Some Thoughts on the Olympics

First, Michael Phelps was spectacular. There's no denying that. What he did was amazing. Congratulations to him and his teammates. (Note: The most impressive moment of all of the swimming events that I saw was Lezak chasing down and passing Bernard in that 4 x 100 m freestyle relay.)

However, given the coverage and praise that has been heaped upon Phelps, Usain Bolt has not gotten nearly enough attention in the television coverage here in the U.S.

Once again (as happens every time the Olympics comes around), I am reminded that our televised Olympics coverage really is way too America-centric. I wonder what the coverage in Jamaica has been like. I hope Bolt has been getting his due there!

Unfortunately, it seems that half the commentary I have heard about Bolt has been disparaging remarks about his poor sportsmanship (exuberance) and showboating (premature celebration). I feel somewhat cheated by not seeing what he would have done in the 100 m if he had really given it his all. But I will not pile on with the criticism. He left me wanting more. That's all.

Here's my take on Bolt: What he did in the 100 meter race may have been the most jaw-dropping performance I have ever seen in sport. It was utterly astonishing! Basically, the guy coasted for the last 15 meters and he still beat the rest the best in the world have ever offered.

Here's the analogy that came to mind when I saw it: Imagine a 50 meter freestyle race, in the final round of the Olympics, in which someone was so far ahead of the field that he could roll over and take his last two or three strokes on his back, still win the race, and still break the world record. It's unthinkable!

The 100 meter run record is a slow dropper. In the last 25 years, the world record in the event has now dropped, on average, just under 0.01 seconds per year. In the last year, Bolt has been responsible for fully 1/5 of that entire drop. And in establishing the new record in Beijing, he wasn't really trying! The guy didn't push until the end. Not even close. He knew he was going to win, and he relaxed. It was absolutely phenomenal.

For comparison purposes, consider that in the last 25 years, the 100 meter dash record time has dropped by just 2.4%.

The 50 meter freestyle long course record time has dropped by 5.51%.
The 100 meter butterfly long course record time has dropped by 5.69%.
The 100 meter breaststroke long course record time has dropped by 5.69%. (This shocks me! Given the complete change that the stroke has undergone, I would have though this would be more like a 10-15% drop.)
The 100 meter freestyle long course record time has dropped by 4.68%.

But winning the 100 meter run wasn't the end of it. Bolt then went on to break the 200 meter running record, which has been an even slower dropper than the 100 meter running record! In almost 29 years, the record for the 200 has now dropped by just 2.1%. Based on these record progressions, it's entirely reasonable to assume that runners are closer to reaching the limits of performance than are swimmers. And Bolt has shown that he is closer than anyone, although watching his performances, it's very difficult to assume that he has come close to reaching his own potential.

Again, I'm not saying that Phelps has not been absolutely spectacular. He has. Period. And in terms of what he has done to shatter records, it's absolutely true that Phelps is head and shoulders above anything Bolt has done. For example, in the 200 meter butterfly, Phelps has singlehandedly dropped the record by as much in just over 7 years as it had been previously dropped in just under 25 years. That's incredible! But in terms of strictly what's happened in Beijing, I would argue that Bolt's performance has been every bit as astonishing as Phelps' performance.

(And just for a bit of snarky nostalgia, I'll throw this in: Michael Phelps will always be an underage drunk driver to me.)

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There's an often uttered saying in the sports world: "That's why they play the games."

The idea is that on any given day, anyone can be beaten. However, with the women's beach volleyball competition, I really felt as much as ever that there was a foregone conclusion in play.

I could hardly have been less enthusiastic about my role as a spectator in this event. As the tournament was happening, I watched minutes here and there, but I made no real effort to tune in and pay attention. I would stop watching matches long before their conclusions, paying little attention to where the scores stood. I simply assumed that May-Treanor and Walsh would prevail. And, of course, they did not disappoint.

There was no surprise in learning that they had gotten to the gold medal match. There was no surprise in learning that they had not dropped a set. Did I watch the gold medal match? Yes. Start to finish, with almost no enthusiasm. I was awed! I won't deny that. What you're watching when you watch Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor play together is simply the best there has ever been, doing what they do best. You should be aware of it and you should marvel at it. It is a genuine privilege. But sadly, it's just not edge-of-your seat, "anything can happen" competition. It's as much like watching destiny unfold as the sports fan can experience.

The Long Now and Why Nuclear Power is a Bad Idea (Maybe)

Oftentimes, it is a mystery to me why my brain goes off in a particular direction. I have written before, on this blog, about having read an interesting book entitled The Clock of the Long Now. Having read that book is the reason why I try to use a 5-digit year in writing dates (for example, 02008 instead of 2008). It's a technique for trying to train myself to think on a longer term time scale. To think in terms of millennia instead of decades or centuries. I haven't yet fully trained myself on the 5-digit years (which is why sometimes I'll post a blog entry that mentions a 4-digit year and then go back and edit it afterwards--and I suspect there are times when the 4-digit year has simply slipped past my notice).

Anyway, I've recently been thinking about nuclear power, but I've been thinking about it with that "long now" mindset. So, where previously I had mostly taken the view that nuclear power is actually a good idea (better for the environment than burning fossil fuels, for example), I've recently been thinking about how fundamentally bad an idea it is. Not because of the potential for nuclear accidents (such as Three Mile Island or Chernobyl). I think that in that sense, nuclear power is actually pretty safe. We've been powering submarines with nuclear fuel for decades and to the best of my knowledge, there's been no consequence in terms of life or limb--and surely there has been less damage to the oceans from all of those thousands of miles travelled in nuclear submarines than has been caused by more conventionally powered boats covering the same number of miles.

What's been on my mind about the hazards of nuclear fuel is just how long they take to degrade. If we assume that it takes nuclear fuel 10,000 years to become inert, think of just how long that is, in terms of human history.

Let's take a quick look back at what wasn't around 10,000 years ago.

10,000 years ago:

There was no Islam, no Christianity, no Judaism, no Buddhism, no Jainism, no Hinduism, no Taoism.

Zeus, Odin, Thor, Quetzalcoatl, and Ganesha had not yet been imagined, let alone risen to prominence and (in most cases) fallen from grace.

There was no religion that you've ever heard of. This is not to say that religion did not exist. Humankind has an extraordinary capacity for making up stories to explain the unexplainable (and the frightening). It is my belief that humankind's default instinct is to explain thunder (a large-scale scary phenomenon) by making up a god. If I'm right about that, then in its most basic form, religion probably predates just about anything else in the history of human thought. Doesn't mean it's sensible, just means it's old.

10,000 years ago:

There was no Rome, no Greece, no Egypt, no China, no Inca Empire, no Mayan culture. There were no Vikings or Mongols or Visigoths or Olmecs or Toltecs. 10,000 years ago predates every great civilization you've ever heard of (except perhaps for some imaginary ones).

While armed conflict between tribes has probably existed since before the fully modern human emerged, the oldest war you've ever heard of happened less than 10,000 years ago. (Again, excepting for fiction.)

While bullies and chieftains and kings have surely existed for as long as people have congregated in groups (and pack leaders are prominent in much less socially "advanced" species than our own), the oldest ruler you've ever heard of had not been born 10,000 years ago.

10,000 years ago:

The cow had not been domesticated. Sure, there was farming, but it was very primitive.

10,000 years ago predates the English language (modern English, Middle English, Old English). That long ago, there was no French, or Spanish, or Russian, or Basque, or Chinese, or Japanese, or Hindi, or Roman, or Greek, or Navajo, or Hebrew or Aramaic. You've never heard of any language as old as 10,000 years ago (except perhaps some imaginary ones--anybody know how long a time ago Huttese was supposed to exist in a galaxy far away?).

10,000 years ago, there was no Iliad or Odyssey. There was no Code of Hammurabi. There were no Bible, no Talmud, no hieroglyphics, no Sanskrit or cuneiform writing. The book had not been invented, nor had the scroll. Most likely, nothing resembling paper had been invented.

Not only was there no recorded music. There was no way of recording music. Musical notation had not been invented yet. I suspect it's probably fair to guess that people have been playing something akin to drums and bamboo flutes and maracas for at least a few tens of thousands of years. However, with the exception of those and similarly primitive examples, it's pretty safe to assume that almost every musical instrument you're familiar with has been invented in the last 10,000 years. Surely the guitar, piano, harpsichord, trumpet, violin, lute, serpent, tambourine, and cymbal are extremely new developments.

10,000 years ago, metalsmithing was likely not a widespread art. Stone knapping existed, and people made weapons. Hunting was a widespread practice.

Clothing existed, but probably not any clothing you'd be willing to wear in public.

The great pyramids of Egypt had not been built 10,000 years ago, nor had the ziggurats. The ruins of Catal Huyuk may be approaching 10,000 years old at this point.

And that brings me to the important word here: Ruins. There is no structure built by human hands that has remained intact for the last 10,000 years. The closer you get to that age, the more completely ruined are the fragments. I'm not saying that people that long ago were not inventive. I'm not saying that they were not clever or sophisticated or advanced (whatever that means). I'm not saying they were not industrious and capable of doing great things. I'm simply saying that 10,000 years is an extremely long time to expect anything to last. Societies rise and fall. Religions rise and fall. Buildings rise and fall.

What we know for sure about people from that long ago is basically what we can infer, simply from our own existence: 10,000 years ago, people were able to find food and eat it. They congregated in close enough proximity that they were able to find mates. They had sex and made babies and raised children. They migrated. In a nutshell, that's probably the majority of what we know, for certain, of human society 10,000 years ago.

What we know of human nature is probably as true today as it was then and it will probably remain just as true 10,000 years from now. What does that mean? For the purpose of this train of thought, it means this: people are inquisitive and imaginative. That alone is enough to establish the danger of trying to store nuclear waste anywhere.

It is hubris to believe that the USA (or any other current nation) will still exist in 10,000 years. It is extremely unlikely that anyone will still use any language that is currently spoken. At best, there will probably be just a few experts who can decipher any of our languages in any meaningful way.

In the intervening centuries, surely there will be periods of increasing war and increasing peace. Surely there will be periods of increasing tribalism and increasing unity.

It's reasonable to expect that archaeology will to some extent go in and out of fashion. But surely, as long as people continue to exist, people will be digging and exploring.

Where on Earth humankind will migrate is anybody's guess. Historically, societies have tended to rise in areas with easy access to water. However, there's no telling how influential our current and future technologies will be in changing that trend.

The end result of that is that there's no place on the planet that we can be sure won't be explored. Which means that you can't simply "hide" your nuclear waste and reasonably hope that it won't be discovered and cause harm.

And you can't simply put up a sign saying "DANGER" and hope it will be heeded. Going back to the death of languages and the pattern of birth and death of religions and beliefs, it's absurd to believe that a sign, no matter how carefully and strongly worded, will be heeded. In fact, it's probably the case that the more warning you post and the more effort you put into making your stash inaccessible, the more effort will be taken in the future to get at it. Human nature means that the more difficult you make it to get at a treasure, the more valuable the treasure will become in the minds of future generations. Even if they understand the warnings, they may think those warnings to be pure hyperbole. It's possible that people in 2,000 years will doubt our ability to create nuclear power just as much as we doubt the ancient Egyptians to have done so.

If someone today digs up a chest of doubloons (and you know that people are searching), nobody is harmed. If someone in the future digs up a mountain full of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel, the downside is potentially pretty disastrous.

So what's the solution?

I have no idea. Ethically, our policy makers should probably be thinking about such things. I wonder whether they do.

I guess that we could simply take the short view: that our responsibility is limited to the few dozen generations that are likely to still have any philosophical or emotional or intellectual connection at all to us. If we take that view, then yes, we can reasonably think that we have the power to protect our descendants. But if we take the long view, that becomes an increasingly absurd idea.

Things Worth Sharing

There are a few things I would like to share with my readers today:

For the last couple of years, I have been enjoying listening to the tail end of the Vinyl Cafe on CBC Radio, when I get out of the book store on Sunday afternoons. I don't think I've ever caught an entire episode, which is a shame. I was thrilled to hear a couple of months ago that they are making weekly Vinyl Cafe podcasts. It's a free subscription, so of course I subscribed as soon as I learned that the podcasts were happening. I'm a bit disappointed that the podcasts are not the entire shows. However, they're absolutely worth listening to. If you've never listened to the Vinyl Cafe, you really should give it a try! And with podcasts, it's easy to fit the listening into your schedule, rather than trying to fit your schedule around listening. This Stuart McLean fellow is a truly amazing storyteller. Really, a Canadian national treasure, in my opinion.

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If you've spent years using one of these:


. . . (especially if you have found the experience rather unsatisfying, as have I), you really should make an effort to track down one of these:


I don't know where we got ours, nor can I tell you who the manufacturer is, as it has no identifying marks on it that I can find. But here's the thing:

I don't really consider myself to be an Anglophile. Sure, I tend to use -ise instead of -ize. But that's simply a matter of finding it to be a much more elegant solution. And while I think it's wiser to use "zed" than "zee", I really only do so when it comes up in conversation with a Brit (which is extremely rarely). I have absolutely not adopted the British habit of (what in my opinion is) overuse of the word "brilliant". Instead, I have fallen into the dopey American habit of overusing "cool". However, in this one case, I have no better word to use than "brilliant". The orange-handled peeler pictured above is absolutely brilliant! It is somehow so vastly superior to the other style, that it seems somehow insulting to claim that they're really the same utensil. After years of hearing people say that there's a real difference between using a genuinely good tool and using a readily available tool, it's strange that this is the best example I have of experiencing the phenomenon for myself. Well, maybe the second best. Using the one instead of the other is akin to using a good dictionary instead of using a bad dictionary. And frankly, the difference is much starker than the superiority of the Mac over the PC. Gosh, that's weird to say! Anyway, bottom line: When I use the orange handled peeler, I end up wishing I had need to peel more! When I use the other style, I can hardly wait for the experience to be over. The orange handled peeler is an absolute joy to use! It is brilliant on potatoes and brilliant on carrots. If I objected to eating apple skins, I expect I would find it to be brilliant on apples too.

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We have two friends who recently gave birth, which means that they and their husbands recently went through the process of deciding what to name a child. Surely a daunting task. I neglected to mention to them the Name Voyager. Shame on me!!! The Name Voyager may or may not be helpful in choosing a child's name. I have found it useful in coming up with character names for writing fiction, at least. Whether you have need for it or not, I find it difficult to believe that you wouldn't appreciate its sheer beauty and elegance. It is a magnificent example of how it's possible to display complex data sets in our new digital world. In that respect, so far I have found its only rival to be Thinkmap's Visual Thesaurus.

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There was one more web site that I was eager to share with you, but it seems to have disappeared. So sad. Anyway, I hope you enjoy what I have shared today. Have a wonderful week!

A Rant on Romney and Religious Fundamentalism

I was listening to NPR's "All Things Considered" the other day when they aired part of an interview with presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The interviewer (Robert Siegel) asked about Romney's belief in the literal truth of the Bible, and Romney very slickly evaded the question while trying to make Siegel feel somehow dirty for asking the question. What follows is the feedback I provided to NPR:

Shame on Mitt Romney for trying to make Robert Siegel feel ashamed for asking a legitimate question and, by extension, trying to make NPR listeners feel ashamed for caring about the answer.

Does it matter to me which specific book(s) of the Bible a candidate takes more literally than others? Nope. But does it matter to me whether my vote supports someone who believes in superstitious hokum, to the exclusion of reason, logic, science, sense, and critical thought? You bet!

It's terrifying to me that Romney can, in one sentence, decry the "global jihad" that's threatening our way of life and in the next sentence say "My point is the Bible is the word of God". I hope I am not alone in seeing absurdity here.

Blind faith in religion is blind faith in religion, regardless of which particular religion is being used as justification. And it is dangerous.

Fundamentalists in the Middle East are out to destroy America. And fundamentalists in this country are out to win the White House. A fundamentalist led us into invading and occupying Iraq, destroying their infrastructure, and making our nation responsible (directly or indirectly) in the deaths of tens- or hundreds of thousands of innocent people there (depending on whose estimates you believe). That latter fundamentalist is also directly responsible for our country's loss of respectability in the eyes of much of the rest of the world.

It is absolutely legitimate for me, as a voter (and for Robert Siegel, as a reporter) to want to know just how trustworthy a candidate is in making important judgments of serious consequence.

Having Original Ideas (even when other people had them first)

I'm always disturbed by people claiming that Columbus did not "discover" America, on the grounds that people were already here. (There are other grounds on which to argue with the Columbus discovery myth, like (a) where he landed and (b) that there seems no good reason to call him Columbus. (Cristóbal Colón seems more likely the guy's name.))

Discovery does not require being the first to discover something. All it requires is finding something when you weren't already certain it was there. Although, even that requirement is a little sketchy. I think you can "discover" the truth, even though you were already aware of its existence. Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent even before I've started with the topic of this post.

Today, I thought I'd mention some original thoughts I've had. They were original thoughts, because as far as I knew, nobody had previously had them. I've since discovered that I was not the first person to have them, however. Meaning that other people have had the same original thoughts before I have had them. This does not mean that my thought process is diminished by not having been the first to get there. A good idea is a good idea, no matter who has it.

A few years ago, I had the original thought of setting up wave turbines to harness the power of the oceans. Turns out that other people already had that thought and industrious people were already working on implementing it. Now, it may turn out that the idea of harnessing the power of the tides is even better than the idea of harnessing the power of the waves. (I can make no claim to having thought of using the tides instead of the waves for electricity generation.) But still, the wave turbines idea is a good idea, and I'm proud to have thought of it.

I also had the original thought a while ago that we really should implement some system of having a national referendum. We have no such system in place, and I think that's a horrible strike against our system of government. As it turns out, Mike Gravel had already had the same idea. I don't know for sure whether it was an original idea in his case, or whether he borrowed it from someone else. I think Gravel has some crackpot notions, and I won't be voting for him. However, on this issue, he has a good idea, and I'm proud to have thought of it.

A long while ago, I was working out (as a thought experiment) how one would go about setting up a local currency. I had never heard of anyone doing it, and as far as I knew, it would be utterly illegal to do within the confines of the U.S. borders. I've recently discovered that not only is it legal, but that there are places where it's been done. Certainly, I wasn't the first to think of it. But I did think of it, and I did so without suggestion from other sources. So I would argue that in my case, it was an original idea. Whether it's a good idea or not, it's certainly an interesting idea, and I'm proud to have thought of it.

Now, I'm sure that most everyone has the "why didn't I think of that?" moments. And I'm sure that lots of people have the "I could have come up with that" moments. There are also lots of us out there who have the experience of having the "hey! I already thought of that" moment(s). It's easy to get discouraged by such moments. I would argue that getting discouraged it not the appropriate response...even if someone else is getting rich off of your bright idea. Just because someone else thought of it (whether they got there first or not), that doesn't mean that you didn't think of it. It doesn't mean that it wasn't your own original idea. And it doesn't mean that you shouldn't take pride in having come up with it.

I've also had this other fantastic idea kicking around in my head for several years. I'm not sure whether anyone else has ever considered it. But I'm sure it was an original idea of my own. I'm fairly desperate to try it out. Sadly, I'm an employee rather than an employer, which takes its implementation far out of my hands. At least for now. If you're in a different position, I encourage you to try it out and see how you like it. If you try it, please let me know how it goes. The idea: Switch from the seven-day week to the twelve-day week. Switch from the five-day work week to the seven-day work week. Switch from the eight-hour work day to the ten-hour work day. Keep the years at their current 365/365/365/366-day schedule, but instead of having each new year start on a different day of the week, the new year always starts on the first day of the week.

What you end up with, instead of 52 seven-day weeks (and one or two spare days left over) is thirty twelve-day weeks with five extra days at the end of the year (or six, in the case of leap year). Those five (or six) days can be used as bonus vacation days.

Seven ten-hour work days for each of 30 twelve-day weeks works out to 2,100 business hours. That's really close to the 2,080 hours that you get from five eight-hour work days, but you get the wonderful benefit of having five-day weekends! Factor in the extra five (or six) bonus days at the end of the year, and figure that when you take a week-long vacation, you actually end up with 17 consecutive days off, and I think you'll quickly see the advantage of my system. Basically, even though your work days may be slightly longer, you get many more free days with which to live your non-working life. Where you might now feel that your measly two or three weeks of vacation per year are just not enough, a one long-week annual vacation, combined with those year-end bonus days, combined with those five-day weekends may actually feel like just enough time off, no?

Now, here's the kicker: If you switch to this system, you suddenly find that you do not need to take days off just to attend doctors' appointments or to have conferences with your children's teachers or to go renew your driver's license or to take your pets to see the veterinarian or to do any of the many other chores that can only be done during normal business hours. This is because your "normal" business hours no longer coincide with everyone else's "normal" business hours. You can get cheaper airfare or hotel rates when you decide to leave town, because you don't have to schedule your travel according to peak travel dates and times. Sure, some weeks, you'll be working from Sunday through Saturday. But on other weeks, you'll have Monday through Friday off, just in the normal course of your life. You can go to see a midweek afternoon baseball game without having to "play hooky" from work, if that's how you like to spend your time. You can visit the museum to see that touring exhibit while there are no crowds, instead of having to go during the weekend like everyone else.

Oh, to dream!

Now, back to my main point: If you have an original idea, don't be devastated if you discover that someone else already had it. And don't let anyone tell you that it wasn't an original idea. If you thought of it all by yourself, then yes, it is your own original idea. Be proud to have thought of it. Just think of how many billions of people didn't think of it!

Linguistic Discussions

This morning, I invited most of the authors of the Language Log blog to take a look at my last blog entry. (Most, not all, only because there were a few whose e-mail addresses I was unable to locate.) Anyway, what has ensued is a fairly fascinating discussion that's been carried on via an e-mail thread rather than as comments to my blog. Oh well. At least they all included me in the e-mails, which have been most edifying. (They're a bunch of professional linguists, and I certainly am not.)

So here's the gist of what seems to be the consensus:

• Both usages are in common parlance.
• This does cause confusion when people of one camp converse with people of the other camp (especially when scheduling, as the "next Wednesday" issue is just as much a problem as is the "last Wednesday" issue).
• The rift does not seem to be a recent development.
• This has been previously studied from a linguistic perspective.
• Such divergent dialectical usages are probably more common than most of us think.

In addition, I've gotten to learn two nifty words today: ideolect and ecolect. (Interestingly enough, both trigger the Blogger spell-check alarm.)

Amateur though I may be, I am much amused by linguistic topics. So today I will add yet another linguistic topic to my blog:

What I've learned from working in bookstores for so many years is that sometimes book covers have proofreading errors. Sometimes, these are especially interesting, including misprints of book titles on the spine. A few years ago, for example, I noticed the spine of a paperback edition of William Gaddis' novel, entitled A Frolic of His Own. The title on the spine read as follows (in two lines):

A FROLIC OF HIS
OF HIS OWN

This is especially interesting because sometimes the mind lets us see not what's actually there, but rather what it seems should be there. Most people, seeing that spine, would read the title the way it should have been printed rather than the way it was printed.

I'm sure the linguists have a scientific name for this phenomenon.

Anyway, on to tonight's discovery:

I found a Phonics book in the Spectrum series from McGraw-Hill. It's for Grade 3. The spine reads:

PHONCIS Grade 3

So I asked a coworker, "What does that say?"

His response: "Phonics, grade three"

So I asked again, "What does it really say?"

Same response.

Now, of course, this reading error is not any indication of stupidity. My coworker is quite literate and quite intelligent, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise. The point is that the mind plays tricks on us, and it's purely by chance that I happened to notice the printing error. Nine times out of ten, I might've read it incorrectly just as he did.

I bring this up, however, specifically because I find this to be an especially funny printing error. After all, it's a book about phonics!

My favorite t-shirt of all time had the following text:

Hukt on foniks wurkt fur me!

(If you're too young to get the reference, ask your mother!)

So, for the kids who have to spend their time plowing through this particular book, I think the final payoff is that they can claim, "I lurnt my fonciss!"

Bill Richardson in Claremont, a Campaign Event

Well, Beth was working this morning, so I was left to my own devices. After taking the recycling to the local recycling center, I popped into Shirley's Restaurant in Claremont for a Bill Richardson "Meet and Greet", which I knew from the local paper was scheduled for this morning.

The owner of the restaurant, Dan Fillo, was quoted in the paper as having said, "We've been told by the campaign not to expect a question and answer format. He's probably just going to come in and speak, giving a brief 10- or 15-minute speech about his platforms."

So I was quite pleasantly surprised when after giving his talk, Richardson did open the floor to questions. In my last blog post, I mentioned that Beth got in the last question from the floor at our session with John McCain. I didn't say anything about what she asked him, however. So here I'll mention that she asked him about Darfur. We were both bothered that it took until she got in (right under the wire) for Darfur to be mentioned. McCain did respond pretty passionately, and it was clear that the genocide in Darfur was something he has thought about and that he does seem to care and want to do something about it. But still, it seemed clear from his not having taken the initiative to mention it himself that it is not terribly high on his agenda.

Well, I'm pleased to report that Richardson mentioned Darfur as part of his opening remarks. No prompting required. There's a point in his favor.

I was very disturbed by one thing Richardson said this morning. (In regards to what to do about illegal immigrants, he mentioned something about whether they were embracing American values/culture, and he mentioned as part of the criteria on which that judgment is to be made, "Do they go to church?".) I called him on it. (Frankly, I view that as a horribly scary test. "Do you go to church?" being one small step removed from "Which church do you go to?", which (in terms of whether someone is embracing American values/culture) is terrifyingly close to "do you worship the way we want you to worship?". (See: sectarian violence in Iraq, Sunni vs. Shia, religious persecution, Holocaust, Salem witch trials, Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock, the Crusades, etc.,...)). To be honest, I was disappointed that when I called him on it, he didn't take a stronger position and admit that it was the wrong thing to say. Instead, he justified mentioning it, by citing that it's one of many criteria in already existing legislation. There's a point against.

HOWEVER...

Calling him on that was secondary to the real question I posed to him, which was about not only reducing our dependence on foreign oil (emphasis on foreign), but rather on reducing our dependence on oil. I'm very concerned about using up our natural resources. If reducing our dependence on foreign oil means simply shifting our focus to more domestic drilling and refining, well that's no solution at all, is it? To his credit, Richardson is firmly in the camp of those who want to move to renewable resources. "New sources of energy" rather than old. He's pro-coal, but pro-responsible-coal. That's a step in the right direction, as the current administration isn't pro-responsible-anything. Richardson is clearly very much pro-solar and pro-wind. I'm guessing (although he didn't state it) that he would also be pro-tidal/wave energy. And if not, then I would at least feel reasonably comfortable in assuming that he's not anti-tidal/wave energy. (Point in favor.)

Richardson is opposed to "No Child Left Behind" (he calls it "an unfunded mandate"). Another point in favor.

He's making real a point of being boldly, strongly pro-education, particularly in science and math. (Multiple points for.)

He's pro-science in general, and I believe if he gets elected, there will be a 180 degree turnabout in our electoral branch's stance on science. That is, I believe the war on science would come to an end. (Point for. (Exuberantly!))

He's also pro-arts education, as he sees the arts as a vital way to open young minds! (Another point for.)

He requires no prompting to talk about autism. (Point for.)

I'm not really on board with Richardson's views on illegal immigration. But then again, I haven't heard much I do agree with on that topic from any of the contenders.

In the end, I've come away from this morning's event as more a Richardson fan than I had been going in. I'm still not endorsing him. But at the moment, I'm thinking that I could imagine being happy with him as our next president. I think he's a pretty solid choice.

This Morning's John McCain Town Hall Meeting, Claremont, NH

We went to our first presidential campaign town hall meeting today. This time was an event for John McCain at the American Legion hall in Claremont. I was surprised to get the phone invitation the other day from McCain's people. I guess he's courting the independent vote. As this will be our first presidential election cycle since moving to New Hampshire, I'm still not altogether certain of the process. From what I gather, we'll be allowed to choose which primary we want to cast our ballots in (assuming we wish to cast our ballots in either primary).

If you've read my campaign web site, you'll probably already be aware that I am, on principle, opposed to the whole two-party system. By extension, I'm also of the opinion that there ought not to be a primary election cycle. I think we'd all be much better off if we just went straight to the general election. Stop playing this game of trying to determine which of our like-minded people would best represent all of our fellow like-minded people when it comes time to vote against whichever of the like-minded people the opposing group of like-minded people has chosen to represent themselves in facing our like-minded representative. (Gorgeous sentence structure, no?)

What we should have is individuals, standing on their own beliefs, taking their own stances. If you want to run for president, run for president. Don't run for the opportunity to be chosen to run for president.

Ah, but that's my idealism poking through, isn't it?

The reality of our current system is that we have to work from within rather than from the outside. So, despite my opposition to the principles of giving political parties the power to determine who gets to be on the ballot in the general election, I very likely will end up voting in a primary election this time around. And frankly, I'm not at all sure which primary is likely to get my participation.

So I got invited and we went. I'll be happy to go to plenty of these events in the upcoming months, assuming I have the opportunity. The crowd was pretty small. My quick estimate put it at probably under 300 people. I figure that's reasonably intimate, considering the stakes. Beth got to ask the last question of the session. Overall, I'd say McCain's positions stood up to the sniff test better that I anticipated. He seems to be a reasonable guy who's willing to think about things and capable of thinking about things. That's vastly better than the guy who's in the White House right now.

I agree with McCain on some things, I disagree with him on others, and I respect his views on lots, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with him.

I'll probably blog more about specific issues in the coming days. At the moment I'd like to pick up on what may seem like a minor point in what he said.

He said that we need a line item veto.

I've gone through my own periods of thinking that the line item veto is a grand idea. I won't deny that. But I've since reconsidered. One big problem with the line item veto is that it will always seem like good idea when your guy (or gal) is in office. And it will always seem like a horrible idea when you're in the opposition.

Here's what I've been thinking more about recently:

What we need is to elect a president who will plainly tell congress (and mean it) that if they give him 200 individual (focused) bills that all make sense, he'll pass them. If they give him one bill that has 170 things that make sense and 30 things that don't, he'll veto the whole thing.

And we need to start electing congresspeople who agree to that principle.

If an idea can't stand on its own merits, it shouldn't be allowed to sneak in as a rider to some overarching bill.

McCain says that when the first pork barrel bill crosses his desk, he'll veto it and he'll make its authors famous. That's a pretty decent start. But what concerns me is this: What about the second one? What about the third?

You know they'll keep coming. I'm pretty sure McCain knows they'll keep coming. Until we have a meaningful shift within our legislative culture, I think we're doomed to having the bridge to nowhere and its kin.

If Bush had a line item veto, his war on science and reason would be much farther along at this point than he's managed to push it without the line item veto. He's hardly vetoed anything. When he has vetoed something, it's mostly been because it had provisions for funding stem cell research. He can justify that because he has that "conservative base" that supports such despicable positions. But if he faced dozens of smaller pro-science, pro-reason bills and kept consistently vetoing them, as he likely would love to do, I think even the support of that "conservative base" would begin to erode. It's one thing to take a stand on one issue (stem-cell research). It's quite another to take a stand on dozens, as I'm sure he would love to stop funding for a broad range of sciences, from evolution to mathematics to chemistry to physics. I'm pretty confident that Bush would consider quantum physics to be pure evil voodoo and the work of the devil, if he were aware enough to consider it at all.

Whether the ideas that currently hold sway in the world of theoretical physics will eventually pan out or not, there's certainly value in the exercise. There's benefit to working them through and pursuing them to see where they lead. If Bush had a line item veto, I'm pretty sure he would have gone a lot farther toward curtailing our brightest minds' progress in figuring out where they lead.

I figure that's enough for tonight. Sleep well.

Getting a Little Political -- Part 3

I watched some of the Republican debate the other night. There was a point at which the questioner asked for a show of hands of who does not believe in evolution. Much to my disgust, some hands went up.

I didn't catch whose hands those were, but I checked the New York Times online edition for the transcript, and they reported that the hands that went up belonged to Brownback, Huckabee, and Tancredo.

Assuming that the NYT transcript is correct, and assuming that the question's intent was clearly understood*, and assuming that we're not dealing with a semantic issue of what "believe in" means...these three men should automatically be deemed unelectable.

So here's where the semantic issue comes in:

Does "believe in evolution" mean "accept that evolution is a process that actually occurs"?

or...

Does "believe in evolution" mean "put your faith and trust in evolution"?

If it means the former, then Brownback, Huckabee, and Tancredo are addled. If it means the latter, then that's somewhat acceptable.

Here's where things get tricky: If you ask me whether "I believe in George W. Bush", my answer will be "No! No! NO!"

Does that mean that I am a denier of his existence? No. Certainly not. I believe he exists. I believe he's a dangerous ass. But I don't deny his existence.

So in that sense, I also don't believe in evolution, right? I don't put my faith in it. I don't believe it's working for my betterment. I don't believe it will provide any salvation to me or anyone else. I don't believe it will lead to an Eden here on Earth (or anywhere else). That's just dumb. But it is a process that happens in nature. So in that sense, you bet I believe in evolution. Just as I believe in fire. Just as I believe in gravity. Just as I believe in sexual reproduction among the mammals.

But I think that in common parlance "Do you believe in George W. Bush?" takes on one meaning and "Do you believe in evolution?" takes on another. It's a matter of semantics.

So, do we give them the benefit of the doubt? No way! Particularly not Brownback, who is a known fundamentalist religious nutjob. (For the record, I'm not saying that or casting any other aspersions on anyone's character here or anywhere else as a statement of fact, actionable as slander or libel. For the record, I'm saying it merely as a literary device. Call it parody. Call it satire. Call it what you like, but don't call it slander or libel, please!)

* Reading the transcript, the question seems less clear in its intent than it seemed as a spoken utterance. The questioner stumbled a bit on his phraseology. But having listened to it in real time, I believe the intent of the question was really quite apparent.

Ants!

Our friends Kuki and Gary were kind enough to get us an interesting jelly-based ant farm as a gift. We ordered harvester ants to occupy it. They arrived earlier in the week. I believe we have 14 survivors from the journey, and they've started tunneling. Fascinating little beasts, really. Anyway, here are some pictures:

Thanks, Science Guy

I've said before and I'll surely say again that in my view, my generation is as much defined by Ultraman and Kung Fu Action Theater as by anything else. This may well define me as the lone member of "my generation". I'm not sure about whether that's the case or not. There may be others out there.

The bottom line on that definition probably amounts to little more than this: For better or for worse, my cultural awareness is and will likely always be something that (at least in part) is tinted by the influence of television. Whether that's ultimately a good or bad thing is not something that I'm interested in discussing at this point. (At least not during this blog entry.) However, I have mentioned it as simply a noteworthy scrap of information. Having said as much, I am willing to go on record as saying that neither is this truth a cause for great celebration nor is it one of the world's great tragedies. I'm quite certain that it falls somewhere on the line between those two extremes.

I bring this up as a way to getting to Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

A few nights ago, I was flipping between channels, when I happened to stop for a few minutes of Countdown With Keith Olberman (in which the part of Keith Olberman was being played by some other fellow whose face I didn't recognise and whose name I didn't catch). His guest for this segment was Bill Nye. They were discussing this fossil find (Tiktaalik, link 1, link 2).

Bill Nye said something that struck me as being very important, and I am extremely grateful for his having said it (even if it didn't reach nearly as large an audience as it needs to). I don't have the exact quote, so I'm paraphrasing here:

This notion of evolution as "improvement" is wrong. Improvement is a human idea and it has no bearing on the processes of evolution.

I bring this up because I think it's a very important concept. It is, in my view, one of the most fundamental concepts in our understanding of the universe.

"Evolution" does not equate with "improvement".
"Evolution" does not encompass "improvement".
"Evolution" does not engender "improvement".
And "evolution" does not imply "improvement".

The idea of improvement plays no role in the process of evolution. And I think that one of the great failings of our science education has been the failure to make this concept crystal clear.

This is one of the biggest problems I had in my high school biology class. Evolution is obvious. It makes sense. But to me, it always seemed that "improvement" was generally considered (if not outright taught) to be a strong overtone or a deep underpinning (take your pick) of the theory of evolution. And this always struck me as wrong, wrong, wrong.

It took me a while to come to terms with this discrepancy. And what I came up with all those years ago is exactly what Bill Nye said. In essence: I was not wrong in my understanding of how evolution works. My thought process was not at odds with science. Logic is logic, and rational thought is possible. The disconnect was merely an error of word association.

If you associate the word evolution with the word improvement, it won't make sense.

The reason: That association of words is nonsensical and illogical.

Thank you, Bill Nye, for saying so publicly.

It is fair to say that a fruit fly is just as evolved as a human being is. In fact, by some measures, it may be fair to say that a fruit fly is more evolved than is a human being. Certainly, a fruit fly's lineage includes many, many more generations than does a human being's. It takes us a long time to reach sexual maturity and to reproduce. In fact, it's probably fair to say that the human reproductive cycle is among the slowest in the animal kingdom. This does not mean that fruit flies are any better or worse than we are. We coexist. That's evidence of only one thing: Neither species has gone extinct yet. That is an observable fact. And there's no value judgement involved in saying so. By the same token, we are no more highly evolved than gorillas or chimps or monkeys or dogs. We have simply evolved along different (divergent) paths.

The idea that evolution is about adaptation is misleading. The idea that evolution is a process that is heading towards something (perfection?) is misguided. And the idea that evolution is about improvement is inaccurate.

Evolution is not about anything. It's just a natural process. It's simply the way things happen. And it is utterly indifferent to qualitative assessments.