Greg Oden: Licking the Boots of Power

So the story is that Greg Oden (the #1 selection in last year's NBA draft who is sitting out this year due to injury) had a brief conversation with Obama that didn't touch on politics, and like a day later, Oden decides to officially endorse Obama. All I hear is how great this is, and that it will inspire young people to vote.

I say the whole episode shows how bankrupt the entire system is. The kid basically admits he knows nothing about politics, but all these media freak celebrate that he's nonetheless willing to jump in blindly. Hooray for mindless conformity! Hooray for directionless participation in a farcical system designed to provide the illusion of democracy! But what else are the media freaks going to say? They're a key part of the system; they wouldn't be in the positions they're in if they didn't think this way.

I feel kind of bad picking on Oden. He only had this mass audience because he's good at a silly game that everyone loves (myself included). That he doesn't know more about politics isn't really his fault. The true nature of the system is carefully obscured from people who aren't trying very hard to figure it out. And now that he poked his head out and received lavish praise for licking the boots of power, he'll probably only do more and better licking. That's what is rewarded.

books updates

Well I haven't nearly gotten through all 12.

I finished:

Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies
Though I didn't read all the appendices. I'll probably go back and read them at some point, since I can't get enough Chomsky.

1984 (Signet Classics)
Can't believe I hadn't read this sooner, though it probably wouldn't have meant as much to me.

God Is Not Great
Pretty good, and an enjoyable read.

What We Say Goes: Conversations on U.S. Power in a Changing World
This is a collection of interviews from the last couple years, so it hits a variety of topics but not in great depth. His writing style can take getting used to, but the conversational nature makes this one of the more accessible Chomsky books I've read. Or maybe I'm just more open to his ideas now so they are easier to process.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
Very good stuff here, though I'd recommend Pollan's last book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, more highly. I enjoyed especially a discussion of the cultural evolution aspect of traditional cuisine.

Hope for the Flowers
Also wasn't on the original list, but it only takes 30 minutes to read. Kind of a children's picture book for adults, or something like that. My sister loved it, and gave Kira a copy. Good for inspiration when you need that.


Still haven't finished:

Teaching As a Subversive Activity
Just not moves to read this. Maybe when I start teaching?

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
Hard for me to fret about the tactical blunders of an invasion that was so wrong to begin with. Might never finish this.

The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
I was way off in my initial assessment that I was halfway through this. I was no more than a quarter of the way in. Now I'm probably 2/3 finished. Reading this is kind of like watching a good nature documentary on PBS. I learned that axolotls are awesome.

Unexceptional: America's Empire in the Persian Gulf, 1941-2007
Similar probably as Fiasco. I have a general familiarity with the material and I'm not sure that digging into these details this way is important to me right now.

The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
This wasn't on the original list, but I decided to reread this book before my grad school interviews. It has been about 3 years since I read it first, and I've had some pretty significant intellectual growth since then, so I wanted to reprocess the information from my new perspective. I'm most of the way through it now, and I think I am indeed seeing it in a new way. I'll leave it at that for now, except to say that this is a great book that was crucial to the development of my thinking.


Still haven't started:

In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines

Les Misérables (Signet Classics)

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress


Considering in the near future:

Interventions (City Lights Open Media)
More Chomsky.

Catch-22
Another classic I've never read that seems appropriate for me.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
I plan to reread this, like The Moral Animal.

Plus I picked up these last four at a discount book store in Columbus. I don't know how good they're supposed to be, but they were like $5 each and cover subjects of interest to me.

Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human

The Survival Game : How Game Theory Explains the Biology of Cooperation and Competition

Margaret Mead and the Heretic: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth

The Octopus and the Orangutan: More True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity

killing women so as to pretend to save babies

I recommend this typically excellent piece from Chris Floyd. Some highlights:

The defining issue of modernity is control of women's fertility. It is this question – more than religion, politics, economics or the "clash of civilizations" – that forms the deepest dividing line in the world today. It is a line than cuts through every nation, every people, from the highest level of organized society down to, in many cases, the divided minds and emotions of individual men and women.

Control of fertility – and its active principle, sexuality – has always been an organizing principle of human society, of course, but modernity has presented the world with a revolutionary concept that overthrows millennia of received wisdom and tradition: namely, that an individual woman should control her own fertility. This notion destabilizes state structures and religious dogmas, and uproots cultural mores whose origins reach back to prehistoric times. It is a profoundly disturbing development in the life of humankind.

I don't know if I'd call control of female fertility "the defining issue of modernity" though I suppose it has a strong case. And advances in birth control and abortion technologies have certainly brought much controversy, and much tragedy as power centers seek to control the use of these technologies:

Chillingly, as the Lancet paper shows, there is no relationship between the legality and the incidence of abortion. Women with no access to contraceptives will try to terminate unwanted pregnancies. A World Health Organisation report shows that almost half the world's abortions are unauthorised and unsafe. In East Africa and Latin America, where religious conservatives ensure that terminations remain illegal, they account for almost all abortions. Methods include drinking turpentine or bleach, shoving sticks or coathangers into the uterus, and pummelling the abdomen, which often causes the uterus to burst, killing the patient. The WHO estimates that between 65,000 and 70,000 women die as a result of illegal abortions every year, while 5 million suffer severe complications. These effects, the organisation says, "are the visible consequences of restrictive legal codes".

Using state power to ban abortion doesn't save fetuses, it kills women.

Floyd also discusses the role of religion in this whole mess. Suprise: there are more abortions where there's more religion.

The Unified Theory of Bullshit

What organization rakes in the cash by exploiting the poor and making extravagant claims that never come true? What business is built entirely on mass marketing and dishonest advertising, and yet is never called into account for its failure? It isn't the tobacco companies or the makers of penis enlargement drugs — it's religion.
- PZ

And the government.

Ricky Gervais on atheism

Ricky Gervais is the comic mastermind behind The Office (the BBC comedy on which the NBC sitcom is based) and the HBO comedy Extras. Here's his story about becoming an atheist. I'd highlight the same 2 paragraphs as PZ:

Wow. No God. If Mum had lied to me about God, had she also lied to me about Santa? yes, but who cares? The gifts kept coming. And so did the gifts of my newfound atheism. The gifts of truth, science, nature. The real beauty of this world. Not a world by design, but one by chance. I learned of evolution—a theory so simple and obvious that only England's greatest genius could have come up with it. Evolution of plants, animals, and us—with imagination, free will, love and humor. I no longer needed a reason for my existence, just a reason to live. And imagination, free will, love, humor, fun, music, sports, beer, and pizza are all good enough reasons for living.

But living an honest life—for that you need the truth. That's the other thing I learned that day, that the truth, however shocking or uncomfortable, in the end leads to liberation and dignity.

all Chomsky, all the time

One of my favorite blogs, Tom Dispatch, is currently featuring a guest post by Noam Chomsky. Who is on the world's most wanted terrorist list? Read it for Chomsky's take.

now: Horus

So we wanted to give him a badass Japanese name like Lord Katsumoto or Hattori Hanzo, but we'd been calling him "Horace" for so long that we were finding it difficult to call him anything else, even a name like Wallace that sounded similar. We solved that problem when we discovered Horus, the Egyptian sky or sun god. If any feline ever looked like the sun, it is this guy. And it has been pointed out that Horus was a pagan archetype for Jesus, with numerous similar life events. So we're set with that name now.

He's been making lots of progress lately. He's spending more and more time out from his hiding places (see picture), letting us come a bit closer before he gets scared, playing with toys, eating treats from our hands, and letting us rub his neck and back while he eats. He still runs away though if you make a sudden movement, or loom near him, or make a loud noise. In a few more weeks maybe he'll be napping on my lap.

We haven't seen any more strays near our house since we brought Horus in. We see lots of them all around town though, so I'm guessing that maybe when the weather warms up they'll start to expand into new territory.

no more inertia?

I have a new post over at inertia anonymous. It begins:

I don't think I have an inertia problem any more. Looking back, I'm not sure I ever did.

Anarchy and human nature

Noam Chomsky had this dialog in a 1976 interview with the BBC's Peter Jay. (You can listen to the entire interview on YouTube. The question begins around 7:38 of the clip below, which is part 5 of the 5 part series.)

QUESTION: How far does the success of libertarian socialism or anarchism really depend on a fundamental change in the nature of man, both in his motivation, his altruism, and also in his knowledge and sophistication?

CHOMSKY: I think it not only depends on it but in fact the whole purpose of libertarian socialism is that it will contribute to it. It will contribute to a spiritual transformation -- precisely that kind of great transformation in the way humans conceive of themselves and their ability to act, to decide, to create, to produce, to enquire -- precisely that spiritual transformation that social thinkers from the left-Marxist traditions, from Luxembourg, say, through anarcho-syndicalists, have always emphasized. So, on the one hand, it requires that spiritual transformation. On the other hand, its purpose is to create institutions which will contribute to that transformation in the nature of work, the nature of creative activity, simply in social bonds among people, and through this interaction of creating institutions which permit new aspects of human nature to flourish. And then the building of still more libertarian institutions to which these liberated human beings can contribute. This is the evolution of socialism as I understand it.

Jay asks about three characteristic of humanity: knowledge, sophistication, and "the nature of man." His interest in the latter is specific to the nature of man's motivation and altruism. The question is whether Chomsky's preferred social structure, anarcho-syndicalism, would require changes in those three characteristics to be successful.

I agree with Chomsky that a change in man's knowledge and sophistication would both be needed for and brought about by the success of such social system, but I disagree with his inclusion of human nature in this list. Now I can't object too strongly to his full response, because his elaboration is entirely about the social environment, and I certainly agree that humans will behave differently as social structures change. He glossed over the human nature part and talked about a "spiritual transformation" which would be a social/cultural characteristic.

I'd like to comment a bit more on my understanding of human nature, because I think it is a useful elaboration on Chomsky's point.

What motivates our behaviors is somewhat programmed by our genes, and somewhat influenced by our environment. Roughly speaking, our genes program us to seek out certain kinds of resources and avoid certain kinds of dangers, and our social environment provides information about those resources and dangers. The way we pursue and evade is also influenced by biology and environment. That is human nature: somewhat hard-wired and somewhat plastic.

Human nature won't and can't change over the course of a few decades or centuries; biology doesn't work that way. But social conditions can change that quickly, and the behavior of humans within the new systems can be different. Those humans will have the same underlying (not necessarily conscious - see next paragraph) motivations and the same nature, but might for example demonstrate more altruism or sophistication, both of which are just behavioral strategies for pursuing resources and avoiding dangers. Victorian England, for example, was a culture that rewarded refinement and sophistication, rewards that could lead to access to various resources. Football locker rooms reward a rather different set of behaviors, but the same human nature and the same motivation to pursue the resources would underlie the different behaviors.

As noted above, motivations don't have to be conscious, which I think is the key for understanding altruism. You need not stop and think "saving this drowning stranger could earn me rewards" in order to act altruistically; an immediate and deep feeling that it is right thing to do is enough to encourage you to act. That feeling is shaped by genes and by environment. Genes likely provide for some amount of plasticity, meaning that as you collect information about your environment and what kinds of behaviors are rewarded, your feeling about what kinds of behaviors are "right" could be variable.

If Chomsky is right that anarcho-syndicalism would provide a preferable life for the vast majority of people, why don't we already have it? Well, that's part of the reason that more knowledge and sophistication would be required for the success of that structure. The vast majority of people lack the knowledge of the flaws in the current social structure, partially because the powerful act to prevent this in selfish service of their own interests. People have been convinced that working within the existing system is in their best interests, and without knowledge to the contrary, change is unlikely. Presumably the same forces that have led to the current social structure would still be at work in the proposed structure (meaning the boundless greed of the powerful), and so continual refreshing of knowledge would indeed be necessary in order for anarcho-syndicalism to succeed. The knowledge to recognize the self-interest of behaving in a more altruistic fashion might be a specific kind of knowledge required to foster the spirit of altruism (which by the way is the sense in which Chomsky referred to a "spiritual transformation," as opposed to a religious sense of the term).

But that doesn't represent a change in human nature, just a change in social conditions that allow non-altruistic behaviors to thrive. Knowledge is a resource, environmental information on which people can base decisions. Sophistication is a behavioral strategy in regards to the application of knowledge, altruism a behavioral strategy in response to certain kinds of knowledge, or in response to a less conscious evaluation of the social environment. A system of anarcho-syndicalism would rely on a certain amount of knowledge, sophistication, and altruism, and also serve to encourage more of each. Human nature would not need to change for such a system to be successful; we're already well equipped with the right kind of motivation to respond with altruism and sophistication to an environment that rewards those behaviors.

I think what Chomsky discussed wasn't really human "nature," but how human nature would actually manifest itself under certain conditions. Many manifestations are compatible with human nature, at least in the short run, but the question is which manifestation is preferable and why. Chomsky prefers anarcho-syndicalism because he believes it will "provide the framework for intellectual development, the growth of moral consciousness, cultural achievement, and participation in a free community." I tend to agree with that assessment, as well the idea he has expressed elsewhere that the survival of humanity may well depend on this kind of change.

waiting to hear

So my grad school applications are out there, under review. And so now I'm just waiting to hear.

My recent visit to McMaster was very good, and I'm hoping they'll offer me admission. I think I've got a good chance there. I haven't heard back from any other schools, and every passing day makes it seem less likely that I will, but maybe that's just pessimism.

It is kind of frustrating though just to be sitting here waiting for the next big step of my life. I used to love having no obligations and lots of freedom, but now I'm getting bored with it, and I'm genuinely excited at the prospect of going back to school. I like having all this time to read, but I want to interact with a bunch of smart people and learn under the guidance of someone with lots of experience. But mainly I'd just like to know what's next and feel like I'm moving towards it.

waiting... waiting... waiting...

bush, terror, saudis, mommy, etc

A popular right-wing response to various accusations against the Bush regime is that whatever "questionable" or "unpopular" (read: illegal and immoral) actions they may have taken (read:did), they were certainly doing them to Protect America From Harm. This idea is very much an article of faith among people like my family: comforting and totally wrong. That should be obvious (even Bush's own analysts concluded that the Iraq invasion increased the threat of terrorism) but reality isn't something these types are good at seeing.

Nevertheless, after noticing this little nugget, I decided to send along some information to the folks. A painfully distorted justification is the only engaged response I'm likely to receive, but I can always hope...

Here's the message:

It is well documented that the Bush family, including both Presidents (and Dick Cheney) are very close personal friends with Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, going so far as to nickname him "Bandar Bush." Previously secret documents recently revealed in British courts show that the Bandar had threatened to make it harder for British officials to prevent terrorism unless they ended a corruption investigation into massive secret payments to Saudi royals by British aerospace company BAE, which promptly scuttled the investigation.

Recap: the President's close personal friend basically threatened to kill random civilians if the British government even thought about trying to stop the dirty money and weapons flowing to him and his associates.

This is of course just one small episode of corruption and disregard for human life from the Saudi royal family, whose deep personal and business ties to the Bush family has lasted decades. Put aside for a minute that the job of a President is to protect and defend the Constitution, not the nation. Does a man committed to doing everything he can to protect America cuddle up to a guy like Bandar Bush?

I just noticed that I used the words "scuttle" and "cuddle," which kind of rhyme. So I got that going for me.

ha more Kristol

Speaking of Bill Kristol's epic performance, A Tiny Revolution has an excellent three part feature on it.

11111
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Why do they hate us????!

So many are just utterly incapable of understanding that some people have legitimate objections to the actions of the US Government, which then motivate the aggrieved to illegitimate actions. A Tiny Revolution highlights a perfect example. I'd describe it as hilarious but the fact that it is really fucking serious would make me feel bad about laughing. I need a word for that situation, because I'd use it a lot.

edit - I should note that Israel is involved in the linked case, but they're a US client state so they can be lumped in for these purposes. Also, racism or some other form of bigotry that allows us to think of some groups as subhuman contributes to this and other cases.

Laws don't apply here, that's why we're the best

Greenwald today sums up just how pathetic things are here in Obama's "last, best hope of Earth."

The president and numerous government officers have been accused, with overwhelming evidence in support, of illegally spying on their own citizens. Congress responds by passing laws to make more spying legal, and retroactively immunize the lawbreakers. The Supreme Court refuses to hear the case, despite the ruling of two lower-court judges that the spying was illegal.

A war-mongering supreme leader, his cronies in supposedly coequal branches of government, and his corporate conspirators have announced that the rule of law does not apply to them. Despite public outcry, nothing has or will ever happen to seriously investigate their crimes. They are untouchable and unaccountable.

If this shit happened in Russia or China, all the conservative blow-hards and liberal enablers would be denouncing it at the top of their lungs. But applying the same standard to America that we apply to the rest of the world is unthinkable.

The epic depravity of Bill Kristol

I've mentioned before my disdain for Bill Kristol, though I really can't summon up strong enough words to fully express my opinion of the man. He's the sniveling, scoffing, sneering face of the cancer eating away at the world, wrong about everything as he licks the boots of power, endlessly rewarded by the pathetic corporate media who amplify his combination of astonishing ignorance and blatant lies. TomDispatch has a good piece up about one of Kristol's most epic performances.

tell me

What would happen if, upon my attempted reentry to the good ol' Yew-Ess of Ay, I refused the border Nazi's demand to open my trunk for his random inspection? I genuinely have no idea. As a citizen do I have rights in this situation? What would happen if I just asked him if I'm allowed to refuse? I assume I'd then be subject to an anal cavity search, as punishment for my insolence.

Anyway, more on the trip later. Generally, it was good. Very, very good.

gone til Monday

to Canada!

Why? Why? Be more constructive with your feedback!

I've repeatedly heard from my family that part of what makes Hillary Clinton so terrifying is that she's a socialist.

A SOCIALIST!!

Now I agree that Hillary Clinton is terrifying, though really no more so than any of the other sociopaths contending for the most powerful job in the history of humanity, but I'd never identify a desire for wealth and production to be distributed more in line with popular interests as her most glaring flaw. In fact I have a hard time attributing that characteristic to her at all. I can't imagine that an objective assessment of her positions and voting history, compared to that of any of the other presidential contenders, or compared to just the Democratic field, or hell even just to Obama, would find her to be the most socialist. And I can't imagine any meaningful reason to label her candidacy as a socialist one, overall. She's conservative on economic issues, hawkish on foreign policy, and authoritarian on domestic policy, though slightly less so than the ultra-lunatic incumbents. In the parlance of our time...

SOCIALIST!!

So, evil she-devil aside, what is so overwhelmingly wrong with socialism anyway? They never have a good answer to that question though that doesn't slow them down. They end up muttering something about how all the people from socialist countries are trying to move here for our medicine. (Huh?) Or how socialism basically just makes the whole government a huge corporation that inevitably collapses. (Isn't that what is happening here?) Their heads are full of nonsensical cartoons of history and political theory, but they know that sure as the sweet baby Jesus was born of a virgin, socialism is really fucking bad.

How did this instantaneous and intense negative association come to be? Noam Chomsky explains:

One notable doctrine of Soviet propaganda is that the elimination by Lenin and Trotsky of any vestige of control over production by producers and of popular involvement in determining social policy constitutes a triumph of socialism. The purpose of this exercise in Newspeak is to exploit the moral appeal of the ideals that were being successfully demolished. Western propaganda leaped to the same opportunity, identifying the dismantling of socialist forms as the establishment of socialism, so as to undermine left-libertarian ideals by associating them with the practices of the grim Red bureaucracy. To this day, both systems of propaganda adopt the terminology, for their different purposes. When both major world systems of propaganda are in accord, it is unusually difficult for the individual to escape their tentacles. The blow to freedom and democracy throughout the world has been immense.

Government says online poker is a national security matter

Seriously, how pathetic can our government get?

Americans, according to this administration, have no right to know how many billions of our tax dollars they've spent with no legislative authorization whatsoever in order to buy the cooperation of other nations and allow them to continue to violate the rights of American adults by preventing them from gambling in the privacy of their own home.

The new guy

Horace got a clean bill of health from the vet, and so at least for now he's living with us. He spent the first few days closed off in our spare bedroom, but we introduced him to the other cats and they all get along so the whole house is open now. I haven't captured it on camera yet, but he does this very cute submissive routine with them where he rolls onto his back and reaches out to them with his front paws.

He is still quite afraid of people, running away in terror if we come near him, but he seems to forget his fear at meal times so we think he's making progress. His body language is slowly becoming more confident and while he spends almost all of his time hiding, he's spending more time in the hiding spots closer to people. When he was confined, we were able to scratch his head and neck a bit, but now that he has open space, he just runs away if we reach towards him, so we've stopped trying to initiate contact. We figure he'll see the other boys enjoying it and eventually come give it a try.

Now that he's part of the family, we've considered changing his name. "Horace" sounds too much like "Hattori" and isn't even a Japanese character from a movie. The problem is that we've been calling him Horace ever since we first saw him running around outside back in August, so it is really hard to change direction. We tried switching to "Wallace," figuring it would be easier to switch to a name that sounded similar to what we've been calling him, and that it could be a tribute to Alfred Wallace. (Or Rasheed.) But the best I've been able to do is call him "Horace Wallace" which is unbearable.

In summary, he meows when he uses the litter box, which is convenient as an early warning stink alarm.

on the fine tradition of virgins having babies

I recently read Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great and particularly enjoyed this passage, in response to a gospel account of how Mary "was found with child of the Holy Ghost."

Yes, and the Greek demigod Perseus was born when the god Jupiter visited the virgin Danae as a shower of gold and got her with child. The god Buddha was born through an opening in his mother's flank. Catlicus the serpent-skirted caught a little ball of feathers from the sky and hid it in her bosom, and the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli was thus conceived. The virgin Nana took a pomegranate from the tree watered by the blood of the slain Agdestris, and laid it in her bosom, and gave birth to the god Attis. The virgin daughter of a Mongol king awoke one night and found herself bathed in a great light, which caused her to give birth to Genghis Khan. Krishna was born of the virgin Devaka. Horus was born of the the virgin Isis. Mercury was born of the virgin Maia. Romulus was born of the virgin Rhea Silvia. For some reason, many religions force themselves to think of the birth canal as a one-way street.

I sometimes wonder how many people who claim to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin genuinely believe that 2,000 years ago an actual human being was born whose conception didn't involve human sperm. The notion is obviously preposterous, and even the most devout Christians must have a hard time hiding behind "the mystery of faith" as their cheap cover. If those people were then exposed to the stories of all these other mythological asexual reproductive events, wouldn't that make it even harder for them not to see their beloved miraculous conception as a silly fairy tale like all the others? Knowledge is the enemy of faith.

[I couldn't resist including the last line of the quote. It would be an excellent introduction to a discussion of control over female sexuality, a topic I might revisit in another post.]

Infinite Hypocrisy

Just consider the consequences if the privileged and powerful were willing to entertain for a moment the principle of universality.

So begins what I think is the first Noam Chomsky passage I ever highlighted in one of his books, the first of many. Elsewhere he's called the principle of universality a "moral truism that should not provoke controversy," defining it as "We should apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to others - in fact, more stringent ones." In Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, he continues [emphasis in original]:

If the United States has the right of "anticipatory self-defense" against terror, or against those it thinks might attack first, then, a fortiori, Cuba, Nicaragua, and a host of others have long been entitled to carry out terrorist acts within the United States because of its involvement in very serious attacks against them, often uncontroversial. Surely Iran would also be entitled to do so in the face of serious threats that are openly advertised. Such conclusions are, of course, utterly outrageous, and advocated by no one.

He goes on to highlight two other historical instances where by "US and UK standards," attacks commonly regarded as atrocities should be seen as "legitimate anticipatory self defense." The Taliban and Osama bin Laden had reason to believe the US was planning military action against them, making the 9/11/2001 attacks " a pre-emptive strike in response to what he saw as US threats."

An even stronger case is the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines in World War 2, preceded by well publicized US plans to (as expressed by an air force general) "burn out the industrial heart of the Empire with fire-bomb attacks on the teeming bamboo ant heaps of Honshu and Kyushu," and slaughter civilians.

All of this provides far more powerful justification for anticipatory self-defense than anything conjured up by Bush, Blair, and their associates. There is no need to spell out what would plainly be implied, if elementary moral principles could be entertained.

Indeed.

My personal statement for grad school applications

Here are the opening sections of the personal statement I attached with my graduate school applications. Below this would be a customized paragraph expressing interest in the work of specific faculty members at each school, and sections about my academic, research, and other experiences.

In this personal statement I essentially want to summarize where I am and how I got here. Along the way I will discuss my research interests, career goals, and relevant experiences.


Worldview

My views include the following ideas:

• The foreign policy of the United States Government has been grossly immoral for at least 100 years. Many of its executive branch and military leaders during this time should be considered war criminals, with Congressional leaders of both parties fully complicit.
• Increasingly authoritarian domestic policies have eroded personal liberty in a multitude of ways, and are contrary to our supposed national ideals.
• The vast majority of our national dialog on these and related matters is remarkably ill-informed, predicated on false assumptions, and dominated by people with an interest in keeping it that way.
• The American lifestyle is perilously unsustainable and unhealthy. Our transportation, energy, and agricultural systems depend on unsustainable resource consumption and environmental destruction. Our economy is propped up by unsustainable debt levels. Our high-calorie diets and sedentary lifestyles are leading to deteriorating health while our healthcare system becomes increasingly unaffordable.
• Religion is a negative societal force. Its destructive consequences include the following: encouraging pride in scientific illiteracy and historical ignorance; glorifying sexist, racist, and homophobic ideas and actions; inhibiting compassion and stunting our moral reasoning abilities in favor of punishment and deference to authority.

These views are based on a great deal of reading and reflection, but each point would take far more space to adequately defend than I have available in this format. So I present them as an unsubstantiated list of my personal views, for which I believe I could argue convincingly and passionately, though I always consider myself open to intelligent counterargument.

Taking all of those views together, I find the hypocrisy, injustice, and immorality disturbing, almost indescribably so. I see understanding the thoughts and behaviors behind each of those points as a necessary contribution to fighting them, and I find myself driven to pursue this understanding.


Academic, Career, and Faculty Interests

I want to understand how individuals can hold obviously contradictory beliefs. Why do people have strong opinions on subjects about which they know almost nothing? I want to understand how each individual within a population can assume patterns of behavior that seem so obviously self-destructive to the group as a whole. How can people come to value superstition and dogma over logic and evidence? What forces drive these behaviors?

I’ve invested a lot of time and energy in trying to make sense of these things, and I’ve concluded that an academic career in psychology would be the best avenue for continuing this pursuit. I envision myself as beginning an academic career with a unifying theme of studying conditions that encourage or discourage reasonable behavior, drawing on findings from, and contributing to the body of knowledge in the fields of personality/social psychology and evolutionary psychology.

My interest in those particular fields developed because they’ve offered the most compelling insights for me as I’ve explored those questions. The classic social science experiments – Milgram, Stanford Prison – shed valuable light on Abu Ghraib and our national torture debate (I still can’t get over that there is any debate). I’ve found the personality research of Dr. Robert Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba, who has extensively studied authoritarianism and religious attitudes, similarly illuminating. Evolutionary Psychology offers the insight that many of the disturbing problems I listed could be united by a common theme of human confrontation with evolutionarily unprecedented situations: huge states, agriculture, powerful weaponry, hydrocarbon energy, and advanced scientific knowledge. The vast majority of the evolution of the human mind occurred in the absence of these innovations, and thrusting our stone age brains into the space age seems bound to cause trouble.

I’ve given political issues a prominent place in this essay because they arouse my passions these days, but I’ve touched on other areas as well: education, morality, health, religion, media consumption. There are a number of kinds of behavior that interest me under all of those headings. I hope to have the opportunity to explore one or more of those interests as a graduate student and beyond.

visiting grad school

When I applied to grad schools this time, I had no idea what to expect. I'm fairly confident in my ability, but wasn't sure if I'd be a good candidate on paper. I was just hoping I'd get into at least one school.

This weekend I'll be visiting McMaster University, for a prospective student weekend with the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behavior. I'm excited for the visit, and I'm optimistic that the invitation (and especially their willingness to pay for my travel and lodging) is an indication that they'll be likely offer me acceptance and funding. They're the first program I've heard back from, so now I'm imagining a scenario where I get into a few schools and have options. But that's getting ahead of myself.

McMaster's program is different than the others to which I applied, with their focus on examining human behavior from a biological perspective, which I'm calling evolutionary psychology. Faculty members Martin Daly and Margo Wilson are very prominent researchers in this field (though unfortunately for me, they're not accepting grad students). The opportunity to study and possibly collaborate with them would be quite appealing. Evolutionary Psychology seems to be rather controversial, and while I have a gut feeling that this means it is onto something, I should consider the option of focusing on a more conventional research area as a student. I doubt that would actually be a decisive factor, but I do want to try to understand more fully that element of controversy.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to meeting faculty and getting a feel for the department. I like the idea of coming into this kind of setting as an outsider, with no real psychology background. Reading through the course curriculum, I feel a genuine enthusiasm for learning about those topics. Aside from learning more about all that stuff, I'm hoping I'll get a tour of their facilities and see all the cool toys and whatnot. Meanwhile Kira will be checking out the town, investigating local housing options and potential employers for her. This will be my first visit to Canada, so that will be cool too.

This is an exciting time, and I hope that I'll find myself in a good situation next fall, whether it is McMaster or another program. If anyone has suggestions about the kinds of questions I should be asking, please let me know.

blog identity crisis... averted?

I haven't been doing much blogging lately, and I think a big reason is that I'm not really sure what this blog is supposed to be anymore. That sounds weird because I created it and I'm the only one who writes it, so it can be anything I want it to be. But I don't know what I want it to be. Maybe this has just run its course.

Who am I writing for? I have a handful of people that I know read this, and I get a few dozen random google hits every day. I have a couple of sponsors that give me a small but not insignificant revenue stream. But what I am doing here?

Blah.

Ok, so I saw this graph, and I thought it was interesting. First of all you have to understand the tool. It uses a two-dimensional political spectrum (economic issues on the x and social issues on the y) to plot the political sentiments of people or groups. You can take a test to see where you'd fit on the graph, and the creators of the site have done research to estimate where various politicians from around the world would fall.

The graph shows something I already know, that prominent US Presidential candidates represent an extremely narrow spectrum of right-wing authoritarian policy positions. Since I'm in the far bottom left, I'm completely alienated. Many of the people who criticize the current administration and its supporters are then supporting a party that is almost the exact same, with a few tiny differences (differences that admittedly in some situations can make a difference to real people - the point is that the ideology isn't very different). And then when a guy like Nader comes along, they hate him and vilify him, and totally miss the irony of it all.

Now I already understood that, but I have no idea how well anybody else understands this whole situation. Or if they care. Or if they'd be able to make sense of the graph. Or if they'd care to. I think it is a useful tool, but will anyone else? More specifically, should I put it on my blog? Why?

That's just one example and there are a hundred more. I guess whenever I have these blog identities crises I should just remember that I'm doing this for myself. I should approach it like a personal journal that I'm sharing with anyone who is interested. I should just write about the things I want to write about. I guess this means recording ideas and events that I'd want to look back on. I did that recently with my series of "grad school?" posts because I've got something going on with grad school choices (more on that in another post maybe). It was helpful. I could extend the same logic to political thoughts, and personal events (a.k.a. what's up with my cats), and whatever else.

So I guess I hereby resolve to drop the formality and the second-guessing about what my audience wants to read and I'll just write what I think makes sense to write. I'll try to label the post title very literally, to at least give you some chance to skip the boring shit.

So that means getting away from just posting a link and a line of commentary that is clearly intended to share with others. I wonder if I'll really do that.

I live among football Gods

Apparently every football every used in every Superbowl was made in that Wilson factory I jog past. Sweet.

who's #1? See For Yourself, biotch

#1

loss of diversity because of modern agribusiness

Thanks to Walt for passing it along.

chime in

I'm having an interesting discussion in the comments of this post. The author is defending a criticism that Richard Dawkins and other atheists (who I've taken to mean Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens) are "incurious" and otherwise unserious about examining religion's root causes before they dismiss it. He's also claimed that they ignore any position effects of religion. I've generally argued that the first claim is incorrect but rather irrelevant, and that the second is just wrong. Along the way I've defended evolutionary psychology and memetics against his derision.

Go see if what I've said makes sense.

Poor Horace

Horace has been in our bathroom for a week now and we're disappointed with his slow progress. He's very afraid of people, and doesn't seem to be warming up much to us. I found an excellent essay about what is involved in taming an adult feral cat, and we now realize it is going to be a lot harder than with the younger kitten we tamed in December. Cats need positive exposure to humans at a young age, otherwise they tend to be extremely distrustful of people.

He just hides in a cubby in the bathroom and generally seems miserable. He does eat the food we give him, use a litter box, and move around the bathroom when we aren't there. He'll let us rub his head sometimes, but rarely seems to enjoy it; he obviously just wants us to leave him alone. He doesn't seem to mind if we're in the room, but when we look directly at him or move near him, that's when he shrinks away or even hisses. If we try to move things around in his cubby, he panics.

We're taking him to the vet soon, which should be an ordeal. If he's healthy enough, we're going to keep him for a while and try to socialize him. We'll get him neutered and immunized and then give him some space. We'll keep hanging out where he can watch us, but stop pushing him to accept our physical contact and let him adapt at his own pace over several months. Eventually he'll meet our cats. Apparently feral cats learn a lot about how to interact with human from watching housecats, so it will be nice if we can find a safe way for that to happen.

Temperatures here have been in single digits at night and in the teens and 20s during the daytime, so I know he's better off being scared but warm and well fed in our bathroom than hungry and freezing out there.

votes, terrorists, criminals

Today I'd like to offer you three links of essential reading. All three issues are straightforward examinations and interpretations of incontestable reality, and yet all would likely be immediately dismissed as extremist hysterics by most everyone I know. People who genuinely prioritize truth and morality are rare.

1.) At Harper's, Scott Horton has Six Questions for Mark Crispin Miller. The discussion is about how election fraud, and the media's failure to report on it except derisively is an ongoing scandal that undermines our (already thin claim to) democracy. I'd note that while Republicans are overwhelmingly the perpetrators and direct beneficiaries of these dirty tricks, Democrats have done very little to oppose them. For me the most shocking example of Donkle capitulation is Al Gore's blocking the attempts of few Democrats from the House of Representatives to contest the 2000 Presidential election, and every single Senate Democrat siding with Gore.

2.) Chris Floyd discusses the bloody doings of "the most dangerous terrorist organization at work in the world since the Second World War," the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Your tax dollars pay for an unaccountable Presidential army that has "overthrown governments, sponsored wars, carried out assassinations and terrorist attacks, organized and financed death squads, kidnapped and tortured, trafficked in drugs, bribed and blackmailed, even worked with the Mafia." If America was even the least bit serious about fighting world terrorism, it would take Chalmers Johnson's advice and abolish the CIA.

3.) Winter Patriot makes the point that needs to be made every single day. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Ari Fleischer, and Scott McClellan "by any civilized standard... are obviously guilty of mass murder, war crimes, and crimes against humanity." I don't share his hope that they all be tortured to death in front of a worldwide audience of billions (life in prison in the strictest sentence my conscience can allow to even the most vile criminal, a category to which all of them clearly belong), but I do share the outrage behind the sentiment. And I also share his frustration that nothing will ever happen about it.

collaborate, learn about justice

Great post over at The Primate Diaries. He recommends Chomsky and Zinn, two authors and activists I've praised here many times, along with many other people and organizations.

He provides some links to excellent resources to learn about them. I've felt like my internet reading routine is getting kind of stagnant, so I'm looking forward to exploring these. Now that I'm grooving on anarchy, I'd been meaning to read some Emma Goldman, so I'm particularly excited to learn more about her. My wife has been talking about Che Guevara recently, so we'll have to dig into that too.

I added a comment that sustainable agriculture is a topic that fits well into the social justice discussion. Check out his list and add your own ideas in the comments!

YES!

We just got this guy to come inside and now he's chilling in the bathroom. He was really hard to get to come near us, but I think winter and loneliness have caught up to him. He's been crying at our door the last few nights. We call him Horace, after another cat we know that he reminds us of. In a few days we'll take him to the shelter (hopefully after cutting off that thing matted into his hair). Hopefully he's not sick...

YouChomsky

I've been spending time in between my reading binge watching Noam Chomsky videos on yewtewb. This man is a treasure, and the amount of free material instantly available to you is incredible. (Many are audio tracks with still pictures added.) Make an hour some time and watch this 6-part series, or any of the many shorter items available.

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Cat Rescue Updates

Kira has the story.

We were very sad to learn that "Big Boy" had contagious feline leukemia and was killed. That disease is contagious and he would have required an unrealistic level of care, so I'm reluctantly conceding that euthanasia was probably justified in his case. I really liked that guy though, and he would have made an awesome pet if someone had taken care of him before he got sick.

The good news is that 3 of the 4 other cats we've taken in have now been adopted, including the fraidy cat. The last one left is the one I thought was most likely to be adopted, the adorable little kitten. We're pretty sure that both of those guys were Big Boy's sons, so he has left quite a legacy.

so many books (so much time)

I realized today I'm in the middle of these 7 books right now:

Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies

A collection of 5 Chomsky essays. I've read one so far, and it was excellent, as he always is. The interesting thing about this volume is that it has 5 appendices of supplemental material, one for each essay, whose combined length is longer than the main text. I haven't decided if I should read each appendix as I read its corresponding chapter, or just read it all in a row.

Teaching As a Subversive Activity

Originally published in 1969, about a philosophy of teaching and criticism of the existing school structures. I've read the first chapter and found myself vigorously nodding my head in agreement.

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

I'm about a quarter of the way into this scathing critical analysis of the execution of the Iraq invasion and occupation. To an extent, I think this subject is unnecessary, since I'd contend we had no justification for invasion regardless of how ineptly things were planned and managed. But the book seems very well researched and written, and offers a great deal of information that supports my position regardless of the author's intention or views. It also provides insights into the minds of various government and military figures, which is interesting for me, given my interest in political psychology.

The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

Richard Dawkins writing about evolution is always delightful. I'm about halfway through. The book has a very cool premise: start with humans, and go back in time meeting each common ancestor along our evolutionary family tree all the way back to the origins of life. So I've met all the apes, and then monkeys, other primates, etc. He structures the book in the fashion of The Canterbury Tales. A very cool idea for a book, and very good reading.

1984 (Signet Classics)

I started this classic work of fiction a while ago, but haven't touched it for a long time because I can just read the news and get the real thing. Orwell was truly a genius.

Unexceptional: America's Empire in the Persian Gulf, 1941-2007

I met the author at a lecture and he sent me an advance copy of his book. I've read most of his concluding chapter, which he said he originally planned to read as part of the lecture (but changed his approach to fit the audience). I'm not sure if I'll end up reading the whole thing, since I feel like I already know most of the material on a basic level, and might not be especially interested in learning it in more detail.

God Is Not Great

The Christopher Hitchens polemic, subtitled "How Religion poisons everything." I read the first few pages last night because I was excited when it arrived in the mail. I anticipated it would be lighter reading for me, but I found Hitchens' style to be more dense than I expected (I've never read a book of his before). So I might pretend I never started it and move this into the next group of books.

The next group includes at least these 5 on my reading pile:

What We Say Goes: Conversations on U.S. Power in a Changing World

In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines

Les Misérables (Signet Classics)

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

I'm declaring a reading binge, to begin immediately. How long until I finish all 12? Does the end of February seem realistic?

do they say anything else?

could Dick Cheney have brain damage?

I imagine many of you have seen the old clip of Cheney from 1994:



The video above attributes Cheney's inconsistency to financial interests. Maybe.

I just started reading Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq which in passing raises another possibility. After discussing how Cheney, before the run-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, had always seemed like "a realist" who "demanded the hard facts" and was "very practical," Ricks writes "Cheney had changed... perhaps because of his heart ailments, which can alter a person's personality."

This immediately made me think of Phineas Gage, whose personality drastically changed after a railroad spike accidentally was driven through his frontal lobe. He became obstinate, abusive, and profane. Since then science has come to understand that region of the brain to be important for judgment and impulse control.

I wonder if heart attacks could cause minor frontal lobe damage? Could Dick Cheney literally have brain damage? Not to the extent of Gage's obviously, but enough to make him more aggressive, less reasonable, and more profane? This is the guy who told Senator Leahy "go fuck yourself."

This is obviously pure speculation on my part, but it struck me as odd that I'd never seen this idea anywhere else.

assortments

I jogged around the neighborhood in shorts today. In Ohio. In January.

I'm sending off my 4th and final graduate application today. I have no idea if I'll get in to any of these programs.

I haven't eaten meat in 4 days.

I haven't seen a stray cat near my house since I've been back from Maryland. They must know we're the people who disappear felines.

the story of stuff

watch, then do something

belgian beer value alert (updated)

Trader Joe's 2007 Vintage Ale is now available, which I've never had, but it is brewed by Unibroue and costs $4.99 for a 750ml bottle, which seems like a great value for anything from that brewery. I'll try it soon to let you know if you should rush out and stock up.

I'm just looking out for you.

UPDATE: Delicious. It is a dark brown Belgian-style Dubbel Ale, very spicy and sweet, and smoother than you'd expect from a 9% ABV offering. Great value for $5.

a nice church story (seriously)

This is a pretty cool story, about a preacher (with the awesome name of The Reverend Hamilton Coe Throckmorton) who did something of an experiment with his congregation, based on a biblical parable. He gave everyone $50, and asked them to use their talents double it and donate the profit to charity. They made about $40,000.

The money raised really wasn't "profit" in the business sense. While many people did produce goods and services of value, it sounds like ultimately most of the funds raised came from within the congregation, so I think of it as more a success of charity than business, not that that's a bad thing. The article emphasizes what I see as the real value of the project: bringing the community together, giving people a reason to use their talents and creativity, and providing an opportunity to enjoy life.

When I argue that religion is a bad thing for society, I am often misunderstood to be saying that nothing good comes of religion, which is definitely not my point. One of the best things that organized religion offers people is a sense of community. Charity is also commonly associated with religion, and it is possible that religious people generally are more charitable (there are some popular studies of this subject that seem inconclusive). I would argue that religion is unnecessary for either of those things, and I'd similarly argue that the success of the $50 project had little to do with religion. Helping others and enjoying community is a natural thing, and religion can be a unifying factor, but it also causes a lot of other damage.

When I argue that religion is a net negative, it is because I'm unwilling to attribute the success of Rev. Throckmorton's idea to an irrational belief in a supernatural deity who hates gay people and will condemn you to an eternity of suffering if you cross him; I attribute that success to the basic goodness of people.

"I will not pay my income tax if we go to war with Iran. I realize this is a desperate and perhaps futile gesture..."


hmmm

consume the terror

How is it possible that I've eaten the #1 most terrifying food in the world, a food more terrifying than #5, which is illegal and causes bloody diarrhea, or #4 which is a drink with dead baby mice as a featured ingredient?

I call bullshit on this list and on paulp's tumblog that led me to it.

nice

good shit

no rights for godless parents

1970

now

yay God!!

je t'accuse

Sara at Orcinus makes a good point, which is that you can learn a lot about what someone thinks by listening to what they accuse their opponents of:

When conservatives tell us that we need constant surveillance to make us secure, what they're telling us is that they themselves are prone to criminal behavior if they think nobody else is watching. The fear of exposure is the only force keeping them on the right side of the law -- and that's why it's the only form of "security" they understand. Bear this in mind if you decide to do business with them.

When they tell us that our future depends on supporting a military that's bigger than the rest of the world's fighting forces combined, what they're telling us is that they can't handle chaos, complexity, change, or being out of control. The whole world is a threat; the only solution is a bigger gun. Bear this in mind if you find yourself in conflict with them.

When they tell us diplomacy isn't an option, they're telling us that it's not an option they understand. Words, agreements, treaties, and contracts mean nothing to them. Brute force is the only option they comprehend...or are likely to respond to themselves. Bear this in mind before you negotiate with them.

When they tell us that homosexuality is a threat to American families, what they're telling us is that homosexuality is a threat to their families. As in: if they ever dared to admit their own sexual interest in other men, their wives would leave them, and take the kids. Bear this in mind when they hold themselves up as moral paragons.

When they tell us the Islamofascists are a threat to our way of life, they are quite correctly pointing out that there are fascists threatening our way of life. They're just deflecting their own intentions on to brown people far away. Bear this in mind before assuming they share your belief in constitutional democracy.

When they accuse reality-based folks of promoting "junk science," they're telling us they basically think all science is junk. Bear this in mind before attempting to present them with convincing evidence of anything.

When they tell us to support the troops, what they're really saying is: You better, because we won't. Bear this in mind when you evaluate the real costs of the war.

When they tell us the government can't be trusted, they're telling us they can't be trusted to govern. Bear this in mind every time you step into a voting booth.

She obviously focuses on political conservatives, but there are lots of other good examples, in and out of the political realm. In my personal experience, keeping this principle in mind has been useful for making sense of various family squabbles.

democracy and anarchy

Another excerpt from Chomsky On Anarchism, this from a 2004 interview with Ziga Vodovnik.

Ordinary people often confuse anarchism with chaos and violence, and do not know that anarchism (an archos) doesn't mean life or a state of things without rules, but rather a highly organized social order, life without a ruler, "principe." Is pejorative usage of the word anarchism maybe a direct consequence of the fact that the idea that people could be free was and is extremely frightening to those in power?

There has been an element within the anarchist movement that has been concerned with "propaganda by the deed," often with violence, and it is quite natural that power centers seize on it in an effort to undermine any attempt for independence and freedom, by identifying it with violence. But that is not true just for anarchism. Even democracy is feared. It is so deep-seated that people can't even see it. If we take a look at the Boston Globe on July 4th - July 4th is of course Independence Day, praising independence, freedom, and democracy - we find that they had an article on George Bush's attempt to get some support in Europe, to mend fences after the conflict. They interviewed the foreign policy director of the "libertarian" Cato Institute, asking why Europeans are critical of the U.S. He said something like this: The problem is that Germany and France have weak governments, and if they go against the will of the population, they have to pay political cost. This is the libertarian Cato Institute talking. The fear of democracy and hatred of it is so profound that nobody even notices it.

It seems to me that many of the ideals of democracy, particularly those expressed by the founders of this nation, are quite admirable by anarchist standards, especially as compared to the actual state of things in our "democracy," which is why genuine democracy is feared in a similar way to anarchy. Thus, working to advance actual democracy is a reasonable intermediate action for someone convinced that anarchism is the ideal social vision.

kiss me

Is it just me or is this article basically saying, "Billick, I've always hated your ass and I'm fucking loving this shit"?