September 30, 2004

Debate Survival Guide

If you've decided, like I have, to watch the debates tonight, I suggest you have a plan for keeping your sanity intact during the process. Scott Paulsen's Debate Survival Guide is a good starting point. He suggests:

Every time your guy says the phrase "my opponent", take a drink. Each time your man utters the phrase "this is where we differ", take a drink. Each time the other guy touches his nose, take a drink.

If Senator Kerry mentions his service in Vietnam, his supporters must take two drinks. If President Bush mentions toppling Saddam Hussein, his team takes two drinks.

The first time Senator Kerry mentions his wife's name, which the rest of the world pronounces Tur-REE-suh, but he and only he pronounces Tur-RAY-suh, Kerry supporters take three drinks. The first time President Bush pronounces atomic weaponry as being new-cue-luhr, rather than new-klee-uhr, Bush people take three drinks.

Dave Hill offers his version, which includes:

Every time Bush mangles a word that he, as President of the United States, should know. [1 shot]
Every time Kerry utters a sentence that, transcribed, would require more than ten commas, two semi-colons, and/or a paragraph break. [1 shot]
Every time Bush gets a folksy grin on his face. [1 shot]
Every time Kerry sounds like he's trying to channel FDR or (the original) JFK. [1 shot]
Every time Bush mentions "The War on Terror." [1 shot]
Every time either of them mentions a previous president. [1 shot]
Every time either of them mentions a previous president of the other party. [2 shots]
Every time either of them mentions a previous president who would have crossed the street to avoid being associated with them. [3 shots]

I would add some ideas, but I need to get some work done. Anyway, I hope these suggestions help you have some fun watching the debates tonight.

30 Sep 14:22 | Link | Category: Humor, Politics

The Sim-ple Life

While reading about the recent release of The Sims 2, I learned that The Sims was the best-selling PC game of all time. I find that fact quite astonishing. A game in which players direct simulated people to make dinner, socialize, sleep, go to work, and take showers is the best-selling PC game ever.

I've played the game, and (thankfully) I got bored after a day or two of extreme addiction. But even during that time I was baffled as to why I had so much fun directing the daily routine of people's lives.

According to Will Wright (creator of SimCity and The Sims), at the core of The Sims is balance.

It is not necessarily about playing God, he says, controlling every aspect of their virtual person's life, down to when they go to the toilet.

It is about how players decide to juggle their virtual people's lives - work, family, love - and how they decide to spend the 24 hours in a day.

And that's just it. I think the game is popular because it's so damned relatable. We might hate to admit it, but most of us spend a good portion of our days worrying about all the details of just getting by.

The following could describe your life or your sim's life:
You have to make sure to wake up on time. Then you have to worry about eating, showering, and getting ready for work. You get home from work and have to fix dinner, clean up the house, and pay the bills. If you don't have some fun and social interaction with others, your mood becomes terrible. Then you have to go to sleep on time in order to start the whole process over.

It's almost frightening how much of our lives are devoted to fulfilling our basic needs, juggling tasks, and scheduling everything to keep ourselves reasonably happy. The creators of The Sims did a pretty good job of boiling it down to a simple yet recognizable formula. I think that's why the game appeals to so many people. You really see something of yourself in the formulaic existence of the sims. I sometimes tend to find myself overwhelmed by just keeping my life in basic working order... it's nice to see that it can be tricky to do the same even with a simplistic computer program. (Sadly, the lives of my sims were usually in much, much better shape than my life is.)

I don't know about the rest of you, but I've always dreamed about ending up in a situation where I could pursue my interests and enjoy myself without spending practically all my time just keeping the machinery of life running smoothly. Of course, I could be fooling myself about how happy I would be in such a situation. Here's an insightful comment from someone reading about The Sims 2 on J-Walk's site:

I've played the Sims a lot, and often I cheat. I buy everything I want, get all the social, cooking, mechanical, etc skills, and man, is it annoying. It's like, if you get everything you want in life (even a sim life), it becomes pretty boring, and the pointlessness of it all starts to make itself apparent.

But while you're struggling to make your Sim use the bathroom in less than 1 Sim hour so you can get to your Sim job and finish wallpapering your Sim house, there remains a bit of challenge. It's all a bit crazy really.

There's a lot of truth to that, I guess. I'll let you ruminate. And I'll leave you with this humorous comment from the same blog:

I played The Sims once before and the gibberish they speak bugged the hell outta me. Plus, I kept creating abusive, unsanitary households in which people kept leaving, setting things on fire, and getting in trouble with the law. That's too close to real life for me.

30 Sep 12:00 | Link | Category: Opinion & Thoughts, Technology & Computing

September 29, 2004

The Crusade Against Evolution

The latest issue of Wired reports on The Crusade Against Evolution.

I've said it before, but please wake me up in 1925. Three quarters of a century and we're still arguing about it.

If the Wired articles makes you interested in "Intelligent Design" or reading Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box... don't bother. (He's like the eighteenth-century theologian William Paley arguing about his hypothetical watch and its maker.) If you do bother (like I once did), make sure you also take a dose of, say, Richard Dawkins (who can teach you about the blind watchmaker) or Stephen Jay Gould. (Here's a nice bit from Skeptic Magazine about Darwin's Black Box.)

I'm not about to delve into the subject at this time of night... I'll just direct you to this Richard Dawkins site that's full of information and links. (See the evolution and creationism links page, for example.)

What scares me is that the "intelligent design" idea is going to appeal to lots of well-meaning but ill-informed people in important positions.

29 Sep 1:13 | Link | Category: Human/Primate Evolution & Behavior, Science

Bush Campaign: "Liberals" want to ban the Bible

The Republican Party acknowledged yesterday sending mass mailings to residents of two states (Arkansas and West Virginia, by the way) warning that "liberals" seek to ban the Bible. It said the mailings were part of its effort to "mobilize religious voters for President Bush."

In my younger days, I would've gotten worked up about it, but now I just accept this sort of bullshit... I'm just not surprised by such tactics anymore. I also know that Bush will conveniently shy away from making any statement (written or otherwise) to condemn it. (I learned that quite a while ago, too -- watching the ugly 2000 Republican primaries in South Carolina and Michigan.)

29 Sep 0:50 | Link | Category: Politics

"Stoned Slackers" and The Daily Show

Earlier this month, Jon Stewart appeared on The O'Reilly Factor. Bill O'Reilly told Stewart that it was "frightening" that The Daily Show actually has "an influence on this presidential election." He continued, "That is scary, but it's true. You've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night and they can vote." He claimed that eighty-seven percent of viewers are intoxicated when they watch the show. You can read the transcript of the interview here. (Stewart's comebacks are pretty funny.)

It was all supposedly in jest, but it's still sort of an annoying jab because The Daily Show is such intelligent television (not to mention, all the people I know who enjoy watching it are smart and well-informed).

Anyway, the research is in. According to Nielsen, viewers of The Daily Show are more likely to have completed four years of college than people who watch The O'Reilly Factor. And a study by U. Penn's Annenberg Public Policy Center shows that viewers of The Daily Show were more likely to answer questions about politics correctly than those who don't - or who watch Leno or Letterman. From their report (PDF):

"People who watch The Daily Show are more interested in the presidential campaign, more educated, younger, and more liberal than the average American or than Leno or Letterman viewers," said Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, a senior analyst at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, who conducted the research for this report. "However, these factors do not explain the difference in levels of campaign knowledge between people who watch The Daily Show and people who do not. In fact, Daily Show viewers have higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers - even when education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiving campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration."

Rock on, Daily Show.

29 Sep 0:36 | Link | Category: Art & Entertainment

September 27, 2004

I need a friend like Peter Buck

Anyone who knows much about R.E.M. knows that in the old days, Peter Buck worked in a record shop in Athens, Georgia. Mike Mills and Michael Stipe would come to the store and talk with him about music. Stipe would go to the store and ask for records, so Buck would give recommends and introduce him to new bands based on his listening preferences.

He's still doing it.

In an article for The Guardian about R.E.M., Will Hodgkinson writes:

[Peter Buck] recently filled up the iPods of everyone who worked on REM's new album with songs that he thought they might like - and considering iPods can take up to 10,000 songs, this was a Herculean feat of downloading. "He's become obsessed with it," says Stipe. "He has done this for everyone who worked on our new record, including the engineers, who he had only known for a couple of weeks. What's interesting is to discover what he thinks we should be listening to. Mike got entire albums by Miles Davis, for example, while I only got the greatest hits. It must have taken him weeks, but he really isn't interested in anything apart from his family and music," adds Mills. "He reads books, and plays music, and hangs out with his family. That's it. So he loves the iPod because it gives him a chance to go through thousands of records that he hasn't played for the last 20 years."

Buck used to write up lists of recommended listening (maybe he still does; I'm just not sure where to find it). I once got a bunch of albums on such a list, and most of it was quite good. (If only I could befriend him and he could give me an iPod full of custom-selected music.)

If I had unlimited money, a large customized collection of music would be my favorite gift to give. My only problem is that I would select music based too closely on my own preferences. Trying to select music you think another person might like would be tricky. (Imagine a poor recipient's reaction to the fact that I had given them the entire Bob Dylan catalog.) But it would definitely make for a thoughtful, unmatchable gift.

27 Sep 21:31 | Link | Category: Music

Today's Photography Links

27 Sep 19:17 | Link | Category: Photography

Pulp Politicians

If you liked the fine film Pulp Fiction, you might enjoy Pulp Politicians, a Flash animation in which various politicians play the role of the characters.

(via Cynical-C)

27 Sep 19:08 | Link | Category: Humor

September 26, 2004

Today's Photography Links

26 Sep 23:54 | Link | Category: Photography

America the Conservative

In a well-reasoned piece for the LA Times, Edward L. Glaeser examines the exceptional conservatism of the United States.

26 Sep 23:44 | Link | Category: Opinion & Thoughts, Politics

Do you know where the sun sets?

John pointed me to one of those disturbing "This Just In: Common Knowledge Is Uncommon" articles.

Apparently, "42% of Japanese children believe that the Sun rotates around the Earth and 30% of children aged 11-14 do not not know that it sets in the west." (Though to be fair, the author of the survey - or perhaps the article - is confused about the difference between rotation and revolution.)

So apparently the fate of modern humans is to know less than their ancestors - who may not have known they lived on a planet revolving around a star, but at least knew where the sun sets.

The article depressingly states: "Earlier this year university researchers found that half Japan's primary and secondary school students had never seen a sunrise or sunset."

26 Sep 23:24 | Link | Category: Science

Are two (or eight) demagogues really better than one?

Another example of why it's so fun (interpret that word however you wish) to live in Utah:

Members of the student government at the community college in Provo-Orem decided to invite rabble-rouser Michael Moore to speak. Poor saps. Other students - along with citizens all over the conservative community - didn't take kindly to the notion of having someone like that tell them what to think. No, much better to have their own rabble-rousers tell them what to think.

The Trib says:

"Michael Moore will break away from the swing-state Bush-bashing circuit to speak at Utah Valley State College - one of the most conservative campuses in one of the most conservative counties of one of the most conservative states in the country.

Some segue.

Political invective aside, it may be the first time that a sitting American president gets lashed, lambasted and lampooned from the podium of Orem's David O. McKay Events Center.

"He went to the Republican convention," UVSC spokesman Derek Hall said. "This has got to be a friendly place compared to that."

Don't count on it.

According to the Provo Daily Herald (proudly located at harktheherald.com):

"The college has received a steady stream of complaints from across the nation, from a grandfather vowing he won't come to his grandson's graduation to an employer swearing to never again hire a UVSC graduate. Many parents and alumni have expressed disgust that the college is using student fees to pay Moore $40,000 to speak at the college and one e-mail administrators received said that if they didn't cancel the speech a UVSC diploma 'might as well be printed on twin-ply, perforated tissue paper and dispensed on rolls in bathroom stalls.'"

(This begs the question - why twin-ply and perforated?)

No worry, though. The college has invited about eight other speakers, including such luminaries as talk show hosts Sean Hannity and Michael Reagan.

The great shame is that instead of a well-attended lecture from a celebrity-of-the-moment and perhaps a minor controversy played out on the editorial pages of the school paper, the poor kids get an enormous community-wide scandal... and now they have to endure propaganda from lots of demagogues! (Between the outraged students / community and all the fervor that'll be hurled by Moore, Hannity, and the rest, I think UVSC will temporarily rank among the most vitriolic spots in the world. Such a sad fate for Happy Valley!)

The funny/sad/ironic thing is that noted individuals (as in, people other than propagandists and talk show hosts) speak at my university (scroll to bottom) and around town all the time... and nobody really pays attention. Gorbachev spoke and earned a small mention on the back page (no letters to the editor, I'm afraid). Lech Walesa stopped by in... I think it was probably '98, and when I later complained to people about the (relatively) low attendance and lack of interest by local news media, most people just looked at me blankly and asked me who the hell Lech Walesa was.

But I can guarantee they all know who the eminent Sean Hannity is, dammit!

Ugh.

26 Sep 22:27 | Link | Category: Current Events, Politics

Omni-directional Panoramas

Check out these cool omni-directional panoramas from Greg Downing. Use the full-screen links. (You'll need QuickTime if you don't already have it.)

26 Sep 21:45 | Link | Category: Photography

Presidential costume masks predict outcome of elections?

According to this site, sales of presidential masks have accurately predicted the outcome of elections since 1980.

And according to this story from CNN/Money, Bush masks have been outselling Kerry masks so far this year.

It's completely unscientific hogwash, but it would have been less stressful to pay attention to sales figures for costume masks than pay attention to the networks on that Tuesday night in 2000, when they studied their scientific exit polls and confidently proclaimed Al Gore the winner.

26 Sep 21:39 | Link | Category: Politics

A couple of cool music videos

Two music vids you should watch:

The first is a video for Lacquer. It's a very cool time-lapse of a cross-country trip from LA to NYC. (I've made much shorter trips with my car's top down, and the idea of driving cross-country in a convertible is... well, I just know I wouldn't want to do that.)

The other is from C-Mon & Kypski. It's a creative video for their song "Shitty Bum" (just watch the video... it's not as bad as the title makes it sound).

26 Sep 21:25 | Link | Category: Music, Video

September 23, 2004

Today's Photography Links

23 Sep 22:33 | Link | Category: Photography

Scared to Death

Another item for the Age of Fear file:

David Ropeik, director of risk communication at Harvard University's Center for Risk Analysis, explains that We're Being Scared To Death.

23 Sep 22:20 | Link | Category: Current Events

History can offer Bush hope... unless it's all Greek to him

The LA Times published a pair of interesting articles. The first is entitled History Can Offer Bush Hope and points out that other presidents - from Madison and Truman to the celebrated Lincoln and Roosevelt - all had moments when they botched a war or its aftermath.

Barbara Garson counters with lessons in history from Athens.

Garson's makes more of an impact and resounds better, but both articles offer interesting points.

23 Sep 22:13 | Link | Category: Politics

September 21, 2004

Today's Photography Links

21 Sep 22:23 | Link | Category: Photography

Amazing airplane landing

The other day I had to fly to Phoenix to pick up a car for my dad and drive it back. (The beauty of the situation is that I was just there last month... in fact, I've had the opportunity to "enjoy" the 13 hour drive between here and there three times in the last month. Ay ay ay.)

The weather made the plane ride a bumpy one. Then the Phoenix airport was shut down for a while, so we circled in and out of thunderclouds waiting in turbulence for clearance to land. We finally got clearance, and the landing was... well, a bit sketchy. I've been through much worse, but it was enough that the rest of the passengers gasped and then clapped when they realized everything was fine. I overheard several on their cell phones describing the terror to spouses and family. (I suggest they try flying an overloaded Cessna through thunderstorms over Tanzania with a very inexperienced - and visibly nervous - pilot.)

However, I'm quite sure it was a lot better than this amazing landing.

21 Sep 22:08 | Link | Category: Misc. Tidbits, Travel, Video

You Know You're From... When...

You've probably gotten e-mails with a bunch of little inside jokes about your state. Now there's a collection of them. I wasn't going to post this, but I thought the first fifteen or twenty entries of mine were pretty funny.

21 Sep 21:03 | Link | Category: Humor

Larry David addresses the Undecideds

Fans of Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm will enjoy an Op-Ed he wrote for the New York Times: Are You Undecided? Or Not?

21 Sep 20:56 | Link | Category: Politics

Amazon's Election 2004 Interviews

Amazon has posted "interviews" (more like interview snippets) with... what shall I call them... celebrity pundits. They offer brief comments on the election and suggest books for reading. Most of them are pretty inane and demagogic (yes, that's a word - I looked it up!), particularly Ann Coulter's, in which she states a Kerry administration would mean "the destruction of the republic" and chooses the Bible and four of her own books for her list of suggested reading). Of the nine interviews, only Gore Vidal's, Jon Stewart's, and Bob Woodward's are worth reading.

Stewart's is particularly witty and entertaining... actually, it's the reason I wasted time posting this entry in the first place.

21 Sep 20:51 | Link | Category: Politics

September 20, 2004

Goodbye Romania

Interesting idea:
"Warning - by visiting this site you will destroy it. Each visit will remove one pixel from these photographs. However, we will tell you a story. It's a story about Romania, which is to say, it's a story about change."

20 Sep 21:24 | Link | Category: Art & Entertainment

One Hundred Albums You Should Remove from Your Collection Immediately

The folks at jaguaro.org put together a list of CDs you should remove from your collection immediately. They "sincerely want to help excise the guilt of a pretentious, over-hyped, and simply bad music collection from your life." But the list isn't made up of the typical easy targets - "Nope, we chose critical darlings and must-have releases from the past and present."

I disagree with a large number of the entries, but it's still fun to read through (much like the music critic guy I linked to last year).

20 Sep 21:21 | Link | Category: Music

"Who's the flip-flopper?"

Occasionally, my grandmother saves clippings from the newspaper for me. (No one else in the family appreciates her wise point of view!) I particularly liked one she saved from the Salt Lake Tribune:

Why is Sen. John Kerry painted as a flip-flop candidate, when our current president has changed his stand on the following: the Iraq WMD investigation, the deficit, the creation of the 9-11 commission, the Saddam/al-Qaida link, North Korea, the U.N. vote on Iraq, "Mission accomplished," Ahmed Chalabi, steel tariffs, the Department of Homeland Security, campaign-finance reform, energy policy, assault weapons, abortion, science, global warming, the environment.
Please can somebody explain why it is OK for W. to alter his opinion on these issues, but when Kerry changes his opinion on issues he is a flip-flopper.

20 Sep 20:55 | Link | Category: Politics

September 14, 2004

Current Playlist

This month's installment...

This time around I'm adding slightly more explanation to the choices.

Bob Dylan - New Morning >>
I include this because it's been stuck in my head. I even had a dream where I kept hearing the guitar riff from the beginning of the song. Dylan's happy songs can be hit-and-miss, but I love this one. A perfect morning song for the good, simple times in your life. "Can't you feel that sun a-shinin'? / So happy just to be alive / Underneath the sky of blue"
John Lennon - Cleanup Time >>
A stupidly catchy song. If I had kids, I'd subject them to this at bath time (with its fairy tale references and Lennon muttering about bubbles as it starts), but I think they'd enjoy the catchy tune and the horn section, so we'd all be happy.
B.B. King - Chains And Things >>
My latest favorite from B.B. King's fine blues-rock album Indianola Mississippi Seeds. An excellent song I can't get enough of.
Mojave 3 - When You're Drifting >>
Neil Halstead's songs tend to be mopey, but in a desolate, sweepingly grand way I love. The lyrics come straight from moments in my life.
Belle & Sebastian - State I Am In >>
A beautiful pop song with clever lyrics
The Promise Ring - Best Looking Boys >>
This song has been stuck in my head for a month or two.
The Promise Ring - A Picture Postcard >>
The perfect song for a rainy day coffee shop where college kiddies look up from a lit assignment to meet their two-day true love. A total throwaway song except for the perfectly simple, repetitive guitar that drives the songs between verses.
Yo La Tengo - Clunk >>
The jangly goodness of this song takes me back to my younger days when I spent autumn as king of the road in SLC. Reminds me of sweatered ones with old scuffed shoes who were the real thing. Or were they?
The Dandy Warhols - Cool Scene >>
What more does a song need than relatable lyrics and cool horns (forward to 2:23)? Almost as good as "Bohemian Like You"
The Beatles - Nowhere Man >>
A classic. (No further explanation necessary.) "Isn't he a bit like you and me?"
Bob Dylan - Three Angels >>
"The wildest cat from Montana passes by in a flash / Then a lady in bright orange dress"
David Byrne - Glass, Concrete & Stone >>
Beautiful. "Skin that covers me from head to toe / Except a couple tiny holes and openings / Where the city's blowin' in and out / This is what it's all about, delightfully / Everything's possible when you're an animal / Not inconceivable / How things can change, I know"
Beck - The Golden Age >>
A masterpiece of languid honeyed country twang. Drowsy powerlines sagging in the desert heat.
Daniel Lanois - JJ Leaves L.A. >>
Exquisite steel guitar makes this a haunting, lonely song.
 

14 Sep 21:22 | Link | Category: Music

The winter is coming

This morning, I had to wear a jacket to avoid being frozen while driving around. I'll take this as the final sign that summer is actually over. Fall is one of my favorite seasons, but summer never lasts long enough. And winter... winter always comes to soon and leaves too late.

Anyway, to commemorate my realization of summer's end, head over to Epitonic and grab a free copy of Elf Power's The Winter Is Coming.

(I would also suggest two old favorites, Beulah's What Will You Do When Your Suntan Fades? (lyrics) and Yo La Tengo's Autumn Sweater, but I can't find them for free.)

14 Sep 18:37 | Link | Category: Misc. Tidbits, Music

September 13, 2004

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat

I was just reading about a woman who lost the ability to dream for several months after a stroke, and it reminded me of a book I read last year. It's by Oliver Sacks (whose books are almost always fascinating) and is called The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat.

The book contains intriguing stories of people with fantastic neurological disorders: people who have lost memories (or the ability to make new memories), people who can't recognize common objects or acquiantances (or confuse the two!), people with extraordinary mathematical or artistic gifts who are otherwise unable to function in society, people whose limbs have become foreign to them, and much more.

It's an interesting look into the brain and what can go wrong with it. One example is a brief story about a medical student who took mind-altering drugs one night and had a dream he was a dog surrounded by extraordinarily rich, meaningful smells. He woke up to find that this heightened sense of smell persisted in real life. Some smells were pleasurable. Others disgusted him, but all were so compelling that he could hardly think about anything else. The symptoms disappeared after a few weeks, much to the relief of the student. But years later, as a successful physician, he still remembered "that smell-world--so vivid, so real! It was like a visit to another world, a world of pure perception, rich, alive, self-sufficient, and full...I see now what we give up in being civilized and human."

Another example, among my favorites in the book, starts with the line:

What was going on? A roar of laughter from the aphasia ward, just as the President's speech was coming on, and they had all been so eager to hear the President speaking...

It goes on to explain that aphasiacs are incapable of understanding words. To get around this disability, they focus on the parts of speech that don't include words - tone, expression, etc.

Something has gone, has been devastated, it is true - but something has come, in its stead, has been immensely enhanced, so that - at least with emotionally-laden utterance - the meaning may be fully grasped even when every word is missed.

Many of the patients, though intelligent, were incapable of understanding words, but nonetheless they understood most of what was said to them. Friends, relatives, even nurses could sometimes hardly believe some of the patients even were aphasic:

This was because, when addressed naturally, they grasped some or most of the meaning. And one does speak 'naturally', naturally. Thus, to demonstrate their aphasia, one had to go to extraordinary lengths, as a neurologist, to speak and behave un-naturally, to remove all the extraverbal cues - tone of voice, intonation, suggestive emphasis or inflection, as well as all visual cues (one's expressions, one's gestures, one's entire, largely unconscious, personal repertoire and posture): one had to remove all of this (which might involve total concealment of one's person, and total depersonalisation of one's voice, even to using a computerised voice synthesiser) in order to reduce speech to pure words, speech totally devoid of what Frege called 'tone-colour' (Klangenfarben) or 'evocation'.

All of this makes it difficult, if not impossible, to lie to an aphasiac. Which explains why the laughter at the speech on television:

Thus it was the grimaces, the histrionisms, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones and cadences of the voice, which rang false for these wordless but immensely sensitive patients. It was to these (for them) most glaring, even grotesque, incongruities and improprieties that my aphasic patients responded, undeceived and undeceivable by words. This is why they laughed at the President's speech.

It gets better. Some people have the opposite affliction: "tonal" agnosia, meaning they "lack any sense of expression and 'tone', while preserving, unchanged, their comprehension for words." Unable to tell if a voice is happy, sad, angry, etc., they have to pay extreme attention to exactness of words and word use. Such a patient also watched the speech:

It did not move her - no speech now moved her - and all that was evocative, genuine or false completely passed her by. Deprived of emotional reaction, was she then (like the rest of us) transported or taken in? By no means. 'He is not cogent,' she said. 'He does not speak good prose. His word-use is improper. Either he is brain- damaged, or he has something to conceal.' Thus the President's speech did not work for Emily D. either, due to her enhanced sense of formal language use, propriety as prose, any more than it worked for our aphasiacs, with their word-deafness but enhanced sense of tone.

Here then was the paradox of the President's speech. We normals - aided, doubtless, by our wish to be fooled, were indeed well and truly fooled ('Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur'). And so cunningly was deceptive word-use combined with deceptive tone, that only the brain-damaged remained intact, undeceived.

You can read the entire selection here. Many other interesting stories and observations can be found in Dr. Sacks's book.

13 Sep 12:00 | Link | Category: Human/Primate Evolution & Behavior, Opinion & Thoughts

September 12, 2004

Time interviews Kerry

Time Magazine published a brief interview with John Kerry. It wasn't very interesting, but I did like the way Kerry encapsulated the Bush strategy (at the end of the interview):

I think they are trying to do everything possible to divert attention from the real issues in front of the country, and their entire strategy for six months has been distorting my record and attacking me because they don't have a record to run on.

I have to say... Mad props to the Republicans for being able to campaign so successfully when George W. Bush has such a relatively poor record. (One would think the Democrats could do a better job with their somewhat confused candidate, but so far they haven't figured it out.)

12 Sep 23:17 | Link | Category: Politics

September 10, 2004

Sail us to the Moon

Dr. Bernard Foing, the European Space Agency's chief scientist and head of Europe's Moon missions says we should have a "Noah's Ark" on the Moon, in case life on Earth is wiped out by an asteroid or nuclear holocaust. It sounds like a fine plan to me.

I do wonder if he's been listening to Radiohead, though... maybe you'll be president but know right from wrong or in the flood you'll build an ark and sail us to the moon

10 Sep 0:30 | Link | Category: Science

Apes in The Twilight Zone

I've always loved the old black & white Twilight Zone episodes. Most people are unaware that Rod Serling (creator of The Twilight Zone) was one of the writers for Planet of the Apes. So... what would Planet of the Apes be like if it were "re-imagined" as an episode of The Twilight Zone? Roger Alford used iMovie to edit the film into a three-act, 30-minute Twilight Zone episode complete with music, Rod Serling narration, and the rest. It's very well done. (My only complaint is that while we get the fine "You bloody Baboon!" line, we don't get the better "You damned dirty ape!" line.) Note: The site has exceeded bandwidth limits, but you can still download from mirrors or torrent. Catch it before Alford gets hit for copyright violation by Fox and Viacom.)

10 Sep 0:16 | Link | Category: Art & Entertainment

September 8, 2004

Today's Photography Links

A few months back, I was posting photography links from my endless bookmarks list... for whatever reason, I stopped doing it. The list is still endless, so here are a few more. I'll try to remember to post more links on occasion.

(I need to mention that I don't necessarily like everything I link to. So keep that in mind before you send me weird e-mails.)

08 Sep 1:40 | Link | Category: Photography

September 7, 2004

Fun with PhotoStamps

You've probably heard about PhotoStamps, a service that lets you use your own images on US postage stamps. I considered trying it until I figured out how much it actually ends up costing. I complain enough about $0.37. But anyway...

Since the stamps are used as legal US postage, images are censored before being accepted. The Smoking Gun decided to see what was and wasn't deemed objectionable. The results? Photos of Lee Harvey Oswald and Ted Kaczynski were naturally rejected, but oddly enough, the Rosenbergs, Linda Tripp, and Slobodan Milosevic (among others) made it through. So now those people appear on US postage. More here.

I might just consider paying way too much for stamps if I can have a little fun with the image on them.

07 Sep 23:50 | Link | Category: Misc. Tidbits

The election...

Unbelievable: Today, Cheney told voters in Iowa that "it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."

I don't even know how to comment on that, so let's move on.

BBC correspondent Tom Carver notes how well Bush and Co. play the political game:

The Republican convention was a virtuoso display of disciplined message. Every image and every speaker was carefully choreographed to reinforce in the voters' minds the idea of George Bush as a steadfast, principled, say-what-you-mean-and-mean-what-you-say kind of leader. Not a moment of doubt or hesitation. No mention of the missing weapons of mass destruction. Or the ongoing bloodshed in Iraq, a year after major hostilities were supposed to have ended.

...

In 2000, he fooled Al Gore into underestimating his talent as a politician, causing Mr Gore to overreach. This time, he has forced John Kerry to have the wrong conversation with the voters.

...

And in the absence of any detailed picture from Mr Kerry himself, Mr Bush filled in the blanks on Mr Kerry's political record sheet. He criticised Mr Kerry for a policy of "expanding government", saying that Mr Kerry wanted more than two trillion dollars in new federal spending. George Bush neatly glossed over the fact that he himself has expanded federal spending by 29% since coming to office and sent the budget plummeting into the red. The "tax and spend" attack on Mr Kerry works partly because that is what many Americans assume Democrats do, despite the fact that former President Bill Clinton successfully balanced his budget. But it also works because Mr Kerry created the opening for the Republicans to attack.

Carver's most significant note might be this:

A key difference between John Kerry and George Bush is that Mr Kerry is trying to find a coherent philosophy that fits the world. President Bush has his philosophy and is happy to let the world fit in around it.

Moving on...

John Podesta and David Sirota wrote an interesting editorial in the LA Times entitled Late, Great Middle Class.

Since his inauguration, the president has delivered more than 1,000 major addresses, news conferences and short public remarks. Yet he has uttered the phrase 'middle class' in only 34 of them. On Thursday night at the convention, he kept the pattern going — the phrase never passed his lips. Maybe it's just an oversight, but in such a highly scripted White House, is anything left to chance? Omitting references to America's most critical demographic is surely no accident — it's evidence of a tectonic shift in philosophy.

Moving on... Be sure to read Louis Menand's fascinating, if somewhat depressing, piece in the New Yorker entitled The Unpolitical Animal.

And, finally, one that had me chuckling: Historians dispute Schwarzenegger's convention comments.

07 Sep 21:31 | Link | Category: Politics

September 6, 2004

Complexity

During the occasional warm, breezy summer night, I'll stare up the sky and focus my mind on the incalculable complexity that makes up my very mundane life. I can examine every system and structure from the top to the bottom and I'm astounded and perplexed by every single one.

I'll start at what I'm calling the "top" - the complicated systems provide food, clothing, transportation, and everything else "essential" to modern life. For a boring example, stop for a second and imagine what it takes to get, say, a potato to your plate. The potato has to grow and be harvested. It has to be transported to a store. You have to make your way to the store where you purchase the potato, take it home, and cook it. Later you'll eat it with nary a thought. Considering the nearly infinite number of systems involved, it's almost a shame you don't give it a thought. The potato needs sun, soil, water (each of which could occupy pages of thought). Then there are people and machines whose job is to plant, nurture, and harvest the potato (and everything involved in that farming operation from fertilizer to machines which are all connected in their own infinite systems). Then transportation - trains, trucks, truckers, fuel (again connected to endless complex systems). Then the store and its employees. Then you and your transportation to the store, the money you use to buy the potato... I could really go on forever. Give me any simple act that goes on during the day and I can describe to you a tree of practically endless complexity.

The following passage from a book by Douglas Coupland (who invariably becomes my favorite author of the month every time I read one of his books) is actually what triggered me to write about my recurrent "oh my god, the fucking complexity of my humdrum life" thoughts. He is, of course, much more poetic than I.

I am aware that there is a world out there that functions without regard to me. There are wars and budgets and bombings and vast dimensions of wealth and greed and ambition and corruption. And yet I don't feel a part of that world, and I wouldn't know how to join it if I tried. I live in a condo in a remote suburb of a remote city. It rains a lot here. I need groceries and I go to the shopping center. Sometimes they'll be rebuilding a road and putting those bright blue plastic pipes down in holds; there'll be various grades of gravel in conical piles, and I almost short-circuit when I think of all the systems that are in place to keep that world moving. Where does all the gravel come from? Where do they make blue plastic pipes? Who dug the holes? How did it reach the point where everyone agreed to be doing this? Airports almost make me speechless, what with all of these people in little jumpsuits eagerly bopping about doing some highly qualified task. I don't know how the world works, only that it seems to do so, and I leave it at that.

The strangest thing about the complexity is its endlessness and complete interconnectedness. A man listening to music while sitting in a chair is mindbogglingly complex. From the air he's breathing (what makes up the air and how did the constituent elements come to be?) to the clothes he's wearing to the music he's hearing (what cultural and creative phenomena collided to produce the music, what intellectual and industrial systems came together to produce the appartus he's listening to, etc.). The man himself is overwhelmingly complex. I need only mention the workings of the ears and brain and the body that keep this man alive... from the most basic metabolic and cellular processes to the systems that make him a single cohesive conscious being. Hell, the man's not even sitting motionless in a chair - the truth is he's moving with the earth's surface as it rotates. The earth is moving around the Sun which in turn is moving through the galaxy which is moving through the universe - so the "motionless" man is actually on a fery fast and very complicated path through the universe dictated by the laws of physics.

As I said earlier, you can move in a tree back. Take your drive to work. Take one element, your automobile. Then take one element of that, the metal. You can trace it back through mining and the location of metals in the planet's crust and the formation of the planet and the chemical properties of metals themselves. If you looked at the fuel in your car rather than the metal, you can trace that back to tankers and refineries and oil rigs, then eventually back to prehistoric life and the chemical properties of fossil fuels and carbon.

Each element along the way has a tree back from it... then you realize everything is connected it's just an enormous web of complexity that somehow works.

If you follow each line of complexity down to its lowest level, you tend to end up at the basic laws of chemistry and physics in the universe... laws we have yet to fully understand (and might never unless we keep ourselves around for a while). If this underlying order to the infinite complexity of the universe is what you would like to call God, then perhaps it makes sense to say God is Everything. I could take my thoughts on a variety of tangents - grand unified theory, fractals, basic philosophy, abstract theology, economics, metaphysics, chaos thoery, etc.

Anyway, my real intention when I started writing was simply to illustrate the fact that your boring life is actually infinitely complicated. I apologize for getting a bit carried away (it's slightly disturbing that I don't have to be under the influence of any kind of substance to have these kinds of quasi-intellectual "thoughts") and I return you to the regularly scheduled programming.

06 Sep 12:00 | Link | Category: Opinion & Thoughts

September 2, 2004

Of college campuses and 'vote machines'

"College campuses are stirring back to life, and Eric Hoplin's vote machine is ready to spring into action. Hoplin, chairman of the College Republican National Committee, has 120,000 members, 60 field staffers and a multimillion-dollar budget directed at turning out 125,000 or more young voters for President Bush in battleground states."

It's pretty sad when college campuses, of all places, are simply targets of multimillion-dollar marketing machines for voter headcounts. Shouldn't colleges should be starting-points for political ideas, or at least hotbeds of thoughtful debate? Or are those now very aniquated, passé notions?

02 Sep 0:03 | Link | Category: Current Events

September 1, 2004

Four more years? Are you serious??

Every four years, it annoys me that I tend to ignore all politics but presidential, treating the president as if he acts alone and is our one sovereign leader - as if the other branches of the federal government, not to even mention our state and local governments, are unimportant. That's something to analyze later. For now I'll continue with my rant.

My honest belief is that George W. Bush has been a remarkably and consistently poor president - easily poor enough not to merit re-election. It's increasingly difficult for me to understand why such a large proportion of the populace would keep him and his administration around for another four years.

A sampling of what I see:

I see a war conceived (ill-conceived) by hawks with a dangerous worldview and lack of understanding of the reality of the Middle East. I see soldiers and reservists taken away from families for long periods to act as police. I see irresponsible tax cuts, heavy borrowing, and undisciplined spending. (Yes, Republicans had control of the house, senate and presidency and greatly increased spending - you figure it out... I haven't.). These measures seem to have been an attempt to use the already discredited trickle-down theory to boost the economy (though it does work for the wealthy). I see a president who lost the popular vote supporting social policies from the most extreme factions of his party. I see disinterest (at best) or contempt (at worst) for environmental policies and scientific research. I see a ban on federal money for research using new lines of stem cells and a ban on federal money for overseas organizations providing abortion information. I see protectionism in the handling of steel tariffs (this from a claimed champion of free trade). I see 1.3 million more Americans sliding into poverty last year.

I could elaborate for a very long time, but the point is this: I can't find any evidence to indicate that the George W. Bush administration is not a failure. Yet for some strange reason hordes of people are still willing to vote for Bush. What is it that makes people look past the failures? Is it all just image? Some bullshit ideological 'doctrine' that sounds pretty on paper? Is it the way George makes a decision and sticks to it even if he's completely wrong?

I just completely fail to understand the appeal of this presidency. It baffles me.

Krauthammer offers his "case for Bush" but as usual I just don't follow his reasoning.  Kinsley's case against him makes more sense.

Okay. I think I'm finished with the political ranting... for a while at least.

01 Sep 12:00 | Link | Category: Opinion & Thoughts, Politics