We all got it coming ...

The Schofield Kid -- [after killing a man for the first time] "It don’t seem real… how he ain’t gonna never breathe again, ever… how he’s dead. And the other one too. All on account of pulling a trigger."

Will Munny -- "It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have."

The Schofield Kid -- "Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming."

Will Munny -- "We all got it coming, kid."

Don't "beware the Ides of March"

The Ides of march (from dictionary.com): March 15 in the ancient Roman calendar; the day in 44 b.c. on which Julius Caesar was assassinated.

.

Obviously, the naming of the new George Clooney directed movie, The Ides of March, is not coincidental with the subject matter. The death of Julius Caesar was borne of a conspiracy and by its very nature was political. Ostensibly, he was killed because the senators feared the march toward tyranny and the end of the Senate. Ironically, it was his death that did just that. They compromised principles to do what they believed was in the best interest of the republic.

While there is no assassination in The Ides of March, there is plenty of political intrigue and the compromising of principles in the name of idealism.

Ryan Gosling's character Stephen Myers, a campaign manager for Clooney's character, governor Mike Morris goes into the campaign full of idealism and believing the man he is working for has that same idealism. Through the machinations of the film, the integrity of Morris and the political process is called into question and leads to Myers' loss of innocence. He is faced with the quandary of opting out altogether or scheming for what he perceives as the greater good. Does he make the right choice and how can it really be for the "greater good" if one compromises one's principles? Don't expect the movie to answer that question.

There's no "happy ending". Along with the fucked up political process it represents, the movie ends ambiguously.

When we start down the road of compromising and selling our soul, when do we lose ourselves?

The casting is good. Gosling is believable as a slick and confident pitch man for a candidate. If anything, he comes across as too slick and you have a hard time buying that he would have a crisis of conscience. Clooney is Clooney. Because of his ideas and charisma, you wish that he would actually run for office.

But the actors that steal the show are the vets, Paul Giamati as the opponent's lead adviser and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Morris' adviser. Would we really expect any less from a couple of Oscar winners? They have the unique talent to be perfectly cast in whatever they play because they are just that good. Jeffrey Wright is also outstanding.

Clooney is very clever in making the candidates in question Democrats. It removes a lot of the tendency by the Right to write off the movie as another example of Hollywood liberal propaganda. Clooney rightly sees the larger point that the problem is the process and not necessarily the political ideas involved. There is no moral high ground when it comes to behavior of the two major parties' campaigns.

This is by no means a "great" political thriller. It would not be mistaken for All the President's Men or The Candidate or even The Contender. But it is good and topical. Grade: B

I’m not going to quit until I absolutely have to

Showing his usual wit, but also a dignity and grace that I'm sure I wouldn't have if I were in his position, Christopher Hitchens accepted an award from Richard Dawkins at the Atheist Alliance of American Convention in Texas recently. This speech is his direct acceptance of that award (but also check out the other two videos here)



It saddens me to know that we will not have too many more of his speeches to enjoy. But it also heartens me to know that even at the end, he sticks to his convictions and does not give in to fear over logic. Because, and he knows this well, his contributions will outlast him and will give him an immortality that the religious will never have.

Book Review: The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking

I have to admit, I was more than a bit miffed at one of my favorite scientists, Stephen Hawking, after reading a quote on God attributed to him recently,

"I am not claiming there is no God. The scientific account is complete, but it does not predict human behaviour, because there are too many equations to solve. One therefore uses a different model, which can include free will and God."

Now, I don't want to give the wrong impression. Complete agreement with those I admire is not a requirement. There are several political points that I fundamentally disagree with Christopher Hitchens on, but those beliefs of his are consistent with his own logic. I'm OK with that. He's otherwise brilliant and one of my favorite writers and thinkers. Hawking's the same for me. The above quote, however, seemed to go contrary to everything I knew of Hawking. And after reading The Grand Design, I have to feel that the quote was misleading or taken out of context. I realized quite early that my reservations about Hawking's quote were probably unfounded when I saw this in the first chapter,

" ... this book is rooted in the concept of scientific determinism which implies … that there are no miracles, or exceptions to the laws of nature"

Continuing on, The Grand Design serves as a good recap of the history of physics and scientific thought ranging from Kepler and Descartes to Newton and Laplace:

"It is Laplace who is usually credited with first clearly postulating scientific determinism: Given the state of the universe at one time, a complete set of laws fully determines both the future and the past. This would exclude the possibility of miracles or an active role for God. The scientific determinism that Laplace formulated is the modern scientist’s answer to question two. It is, in fact, the basis of all modern, and a principle that is important throughout this book. A scientific law is not a scientific law if it holds only when some supernatural being decides not to intervene. Recognizing this, Napoleon is said to have asked Laplace how God fit into this picture. Laplace replied: ―Sire, I have not needed that hypothesis.""

And we don't need it either. The Grand Design (co-written by Leonard Mlodinow) is quite a beautiful book with color artwork and photography. Far from being some dry, technical tome stretching for a thousand pages, the book is a quick moving refresher on the drive to unify the various theories of physics (gravity, electromagnetic, etc.) into one Grand Unified Theory. Besides being probably impossible, it is also untestable within our current level of understanding. But it doesn't stop people from trying. Clocking in at 180 pages, you can polish off The Grand Design in a night. There is no math and just a few Feynman Diagrams to wrap your noodle around.

Don't expect The Grand Design to provide in-depth explanations of the string theory and M-theory with mathematical proofs.  Hawking (and Mlodinow) assume the reader either already has a deeper understanding or doesn't need one.  I come somewhere in between.  I have read much deeper explanations in some of Hawking's other books and by other scientists.  But, I would be lying if I said that I completely understood them.  I don't think (and Hawking as well) that it's required to get the gist of the concepts.  The supposition, however, did give me a little pause because Hawking seems to want to wrap up M-theory as the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. You're just flying along in this short book, getting whisked from the microscopic to the unbelievably humongous and all of a sudden you end up at M-theory ... answer to everything ... The End. I couldn't help getting the feeling that a few steps were skipped and that Hawking might be a little presumptuous to say that it is "the" answer.

There are other books of this nature that give an overview of modern theory. I read Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe not too long ago, just to name one. New theoretical ground is not broken in The Grand Design, and that is probably just as well, as most normal people like us wouldn't understand it. I certainly wouldn't. Science geeks are not the only ones that will get something from the book as philosophical concepts such as the anthropic principle are discussed as well. When you are getting into the field of extra dimensions, it's really approaching philosophy. Perhaps not coincidentally, scientists used to be called natural philosophers. Anyway, if you are curious about how the universe works ... or if you are just curious, The Grand Design is not a bad starting point.

Movie Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

My lack of movie and book reviews is not from a lack of viewing, or reading, but rather from laziness. It's time to play catch-up. I'll start with the most recent and will try to work my way backwards, one a day.

I just saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes late last night. It's nothing special but holds that elevated position of being science fiction, and as such, has to try harder to disappoint me. Because, as I've said ad nauseum, even the worst science fiction still has something to say. Where they fail in execution, they make up for in effort.

In effectively establishing how the "Planet of the Apes" came to be, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is useful. The movie's premise: development of a potential Alzheimer's cure has led to primate testing. Unintended, and unexpected, the cure (in the form of a controlled virus) actually enhances cognitive ability of the test subjects.

The virus establishes both how the primates get their intelligence and how the humans are decimated and subjugated (it appears to kill humans). The launch of a Mars mission and its subsequent loss establishes how human astronauts may, in the future, return to a vastly changed world. In their care for setting these things up, it is obvious that the filmmakers intend on making more movies (as if there was any question). It's all about the benjamins, baby.

The special effects of the primates are very good, from a technical standpoint, but are most obviously aided by the unique motion capture talents of Andy Serkis. Serkis, whose genius has been witnessed in Lord of the Rings (as Gollum) and King Kong, gives a humanity to Caesar without anthropomorphizing him. Serkis is truly a unique actor whose actual role is both hard to describe and quantify, but whose skill is obvious on screen. He is a normal actor as well, with roles in 13 Going on 30 and other films, but it was through Lord of the Rings and a position that was given larger significance because of his talent in motion capture. He'd actually do every scene both in studio for motion capture and on location for the benefit of the actors acting opposite Gollum.

The acting is nothing special, despite having some great actors in it, including Franco (as scientist Will Rodman), John Lithgow, and Brian Cox. Lithgow is really the only one that gets to show his chops. He plays Rodman's father, who is suffering from Alzheimer's, and who is Rodman's motivation for developing a cure. Freida Pinto, despite being gorgeous, does nothing to show her acting ability. I thought she was very good in Slumdog Millionaire, but she either does not get the opportunity to show her ability here, or fails to take advantage of the chances she does get. The script doesn't really give her a purpose.

Where I believe that Rise of the Planet of the Apes does itself credit is in its treatment of the role of science and ethics. It's like that quote by the Jeff Goldblum character in Jurassic Park:

"Don't you see the danger ... inherent in what you're doing here? Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun ... I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done, and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you, you've patented it, and packaged it, you've slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it ... your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

While it is admirable to be thinking of a cure for Alzheimer's, we have to be aware of the unintended consequences.

If I have a criticism of the movie, it is in its moral stance of the James Franco character. He seems happy, or at least content, that his pet/friend Caesar gains his freedom, which is fine. But he seems unconcerned that what has ultimately led to the intelligence leap of the primates is also the virus that will virtually wipe out the human race. No time is spent to examine whether he has any concerns of this. He is complicit in wiping out humanity. But, I guess, at the end of the movie, he doesn't yet realize the pandemic that has started. Hopefully, it's something that will be addressed in a future movie.

Anyway, not a bad way to spend a couple of hours. Grade: B-

"Our belief is not a belief"

I've just started reading the Christopher Hitchens' book, God is Not Great. Hitch is as erudite and acerbic as ever, wonderfully so, but also humorous. I've had the book forever, but there are only so many hours in the day and entirely too many good books to read (a not altogether bad problem to have). I'll do a bigger review later but I couldn't resist putting up this quote from just the first couple of pages:

"And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically ... We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and—since there is no other metaphor—also the soul." -- Christopher Hitchens in God is Not Great

I couldn't not have put it better myself. Actually, I don't think any living writer could have put it better.

Look up ... not down

A nice response to those that would cut funding to NASA:



Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of my favorite science popularizers and a worthy warrior against the rampant anti-intellectualism of today.

"I don't want students who could make the next major breakthrough in renewable energy sources or space travel to have been taught that anything they don't understand, and that nobody yet understands, is divinely constructed and therefore beyond their intellectual capacity. The day that happens, Americans will just sit in awe of what we don't understand, while we watch the rest of the world boldly go where no mortal has gone before." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson

Atheism is NOT fundamentalism

atheist
1570s, from Fr. athéiste (16c.), from Gk. atheos "to deny the gods, godless," from a- "without" + theos "a god" ...

"Without a god" ... that's it. That's all that atheism means. But almost all theists, and a remarkable number of skeptics/agnostics get this wrong. They believe that atheism implies certainty that there is no god. Many people that I know that are actually atheists believe that atheism requires the same amount of belief and intractability as fundamentalist Christianity. So they call themselves "agnostic". Hell, I used to call myself an agnostic because I had the same exact misconception. I know these are just words, but words have some importance. People base their opinions on these words. And to me, agnostic, is a much more dangerous word, especially for those that call themselves inquisitive and curious:

agnostic
... a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable ...

I don't hold anything as being "unknowable". Why would we even go on if we didn't believe that we could discover the nature of things eventually? Not knowing something is not scary to me but making the decision that something couldn't ever be known is.

The term skeptic doesn't bother me as much in that it is a more philosophical term. I get the line of thinking that posits that nothing, really, is absolutely "known". But that is in a much more abstract sense of the word.

Anyway, the whole reason why I was reminded of this whole subject was by a tweet by the great blogger, vjack, today that linked to one of his older posts:

Atheism Does Not Require Certainty

Check that post out, and his blog in general. Consistently good stuff.

And to my friends who are scared by me calling myself an atheist ... don't be. I don't believe there is a God because I'm not going to apply one way of thinking to one part of my life and another to the balance. I take nothing on faith in my daily life and why should I when it comes to spirituality? I don't "know" there is no God, but nothing that I have ever experienced or seen would lead me to believe otherwise. Christians "know" there is a God. Now, you tell me which side is fundamentalist?

Atheism is not a religion and as such does not require faith. All that it requires is a good healthy dose of skepticism and curiosity.

Facebook ... haven for morons

From one of my Facebook "friend's" pages:

When you carry a Bible, the devil gets a headache.
When you open it, he collapses.
When he see's you reading it, he faints.
When he see's you living it, he flees.
And just when you are about to re-post this, he will try to discourage you.
I just defeated him. Copy & paste this if you are in God's Arm
Boo-yah

I'm at a loss for words. You can't make stuff like this up. Facebook and Christianity ... a match made in idiot heaven.

Faith no more

Cartoon by Christopher Madden

For good, and relatively brief summations of some popular scientists' and authors' takes on God, I highly recommend you read Faith no more by Andrew Zak Williams, in the current New Statesman. They are very entertaining, save for a rather puzzling (and disappointing) answer by Hawking. I've highlighted just a few of them. There are many more at the above link.

Philip Pullman -- Author
The main reason I don't believe in God is the missing evidence. There could logically be no evidence that he doesn't exist, so I can only go by the fact that, so far, I've discovered no evidence that he does: I have had no personal experience of being spoken to by God and I see nothing in the world around me, wherever I look in history or science or art or anywhere else, to persuade me that it was the work of God rather than of nature. ...

Kenan Malik -- Neurobiologist, writer and broadcaster
I am an atheist because I see no need for God. Without God, it is said, we cannot explain the creation of the cosmos, anchor our moral values or infuse our lives with meaning and purpose. I disagree.

Invoking God at best highlights what we cannot yet explain about the physical universe, and at worst exploits that ignorance to mystify. Moral values do not come prepackaged from God, but have to be worked out by human beings through a combination of empathy, reasoning and dialogue. This is true of believers, too: they, after all, have to decide for themselves which values in their holy books they accept and which ones they reject. And it is not God that gives meaning to our lives, but our relationships with fellow human beings and the goals and obligations that derive from them. God is at best redundant, at worst an obstruction. Why do I need him?

Susan Blackmore -- Psychologist and author
What reason for belief could I possibly have? To explain suffering? He doesn't. Unless, that is, you buy in to his giving us free will, which conflicts with all we know about human decision-making.

To give me hope of an afterlife? My 30 years of parapsychological research threw that hope out. To explain the mystical, spiritual and out-of-body experiences I have had? No: our rapidly improving knowledge of the brain is providing much better explanations than religious reasoning. To explain the existence and complexity of the wonderful world I see around me? No - and this is really the main one.

God is supposed (at least in some versions of the story) to have created us all. Yet the Creator (any creator) is simply redundant. Every living thing on this planet evolved by processes that require no designer, no plans, no guidance and no foresight. We need no God to do this work. Where would he fit in? What would he do? And why? If he did have any role in our creation, he would have to be immensely devious, finickity, deceitful and mind-bogglingly cruel, which would be a very odd kind of God to believe in. So I don't.

Richard Dawkins -- Evolutionary biologist
I don't believe in leprechauns, pixies, werewolves, jujus, Thor, Poseidon, Yahweh, Allah or the Trinity. For the same reason in every case: there is not the tiniest shred of evidence for any of them, and the burden of proof rests with those who wish to believe.

Even given no evidence for specific gods, could we make a case for some unspecified "intelligent designer" or "prime mover" or begetter of "something rather than nothing"? By far the most appealing version of this argument is the biological one - living things do present a powerful illusion of design. But that is the very version that Darwin destroyed. Any theist who appeals to "design" of living creatures simply betrays his ignorance of biology. Go away and read a book. And any theist who appeals to biblical evidence betrays his ignorance of modern scholarship. Go away and read another book.

As for the cosmological argument, whose God goes under names such as Prime Mover or First Cause, the physicists are closing in, with spellbinding results. Even if there remain unanswered questions - where do the fundamental laws and constants of physics come from? - obviously it cannot help to postulate a designer whose existence poses bigger questions than he purports to solve. If science fails, our best hope is to build a better science. The answer will lie neither in theology nor - its exact equivalent - reading tea leaves.

In any case, it is a fatuously illogical jump from deistic Unmoved Mover to Christian Trinity, with the Son being tortured and murdered because the Father, for all his omniscience and omnipotence, couldn't think of a better way to forgive "sin".

... Why is religion immune from the critical standards that we apply not just in courts of law, but in every other sphere of life?

Paula Kirby -- Writer
I stopped being a believer when it became clear to me that the various versions of Christianity were mutually contradictory and that none had empirical evidence to support it. From the recognition that "knowing in my heart" was an unreliable guide to reality, I began to explore other types of explanation for life, the universe and everything, and discovered in science - biology, chemistry, physics, cosmology, geology, psychology - answers that genuinely explain, as opposed to those of religion, whose aim is to shroud their lack of substance in a cloak of mystery and metaphor.

All-importantly, these scientific answers, even when tentative, are supported by evidence. That they are also far more thrilling, far more awe-inspiring, than anything religion can offer, and that I find life fuller, richer and more satisfying when it's looked firmly in the eye and wholeheartedly embraced for the transient and finite wonder that it is, is a happy bonus.

Sam Harris -- Neuroscientist
The most common impediment to clear thinking that a non-believer must confront is the idea that the burden of proof can be fairly placed on his shoulders: "How do you know there is no God? Can you prove it? You atheists are just as dogmatic as the fundamentalists you criticise." This is nonsense: even the devout tacitly reject thousands of gods, along with the cherished doctrines of every religion but their own. Every Christian can confidently judge the God of Zoroaster to be a creature of fiction, without first scouring the universe for evidence of his absence. Absence of evidence is all one ever needs to banish false knowledge. And bad evidence, proffered in a swoon of wishful thinking, is just as damning.

But honest reasoning can lead us further into the fields of unbelief, for we can prove that books such as the Bible and the Quran bear no trace of divine authorship. We know far too much about the history of these texts to accept what they say about their own origins. And just imagine how good a book would be if it had been written by an omniscient Being.

The moment one views the contents of scripture in this light, one can reject the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity and Islam definitively. The true authors of God's eternal Word knew nothing about the origins of life, the relationship between mind and brain, the causes of illness, or how best to create a viable, global civilisation in the 21st century. That alone should resolve every conflict between religion and science in the latter's favour, until the end of the world.

In fact, the notion that any ancient book could be an infallible guide to living in the present gets my vote for being the most dangerously stupid idea on earth.

What remains for us to discover, now and always, are those truths about our world that will allow us to survive and fully flourish. For this, we need only well-intentioned and honest inquiry - love and reason. Faith, if it is ever right about anything, is right by accident.

Daniel Dennett -- Philosopher
The concept of God has gradually retreated from the concept of an anthropomorphic creator figure, judge and overseer to a mystery-shrouded Wonderful Something-or-Other utterly beyond human ken. It is impossible for me to believe in any of the anthropomorphic gods, because they are simply ridiculous, and so obviously the fantasy-projections of scientifically ignorant minds trying to understand the world. It is impossible for me to believe in the laundered versions, because they are systematically incomprehensible. It would be like trying to believe in the existence of wodgifoop - what's that? Don't ask; it's beyond saying.

But why try anyway? There is no obligation to try to believe in God; that's a particularly pernicious myth left over from the days when organised religions created the belief in belief. One can be good without God, obviously.

Many people feel very strongly that one should try to believe in God, so as not to upset Granny, or so as to encourage others to do likewise, or because it makes you nicer or nobler. So they go through the motions. Usually it doesn't work.

I am in awe of the universe itself, and very grateful to be a part of it. That is enough.

A C Grayling -- Philosopher
I do not believe that there are any such things as gods and goddesses, for exactly the same reasons as I do not believe there are fairies, goblins or sprites, and these reasons should be obvious to anyone over the age of ten.

Stephen Hawking -- Physicist
I am not claiming there is no God. The scientific account is complete, but it does not predict human behaviour, because there are too many equations to solve. One therefore uses a different model, which can include free will and God.

Michael Shermer -- Publisher of Skeptic magazine
I do not believe in God for four reasons. First, there is not enough evidence for the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent being who created the universe and ourselves and hands down moral laws and offers us eternal life. Second, any such being that was supernatural would by definition be outside the purview of our knowledge of the natural world and would necessarily have to be part of the natural world if we did discover such an entity. This brings me to the third reason, Shermer's Last Law, which is that any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God. (Because of Moore's law [of increasing computer power] and Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns, we ourselves will be able to engineer life, solar systems and even universes, given enough time.) Fourth, there is overwhelming evidence from history, anthropology, sociology and psychology that human beings created God, not vice versa. In the past 10,000 years there have been roughly 10,000 religions and 1,000 different gods. What are the chances that one group of people discovered the One True God while everyone else believed in 9,999 false gods? A likelier explanation is that all gods and religion are socially and psychologically constructed. We created gods.

Richard Wiseman -- Psychologist
I do not believe in God because it seems both illogical and unnecessary. According to the believers, their God is an all-powerful and almighty force. However, despite this, their God allows for huge amounts of suffering and disease. Also, if I were to believe in God, logically speaking I would have to believe in a wide range of other entities for which there is no evidence, including pixies, goblins and gnomes, etc. It's a long list and I don't have room in my head for all of them. So, I am happy to believe that there is no God. We are just insignificant lumps of carbon flying through a tiny section of the universe. Our destiny is totally in our own hands, and it is up to each of us to make the best of our life. Let's stop worrying about mythical entities and start living.

... and, PZ Myers, not surprisingly, has the harshest (and funniest) criticisms of religion:

P Z Myers -- Biologist
I am accustomed to the idea that truth claims ought to be justified with some reasonable evidence: if one is going to claim, for instance, that a Jewish carpenter was the son of a God, or that there is a place called heaven where some ineffable, magical part of you goes when you die, then there ought to be some credible reason to believe that. And that reason ought to be more substantial than that it says so in a big book.

Religious claims all seem to short-circuit the rational process of evidence-gathering and testing and the sad thing is that many people don't see a problem with that, and even consider it a virtue. It is why I don't just reject religion, but actively oppose it in all its forms - because it is fundamentally a poison for the mind that undermines our critical faculties.

Religious beliefs are lazy jokes with bad punchlines. Why do you have to chop off the skin at the end of your penis? Because God says so. Why should you abstain from pork, or shrimp, or mixing meat and dairy, or your science classes? Because they might taint your relationship with God. Why do you have to revere a bit of dry biscuit? Because it magically turns into a God when a priest mutters over it. Why do I have to be good? Because if you aren't, a God will set you on fire for all eternity.

These are ridiculous propositions. The whole business of religion is clownshoes freakin' moonshine, hallowed by nothing but unthinking tradition, fear and superstitious behaviour, and an establishment of con artists who have dedicated their lives to propping up a sense of self-importance by claiming to talk to an in­visible big kahuna.

It's not just fact-free, it's all nonsense.

Amen.

I'm a masochist

Because I'm apparently not already spreading myself too thin, I've started a Tumblr blog here. I just wanted to try something that is a lot easier to post to from a mobile platform ... in my case, a Blackberry. I'll mostly be posting quotes, pics and shorter blog posts there. Hopefully, it will encourage me to post stuff more frequently and as I think of them. For now, my Tumblr posts will show up as an RSS feed on this site (at the top on the right) and also to my Twitter feed. I'm trying to research if there is a way for my Tumblr posts to automatically post to Blogger where normal posts are.

I'm not stopping my Blogger blog. Rather, I'm just trying to figure out ways to enhance how and when I post to it. To be continued ...

Things I like: Science Popularizers

I like science without having to be convinced to like it. But I'm not necessarily the common audience. That's why I'm a big fan of those scientists and authors that are able to 1) bring science down to the level of the non-scientist without being condescending and 2) make it interesting in the process.

I grew up in the age of one of the best science popularizers ever, Carl Sagan. His knowledge of physics and astronomy was perhaps only exceeded by his enthusiasm for the same. He made it semi-cool for a nerdy kid to run around saying "billions and billions". OK, even he couldn't have made me cool. But at least I was interested in science.

As I got older, others including Stephen Hawking became popular. When my wife, who could not care less about science, is aware of a scientist like Hawking, then you know someone has entered pop culture.

Despite the obvious anti-intellectualism that seems rampant in society, I still think we are in the heyday of science popularizers and that gives me hope. And maybe we are not as anti-science as it appears. There is a very vocal segment of society (much of Congress, all of FOX News) that has a high moral regard for the Dark Ages, but maybe they are just a loudmouth minority and don't represent most of society. That is what I hope.

If society is going to be brought back from the brink, minds such as these will play a big part:

Brian Cox, broadcaster, musician and physicist
Paul Davies, physicist, author and broadcaster
Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and author
Daniel Dennett, philosopher and cognitive scientist
Jared Diamond, evolutionary biologist, physiologist, biogeographer and author
Brian Greene, physicist
Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist and author
Christopher Hitchens, author, journalist and essayist
Jamie Hyneman, special effects artist and television personality (MythBusters)
Lawrence Krauss, physicist and author
Robert Krulwich, broadcaster
Bill Nye, broadcaster and mechanical engineer, known as the "Science Guy"
Steven Pinker, experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist and author
Adam Savage, special effects artist and television personality (MythBusters)
Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and author
... and many others

I've had the fortune to have seen a couple of them in person, Richard Dawkins, Paul Davies, and Lawrence Krauss (and spoke to Krauss).

What makes many of them so relevant is not their knowledge, but their willingness and ability to use that knowledge to educate. Please don't get me wrong. I don't anyone to have to dumb themselves down. But, let's be honest ... if people like Hawking and Greene were to talk to us as they speak to each other, they might as well be speaking ancient Greek. And this is coming from someone who took 5 college level calculus courses, calculus-based physics, and astrodynamics.

deGrasse Tyson, for one, is funny and very active on the talk-show circuit, having appeared on the Daily Show and Colbert repeatedly, plus he has podcasts and a PBS show called Nova Science Now that I regularly watch with my son. Just yesterday he was on Jimmy Fallon:



Pointy-headed academicians are not going to be the ones that convince Joe Schmoe of the dangers of climate change, the importance of pure research, and why we should continue the space program. It will be through people like deGrasse Tyson that sway the common man with humor and a sense of awe. One can hope that a sense of wonder will replace fear and mysticism. We'll see.

"Catapult the Propaganda"

I have to give credit where credit is due. It takes a special kind of stupid to be able to consume FOX News on a daily basis. We ate dinner at BJ's Brewpub tonight and among their bank of TV's, FOX News was on ... with no sound. Even without sound, within 5 minutes I was ready to put a gun in my mouth. In that small time frame, I was able to discover that Obama is the worst imperialist President ever, that he was going to take my home through imminent domain and was going to tax me into submission. That's important information that I was lucky enough to have beat into my brain without so much as a convincing argument.  I was able to tick off at least a half dozen of the classic propaganda techniques without even trying.

A reasoning FOX News viewer might be concerned by the turmoil of News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch, but as evidenced by my short indoctrination, there couldn't possibly be any reasoning FOX News viewers.

Quantum Typography

Courtesy of Garry Tan at garry's visualposterous

Happy 4th of July

"I despise my own nation most. Because I know it best. Because I still love it, suffering from Hope. For me, that's patrotism." -- Edward Abbey

Things I like: Bluegrass music

My musical upbringing was all over the place. An Iowa-born father and west coast mother brought the music of those two arenas together in our household. Charlie Rich, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard intermixed with The Fifth Dimension, The Mamas and The Papas and Elvis. Growing up in small town Iowa, I was sheltered from more rebellious art forms like punk, so instead was exposed to a heavy dose of Kasey Casem Top 40 on my little transistor radio. Teen years ... New Wave, Duran Duran, The Police. In college, I finally got outside of the confines of programmed radio. Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Prong, Front Line Assembly and the real coming out party for college radio: REM, U2, The Smiths, Joy Division, The Pogues. Just as I was graduating ... Nirvana, Pearl Jam.

As I've gotten older, I still listen to most of those things but have developed a real appreciation for the most original of those American musical art forms: Jazz, Folk, and Bluegrass. Once you start listening to the older music, you understand that most of the later music that you like was greatly influenced by what came before. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones were just giving their interpretations of American blues music. Country music largely derived from bluegrass, gospel, folk and blues. Now, I can't really stand what is now called country music, save for those few acts that seem to understand where it all came from.

I'm by no means a historian, but I know what I like listening to and my recent fascination with bluegrass music spawned from a singular angelic voice, that of Alison Krauss. Those elements of bluegrass that I most like and that comprise most bluegrass is the vocal harmonies, and the great instrumentation of the banjo and the fiddle. And you get that in spades with Alison Krauss and Union Station.



I understand the real progenitors of bluegrass were players like Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and I have listened to them, but they're probably a little too old school for even me. I prefer Ricky Skaggs and Vince Gill, the music of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the college age groups like The Punch Brothers:



The Punch Brothers are unique in that they are ostensibly playing bluegrass but their song structure are more classical. Mandolinist Chris Thile's earlier band, Nickel Creek, is also very good.

Bluegrass is not for everyone, but I dig it. It may seem like hillbilly music, and to a large extent it is, but to write it off as such would be selling it short. There's a lot of history of our country in those sounds and many other places that originally influenced it, including Africa, the UK and Ireland.

Next up, tomorrow: Philosophy

Things I like: Science Fiction

For regular readers here, this is no surprise. And I mean that I like science fiction in all its flavors: books, movies, TV, graphic novels. And it doesn't even have to be great science fiction. I've said this before, but I believe that even bad science fiction has merit. This is because even the worst science fiction is trying to make a point or send a message. It may fail miserably, but it's still trying.

Science fiction is allowed to address important social and political issues that traditional genres would not be able to without being considered preachy. Most recently we saw this with Battlestar Galactica, addressing torture, fundamentalism and terrorism, among other things.

My early beginnings in sci-fi were the novels of Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert. As I got a bit older, Larry Niven became probably my favorite hard sci-fi author. It might be cliche, but for a brainy and shy teenager, the escapism of science fiction was one of the few things that brought me solace and joy for those tough years.

In my adult years, I gravitated to the cyberpunk of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. But, I'm still discovering authors that are fantastic, like Greg Bear and Iain M. Banks, and fantasy authors like Philip Pullman and Neil Gaiman.

Obviously, as with all males of my age, one of the most formative experiences of my youth was seeing the original Star Wars movie. In those days, there was no Internet, no DVD's, and VCR's really weren't prevalent yet. Going to a movie theater and seeing something like Star Wars was an indescribable experience. It's so indelible that I remember that it was at a drive-in in Salem, Oregon and we watched it in the back of my folks Jeep.

It was through Star Wars, Blade Runner, the Alien movies and the books of my youth that my interest was cultivated. The 70's and 80's were, however, NOT the heyday of science fiction on television. You had the original Battlestar Galactica (which may prove wrong my theory of all science fiction having merit) and Space 1999, both unintentionally campy and embarrassing. I had no exposure to Doctor Who until I was in college. It's really just been the last 15 years or so that science fiction has come into it's own through things like the X-Files, the Stargate shows, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, the new Doctor Who, and many other shows. Something that was often an afterthought in programming now has a channel dedicated to it (SyFy) and just about every traditional network has at least one program that could be considered science fiction.

I just don't find issues of science, philosophy, consciousness, religion, the environment, war, etc. being addressed in such an entertaining manner as I do in science fiction. I don't read a lot of fiction, but when I do, about 75% of it is science fiction.

Top 5 favorite science fiction/fantasy books, no particular order: Dune, Lord of the Rings, Snow Crash, Neuromancer, Contact

Top 5 favorite science fiction movies, no particular order: 2001, Star Wars, Blade Runner, The Matrix, Children of Men

Next up, tomorrow:  Bluegrass music

Things I like: Chess

Over the years, I've immersed myself in both the mythology and history of chess, which is endlessly fascinating, but also the actual playing of it. I probably own about 100 books on arcane chess theory and have went through entirely too many of them.

The main reason that I started reading so much about chess theory was that as a teenager I was tired of my dad handing me my ass on a plate every time we played. He'd never studied chess but is much more of a natural chess player than myself. Learning some theory helped me to level the playing field a bit.

An upcoming documentary on HBO on Bobby Fischer was what got me thinking about chess again. Fischer, a nut job and possessing of unforgivable opinions on many things in the real world (Jews among them), was, nonetheless, a genius and probably the best chess player of all time. Both his play and his unusual life made for great drama and the documentary should be interesting. Another movie that delves into Fischer, but more tangentially, is Searching for Bobby Fischer. It's the true story of chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin. It's a great movie with a nice cast: Joe Montegna, Joan Allen, Laurence Fishburne, William H. Macy and Ben Kingsley.

For all my interest in chess, I don't play a lot. The wife knows how to play but usually does not want to. My ingrained competitive nature does not make for an enjoyable leisurely game for her. My son seems to be developing a similar interest in chess and tries hard.

I'm not sure what fascinates me so much about chess. It's not a game or sport in the traditional sense. Chess prodigies have more in common with math and music prodigies than those that excel in other games.

The rules are relatively simple but the possibilities are endless. You could play all your life and never master it. Maybe that's what attracts me ... chess as a metaphor for life.

"That's what Chess is all about. One day you give your
opponent a lesson, the next day he gives you one." -- Bobby Fischer

Next up, tomorrow, Science Fiction

Things I like: Modern Design

I'm going to start a new series of posts about the things I like. Nothing necessarily deep, but rather an idea, a concept, a movie, an artist, whatever, that I like. One a day for as long as I can stand it. I'm not going to overthink them. I'll just pick something and riff on it for awhile. Too often I use my blog to complain about something ... and that's definitely necessary and not something I'm going to stop ... but it's important to talk about those things we have a positive view of also.

Of course this seems incredibly narcissistic. Why, you would rightly ask, would anyone really give a shit what I like? And I would answer ... wait, I don't really have a good answer to that. Ultimately, it's an exercise to encourage me to write more often. Through exploring what it is in daily life that I truly enjoy, I might better use my time.

First up is Modern Design

And by Modern Design, I mean that architecture, art, furniture, etc. that rejects tradition. I'm certainly not an expert in any of those but I know that I really like the modern architecture as demonstrated in the works of photographer Julius Schulman and the design of architects like Wright, Philip Johnson and Frank Gehry. I like the furniture designs of Eames. Of course, I can't afford either. My tract home with Ikea furniture is a far cry. But the names aren't the point. The aesthetic is the point.

Modern Design appeals to be because of the practicality and functionality, especially as it pertains to sustainability. It's the classic "form follows function". In my own life, I try to get to what is essential and get rid of the clutter. We spend every day wasting time and money with those things that are not really essential to us.

My interest probably started with my interest in Frank Lloyd Wright. Growing up, my family lived in Oregon for a time and some friends of the family were architects. And they designed very much in the Wright style. I was hooked and well into high school, I thought I'd go to college for architecture, but life and finances derailed me into the more generic engineering. But, my interest never waned. Some day, when money is no object, I'll have that modernist house and that Eames chair:






For the 2nd year in a row, I'll be going out to LA for the Dwell on Design show. We go out to LA a couple times of year anyway because of having relatives in Manhattan Beach but the show is a compelling reason for me to go out at that particular time. We're hopefully going to get to the Getty Museum as well.

I've subscribed to Dwell Magazine for several years and it is a great source for ideas on modernist design.

Next up, tomorrow: Chess