The *BIG* Book Meme

Copied from This Week @ the Library….. (by way of CK at Seeking a Little Truth)

1. Favorite childhood book?

Cannot really remember before about age 10. Early teens is when I got heavily into sci-fi (Heinlein, Herbert, Clarke, Asimov). So, probably Dune, but did not read that until I was about 15. I guess that's not really a "childhood book".

2. What are you reading right now?

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Briane Greene and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

3. What books do you have on request at the library?

I'm a book hoarder, not a book borrower. The wife and kid use the library all the time.

4. Bad book habit?

Like CK, it's buying more than I can read.

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library

Nada.

6. Do you have an e-reader?

Nope. Have tried out several (Kindle, iPad).

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?

One fiction, one or two non-fiction

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?

Not frequency, but certainly in what I read. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't influenced at least a little bit by what some of my blog friends are reading and recommending.

9. Least favorite book you read this year (so far?)

Pull Up a Chair by Curt Smith. It's a biography of Vin Scully, who I love. But Smith seemed to be more in love with his own writing than in Scully.

10. Favorite book you’ve read this year?

Probably The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks

11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone?

I'll try a few a year that I wouldn't normally read if someone recommends them.

12. What is your reading comfort zone?

Sci-Fi

13. Can you read on the bus?

Sure, but haven't rode the bus in awhile.

14. Favorite place to read?

Living room near several of my bookcases.

15. What is your policy on book lending?

I have no problem with it as long I know the person and I know they are serious about reading the book they are borrowing.

16. Do you ever dog-ear books?

Definitely not.

17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?

Duh, no.

18. Even in college textbooks?

I did not, though I certainly had used books that were plenty marked up.

19. What is your favorite language to read in?

English. I wish I knew other languages.

20. What makes you love a book?

Detail and the sense that you are not just part of some formulaic book.

21. What will inspire you to recommend a book?

If a book inspires me to do something or change something, then I usually feel that it will do the same for someone else.

22. Favorite genre?

Sci-Fi

23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did?)

I used to read a lot more history books, but have gotten out of the habit. I read books that talk about history indirectly, but not specifically.

24. Favorite biography?

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer or Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

25. Have you ever read a self-help book?

I know these books are helpful to some people and would not want to minimize that. But, I can't ever imagine reading one. If you are motivated enough to buy one, then you probably don't need it in the first place.

26. Favorite cookbook?

A couple of vegetarian ones I picked up.

27. Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?

Oddly, Collapse by Jared Diamond

28. Favorite reading snack?

Trail mix.

29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience.

Can't remember any.

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?

I generally don't read book reviews. The exception is those by my blog friends. And I generally agree with them.

31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?

If you are willing to recommend a book, then you should be willing to criticize another.

32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you chose?

Right now, Swedish. It would be cool to read ... Dragon Tattoo in its native language.

33. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read?

I hope I'm a little intimidated by most books. I need the challenge.

34. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?

Believe it or not, I've never read On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. I just expect it to be a little dated and too detailed to be enjoyable.

35. Favorite Poet?

I never really read poetry.

36. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time?

When I was checking out books, probably just 1 at a time.

37. How often have you returned book to the library unread?

A few.

38. Favorite fictional character?

Aragorn in Lord of the Rings

39. Favorite fictional villain?

I like books where the villain is really internal. The main character is fighting against his/her own demons.

40. Books I’m most likely to bring on vacation?

I don't think I really read anything different than I normally would.

41. The longest I’ve gone without reading.

Probably about 6 months in college.

42. Name a book that you could/would not finish.

The previously mentioned Vin Scully biography.

43. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?

TV.

44. Favorite film adaptation of a novel?

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

45. Most disappointing film adaptation?

Probably the Golden Compass. I didn't out-and-out hate it, and I liked the casting. But there was way too much of characters explaining the story.

46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?

I think $70 or $80.

47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?

Non-fiction to get an idea of the scope of the book. Never with fiction.

48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?

I usually feel compelled to read books I've started. But if I know I'm really not going to like it, I'll stop in the first chapter. I won't wait till I'm halfway through it.

49. How do you keep your books organized?

Sections by subject and alphabetically within them. But, of course, I buy so many that at any one time, there are a bunch of random books sitting around the house.

50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?

I keep 'em.

51. Are there any books you’ve been avoiding?

I'm pretty sure I'll never read a romance novel.

52. Name a book that made you angry.

I can't think of one off the top of my head.

53. A book you didn’t expect to like but did?

The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker

54. A book that you expected to like but didn’t?

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

55. Favorite guilt-free, pleasure reading?

Sci-Fi

Political Song of the Day: War Pigs by Black Sabbath (covered by Faith No More)

Obviously I know this was written and first performed by Black Sabbath ... and theirs is a great version. But, my first exposure to War Pigs was by Faith No More in college. And theirs is the best cover of the song I've ever heard.

Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of death's construction
In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh lord yeah!

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor

Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait 'til their judgement day comes
Yeah!

Now in darkness world stops turning
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has struck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees the war pig's crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan laughing spreads his wings
Oh lord yeah!

Stupidity Sells

I was at Costco today and was perusing the books and came upon the political section. These were the books I saw ... the only political books I saw:

• ** An Obama hatchet-job book by Michelle Malkin, Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies. 
• ** Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto by Dick Armey, who, unintentionally, has the most appropriate name ever for the movement he represents. 
• ** Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin. There's no joke that hasn't already been said about Palin. 
•  ** And last, and certainly least, a novel by Glenn Beck, The Overton Window. Considering everything that Beck has ever said or written is fiction, this is not exactly a stretch.

No books by liberal or even moderate authors to be found. Is this a switch to the dark side by the traditionally progressive company? Probably not. More likely an admission that the Right is more likely to shell out $ for blatantly biased writing. It's why conservative talk radio and FOX News make money. For all the talk about "freedom" and "independence", Republicans don't want to form their own opinion. They want to be told what to think. They don't want an exchange of ideas. They want a chorus of sycophants.

So-called "liberal" authors have never sold a lot of books because most liberals don't want an echo-chamber. The few that have done moderately well did so because they were also humorists (Al Franken and Molly Ivins). But we've lost both of them in one way or another ... Franken, thankfully, to the Senate, and Ivins, unfortunately, passed away a few years ago.

Most liberals are far more likely to read scholarly works analyzing society in general (Jared Diamond, Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Friedman, etc.) than anything partisan. This makes for better rounded people, but it doesn't necessarily help Costco sell more books. So, I guess it doesn't bother me that they sell the books. They are certainly not changing anyone's mind with them. In Arizona, if agreeing philosophically with one's customers was a prerequisite for a transaction, then I would be out of business.

"SYCOPHANT, n. One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor." -- Ambrose Bierce (American Writer, Journalist)

Freedom

"I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another" -- Thomas Jefferson

Courtesy of Atheist Eve and Atheist Revolution

Hmm. They say we are fighting for freedom, but I'm suspicious that they don't actually know what that is. The mosque issue in NYC is certainly bringing this to the forefront.

I don't think a lot of them realize that they might be shooting themselves in the foot. By limiting Muslims' freedom of religion, it could hurt their own. vjack at Atheist Revolution put it well:

I cannot help but wonder how this might impact public attitudes toward separation of church and state. Will America's Christian majority finally gain some perspective as they realize what it is like to have another religion asking for the same freedoms they enjoy? Might the threat of Islam lead even Christian extremists to rethink their opposition to church-state separation? Will more Christians begin to understand that church-state separation actually protects their religion?

... Yes, Islam is a problem ... and so is Christianity. Maybe there should be fewer mosques, and maybe there should be fewer Christian churches.

Are we fighting for "freedom of religion" or just freedom to be exactly what we want you to be ... a Christian. Even those who are supposedly fighting for our "freedom" are not given that freedom: Troops: Skipping Christian Concert Got Us Punished:

RICHMOND, Va. — The Army said Friday it was investigating a claim that dozens of soldiers who refused to attend a Christian band's concert at a Virginia military base were banished to their barracks and told to clean them up ...

Also, are we fighting for "freedom of speech" or freedom from criticism when we say something stupid and racist? ('Dr. Laura' Is No Free Speech Victim):

I watched on Tuesday as "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger told Larry King she'd be leaving her radio program after 30 years on the air and more than a decade and a half of national syndication. Schlessinger told King -- in her own words -- "I want to regain my First Amendment rights." I watched again on Wednesday as she told John Roberts that her freedom of speech had been taken away ...

See, "Dr. Laura" was upset that she received criticism when she sprinkled the n-word throughout her broadcast. I think most conservatives don't actually understand what freedom of speech is. She has every right to say what she wants and I would go to the mat for her right to say whatever stupid thing she wants. But that freedom is not a freedom from other people exerting their right of freedom of speech. She wasn't even fired. She chose to step down because she couldn't handle people using their freedom of speech. Hypocrisy, thy name is Dr. Laura.

"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." -- Soren Kierkegaard (Danish Philosopher and Theologian)

Female Movie Leads

One might think that the only type of female-lead movies that you can catch nowadays are the unrealistic, privileged white women types that no one can really identify with. Or as my friend Laura put it on her Twitter page (dittydot_76):

The women coming to The Davis to see 'Whiny, wealthy, white' are everything I expected.

You would have to tie me down Clockwork Orange style to get me to watch #eatpraylove

Her takes on feminist issues are well-informed and, more importantly, wickedly funny. Follow her or read her blog (The Sarchasm).

Thankfully, Eat, Pray, Love is not the only thing out there. I'm recommending 3(one new, one recent, and one old) action movies with strong and interesting female leads that I, oddly and by no specific design, watched in a period of only 3 days this past week or so: Salt, Nikita, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

I was originally going to be a lot more ambitious with this and have full reviews of all three. But then I read Wunelle's reviews of Salt and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I went into a depression. He writes disgustingly well and my reviews would come off like Perez Hilton as compared to Shakespeare. So, instead I'll just give some general impressions.

Salt is by no means high art, but the movie moves, is not effects-laden and has enough twists to keep you interested. Jolie, as she did in Wanted, can believably kick some ass but also has enough acting chops to keep you questioning her allegiances. A couple of my favorite actors, Chiwetal Ojeafor and Liev Schreiber also have large roles. It may be oversimplifying, but for a fortune cookie length description, you wouldn't be far off to call it a female led Bourne-type spy movie.

Nikita(or La Femme Nikita) is very good. Nikita is a miscreant and convicted felon, and the government gives her a chance to become a spy . But first, extensive training and deprogramming to break the troubled child. I had watched the movie many years ago when I was on a bit of a Luc Besson kick. I've always liked the Fifth Element, and especially The Professional (with Jean Reno and a young Natalie Portman). Nikita is one of his earliest films and is in French with subtitles. Jean Reno is also in this movie, in a role similar to his in The Professional. This movie is much better than the American remake (Point of No Return) with Bridget Fonda. Yeah, Bridget Fonda. Often when I think of a female kicking ass, I think of Bridget Fonda ... or not. There was also a television series, which may be fine, but I've never watched it.

I liked The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo quite a bit. I might be wrong but it sure seems like European directors have a better sense of cinematography, spacing, and character development and don't feel compelled to jam pack movies with unnecessary special effects. That being said, I'm still looking forward to the American remakes of this film (and the others in the series) that are coming, mostly because of the involvement of director David Fincher and actor Daniel Craig.

Lisbeth Salander, in the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, is very similar to Clarice in Silence of the Lambs in how she investigates a series of murders and in how she is viewed by those around her because of her sex and her appearance.

All three films have women that had harsh and abusive childhoods. Salt, in order to make her a more useful spy. Nikita and Lisbeth, for no better reasons than people can be shits and they compound it by taking it out on their children.

I'm not going to go too far into a field where I'm clearly out of my field of expertise, but all three of these female characters are pushing back against a male-dominated world that has oppressed them in some way. Whether it be what society views as gender-appropriate roles (all three movies). Or the sexual element and how women have to cope with abuse that men inflict upon them both physically and mentally (Tattoo and Nikita). All three are smart, and talented. They have a tendency to sabotage their relationships with others through necessity or trust issues brought upon by the previously mentioned abuse.

Now, both Nikita and Tattoo are subtitled. If you don't like movies with subtitles, get over it. There is literally a whole world of quality cinema that most people never get the chance (or take the chance) to see. Choosing to not watch movies with subtitles is like playing a piano and choosing not to use the black keys.

I'm sure there is an audience for movies like Eat, Pray, Love, but for those women that don't necessarily want whine with their cheese, take a look at these three movies.

Ignorance

Conversation between workers at one of my clients today (financial services):

worker1: "They wouldn't have budget problems if they'd just get rid of the wasted $10 billion a year for the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts)."

worker2: "Yeah, I heard they're going to cancel my military insurance because of no money for it."

I've always said that I believe in the inherent goodness of people. Lately, I'm not so sure. If people are not bad, at the least, they are invariably stupid.

Even if you granted the $10 billion a year figure, it would be dwarfed by the $664 billion for the U.S. military. The very military that pays for insurance for one of these two morons and for the education of the other. But these two Mensa members didn't even get the $10 billion right. The annual budget for the NEA is $155 million. A single F22 Raptor is $150 million. It's remarkable that people actually entrust my clients with their money when they seem to have no true knowledge of it themselves.

I didn't have the heart or patience to correct them. People believe what they want to believe. They will not seek out opposing viewpoints. They will seek out outlets that reinforce their prejudices. I don't even think we need to venture a guess as to where these two got their info.

The lesson here? Don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant. I am honestly so tired of the willful ignorance that I face every day. Perhaps if we reversed the money spent for wars and the military and put it in more funding for education and the arts, maybe we'd be on the right track. Hell, even if we could just eliminate the funding for military, we'd be on the right track.

"The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge." -- Elbert Hubbard

Dalton Trumbo

We each wage battles we consider worthy, smug in the belief that our sacrifices are significant and tangible. We sacrifice nothing. We're put out if we can't have 3 cars. Modern Americans don't know the meaning of sacrifice. Would you go to jail for your beliefs? Would you give up the 10 most productive years of your career for your beliefs?

Dalton Trumbo did. Trumbo is a great documentary that I just watched that tells his story. Dalton Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of Hollywood directors, writers, and actors who were, real or imagined, communist sympathizers. Because they refused to snitch, they were jailed, blacklisted, or both. Unable to work in the only fields they knew, they suffered greatly both financially and personally.

Dalton Trumbo wrote "the" anti-war novel of our times and one of my favorite books, Johnny Got His Gun. Hard to read, void of any punctuation (Cormac MacCarthy's The Road is similar), and of a subject matter inherently depressing, the book is simply brilliant.

Trumbo was also an extremely talented and recognized film screenwriter: Spartacus, The Brave One, Papillon. Dalton Trumbo directed one film, the adaptation of his book Johnny Got His Gun. If you have ever seen the Metallica video One, that song is about Johnny Got His Gun and includes clips from the movie.

His post-blacklist movie scripts, particularly Papillon and Spartacus, draw from his experiences during the blacklist. When each of the slaves exclaim "I am Spartacus" rather than subjecting the true Spartacus to punishment, you see its parallels in the Hollywood Ten standing on principle and not "naming names". In Papillon, when Steve McQueen's character refuses to relent, you can imagine Dalton Trumbo defiance to the Congressmen at the House Un-American Activities hearings.

Kirk Douglas has led a full life with much success, yet the thing he is most proud of is the fact that he had the guts to break the Hollywood blacklist by openly crediting Dalton Trumbo as the writer of the movie Spartacus.

Is a life of comfort obtained through keeping others down or by persecuting your innocent fellow citizens worth it? It's a half-life really. Those that stand for themselves at the expense of others stand for nothing. They stand alone. We still see it now. Proponents of SB 1070 in Arizona and Prop 8 in California believe they are elevating principle and morality. They are doing neither. In Dalton's time, you could be shunned and even jailed for thoughts or beliefs out of the mainstream. Today, you are less if your skin is brown or if you love the "wrong" person. Freedom and liberty are bumper sticker punchlines, nothing more. We forget the lessons of our past.

Trumbo was based on the play of the same name by Dalton Trumbo's son, Christopher. The words are Dalton's from correspondence to friends and foes alike and from interviews. They are effectively spoken by actors who have been inspired by Trumbo including: Michael Douglas, Donald Sutherland, Liam Neeson, David Straithairn, Joan Allen, etc.

If you want to know the story of the Hollywood Blacklist, watch this documentary. If you want to see who really gets hurt by red-baiting self-righteous demagogues like Joseph McCarthy, watch this movie. You should be able to rent this DVD. I watched it on Netflix Instant. Grade: A-

Movie Review - Inception (The authenticity of reality)

I was going to write a review of Inception, but some of you (Wunelle) beat me to the punch and did a good job with it. I'll have a few words about my take on Inception later but I thought I'd first post a nice article by progressive writer David Sirota about the parallels between Inception and modern propaganda:

The Deception of Real-Life 'Inception'
by David Sirota

For all of its "Matrix"-like convolutions and "Alice in Wonderland" allusions, the new film "Inception" adds something significant to the ancient ruminations about reality's authenticity-something profoundly relevant to this epoch of confusion. In the movie's tale of corporate espionage, we are asked to ponder this moment's most disturbing epistemological questions: Namely, how are ideas deposited in people's minds, and how incurable are those ideas when they are wrong?

Many old sci-fi stories, like politics and advertising of the past, subscribed to the "Clockwork Orange" theory that says blatantly propagandistic repetition is the best way to pound concepts into the human brain. But as "Inception's" main character, Cobb, posits, the "most resilient parasite" of all is an idea that individuals are subtly led to think they discovered on their own.

This argument's real-world application was previously outlined by Cal State Fullerton's Nancy Snow, who wrote in 2004 that today's most pervasive and effective propaganda is the kind that is "least noticeable" and consequently "convinces people they are not being manipulated." The flip side is also true: When an idea is obviously propaganda, it loses credibility. Indeed, in the same way the subconscious of "Inception's" characters eviscerate known invaders, we are reflexively hostile to ideas when we know they come from agenda-wielding intruders.

These laws of cognition, of course, are brilliantly exploited by a 24/7 information culture that has succeeded in making "your mind the scene of the crime," as "Inception's" trailer warns. Because we are now so completely immersed in various multimedia dreamscapes, many of the prefabricated-and often inaccurate-ideas in those phantasmagorias can seem wholly self-realized and, hence, totally logical.

The conservative media dreamland, for instance, ensconces its audience in an impregnable bubble-you eat breakfast with the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, you drive to the office with right-wing radio, you flit between Breitbart and Drudge at work, you come home to Fox News. The ideas bouncing around in this world-say, ideas about the Obama administration allegedly favoring blacks-don't seem like propaganda to those inside the bubble. With heavily edited videos of screaming pastors and prejudice-sounding Department of Agriculture officials, these ideas are cloaked in the veneer of unchallenged fact, leaving the audience to assume its bigoted conclusions are completely self-directed and incontrovertible.

Same thing for those living in the closed-loop of the "traditional" media. Replace conservative news outlets with The New York Times, National Public Radio, WashingtonPost.com and network newscasts, and it's just another dreamscape promulgating certain synthetic ideas (for instance, militarism and market fundamentalism), excluding other ideas (say, antiwar opinions and critiques of the free market) and bringing audiences to seemingly self-conceived and rational judgments-judgments that are tragically misguided.

Taken together, our society has achieved the goal of "Inception's" idea-implanting protagonists-only without all the technological subterfuge. And just as they arose with Cobb's wife, problems are emerging in our democracy as the dreams sow demonstrable fallacies.

As writer Joe Keohane noted in a recent Boston Globe report about new scientific findings, contravening facts no longer "have the power to change our minds" when we are wrong.

"When misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds," he wrote. "In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs."

What is the circuit breaker in this delusive cycle? It's hard to know if one exists, just as it is difficult to know whether Cobb's totem ever stops spinning. For so many, meticulously constructed fantasies seem like indisputable reality. And because those fantasies' artificial inception is now so deftly obscured, we can no longer wake up, even if facts tell us we're in a dream-and even when the dream becomes a nightmare.

I liked the movie. The visuals are stunning and not fakey like most F/X-laden blockbusters. Most of the illusions look to have been done with camera tricks rather than computers. Inception has a nice cast, partularly Leo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Michael Caine, Ellen Page, and Marion Cotillard.

Like most Christopher Nolan directed movies, Inception tweaks your noggin' a bit. I still like Memento more, but maybe that was because it was a bit more modest in scope and Nolan was not the big Hollywood director he is now with franchises like Batman in his back-pocket.

The concept of recursive dreams is cool to think about. I'm pretty sure that I wasn't the only one whose dreams were a bit odd the week after watching Inception. I found myself trying to control them a bit ... to no avail. Grade: B

"Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves." - Eric Hoffer

Pete Seeger - Song about BP oil spill

The great national treasure Pete Seeger singing on the BP oil spill. As he always has, Pete combines biting social criticism with a positive message:



Some of my favorite lyrics:

... It's time to turn things around, trickle up not trickle down

... And when drill, baby, drill turns to spill, baby, spill

.. There's big problems to be solved, let's get everyone involved

... When we sing with younger folks, we can never give up hope
God's counting on me, God's counting on you
Hopin' we'll all pull through, Hoping we'll all pull through,
Hopin' we'll all pull through
Me and you.

Flat Earth

From the UK's Daily Mash and retweeted by Professor Brian Cox:

COUNCILLOR SUSPENDED FOR BRANDING EARTH 'ROUND'
21-07-10

A CARDIFF councillor has been suspended after claiming the Earth is round and orbits the sun.

More than 200 Flat Earthologists complained after Cllr John Dixon posted a Twitter message referring to the Earth as a 'globe'.

A council spokesman said: "Staff have a responsibility to respect the beliefs of others, no matter how scrotum-tighteningly idiotic they may appear to anyone with the cognitive ability to actually get to the end of this sentence. Well done."

He added: "We have a very clear policy on tolerance and inclusivity, which we've had translated into dozens of languages as well as having it carved into enormous stone monoliths for the local druids. That cost an absolute fortune, by the way."

Employee numbers have dwindled at the authority since January, when it agreed to allow registered Vikings to kidnap female employees out of respect for Norse mythology.

Meanwhile followers of the Persian deity Mithras have won a tribunal giving them the right to slaughter a bull in the canteen every Monday lunchtime.

Wayne Hayes, a Level 19 Flat Earthologist from East Grinstead, said: "Dixon's remarks are just typical of the prejudice we face on a daily basis just because we refuse to bow down to the dogma of scientific proof.

"He should be fed to the Great Salamander of Xenu or at the very least taken to the edge of the world and pushed off.

"We'll see who's stupid then."

He-he. Just a taste of what it feels like to be a skeptic and atheist in a world that bends over backwards to make sure that the religious are not offended.

"A man who is convinced of the truth of his religion is indeed never tolerant. At the least, he is to feel pity for the adherent of another religion but usually it does not stop there. The faithful adherent of a religion will try first of all to convince those that believe in another religion and usually he goes on to hatred if he is not successful. However, hatred then leads to persecution when the might of the majority is behind it." -- Albert Einstein

Movie Review - Equilibrium

I had several friends recommend Equilibrium to me over the last few years. Let's see ... Christian Bale, Sean Bean (LOTR), Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves), sci-fi, cool gun fights. I'm not sure why it took me so long to rent it. It came out quite a bit ago, 2002.

Equilibrium is a stylish movie, obviously borrowing from the Matrix in look and 1984 in concept. One of its cooler elements is the fictional Gun Kata martial arts fighting style that the director invented, borrowing from classic Kung Fu movie gun fighting.

The setup: near future. War has been abolished by making emotion and feeling illegal. Citing the extremes of emotion as being the cause of all war, people are required to take shots several times a day of a drug called Prozium to make them docile. People are not allowed to own or view art, listen to music, read literature. It's peace in name only. Classic war has been replaced with the state as judge, jury and executioner.

Christian Bale plays Grammaton Cleric First Class John Preston. Basically, they are instruments of the state that go out and destroy art and kill people for viewing it. He's the best at what he does and has a high standing in the government. Seemingly by accident, he forgets to take his meds and starts to feel natural human emotions. The main thrust of the plot follows Preston coming to terms with his humanity, with what society is, and his guilt.

Now, I like Christian Bale as an actor, but it seems like a lot of his roles are one note, and this is certainly no exception. Here, it reminds me of Keanu Reeves in the Matrix movies. Partly, that's due to the story ... you are not supposed to have emotion. But even once he has stopped taking the drug, he doesn't sell me completely that he feels. The rest of the cast is pretty good. I especially liked Angus MacFadyen (Braveheart) as the main bad guy, Dupont.

I've read reviews of this movie before and they're pretty universally negative. The movie bombed in the box office. Equilibrium came out during the height of the Matrix trilogy and I think it may have been unfairly compared to it. But it deserves to be judged on its own merits.

Equilibrium hits upon quite a few weighty subjects including oblique references to the MPAA film rating system and Prozac. The influence of art and propaganda are explored. Overall, I liked Equilibrium. It's certainly not classic, but like most sci-fi, it brings something intellectually to the table that makes it worth while. There's a yin and yang to life, light and dark. You might think you are solving a problem by eliminating the extremes, but you are instead destroying what makes us human. It's that raw emotion that creates true beauty, innovation, and love.  Grade:  B-

"One of the things which danger does to you after a time is -, well, to kill emotion. I don't think I shall ever feel anything again except fear. None of us can hate anymore - or love." -- Graham Greene

HE is AMAZING!

I saw this posted by one of my Facebook friends this past week:

I have to share how God comes through...unexpected ac repair, $210...unexpected refund check from mortgage company, $197. Thank you Lord for always providing.

Comment: HE is AMAZING!

Posts like these are by no means rare or unusual. I see something similar by a friend or family member just about every single day. They bother me quite a bit. I think I understand faith. I may not agree with it, but I think I understand it. But I have a hard time abiding hypocrisy and lack of consistency.

I once heard one of the Pythons defend Life of Brian by saying it was blasphemous but not profane. Meaning - they were not attacking faith but rather dogma. I'm not sure which I might be treading on here. I'm not trying to do either. I'm just trying to understand. Help me out.

Why would one presume that God would care if you could pay for a/c repair? And if you did assume that he intervenes in things so mundane and pedestrian, then why not in everything else? Why couldn't you assume that it was God that caused that little girl down the street to get hit by a car?

You can't have it both ways. If God is active in every little thing on the one hand, you can't say that he's non-participatory in the cases of war and famine and disaster, etc. on the other hand.

I can see the response right now - "God works in mysterious ways". How convenient.

"Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense." -- Robert Green Ingersoll, American Statesman and Orator

Movie Review: In the Loop

In the Loop is fucking brilliant. Sorry for my vernacular, but if that offends you, then this movie probably will too. It's foul-mouthed. It's insulting. And it's spot on.

Malcolm Tucker: Linton! Linton!
Linton Barwick: Mr Tucker, isn't it? Nice to see you again.
Malcolm Tucker: Are you fucking me about?
Linton Barwick: Is there a problem, Mr Tucker?
Malcolm Tucker: I've just come from a briefing with a nine-year-old child.
Linton Barwick: You're talking about AJ. AJ is one of our top guys. He's a Stanton College Prep, Harvard. One of the brightest and best.
Malcolm Tucker: Well, his briefing notes were written in alphabetti spaghetti. When I left, I nearly tripped up over his fucking umbilical cord.
Linton Barwick: I'm sorry it troubles you that our people achieve excellence at such an early age. But could we just move on to what's important here? Now, I understand that your Prime Minister has asked you to supply us with some, say, fresh British intelligence, is that true?
Malcolm Tucker: Yeah, apparently, your fucking master race of highly-gifted toddlers can't quite get the job done...
Linton Barwickk: All right.
Malcolm Tucker: ...between breast feeds and playing with their Power Rangers. So, an actual grown-up has been asked to fucking bail you out.

It's a modern day Dr. Strangelove with its satirical take on the machinations of politicians and the military in a so-called time of war. In this case, it's the Iraq war and the countries in question are the U.S. and Great Britain.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm not trying to put it on the same level as Dr. Strangelove, which is one of the best movies ever made.  But in terms of humor and the ability to hit its satirical target, it's in the ballpark.

In the Loop basically calls it like it was: The push for the Iraq War was made by a bunch of twats who were over their skis and who fudged intel to get what they wanted. This is a British film but America and the UK are skewered equally. Don't be turned off by the fact that it is political. It's more about human nature than the intricacies of diplomacy. Mostly, it's just plain fun to watch. I may have to re-watch it just to write down some new insults that I want to try out. The British seem able to cut someone off at the knees verbally with a lot more style than us Yanks.

The cast is mostly UK TV regulars. I recognized one of the main characters from Torchwood. There's a cameo by Steve Coogan. The most obvious American actors are James Gandolfini as a general and David Rasche (of Sledge Hammer! TV fame).  The Gandolofini character seems to be a bit of proxy for a Colin Powell-type ... someone who knows the intel is not there, but plays the good soldier so as not to rock an administration.

I highly recommend In the Loop. It came out in 2009 and I was able to rent it through Netflix. Grade: A

W.M.A.

dbackdad: Weird, but not scary, feeling being only white person on train back from downtown LA. More whites need to step outside their "safe" cocoons.
2:23 PM Jun 25th via Twitter for BlackBerry®

W.M.A. by Pearl Jam

he won the lottery when he was born
took his mothers white breast to his tongue
trained like dogs, color and smell
walks by me to get to him
police man
police man
he won the lottery by being born
big hand slapped a white male american
do no wrong, so clean cut...
dirty his hands, it comes right off
police man
police man
police stopped my brother again ...
jesus greets me...looks just like me...

"He pointed at me and said, 'that one won't stand up.' The two policemen came near me and only one spoke to me. He asked me if the driver had asked me to stand up? I said, 'yes.' He asked me why I didn't stand up, ... I told him I didn't think I should have to stand up. So I asked him: 'Why do you push us around?' And he told me, 'I don't know, but the law is the law and you are under arrest.'" -- Rosa Parks

Book Review: Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology by Eric Brende

I'm going to do my best to dispel the rumor that I never blog. Sure, it took getting out of Arizona and away from work a few days to do it.

I just finished the book Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology by Eric Brende. Brende, graduate of Yale, Washburn University and MIT, took the drastic step of putting his money (and his life) where his mouth was. For 18 months, Brende and his wife lived among a pseudo-Amish community and eschewed the so-called modern conveniences (electricity, automobile, TV, telephone) so as to better understand our motivations as a society. They grew their own food, or bartered their labor with others to get the things they needed.

I like Brende's book. If there is one small criticism, it would be that attachment of a spiritual significance to his experience. This is most likely a product of his own religious background and the obvious religious nature of the type of community he was living in. But, I believe, it definitely does not take a Christian mind-set to appreciate the benefits of simpler living.

What they found was that technology, instead of making things easier, "Besides often depriving their users of skills and physical exercise, they created new and artificial demands - for fuel, space, money, and time. These in turn crowded out other important human pursuits, like involvement in family and community, or even the process of thinking itself. The very act of accepting the machine was becoming automatic."

By removing most of these tools, those things that we work so hard to make time for (recreation, exercise, education, socialization) become part of an integrated lifestyle. And instead of having to work harder and longer, we have more time for true leisure and reflection. Our current society barely leaves us enough time to think. "By speeding through life with technology, you reduce what any given moment can hold.  By slowing down, you expand it."

Another byproduct of our reliance on technology is the isolation that it encourages. This isolation is, perhaps, one of the biggest contributors to our partisanship in politics and human interaction. "Modern technology .. far from being neutral in its effects, has more than one underlying purpose ... besides reducing the need for physical effort, ... it helps us avoid the need for cooperation or social flexibility ..." If, in the course of a normal day, we had to rely on the help of others and, in turn, helping others, we might be more likely to find common ground.

I read a quote once, and I'm paraphrasing, "You first shape a tool to fit your needs, but as you become more dependent on it, the tools shapes you." We change our behaviors to accommodate those things we first created to make life easier. As Brende says,

"... The changes I have made to live less technologically are easy compared with the contortions most people go through to maintain technology. Their beloved machinery does not so much save labor as separate it out in time and place and thereby make it harder to obtain-physical exercise in the gym, moneymaking in the office, education in the school, and "quality time" with the family in the national park. Rather than an integrated whole, life become a temporal and geographical obstacle course."

Believe me, I'm not a Luddite. Anything but. Michelle has a valid criticism of me that I have too much technology. Technology is not inherently bad. But just think about whether it is really making your life easier and allowing you to spend more time with those things that really matter - your family, friends, and the acquiring of knowledge. And when evaluating the costs of your technology, don't just consider the price you paid, but also the costs on our environment and our society. One of the biggest problems with our modern culture is that we only consider the price that is on the sticker. People will go to Wal-Mart to buy cheap crap because they think they are getting a good deal. But they have no concept of the slave-labor it took or the sub-standard and environmentally harmful elements that comprise it. We like our cheap food, yet don't understand that it's because it is made up of nothing but government subsidized corn products made by huge corporations. Those fresh vegetables you get at the local farmers' market may have the higher sticker price, but the effective price is much lower. And people need to start thinking that way. Do more things yourself. When buying important things, think more about craftsmanship and the skill it took to make them. Barter. Volunteer. Ask for help and give help freely. Turn off the TV. Read a book. Grow a garden. Turn off the computer ..........

---------------------------------------------------------

Note: I'd also suggest reading "Nothing grows forever. Why do we keep pretending the economy will?" by Clive Thompson in May '10 Mother Jones Magazine. It examines how a growth-based economy is not necessarily the best thing for the future of our society.

A(nother) Book Meme

Inspired by CK at Seeking a Little Truth, my take on this book meme:

Do you snack while reading?

Unfortunately, I snack when doing just about anything.

What is your favourite drink while reading?

Diet Mt. Dew

Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

Not in a million years. The fact that I have a hard time even getting rid of a book would indicate that I would not dream of defacing one.

How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book open flat?

Usually bookmarks, but a ticket will do also. My main book that I am reading always has my gym pass in it, as I take it every time I go to the gym to read while on the stationary bike.

Fiction, non-fiction or both?

Both, usually at the same time. Reading two non-fiction books or one non-fiction and one fiction are fine. But reading two fiction books at once screws me up on characters a little bit.

Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere?

I prefer stopping at a break indicated by the author, which may be the end of the chapter or just some other break within a chapter.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?

Nope. As they say, the opposite of love is not hate ... it is apathy. If I disagree with the author, I'm more likely to just stop reading the book.

What are you currently reading?

Best Seat in the House: A Basketball Memoir -- Spike Lee
Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology -- Eric Brende
I Am Legend -- Richard Matheson

What is the last book you bought?

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal -- Eric Schlosser

Do you have a favourite time/place to read?

Saturday and Sunday mornings on the couch near where most of my bookcases are.

Do you prefer series books or stand-alones?

Probably stand-alones, but some of my favorite books have been part of series (Dune, LOTR)

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?

The book I've recommended the most in the last couple of years would be The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?

Definitely. I have a dictionary.com app on my Blackberry that I use all the time.

How do you organize your books (by genre, title, author's last name, etc.)?

Yes (all of the above). I try to split them up by genre and within each genre, they are ordered by author and title.

Background noise or silence?

Generally silence but can read with something mellow.

Framing ignorant vs. educated as a debate

Great New Rules segment by Bill Maher a few days ago.  The good stuff is at about the 2:20 point on in the clip.


Watch New Rules 6/4/10 in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

"That's the problem with our obsession with always seeing two sides of every issue equally -- especially when one side has a lot of money. It means we have to pretend there are always two truths, and the side that doesn't know anything has something to say. On this side of the debate: Every scientist in the world. On the other: Mr. Potato Head.

There is no debate here -- just scientists vs. non-scientists, and since the topic is science, the non-scientists don't get a vote. We shouldn't decide everything by polling the masses. Just because most people believe something doesn't make it true. This is the fallacy called argumentum ad numeram: the idea that something is true because great numbers believe it ...

... Media, could you please stop pitting the ignorant vs. the educated and framing it as a "debate." The other day, I saw a professor from the Union of Concerned Scientists face off against a distinguished expert on Tea Partying, whose brilliant analysis, recently published in the New England Journal of Grasping at Straws, was that we shouldn't teach climate science in schools because kids find it scary. As they should. I hope they're peeing in their pants.

The last decade, year, and month are all the hottest on record. Then there's the killing of the oceans, floods, Category 5 hurricanes, heat waves, giant wild fires, and the vanishing water supply. You know, the little things. And yet deniers say, it's just a theory. As is gravity. For progress to happen, certain things have to become not an issue anymore, so we can go on to the next issue. Evolution was an issue until overwhelming consensus among scientists made it not an issue ..."

"I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses." -- German astronmer Johannes Kepler

Protest Art

3 posters by Californian poet and artist Xico Gonzalez that I was given this last weekend at the Alto Arizona SB 1070 protest march:

Book Review -- The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks

I just finished reading The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks this weekend. Cyberkitten read and reviewed the book several years ago. It's a great review and I agree with everything in it. This is truly an epic book and does a good job with characterization and bringing disparate cultures and species together in a believable story. Rather than try to improve on CK's review (which would be futile), I just want to list a couple of my favorite passages:

"The Truth went a stage further, holding that this was difference that could be made to make a difference. What was necessary was for people truly to believe in their hearts, in their souls, in their minds, that they really were in a vast simulation. They had to reflect upon this, to keep it at the forefront of their thoughts at all times and they had to gather together on occasion, with all due ceremony and solemnity, to express this belief. And they must evangelise, they must convert everybody they possibly could to this view, because - and this was the whole point - once a sufficient proportion of people within the simulation came to acknowledge that it was a simulation, the value of the simulation to those who had set it up would disappear and the whole thing would collapse.

If they were all part of some vast experiment, then the fact that those on whom the experiment was being conducted had guessed the truth would mean that its value would be lost. If they were some plaything, then again, that they had guessed this meant they ought to be acknowledged, even - perhaps - rewarded. If they were being tested in some way, then this was the test being passed, this was a positive result, again possibly deserving a reward. If they had been undergoing punishment for some transgression in the greater world, then this ought to constitute cause for rehabilitation.

It was not possible to know what proportion of the simulated population would be required to bring things to a halt (it might be fifty percent, it might be rather smaller or greater), but as long as the numbers of the enlightened kept increasing, the universe would be constantly coming closer to the epiphany, and the revelation could come at any point.

The Truth claimed with some degree of justification to be the ultimate religion, the final faith, the last of all churches...

...It could also claim a degree of universality that the others could not. All other major religions were either specific to their originating species, could be traced back to a single species - often a single subset of that species - or were consciously developed amalgams, syntheses, of a group of sufficiently similar religions of disparate origin..."

The "Truth" is the prevalent religion in the galaxy. Of course, any description of this religion that may seem similar to Christianity is purely coincidental (right). What I like about this book specifically and the sci-fi/fantasy genre, in general, is that you may seem like you are talking about one thing, but you are really talking about something else altogether. The cloak of science fiction gives one license to explore controversial subjects stealth-like. We've certainly seen that in things like His Dark Materials (The Church, free will) by Phillip Pullman and in Battlestar Galactica (fundamentalism, war on terror, torture, etc.).

The above passage and the following one also show that Banks is well-versed in philosophy. In this case, Bostrum's simulation thesis.

" ... Any theory which causes solipsism to seem just a likely an explanation for the phenomena it seeks to describe ought to be held in the utmost suspicion."

The Algebraist is also just a darn entertaining book that doesn't assume that you take any more out of it than that. But if you want the added meaning, you don't have to dig very far. You will not find much better fiction that explores the importance of rationality so well.

Si Se Puede (Yes, We Can)

Today's protest of Arizona's anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, drew anywhere between 20,000 and 75,000 people, depending on who you listen to. The 5 mile march between Indian School Park and the Capitol was peaceful, multicultural and did not result in a single arrest, though you certainly wouldn't assume that considering the police presence:

I was heartened by all the groups in attendance.  You'd assume that it would only be Latinos, but there were a lot of Native Americans and African Americans, both as marchers and speakers.  They (and we) rightly see this as a basic issue of human rights. 

This might be an over-used (and over-revised) quote, but it still fits:

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."

The spirit, creativity, and humor of all in attendance was evident:
 

I'm glad we went.  I think it was important to show our son the positive influence of a peaceful protest.  As they say, the family that protests together, stays together.  Maybe they don't say that ... but they should.

Free enterprise as morality?

John Stossel on FOX News this week:

"[I]t's time now to repeal" the Public Accommodation section (of Civil Rights Act), "because private businesses ought to get to discriminate. And I won't won't ever go to a place that's racist and I will tell everybody else not to and I'll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist."

"What they have to discover, what all the efforts of capitalism's enemies are frantically aimed at hiding, is the fact that capitalism is not merely the 'practical,' but the only moral system in history." -- Ayn Rand, "Capitalism : The Unknown Ideal"

Bill Moyers on Fresh Air:

"... I think the most important thing that we can do is to continue to treat Americans as citizens, not just consumers. If you look out and see an audience of consumers, you want to sell them something. If you look out and see an audience of citizens, you want to share something with them, and there is a difference.

Libertarians need to stop praying at the altar of Ayn Rand. Do you honestly believe that businesses would stop discriminating because the market told them to or because it was right? Even William F. Buckley didn't agree with this, "I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow," Mr. Buckley said in 2004. "I was wrong: federal intervention was necessary."

William F. Buckley Jr., in an essay written in the 1960s, directly confronted the libertarian/Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. "The conservative's distrust of the state, so richly earned by it,"Buckley wrote, "raises inevitably the question, how far can one go?" He went on to warn against those "whose passionate distrust for the state has developed into a theology of sorts, or at least into a demonology; to which they adhere as devotedly as any religious fanatic ever attempted to adhere to the will of the Lord."

How did I get here?

A recent post at Atheist Revolution got me to thinking about how people fall into their religion ... or their lack thereof. I think a lot of religious people assume that atheists and agnostics have a falling out or "crisis of faith". At least from my personal experience and from having read a lot of your experiences, this is not the case. From Atheist Revolution:

"... To be fair to both my mother and to myself, I suspect that I would be an atheist today regardless of whether she had imposed church upon me. The way my mind works and my love of science from an early age probably would have led me away from superstition regardless of my church experience."

That's not that different from where my atheism came from, though that writer seems to have a little more animosity towards the parents. Here, I'm going to try and analyze the different reasons on why someone would be an atheist and how they apply to me:

Were our parents atheists and we are just following in their steps? In my case, not exactly. I was baptised Methodist. My parents took us to church when we were young (6 or 7 and younger). But I think this was done more to appease a grandfather (my dad's dad) who was very religious. Our attendance only seemed to happen when we lived in the same town as my grandfather.

My parents never talked about God, though we always had a bible in the house. But, conversely, we were never pushed away from religion either. I even remember saying prayers before going to bed every night. We probably did this until I was about 10. It didn't seem weird to me at the time, but it also didn't really seem spiritual. Just another daily ritual like brushing your teeth and giving your parents a kiss before going to bed.

I think that is a big part of my realization at a fairly young age that I didn't believe in God. Religious rituals like going to church, praying, etc. seemed like just that ... rituals. There was no spark. There was no feeling of a divine connection. I was doing the things because society made you feel like that was "normal".

Were our parents screwed-up Christians and that pushed us away from religion? That wasn't the case either. They certainly weren't devout but they also weren't sitting around railing on the church. Simply, my folks just never talked about religion or politics. I know it's wacky, but they thought their job was to provide a home, food, education, boundaries and to encourage their children. Parents are doing a disservice to their kids if they feel they have a mandate to do anything else. When you see kids holding "God Hates Fags" signs or you see a movie like Jesus Camp, how is that kind of parenting not child abuse?

Did I have a "crisis of faith"? That is a popular assumption - that all people are born religious and something pushes them away from it. I think this is a lot rarer than than most people would believe. Just because someone may have been born into a religious family and may have went to church does not mean that they ever believed in God.

They are not "losing" faith but rather gaining a confidence that they can express the fact that they never believed in the first place. In the current climate in the U.S., that is not a trivial occurrence. Society, as you may have noticed, does not embrace atheists.

I cannot personally speak for the opposite - for those people who may have been born without religion or went through atheist phases and then "found" religion. I would suspect that the situation is similar in that they always had faith but it took awhile for them to come around to that realization. But, I'm sure there are those that truly did not believe in God but later changed.

What about those that were born Christian and readily admit that they believed in God but had a change of heart? This would seem to be fairly common and not to just run-of-the-mill types that never go to church. It can even happen to the most devout (bible scholar Bart Ehrman, for example).

Those cases seem to born of education or, at the very least, a removal from limiting environments where they would not know of alternatives. Ex-Mormons would certainly fit into this category, though not all Ex-Mormons give up a faith in God in general.

People may leave the church, but not leave God. Even Christians would have to admit that organized religion can be pretty fucked up -- priests buggering young boys and churches who seem more concerned with raising money that with raising souls. If these particular instances also cause people to leave God altogether, that has more to do with people not understanding how a caring God could allow those situations to happen. And you would have no argument from me on that one. How, indeed?

So, I do not believe in God. I never did. I did not give up God because something bad happened or because someone told me to. God did not make sense to me even before I could intellectually grasp why. When my education caught up with my intuition, it merely confirmed what I already knew.

God was yet another societal construct that was put in place to help me stay in line, like a teacher, or a policeman. Something to ease my fears of death. No more than that. I'm not afraid of death. I am afraid of believing something just because it is convenient and comforting. But, that's just me. This was my path. This is how I got "here".

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" -- Epicurus

Book Review: why does E=mc2 by Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw

Possessing a fairly technical background -- engineering degree, college calculus and calculus-based physics -- I'm not completely lost when I read science books. Still, I'm 20 years removed from college and have not found a lot of cause to use any of that. And brain cells are readily killed by lack of use and beer.

So, when I heard of why does E=mc2? on the Daily Show and I read its cover promising, "the most accessible, entertaining and enlightening explanation of the best-known physics equation in the world ...", I was encouraged. The following excerpt from the book does a good job of confirming my optimism:

"the provocation lies in the way the science challenges us to think
about the world around us. Scientist or not, each of us has intuition and we all infer things about the world from our everyday experiences. If we subject our observations to the cold and precise light of the scientific method, however, we often discover that nature confounds our intuition. As this book unfolds, we will discover that when things whiz about at high speeds, common-sense notions regarding space and time are dashed and replaced by something entirely new, unexpected, and elegant. The lesson is a salutary and humbling one, and it leaves many scientists with a sense of awe: The universe is much richer than our everyday experiences would have us believe. Perhaps most wonderful of all is the fact that the new physics, for all its richness, is filled with a breathtaking mathematical elegance.

... science at its heart is not a complicated discipline. ... it is an attempt at removing our innate prejudices in order to observe the world as objectively as possible. It may be more or less successful in that goal but few can doubt its success in teaching us how the universe “works.” The really difficult thing is to learn not to trust what we might like to think of as common sense. By teaching us to accept nature for what it is, and not for what our prejudice may suggest that it should be, the scientific method has delivered the modern technological world. In short, it works."

That's part of the strength of this book - It gives a general perspective on the role and scope of science while explaining a specific concept. I guess that helps to make it less of a dry and scholarly tome.

The basic thing to take from the theory of relativity is that mass and energy are interchangeable. Also, space and time are not not mutually exclusive entities but rather interwoven ones. Our observations of each are dependent on our location and our speed. That may seem abstract, but it has been experimentally proven. If the variations of time predicted by Einstein were not taken into account, the GPS system in your car would not work. "Time ticks at a different rate on the orbiting satellites than it does on the ground."

That's the big kicker. People could not get through a single day without using technology that has been developed using science, and theory, and experimentation. Though, many would pretend they are not and would deny science and would seek to deny others from using it.

Science does not revel in perpetuating myth, but rather in destroying it: "Science is at its heart a modest pursuit, and this modesty is the key to its success. Einstein’s theories are respected because they are correct as far as we can tell, but they are no sacred tomes. They will stand, to put it bluntly, until something better comes along. Likewise the great scientific minds are not revered as prophets but as diligent contributors to our understanding of nature. There are certainly those whose names are familiar to millions, but there are none whose reputations can protect their theories from the harsh critique of experiment. Nature is no respecter of reputations."

Besides the previously mentioned technology that relies on an understanding of E=mc2, there are experiments going on right now that will further our understanding of the nature of particles and will perhaps lead to an even better understanding of the nature of our universe. If you want to know that they are trying to do and what they are trying to find at the Large Hadron Collider, I would suggest you read this book and, perhaps, Particle Physics – A Very Short Introduction by Frank Close, as reviewed very well by Cyberkitten.

I liked this book quite a bit. It's not a book filled with equations. But don't kid yourself. When they say "accessible", they are stretching it a bit. There is still a lot of talk about "Minkowski spacetime", the "Higgs field", quarks and gluons. But any reasonably clever person can read this book and get a better handle on relativity.

Note: For anyone that might want to download this book to their PC or book reader, I found a full PDF version at: why does E-mc2?

Political Song of the Day - Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Kent State shootings. From Wikipedia:

"The Kent State shootings ... occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.

Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the American invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.

There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of four million students, and the event further affected the public opinion – at an already socially contentious time – over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War ..."

Sometimes the cost of speaking out is paid with our lives. All the more reason to keep speaking out. Don't assume your government ... the military ... the police always have your best interests in mind.

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." -- Abraham Lincoln

SB 1070 - anti-illegal immigration law

People are talking about this all over the place. Most have shown a remarkable lack of understanding of the law and its implications. I'm not interested in getting in flame wars in those places, so I'm just going to outline a few points here that you may not have thought about and then I'm not interested in talking about it any more:

- Police officers already have the power to arrest illegal immigrants and turn them over to the Border Patrol. This law will allow people to sue the police for both NOT enforcing the law and for racial profiling. It's an untenable law that even police think is BS. They will be damned if they do and damned if they don't.

- It requires police to make an effort to determine immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion". That is left within the police's discretion. How does an illegal look? I'll tell you, in the eyes of the police, he looks brown. That gives the them the right of asking legal American citizens for their proof of citizenship. If someone was in the country illegally from say, Canada or Ireland, what would make them identifiable by the police? Absolutely nothing! So, what makes our police so special that they can see something we cannot? They can't. That's the point. If you are brown, you are going down.

- If you are for this law, then you must be for all citizens carrying proof of their citizenship at all times and being required to provide it at the police's discretion. Sound familiar?

- In a already down economy, Arizona is doing something that is going to isolate them from the country in the world in a manner similar to what it did during the MLK day fiasco. I have personally spoken with business owners here who are getting cancellations by the truckload for resorts, hotels and conventions. There is a very real chance that Major League Baseball will relocate next year's All-Star game from Arizona. If our leaders want to be backwoods, ignorant xenophobes, do it somewhere else, because it is affecting the ability of non-racist people to make a living. This law, though signed, will not go into effect for at least 90 days. With all of the costly court challenges sure to come, I would suspect it may never go into effect. So, what has been accomplished? Nothing is done to help illegal immigration. The state will lose hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. The world will laugh at Arizona. Congratulations, Russell Pearce, Joe Arpaio, and Jan Brewer ... you are sure to go down unfavorably in the long list of Arizona political fuck-ups (Evan Mecham, Fife Symington).