About Brian Eisley

Posts by Brian Eisley:

You thought you were rid of me

Uncategorized 0 Comment

As you may have noticed–or maybe not–my site has been down for awhile. I decided to experiment with a couple of new paradigms for the site, including an About.me-style front page and a lifestream.

Along the way, I ended up shutting down the WordPress blog and moving the hosting. However, these experiments did not work out, and so I’m pretty much back to a traditional blogging setup.

I’m not quite satisfied, and I’m still looking for the One Theme to Rule Them All. In the meantime, though, I’ll be starting up again with the occasional posting, as before. So, watch this space for more thrilling developments.

Reflections

cognition, culture, history, technology , 0 Comment

Mirrors.

 

We don’t normally think of mirrors as high-tech items, but in many ways, they are.

Primitive mirrors have been around for thousands of years, usually made of polished stone, and then of various metals. Mirrors similar to what we know today—a sheet of glass with a reflective back-coating—were invented nearly 2000 years ago in the Middle East and perfected during the Renaissance. But for all this time, they were extremely expensive to manufacture and only the wealthy could afford them; even then, they remained novelties. It wasn’t until after silvered-glass mirrors were invented in 1835 that it became possible to mass-produce them, making them accessible to ordinary people. And, of course, photography wasn’t invented until roughly the same time.

(source: Wikipedia)

Think about what this means: until the mid-19th century, most people had little idea what they looked like. Wealthy people would commonly hire an artist to paint a portrait, but the poor would have to settle for fleeting reflections in ponds or windows. For most, clearly seeing one’s own face was a rare and novel experience.

I wonder how a person’s knowledge of their own appearance would affect their self-image. It’s difficult enough to have any kind of objective view of yourself; imagine doing it when you don’t even know what you look like. The whole concept of a self-image becomes far more difficult.

But now, most of us have a very good idea of our appearance. How does this inform our internal models of ourselves?

(Incidentally, it occurs to me that portraits of the wealthy might have been intended for this purpose: not as vanity objects, but as a means of simply knowing how one presented to the world. Being able to see yourself as others saw you would be highly useful for participating in formal society.)

Change we can believe in

hobbies, meta, music, personal , , , , 0 Comment

I’ve been neglecting this blog, and I know that. Part of it is that I’ve been easing off on my social-media activities this summer; part of it is that I’ve been rethinking the reasons for it, as I’ve posted previously; and part of it is that I’ve spent the last few months settling into my new job. But I’m working on a redesign of this site, as well as a couple of new projects.

For the revamp of this site, I’m working on making it more of a hub for all of my online activities. The blog will still be there, but deemphasized; I’m hoping to make it one of a number of options available from the home page. Ideally, I’d like to have a grid with previews of the most recent thing I’ve posted on all of the sites where I participate, and I’m working on finding/creating a WordPress theme that will do this for me. (Despite my disdain for Windows 8, I’ll give it credit for one thing: reminding me how much I like Swiss style.)

As for the new projects, I’m working on something I’ve never really done before: music. I’ve spent much time lately playing with music-making tools on both Windows and Android, and I’ve reached the point where I’m about ready to start posting my noodlings for all to hear. It’ll be mostly electronic, of course, but I may also inject some real instruments here and there.

I’ve even come up with a name for the project: Zeitung. More details will be posted as warranted.

So, despite my quietude, I’ve not been entirely inactive. There are developments afoot.

 

O HAI

meta, personal, writing , 0 Comment

I haven’t posted on this site in over a month.

Part of this is that I’ve been busy, with some changes in my job (due to the person I was hired to replace finally retiring completely), and also with several other things that I won’t go into. But part of it is also that I’m reevaluating what the value of this blog is to me.

Most of my energy lately has been going into Twitter, Facebook, and, strangely, Google+ (which I expected to go the way of Google’s other social-media experiments, but is instead growing on me). Blogging is less important than it used to be, particularly when I have more going on in the non-online segment of my life.

I guess, in a way, I’ve been turning inward. Not a bad thing, necessarily… nor all that surprising, since I’ve never been much to talk about myself.

And also, for me, it takes time and energy to write an interesting blog post. It’s getting more difficult for me to find the motivation when I have other, more necessary projects. Writing is difficult enough for me that I prefer to work on the kind of writing I really want to do–which isn’t about myself.

So, I’m going to stop putting pressure on myself to work on this blog and/or feel guilty when I don’t. I don’t think I’m going to be getting rid of it altogether, but I will be deemphasizing it on this site. I’m working on a redesign that will act as more of a hub for all the stuff I do elsewhere, instead of providing content myself. We’ll see how that works for a while.

And this fits in with a more general realignment that I’m going through. I’m entering a bit of an experimental period; exploring time-management strategies, working on personal health, and a few other things. Some of it will end up here, and some elsewhere–but people coming here ought to be able to find it all, no matter where it is. So that’s what I’m aiming for.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to post, but I’m expecting that things will be shorter and possibly more frequent. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, watch this space for a more interesting layout. Change is good, no?

 

Touched by its Googly appendage

libraries, philosophy, science, science fiction, technology , , , , , , , , 0 Comment

I recently ran across this story about the upcoming Google I/O conference, speculating on what exactly Google might be working on. The article doesn’t seem to have gotten a huge amount of attention as yet, and I thought I’d give it some. This writer has done an extraordinary job of connecting lots of widely scattered dots to tease out some truly astonishing plans.

Now, although I use lots of Google products–to the point of embarrassment–I wouldn’t consider myself a fanboy. But I do tend to think that they generally have good intentions, and while some of what they do is scary from a privacy perspective, I feel that a lot of this uneasiness comes from a failure to see exactly what they’re trying to do.

But this article, IMHO, ties much of Google’s recent history together in a way that seems to match what I’ve suspected for some time–namely, that Google, rather quietly and not entirely wittingly, is attempting to build upon the whole of human experience to create a truly global, all-encompassing artificial intelligence.

Yes. I believe Google, on some level, wants to wake up the Internet.

And more, they’re not alone. We’re all doing it.

——————–

If you look carefully at the evolution of the Internet and the World Wide Web over the last 20 years, the overall trend has been toward more and denser connections between people. The so-called social web is merely the latest and most visible iteration. We seem to have an innate human instinct to share our thoughts and our lives, and to reach out to each other via whatever communication technology is available.

Note also that there seems to be a trend lately toward consolidation of people’s online identities. After all, the more we connect up the various parts of our online lives, the more useful each part becomes. Someone we meet casually in a chat room becomes a Facebook friend, and then a LinkedIn contact, leading to a new career; this sort of cascade of connection can only happen with tight links between various personal and professional spheres.

At the same time, the ability to easily crunch the world’s data leads to more useful insights than we can name. In the emerging field of digital humanities, for example, modern data-mining and visualization tools are applied to historical economic and geographic data, leading to new theories about trade patterns or the interplay of technology and culture. The vast corpus of public-domain works in Google Books has allowed a quantitative analysis of written language that was never before possible. And increasingly detailed digital mapping is allowing researchers to make fabulous new discoveries without necessarily leaving their desks.

Of course, this gives tremendous power to those entities with which we’ve decided to entrust that information. Google, Facebook, and other companies continue to amass information about the world and its people, and their willingness to trade on this data has naturally prompted questions about their trustworthiness. And more shadowy entities such as the National Security Agency have demonstrated similar interest, for what are likely more nefarious reasons than simple profit. Nevertheless, we as a people seem to have reached a consensus that we’re comfortable with sharing large swaths of our lives, in exchange for being able to connect with others doing the same.

We like sharing. And I suspect that this comes out of a primordial instinct–a deep, subconscious awareness of the true connectedness of all of us. An unknowing acknowledgement of the illusory nature of the boundaries we draw and the categories into which we place ourselves. This urge to share is a drive to overcome these artificial separations.

With that in mind, I think it makes sense to consider intelligence as an emergent phenomenon that arises naturally in complex information systems. Neural networks–dense arrangements of simple switches that can process input and respond to changing circumstances–are usually constructed by humans, but there’s nothing preventing one from arising spontaneously in a system made of the right building blocks. And once a neural network of sufficient complexity appears, it models its interactions with the world in order to adapt to new situations, and eventually begins to consider itself. Alongside all the models it creates for other objects and systems it encounters, it finally builds a model of itself–and this strange loop is the foundation of consciousness.

This is one of the prevailing theories on the origin of minds, and to me, what’s most interesting about it is that the building blocks of a neural net don’t have to work any particular way. All that’s necessary is that they take input and produce output according to some rule. They can be electromechanical (such as relays), digital (as in intelligent software agents), or biochemical (like the neurons in our brains). Regardless of the substrate, with sufficient complexity a neural network can exhibit emergent behavior that can be very hard to predict or to model.

Now after all that, let’s look at what Google may be up to.

Google’s been busy lately. We’ve all watched the rise of Google+, which, even if it hasn’t come close to dethroning Facebook, has nevertheless grown into a respectable social network integrated across all of Google’s properties. We’ve seen the ever-increasing capabilities and adoption of its Android smartphone software. And we’ve heard plenty lately about the new unified privacy policy it recently introduced.

Couple of other, slightly less visible details. You may have noticed that Google search results now have a page of more general, reader-friendly information about the topic over on the right side.

Google calls this the Knowledge Graph. What it’s trying to do is use Google’s vast collection of interrelated data to model what people are actually thinking of with a given search term. This is not as simple as it sounds at first; in addition to simple definitions, it requires detailed contextual knowledge. Google is using its knowledge of the world to provide this context in such a way that their system can conceptualize the subject in a way somewhat similar to how a human would.

It should be fairly obvious that in order to get a decent idea of what a person means by a particular search term, it helps tremendously to know something about that person. Who they are, where they’re from (to provide cultural background), their personal and professional interests, their current location, and a host of other details. And it’s also useful to have an idea of how they’re going to use that information; what categories they might put it in, whether they’ll share it with others, et cetera.

And this is precisely the kind of information you get from a social network.

THAT is what Google+ is: a tool for teaching Google how people think and use information, so that their results are better and more useful.

Remember, I’m a trained librarian. This is a huge part of what librarians do: modeling user behavior. Figuring out what the person is looking for and presenting it to them as efficiently as possible. So it makes perfect sense to me that Google would set up a social network in order to learn about its users.

And that’s also what the newly unified privacy policy is about. Google wants to be able to use all the information it has, across all of its properties, in order to build a complete picture of its users. All of this information will feed into the Knowledge Graph to make Google more useful and valuable to its users.

The most exciting development of all, however, hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves: Google Assistant.

This will be Google’s answer to Siri, the virtual assistant built into the most recent iPhone. It will be able to understand questions posed to it in natural language, and respond in kind. But unlike Siri, it will have full access to everything Google knows about people and about the world. (By contrast, Apple doesn’t even have a search engine or a social network of any importance, so Siri is crippled by default.) Google is also pouring vast resources into natural-language processing, so the Assistant should be a decent conversationalist; one (unconfirmed) source even claims that Google has finally managed to crack the Turing Test.

Whether Assistant will have a personality seems to be undecided. But one telling detail is the original codename for the project: Majel. This is after Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, the wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who provided the computer voices on every iteration of Trek from TNG on. And Google has said explicitly that they want to build the Enterprise computer.

So. We have a massive distributed worldwide supercomputer, with every imaginable kind of information pouring into it from all directions; we have a semantic network designed specifically to model the interconnections between this data and turn it into useful knowledge; we have a natural-language system to understand spoken queries and to respond conversationally.

And we also have a system connecting humans together in such a way as to comprise the most powerful neural network the world has ever seen. Individuals are the switches, the neurons.

These are about the best conditions I can imagine for the spontaneous appearance of an artificial intelligence. What vast and alien intellect might emerge from this primordial digital soup?

Now, of course, this is all wild-eyed speculation on my part. I have no idea if Google really does want to create Galaxia. But I do think it’s a reasonable possibility that such a thing will emerge whether we’re planning it or not. And I refuse to make a value judgment about such an event; when biological consciousness appeared, nobody asked the neurons’ opinion.

And it isn’t just Google, of course. Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, the NSA, any entity that works to gather deep vertically-integrated information about people can serve as a locus for this. Facebook is also horizontally-integrated, due to its focus on connecting people, so it’s a strong candidate as well.

But only Google has the scope, the knowledge, the will to integrate that knowledge, and the sheer computing resources to pull off such a project.

So who knows? I’m not saying it will happen. But it could.

And maybe, shortly after Majel is turned on, we’ll find out what it’s like to share this planet with something smarter than us.

M, C, to the A

culture, music , , , , , 0 Comment

Ever since the word broke on Friday about the death of Adam “MCA” Yauch of the Beastie Boys, I’ve been playing their music obsessively. I’ve been sad, but also grateful.

If somebody had told me around, say, 1986, that the Beastie Boys would prove to be the most groundbreaking and influential band of their generation, I would have asked them what they were smoking, and where I could get some. At this time, they were known primarily for their first album Licensed to Ill, and the massive hit “Fight For Your Right (to Party)”. It was fun, sure. And I could tell that there was a lot of talent behind the silliness. But I had no idea of what was in store.

When their second album, Paul’s Boutique, appeared in 1989, I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t buy it right away; what I heard (particularly the single, “Hey Ladies”) didn’t sound all that great compared to the big dumb fun of the first album. Now, of course, I recognize how utterly brilliant and ahead-of-its-time the album was; but it took years for me to recognize it.

The next Beastie Boys album I actually bought was 1992′s Check Your Head. It served as a major part of the soundtrack of my college years. The music was far more sophisticated than in their early days; in particular, they weren’t afraid to branch out and experiment, or to pull in influences from funk, and jazz, and anything else that caught their fancy. This was the album that earned my respect.

By the fourth album, Ill Communication, there was no question that the Beasties were among the most diverse and innovative bands out there. And also, by this time, MCA was firmly established as the heart and soul of the group. He had become a Buddhist by this time, and his newfound belief had been infused into the band for some time. But the track “Bodhisattva Vow” proved to be the pinnacle of his personal expression within the band; a true 20th-century sutra. Even now, after more listenings than I care to count, I still find something different every time I listen. (And I wasn’t even a Buddhist at the time.)

Over their remaining years, the Beastie Boys continued to produce fascinating, trailblazing music–that also happened to groove harder than almost anything else. Fortunately, I got to see them live in San Francisco in 2004, when they were at the top of their game; the show was every bit as terrific as I was expecting.

When Yauch revealed his illness in 2009, I was worried but not terribly concerned. I was in the same denial that all fans engage in when hearing that a favorite artist is seriously ill. But when he was unable to attend their induction into the Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame last month, I started to wonder.

And now, of course, he’s gone. And the Beastie Boys, I expect, are over; no announcement has been made, but I honestly don’t know how they could continue.

I’ve spent the weekend revisiting their music. It’s been sad, of course, but I’m also grateful. The influence of this band has been incalculable. So much of today’s rock and hip-hop music grew out of their work. And, unlike so many groups, they never really went downhill; they kept producing interesting, vital music almost until the end. (Not to mention, of course, his vitally important work in raising awareness about the Tibetan cause.)

Thank you, Adam. May your next rebirth be favorable. Namaste.

A Victorian steampunk ditty

history, Leaves Of Brass, music, steampunk , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

And now, the other major bit of writing from my short-lived steampunk/retrofuturism blog, Leaves of Brass: a series of pieces about a popular Victorian song, “The Steam Arm”.

I enjoyed this piece of research, and I’d hate to see it disappear forever from the interwebz. This originally appeared on July 7, 2011. I did it in several parts, but here I’ll combine them.

 

The Steam Arm

From historian of fantastic Victoriana extraordinaire Jess Nevins comes this discovery: a proto-steampunk ballad from the 1830′s, “The Steam Arm”.

Oh! Wonders sure will never cease,
While works of art do so increase;
No matter whether in war or peace,
Men can do whatever they please.
Ri too ral, etc.

A curious tale I will unfold
To all of you, as I was told,
About a soldier stout and bold,
Whose wife, ‘tis said, was an arrant scold.
Ri too ral, etc.

At Waterloo he lost an arm,
Which gave him pain and great alarm;
But he soon got well, and grew quite calm,
For a shilling a day was a sort o’ balm.
Ri too ral, etc.

The story goes, on every night
His wife would bang him left and right;
So he determined, out of spite,
To have an arm, cost what it might.
Ri too ral, etc.

He went at once, strange it may seem,
To have one made to work by steam,
For a ray of hope began to gleam,
That force of arms would win her esteem.
Ri too ral, etc.

The limb was finished, and fixed unto
His stump of a soldier neat and true;
You’d have thought it there by nature grew,
For it stuck to its place as tight as glue.
Ri too ral, etc.

He started home and knocked at the door,
His wife her abuse began to pour;
He turn’d a small peg, and before
He’d time to think, she fell on the floor.
Ri too ral, etc.

With policemen soon his room was fill’d,
But every one he nearly killed;
For the soldier’s arm had been so drill’d,
That once in action, it couldn’t be still’d.
Ri too ral, etc.

They took him, at length, before the mayor,
His arm kept moving all the while there;
The mayor said ‘Shake your first if you dare,’
When the steam arm knocked him out of the chair.
Ri too ral, etc.

This rais’d in court a bit of a clamour,
The arm going like an auctioneer’s hammer;
It fell in weight like a paviour’s rammer,
And many with fear began to stammer.
Ri too ral, etc.

He was lock’d in a cell for doing harm,
To satisfy those who had still a qualm,
When all at once they hear an alarm,
Down fell the walls and out popp’d the arm.
Ri too ral, etc.

He soon escap’d and reach’d his door,
And knock’d by steam raps half a score;
But as the arm in power grew more and more,
Bricks, mortar and wood soon strew’d the floor.
Ri too ral, etc.

With eagerness he stepp’d each stair,
Popp’d into the room–his wife was there;
‘Oh! Come to my arms’, he said, ‘my dear’;
When his steamer smash’d the crockery ware.
Ri too ral, etc.

He left his house, at length, outright,
And wanders now just like a sprite;
For he can’t get sleep either day or night,
And his arm keeps moving with two-horse might.
Ri too ral, etc.

Nevins dates this ditty to 1834-35. He doesn’t give his source (glaring oversight, that; I’ve asked him), but it sounds reasonable. Waterloo was in 1815, of course, and 20 years is more enough time for the battle to pass into the popular consciousness in this sort of way. And, as he says, the 1830′s are right at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when the first stirrings of mechanization were being seen. (I also wonder if there might be a bit of a Frankenstein influence?)

I did a bit of poking around, looking for more information; in particular, I was interested in what the music might have sounded like. Lo and behold, it appears to have been brought to the US, possibly in the late 19th century, and altered to refer to the American Civil War:

In old Virginia he lost his arm,
Which caused him pain and much alarm,
Toori, loorie, lay.

This book also gives a melody. The verse structure is a little different here, so it wouldn’t be exactly what they played with the original; and there’s no way to be sure anyway, since folk songs have always freely traded lyrics and melodies. But, still, it might give an idea.

Nevins claims that this song may be the first appearance of a cyborg in popular culture, as well as the first appearance of a phantom-limb motif. I’m afraid I have to dispute the first claim. The idea of a soldier with a mechanical arm is very likely inspired by the story of Götz von Berlichingen, who lost his arm in 1504 and had a (quite advanced) mechanical replacement made. Goethe wrote a play about this early cyborg in 1775, predating the song by some decades.

(As for the phantom-limb theme, I can’t find a specific example at the moment, but I would be very surprised if it had not appeared in Gothic fiction at some point during the 18th century.)

Anyway. From what I can tell with my limited musical ability, it appears to be a rather catchy little tune. The book mentions a recording from 1984; I may have to track that down. Good material for your friendly neighborhood steampunk filk band, eh?

UPDATE! I heard back this morning from the good Mr. Nevins. He says his source was a songbook from the mid-1860′s called “The Billy-Cock Hat”, and his date of the 1830′s was based on the impact of steam power and when the song seemed to have appeared.

With that clue, I was able to find this essay on the song by Kirstie Blair, in the Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies (of which I was shamefully unaware). It’s a fascinating examination of the song’s themes of control and runaway technology. It also led me to the Broadside Ballads catalog at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, which apparently has several more copies of the song–a couple of which are dated by the Bodleian to between 1819 and 1844. Still no information about the music or the composer, which is hardly surprising.

But oh well. This is a delightful discovery. I will have to find that recording…

 

(later that day)

I have found music!

This is from Davidson’s Universal Melodist, published in 1853. It sets “The Steam Arm” to another comic song called “The Cork Leg”. It does indeed look like a fun little melody. I also found it in several period songbooks. The last of these sets both it and “The Cork Leg” to a different song called “The King and the Countryman“, which has a similar melody as the above. “The King and the Countryman” goes back to at least 1640(!), and seems to have been a popular melody for comic songs of all kinds. (Meanwhile, this copy credits the song to an H.V. Smith; I’ve not found any other reference to a 19th-century songwriter of that name.)

I also came across a discussion of the song in a rather marvelous journal called Notes and Queries, which contained discussions of all kinds. (It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a blog on paper; I highly recommend it.) These two bits are from September 22 and October 20, 1888, and are worth repeating in full.

September 22, 1888:

OLD SONG.–Where can I read the words of an old song, which I have not seen or heard since my schooldays, now nearly half a century ago, which commenced thus:–

Oh! wonders sure will never cease,
For works of art do so increase,
No matter whether in war or peace,
For men can do whatever they please.

The song, I fancy, recounted the then recent introduction of railways, steam packets, and possibly the still more recent discovery of the electric telegraph; but, alas! my memory grows no better as I grow older.    E. WALFORD, M.A.
7, Hyde Park Mansions, N.W.

October 20, 1888:

OLD SONG (7th S. vi. 229).–The verse commencing–

Oh wonders sure will never cease,

is from ‘The Steam Arm.’ I distinctly call to mind that it was a great favourite at Vauxhall Gardens about the period of the ascents of the Nassau balloon, now more than half a century ago. This song recounted the misery that attended the ownership of a steam arm that, once set in motion, could not be put at rest; and which the singer demonstrated by the vigorous action of the limb that moved rhythmically to the music. Vauxhall Gardens, even at that period, were fading away, despite the “10,000 extra lamps”; and Mr. Simpson, the Master of the Ceremonies, that singular relic of the past, chapeau bras in hand, had made his last bow. At his death, as I recall, a wicker or wire-work effigy of the man, some thirty feet in hight, was erected in the gardens. This structure, when lighted with small variegated lamps, conveyed an excellent idea of this singular character, and attracted the town for weeks.    T.F.F.

The lines given are, I think (I am certain as to the first two), the commencement of the old comic song of ‘The Steam Arm,’ a skit upon the introduction of steam as applied to locomotion. I have the song, and a copy is at MR. WALFORD’s service, but am at present away from my books and papers.
R.W. HACKWOOD.

Good stuff. And, at last, we have enough for some enterprising musician to recreate the song–though probably not me.

(Thank you, Google Books; whatever would I do without you?)

P.S. Since I just can’t quit, a bit more info. The quote above about “the ascents of the Nassau balloon” likely refers to the flights of Charles Green in the Great Nassau in 1836 (departing from Vauxhall Gardens and flying to the Duchy of Nassau in Germany). So, even if the song is older, it certainly seems to have had its greatest popularity in the 1830′s.

On religion, science, and morality

philosophy, religion, science , , , 0 Comment

 

I found the above on Facebook the other day. I’m not sure who created it originally (although this is a strong contender). I took it and put it up on Pinterest, and both there and on Facebook it touched off some serious conversation. In particular, several people seem to be incapable of imagining morality without a moral authority.

I’m not going to reprint other peoples’ words without their permission, but I did want to repeat some of my responses in case anyone would be interested.

Well, there seems to be a consensus, across all religions and cultures–including atheists–that murder, rape and theft are wrong. That suggests to me that morality really doesn’t have much to do with religion, and is instead probably rooted in our basic human instincts. (Granted, many of us still do these things anyway, regardless of the punishments. But that also seems to be independent of religion.)

(snip)

I mean, some of the people in this thread clearly believe in God. But if it were somehow proven that God didn’t exist–never mind how that would happen–and that there were no eternal punishments or rewards, would those people suddenly start killing and stealing? I honestly don’t think so.

Another person said that I probably don’t know much about religion. I responded:

I think it comes down to the difference between knowledge and faith.

(Referring to the picture itself.)

That was on Pinterest. Meanwhile, back in the Facebook thread, a discussion that had already been pretty active before I got there continued unabated. All the usual arguments; people talking about themselves or their children being good despite not being exposed to religion, or saying that our instinctive morality is devalued when people insist that it must come from outside ourselves. Others insisted that without God there can be no morality.

Because I sometimes can’t resist temptation, this was where I dove in:

“Without God you have no morality!”

One small problem with that: how do you know what God wants? Now, I know exactly what you’re going to say: the Bible says so. So now, you have another question: how do you know the Bible is a reliable guide to what God wants?

And the answer to that is, you have faith. (I think even the most devoted Christian would agree with me on that.)

So, now I have one more question for you, which I will leave unanswered: Have you ever considered the possibility that you might be wrong?

The last question comes from Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. It was his standard response to anyone who spouted dogma instead of using their brain.

But one person struck me in particular. He insisted that morality came not from religion, but from God… and then proceeded to use the Bible as justification. I imagine the contradiction was quite lost on him. He also said the Bible was true, and offered to prove it, asking if we wouldn’t want to know if the Bible indeed was true.

(Note to religious people using this approach: you can’t convince a skeptic by arguing the Bible’s authority, because that is precisely what the skeptic is questioning.)

(Y)ou say you’ve “looked into it” and found the Bible to be true. But I humbly submit that your faith is so strong that you’ve probably never seriously considered any other possibility.

(snip)

You can prove it? Yes, please do. This oughta be good.

(Not that having “proof” really persuaded anyone, of course. The evidence for evolution is about as clear and obvious as anything in science, but vast numbers of people still don’t buy it.)

At this point, he claimed to be able to disprove evolution using Darwin’s own words, claiming that there was more proof for the Bible than for any other theory; but then he acknowledged (with some insight, methinks) that we could keep bashing at each others’ beliefs and never made any progress. And asked again, if the Bible were true, wouldn’t I want to know it?

My reply:

You’re right, there’s no point in arguing about evolution. Because neither of us can convince the other, because we are approaching the issue from two diametrically opposed directions. You are taking it as given that your particular brand of creationism is true, and I honestly don’t believe that any amount of evidence would convince you otherwise. That’s faith: the belief in something regardless of the evidence.

I, on the other hand, am coming at it from the viewpoint that it’s possible to investigate the way the universe works and to find out what the truth is, without relying on the word of an authority which may have an ulterior motive, or of an ancient book which may or may not be accurate. That’s science–the only method we have for actually figuring out what the truth is. It’s not a perfect system–in particular, it’s impossible to completely eliminate human bias and misjudgments–but it’s the only method we have that seems to work.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with either of these systems, and they can coexist just fine–on the condition that they respect each others’ boundaries. For instance, science can’t say anything one way or the other about the existence of God. It’s not a question that we can directly investigate, and so scientists leave that issue for philosophers and theologians.

But when a religion makes a claim about the way the physical world works, that’s a different story. If you say the world is only 6000 years old, well, that IS a question we can investigate. And if you’re going to make such a claim, then I say you HAVE to pay attention to what scientists say about it. If you don’t, if you just deny all the evidence–centuries of it, gathered from all over the world, and involving at least half a dozen major fields of inquiry–then you’re guilty of the worst kind of intellectual dishonesty.

If you’re going to make a scientific claim, then you MUST listen to what scientists have to say. Simple as that.

To answer your other question: yes, if the Bible were true, I would want to know it. But since it’s filled with inaccuracies and logical fallibilities, I see no reason to take it any differently than any other ancient book. And since, to me, the world is perfectly explicable without it… Well, to quote Laplace, “I had no need of that hypothesis.”

As yet, there has been no response.

(Maybe I don’t really need to be repeating all this, but I think there are some good explanations here of my attitude toward these issues. So I thought I’d share.)

Traveling circus

travel, whining, work , , , , 0 Comment

Well, that was interesting.

This week was the conference down in southern California, for my new job–my first business trip ever. The conference itself (training and updates on the database software we use) went just fine. So, as you may guess, it will not be discussed here.

No, this post will be about the travel itself, which turned out to be a long and seemingly-endless series of disasters.

It all started when I arrived at the airport in San Francisco on Sunday afternoon for my flight to Ontario. Now, SFO apparently has a policy that you have to check in at least half an hour before departure. Unfortunately, I did not quite make this deadline, and so when I arrived at the United desk, they would not allow me to check in. I had to wait for the next scheduled flight–five and a half hours later. I didn’t get to my destination until midnight.

This was unfortunate, but still, it was only an inconvenience (and, really, it was nobody’s fault but mine). Little did I know that it was only the beginning.

Once I landed, I made my way to the Doubletree, where the district had reserved me a room. Now, I had been under the impression that the room had been paid for. But, as it turned out, this was not the case; apparently, there is a state law that bars the district from paying in advance for accommodations, and so I would have had to pay for the room myself and get reimbursed. However, nobody had said anything about this, and so I was not prepared to do so. (No, I don’t have a working credit card at the moment; I canceled it a couple of years ago when they raised the interest rate to an unacceptable level.)

There I was, stranded with nowhere to go, and exhaustion coming on fast. What to do?

After a fair amount of panic, I ended up going across the street to the Motel 6 (which, astonishingly, was by far the nicest example of that chain that I had ever encountered; I can recommend them unreservedly). In the morning, I renewed my stay for a second night, canceled the reservation at the Doubletree, and headed for the conference.

At this point, I was already feeling like I’d had more fun than the trip was worth. But the best was yet to come.

On Wednesday, the second and last day of the conference, I was scheduled to fly out at 6:50 pm. However, that morning, a major front was coming down from Alaska, and San Francisco was getting hit particularly hard. And SFO is prone to delays in bad weather. (My guess is that it’s susceptible to flooding because of its location on landfill right on the bay shore.)

So, at about 11:45 that morning, I got an email that my flight had been canceled–and my reservation moved to about 11:30 the next morning. Which left me with nowhere to sleep.

Naturally, I completely panicked. But despite my frantic calls to United, there was nothing to be done over the phone. So, after the conference was over, I returned to the Motel 6, picked up my bags, and headed for the airport to see what could be done.

As it turned out, I was able to talk myself into a seat on a slightly earlier flight (8:30 am). And, wonder of wonders, I got them to take pity on me and give me a discounted room at the Holiday Inn through a “distressed traveler” program. So, if nothing else, I was at least going to have a comfortable night.

Next morning, after a good dinner, a couple of movies and a sound sleep, I got to the airport well on time to catch my plane. What do you think happened?

That’s right. Delayed. I got to sit. And sit. And wait. And wait. The weather in San Francisco was seemingly not going to let anyone in. I kept checking the FAA weather alerts; they were talking about a two-hour delay, a three-and-a-half-hour delay…

I was well and truly exhausted at this point, of course, and ready to do just about anything to get myself a seat back to the Bay Area. The only stipulation was that I had to be able to get back to SFO to pick up my car. Unfortunately, none of the limited options were workable. Southwest was flying successfully into Oakland, but they apparently have no agreements with any other airlines and so I would have had to pay my own way. I also considered San Jose, but there are no direct flights there from Ontario–and the airport shuttle was $92 to take me to LAX or to John Wayne.

Seriously, if I could have afforded either of those, I would have just rented a car and driven home. So I really had no choice but to sit and wait. Finally, wonder of wonders, they called for boarding at 11:30. We took off at noon, and landed in San Francisco at 1:30. (And, yes, the rain was bad and there was water on the runway, so I guess the delay was justified.) I finally made it home at about 4.

After which I completely collapsed.

So. Lessons learned?

First, I should have been more selective about where I flew, and on what airline. Clearly, I should have taken Southwest out of Oakland. Chalk that up to inexperience; I simply went with the lowest fare Travelocity gave me. But now I know better. (In particular, I’ve relearned just how horrible United is.)

Second, I realize now that I should never make assumptions about how any part of my trip will be paid. Again, inexperience.

Third, I really need to have an emergency credit card. I will take care of that ASAP.

Anyway, I did survive, which is something. I even managed to learn a few things at the conference. With any luck, this first encounter with business travel will be the worst, and it’ll only get better from here.

But really, in the end, I think I should have known better than to set foot once again in the festering hellpit known as the Los Angeles Basin. Every time I go, I have a worse time than before. Eventually, it’ll sink in that I just don’t belong there.

Update: I took video of my landing in SFO. It’s now on YouTube.


 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 »