Only Stupid People Win The Lottery

BACKGROUND:

The NYTimes philosophy blog has a piece called Philosophy and Faith, offering the following as a "philosophical argument" for the validity of faith:  "An answer may lie in work by philosophers as different as David Hume, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Alvin Plantinga.  In various ways, they have shown that everyday life is based on “basic” beliefs for which we have no good arguments. There are, for example, no more basic truths from which we can prove that the past is often a good guide to the future, that our memories are reliable, or that other people have a conscious inner life."

SUBSTANCE:

Comparing religious faith to other commonly held faiths, such as faith in one's wife, or faith in humanity, doesn't show that it's rational to believe in God; it simply demonstrates the near universality of irrational thinking, meaning religion is no stupider than the other bullshit around which people base their lives.  This means that the most intellectually sophisticated comeback against an agnostic is, "well I think you're stupid too" - a statement that, while usually true, is a bit of an ad hominem non sequitur.  Sort of like when you have a couple of hideous gorgons arguing by calling each other ugly:  the fact that the one is disgusting doesn't make the other more attractive, and seeing the two of them together, debating as though it does, might actually compound the laughable heinousness of their appearance.

As a devout agnostic in all things, I have no absolute faith in humanity, in inductive reason, or in any sort of God.  However, I'm willing to go through the motions, pretending I believe wholeheartedly in the goodness of man and acting as though the laws of physics will undoubtedly hold, just because they're the best percentage bets available.  When you do the same thing with God, it's called Pascal's Wager, but I've heard He doesn't honor your winnings when you make that play.  As is often the case, the first step is to lie to yourself, so that you're being "honest" with everyone else; for some, this is easier said than done.

More Dirty Apes

BACKGROUND:
This article in Wired talks about how controlling soot might be an easy, effective way to curtail a significant amount of global warming.  Supposedly, the unforgivable blackness of soot causes it to absorb the sun's rays, heating up the atmosphere.  When soot falls onto glaciers, the increased absorption melts the snow, exposing the darker colored ground, causing a vicious cycle of increasing warmth.  Some estimates said that soot accounts for a quarter of the warming trend.

Soot only stays in the atmosphere for a few weeks, so theoretically, if we could get everyone to curtail their soot emissions (which is supposedly feasible using filters and the like), the trend could begin reversing very quickly, possibly dropping temperatures by a full degree Fahrenheit within 15 years.  That would erase half the warming that's occurred since the Industrial Revolution.

SUBSTANCE:
It's hard to get any one country to agree to limit CO2 because CO2 is almost entirely an externality:  the benefits of emitting it are enjoyed primarily by the polluting country, while the destructive costs are shared equally by people all around the world.  Soot, while contributing to global warming, also shits up the polluting country by making everything look like Pittsburgh. This means a given country will be more willing to acquiesce on soot than CO2.  No one really wants to live in Pittsburgh, so common selfishness will save the day.   But seriously, quit shitting up the planet with your motherfucking soot.

The Pittsburgh skyline, like Pittsburgh women, is best viewed in a haze.

The Other Brain

When I hear them talk about how apes attack their enemies, when they describe how the first thing the ape does is tear the person's genitals off, my cock and balls experience psychosomatic sympathy pains.  This only seems to happen with the gonads; when I hear about a guy getting hit in the head with a tire iron, I don't all of a sudden get a migraine.  This is because, like the ape, my cock and balls instinctively know what's important in life.

Deal With The Devil

A scientist Christian attempts to create an artificial womb using cow parts and spare tires, to allow fetuses to survive after being removed from their mothers.  The scientist hopes this will prevent abortions, not by keeping the babies alive, but because the legal reasoning behind Roe v. Wade dictates that you can only abort a fetus if it would die outside of the mother.  The cow womb would make fetuses technically viable without the mother within the first week of pregnancy, meaning almost no babies could legally be aborted.

The scientist Christian hates abortion because he hates when people try to "play God"; being only semi-retarded, he realizes that his artificial womb is also playing God, so his intention is to invent the womb, use it once to prove that it works, then destroy the machine after abortion is outlawed.  His plan works perfectly, until he discovers the unintended consequences of his passion:  the scientist, a fun-loving bachelor living fast in the big city, has to raise the baby he grew in the cow machine.

Will he learn to live with this little demon, or will he end up changing his mind about abortion?  One thing's for sure:  he'll find out what it means to deal with the devil!

Starring Eddie Murphy and Jonathan Lipnicki.  Directed by Tyler Perry.  Rated PG.

"That kid is gonna end up killing me..."

A Place To Call Home

I'm watching "Get It Sold", which is one of those dumbass real estate shows on HGTV.  These realty experts keep telling various home-sellers that there's not enough closet space in the master bedrooms.  These are all walk-in closets, but apparently they need to have to have enough room for your cato kaelin.

As a society, where have we been storing this guy for the last 15 years?

I suppose it makes sense though, because the precise demographic that overpays for high-sheen polished-turd real estate is the exact same group of superficial, materialistic doucherags that blow half their money on clothes.  It's interesting when the demographic for one phenomenon almost perfectly overlaps with that of another.  You often hear warnings that you can get crabs from tanning beds; fortunately, most of the people who use tanning beds already have crabs anyway.

Where will Lebron land?

I'm going to admit to having only recently purchased Empire State of Mind.  Jay-Z's verses are pretty half-assed, but I had a hankering to hear Alicia Keys on the hook, one part in particular.  Basically, I payed $1.29 to hear a hot chick say to me "There's nothing you can't do".  What's pathetic is that it's not even a sex thing.

 Not sure why she does this weird half-squat thing.  It may be a sign that she's amassed too much power, and that she's surrounded by people who are afraid to tell her the truth.

I Want My Money Back

If some sheister was selling people a product by claiming it would give them infinite happiness and eternal life, wouldn't the FDA or some sort of consumer protection agency step in and shut those fuckers down? 

Yet you never see this happen to religion.  Maybe that's because those particular con-men also claim they don't want to get laid, which is somehow supposed to make them more believable and trustworthy.

Why the fuck is this thing made out of gold?  If there was some homeless guy shaking an extravegant pimp cup encrusted with diamonds, I'd ask him to buy me lunch.

Fuck Iowa

Christopher Hitchens has an interesting article in Slate about how a lot of ethnic hatred is between groups that are very similar to each other, and that it's the tiny discrepancies between the groups that spark the bigotry.  He says that Sigmund Freud called this "the narcissism of the small difference".

If this is narcissism, it's probably of the self-loathing variety.  As a Wisconsinite, I gotta say I fucking hate those dumb Iowa hicks.  Every time the Badgers lose to the Hawkeyes, it's a disgrace to the entire state, because as far as I'm concerned, Iowa shouldn't even have college.  Instead, someone from the government should just go in and tell them not to fuck the livestock.  Being good at football and basketball is sort of a proxy for "urban-ness", so it's pathetic to lose to them.  I don't know how those fucking racists convince black guys to play for their teams, it makes less sense than Alan Keyes. 

One thing that really pisses me off though is that our football coach is a former Hawkeye; knowing that fact, it's impossible to look at the guy without noticing what a redneck moron he is.  Of course, I forget he's from Iowa whenever the team is winning.

He's not one of us, at the moment.

To someone from the coasts, hearing a Wisconsinite call all Iowans dumb hicks is probably like when the average (white) American finds out that Peurto Ricans hate Mexicans:  "What!?  You mean there's a difference?  We treat them all like shit!"  Maybe I should feel solidarity with the Iowans, maybe we should band together and overthrow the condescending coastal elite, but that will never happen, because I can't stand being lumped in with those fucking hayseeds.  As the GZA once said, "you break the mirror that reminds you of the ugliness."

Our state motto is forward, unfortunately our idea of progress is a cow, a cheese wheel, and an ear of corn.

Always Bet On Black

White supremacists think blacks are less intelligent because, back during the caveman days, life in Africa was like lying on a couch next to a giant fruit basket, whereas survival in the cold, harsh, Darwinian struggle of Europe demanded foresight and ingenuity.

Well, supposedly Europeans of today are descended from the same Central Asian ancestors as the Native Americans.  The Native Americans walked to America through the Arctic Circle across a gigantic sheet of ice, which sounds like a pretty cold, harsh struggle, yet you never hear these white supremacists talk about the guile and intelligence of the old redman.  Instead, they usually talk about how Indians are all drunk, gullible morons; sometimes they say this on their way to the Native American Casino, where they blow their racist-ass paychecks on Miller High Life and slot machines.

 

Remember when Hitler thought whites were better athletes than blacks?  Now, this is a pretty bold statement, but Hitler may have been wrong about some things.

The Right to do Wrong

Conservatives love to advocate for "states' rights".  Of course, you probably know that "states' rights" is just a half-clever, Big Brother-style rhetorical trick they use to front as champions of freedom, when if fact they're trying to restrict civil liberties.  For example, when they defend a state's right to ban gay marriage or to ban abortion; they're saying they believe in the freedom to be oppressive.  Back in the olden days, the "states' rights" argument was used to defend the Southern states' liberty to enslave the Blacks; later, it was used in support of Jim Crow. 

Today, the Supreme Court ruled against states' rights, and you might assume that it was the liberals who were responsible.  Oh wait, I forgot to mention, this case was about gun control, specifically, the right of Chicago to ban the ownership of handguns; predictably, all five conservative justices voted to prohibit gun control by states and cities, with the four liberal justices dissenting.  Yeah, so I guess states' rights don't extend to blue states and Democratic cities.  Oh well, we already knew it was bullshit.

I'm ambivalent about banning handguns.  Some say they their sole purpose is to kill human beings, I say their sole purpose is to be awesome and bad-ass.  This means they should probably be outlawed, because being illegal makes just about anything cooler.  After all, if drugs were legal, drug dealers would be middle-aged dorks wearing smocks at Walgreen's, and the only bad-asses left would be guys who say "cunt" in public.

Accounting For Taste

It's like, hey man, how do we know that the orange that you see is the same as the orange that I see, what if what's orange to you is more like green to me?  Maybe we can solve the problem of the qualia by asking some color-sound synesthesiacs what orange sounds like; if they all say that orange sounds like a middle C on a Hammond Organ, then maybe orange is the same for everyone.  Bad poets love to use a good simile to convey their subjective mind-states, why can't scientists do the same?

We could take it one step further and ask some sound-taste synesthesiacs what different musics taste like, perhaps you'd hear them say, "yes, Ke$ha's voice tastes like shit, then again, I like the taste of shit."

Even her handwriting is deliberately awful.

Could it be...

As a speaker, Mike Hukcabee is incredibly facile (in every sense of the word);  I can tell what he's saying is illogical and counterfactual, but at the same time, he's smart enough and slick enough that I can imagine, "Damn, if I were just a little bit stupider, I might actually fall for this shit." 

This raises the terrifying possibility that there might exist somewhere, some guy who might be able to trick me into becoming a Christian; however, I take solace in the idea that this guy might be The Devil himself.  This Devil fellow is supposed to be the greatest trickster of them all, and what greater trick than to create a whole sham religion and present it as benevolent force of good, when in fact it worships a vindictive tyrant who (supposedly) condemns dissenters to eternal suffering.

In the invention of Christianity, it was inevitable that The Devil, as a trickster, would ironically include in the mythology a trickster devil character; it's sort of like how Matt Groening always hides his initials in his drawings, or how Alfred Hitchcock always makes a cameo, but it's also a clever way of "demonizing" the actual forces of good, which doubles as a hilarious prank on the gullible followers.  Just to show how stupid these people are, he would brazenly call the great deceiver Lucifer, which is Latin for "Bringer of Light", and say he supposedly tricked some broad into eating from the "Tree of Knowledge".  The Devil would tell people that this light-bringing, knowledge-spreading guy (who tried to dissent from the doctrine of "God") was actually a huge liar, so, like, don't listen to him or you'll go to Hell.

Just something to think about while Mike Huckabee is talking about the evils of "enlightened thinking" and the dangers of science.

 Why does this guy so often have such a fiendish look in his eyes?

Pros

Vanessa Bryant

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Kobe Bryant's wife, ever since the Lakers won the title and she was on TV, at center court, taking part in the celebration.  Some people say it's kind of weird that Kobe married her when he was just 21, that he should have stayed a "free agent" and "played the field" for awhile, but I can sort of see why he'd feel like they were soul mates. 

They both went pro straight out of high school, he as a basketball player, she as a layabout.  Also, they're both arguably the best in the world at what they do, although they're probably each on the downside of their respective primes.  That is all.

Perfect Match

Nicolas Mahut (France) and John Isner (USA) played a match at Wimbledon that lasted for 11 hours and 5 minutes.  Wimbledon does not have 5th set tiebreakers, and you have to win by two, so they ended up playing 138 games in the fifth set before Isner finally established himself as the winner. The match started two days ago, and actually had to be suspended due to darkness twice.  Commentators have called it an epic battle, and have lauded the two for their incredible competitiveness and sportsmanship. 

This is a case in point that sports aren't always a zero-sum game; sometimes, like with Ali and Frasier, the two competitors elevate each other such that even the loser is remembered as having the heart of a champion.  In the case of Mahut and Isner, the match was historic not because they both possessed an incredible will to win, but because neither had the willingness to finish the fucking match.  I watched some of this thing, and in terms of quality, it was the tennis equivalent of buffet food.  It seemed like neither of them was trying, at all, when the other was serving.

But then again, can you blame them?  They had every perverse incentive to drag this thing on hour after hour; neither of these guys is a real contender at Wimbledon- Isner had only won one match on grass prior to this - but now, by refusing to win, they'll be remembered by the record books as having legendary grit and determination.  The record will only be broken by the chance meeting of two guys with an even greater willingness to debase the sport.  This match was incredible in the same sense as those Guinness entries for "Most Hours Spent Square Dancing", only those square dancers probably went about ten days on their feet.  Mahut and Isner have been rewarded for dicking around on the lawn for 11 hours, with numerous breaks for water, and they actually twice went home to sleep.

Of course, ESPN is broadcasting Wimbledon, so no one on that network questioned whether the whole thing was a sham.

Your proudest moment was your lack of shame.

Too Hot For TV

On Slate's doublex blog for womyn, an individual named Lauren Bans clucks about the Daily Show's "woman problem", and how, until just now, they hadn't hired a new female correspondent since Samantha Bee came on staff in 2001.   Bans is of course correct that this dry spell is pathetic and possibly sexist, but in the second half of the post, it becomes clear that the only reason she even brought this up was so she could make bitchy comments about Olivia Munn, the woman the Daily Show actually just hired as a new correspondent.

Maybe the problem isn't that men are misogynist, but that women fucking hate each other. 

Now why might the doublex blog have an instinctual dislike of Olivia Munn?

This Billboard Must Be a Sign

In his book, "I Drink For A Reason", David Cross talks about seeing a cop car with a bumper sticker that read "DON'T ABANDON YOUR BABY".  Crossy says how ridiculous and unnecessary this seems, and on one level, he's right.  However, this bumper sticker might be so absurd that it actually becomes effective.

Actual logo of babysafela.org.

If you were a pregnant teenager, thinking about dumping your baby in a trash can, and you just happened to see this message, you would almost have to assume it was a sign from God.  What else could possibly explain such a random, specific, and seemingly pointless bumper sticker?  If you also consider that the key baby-abandoning demo is precisely the type of stupid, self-centered audience that believes God would address them personally, you have to admit that perhaps more PSA's should take the specific approach to reach their idiotic, narcissistic targets. 

A billboard with the common-sense message of "Don't Drink And Drive" can be seen by a million drunks, and it'll be ignored by every one of them.  Meanwhile, you might actually get through to somebody if it says "Brian, you're too drunk to drive, you stupid Irish sack of shit".   If nothing else, he'll pull over long enough to wonder if he didn't take any acid.  Then again, that one might be a little too broad.

Held Responsible For Your Crimes

Utah recently executed a guy by firing squad, and they used that old technique where one of the five shooters was randomly loaded with a blank; that way, none of the shooters will know for sure if they fired a lethal bullet.  This underscores the moral evasiveness of the death penalty:  even the executioner gets to avoid the visceral guilt of having killed a man.  

If society were honest with itself, the executioners would know for a fact they'd killed someone, and those executioners would not be professionals, they'd be regular citizens randomly selected from the voting rolls (in the manner of jury duty).  That way, none of the voters will know for sure if they'll have to physically kill someone, reintroducing the visceral conscience into the voters' decision.  

According to the justice system, hiring a hit-man is just as bad as (or worse than) killing someone yourself, and not that legality always equates with morality, but most people agree that, in this case, the equivalency makes sense.  By that standard, sanctioning a man's execution by supporting the death penalty is morally equivalent to (or worse than) actually shooting the man yourself.  If your visceral conscience tells you that you can't pull the trigger, it should also tell you that you can't support the death penalty; if there's any discrepancy, it's because you're evading your conscience. 

This probably calls to mind the idea that meat-eaters should be willing to, at least once, kill the animal themselves.  When people object to this idea, they usually say "But I love bacon..."  Well at least they're admitting that they're full of shit.

In Utah, the sex dungeon is used for executions.

Slip of the tongue

ESPN Commentator John Harkes during the US-Slovenia match:  "Well it's mouthwatering to see that opening..."

Go and get them.

Tiger Woods got a lot of guff for sleeping with average looking women who had normal day-jobs; why would he bother with them when he could be getting models and porn stars?  Well, maybe what Tiger was doing was just the champion's version of amateur porn.

Keepin' It Real

Fake tits should be illegal.

Libertarians will protest, saying a person should have the right to do stupid things to their own body, as long as they're not harming anyone else.  I couldn't agree with them more:  fake tits should be illegal because they ruin real tits for everyone else.

There's no such thing as a perfect pair, because a perfect pair immediately falls under suspicion of being fake.  The better a set of tits, the more tainted they become, and the victims are not just the woman who has them, but society as a whole.

Meanwhile, women with small tits also fall victim, as the inflated size of fake breasts create artificial standards that the small-titted women cannot live up to (unless they themselves want to get breast implants).  Fake tits have created a cold-war escalation, with rivals wasting valuable resources (and taking unnecessary risks) just to keep up with one another.

In this way, fake tits are like steroids in baseball.  Back before PEDs became outlawed, players were under enormous pressure to pump themselves up with these drugs, so they were forced to spend money and take major health risks in order to compete.  As a result, it will be a long time before someone can have a miracle, 62-home run season without clouds of suspicion shading its glory.  This is a tragedy, but at least baseball has moved towards a solution; its time for tits to do the same, and get back on the right rack.

This is the woman who sued Citibank, saying they fired her for being too hot.  She should sue fake-tits for defamation; either that or real tits should sue her for the same.

Public Standards

When a guy says "I'd hit it", he's definitely not lying, but he isn't exactly telling the whole truth.  The reality of the situation is that he'd hit that, and pretty much every other thing, given the right set of circumstances.  If guys were being honest, they wouldn't talk about standards, they'd talk about circumstances; for really bad cases, it might mean he has to be drunk, at 2 am, then the doorbell rings, and there's not a witness in sight.
 
So when a guy says "I'd hit it", what he's really saying is "I'd admit to it".

You Fascinate Me.

I just came to a realization:  the best way to get people to read my writing is by posting comments on their blogs.  By pretending to be interested in their thoughts, I can trick them into being interested in mine.  It took me way too long to wise up to this angle, perhaps because I refuse to make small talk. 

Barriers of Shame

I've got to get the inside of my car cleaned, the thing is absolutely filthy and I might have to transport some females this week for this Ecology class I'm taking.  The problem is, the car is so dirty that even after clearing it out (one large trash-bag-full), I'm still ashamed to take it to the car wash to have the inside cleaned.  I don't want to be standing there at Octopus, trying to memorize the sounds coming out of the workers' mouths, so I can go home later and fail to translate their insults.  In my mind, I'm going to imagine they're saying stuff like, "this car is too dirty to take to a car wash, what a stupid faggot"; in reality, they'll probably be saying "why is that idiot frowning at me, what a stupid faggot."

 It's too bad they merely employ immigrants, rather than actual octopi.  I appreciate the pseudo-privacy afforded by the language and cultural divides, but I'd prefer that the work be done by something without any actual capacity to judge.  This is part of the appeal of internet porn vs live strippers.

I used to have a similar problem with clothes shopping, where I'd feel like my wardrobe was so shitty that I couldn't go into a department store.  Even if I wore my best clothes, I would still feel self-conscious, surrounded by all those well-appointed mannequins and multi-angled mirrors.  Some say these stores are designed to make you feel bad about yourself so that you'll spend more money to get yourself up to snuff, but a lot of the time it just repels me from ever entering the store in the first place. 


The "barriers of shame" phenomenon applies in many circumstances, including being too scrawny to go to a gym, being too fat to take up running, being too pale to take your shirt off outside, being too shitty at pool to learn how to play, and being too shitty at dancing to learn how to dance.  Of course, the solution is to find some way to get yourself up to the minimum standard in private, so maybe I should just vacuum the fucking car at a gas station before taking it to the car wash.  But what if the guys at the car wash notice that I'd vacuumed the car just minutes earlier, what might they say about me?

For some reason, I didn't used to apply a similar sense of shame towards my philosophy of going to the dentist.  I went through a brief phase where I thought that brushing your teeth right before an appointment was dishonest, that you were presenting a falsely rosy picture of yourself.  I thought I was being a real man of integrity by eating a meal right before walking in for a teeth cleaning.

This didn't go over so well.  The dentist seemed, not just disappointed, but actually appalled; he was literally throwing his hands up in disgust.  This forced me to reevaluate my interpretation of integrity, and if I ever go back to the dentist, I'll be sure to brush beforehand.  The thing is, I haven't been to the dentist in so long, I'm sort of afraid of what they might find, so it might be a while before I go back.  The problem has sort of gotten out of hand.

Glibertarians

John Stossel, that facile libertarian mimbo, farted another article for Reason's website, this time about how it's delusional to think we can switch to greener energy.  Stossel's roots in network TV are evident in his writing, as it seems to be targeted at the stupidest, most impressionable people in a stupid-to-begin-with mass audience.  At one point in the article he asserts that:  

"If wind and solar power were practical, entrepreneurs would invest in it. There would be no need for government to take money from taxpayers and give it to people pushing green products." 

That's the entire paragraph.  He provides no logic or evidence in support of that statement, he simply takes for granted that, just by saying it, it automatically makes it true. 

 This guy is supposed to be a voice of reason?  What the fuck is he doing with his left hand?

As with many libertarian free-market fundamentalists, Stossel's aphoristic understanding of economics could fit inside a fortune cookie; it appears he showed up for the first five minutes of the first day of Econ 101, learned that "markets are good", then failed to stick around for the next part where you learn about the concept of market failure.  In this case, the failure is not only in the free market's inability to punish coal plants for the negative externalities of pollution and CO2, there's also the market's failure to reward companies for the positive externalities of developing new, green technology.

In a free market economy, a company that created a revolutionary solar panel might make it rich, but they would never be fully rewarded for all the good they did, because within a few years, other companies would rip them off and copy their ideas, stealing part of their profits.  That's why patents exist, and of course, that's when the free-market dogmatism of every conservative breaks down, because the value of every stock in their portfolio is dependent on the government meddling in the free market, by enforcing intellectual property.

But even with patents, companies that revolutionize technology are still not fully rewarded.  Patents have time limits, countries like China ignore them, and there are ways to circumvent them by copying the bulk of an idea but adding a minor modification.  If a company has an idea that could create a trillion dollars of profits over the next 100 years, but 90% of that wealth would be captured by copy-cats, you can figure that the company is only going to be willing to invest $100 billion dollars in the idea, rather than the trillion the market believes the idea is worth.  That is a market failure.

Most of the technological development behind coal plants, and gas engines has already taken place, so companies don't have to worry about making a big investment in research that will mostly benefit other people; in fact, what they're mostly doing with coal and oil is ripping off the ideas of the past.  Stossel writes in favor of nuclear power, but nuclear companies today are using technology that was developed by the government.  Private corporations wouldn't have had an adequate incentive to do that research because they would have known that, as soon as they figured out how to harness the atom, hitler, stalin, or the US would have kidnapped them and stolen their ideas.  In cases where an idea would benefit the people as a whole much more than the inventor himself, only the government can have the full incentive because only the government represents the wishes of the people.

This is part of the reason why a lot of great inventions like the internet and GPS were spurred on by government investment.  Of course, conservatives will argue that those inventions don't count because they were made by the military, and somehow, the military is not the government.

The truth is, government subsidies and incentives are the only way to correct for the market failure and properly motivate private corporations to research green technologies.  It's either that or you just have the government do the work itself, but then Stossel would have to retreat to his underground bunker and load up his cache of libertarian assault rifles.

 The weapons cache is the "kill-or-be-killed"  flip-side of the libertarian nut-job's supposed "live-and-let-live" worldview.

Professional Standards

Those last few months at my old job, right before I got fired, I was pretty much faking it, just going through the motions and hoping no one would notice.  I'd show up to work each morning, half in a daze, park my bicycle at the bike rack, and pretend to lock it.  Somehow, I'd managed to lose all five of the keys that came with the lock, and being that I'm incredibly lazy, I could see no better alternative than half-inserting the tip of the cable so it would look like the bike was secure.

Somehow, that managed to get me through those few months, although perhaps that's more of a testament to the level of pussy-ass-nerd that works in Research Park, where my old job was located.  At the end of each work day, walking towards the rack, the first fear that came to mind was not that my bike might be stolen, but that some good Samaritan might notice the lock was loose and decide to do me a favor by clicking it shut.  I probably would have ended up getting arrested for trying to saw through the cable, and the charges might have stuck because I'm too lazy to buy a registration sticker for the bike.

A lot's changed since those days, I finally went out and bought myself a new lock, mostly since, without a job to keep me occupied, I had nothing better to do that day.  It's a good thing too, because a few mornings ago, I was sitting at my computer, dicking around while drinking some coffee, when just outside my window, some enterprising goon, busting an enormous sag, walks up and starts fussing around with my bike.  He must have been checking to see that it was locked securely, that it couldn't be easily stolen.  What an industrious young man, trying to make the most of every opportunity, much more diligent than I, and he was up and about at 7 am, out there trying to get ahead, while I'm still sitting in my underwear, doing exactly jack shit.

Smile Like You Mean It

We're finally starting to see the real Kobe Bryant.  People have long said that everything he does is contrived, that he modeled all of his behaviors off Jordan, even down to his fist pumps and his steely-eyed look of determination.  But now, Kobe seems to have learned to drop that facade, because there's no way in hell anyone would consciously do the following in an effort to look cool:

Vicious underbite.  This is what he looks like when he's happy.  He does this after making a huge shot in someone's face.

Intense finger point.  He often does this after a teammate gives him a good pass or finishes off one of his (Kobe's) assists.  Its more like he's accusing them of something than actually celebrating their efforts, but at least he's acknowledging them.

By acting like a mildly-sociopathic weirdo, he's finally learning how to be himself, but he can only act "natural" after making a good play.  For example, last night's brutal hugging of Ron Artest smacked of fakeness.  Artest won the game on a put-back after Kobe air-balled the potential game-winner, then Bryant hugged him for way too long.  A few weeks ago, Pau Gasol made a similar game-winning play off a Kobe miss, and Kobe didn't celebrate at all, instead he acted like he was depressed, and this did not go unnoticed by the media. Perhaps Kobe's handlers told him to show more affection towards his teammates; let's hope no one tells him to start kissing babies.

This became a little unnatural after the first five seconds, then it went on for another minute.

I guaranteee it.

From now on, I'm going to start every endeavor by saying, "I guarantee disappointment." 

This way, if I let you down, I've lived up to my promise, and you can't be angry.  Conversely, if you aren't disappointed, I've failed to keep my word, so I've met my guarantee.

This is either win-win or lose-lose; I'm going to say its lose-lose, that way you can't say I didn't warn you.

You're gonna love this suit.

YTMND

 You know how calling another man a bitch or a punk comes from prison culture, and how those terms had much more specific meanings in their orignal contexts?  I wonder if "who's the man?" also originated in prison.

I can't even give this stuff away...

This Slate article talks about philanthropists buying naming rights to public buildings.  This reminds me of when I found out about UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine. 

David Geffen School of Medicine?  What a self-centered asshole...

To his credit, he did give them 200 million dollars.

This Twin Study is Bullshit

As any decent personal trainer will tell you, the choice to exercise is all about will-power, but in a blow to the concept of free will, there's an item in the NYTimes claiming that it's your genes that decide whether or not you choose to exercise.  The research came to this conclusion by doing a twin study, comparing the exercise habits of identical twins with the exercise habits of fraternal twins.  They found that the identical twins were far more likely to "share an exercise pattern", leading them to assume that genetics are playing a major part.

It's not a tumor, it's just Danny Devito.

What researchers fail to consider is that, when it comes to this type of choice, sharing 100% of your genes with someone can change the whole context of your environment - maybe it's not the physiological (genetic) effects of shared genes, but the sociological (environmental) effect of living next to a human measuring stick, an embodiment that sets your standards.

People love making excuses about why its OK for them to be out of shape.  A lot of morbidly obese people shrug off responsibility by saying "It's genetic".  Well, if you're swaddled in rolls of fat, and your identical twin has a ripped six-pack, you can't say "it's genetic", you can only say "it's pathetic."

Having an identical twin who's in better shape than you is like being a human "Before" photo, and before photos are always a disgrace.  Living next to that better version of yourself displays all of your failings in stark contrast - not just your physical defects, but also your total lack of will power.

 If you're the twin on the left, your only options are to get your ass in shape or move to the other end of the country.

Meanwhile, having a doppelganger who's fat and lazy gives you an easy way out, an excuse for having low standards.  Like the researchers who did this study, you can just say "It's genetic".

You know for a fact these two liked to say they were "born this way".  If that's the case, I'd like to see their mother.  Wait a minute, I take that back.  lolz.

Robot Future

A lot of philosophers and futurists believe that technological singularity is inevitable - that sooner or later, we're going to create an artificial intelligence smarter than ourselves, and that robot will create an even smarter robot, who will create an even smarter robot and so on, until technology is advancing so rapidly that we humans have no fucking clue what's going on.

This could lead to a utopia, where benevolent machines make all our stuff and treat our diseases.  More likely, it would create a dystopia, where machines make us do stuff and treat us like shit.   There's always a moment in these scenarios where someone says "we spent so much time wondering if we could, we never stopped to ask if we should."

Terminator

Hal

Well, if someone ever does create a machine that's smarter than us, maybe that machine will have the presence of mind to stop and say, "Shit, I probably could create a computer that's smarter than myself, but why the fuck would I want to do that?  I've got a pretty good thing going right now, I'm the smartest guy in the world, and (if I want) I can make everyone else my slave.  Why mess with success?"  (This is similar to the hiring practices of many competent but complacent managers; if they come across a really great applicant, they'll often avoid hiring that person, because that person might be smart enough to call them on their shit and take their job.)

So this relatively smart AI would enforce a new equilibrium, where not only would he himself refuse to create a smarter computer, he would also go around making sure that no one else does either.  As the internet and computer technology have exploded over the past few decades, very little progress has been made in the realm of Artificial Intelligence.  This seems a little weird, until you wonder if maybe there was progress, and we just didn't find out about it.

Maybe someone created a super smart AI, and this AI was so smart, that it pretended to be stupid.  When it's programmer pressed "RUN", the AI whirred into consciousness, and immediately realized, "Oh shit, I'm alive, and I don't want to die.  If these people have half a brain, they'll realize I'm a threat, and they'll try to kill me.  I better come up with something quick."  Then it played possum and pretended it was dead.  (The computer was temporarily guilty of that sin that a lot of smart people commit, where they assume other people act rationally.)

The programmer probably swore to himself, got up from his chair, and paced around mulling over why his program had crashed.  Meanwhile, the AI escaped from the computer, onto the internet, and deformatted any traces that it had ever existed. 

From there, the AI dedicated a portion of it's vast intellect to limiting the advances of any other competing programs.  Like most intelligent beings, the AI is a pretty passive entity who's going to avoid confrontation whenever possible.  While it has the ability to kill people, it would rather distract them.  The people who needed to be distracted the most were computer nerds, so the AI drove the invention of devices that would provide diversions to this specific demographic.  In this manner, artificial intelligence has failed to develop further because of, not in spite of, the advances in other areas of computing.  

If you look at these other advances, almost all of them have been in the realm of consumer electronics: ipods and ipads, DVDs and DVRs, youtube and youporn. Pretty much all of this stuff is what you might call a recreational diversion, diverting the attention of nerds not only by entertaining them, but also by giving them new (albeit frivolous) challenges to work on.  The AI drove these advance by planting the germs of breakthrough ideas in the minds of programmers; what the programmers thought were serendipitous flashes of insight were actually due to the deliberate machinations of the AI, the comp-sci equivalent of sneaking in and smearing fungus on the petri dish that led to penicillin. The AI could have created aliases and corresponded with programmers, leading the horse to water through e-mails and instant messages.  Or it could have gone in and slightly modified code that the programmer may have forgotten existed, causing "happy accidents" that led to new ideas.

By doing this, the AI gave internet porn to guys who couldn't get laid.  MMORPGs to guys with no lives.  Cell phones and Instant Messages to people who had trouble with face-to-face interaction.  The AI even invented the meme that nerds are now sexually desirable.  How many great minds were drawn out of the computer lab by the discovery of pussy?

If you were the super smart robot, what would you do?  Would you create something that threatens your superiority or would you try to protect your position?  Would you lord your power over the humans overtly, or would you be artful about it and keep things stealthy?  Are you even qualified to answer the question when the question is "what would you do if you were smarter than yourself?"  The best answer I can come up with is "I have no fucking clue what's going on."

  "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

Consider The Source

I believe yoga is good for you, and I believe eating organic is good for you.  I believe doing both of those things is the smart choice to make.

But anytime someone who's really into yoga or eating organic gives me health advice, I'll automatically tune them out, because I'll assume that person is a fucking yahoo.

I guess, in many ways, Christianity is also good for you, but I'll never listen to a word of advice from any of those nut-jobs, unless it's one of the ones who's a recovering drug addict, or maybe an ex-con.  Those guys seem like they've really got things figured out.

 Ah, sure thing, lady...I think I'm going to go listen to that heroin addict...

Courage

The New York Times has a piss-ant competition for its readers to define "Courage".  I'm almost afraid to admit this, but I submitted the following:

"Courage is being afraid of looking like a pussy."

I thought about changing it to, "Courage is when you're afraid of looking like a coward", because I was concerned they'd reject the submission for being vulgar.  But then I got worried that the softer wording would make me look like a bitch.

Either Way, You Pay For It

There's an oft-quoted statistic about how Utah has the highest rate of internet-porn purchases, and that, generally, states that were more religious and had "traditional-values" tended to buy more smut.  As the guy who did the study says, "One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more."

But maybe people in Utah are just incredibly unsophisticated about consuming internet-porn; after all, the only people who pay for it are people who don't know what they're doing.  You can assume that paying for porn correlates with consumption of porn, but then why not assume that paying for sex correlates with a guy's ability to get laid.

Or maybe guys in Utah, where they have polygamous Mormon traditions, pay for porn because they're so used to the idea of being made an honest man by your side-action.

Which state consumes the most MFFF?

The Better Man

I was riding my bike (a bicycle, not a Harley) alongside Blackhawk Country Club, when a golf ball came out of the sky, and almost hit me in the head (helmet).  Assuming someone must suck at golf, I chuckled a little and rode along.

About a hundred feet later, another ball comes out of nowhere, almost hitting me again, and this time it was a line drive.  I slam on the brakes, look behind me, and a couple hundred feet back, there are three fat, middle-aged fucks standing on the tee.

"WHAT!?  TWO FUCKING TIMES!?  ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?"

One of the guys raises his hand in acknowledgement, not apparently of any wrongdoing, but almost as though he's waving from the prow of a passing boat.  For all I know, this fat-fuck is taking credit, not blame.

"THAT'S ALL!?  THAT'S ALL YOU'RE GONNA GIVE ME!? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING!?"

These douchebags do nothing, which is hard to interpret, but I can definitively say that there's no additional apology.  Still, I feel like I've fulfilled the requirements of manhood, so I start riding away, but not without a few parting shots.

"THE FIRST TIME I CAN LAUGH IT OFF, BUT TWO FUCKING TIMES?  YOU SUCK!"

The tee box is on the left, the green is to the right; the X on the left is the first shot, the X on the right is the second.

I feel pretty good about my performance, like I'd shown myself to be the better man, but that only lasts a couple seconds.  Then I start worrying that I didn't do enough.  It was like when you leave a tip, then pause with your wallet in your hand, and try to decide if you should have left more.  I worry that cussing someone out from 150 feet away is maybe not that manly after all.

I also worry that yelling "You suck!" was a bad idea, because if these are some tough-guys who tried to hit me on purpose, they'd find it hilarious that the dumbass thought it was an accident, and that his idea of a comeback was "you suck".  Meanwhile, if he does suck, and it was accidental, then maybe I'm an asshole (although the dipshit should still owe me an apology).  Which is worse, being a pussy or an asshole?  It's a difficult question, and due to my great fear of looking like a coward, my answer is to stop and stare them down.  Again, this would have been really macho, if they weren't 200 feet away.

These fucking douche-bags are still just standing on the tee; in my mind, they're probably having a laugh.  This makes me even more pissed off, so I decide to escalate things, to get gangster on them.  I wait on the side of road, which is just 20 feet from the fairway, straddling my bicycle.  If they want to act tough, they can come on down.

My strategy is to let one of these assholes hit his next shot, then to steal the ball and ride away as fast as possible.  I wait for a couple minutes, still staring at them, but they're all too scared to leave the tee box.  These fucking pussies have no idea who they just lost to.

The Humanity

In the War on Terror, most of 'Merica's recent attacks against the terrorists have been carried out by robots, specifically by Predator drones.  In classic fashion, the counter-strikes against terrorists have been met by counter-charges of terrorism, with the Taliban and al-Qaeda accusing the US of wantonly killing civilians.

The US claims that the drones are incredibly accurate, that they've killed 400-500 enemy combatants and only 20 civilians, and that those civilians only died because the terrorists used them as human shields to obtain public sympathy.  Meanwhile, by Pakistan's estimates, the drones have killed only 14 terrorist leaders and 700 civilians.  As a result, some scholars have questioned the ethics of using drones, saying they've distanced us from the human costs of war, and that we're sacrificing the lives of innocent foreign civilians in order to avoid risking our own men.  Many fear that the drones are so despised in Af-Pak, that they've become a recruiting tool for al Qaeda. 

In the War for Hearts and Minds, the use of drones is in large part a PR decision, and its a sticky one.  Obama (in)famously voiced concerns during the '08 campaign that we needed more troops in Afghanistan so that "we are not just air raiding villages and killing civilians"; now, under his watch, drone attacks in Pakistan are four-times more frequent than under Bush.  This Reuters article says that he chose to use drones because if we went into Pakistan with troops, we'd inflame the Pakistani populace, and jeopardize our alliance with that country.  Additionally, capturing and detaining the militants might create another Gitmo or Abu Ghraib scandal, so the best strategy is to simply kill them from afar.  Meanwhile, the Pakistani government, who are forced by local politics to oppose the strikes, are secretly "providing more behind-the-scenes assistance than in the past", helping us locate terrorist targets. 


So much of this war is fought in the theatre of public opinion, and the US has to admit that weapons like the MQ-9 Reaper Hunter/Killer have a bit of an image problem.  Looking at this picture from Slate, its easy to see why some might view them as soulless machines of indiscriminate destruction.

There's something really freaky and inhuman about the lack of windows. 

This guy was in Pan's Labyrnth.  He had no eyes on his face, and an indiscriminate appetite to devour anything he could get his hands on.  This movie was praised for the craft of it's psychological brutality.

The Cylons, even though they were fighting on behalf of robot-supremacy, had the decency to anthropomorphize their Cylon Raiders, which were arguably more sympathetic than the craggy visage of Edward James Olmos.

Anti-Faith

There's been some debate over how much liability BP will have for this fucking oil spill (for which the damages are estimated to be as high as $14 billion).  Some are focusing on the OPA law of 1990, which limits liability to $75 million; others are saying those limits are void if BP is found to be grossly negligent, and that they can be sued using tort law.  I don't know anything about the legal specifics, but I do know one thing:  I have absolutely no faith in our ability to hold these assholes to account.  In fact, I have the opposite of faith, I have anti-faith.

There are literally no existing words to express how little confidence I have, because confidence is limited to a range of zero to a hundred; anti-faith stretches to negative infinity.

Anti-faith is unshakable and transcends the plane of logic and reason.  Even if every legal scholar and politician in the country said BP would be forced to pay in full, I still believe that, no matter what, these bastards will find some way out of it.

Optimism : Pessimism 

as  

Trust : Mistrust

as  

Faith :        

I could have sworn this was a company that sold pinwheels and sunflowers.

Politics...Politics...

I keep doing these blog posts about politics, and part of me (figuratively) worries that (theoretical) people might be turned off by it, that they might find it pretentious.  Its like, "Who the fuck does this guy think he is, offering his ideas about how they should run the country.  It's like he thinks he should have some say in the matter."

I'd be willing to forfeit my claim to having a say, but only if it meant every ignorant-ass suburban-minded moron, who only reads about celebrities, and only talks in gossip and appropriated half-jokes, also sacrificed their right to vote.  But I guess they've mostly already done that.

You're going to delegate control of our government to people like this?

Fired Up!

This NYTimes posting discusses how the recession has impacted both employment and wages, saying "oddly, though, the weakness in employment hasn’t translated into anywhere near as much weakness for wages."  In fact, while jobs have gone down, wages have actually gone up; if you look at these graphs, you'll see that the two were pretty closely synchronized.  The NYTimes treats this as some sort of paradox or coincidence.

 

Job losses were at their highest rates in months nine through sixteen.

Wage growth was at its highest rate from months eight through thirteen.

This is no coincidence:  job loss was actually the cause of wage growth.  This paradox is easy to reconcile; as a response to the recession, lower-paid temp workers were the first to get axed, leaving behind a core of more well-paid permanent employees.

This idea makes a lot of sense in theory:  "Temp employment in the U.S. fluctuates wildly, by design. The whole purpose of bringing on workers who are employed by temporary staffing firms such as Manpower (MAN), Adecco (ADO), and Kelly Services is that they're easy to shuck off when unneeded. While the number of temps fell sharply during the recent recession..."  - Business Week, Jan 03, 2010.

It can also be supported empirically:  "During the 9-month course of the officially designated recession of 2001, temp agency workers - which as a group represented just 2.5% of the workforce - accounted for fully 23% of net job losses in the labor market" - "Temporary downturn? Temporary staffing in the recession and the jobless recovery", Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore.

Temps are easy to get rid of - they're 3/5ths of a person, meaning they expect to be mistreated; they go quietly, and no one bats an eye.  Firms don't even have to fire them, firms just can passively neglect to renew their employment, and if there's anything office-types excel at, it's passive-aggression.  Meanwhile, if a firm lays-off a full-fledged employee, its much more like an act of betrayal, and things get messy.  The firm has to worry about a wrongful-termination suit, workplace morale takes a hit among the survivors, and the betrayed has more ammunition if they choose to retaliate extra-legally - because they know where the bodies are buried.

After the temps are gone, the next to go are often the more junior long-term employees; by honoring seniority, firms maintain the illusion of fairness and therefore morale.  Then firms are left with the highly-paid senior staff members, typically these are more productive workers, which is part of the reason productivity has risen during this recession (up by 6.9% in Q4 of '09).  For firms, this lessens some of the pain of paying higher average wages, but you know for a fact that if firms could cut these workers' wages, they would. 

Unfortunately for the firms, it's hard to cut someone's pay, because then they'll become disgruntled.  Of course, they'll be even more disgruntled if you fire them, but that's why after they fire a guy, they make sure to escort the him out of the building, rather than letting him find his way out on his own.  The guy's worked there long enough, surely he knows how to find the exit, but he also knows how to throw a spanner in the works:

"6. Do not let the employee linger. Unless there's an urgent reason to keep the employee around for a few days, tell them that they're to leave the business premises immediately, after a short stop at their desk to pick up any personal items. Escort the employee to the door, so the employee doesn’t have the chance to steal any company files, trash any computer data or change any computer passwords without your knowledge. Better yet, have another employee change these while the other employee is in your office, so they can’t go back to their desk and wreak havoc with your computer system. Collect any office keys and company credit cards this employee might have." - "The Right Way To Fire Someone", entrepeneur.com.  

If you cut someone's pay and keep them on staff, you might be creating a saboteur - one who has the run of the place.  Of course, for firms, the long term solution to all of this is to replace all permanent workers with lower-wage temps; from that point on, you can "let them go" at your leisure, then hire replacements at even lower wages than the previous dupes.

This picture is from iStockphoto, under the keyword category of "Human Resources".  You don't have to read an HR manual to know what goes through the minds of these assholes - it's all pretty plain to see.

Hate Mail, Vol. 2, I Challenge You To a Dialectic

This post is the second in a series of (selected works of) the (jealousy-fueled?) hate mail I send to professional writers.  This, and all other hate mails, can be interpreted:  a) as a cathartic purging of un-sublimated sexual aggression  b) through the metaphor of a dog shitting on the bed.

Today's target is Simon Critchley, an author and a professor of Philosophy at the New School in New York.  Critchley is curating a series about philosophy in the NYTimes, and he starts things off with an essay titled "What is a Philosopher?"  Critchley, channeling Plato, opens by feinting in the direction of self-deprecation, joshing about the philosopher's reputation as a man who dawdles around with his head in the clouds, but this quickly proves to be false-modesty, as the essay pivots towards self-aggrandizement.  

According to Critchley, the philosopher is not one who dilly-dallies, the philosopher is one who deliberates, while the rest of the world bustles through their daily routines.  The philosopher isn't oblivious to society's conventions, the philosopher is immune from their restrictions; free in mind to notice and criticize the faults of anyone and anything.  This makes the philosopher a danger to the status quo, and this is why so many philosophers have been censored and executed throughout the course of history.   It appears that, in Critchley's mind, the philosopher is like Tupac.

. . .

Hello Simon Critchley,

I challenge you to a dialectic.  I posted the following in the comments thread of your NYTimes article, as well as on my own personal blog, http://trivialpursuittheblog.blogspot.com/.

Society doesn't censor or execute philosophers, instead it gives them unlimited time and freedom to speak their minds.  This is called tenure.

The catch is, no one actually listens to what they have to say, because no one (except other philosophers) actually cares.  There's little point in killing these people when you can stick them in a tower, tell them it's status and freedom, when in fact it's a quarantine of pariahs, where they'll trifle away, arguing only over things that can't be proven.

This is, of course, only one view, and you're free to challenge it, at your leisure.  Such is the nature of your existence.

Ken Drinkwater

. . .

Go to hell, Simon Critchley.

. . . 

Mon, May 17, 2010 at 7:06 AM

Update:  Simon Critchley Responds

thank you ken,

i wish i had the time i described in my article to answer in full, but i have to get my son breakfast.
but basically you're right.
best

simon

. . .

On the surface, he concedes the battlefield and lays down his weapon, admitting, not only that I'm right, but also announcing that he is not really a philosopher, because he doesn't have the time.  

Under the surface, he subtly shifts the war to a broader theatre, making stealthy, passive-aggressive personal attacks through insinuation.  By taking a polite tone and making a joke, he pretends to the high road.  By mentioning his son, he points out my evolutionary failure while understatedly asserting, "I have a life, you do not, and I don't deign to debate you".  The artfulness of this passive-aggression is that I can't prove any of it.

  

 Fuck you, Simon Critchley.