Of Gratitude and Wonder

So today I'm reading a David Brooks' column titled "The Arena Culture" in the NYT. It's about a new book "All Things Shining" by a couple of philosophers which "take[s] a smart, sweeping run through the history of Western philosophy". I love philosophy almost as much as I love science. Brooks mentions "Vico’s old idea that each age has its own lens through which people see the world". So of course I have to look up Vico. Turns out he was a 17th century Italian philosopher who had some ideas that may not have gained much traction in his own time but have aged well. Anyway, from time to time I read or stumble across something that reminds me anew how we stand on the shoulders of giants in many ways and I'm awed all over again at the potential of humankind. I need that occasionally to lift the gloomy, pessimistic thoughts that accumulate in my daily journey through life as I observe the infinity of stupidities we inflict on ourselves and others. Fortunately, I don't think I'm gloomy by nature and I'm easily distracted by marveling at the mysteries that lie all around us if we but pause to reflect. (Okay, I'm starting to ramble. Back to the column.)

He writes, " Dreyfus and Kelly (The authors of the book.) say that we should have the courage not to look for some unitary, totalistic explanation for the universe. Instead, we should live perceptively at the surface, receptive to the moments of transcendent whooshes that we can feel in, say, a concert crowd, or while engaging in a meaningful activity, like making a perfect cup of coffee with a well-crafted pot and cup.

We should not expect these experiences to cohere into a single "meaning of life." Transcendent experiences are plural and incompatible. We should instead cultivate a spirit of gratitude and wonder for the many excellent things the world supplies.

Not sure how much I would agree with Dreyfus and Kelly. I'm sure that living perceptively and receptively is terrific and useful, but I LIKE totalistic explanations. And my initial reaction to Brooks' "gratitude and wonder" comment was to think that gratitude and wonder is a poor substitute for understanding how things work. Then I had to reconsider as I thought of the sense of gratitude and wonder that infused this train of thought and so many others in my life. It has to be among the best that life has to offer. I wish everyone, including myself, could feel that more often.

Spiritual Sam Harris

Watched a short video of a ABC Nightline interview with Sam Harris. I've described him as hyperrational and, since I LOVE rational, I say that most admiringly. The interview focused on his ability to stir controversy, not just in the religious, but also in the atheist community. He is known as one of the "New Atheists" and "Four Horseman" of atheism but has some good arguments against using the term "atheist". He notes that we don't need a word for non-astrologers to describe those who doubt that far away stars and planets could have mysterious deterministic effects on the lives of people here on Earth. He has aroused some ire from atheist groups and gatherings for saying that people can be spiritual without spouting religious dogma and claiming to know things no one knows. I have some serious misgivings myself about going with "spiritual". I have no doubt that some people can alter their consciousness and perceptions through meditation or concentration in ways that could allow for some profound experiences. It can also be easily done with drugs. But I think the default assumption should be that these experiences take place solely in the mind. We know brains exist and that they produce the phenomenon of "mind". To my knowledge the evidence for "spirit" is non-existent.

Interestingly, the best argument I ever heard for treating people with compassion and kindness came from Sam Harris. In his book "The End Of Faith" he makes the point that everyone we know or meet will die one day and lose everything they love. He asks, "Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?" First time I'd heard it put like that.

Seasteading: Starting New Countries On The Oceans

Seasteading is basically a concept of floating city-nations that could eventually be home to millions. Since all the usable lands are already claimed by other nations the oceans are all that is left. The link http://seasteading.org/about-seasteading/our-strategy is to the Seasteading Institute, founded in 2008 by Patri Friedman, grandson of the famous economist Milton Friedman. His vision is to think like an entrepreneur and see these as startup countries, where governments are thought of as industry, with citizens as customers. That should certainly change the dynamics. He says, "Let a thousand nations bloom on the high seas, trying diverse political systems — essentially, a startup sector for government. We think seasteading will begin in 3–10 years on ships, repurposed for businesses like medical tourism. In a decade, they’ll progress to innovative designs based on oil rigs, hosting a range of businesses and thousands of residents. And in several decades, they’ll evolve into true floating cities for millions of people, pioneering new ways to live together. The idea is to enable seasteading communities — floating cities — that will allow the next generation of pioneers to peacefully test new ideas for government. The most successful can then inspire change in governments around the world.”

What a concept! If it works, this could be an evolutionary (and revolutionary) process for selecting lean, efficient governments that actually work in ways to maximize human well being and diminish conflict. I have often thought how much I would like to live in a world where reason ruled and no one killed or died over what they believed. Maybe it could happen on the high seas in the not too distant future.

Just Sayin'

Regarding the title I chose, I heard an NPR editorial rant a few days ago against the usage of this phrase. Just thought I'd mention that...

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There are three big billboards signed "God" I pass by on my way home from work. As I recall, the center one says, "One nation under me... Pray! Pray for what? And why? It's kind of interesting at times to see the absurdities in things so common we take them for granted. Just a brief analysis of that statement could open several lines of thought. Does this nation we live in have special status under "God"? I'm sure many evangelicals would answer in the affirmative. What about the rest of the world? Are they second class nations? And is this "pray!" thing a desperate plea or a commandment? Is this God really insecure or merely a celestial dictator seeking servile, cringing behavior? Just sayin"...

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Heard today that an assumed Homo sapiens tooth that was 400,000 years old was found while excavating a cave in Israel. That's at least twice as old as the date assumed for the earliest member of our species. The claim was that, if verified, this discovery would "change the whole picture of evolution". I hate these kinds of grandstanding, melodramatic proclamations. It wouldn't change anything of the sort. Evolutionary theory remains as solid as ever with multiple scientific fields all pointing in the same direction. Humans are only one tiny part of evolution. It would change the current picture we have of human evolution by simply pushing the date back. I don't get it. Just sayin'...

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Weird how the whole 9/11 thing became framed in such defining terms. I'm well aware that speaking of 9/11 in anything less than reverential terms is unlikely to be popular but I would argue it's become a symbol of something far bigger than its actual impact. A few points: 3000 people died. And yes, by any measure that was a tragedy. But medical errors kill 400,000 every year and that doesn't even rate a headline. Much less get seared into the national consciousness so deeply that Ground Zero is now thought of as sacred ground. So it obviously wasn't just the numbers of people who died. Or the property damage. Our response caused the further deaths of another 4000 American soldiers and several hundred thousand Iraqis and Afghans. And the economic costs estimates are somewhere between 1 and 3 trillion dollars. So some seriously deranged religious lunatics flew some planes into buildings and killed 3000 people and that event backblasted through our society with a force that probably won't be fully understood for years, if ever. Then recently we have Jon Stewart (Hey Jon, I love you, man, but seriously? Couldn't you find a cause that has an impact for humanity proportional to your influence?) shaming Congressional Republicans into dropping their objection to the 9/11 responders health bill. Let me walk that "shaming" thing back a little. I suspect a sense of shame is a rare attribute in politicians. More likely was a sense that voting against funds for 9/11 heroes might not be a popular postion. Just sayin'...

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Speaking of deranged religious lunatics, I recently heard the always eloquent Sam Harris giving a talk about his new book "The Moral Landscape". He was speaking of the special dangers posed by radical Islamist suicide bombers and made the point that from their perspective it's impossible for them commit a morally wrong act when they blow themselves up in a crowd and kill indiscriminately. They and any other good Muslims who die will go straight to paradise and the unbelievers (anyone besides good Muslims) will go to the eternal torments they deserve. It's a total victory with no way to lose! He also contrasted this death- seeking Abrahamic religion of Islam with the totally passive non violence of the Indian religion of Jainism, that forbids harm to all living beings. I think that includes animals. An amusingly well made point was that "the crazier a Jain gets the less we have to worry about them". Apparently the truly fanatical Jains are virtually paralyzed from passivity and must walk with their eyes on the ground lest they accidently step on a bug. I doubt if they do much proselytizing either. And that's gotta be a good thing. Just sayin'...

Plight of Women

Where is the righteous anger and solidarity of women with the plight of their sisters in bondage and hostage to some very stupid ideas? After hundreds of years, in places like Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc., they are still often forced to live in head-to-toe cloth bags in 100+ degree heat, beaten, stoned, killed in the name of family honor if they are raped, or at the very least ostracized or charged by authorities if they report the rape. They have their genitals mutilated "to protect family honor" and treated like farm animals kept for breeding purposes. In Afghanistan the hopelessness of their lives seems to have some of them setting themselves on fire as a means to escape. Recently Time magazine featured a young 16-year old wife who would have been a beauty if not for the gaping hole where her nose was before her Taliban husband cut it off as punishment for her running away from the enforced service to and abuse of the in-laws she had to live with while her husband was off fighting. And, of course, she had never had any choice in marrying the much older man who was her husband. Afghan women are property to be given in marriage to settle debts or any other whim their father or closest male relative may have.

There are also a few special refuges for disfigured women and girls who have had acid thrown in their faces by rejected suitors or for the crime of going to school. And on and on. It's difficult to imagine so dysfunctional a society as those so common in that region of the world. Saddest of all is the fact that the underlying causes of the lifetime of suffering and abuse many of these women are continually born into cannot be addressed. It is immunized by religious beliefs that cannot be questioned.

How is this different from slavery that has been supposedly banned everywhere in the world? Why is so little attention paid by governments and media? The world organized against apartheid in South Africa. This seems much more brutal. Where is the outrage?

News Bits

A renowned South African whitewater tour guide who was leading a couple of American kayakers on a whitewater expedition on an unexplored river in the Congo was apparently pulled from his kayak by a crocodile and presumed to be lunch. I suspect that little adventure is forever burned into the memory of the survivors.

Am I alone in feeling a special sense of horror at the idea of being eaten by a predator? Don't know why. And I think it's even worse when the predator is a reptile like a crocodile. Or a shark. These beasts seem kind of like prehistoric monsters. Maybe it's some sort of genetic memory from the thousands or millions of years our ancestors were on the menu for large numbers of animals with big teeth and claws and appetites. Maybe it's just the idea of a living, breathing, thinking person with dreams and aspirations being turned into crocodile shit. And is the fact that a crocodile sees us as just lunch ego-deflating to the prevalent view that sees mankind as made-in-the-very-image-of-God special?

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                                                             From NPR

Speaking of God stuff... The critically acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi (who was arrested last year for publicly mourning the protesters killed following the infamous presidential election) has been sentenced by the theocracy ruling Iran to 6 years in prison for "conspiring against national security and spreading propaganda against the Iranian system". He was also banned from writing or making movies or traveling abroad for 20 years. Like any dictatorial, totalitarian system, this is how theocracies have always behaved. Special skepticism should always be reserved for any who claim to speak in God's name. And they certainly should be kept far from the levers of power. For those who hear God speaking to them, you can be sure he always says exactly what they want to hear.

I was reminded of a great comment from a reader of a news article about some theocracy (I think it was about the crackdown by the Iranian theocratic government during pro-democracy protests). It said, "when a religion must be policed, enforced, or dictated it has failed and become destructive in a way it was not meant to be".  If only I could distill my thoughts so succinctly! Like Shakespeare in Hamlet, "Brevity is the soul of wit", to mention but one of the immortal lines from that work. Certainly didn't intend to compare that writer with Shakespeare.

The White House is claiming another victory with the new START arms reduction treaty being ratified by the Senate. President Obama said, "the strong bipartisan vote in the Senate sends a powerful signal to the world that Republicans and Democrats stand together on behalf of our security."

Translation: Republicans and Democrats made a careful assessment of the political advantages and disadvantages of a yes or no vote and cast the vote they felt would further their careers and curry favor with the particular constituency that might be paying attention.

Things We Believe

Around this time of the year it seems that the BMJ, formerly known as the the British Medical Journal, presents findings on quirky things. (Perhaps the Brits have a tendency toward quirkiness. I like it.) What caught my attention was the debunking of a belief - apparently rather prevalent in Denmark - that one can become intoxicated by soaking one's feet in vodka. Seems the BMJ did the requisite blood test examinations and found no increase in blood alcohol content with this odd habit of some of the Danish people.

How do beliefs based on obviously fuzzy thinking persist? As supposedly thinking, intelligent beings (I almost said "rational" but that description has been pretty thoroughly discredited in multiple lines of research. And perhaps that observation renders this particular query an exercise in useless rhetorical musing.) isn't there a sort of constant calibration, of testing and measuring things we believe against our best evaluation of the way things really are? Is it some sort of mental laziness that allows many to believe things based on little or no evidence? Do some construct a framework of beliefs about the nature of reality that they find so appealing that they either don't test those beliefs against an objective standard or actively resist the intrusion of facts or evidence against those beliefs? Do the comforts people find in the things they believe outweigh the risks of believing things that just aren't so?

No one can doubt that beliefs can have consequences that have the potential to alter existence itself for the individual or the whole of humanity. Shouldn't that be all that is necessary to motivate us to consider how well the things we believe measure up to the evidence?

Shorts

The non-partisan group, Politifact, which monitors all the political talking heads, recently named their pick for the biggest political lie of the year and for the second year in a row it was Republicans telling big whoppers about healthcare. Last year it was Sarah Palin's "death panels". This year it was "government takeover" of healthcare. (Although, the government-run healthcare program known as MediCare sure is popular.) Apparently, a well-known conservative consultant named Frank Luntz came up with the phrase as an obvious scare tactic. It worked very well. Of course, Democrats told some whoppers too. Incidentally, while all politicians lie (and whose fault is that?) I've thought for some time that Democrats just can't lie as well or effectively as Republicans. Republicans just tell bigger, better, scarier lies that make better sound bites and push the right emotional buttons.

Maybe we need another political party in the middle to keep the right and left honest. Or some source of information that is perceived as above the fray. Probably wouldn't solve the problem, though. Even facts can be "spun" and pigs can apparently have enough lipstick applied to look pretty good while squinting from a distance. Sure would help if people learned critical thinking skills and applied them to seeing things the way they were rather than how they wanted them to be.
              
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I read that a couple of economists, Ethan Harris of BofA Merrill Lynch and Diane Swonk of Mesirow Financial, predicted a year ago that the 2010 unemployment rate would end the year at 9.8% and got it exactly right. I have wondered for some time while listening to the political back-and-forth about how to improve the economy between Republicans (tax cuts!) and Democrats (stimulus!) why we didn't assemble a group of economists with impressive credentials to put together a plan and follow it. Surely it's better to solicit advice from experts in a given field and follow it than to figure we could do better on our own. I couldn't believe how so many people who weren't economists were certain bailouts and stimulus were terrible ideas and were glad to tell anyone who would listen just how terrible. My thought was, "I don't know and neither do you"! And our politicians and talk show hosts also aren't economists.

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Newsweek reports that 51% of Americans think it is more likely that scientists will clone dinosaurs in their lifetime than it is that Congress will fix Social Security. How hard can it be? I suspect politics is getting in the way of the math.

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Science magazine named the discovery of the quantum machine as the most significant breakthrough of the year. It's a tiny metal paddle of semiconductor that was supercooled and coaxed into being in two different states at the same time, something only possible (as far as we know) with quantum phenomenon. They were able to get it to vibrate both a little and lot at the same time. Impossible! you say. But you might want to pause and consider that quantum mechanics is the most successful theory ever devised. It has been tested thousands of times for years and the basic principles have never been found in error.

The Adventures of Voyager I

Voyager I is nearing a milestone. She was launched on September 5, 1977 and is 10.8 billion miles from home and about to leave the solar system after traveling for 33 years. She is still in touch with Earth even though the radio messages take about 16 hours one way at the speed of light. She finished her original mission of surveying the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in 1989 then headed toward deep space between the stars in the direction of the center of our galaxy. She's by far the fastest object we've ever launched - moving I think about 40,000 mph - but still an insignificant fraction of lightspeed. Since the nearest star is nearly 30 trillion miles away I think I've read it would take her about 80,000 years to make it that far. It will be many millions of years to the center of the galaxy.

Aren't you glad you tuned in? :)

Showers, Itches, and Random Thoughts

An itch between my shoulder blades this morning while showering set off a train of thoughts I thought I would write down for posterity - or whatever. (Or is this just a form of self-obsession? Many of us are so connected these days. We're blogging and tweeting and Facebooking to share so many details of our lives. Well, not me so much. I'm too much of an introvert. Anyway, not trying to get philosophical here.)

Back to my hard-to-reach itch. I got to thinking how frustrating the physical limitations of human bodies can be and that led me to think about how different it could be when humans merge with machines in more complete ways. (Here's a line I ran across that nearly had me rolling on the floor: Sexbots will heighten our ecstasy until we have frothy, shrieking, bug-eyed, amnesia-inducing orgasms.) This process has already begun, of course. (There is the woman who had a tooth that I seem to recall was hollowed out, fitted with a camera lens, implanted where an eye was and attached to a retinal nerve. Not entirely sure I have the details exactly right. There are people with amputated legs that have been fitted with protheses that are in some limited ways superior to what they had and this is stirring debate about unfair advantages in sporting events.) But I'm getting sidetracked again. I got to wondering about how some possible scenarios might play out in Cyborg World. Specifically, how fierce the debate would be about how far is too far. I think we can be pretty sure it will get nasty. Maybe it will only be a vocal few. Perhaps fears real or imagined could escalate into legislation or persecution. I guess the possibilities are endless and ultimately unpredictable.

Except perhaps one: religious fundamentalism. My idle musings in the shower about obstacles to technological advances (no doubt influenced by an episode of "House" I had watched last night about a father who had himself actually crucified each year as part of a bargain he had made with God in order that his daughter would remain in remission from a nasty cancer she had - people believe weird things!) segued into some considerations of rejections of those technological advances. I was recalling how offended I was as a healthcare professional and a person when I first encountered long ago the religious objections of, for example, Jehovah's Witnesses to receiving life-saving blood products. I was doubly offended when reading tech articles that would mention the search for blood substitutes that, among other applications, could get around these (to me) idiotic objections. My first inclination would be to just get out of the way and watch the aforementioned idiot go to meet the consequences of stupid decisions. And stupid decisions should have consequences. I've been on the receiving end of those sorts of consequences enough myself to appreciate the value of the lessons they offer. They do tend to stick with you. Pain is indeed a wonderful teacher. The problem with life or death decisions made based on beliefs is that if the belief was a stupid one you are likely to end up very dead and the possibility of learning further lessons is forever ended. I guess the obvious conclusion here is to make sure you don't shackle yourself to stupid beliefs. On the other hand, technology and civilization have insulated many of us from some consequences of bad decisions and stupid beliefs. In fact, it just occurred to me that the right to have stupid beliefs that lead to bad decisions is enshrined in the Constitution. Whether that's a good idea is another argument and one I'm not sure which side I would come down on.

Whew! It takes way too many words and too much time to express the thoughts that race around in your head in a few moments!

Back to the human-machine merging... Just picture, if you will, some of the mind-blowing possibilities. Some might decide the human shape is rather limited and opt for radical redesign. Maybe to something like a Transformers approach. Might be useful to morph into whatever best suited the task at hand. Others have considered these possibilities with infinitely more imagination than I possess. Posthuman or transhuman are words often applied to what we may become. The philosopher Nick Bostrom has some terrific stuff about posthumanism on his website http://www.nickbostrom.com/ . Letter From Utopia has wonderful prose and The Dragon Tyrant is a good tale. I think it was Marvin Minsky (I believe he's an artificial intelligence pioneer) who was asked the question: "Will robots take over the Earth?" His answer was, "Yes, but they will be our children."     

The end of time?

I guess most people don't find this stuff interesting but I love it!

A recent model of the universe is giving a 50% chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years, according to a group of physicists rebelling against the implications of a flat, open universe, which appears to be established as the actual shape of the universe. Apparently, a flat, open universe will expand forever. And, also apparently, a universe that expands forever is infinite and eternal. For me, the most fascinating implication is that, in an infinite and eternal universe, anything that can happen will happen. An infinite number of times! This group of rebels just can't swallow this because they say the laws of physics don't work in an infinitely expanding universe. Therefore, the universe must have an end and they have crunched the numbers and came up with the 50% chance. Well, that's kind of depressing! But just to cheer us up they point out that we won't see it coming. You see, that would violate cause and effect principles, I think. So catastrophe will be on us before we recognize it.

On the other hand... last month Roger Penrose, a well known physicist, and others announced tentative evidence (in the form of concentric circles in the cosmic background radiation - the echoes of the big bang) that hinted at collisions with other universes. They say this is exactly what you would expect if the universe were eternally cyclical. Meaning an endless cycle of big bangs and expansion. Of course, they've been jumped on pretty hard by their peers who say that's pretty far-fetched. We have a space probe named Planck that I think is now making precision measurements of the cosmic background radiation and that may settle the argument in a year or so. At least for the time being.

I find the thought of an eternal universe somewhat comforting. Even if a big bang wipes the slate clean every now and then and starts it all over, I'm okay with that. Last I heard our destiny looked a lot gloomier. Dark energy is pushing all the galaxies farther apart in an ever speedier expansion and at some point we would be alone, and at some later point all the stars would exhaust their fuel and go out, leaving them adrift in eternal darkness. Doesn't sound like much fun.

Justice Stevens speaks against the death penalty

Justice John Paul Stevens has been in the news a couple of times lately speaking against the death penalty. That's kind of interesting since he was one of the Supreme Court justices (now retired) who voted to reinstate the death penalty in 1976. Apparently he now regrets that position. He recently wrote an essay that argued the way it is applied fails to meet the Supreme Court’s own standards for execution and persists only because of misguided political and cultural reasons.

I read that he wrote this essay as a review of a book “Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition,” by David Garland, a professor of law and sociology at New York University. An NYT article said,  "The book compares American and European approaches to the death penalty, and Justice Stevens appears to accept its major conclusions. Professor Garland attributes American enthusiasm for capital punishment to politics and a cultural fascination with violence and death."  Justice Stevens wrote that personnel changes on the court, coupled with “regrettable judicial activism,” had created a system of capital punishment that is shot through with racism, skewed toward conviction, infected with politics and tinged with hysteria.

It has long been apparent to me that the "American enthusiasm for capital punishment" - which is alive and well - was very much at odds with the ideals of a civilized society. In 2004 four nations - China, Iran, Vietnam, and the US - accounted for 97 percent of all global executions. Obviously, keeping that sort of company should make us wonder at the correctness of our actions.

In 1976 the Court said that the death penalty was okay if it "served the purpose of incapacitation, deterrence or retribution". None of those justifications hold water. The first two are worthy goals. The last one is unworthy of any society that calls itself civilized. Incapacitation is easily achieved with life imprisonment. Some may be tempted to point out that killers do escape from prison. Yes, but we do have prisons that people don't escape from. I think the deterrence claim has been pretty well discredited by the majority of those who do the studies. If a killer was thinking clearly enough to weigh prison against death they probably wouldn't kill. Retribution or revenge has no place in a deliberative body charged with the government and protection of a civilized society. I have always maintained that the sort of irrational passions that could lead one to take a life was understandable - if not excusable - in an individual. There is absolutely no justification for irrationality or passions in the courtroom. And inevitably, given the fallibility of humans, we will execute someone who didn't commit the crime they face execution for. In fact, it has likely already happened. There have been over a hundred people exonerated and released from death row since the availability of reliable DNA testing. How many thousands died without the option to have DNA testing done? The near certainity of sooner or later executing someone innocent should be enough to forever proscribe such an irrevocable punishment. Incidentally, I've read that some states have a system whereby volunteer executioners flip the switch or press the button that extinguishes the life of someone who had never harmed the executioner personally. Then that volunteer executioner presumably goes home to sit down and have dinner with his family. I've always thought that sort of person had to have crawled out from under a rock and should be considered to have fairly severe psychological problems.

I feel pretty sure that in the not too distant future we will look back and suffer pangs of conscience over this era of judicially sanctioned revenge. Another chapter in the long, bloody history of humankind.

Billionaire's Giveaway

Lately in the news was Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and a newly minted billionaire, joining the group of billionaires that includes the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett who have pledged to give much or most of their vast fortunes to charity and/or what they consider to be worthy projects to help people. Zuckerberg may be trying to polish his image but at least some of the others seem to be genuinely interested in alleviating suffering. I first noticed this phenomenon quite some time ago when Bill Gates started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and I started hearing about good works such as campaigns to end some horrific diseases in Africa and numerous other projects.

These are wonderful things, I'm sure, but I think, monumentally shortsighted. Perhaps it's like that often used adage about giving a man a fish and feeding him for a day versus teaching him to fish and feeding him for a lifetime. If the Gates Foundation eradicates malaria in Africa and saves uncounted millions, how does that help mankind? It adds many more empty bellies to a land where famine is endemic as population growth has outstripped their ability to feed themselves for years. I remember a few years ago listening to a report on some humanitarian project in Ethiopia (I think) and a woman who had given birth to eight children (I don't remember how many actually survived but it was considerably less) was being provided counseling about limiting family size. She rejected that information, saying, "I will have as many children as God sends me". I thought, terrific, then you and God can watch them starve.

I would argue that Gates and company need to think much bigger. They could change the course of human history by using their vast wealth on research and development projects to alter aspects of human existence that matter much more than any particular group of people. Get some of us off this planet so the next really big rock that slams into Earth won't wipe us all out. Develope nanotechnology that could cure disease and aging. Build nanomachines that can assemble anything we need from simple atoms and molecules the way nature does. Develope artificial intelligence, solve our energy problems, vastly expand human learning, educate people - especially women - and break a cycle of ignorance and poverty and all its attendant ills. Just don't cure a disease or three and leave us laboring under the same limitations that have dogged us since existence began. Collectively and individually, Man has the unfortunate tendency to be his own worst enemy. Get projects underway to save us from ourselves.

A few billionaires; the Google guys, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the Paypal cofounder Elon Musk, have poured money into things that have the potential to be game-changers. Google is financing research into vehicles that drive themselves and alternative energy sources to name a couple. Elon Musk has spent hundreds of millions developing space lauch capabilities and just recently his company, Space X, became the first private company to launch a ship into space, orbit the Earth, and bring it back home.

Anyway, I'm thinking I should write a letter to Gates and others who think charity and humanitarian projects are the best use of their money and implore them to reconsider. (In the case of Zuckerberg, I'm wondering if I shouldn't try to make the case that if he must give away some of those billions I would be glad to take it off his hands and apply it in the manner I've advocated. If he just wants PR points I'd be delighted to give him all the credit.) Seem reasonable?

Wikiproblems

The U.S. somewhat hysterical response to the wikileaks release of the classified diplomatic cables is not impressing other countries around the world. We are getting denounced from England to Russia as hypocrites who pontificate and lecture the rest of the world on freedom of information, speech, etc. and then have a hissy fit when our business gets put out in the street. Our former governor, the Reverend Mike Huckabee, is calling for whoever originally leaked the cables to be executed. Maybe the combination of his gig at Fox News and his presidential aspirations have unhinged him.

Doesn't sound to me like much damage was done. Yes, it caused some embarassment but apparently some knowledgeable people were pretty impressed with the both the competence and consistency of our diplomats.

R

A well-spoken David Brooks quote

"You don’t have to abandon your principles to cut a deal. You just have to acknowledge that there are other people in the world and even a president doesn’t get to stamp his foot and have his way."

I liked this quote from todays David Brooks' column in the NYT speaking of the compromise worked out between Obama and Rebublicans determined to extend the Bush tax cuts until the heat death of the universe. He is a member of that rare and endangered species, the moderate conservative. I'm not sure how he has survived this long, other than the fact that he writes for the NYT, that liberal media bastion.  He appears to have considerable respect for Obama. Perhaps because they are both just entirely too reasonable for their own good.

R

Intro

I'm a newbie so be gentle and tolerant.

I'm calling this blog "Random Thoughts" and that will probably be fairly descriptive although there may be some common themes running through the commentary. I'll try not to get too incendiary :). My interests are fairly wide-ranging, I think, but will often meander in the realm of science and technology. There will also probably be frequent excursions into current events and political misdeeds. I tend toward freethought philosophy. I like most of "Clifford's Credo", that admonishes us to never accept anything on insufficient evidence.

Here is a link to some beautiful animation of the "complex inner machinery of living cells" from a recent science article in the NYT. http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/11/15/science/1248069334032/the-animators-of-life.html?ref=science

Enjoy!