Café Philos: an internet café

If you're like our friend (left), you're absolutely ecstatic that today is Nude Blogging Day.

As you can see, she's expressing her appreciation of Nude Blogging Day by taking a moment out of her busy schedule to celebrate the pleasures of simple nudity while she clenches her laptop equipped with wireless internet between her knees (hidden by the foxtails).

Like you, me, and potentially millions of other bloggers, she's motivated by an adamant desire to change society for the morally better. So she's joined the Nude Blogging Movement.

Sadly, not everyone agrees that nude blogging is moral. There are people -- even influential people -- who think the good lady to the left of us is spinning society into dark moral decline simply by blogging naked amongst the foxtails.

Those folks are morally confused. For reasons perhaps known only to themselves and their psychiatrists, they firmly believe great evil comes of simple nudity. Most of them were shocked to the bone when Janet Jackson's naked nipple appeared for two seconds on international television during the superbowl.

At the time, the FCC was deluged with angry letters and emails from folks outraged that even a single nipple was seen by themselves and their children -- as if their children would inevitably grow up to be perverts and sex criminals now. Politicians demanded an investigation. The FCC responded by fining the broadcaster, then toughening its standards. Jackson's "nipple of doom" launched a national crisis.

Is that what so many people think morality is all about? Naked nipples? Apparently so. At some point, all morally sane people should be asking themselves, "Do we really want a society that's crazy enough to take a nosedive into sheer hysteria over nudity?"

Of course, nothing is going to change society unless those of us who are morally sane enough to recognize the inanity of going into hysterics over nudity do something to change things. That's why, as a decent person, you have a moral obligation to blog in the nude on Mondays.

You say, you already blog in the nude? Great! Your morals are impeccable. But, to change society, you should do more than merely blog in the nude. You must let the world know you blog in the nude.

Only by letting others know we blog in the nude can we make society face up to the reality that nudity is neither sinful nor morally corrupting. And that's why it's important to publicly join the growing Nude Blogging Movement, like our friend above has done.

The growing Nude Blogging Movement needs you to light the way to moral sanity by publicly declaring that on Mondays (at the least) you blog in the nude.

Doubtless, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Dick Cheney, and other would be "moral leaders" will never join you in declaring that they too blog in the nude on Mondays.

That should not alarm you.

After all, you are far more moral than those gentlemen, and everyone who knows both you and them knows that about you. So, go ahead! Declare that you blog in the nude on Mondays! You have nothing to loose but your clothes!


Related:

Your Moral Duty To Blog In the Nude

The Growing Nude Blogging Movement: Q & A



Photo of nude blogger courtesy of DOMAI.

When I was going to school some 30 years ago, a friend of mine was working on artificial intelligence for the government. The two of us were both night owls and so we fell into the habit of discussing everything under the moon with each other.

One night, I asked him whether a thinking computer would have emotions. "It would be too intelligent for emotions", he responded. "How's that?", I asked. "Emotions are undeveloped thoughts.", he said, "The computer would think too fast for it to have much in the way of undeveloped thoughts."

Thirty years ago, the notion emotions amounted to nothing more than "undeveloped thoughts" was certainly not exclusive to my friend. Psychologists of the time barely studied emotions, focusing instead on behavior and cognition. Most of those psychologists, if asked, would have told you that emotions interfered with thinking.

The idea that emotions interfere with thinking goes far back in Western Culture. At least as early as the ancient Greeks and Romans, people thought feeling was inferior to thinking, and thought emotions were at odds with clear thinking. When you have a prejudice that deeply rooted in your culture, it's no wonder the psychologists of 30 years ago still clung to it.

All that seems to be changing now. Recently, psychologists and neuroscientists have discovered emotions as a subject of study. And some of the early results are astonishing to anyone familiar with the idea that emotions interfere with thought. According to Jonah Lehrer:

When [Antonio] Damasio first published his results in the early 1990s, most cognitive scientists assumed that emotions interfered with rational thought. A person without any emotions should be a better thinker, since their cortical computer could process information without any distractions.

But Damasio sought out patients who had suffered brain injuries that prevented them from perceiving their own feelings, and put this idea to the test. The lives of these patients quickly fell apart, he found, because they could not make effective decisions. Some made terrible investments and ended up bankrupt; most just spent hours deliberating over irrelevant details, such as where to eat lunch. These results suggest that proper thinking requires feeling. Pure reason is a disease.

Of course, it will take quite some time before the culturally ingrained notion that emotions interfere with thought is discarded by most people in favor of a more sophisticated model based on research. For one thing, there are ways in which the old model is true enough. Everyone has experienced a time or two when a strongly felt emotion impelled them to act rashly. And because there is some truth in the old model, it will take a long time before that model is replaced. Yet, we now know it's overly simplistic to say emotions are merely at odds with clear thinking.

"This administration intends to be candid about its errors. For as a wise man once said, 'An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.' We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors.... We're not going to have any search for scapegoats ... the final responsibilities of any failure are mine and mine alone."

- John F. Kennedy


(Kennedy spoke those words following the botched Bay of Pigs invasion)

Monday is only three days away as I write this -- and with Monday comes the moral obligation of all decent bloggers to blog in the nude. So, I thought I would answer some common questions from those few people who have not yet joined the Nude Blogging Movement.

Q. If I blog in the nude on Mondays from my office, can my boss fire me for violating the office dress code?

A. Legally no. The office dress code applies only to dress. Since you will be undressed there is no way a rational judge can say the dress code applies to you.

Q. I love to multitask, but is it safe to blog in the nude on Mondays while working heavy construction as a crane operator?

A. Perfectly safe. That's why your industrial crane has a cab: To keep the construction dust off your laptop.

Q. What if my kids see me blogging in the nude on Mondays?

A. Good question! We can all imagine how embarrassing that would be. Nevertheless, I feel you should not be ashamed to admit even to your kids that you're a blogger. Kids are resilient. It's our spouses we have to worry about.

Remember: By blogging in the nude on Mondays, you strike a blow for a future world in which our descendents will have risen above the ridiculous moral confusion that says the sight of even a single nipple will plunge society into moral decline.


Related:

Your Moral Duty To Blog In The Nude

It's Monday! Time To Blog In the Nude!

A wise friend emailed me last night. In her email, she pointed out something I excel at and mentioned that, of all the things I do, she thought that was what I did best.

So far as I can see, she was right. Not only do I excel at that particular thing, but it's what I do best. But here's the catch. Recognizing that I excel in that one thing is very close to recognizing that I don't excel at everything I do. And that is humbling. In thinking over her email, it came to me how much I depend on her and others to do the tasks that I myself either cannot do or can only do poorly. Consequently, her kind words made me feel both very vulnerable and grateful at the same time.

We should accept who we are.

That is so easy to say and so difficult to do.

It is difficult in part because society makes it difficult. Much of society is geared towards helping us be just about anything -- except who we are.

Perhaps you couldn't care less about prestige, but you have a job in which it matters that you drive a prestigious car. You know you are going to work harder to buy that prestigious car. And you know you are going to sacrifice the vacation to New Mexico in order to buy that luxury car. In one way, it's worth it. Who cares if you have to make little compromises like that every now and then? What matters is you have a job you like. If it means you need a prestigious car for the job, so be it.

Yet, in another way, the example is more disturbing. It's not just about that one car we don't want. It's about the way society so often expects us to be someone we are not. Today it's a luxury car. Tomorrow it might even be a job we don't really want. And the day after, something else. The danger is that sooner or later we have made so many little compromises -- and sometimes big compromises -- that it's become a habit with us to act like someone we are not. People loose themselves over the years in a thousand little acts: In a thousand little compromises between who they are and what society expects of them.

Society isn't the only force that often works against our accepting ourselves. Not by far. There are many other factors too. You could write a whole book on the problem of society alone. But if you wanted to be truly comprehensive, you would need to write whole companion volumes on other factors as well.

"If with the best intentions in the world, we say hurtful things to someone that do not actually help them, our aggressive and direct manner will not have achieved its goal. Maybe what the person needed was a white lie!"

- Dalai Lama


Of course, the Dalai Lama is not talking here of people who say hurtful things to hurt, but only of people who say hurtful things in good faith, in order to help someone. Yes, it's odd, but there really are people of good will who use hurtful talk in an usually clumsy attempt to help people. Perhaps such people do not realize how they are making things more difficult for the person they are trying to help?

Some years ago, I said a few hurtful words to my secretary. Her head jerked back a bit, almost as if I'd slapped her. She was the most gentle of people, and perhaps it's precisely because she was so gentle that I still recall her reflexive response to my words. Looking into her eyes immediately afterwards, seeing the hurt and confusion there, I was ashamed. Worse, I knew in an instant that my words had done nothing to help her. She would never take them as I wanted her to take them. She would remember only that I had hurt her.

The Thinking Blogger Award has been making its way around the internet since February 11th, when it was begun by none other than The Thinking Blog. The idea is simple: If someone tags you as a blog that makes them think, then you respond by tagging five other blogs that make you think.

Mystic Wing generously tagged me with the Thinking Blogger Award about a month ago. So, I responded in this post by tagging five blogs that made me think. That might have been the end of it except for a very strange coincidence which happened earlier tonight. Namely, I got tagged again...then once again.

The first person to tag me tonight was Steppen Wolf at The Skeptical Alchemist. Less than an hour and a half later, Trinifar of Trinifar tagged me. You can imagine how honored I feel that two fine bloggers chose to tag me tonight, and how surprised I am that they chose to tag me almost at the same moment. I'm very grateful to Mystic Wing, Steppen Wolf, and Trinifar for the compliment each has given me.

According to the rules, I suppose I should now tag ten blogs. Five each for Steppen Wolf and Trinifar. However, I am only going to tag six blogs. I figure the six I've chosen are enough to satisfy everyone concerned, and -- best of all -- each of them more than deserves to be tagged. Here they are in alphabetical order:

Decrepit Old Fool. George likes to pretend he's a fool, but he's actually one of the most fresh and creative thinkers I've run across on the net. He is prone to saying things that both make a great deal of good sense and which I haven't heard elsewhere. But even when he's not the first to say something, his reasoning is exceptionally well thought out and sound.

Hug the Monkey. Susan is writing a book on the neurochemistry of oxytocin that is due out early next year. Her blog is dedicated to imparting some of the extraordinary facts she's learned about oxytocin while researching her book.

Don't let the cold, scientific name "oxytocin" fool you. The molecule is anything but cold in how it operates. Among other things, it is responsible for a woman's contractions during orgasm, for the warm and fuzzy feelings we have towards the people we love, and for emotionally bonding children and parents. This blog can change how you see and think about your emotions.

Just Another Day. Laurie is a beautiful stylist who is at home with both the minutiae of daily life and the world of ideas. Trained as a research biologist, she is now a stay at home mom to two daughters. Although she's still finding her voice as a blogger, when she is inspired to write, she can write movingly and passionately with great insight.

Songs of Unforgetting. Kay can be absolutely brilliant at tying together ideas in ways that make sense of spiritual concepts I've struggled all my life to understand. Yet, I don't think she even knows she has that gift. She seems to do it intuitively -- perhaps even effortlessly.

Neurevolution. Mike's writing style ranges from crystal clear to scientifically dense and precise, so his message is not always easily accessible to the lay reader. Nevertheless, it's worth the occasional struggle to understand him not only because neuroscience is vitally important to understanding human nature, but because Mike is a sure-footed and conscientious guide to it.

Not Exactly Rocket Science. Ed describes his blog as, "my small attempt to celebrate science and to make it interesting and fun, by giving jargon, confusion and elitism a solid beating with the stick of good writing." That's one of the most honest and accurate mission statements I've seen on the net. The word that most comes to mind when thinking of this blog is simply the word "excellent".

Those are my six choices for the Thinking Blogger Award. I hope you find each of my six choices worth your attention. Enjoy!

Last, I would like to again thank Steppen Wolf and Trinifar for tagging me tonight. It's been fun to do this. However, if anyone is thinking about tagging me for a fourth time around, please desist and instead tag someone more deserving of the award than myself. I feel I've done my part now, and that it's time for someone else to enjoy the honor.

Carrie McCandless (left) is a 30 year old Colorado teacher who yesterday pled guilty to "unlawful sexual contact" with one of her students, a 17 year old boy.

Her lawyer maintains she's innocent of the charge, but unwilling to risk a trial that might send her to prison for years. The deal is for her to serve five years of probation in exchange for a guilty plea. If you're interested, you can read the details here.

Late last night, I was listening to a bimbo talk show host cough up his opinion that there ought to be a double standard about these sorts of things. He offered that it was acceptable for an older woman, like McCandless, to have sex with an underage boy, but that it was unacceptable for an older man to have sex with an underage girl.

According to the bimbo, a double standard is morally justified in these cases because of the very nature of human reproduction. In humans, the reproductive burden is not equally distributed between the sexes. Instead, women bear most of the burden (i.e. nine months of pregnancy followed in most cases by years of care-giving). Men, on the other hand, never get pregnant, nor are they usually the primary care-givers. Consequently, the bimbo pointed out, men have a much lighter reproductive burden than women.

He then went on to argue the difference in reproductive burdens between men and women obligated society to protect girls from older men, but did not obligate society to protect boys from older women. That is, girls have a lot to loose by getting pregnant from older men. Boys, on the other hand, have very little to loose by getting an older woman pregnant. Hence, we ought to be outraged if an older man has sex with a girl. But we ought to encourage -- or at least condone -- a boy having sex with an older woman.

It would be cruel to demand that talk show hosts think.

Now, I confess I admired the bimbo for his heroic effort to do something with the McCandless case besides condemn her to hell. It's always boring at midnight to hear a bimbo take the moral high road. Nevertheless, I found myself in radical disagreement with him.

The age and sex of a couple makes little difference to me. The way I look at it, the important things are mutual respect, shared expectations, sexually responsible behavior, a lack of abuse, mutual free and informed consent, and so forth. The same things that are important to me always. I'm not in favor of people so young they cannot give informed consent having sex, but apart from that I think the age of the partners doesn't much matter.

I'm not saying McCandless was right to indulge in groping a 17 year old, if that's what she did, because her specific case is complicated. For one thing, she was the 17 year old's teacher, and thus in a position to retaliate if he turned down her advances. Could he have given free consent under those circumstances? Maybe. The McCandless case hinges on that and other questions that cannot now be answered because the case will not go to trial. So, I'm reserving judgment on that case.

Instead, I have another bone to pick with the bimbo talk show host. Not only do I disagree with him that it's automatically immoral for an older man to have sex with a girl, and automatically moral for a boy to have sex with an older woman, but I also disagree with his notion -- he must have gotten this notion from the same "scientists" that keep telling Rush Limbaugh the jury is still out on global warming -- that only human males have evolved to have multiple sex partners. The truth is the best available science strongly suggests that both males and females have evolved to have multiple partners.

In the first place, there is no society in which it is unknown for some women to have more than one partner. This suggests the basis for multiple partners has a genetic component, rather than being merely cultural, since if it was merely cultural, we could expect to find cultures in which no women had more than one partner. But in every culture, there are women who have more than one partner.

In the second place, human males have evolved to cope with their females "getting some on the side." According to some scientists, the size of male testicles and the quantity of sperm production indicate that males evolved to have sex with females who were at least somewhat likely to have sex with more than one male. Again, the size and shape of the male penis is such that it seems evolved to be an effective pump for removing a competing male's sperm from a vagina prior to depositing one's own sperm. Last, males ejaculate significantly more sperm in circumstances when their females have had a chance to be with another male. None of these things would be the case if females were evolved to be perfectly monogamous.

So, in my opinion, the bimbo talk show host is wrong not just in his belief that we should have a double standard when it comes to older people having sex with younger people, but he is also wrong in his belief that only men evolved the reproductive strategy of screwing around.

"As we grow up we attach less and less importance to affection, friendship, and mutual support. Instead, we emphasize race, religion, or nationality. We forget the main thing and concentrate on the most trivial."

- Dalai Lama

Monday will soon be upon us, and -- as many of you know -- with Monday comes the moral duty of every decent blogger to blog in the nude.

Why should all morally decent bloggers blog in the nude on Mondays? By adhering to the rapidly growing custom of blogging in the nude on Mondays, bloggers are doing their moral duty to point out in the most practical way possible that nudity is not sinful -- contra the opinions of many pundits, preachers, and prudes.

Can you imagine Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, or Dick Cheney blogging in the nude on Monday? Of course not! Such morally confused people lack the insight and resolve to blog in the nude. The Falwell's, Robertson's, Dobson's and Cheney's of this world are so confused about morality they almost certainly think nudity is a threat to the very fabric of society. By blogging in the nude on Monday's you point out the lie in their thinking.

But what happens if, like most of us, you work on Mondays in a crowded office where it might not be practical to blog in the nude? That's actually not much of a problem. You can still show your solidarity with the Nude Blogging Movement by blogging in the nude either before or after office hours. You can also, in an absolute pinch, shrewdly compromise by removing only your shoes and socks when you blog on Mondays. After all, barefoot is the next best thing to full nudity.

As more and more millions of people join the growing Nude Blogging Movement, we shall at last overcome the silly Victorian aversion to nudity; the aversion that equates nudity with sin; the aversion that morally confuses so many people. And when that happens, society will at last be free to focus it's energies on something -- on anything -- more important than whether the now infamous two second sight of Janet Jackson's nipple at a Superbowl doomed the nation and the Western World to moral decline. Wouldn't it be nice if people could see a nipple without thinking they're going to hell for having seen it?

This Monday, strike a blow for good moral sense and psychological freedom! Join the Nude Blogging Movement!


Related:

The Growing Nude Blogging Movement: Q & A

It's Monday! Time To Blog In the Nude!

The 239th Carnival of the Vanities has been posted here. The Carnival attempts to bring together some of the best writing in the blogosphere for those who like to read good posts.

Lately, though, the Carnival has been publishing posts from this blog -- which certainly calls into question whether it's actually publishing links to the best writing on the net. For instance, this time around the Carnival has linked to my post on Young Love, which can be found here. I myself am personally alarmed at this sign that the standards for good writing are in perilous decline. Can the Apocalypse be too far away?

"The war in Iraq is the biggest ethical issue facing our country."

- Nancy Pelosi


Do you feel, like Pelosi, that the war in Iraq is the biggest ethical issue facing our country? I myself wonder whether there is any one, single "biggest ethical issue"? But if there is one, single biggest issue, I think it might be the global environment, rather than the war. What do you think?

A farm boy accidentally overturned a wagon of corn on the road. A nearby farmer saw the accident and went over to have a look and found the boy trying to right the tipped wagon.

"Hey Willie," the farmer said. "Forget your troubles for a spell... it's late, come have dinner with us. I'll help you with that wagon after we eat."

"That's mighty nice of you, but Pa won't like that," Willie replied.

"Aw, come on son. Take a break," the farmer insisted.

"Well, okay," the boy finally agreed. "But Pa won't like it."

After a hearty meal, Willie thanked the farmer. "I feel a lot better now, but I just know that Pa will be upset."

"Nonsense," the farmer said. "Where is your pa anyway?"

"Under the wagon."

This morning, I'm a bit confused after reading a letter to the editor published in The National Post (of Canada).

The author of the letter is Don D. Wallar, and he holds a Masters in Neurochemistry. Mr. Wallar wants to argue against naturalism, which is the philosophical position that only nature exists. That is, nothing supernatural exists. And Mr. Wallar specifically wants to argue against the notion, "there is no mind or soul independent of the brain; all thought and behaviour is purely the result of neurochemical synapses in the brain."

Now, when I'm on a first date, I often make a point of telling my new friend that I'm much more fascinated by epistemological naturalism than I am interested in ontological naturalism. The point, of course, is to impress her with how many big words I know. It seems to work, because my dates are so impressed by my droning on about the various naturalisms that they never go with me on second dates. And that's how I avoid the horrible troubles associated with extended romances.

Consequently, I really perked up this morning when I sighted Mr. Wallar's letter, for I immediately grasped that it might provide me with juice for initiating an engaging conversation at one of those tender moments after the dinner, and after the movie, when I'm back at my date's apartment and she's just dimmed the lights.

Unfortunately, Mr. Wallar's letter left me more confused than intellectually armed.

That's because Mr. Wallar argues in his letter that naturalism is untenable because it leads to our denying the existence of free will. He says:

There are serious scientific and philosophical reasons why physical [i.e. ontological] naturalism cannot be tenable. One philosophical argument is based on the idea of free will.

Human beings are known to exhibit what is known as libertarian freedom, that is, they can literally choose between bona fide options... A or B.

If all thought and behaviour are indeed only the result of the biochemistry of the brain, then free will cannot exist, and all we have left is pure determinism.

Furthermore, any concept of moral obligation and responsibility is also nonsensical if determinism is true. But we do not live this way because we do not believe this way. [stuff in brackets mine]

Here's something my old philosophy professor taught me shortly before he taught me how to practice safe sex by engaging my dates in philosophical conversations at strategic moments in order to deter them from pursuing their base romantic desires: "One cannot legitimately argue that something is false merely on the grounds that if, it were true, one wouldn't like the consequences of it's being true."

Applied here, that means Mr. Wallar cannot legitimately argue that ontological naturalism is false simply because there can be no free will if it's true. Yet, it seems to me this morning that is precisely what Mr. Wallar is doing in his letter. He's urging us to reject ontological naturalism on the sole grounds that, if we accept it, we have to discard any dear notion we might have that our wills are free. And that's confusing me.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding his point, but is that the best grounds he wants to offer us for rejecting ontological naturalism? "It can't be true because we don't like what it implies"?

But there's another possibility. Having said all that, I think it's possible that Mr. Wallar is actually arguing:

1) Ontological naturalism implies no free will.

2) But we have libertarian freedom of choice (i.e. we can choose between options).

3) Libertarian freedom of choice is the same as free will.

4) If we have free will, then ontological naturalism is false.

5) We have free will.

6) Therefore ontological naturalism is false. False! FALSE!

That's a different argument than the first one. Yet, if that's what he's arguing, then the trouble is premise #3 is wrong. Contra the premise, libertarian freedom of choice does not actually imply free will.

You can see that when you think of how a computer works. A computer can be programed to choose between options. That is, a computer has libertarian freedom of choice, which is the ability to choose between options. But a computer certainly does not have free will. Hence, there is no precise equivalence of free will and libertarian choice.

Of course, if premise #3 is wrong, then the conclusion that ontological naturalism is false does not follow from Mr. Wallar's argument. Instead, we have to go back to square one, and find other grounds on which to argue either for or against ontological naturalism.

I'm still confused though. I really don't know which argument he's making in his letter. If I had to bet, I'd lay money on the second one, because that's the stronger argument. But it seems to me it could just as easily be the first argument that he's really making. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I need to quit reading arguments against naturalism so early in the morning.

At any rate, what do you think of Mr. Wallar's argument? Do you buy into it? Do you reject it? Would you like to go on a first date?

I've decided to disable the comments moderation feature on this blog. Anyone can now comment, under any name (including anonymous -- although I hope few use "anonymous"), and his or her comment will be published immediately.

We'll see if it works. I ask everyone to be polite and considerate of each other when commenting. Of course, I will delete any comments that I deem to be rude, insulting, or inflammatory. I will also delete any spam.

If you feel a comment is rude, insulting, or inflammatory, please email me at the address in the sidebar. I'll take a look at the comment, and if I agree, I will delete it.

I hope this new comments policy will make it easier for us to carry on a conversation. Thanks!

O poeta é um fingidor
Finge tão completamente
Que chega a fingir que é dor
A dor que deveras sente
_____________________________
The poet is a pretender
Who's so good at his act
He even pretends to be pain
The pain he feels in fact


- Fernando Pessoa


(Thanks to Corgiguy for the poem and translation)

How should scientists communicate to the general public what they know about global warming, evolution, stem cell research, and other topics?

That question becomes downright urgent when the science on those topics comes under organized attack from some religionists, corporations, pundits, or politicians. Lately, heated posts have been flying all over the science blogosphere on what scientists should, or can, do to respond to those attacks. Now, the intrepid Bora of Blog Around the Clock has organized in one place a feast of links to nearly every post in the debate. For that massive effort alone, he ought to win a medal or two.

Broadly speaking, the debate falls into two camps. In the first are the folks who seem to think any effort to tailor the science message to the general public represents the worse spin. In the second are the folks who seem to think tailoring the science message is plain good sense and necessary in today's world. While that brief description of the camps leaves a lot to be desired, it should be enough to get you off to a good start. The debate is important if only because who wins it could go a long way towards deciding whether scientists ever develop effective responses to the public attacks against their disciplines.

Some long time ago, I decided that I was going to allow myself at least one irrational prejudice: Namely the irrational belief that all talk show hosts are bimbos.

There are days when that actually seems to me a wise decision. Knowing I willfully harbor an irrational belief helps keep me more intellectually modest than I might otherwise be. Also, I haven't seen a whole lot of evidence to contradict my belief: Especially yesterday.

Yesterday, I tuned into a bimbo talk show host for five or ten minutes to discover him outraged that anyone would have compassion for the killer of 32 students at Virginia Tech on Monday.

I wondered why the bimbo thought it was any of his business to try to argue people out of their compassion? Then I realized that is precisely what makes him a bimbo: He deeply believes he's making the world a better place by trying to argue people into being less compassionate.

Apparently, the bimbo talk show host doesn't have enough personal experience of compassion to realize that compassion for a killer does not require one to condone the killer's actions, nor forgo trying to prevent them, nor forgo intervening to stop them. Genuine compassion requires none of that. And nor does compassion for a killer require one to have any less compassion for those who died at his hands.

Our understanding of what compassion involves very much depends on our own experience (or lack of experience) of compassion. Perhaps the bimbo talk show host either has not experienced compassion, or he has paid so scant attention to the compassion he has experienced that he has failed to understand it. Whatever the case, the bimbo's analysis of compassion is wrong and misleading.

UPDATE: Perhaps I've been too harsh on the bimbo. After all, I didn't listen to him for more than ten minutes, and probably more like five or seven minutes. The thought occurs to me now he might have been responding to those folks who argue that we should all feel compassion for the killer. If so, I can understand how that notion we should all feel compassion might irk him.

I am just as much against telling people who don't feel compassion to feel compassion as I am against telling people who feel compassion to stop feeling compassion. I believe whether someone feels compassion or not is, and ought to be, their own business.

I myself don't feel compassion for Cho, and I'm not about to try to change that. If I've learned anything about life, it's that I should not try to force myself to feel what I do not in fact feel. Down that path lies self-deceit and emotional stupidity.

Yet, I stick by my earlier observation that genuine compassion does not preclude intervening to stop someone from doing wrong. Genuine compassion is not about condoning a wrong out of some kind of sentimental attachment to the person who does the wrong. Genuine compassion has nothing to do with sentimental attachments. Genuine compassion, so far as I've occasionally experienced it, is something that transcends mere sympathy.

As I write this, the sun has just touched the uppermost blossoms on the apple tree in my back yard. The sight is so beautiful that it demands I become lost in it.

Have you noticed there can be a certain emotional pain in seeing the most beautiful things? The most deeply beautiful things sometimes disconcert us. We might even turn away from them. We might even make an effort to dismiss them. For the deeply beautiful things of this world have the power to challenge us to move out beyond ourselves; to loose, if even for a moment, the concerns, the thoughts and feelings that give us such a sense of self, such a sense of who we are and why we are so important to ourselves.

Sometimes, we would prefer to look at something ugly than to look at something beautiful precisely because the ugly thing does not make us yearn to be free of ourself; precisely because it does not challenge us in quite the same way beauty can challenge us to loose ourselves in it.

That's a truth that seems lost on those overtly sentimental works of art designed to provoke in us warm and fuzzy feelings towards the merely cute or the merely pretty.

Yet, the deeply beautiful things of this world have the power -- if we let them -- of refreshing and renewing us in ways that sentimental prettiness cannot. The deeply beautiful things can offer us a perspective on our selves that is far more life affirming than the feelings one might have towards an all too cutely rendered painting of an English cottage at dusk.

That's why it is so important to let go of oneself at times: To allow ourselves to become lost, perhaps in the sight of something deeply beautiful. Letting go can, when one is lucky, be life affirming. But genuine letting go of ourselves is not ego affirming. And hence, it is something that we all too often are not prepared to do. Our egos, necessary as they are at times, can make us cowards even towards experiencing something as simple and life affirming as the beauty of an apple blossom against the dawning sky.

Brendan at Off the Beaten Path posted on Giordano Bruno yesterday. It's said of Bruno that, "His conclusions were simply unbelievable for a late medieval mind." Brendan, who for some time has been working diligently on one of the central problems of the 21st century long before it has been discovered by most people to be one of the central problems of the 21st century (Namely, how we are to reconcile science, the arts, and mysticism or spirituality), approaches Bruno in an especially fascinating way here.

At Hug the Monkey, Susan interviewed Micheal Gurian on Teens, Sex and Love back in January. However, nothing in the interview is any less topical today for being a few months old. Gurian's comments on the psychology of young women especially is rich and insightful.

Laurie, at Just Another Day, once again proves that all concerned citizens must band together to organize a "Draft Laurie" movement with the goal of persuading her to both post more often and then, sometime in the future, turn her posts into a book. In a post here, she writes beautifully, thoughtfully, and movingly about explaining loss of life and tragedy to her two young daughters.

At Decrepit Old Fool, George writes the single most wise commentary on the Virginia Tech shootings that I've yet to find on the net.

Kay, over at Songs of Unforgetting, has posted a clarifying explanation of Indra's Net and the Buddhist concept of "dependent origination" which, if I understanding it, is an alternative to the Western concept of linear cause and effect.

Anyone interested in how Japanese women are awakening to new social roles should check out Yang-May Ooi's brief review of Kickboxing Geishas on her blog Fusion View.

At Mystic Wing, Mystic wrote a few days ago on the concept of "Rigpa". I've returned several times to his post -- it's that good -- even though it makes me wonder like Chung Tzu whether I'm a butterfly dreaming of being a human or a human dreaming of being a butterfly.

A few weeks ago, my friend Faisal told me that, when he was growing up in rural Saudi Arabia, a common expression was, "Do you think you're in America?"

People typically asked, "Do you think you're in America?", when a person did or said something improbably, wildly optimistic, such as suggesting they could change society for the better, or even travel to the moon.

Sadly, Faisal tells me the expression has fallen into disuse since Bush invaded Iraq. People in his hometown no longer believe in America, it's dream and it's promise.

Many Americans are no more concerned with what America represents to the rest of the world than they are concerned that American forces did nothing to stop looters from destroying the museums and hospitals of Baghdad during the initial invasion of Iraq. For those Americans, all that matters is the world fears us, fears our power, fears our military; just like the ancient world feared the Roman legions and the will of the emperors.

Yet, it's really quite petty -- even insanely petty -- to think that all America might legitimately represent to people in the rest of the world is a threat.

America has in its short history represented many things to many peoples. It has at times shown the world that a government of the people is practical and not merely a dream of idealists. It has at times shown the world that people can live freer than their princes, dictators, and tyrants tell them people can live. Indeed, it has at times been a savior of other nations, a light unto the world, and a beacon of decency, optimism, and hope.

How strange it is that some Americans think it should only be a force to be feared by the world's peoples.

"All models are wrong. Some models are useful."

- Anonymous


What is objectivity? The naive view is that objectivity represents reality. That, however, is a metaphysical assumption, because we have no experience of an objective reality -- all experience is subjective, and we are merely speculating when we posit that an objective reality exists.

That raises the question of how -- and even whether -- the concept of objectivity is a useful model of reality.

What do you think?

On Monday, 33 people died of senseless violence in Virgina. Yesterday, 171 people died of senseless violence in Baghdad.

I'm sick of the killing.

Too often, we think that partner abuse is a private matter between the partners. But if you have ever loved someone who suffered abuse then you know how devastating that abuse can be, not only on the victim, but on everyone who loves the victim. Moreover, since abuse is often passed along from one person to another, much like a contagious disease, the abuse of anyone should concern everyone. With that said, here are eight simple statements to determine if you or someone you know are in an abusive relationship. Answer "yes" or "no" to each statement:



I am afraid of my partner. Yes or no?

I cannot express my opinion or my feelings without being afraid of my partner's reaction. Yes or no?

I always ask my partner for permission to see family or friends, to spend money, or to buy something for myself. Yes or no?

I constantly manipulate myself, my children, and my environment in order to make things "just so" for my partner. Yes or no?

I try and try to please my partner only to be criticized again. Yes or no?

I sometimes feel like I'm living with two different people, a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. Yes or no?

I am confused about the difference in the way my partner views our relationship and the way I see it. Yes or no?

I am beginning to believe all the terrible things my partner says about me and accuses me of. Sometimes I'm not sure what is real anymore. Maybe I am going crazy. Yes or no?


If you answer "yes" to just half the questions, you are being abused. Regardless of whether you want to leave your relationship or not -- and that choice is entirely yours -- you should seek professional help. Contact your local women's shelter, a relationship therapist, a psychiatrist, or even an abuse hotline. For the number to an abuse hotline in your country, simply google "National Abuse Hotline". Learn what your options are.

"In investigating one's consciousness one is investigating the whole human consciousness -- not only one's own -- because one is the world and when one observes one's own consciousness one is observing the consciousness of mankind -- it is not something personal and self-centered."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

"Kindness is our most powerful rebellion against tragedy."

- George Wiman

When I was much younger, I had the misfortune to believe that politicians were, for the most part, statesmen who more often than not made wise decisions.

That's not to say their decisions always looked wise to me. Far from it. Their decisions most often seemed foolish to me even when I was younger. So how could I believe they were, in reality, wise?

Pretty simple, really. I would read the morning newspaper, nearly choke as I read what Congress and the President had done, but then -- but then -- I would think to myself, "Well, they know more than I do. Obviously their decisions would make sense to me if I knew the real situation, like they do." That's what I would think, and it worked to keep me happy with the politicians for a long time.

Then came C-Span.

C-Span was The Great De-Mystifyer. I recall a period of a few short years when I would watch it each weekend for hours at a time, in utter fascination at what politicians were like when their statements weren't being heavily edited by the news outlets. Gradually, I realized most politicians, far from being statesmen, were simply buffoons of one sort or another. Yet, only by seeing for myself the truth did I come to that realization. If it had not been for C-Span, I would most likely still think of politicians as genuine leaders, wiser than most people, somehow above the crowd.

Last night, I was reminded of all that when reading a very popular science blog. I don't know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure the blog gets over 3,000 visits each day. It has a Google page rank of seven, which is almost impossible for a blog to achieve without it's having enough traffic to cause a major immigration problem if blog visits were the same as border crossings. People leave so many comments on the posts that the blog even rivals some popular forums for participation. And a read through 200 comments on one thread alone impressed me that perhaps half the people commenting were folks working in, or studying, some field of science.

Reading the comments was just as de-mystifying as watching C-Span had been so many years ago Many of the science workers were rude, insulting and hyper-sensitive towards each other -- so rude, insulting and hyper-sensitive that they quickly put me in mind of the worse trailer park society. I wondered where they had grown up; whether their families were as emotionally undisciplined -- even to the point of being dysfunctional -- as they seemed to be; whether there was anything about science itself that brought out such rudeness in such bright people; and a host of other questions.

Of course, Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, mentions that scientists often try to persuade each other through irrational means. But until recently -- and especially until last night -- it hadn't sunk in just how irrational those means could get.

All of this caused me some late night reflections. First, I thought of how naive my expectations had been. When Kuhn mentioned "irrational means" I had envisioned scientists appealing to each other's emotions, but nothing like the cat fight in a whore house I witnessed last night. Appealing to someone's emotions might be appealing to their irrational side, but it's still legitimate. However, viciously attacking someone personally is the sort of irrationality that's more often associated with bimbo talk show hosts than with scientists. Yet, the "debate" I saw last night would fit perfectly Sean Hannity's radio program.

Second, I reflected that we often confuse scientists with science. Science is hyper-rational, dispassionate, and as close to objective as anything humans know. It is easy, therefore, to think of scientists themselves as hyper-rational, dispassionate, and objective. But if the folks on that blog are any fair indication, many scientists are far from being any of that. Which leads me to my third reflection: It must be the methods of science, and not the personality of scientists that accounts for much of the dispassionate rationality of science.

Now, to be fair, I should tell you that in my offline life I only know a tiny handful of scientists, and that each and every one of my scientific friends is an exceptional human being. Indeed, at least one of them, Jeff Glickman, is a sort of hero of mine. He's a computer scientist who has been described by his peers as a "genius' genius", and he ranks among the kindest, most compassionate, most loyal people I've known in my life. I've known Jeff since we were undergraduates together at university and I have never known him to be rude or insulting towards me or anyone else. So, I know full well that the group I saw last night by no means represents all scientists.

Yet, last night was still de-mystifying for me. I had assumed that my tiny sample of scientific friends was more or less representative of the whole. Now, I'm not sure what the real case is.

Over the coming months, it will become increasingly apparent the Iraq war is lost. That, almost certainly, will lead to a political blame game that will further divide the country at a moment we need to be united. The Ann Coulters, Rush Limbaughs, Sean Hannitys and other fools will see an opportunity to question the patriotism of everyone but themselves -- and they will be led in that moral mistake by none other than Bush himself.

Bush never was much of a man, and he almost certainly won't be man enough to do the right thing and take full responsibility for the war he started and lost. That's a shame because the best thing Bush could do for his country now is take full responsibility for loosing the Iraq war. Doing so would go far to ameliorate the divisiveness that always follows when a country looses a war.

Yet, this time around, we have choice given to us by the internet. We can passively allow Bush and his friends to spin the lost war as everyone's fault but his own, or we can actively oppose Bush by declaring far and wide over the net that it was Bush who lost the war. Which do you think is the better choice?

If you agree Bush lost the war, spread it far and wide on your blogs. Pass it on to friends, family and co-workers. Make it the talk of the nation. Don't let Karl Rove decide for you what the truth is. Let's take back the truth!

(There's more information on this topic here and here.)

I never intended to have this life, believe me --
It just happened. You know how dogs turn up
At a farm, and they wag but can't explain.

It's good if you can accept your life -- you'll notice
Your face has become deranged trying to adjust
To it. Your face thought your life would look

Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten.
That was a clear river touched by mountain wind.
Even your parents can't believe how much you've changed.

Sparrows in winter, if you've ever held one, all feathers,
Burst out of your hand with a fiery glee.
You see them later in hedges. Teachers praise you,

But you can't quite get back to the winter sparrow.
Your life is a dog. He's been hungry for miles,
Doesn't particularly like you, but gives up, and comes in.


Robert Bly, Morning Poems

On April 15, 1912, the British luxury liner, Titanic, sank in the Atlantic ocean off Newfoundland, less than three hours after striking an iceberg.

Is it an act of unequalled cynicism that the U.S. Government designated April 15th as income tax day, or am I just paranoid?

Some things are easy to predict. For instance: Basic human nature is no more likely to change on its own over the next 1000 years than it has changed over the previous 1000 years. Which is the same as saying it won't change unless we intervene in our own nature through genetic engineering or some other means.

On the other hand, some things are very difficult to predict. Anyone who can accurately predict which inventions will catch on with the public next year, or the year after, has a fortune waiting for them. Corporations will pay that much to reliably know which products will be successful, and just how successful they'll be. Many people are willing to take a guess for $50,000, but who can say for certain?

I myself try to stay clear of predicting anything that's not a sure thing. So, while I'm willing to bet that humans will still fall in love 10,000 years from now, I won't risk saying where the stock market will be in 10 days. Today, though, I'm going to break my rule and make a prediction that is somewhat more iffy than, "humans will still have symmetrical body plans centuries from now." I'm going to predict the future of neuroscience over the next 100 years.

If you are not familiar with what's happening in neuroscience, my predictions might seem immodest to you. Nevertheless, here they are:

First, by the end of this century, neuroscience will be the new physics and the new biology. That is, neuroscience will supplant physics and biology as the primary knowledge base drawn on by people trying to answer such questions as: "What is human nature?", "What is our place in the universe?", and even, "What is the meaning of life?" Physics and biology won't go away entirely, but they will become secondary in importance to neuroscience when it comes to those sorts of questions.

Second, neuroscience, in conjunction with other sciences and technologies, will create consumer technologies that are today the stuff of science fiction. Technologies that allow folks to read minds, predict someone's actions moments before they act, mentally control everything from appliances to computers, and perhaps even defend oneself.

Third, neuroscience will become militarized. Not only will it be used to do such things as allow airmen to fly superfast aircraft from the ground, but it will also be used to create weapons that disrupt an enemy's thoughts and feelings.

Last, at some point during the century someone will come up with a reliable way to create mystical experiences in people. Whether that will be through a pill or through a machine, I refuse to predict. But there will be "enlightenment on demand" as a sort of ultimate consumer product.

Those are my four modest predictions for neuroscience. They are no more than guesses, of course, and you should know that I stole most of them from things I've been reading over the past five years or so. I don't claim to be original about most of my predictions. I only claim to be a good thief.

Regardless of whether I'm right or wrong about any of these things, it's pretty certain neuroscience will become an increasingly important field. Anyone who is interested in quickly learning the basics of the science now has a wonderful opportunity to do so. Mike Cole at the blog, Neurevolution, is this month running a daily series of concise and clear posts, each on a crucial principle or discovery in the field. The series is very much worth reading.

Some new research funded by the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience is downright shocking. It shows that when men look at sexy photos, they actually look first at the model's face -- and they spend more time looking at her face than do women looking at the same photo.

Researchers hypothesized women would look at faces and men at genitals, but, surprisingly, they found men are more likely than women to first look at a woman's face before other parts of the body, and women focused longer on photographs of men performing sexual acts with women than did the males.

Both sexes spent about equal amounts of time looking at the model's genitals.

According to a new study on the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education, kids who are taught to abstain from sex do no better at abstaining from sex than other kids. Or, as The Washington Post reports:

A long-awaited national study has concluded that abstinence-only sex education, a cornerstone of the Bush administration's social agenda, does not keep teenagers from having sex. Neither does it increase or decrease the likelihood that if they do have sex, they will use a condom.

Authorized by Congress in 1997, the study followed 2000 children from elementary or middle school into high school. The children lived in four communities -- two urban, two rural. All of the children received the family life services available in their community, in addition, slightly more than half of them also received abstinence-only education.

By the end of the study, when the average child was just shy of 17, half of both groups had remained abstinent. The sexually active teenagers had sex the first time at about age 15. Less than a quarter of them, in both groups, reported using a condom every time they had sex. More than a third of both groups had two or more partners.

"There's not a lot of good news here for people who pin their hopes on abstinence-only education," said Sarah Brown, executive director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, a privately funded organization that monitors sex education programs. "This is the first study with a solid, experimental design, the first with adequate numbers and long-term follow-up, the first to measure behavior and not just intent. On every measure, the effectiveness of the programs was flat."

Of course, proponents of abstinence only sex education are not giving up. They're trying to spin the study as highly inconclusive. Yet, the results of the study are not substantially different from several other smaller studies done over the years.

Some of the blog authors I read strongly prefer words like "moron", "idiot", "cretin", and so forth when referring to people who behave reprehensibly.

That particular prejudice strikes me as curious because there is no clear link, so far as I know, between a person's intelligence and whether they will act like a jerk.

One blogger recently described some vandals who spray painted protest slogans on a university wall as "morons". He didn't know who did it, so he really didn't know how smart they were. It seems his sole reason for calling the vandals "morons" was his knowledge they had callously damaged university property. But why "morons"?

It seems to me he's making a rather silly assumption: jerks are dumber than the rest of us. If so, he hasn't met a few of the jerks I've met. Like most people, I have the experience to know jerks come in all shapes and sizes, all ethnic backgrounds, and all ideologies. Some are even smart.

When certain bloggers pretend that jerks are dumber than the rest of us, it makes me wonder if they think the converse is true too? Do they believe those who are dumber than the rest of us are necessarily jerks?

If so, that's yet another silly idea.

The way I see it (most of the time), the single most important virtue a person can possess is kindness. After kindness, maybe love or compassion or wisdom. Somewhere down the list, following integrity, honesty, courage, spirit, and perhaps a few other virtues comes brains.

I know that when I was much younger, I ranked brains a whole lot higher than I do today.

That was the folly and narrowness of youth. I scarcely knew back then what love or compassion or wisdom were. I had only the vaguest understandings of integrity, honesty, courage and spirit. And I don't recall ever having thought kindness was important. But brains -- I valued brains almost fanatically.

Since fanaticism about anything always narrows us, maybe that's why I didn't know much about the other virtues.

The vandals the blogger spoke about who spray painted the university wall were surely lacking in wisdom, along with some other virtues. but it just ain't necessarily so they were morons. So, let's call them what they are -- jerks -- and refrain from implying that all vandals are morons.

The other day, I was reading a blog dedicated to practicing sex as a way to enlightenment. Reading the blog reminded me how Jiddu Krishnamurti sometimes remarked that sex seemed to be the closest many people came to having a transcendental experience.

I think there's some truth to that. In a transcendental experience, the subject/object divide abruptly ends, while the continuum of experience goes on, leaving no sense of a distinction between the observer and the observed. In some sexual experiences, partners report experiencing themselves as no longer separate people, but rather as profoundly united with each other into something like one being. So, in both cases, you have what seems to be a radical end to subject/object perception, ending any apparent distinction between the witness and the witnessed.

No one really knows what causes transcendental experiences. They seem to come about in a variety of ways: At times, through some forms of meditation, through some drugs, through some injuries or illnesses, through some sexual episodes, and even spontaneously. But no one knows what role, if any, those things play in causing the experiences.

Krishnamurti believed no sure and certain path to transcendental experiences existed. He likened our condition to that of someone sitting in a room of their house waiting for a breeze. All the waiting person could do, Krishnamurti said, was make sure the windows were open so that if a breeze came, it could enter the room. Beyond that, the person had no control over whether or not there would be a breeze.

If Krishnamurti is right, a couple who wants to have a transcendental experience cannot force such an experience to come about, but can only open the windows, so to speak, and wait for an experience that might or might not come. Even sex is not a guaranteed path to transcendence.

An internet carnival, I've discovered, is a round-up of blog posts that adhere to a specific theme. There are hundreds of carnivals on the net these days. Taken together, they cover nearly every topic imaginable, from politics to birds.

One of the first internet carnivals was The Carnival of the Vanities. Unlike many other carnivals, the Carnival of the Vanities doesn't focus on any one topic, but rather focuses on good writing. It's purpose is both to encourage better writing from bloggers, and to provide a single net location where folks can go to find good writing on a variety of topics.

When I found all that out last week, I decided it might be fun to submit an entry to the Carnival and see if it passed muster as good writing. The entry was my post on Buddhism and the Grand Debate Over Evolution. I'm happy to say it passed muster with the powers that be, and is now part of this week's Carnival of Vanities.

The 238th Carnival of the Vanities is published here, and you can click on over there to find other good blog posts from the past week. Enjoy!

On March 23rd, in this, the sixth year of our dark lord, Dick Cheney, I committed an evil and heinous crime against good sense, as well as against Eolake Stobblehouse, when I wrote a review of his DOMAI site that contained a blatant and senseless falsehood. It's now time for me to honestly and humbly confess to my crime, correct my mistake, and spin the whole episode as the fault of Osama Bin Laden.

On March 23rd I wrote the following lie about DOMAI:

If I have any qualms about Eolake's site, they come from a conversation I had with Anne a while back. She pointed out the site pretty much represents only one standard of feminine beauty and that it tends to idealize that standard. I agree with her, and it's a serious criticism.

Shame on me! The plain and god-fearing truth is the DOMAI site represents a range of feminine beauty, rather than a single standard, and which you can see for yourself by looking at the photos that accompany this post. Had I not been under the influence of Osama Bin Laden from having too recently read his persuasive, but ultimately worthless, treatise on the uncontrollable eroticism provoked in the male animal by orange striped burkhas, I would have told the truth in the first place. Maybe.

At any rate, I hope my mistake did not cause cause any lasting confusion.

Nay, little one, it is not love as yet.
Dear as thou art, and lovely, thou canst not love,
Thy later loves shall show the truth of this.

- Laurence Hope


A 13 year old friend of mine professed to be deeply in love with a boy in her class. “People think I’m too young for it to be true love”, she complained to me, “but that’s not so: I know how I feel.”

In a way, she had a point, of course. Many a 13 year old is well enough emotionally developed to feel intense romantic love for a person, no matter how much parents, relatives, and older friends might wish they couldn’t. My young friend was simply reporting a fact when she told me she was in love.

Yet, how do you tell a 13 year old girl – a girl who knows full well how she feels when a special boy smiles at her, who knows full well how she feels when she doesn’t see him for a day or two – how do you tell her that what she feels is not mature love? Do you lie a bit and say it’s just infatuation? Do you try to explain the difference between the love she knows and the love she has yet to know? Or, is there something else you can do?

I’m personally terrible at explaining love to young people. The last thing I want to do is give them the impression I’m discounting their feelings. Yet, I know they are not capable of a mature love. Not only are they incapable of experiencing it – they are incapable at their age of really, deeply understanding what a mature love is. So, my usual strategy when a young friend brings up the subject of love is to simply listen, and listen well, to what she has to say. I refuse to judge her. I refuse to discourage her. But I sometimes try to gently point out there are unimagined depths to love that she can look forward to experiencing when she gets older.

The human brain is not fully formed until a person is in their early 20’s, so this matter of whether one can love well and truly at a younger age is very likely not just a question that applies to my 13 year old friend, but to all adolescents, and perhaps even to some very young adults. We shouldn’t confuse the question of whether a person can love well and truly with the related – but distinct – question of whether a person is ready for sex. Everything I know of that latter question suggests to me that most people are emotionally, physically, and mentally ready for sex sometime in their later teens. Yet, the capacity for love takes longer to fully blossom in our species than the sometimes related capacity for sex.

In general, the younger we are, the more likely we are to focus on our own feelings when in love. There could be a simple explanation for that. Perhaps we are more likely to focus on our own feelings because our feelings are so new and strange to us. But another explanation is we are more likely to focus on our own feelings because our brain isn’t yet developed enough to easily and accurately empathize with others. There is at least one study I know of that supports the second explanation. There might be other causes too, but whatever the cause(s), the fact is, when we are young, we tend to focus more on ourselves than on the people we love.

Compared to when I was, say, sixteen, at 50 I hardly notice when I’m in love. The people I love are more vivid to me than my feelings. That might be because I’ve been through those feelings so many times before that there is no longer anything surprising or novel about them. Hence, they are easy to simply acknowledge and then move beyond them. However, I can remember paying the utmost attention to my feelings when I was sixteen. In fact, I once paid so much attention to my feelings, and once paid comparatively so little attention to the people I loved, that today I could tell you much more how I felt about someone at sixteen than I could tell you what kind of person they were.

I don’t think that’s unusual. Far from it. When teenagers have told me about their love for someone, they have almost always focused on their feelings for that person, rather than on the person they loved. They scarcely notice that’s what they’re doing, focusing on themselves rather than on the one they love. I don’t fault them for that, but I recognize that it creates all sorts of problems for them. And maybe it’s because we older folk recognize the many problems with young love that we are almost always a bit alarmed when a young friend of ours tells us she’s in love.

It seems to me the debate in America over human sexuality seldom rises above the sophomoric. For instance: We endlessly argue over whether abortion is good or evil, but almost never discuss ways to reduce its frequency.

That’s like arguing over whether car accidents and train wrecks are good or evil, without discussing how to reduce their occurrence.

What’s true for abortion is true for teenage pregnancies, STDs, and even issues like rape and incest. Again, we’re like college sophomores who can’t quite get pass the moral questions to focus on the nuts and bolts of solving those problems. Americans think of themselves as a practical, competent, “can do” people, but that doesn't seem so true of many Americans when dealing with problems of sexuality.

Why do you suppose Americans can't get their act together on sexual issues?

Does anyone know if the British are just as bad?

Kurt Vonnegut died last night. The New York Times obituary is here.

Some time ago, I received an email from a friend whose signature on the email consisted of a few lines from Leonard Cohen's song, "Anthem". I'd never heard his "Anthem" before and was struck by these four lines:

Ring the bell that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

She and I discussed the lines in our next email. It turned out that she liked them because they reminded her not to be too much of a perfectionist, while I liked them because, at age 50, I've come to recognize that, though life can leave us with a few cracks and dents here and there, we must nevertheless do the best we can with what's left of us. So, how do you yourself interpret those lines?

If you're a U.S. high school student, you might want to enter this cool science essay contest. The recognition you'll get for a winning essay is awesome!

Some time ago, Brandon E. experienced a low point in his life and wrote an angst poem about it that I find quite interesting for its spirit of defiance. The poem is called "Bent, Not Broken":


not succumbing
but not overcoming
barely getting by

smiles in the hallway
jokes on the fairway
at home a broken sigh

belief in life better
with no clue how to get there
slowly running dry

a bent neck, not broken
many dreams, unspoken
how did he become I?



Thank you, Brandon, for allowing me to post the poem!

I suspect the Grand Debate over evolution/creationism/intelligent design could be won or lost in America within the next ten years depending on how each side plays the public relations card.

According to a recent Newsweek poll, 48% of Americans believe God created humans in their present form sometime within the last 10,000 years. That suggests to me that scientists are loosing the public Debate.

Can that be turned around?

I think it can. Scientists have not been fighting the public debate in an effective manner, but they could do so. How? By recognizing the need on their part for a professional public relations campaign to inform the people of what's really at stake in the Grand Debate, and to respond to political attacks on evolution.

To insure the campaign is a success, scientists should set up an institute dedicated to the task.

Whether they do or do not institutionalize a public relations response to the challenge from the creationists and IDers will, in my opinion, largely determine whether they win the Grand Debate in the public arena or not. The history of other public relations campaigns strongly suggests it should take no more than a decade to turn the public debate around in favor of science.

Sam Crane of The Useless Tree is making an heroic effort to start an important meme on a journey around the internet.

The meme is, "Bush lost the war", and the reason it's far more important than most memes making the rounds of the net is easy to figure out with a moment's reflection. Everyone knows we live in an age of spin, and everyone should realize that we are very soon to be deluged with spin about who lost the Iraq war.

The Administration will try it's best to pin the blame on anyone or anything but itself. They will be joined both by their allies and by opportunists looking to take a dig at their favorite targets. Likely targets of the Administration, it's allies, and the opportunists range from the military, to the so-called "liberal press", to the American people, to the Democrats in Congress, or on to some other group. Everyone but the real culprits -- Bush and his Administration -- will be fair game for someone. But why put up with this bullshit?

Sam Crane is idealist enough to believe that if enough bloggers pass along the meme, "Bush lost the war", we might -- just might -- influence the talking heads on the various networks to at least consider the possibility that Bush did indeed loose the war, rather than everyone but Bush.

It's an interesting experiment. Can the common people vote in this spin game with their blogs? Or, are we required to shut up and take whatever spin the Karl Rove's of the world dish out to us as gospel truth?

Time will tell, but if you are a blogger, this is your chance to express the truth that Bush -- and no one else -- is responsible for loosing the Iraq war. He lost it when he invaded Iraq without a viable exit strategy. He lost it when he invaded Iraq without enough troops to handle the invasion's aftermath. He lost it when he disbanded the Iraqi military, thus setting tens of thousands of armed men loose without jobs or income, and nothing better to do than form an opposition. He lost it when he failed to rebuild Iraq in a timely fashion. He lost it when he failed to provide the troops to secure Iraq's borders. He lost it when... You get the picture.

So, if you're a blogger, please give serious consideration to passing the meme along. If enough of us do so, we will be heard. And if you're not a blogger, there's a little email icon at the bottom of this article. By clicking on it, you can send this post along to a friend, thus doing your part to spread the meme. Thank you!

UPDATE: There's more information on this subject here.

Some thoughts from the Bhagavad Gita:


Foolish men talk of religion
in cheap, sentimental words,
leaning on the scriptures: "God
speaks here, and speaks here alone."

...

As unnecessary as a well is
to a village on the banks of a river,
so unnecessary are all scriptures
to someone who has seen the truth.

...

When your understanding has passed
beyond the thicket of delusions,
there is nothing you need to learn
from even the most sacred scripture.


- Mitchell, tans. From Chapter Two.



Mystics the world over have always challenged us to see for ourselves, pointing out again and again there is no substitute for experience.

Because mystics think experience is primary, they often find themselves at odds with folks who think holy scripture is primary. And sometimes, the folks who think holy scripture is primary end the dispute by burning the mystic. (That tendency to burn people at the stake is not reciprocated -- So far as I know, there is not even a single case of a mystic murdering a non-mystic to suppress what the non-mystic has to say. ) It is no longer fashionable to actually burn mystics, at least not in the West, though it is still fashionable to dismiss their claims as hallucinations or delusions.

Indeed, perhaps they are hallucinations or delusions. To paraphrase the Taoist mystic Chung Tzu, "Last night I dreamt I was a butterfly. Awaking from my dream, I now wonder if I am a human dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being a human." How are we to know which is the "dream" and which is the reality?

Perhaps psychology, neuroscience, or some other discipline can someday answer that question, but as of now, I know of no body of experimental evidence which strongly supports the notion mystics are hallucinating when they describe experiencing a sudden end to subject/object perception and all that follows from that. Besides, even if mystics are hallucinating at that moment, their hallucinations seem to bestow real benefits on them in the aftermath. For instance, they tend to become much less susceptible than most folks to being manipulated by language and symbols. The mystic challenge to "see for ourselves" might be worth taking up simply to improve our quality of life, without reference to whether mystical awareness is truer than non-mystical awareness.

You cannot clip the wings of a falcon and still have a falcon.

That should be a lesson to lovers who would try to clip each other's wings. You can call a clipped falcon a falcon and say it's the same bird as before, but you are only deluding yourself. In truth, your flightless falcon is only similar to the bird it once was. Why don't we see this?

A large part of the answer is language. We think we have the same bird as before because we call the bird by the same name as before. We call it a falcon when it could fly, and we still call it a falcon when it cannot fly, so we think we have the same bird. Yet, the bird behaves differently, we interact with it differently, we experience it differently. If we went solely by what we actually observe -- and did not rely so much on language to tell us what we should observe -- we would concede that a clipped falcon is not the same bird as an unclipped falcon.

I have seen in my 50 years that many lovers try to clip each other's wings. Perhaps they think they can clip each others wings and still have the same person as before; the one they fell in love with. Yet, every so often, those lovers wake up one morning thinking, "He's changed. I don't love him anymore."

The most valuable gift you can give to those who love you is the gift of yourself. That is, however, precisely what those who would abuse you will reject: yourself. Thus, there need be no self sacrifice in giving to those who love you. But in giving to those who would abuse you, there is immense self sacrifice.

People who have been abused become reluctant to give of themselves. They give almost anything instead of themselves. But that frustrates the people who love them. For those who love them want precisely what they are most reluctant to give.

When in love, it is most important to be true to yourself. If the other loves you too, then you will give that person what they value most. If the other does not love you, no amount of hiding or changing your true self to suit them is wise.

Happy Easter, my Christian friends! May you have a joyous day!

In his book, The Strong Willed Child, James Dobson describes how he disciplined his dog:

"Please don't misunderstand me. Siggie is a member of our family and we love him dearly. And despite his anarchistic nature, I have finally taught him to obey a few simple commands. However, we had some classic battles before he reluctantly yielded to my authority.

"The greatest confrontation occurred a few years ago when I had been in Miami for a three-day conference. I returned to observe that Siggie had become boss of the house while I was gone. But I didn't realize until later that evening just how strongly he felt about his new position as Captain.

"At eleven o'clock that night, I told Siggie to go get into his bed, which is a permanent enclosure in the family room. For six years I had given him that order at the end of each day, and for six years Siggie had obeyed.

"On this occasion, however, he refused to budge. You see, he was in the bathroom, seated comfortably on the furry lid of the toilet seat. That is his favorite spot in the house, because it allows him to bask in the warmth of a nearby electric heater. . . "

"When I told Sigmund to leave his warm seat and go to bed, he flattened his ears and slowly turned his head toward me. He deliberately braced himself by placing one paw on the edge of the furry lid, then hunched his shoulders, raised his lips to reveal the molars on both sides, and uttered his most threatening growl. That was Siggie's way of saying. "Get lost!"

"I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me 'reason' with Mr. Freud."

"What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!"

"But this is not a book about the discipline of dogs; there is an important moral to my story that is highly relevant to the world of children. JUST AS SURELY AS A DOG WILL OCCASIONALLY CHALLENGE THE AUTHORITY OF HIS LEADERS, SO WILL A LITTLE CHILD -- ONLY MORE SO." (emphasis Dobson's)

"[i]t is possible to create a fussy, demanding baby by rushing to pick him up every time he utters a whimper or sigh. Infants are fully capable of learning to manipulate their parents through a process called reinforcement, whereby any behavior that produces a pleasant result will tend to recur. Thus, a healthy baby can keep his mother hopping around his nursery twelve hours a day (or night) by simply forcing air past his sandpaper larynx."

"Perhaps this tendency toward self-will is the essence of 'original sin' which has infiltrated the human family. It certainly explains why I place such stress on the proper response to willful defiance during childhood, for that rebellion can plant the seeds of personal disaster."

Do you think, like James Dobson, that the disobedience of children might be due to origninal sin?

Are people basically bad and need to have their wills broken?

Is beating a 12 pound dog with a leather belt a pretty good training technique?

Is it rational to believe that a dog who does not want to go to his bed at 11:00 PM sharp secretly believes he is "captain" of the household?

"Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil."

- Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil


What do you suppose Nietzsche means by "love" here?

Sam Crane at The Useless Tree has been calling on bloggers to state the truth, "Bush lost the war". Sam hopes that if enough bloggers state the obvious, even the Karl Rove spin machine will not be able to blame the war's loss on Congress, Democrats, liberals, professors, the American people, or any of the other groups the Administration is likely to try to blame. Here's a link to Sam's article for those who are interested in his reasoning.

UPDATE: I've decided to write about the topic here.

Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority recently wrote a thoughtful response to an article that appeared in the journal Science. The Science article deals with the need of scientists to radically improve how they communicate with non-scientists on the issue of evolution, and calls on scientists to adopt some proven marketing methods.

Scientists and marketers are a bit like cats and dogs. The two just don't get along that well, except when a few scientists conspire with the marketers to discover more effective ways of impressing on us that happiness depends on having a brand of toothpaste that promotes sex appeal. Other than in unholy marriages like that one, scientists and marketers usually go their separate ways.

Reading Mike's comments on the Science article, I was reminded of a time many years ago when I hired a professor to do some telemarketing. The professor wanted to do the telemarketing because he was seriously considering dropping out of academia, hitting the road, and never looking back, but he first needed to learn a job skill besides that of being a professor.

His new job was to call up high school teachers, ask if they wanted to renew their subscription to a professional journal, and take their order if they said "yes". Callers were guaranteed an hourly rate (minimum wage), but were expected to make their real money on the commission they earned for each order. The average caller earned a little over $18/hour.

Jim, the professor, did worse than expected. Much worse.

Day after day, he brought in a paltry 15 to 25 orders, and consequently his commissions were so low that he hit the guaranteed minimum wage time and again. I decided to work with him to see what it was he didn't understand about the job.

Jim bluntly told me he found it immoral to sell people on doing something they would not otherwise do. He admitted his orders were few, but maintained the reason for that was because he was only taking orders from people who wanted to renew their subscriptions, rather than selling people who didn't want to renew their subscriptions on renewing them anyway.

Yet, there was something Jim didn't know. He didn't know that in telemarketing there is such a thing as an "order rate". Briefly, the order rate is the average rate at which a telemarketer will take orders -- if he or she does no selling whatsoever.

The order rate is distinct from the "sales rate", which is the average rate at which a telemarketer will take orders if he or she is actually selling the product rather than just gathering orders for the product. Both the order rate and the sales rate can be discovered by analysing the call statistics after running an experiment or two. I knew the order rate for that operation and I knew Jim was actually performing below it.

That is, he was worse than neutral. He was actually discouraging people who wanted to renew their subscriptions from renewing them.

Ironically, Jim was one of my best sales people. He was so far below the order rate, the only reasonable conclusion was that he had a gift for selling people on not doing what they wanted to do.

To be sure, Jim was not a scientist. And if he had been a scientist, he would not necessarily be representative of other scientists. But Mike Dunford's article on the need for scientists to get more savvy about marketing evolution brought Jim to mind because I've been seeing plenty of science blogs that do exactly what Jim was doing many years ago: They are almost certainly negative sells. Instead of persuading people to believe in evolution, I strongly suspect many science blogs are persuading people to disbelieve evolution. At least, that's my hunch.

Offhand, I can think of three ways many science blogs drive people away from evolution:

• Foremost, many science blogs turn people off by intentionally insulting creationists and IDers. It is no more than an adolescent fantasy you can efficiently persuade people through insulting them.
• Second, many science blogs turn people off by systematically writing about evolution in an insider's language, then failing to explain their terms. That comes across as exclusion, more than anything else.
• Last, many science blogs turn people off by failing to mention any advantages or benefits to believing in evolution. Whether we like it or not, people need to be reminded what's in it for them.
  

That's not to say all science blogs are alike. There are some excellent ones that aren't turning people off to evolution. But -- again -- I suspect too many are. More over, it seems to me that our species of chimpanzee has a hard enough time reconciling itself to truth, and we really don't need to make that job harder than it already is.

I sometimes suspect the public debate over evolution/creationism/intelligent design is likely to be won by the side with the best public relations. The scientists have always had truth on their side, but the truth has so far not been enough. Maybe it really is time for the scientists to learn a thing or two from marketing, then apply it to the Grand Debate.

UPDATE: After posting this late last night, I learned that Coturnix at Blog Around the Clock had written an excellent article on this subject in which he goes into depth on how to apply the technique of "framing" to the Grand Debate over evolution/creation/intelligent design.

UPDATE: For anyone interested, I have made a brief, modest suggestion about how to win the public debate over evolution here.