for Israel. And stand strong.

Centaurs

2004-10-10T03:29:00.000-07:00

When their master is dead or dying, horses shed tears-- for they say that only the horse can weep for man and feel the emotion of sorrow. And hence in Centaurs the nature of men and horses can be mixed.-- T.H. White, translation from a Twelfth Century Latin Bestiary

I don't usually write about my experience in the carbon-based realm, but today was so good I wanted to share. There can't have been a more perfect day, anywhere, ever. The scrub oak and aspen were scarlett and gold against the dark green conifers and tawny grass. The sun was brilliant, but the air cool enough that the sun felt good.

The local tribe of horsefolk gathered at a nearby ranch for a pair pace, an annual event that involves teams or pairs of riders galloping around a cross country course with some twenty to thirty jumps. It is not a speed event, the goal is to be closest to the optimum time and jump around clear. Because of Halloween, the course was decorated with pumpkins and corn stalks, and a real coffin at the coffin jump. Costumes for horses and riders were encouraged, and I saw ghosts and goblins, angels and witches, a lion tiger pair, pierrots, and the cast of the Wizard of Oz. Always someone is Lady Godiva in a flesh coloured unitard and mondo-wig. The horses were patient and kind with their fabulous decorations, their generous spirit shining through.

We of the tribe of Centaurs have our nature mixed with the nature of the Horse. We borrow his generousity, kindness and courage. Horses are deeply generous. Not one would be ridden if they were not. And on horseback we are more than we were, we can 'fly without wings', and 'conquer without swords.'

After riding, when the horses were tied to the trailers with water and hay, we all sat at open air tables in our tall boots and breeches, eating burritos and waiting for the ribbons, looking out over the vast dark green bulwark of Pike National Forest.

I thought, thank you god. And thank you George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. Thank you Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice. Thank you Tommy Franks and most especially thank all of you serving in the armed forces. And thank you John Howard and even thank you Tony Blair (the mullahs would be more against the Hunt than even you!). Thank you that I can go to school and to work, and drive a pick-up truck and ride astride in breeches. Thank you that I can own a horse. Thank you that I can go to the Tattered Cover tomorrow and buy a copy of Wilson's Consilience, and sit in an open air cafe in camos and oakleys and a grungy t-shirt and read a chapter in public while drinking a corona. Thank you for my life.

Basilisk

2004-10-08T16:33:00.000-07:00

When I quoted Lucan at Belmont Club, I was only talking about Andrew Sullivan, and how he himself is poisoned with the bias he sought to slay. But I think it a good metaphor for the entirety of the Left. See, the Left believes George Bush is the Basilisk.
From Pliny--

He does not impel his body, like other serpents, by a multiplied flexion, but advances lofty and upright. He kills the shrubs, not only by contact, but by breathing on them, and splits the rocks, such power of evil is there in him.

Yes, Bu$hitler, to the life. The embodiment of absolute evil. But this fierce hatred has blinded the Left to all danger. They have given over rational thought to poisonous loathing. Corpuscles of hatred make up their blood. Their instinct for self preservation is shorted out by hatred. Because if they do succeed in slaying the Basilisk, and electing Kerry, we may all be dead.

Frankly, Kerry sets off my self-preservation alarms. The short hairs stand up on the back of my neck when I hear him speak. This is a creature that obviously cares more about his image, his ambition, his goals, than about my life and the lives of millions of others.

What though the Moor the basilisk hath slain,
And pinned him lifeless to the sandy plain,
Up through the spear the subtle venom flies,
The hand imbibes it, and the victor dies.-- Lucan

Anime Arcana

2004-10-06T22:13:00.000-07:00

Den Beste's new anime site, Chizumatic is awesome! I expect my anime appreciation skills to reach unprecedented heights. Perhaps I can be educated out of my 'junk food taste'! :-)
But there is one thing I looked for and did not find in the reviews. Studio name. I love Studio Ghibli the best! Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, all my favorites.
And I wonder if Den Beste remembers that Tuatha de Danaan, the name of the submarine in Full Metal Panic, is from "Willow" ?
Amritas has posted anime #3-- I knew the answer to the question posed in #2! Did you?

Update: Den Beste posts a tribute to Miyazaki. I agree. :-)

Double update: Props to the ever-wonderful Gamer who writes--
"The Tuatha de Danaan in Celtic mythology were the ancestor race of the Fae. The Fae included a wide range of characters from pixies, leprechauns, and (of course) fairies, to Titania and Oberon of A Midsummer Night's Dream, to Tollkein's elves."
True, true, true! And the Mithril reference in the same anime must be from Tolkien. How very kewl. :)
The reference from "Willow" pertains to the shape-changing spell used by the title character. Perhaps for a shape-changing submarine. :-)

Ghost Theory

2004-10-05T17:05:00.000-07:00

If you want to read this post, you must go here.
Boo!