Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

"In God We Trust" might be the official US motto, but it's not the national slogan.

Snap, crackle, pop.

Plop plop, fizz fizz...
Tastes great, less filling.
Change you can believe in.

Slogans have power. A few words evoke a whole constellation of ideas, memories and feelings.

Stay with me, now... Radio operators use a “phonetic alphabet” because letters and some numbers sound too much alike. So in the usual phonetic alphabet the letter “a” becomes “alpha”, “b” becomes “bravo”, “9” becomes “niner”, and so on. And WTF becomes “whiskey tango foxtrot.”

In 2007 photographer Ashley Gilbertson published Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War. I heard Gilbertson say in an interview that he used that title because he heard this constantly on the radio channels in Iraq. “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” Many of the combat personal were young and, safe to say, familiar with text messaging and the internet, so “WTF” was already a natural comment/question for them. Add to this mix the f-bomb problem. The single word that's still the potentially most offensive, at least in the US, is “fuck.” I don't blame the FCC for this, but they could have fixed it years ago with a little free speech. No big deal, perhaps, but as with all things naughty, WTF and it's phonetic equivalent is a little more evocative for it.

Muzafer Sherif, the famous pioneer social psychologist, said, “(S)logans catch almost spontaneously when (and not before, because only a few might notice them) they stand out as short-cut characterizations of the direction and temper of the time and situation. … (S)logans are short-cut expressions arising in confused and critical situations. This does not mean that these short-cuts necessarily express the true and objective solution of the problems they are facing.” (1)

Short-cut characterization of the direction and temper of the time. WTF? You think?

Exactly right. It's perfect.

1. Muzafer Sherif, "The psychology of slogans." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1937, 32, 450-461 archived on the web at: http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Sherif/Sherif_1937b.html

Faith

This entry is about why I think faith is dangerous, but let me clarify something first. Full disclosure here.  I'm not an atheist, new, old, or otherwise.  We know more about physics and cosmology than any civilization, ever, but there's a lot more that we don't know. Nobody has any firm notion of what gravity really is, or time, or how many dimensions may actually exist.  Read about string theory or quantum mechanics a bit, and existence suddenly seems pretty strange and confounding.  So I, for one, am very cautious about drawing conclusions on the nature of existence.  If you need a label, call me a provisional agnostic in search of data.

Faith is, by definition, belief without substantiation.  There's nothing wrong with believing whatever you like.  Imaginary friends are, for the most part, harmless. But if you act on the basis of irrational beliefs, you become a danger to self and others, or at least very annoying.

If you tell me you believe thus-and-so, that's fine. But if you want me to believe the same thing, you need to offer evidence. And I'm talking about empirical, quantifiable evidence, not rhetorical arguments or personal narratives. I don't believe anything simply because someone tells me it's true. If I were that foolish, I would have been dead decades ago.   If you claim prayer can effect events, show me your data.  If you claim people who worship your god make more money, show me the numbers.  If you claim you have miraculous healing powers, I've got a job for you. Claims of that kind should be pretty easy to substantiate. 

If you tell me I have an immortal soul, there's no way to test that, is there?  Well, I guess there is, but there's no way to recover any data. There are lots of stories and myths and anecdotal narratives, but that's all.  

Life is difficult and always terminal. Bad things happen for no apparent reason. The universe is a dangerous place. We're members of an inherently violent species that's always in heat, and whose behavior is erratic. We struggle to find some predictability; some reassurance that we aren't going to die momentarily and that this struggle and pain of life is all worthwhile.  Our minds abhor chaos because chaos is dangerous. So if we can't see patterns in the world around us, we invent them. This seems to be the pattern for every life form we know of that has any sort of self-awareness. It's in our wetware.  Ink blot tests and superstitious conditioning are two examples.

(http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~psych200/unit3/32.htm)

There are things I'd like to believe are true. I'd like to believe kindness, empathy and compassion are rewarded. I'd like to believe evil never wins. I'd like to believe I'll see my dead mother again someday. I'd like to believe I'm going to win the lottery on Saturday. I'd like to believe my social security benefit will arrive every month, adjusted for inflation as needed, until the day I die. It doesn't hurt me to believe some of these things, and may make me feel better. Believing others can only hurt me. There's no evidence I'll see my mother again, but it doesn't hurt me to entertain that idea occasionally.  But spending money today that I'm sure I'll win tomorrow could land me in jail.  And not stashing away a little money every month, for as long as I can, would be just plain stupid. 

Evidence is important. Faith is dangerous. If you can convince a man that he'll have it made in an afterlife and you make him miserable enough in the here-and-now, you can make him do anything, like become a suicide bomber.  Create enough unreasoning faith in government and you'll get people eager for battle against enemies real or imaginary, or against each other.

Now go watch the news for 30 minutes and tell me I'm wrong.

Video Games Destroying Civilization Again!

I get really annoyed when people take some issue of  the moment and promote their position by twisting cause and effect.  Here's a perfect case in point. I just saw a post on one of the forums I graze about the supposed ill effects of violent video games.  The poster cited this: http://ithp.org/articles/violentvideogames.html

"In summary, there are good theoretical reasons to believe that violent video games are even more harmful that violent TV programs or films. We also have empirical data showing this (Polman et al., 2008). In this study, children were randomly assigned to play a violent video game or watch someone else play it. There was also a nonviolent video game control condition. The results showed that boys who played a violent video game were more aggressive afterwards than were boys who merely watched."

Yes, well, Hitler had "good theoretical reasons" and "empirical data", too.  But thanks for reassuring us that you really are scientists. 

Look at art and literature from any time or place, and what are the two universal themes?  Sex and violence. Hopefully they're treated in ways that shed light on the human condition, or caution us about what lurks in our own hearts, but that's another matter.  The content of an artwork may or may not be explicitly violent, but it very often is.  No matter how you parse it, in the end we humans are a violent species that's always in heat. We probably made weapons and killed sexual rivals before we made fire.  There's a layer of culture on top of that behavior, but it's always proven to be a thin layer.

Art is a mirror.  If the art is popular or lasting, that means a lot of people find it a better mirror.

Video games are not art?  Think again.  You can argue that they're bad art, just like most popular music or television programming is; just as most published novels or films are.  But the only thing that differs among any of these media is ease of access and the immediacy of the experience.  Video games have characters and plot lines, just as any film or novel does.  Identifying with a character involves more than it does with novels or film, and the player has a degree of freedom in helping create his/her character and drive the plot.  Character identification is an active process, not simply a passive one.  But it's the same process.

The Catcher in the Rye has gotten some press for being a favorite read of psychopaths and killers, perhaps most recently John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman. Does anyone seriously want to suggest that the novel had any causative effects on him?  Of course not!  The novel speaks to millions up millions of readers who feel alienated. Most readers aren't present or future psychopathic killers, but it's hardly a surprise if a small number are. 

If you don't like what you see in the mirror, don't blame the mirror.  Don't confuse cause and effect.

Dump Obama? Do I Care?

Last night I was carousing with some of my pinko socialist cronies on-line. The most reasonable group consensus seemed to be that we should work for Obama's re-election and hope for the best during a second term. In other words, let's hope he somehow becomes willing to stand up for some sort of social and economic justice. But in the cold light of morning I'm not so sure.

Barack Obama isn't a liberal. Hell, he's barely a Democrat if you stand him up next to Harry Truman or Lyndon Johnson. That's okay. He never pretended to be a liberal. But he did promise transparency. Remember his line about putting the national health care debate on CSPAN? As soon as he took office he made a U-turn. He cut his teeth on Chicago politics, and does it show? It sure does. “National health care” became the Chicago Plan, brokered behind multiple smoke screens, and now he's doing it again with the deficit ceiling negotiations. America, prepare to be sold down the river one more time. (That would be the Illinois River—the one that turns green now and then, and has dissolved a lot of corpses over the years.)

Sell-Out No. 1 – No cost-of-living increases to Social Security benefits.

Here's a site which calculates inflation of the U.S. dollar by a number of methods:
http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/

If you receive a monthly SS benefit today of $1600, you're not living high on the hog unless you have a lot of other income. Now let's roll that amount backwards 15 years, using the above calculator. In 1995, the relative worth of $1,600.00 from 2010 is:

	$1,120.00	using the Consumer Price Index
	$1,180.00	using the GDP deflator
	$1,090.00	using the unskilled wage
	$1,010.00	using the Production Worker Compensation
	$941.00	using the nominal GDP per capita
	$809.00	using the relative share of GDP

You can see why the wankers in Washington would love to amputate any COLA from Social Security. The long-term impact is enormous.

And by the bye, it's interesting to go to that website and plug in numbers from your own life. For example, if your rent in 2000 was $700 per month, that translates to at least $860/month today by the lowest of those calculation methods.

Sell-out No. 2 – Unfunded Foreign Wars

Yes, Obama always “owned” the Afghanistan thing, but he also tripped all over himself to tell us how he wasn't “nation-building” and how this wasn't Vietnam all over again. Well, guess what? Osama bin Dead for awhile now, and his organization left town long before. Why haven't we? I know why, and so do you. Too many Important People are making too much money. It's $10 billion per month x 12 months x how many years? I'd love to have a pizza contract for that game!

The President is the Commander in chief. He can order the troops home any time. He doesn't need Congress for that. He just needs the courage, but I don't think it's in him.

Someone needs to explain to me why, exactly, I should care whether Obama is re-elected. He re-upped on the Patriot Act. He gave all the lifeboats to Wall Street and left the rest of us to suck seawater. He short-circuited any chance for real national health care. He relentlessly feeds the military-industrial complex while helping stake the space program. Now he's willing to gut Social Security and Medicare, which I've paid into all my life and now rely on almost totally. He's a sweet, smooth talker, but it's all bullshit. Bush Jr. was dangerous because he's a stupid tool. Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al are dangerous because they're fascists. Mitch Romney is dangerous because of his vanity and hubris. Michelle Bachmann is dangerous because she's a flake with cunning and hubris. Tim Pawlenty is yet another fascist bully. (I'm from Minnesota. Trust me on this.) But are any of them worse than Obama? Pretend I'm from Missouri.

Here's someone who believes living to age 150 is just around the corner.

(Cue Rod Serling)

Meet Aubrey de Grey, formerly of London and currently on a quest to revise the most basic fact of his existence, his own mortality. He will soon discover that time is more than what he makes of it. Next stop; the Twilight Zone.

Well, okay. Maybe that's a little over-dramatic. Or maybe not. Disney notwithstanding, The Sorcerer's Apprentice has proven itself to be a cautionary tale to be taken seriously. Mess with the Unseen Forces at your own risk. You have to live with spirits you summon.

In the future de Grey sees, the ravages time commits on our bodies will be unraveled at the doctor's office and we'll be able to live for 150 years, and maybe indefinitely. The effects of aging will even be reversible. So if you're say, 60, when this wonderful technology hits the street, the good doctors will be able to rewind you to the biological equivalent of 25.

This sounds just ducky, but I'm a little worried. I have concerns. My concerns manifest on several levels.

The human population is already 3-4 times what the planet's current ecosystem can sustain and it continues to grow. Since we humans show no sign of being willing to control our own numbers, nature will soon solve the problem the way nature always solves it, and a bunch of us living especially long lives will only make the medicine more bitter. And if it actually prolongs our ability to breed, so much the worse. A lot of us are going to have to go away soon. Let's not make things any worse than they already are.

The technology de Grey talks about will obviously not be available to everyone. It will no doubt be very expensive. Who will the gatekeepers be? What standards will they impose? This could be a tool for control and repression on a level never before seen.

That's all serious stuff, but here's my big concern:

Time is merely the perceived order of events. For us humans, time without memory is meaningless. And at least for me personally, time becomes less and less linear as I age, and my whole temporal landscape can shift without warning. An event of 50 years ago can suddenly seem more real than the breakfast I ate five minutes ago, until the phone rings and it all shifts again. This is endlessly entertaining, despite the occasional discomfort it can spawn. But I suspect it's also my mind's way of indexing large volumes of data; tying up loose ends, reconnecting loose fragments of files; my wetware's version of a disk optimization routine. I don't want to mess with that process.

I'm not afraid of death. I'm afraid dying might hurt and I'd rather not be there when it happens, but the bare fact of my own mortality doesn't bother me. I certainly prefer it to any myth of an afterlife or rebirth I've ever heard. I don't want to roll around heaven all day, nor rot in hell, nor find myself looking at the universe through the eyes of a salamander or sewer rat. I'm quite sure I wasn't Catherine the Great in a past life, and I don't want to be the queen of Titan in a next life. And I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way. We're just not that important in the big scheme of things.

(Images courtesy of Wikipedia. )

Show us the math!

The state government here in Minnesota is currently in Day 6 of a shutdown.  The President and Congress are locked in a dance of death over the federal budget.  Personally, I blame all parties. A plague on all your houses!  You were hired to govern and you're not doing your jobs.  You're only campaigning.  If you have the courage, here's how to proceed to fix the problems.  It's very simple. 

Present specific solutions supported by rigorous math. Don't tell us about your personal values and priorities, show us what they are.  We value the things we spend our money on. That's true of individuals and nations equally. Don't tell, show.  Once more for clarity:

1. Do the math.
2. Show your work.
3. Present your solutions.

If you can't do that, shut up and resign. We the people will be better off without you.

Kill Your TV (Part 23)

Everyone who works in the criminal justice system, in any capacity, should have the experience of being arrested and jailed at least once. The weight of the whole system landing on top of you will change you forever. The sense of being a bug in the shadow of a shoe is unmistakable. I'm here to testify.

I was lucky. I didn't do it, the charges were dropped, and I was only held for 24 hours. Maybe, if you go through it a few times, you get used to it, but I doubt it. I'm betting you just get ground down and down.  Judges, trial lawyers, prosecutors and police don't give a damn about "truth." They only care about winning, or at least covering their own asses.  Cops arrest the wrong people all the time. Many "innocent" victims of the criminal justice system have spent decades in prison, and many were executed, because the system doesn't care about truth.

Casey Anthony, accused killer of her child and accused low-life slut, was acquitted of murder charges yesterday in Florida. Media pundits flaunted their astonishment and villagers outside the courthouse waved torches and pitchforks.  As usual, most people succumbed to simplistic thinking and false choices.  Of course, "not guilty" doesn't mean "innocent."  It doesn't even imply it. In this case the state didn't even prove there was a murder.  Nancy Grace, self-crowned  Maggot Queen of the 7x24 news cycle, seemed very sure about everything despite a shortage of facts.  Thankfully, the jury in this case was made of better stuff. 

"But what about poor little Caylee?," you may cry. 

Caylee is dead.  Nothing any of us do or say can effect her in the least.  Any notion of "justice for Caylee" is just code for revenge, and we do love our revenge.  We lust after it and roll in it, and this truth isn't lost on media decision-makers.  That's why they lavished so much money and attention on the Anthony trial.  If you needed another reason to turn off CNN, NBC, Fox, and the rest...  But you didn't. Not really. You already had plenty of reasons.