Samuel here.
Yo! I haven't posted in ages. Sorry! I'm working 11 hours a day, 6 days a week, and every post I make on facebook, twitter, tumblr or this blog is monitored by the DNC and senior staff of Barack Obama's reelection campaign until the end of August. I am expressly prohibited from throwing the sort of fire I am accustomed to throwing, and if I'm going to write posts on my blog with my name attached to them, I would like their content and their tone to be entirely unrestricted. So I'm gonna hold off until I'm a free man once again.
Ian can make his own excuses and I don't even know if Simon's still alive*. I will resume my regular posting schedule in September, likely in the second week. I may change when I post based on what day of the week my problem sets are due next year, but I'll be sure to tell you guys if that happens.
I'm sorry it took me so long to write this post. You've all been most patient and I've been entirely neglectful. I have no excuses. When I start writing again, I'll post about it on facebook and g+ and stuff so that everyone knows.
Thank you all for your interest in the blog and for being patient with me.
Samuel
*This is a complete lie. I'm talking to him on facebook right now.
Updates Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays
Monday, 9 July 2012
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
May Day!
Samuel here.
A number of my friends have declared on Facebook that they are going to this (NOTE: the horrible people who made this horrible website have changed the page and left no record of what it was when I posted this. It was a thing promoting a "hand puppets for Occupy" event, I think), and it seems like as good a time as any for me to actually say something partisan. I haven't really expressed any political convictions on this blog since that one time I wrote 8 pages about libertarianism. It's time to make some enemies.
I wish I could protest.
I mean, I wish I had ever had the opportunity to protest for a cause I believe in.
Now I've got you all mad. But hear me out. The Canadian Occupy Movement sucked. May Day sucks. Anyone who talks about "the Harper Attack" definitely sucks.
Firstly, to The Right Honorable Stephen Harper, I wish a late but sincere happy birthday. I contend that you came to power through willful election fraud in 2006 when you knowingly violated the $18,300,000 federal campaign spending limit. You came to power through willful election fraud in 2011 when your campaign systematically and maliciously lied to liberal voters in tight ridings about where and when they were to vote, and I contend that whoever is responsible for that unprecedented breach of Canadian democracy should literally be exiled from human society. Perhaps by spaceship. Your harsh limitations on the freedom of Conservative MPs and your cabinet members to speak their minds represents an atrocious contempt for the maturity of your colleagues, and you habitually ignoring the press combined with your government's repeated refusal to give the House information that it requires (leading, I should add, to your government being the first committee of parliament in any commonwealth nation ever to be found in contempt of parliament) is genuinely frightening. I was disappointed and surprised by your crime bill, which is a rare combination for me in politics. In the year I graduate from university, we will spend twice as much on prisons as we did in my freshman year, and crime rates will have steadily fallen (barring unforeseen crime-inducing circumstances). I was shocked when we literally spent tens of billions of dollars on fighter jets that aren't built yet, during peacetime, during a massive deficit amassed during your administration. And I can't tell you how saddened and angry I am at the idea of redefining when life begins for the purposes of outlawing abortion. But ultimately, sir, I am grateful for how little your government has done. The fact is, it could have been a whole lot worse. I'm pretty fucking pissed about the election rigging, sure, but aside from the crime bill, the only thing you've done to advance any sort of socially conservative agenda is the fairly low-impact scrapping of the long-gun registry. That, and my respect for your office and my recognition of your humanity, are why I sincerely wish you a happy birthday.
I wish anyone had been complaining about any of that when I visited Occupy Toronto. That would have been nice. But instead they spoke, like this May Day website, in strange, obfuscated platitudes. I was told that we shouldn't be building a pipeline to the US because the oil is ours. I met communists and extreme socialists and we spoke about Marxism and that was pretty fun but pretty blatantly futile. It was not a protest. It was a circlejerk.
If I had lived in New York this past year, I would have lent my name and my hands and all my spare time to the Occupy Wall Street movement, because that was a genuine protest. I would have sat in Zuccotti Park because campaign contributions should be limited. Severely limited. I would have sat in Zuccotti Park because radical campaign finance reform is absolutely essential for the health of American democracy. I would have sat in Zuccotti Park because most lobbyists should have little influence most of the time. I went to the Toronto Occupy movement once and never again. When they told them to leave Oakland they rioted. When they told them to leave New York they came back half a dozen times. When they told them to leave Church Street they were gone by the morning. Because they weren't there for any good reason. Because they spoke in platitudes. They were bored and unfocused. You aren't a protester unless you are angry.
Friends. If someone is trying to change the world, and their rallying cry includes the phrase "criminalization and racialization of our communities", if their single biggest worry in this world is that "the corporate elite are deploying measures of austerity that is [sic] leading to the depletion of our much valued social and public services", if they don't give you a single damn example of what's making them angry, if they are asking you to make puppets, then stay home.
But
But if this private members' bill goes anywhere, or if Rick Santorum had gotten anywhere with his anti-contraception clusterfuckery
If The Right Honorable Stephen Harper decides he can turn Canada into a state where a woman must bear the child of her rapist, that he can do so on the backs of the MPs he has muzzled while lying through his teeth about where he stands, if we slip that one fatal inch back down the slope of women's liberty, then I will live on parliament hill. I hope you will as well. And we will scream at the top of our lungs. Because we will be angry. Because we will be focused. Because we will understand our cause and we will believe that it is right. Because that is how you protest.
Happy birthday, Mr. Prime Minister. And happy May Day to you all.
A number of my friends have declared on Facebook that they are going to this (NOTE: the horrible people who made this horrible website have changed the page and left no record of what it was when I posted this. It was a thing promoting a "hand puppets for Occupy" event, I think), and it seems like as good a time as any for me to actually say something partisan. I haven't really expressed any political convictions on this blog since that one time I wrote 8 pages about libertarianism. It's time to make some enemies.
I wish I could protest.
I mean, I wish I had ever had the opportunity to protest for a cause I believe in.
Now I've got you all mad. But hear me out. The Canadian Occupy Movement sucked. May Day sucks. Anyone who talks about "the Harper Attack" definitely sucks.
Firstly, to The Right Honorable Stephen Harper, I wish a late but sincere happy birthday. I contend that you came to power through willful election fraud in 2006 when you knowingly violated the $18,300,000 federal campaign spending limit. You came to power through willful election fraud in 2011 when your campaign systematically and maliciously lied to liberal voters in tight ridings about where and when they were to vote, and I contend that whoever is responsible for that unprecedented breach of Canadian democracy should literally be exiled from human society. Perhaps by spaceship. Your harsh limitations on the freedom of Conservative MPs and your cabinet members to speak their minds represents an atrocious contempt for the maturity of your colleagues, and you habitually ignoring the press combined with your government's repeated refusal to give the House information that it requires (leading, I should add, to your government being the first committee of parliament in any commonwealth nation ever to be found in contempt of parliament) is genuinely frightening. I was disappointed and surprised by your crime bill, which is a rare combination for me in politics. In the year I graduate from university, we will spend twice as much on prisons as we did in my freshman year, and crime rates will have steadily fallen (barring unforeseen crime-inducing circumstances). I was shocked when we literally spent tens of billions of dollars on fighter jets that aren't built yet, during peacetime, during a massive deficit amassed during your administration. And I can't tell you how saddened and angry I am at the idea of redefining when life begins for the purposes of outlawing abortion. But ultimately, sir, I am grateful for how little your government has done. The fact is, it could have been a whole lot worse. I'm pretty fucking pissed about the election rigging, sure, but aside from the crime bill, the only thing you've done to advance any sort of socially conservative agenda is the fairly low-impact scrapping of the long-gun registry. That, and my respect for your office and my recognition of your humanity, are why I sincerely wish you a happy birthday.
I wish anyone had been complaining about any of that when I visited Occupy Toronto. That would have been nice. But instead they spoke, like this May Day website, in strange, obfuscated platitudes. I was told that we shouldn't be building a pipeline to the US because the oil is ours. I met communists and extreme socialists and we spoke about Marxism and that was pretty fun but pretty blatantly futile. It was not a protest. It was a circlejerk.
If I had lived in New York this past year, I would have lent my name and my hands and all my spare time to the Occupy Wall Street movement, because that was a genuine protest. I would have sat in Zuccotti Park because campaign contributions should be limited. Severely limited. I would have sat in Zuccotti Park because radical campaign finance reform is absolutely essential for the health of American democracy. I would have sat in Zuccotti Park because most lobbyists should have little influence most of the time. I went to the Toronto Occupy movement once and never again. When they told them to leave Oakland they rioted. When they told them to leave New York they came back half a dozen times. When they told them to leave Church Street they were gone by the morning. Because they weren't there for any good reason. Because they spoke in platitudes. They were bored and unfocused. You aren't a protester unless you are angry.
Friends. If someone is trying to change the world, and their rallying cry includes the phrase "criminalization and racialization of our communities", if their single biggest worry in this world is that "the corporate elite are deploying measures of austerity that is [sic] leading to the depletion of our much valued social and public services", if they don't give you a single damn example of what's making them angry, if they are asking you to make puppets, then stay home.
But
But if this private members' bill goes anywhere, or if Rick Santorum had gotten anywhere with his anti-contraception clusterfuckery
If The Right Honorable Stephen Harper decides he can turn Canada into a state where a woman must bear the child of her rapist, that he can do so on the backs of the MPs he has muzzled while lying through his teeth about where he stands, if we slip that one fatal inch back down the slope of women's liberty, then I will live on parliament hill. I hope you will as well. And we will scream at the top of our lungs. Because we will be angry. Because we will be focused. Because we will understand our cause and we will believe that it is right. Because that is how you protest.
Happy birthday, Mr. Prime Minister. And happy May Day to you all.
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
Post 23: Wherein I Blatantly Break The Rules To Talk About PLANETS
Samuel here, but I am not writing a blog post today.
"Then what am I reading?"
Okay, I guess I am writing a blog post today. But I'm breaking all the rules.
See, this morning I found an editorial cartoon that I wanted to write about because when I saw it I thought up a really great joke about Rick Santorum and condoms. But after a few deep breaths and a lot of coffee, I still couldn't bring myself to crack wise about Rick Santorum's penis. It's great to have an outlet, but after a couple weeks of writing as though everything I see on Facebook is personally offensive to me, I have to take a break. I already basically did when I wrote that one about things being awesome, and this morning I was reading the news when I discovered, to my surprise, that things are still awesome.
This is the second most important news article that I have ever read. The most important was on September 29, 2010, when Steven Vogt and Paul Butler discovered Gliese 581 g. It was immediately apparent that it would more profoundly change the human legacy than any discovery in our lifetimes thus far. It was the first Earthlike planet ever discovered; it had a substantial atmosphere, remarkably Earth-like temperature and chemical composition, and astrophysicists worldwide deemed it likely habitable by humankind. Immediately Gliese 581 g caused our estimate of the distribution of nearby habitable planets to skyrocket; it unrecognizably changed our estimation of the number of future homes for us or even present homes for others. Having Earthlike planets nearby means two crucial things: that in order to branch out into space we don't have to spend millions of years terraforming uncooperative worlds like Mars (not only don't we have to terraform, but I am literally talking about wandering around on a planet 20 light years away without any kind of spacesuit at all), and that perhaps the evolution of organisms like us isn't so unlikely after all. All the life we know is based on liquid water, so in space we look for life where there is liquid water. The more liquid water we know about, the more likely we are to find life. The discovery that there is anywhere near 10 billion Earthlike planets in our galaxy alone is the biggest step towards finding aliens since the invention of the telescope.
And the individual discoveries aren't even the important thing. The important thing is the trend. Ever since we started looking for planets outside of our solar system in 1995, we have found them in droves. I mean, really, in unbelievable numbers. No one could have predicted that when I was born. But within my lifetime, the likelihood of humans ever living on another world has increased by orders of magnitude. If we can find sufficiently Earthlike planets sufficiently close by, all the remaining obstacles to far-reaching human colonization of space are cosmetic. The infrastructure is there. We don't have to fundamentally alter the nature of worlds; the building is done for us, all that's left is engineering and politics. It's like the universe has handed us a state-of-the-art computer, and all we have to do is write the software.
So why does it take me to tell people about this? When Pluto was accurately reclassified as a trans-Neptunian dwarf planet, newspapers worldwide were loud and indignant for days. Where are they now? This story didn't even make the Android news app's Top News section for the day. We have just witnessed a radical overnight transformation of humankind’s understanding of the universe and you're probably hearing about it from a blog. I mean, this article has further-reaching consequences than almost anything you will ever read or see or hear; if our descendants exist in a billion years, they will be spacefaring, and if they are spacefaring then this very discovery will be the cornerstone of their longevity. The name of the researchers, and of Gliese 581 g and Steven Vogt and Paul Butler, should be taught to every child in every school on Earth. And yet they will be casually mentioned and quickly forgotten.
I cannot imagine a human future without space colonization. I can't even imagine another generation without space colonization. I like humans and I want to see us survive, and I have limited patience where the extinction of my species is concerned. To know that worlds exist that are perfectly prepared for our arrival is comforting on a cosmological scale. It is viscerally exciting. When I stand at my window and look into the sky I have always seen the unfathomable blackness of space. I have always known the tiny shimmering glints of those massive furnaces that pepper our cosmos. But now, for the first time ever, I see home. Earth is no more safe, no more nurturing or lovely, than tens of billions of distant alien rocks. This is not my home. I am shackled here, temporarily, by the technical immaturity and social irresponsibility of my species. But I learned today that that can't last. There's no reason any longer to keep us here, for today we learned the Earth is nothing special. The Earth is not our home. Our homes are everywhere. So let's go.
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Post 21: Wherein People Whine About Politics
Samuel here.
People whine about politics: FACT. Usually this is good. The success of self-governance depends on people whining about politics. But sometimes they do it for the wrong reasons.
Lately there has been a reasonable hubbub, at least among my fellow liberal-socialist-commie-pinko-elitist-war-on-religion-types, about Stephen Harper launching an attack ad against Bob Rae, the leader of the Liberal Party which isn't even the official opposition, on the day of a by-election. While Canada does have rules against campaigning in an election on the day it's held, this video bypasses them nicely by not mentioning the by-election once.
Seems fine to me.
I have never seen anything wrong with using the rules of the game to your advantage. In my opinion, the only meaningful political boundaries are whether it is legally possible to do something and whether or not you think it contributes to the sum total good in the world. If it does both, you cannot be blamed for doing it. So, yes, I'm in favor of exploiting legal loopholes to air videos that you think will contribute to keeping the right people in power. I am not in favor of something like the nuclear option, because I think it would fundamentally alter the functionality of the senate in a way that does more harm than good (again, sorry that every time I need a reference it's to American politics. It's just that here in Canada we are slowly realizing that our last election was maliciously and intentionally rigged by the people who currently run our country and what we choose to bitch about is by-election youtube videos, so you'll understand if I have a bit of a hard time studying the functionality of, say, our unelected senate that has veto power over every law our elected representatives try to create. Yes, every one of those words has a different link). Mine is a pretty straightforward legalistic utilitarian argument. It's pretty easy to make and hard to challenge. It would make for some super fun devil's advocate. But I imagine you guys are more interested in why I think the Conservatives were right to release this video (much as I'd like to talk about political ethics for ages).
Does it fit my criteria?
Well, so far as I've read, it is legally possible. The obvious response is that "it goes against the spirit of the law." This I do not understand. Why should it be up to a political operative, probably the head of some Conservative federal video editing team, to interpret the law? I bet you there wasn't a single lawyer involved in the creation of this video. The only lawyers involved are the guys who would have said that technically, it would not be illegal to release a video on the day of a by-election if the video ignores the by-election. And they were doing their job and they were doing it well. Whom exactly are you blaming if you say that the video goes against the spirit of the law? Who is supposed to step up and say that the law should be taken to mean something that it does not say? Personally, I'm just as happy that the Conservative majority's lawyers are telling the truth to our elected officials, and I'm even happier that the cinematographers who actually constructed the commercial aren't interpreting Canadian election code.
Does it contribute to the sum total good? I'm going to say no, but the people who launched the video would of course disagree. And I think this is probably the biggest public misconception about government. Nobody understands the types of people who get involved in politics. Sure, there is money and influence and fame in being a member of parliament. Agreed. There is only poverty and obscurity in being the guy who makes videos for the Conservative party, or in being the guy who decides that a video will be made and why and when and how. If you don't hold elected office, you're not there for money and you're not there for power. You are there out of a genuine desire to effect positive change. This is why it pisses me off when people complain about "spin doctors" or "hatchet men". You do what you have to do to change the world for the better. Sometimes it may seem manipulative, sometimes it may seem destructive. But I'm a utilitarian, and chances are you are, too.
Calm down.
Thursday, 15 March 2012
Post 19: Wherein Snobs Bother Me
Samuel here.
You guys! You guys! Exciting news, you guys! Turns out I'm what's wrong with the world. :(
Once again, I'd like to preface this post with an admission that at times it seems like I'm arguing at great length with an image that really isn't trying to put forward a considered opinion, so allow me to defend my post in advance: I choose the images that I complain about on this blog based partly on how familiar I am with the opinions they present. People share things on Facebook because they agree with them. I think this image presents an opinion that a lot of smart people believe, or at least believe a slight modification of. I'm arguing with behaviors I've seen as much as with the image itself.
So, I definitely can't name all of these people. I don't recognize Freud by sight and I sure don't know what Ayaan Hirsi Ali looks like. Yes, I do recognize Snooki, but not because I have ever watched Jersey Shore. I blame some sort of cultural osmosis. Not that it matters at all whether I've watched Jersey Shore or not.
I guess that there are two things for me to address here. I'm going to make the wording of the image --- and probably its meaning, too --- a little bit more reasonable so that I'm actually arguing against real statements that real people might seriously make. One message of the image is, I think, that anyone who watches Jersey Shore is supporting something damaging to humanity. The second message is that you are damaging humanity if you are unfamiliar with the work of history's greatest minds. Note that this isn't my interpretation of the image, it's just the most reasonable argument along these lines that I can construct while still feeling like I'm at least sort of responding to the image.
Well. I'm a gamer (surprise!). I played with colorful pieces of cardboard in public places for most of my free time in high school. I like math and sometimes I read large books while I walk. I know what it's like to have people make fun of me for my hobbies. I never understood why it mattered to random strangers in the cafeteria how my friends and I spent our time. It didn't affect them in the slightest, and I doubt we ever gave much satisfaction to anyone who harassed us. Not that people bothered us often, but it did happen occasionally, and it always perplexed me. I see the same ridiculous error in this image. When someone watches Jersey Shore, they are part of a group of people who are responsible for, uh, let's say, three things that could ever possibly matter to you:
1) They raise the ratings of Jersey Shore, making it more profitable for advertisers to run commercials during that show, which means that the networks are more likely to pick it up for more seasons. So more of the time that you turn on the television, there will be Jersey Shore on. This would be a reasonable argument if it significantly decreased the likelihood that something you want to see is on at any given time. But it doesn't mean that at all. Firstly, the affect that one program has on how much other programs are aired is minimal. Secondly, if you object this strongly to Jersey Shore then you probably aren't watching MTV anyways. Finally, reality shows don't air reruns. Jersey Shore takes up 11 hours of the year. Horror of horrors.
2) They popularize cultural icons, like Snooki, that you find distasteful. This is a stupid complaint. It is absurdly easy to ignore celebrities who annoy you. The fact that Snooki is popular will never affect how much you enjoy television. I mean, Stephen Harper is my Prime Minister and I'm still majoring in political science (OUCH!).
3) They popularize a cultural icon whose behavior glamorizes something destructive, which you feel young people will emulate. Maybe there's something to this, but in order to do this argument justice I would have to figure out what Snooki actually does, which sounds difficult and boring.
I refuse to even attempt to construct an argument about how Snooki's popularity reveals the stupidity of the masses, and stupid people are fun to complain about. Anyone who tries to mount an argument like that desperately needs to relax.
What about ignorance and science and stuff!?
I don't like ignorance, but I think an image like this ignores the crucial distinction between ignorance that hurts society and ignorance that just makes life a little bit more boring for the ignorant person. Chances are you have seen a video or a television show where a camera crew has taken to the streets and asked random people absurdly simple questions, and most people could not answer them. Chances are you thought it was funny, and decided that people are stupid (or that it's easy to edit videos and only show dumb people). These videos from the Rick Mercer Report are exactly what I'm talking about. Or all the ones from the beginning of the #Occupy movement where journalists from major networks asked Occupy protesters questions like "what is the name of the secretary of transportation?" and then whined about how no one knew. I see absolutely nothing wrong with the ignorance of these people. Why would a random resident of South Carolina know the name of the Canadian Prime Minister? Why would someone protesting the influence of money in politics know the name of the secretary of health and human services? These aren't relevant. They really are cheap shots. It's the fallacy of irrelevant conclusion. You're dismissing people and dismissing peoples' ideas based on criteria they have no reason to succeed in.
Same problem with this image. See, I'm all for promoting scientific literacy. But only because science is cool and because you need to understand some science to vote optimally. Neither of these requires knowing shit about Madam Curie or Tesla. Maybe the image would have a point if the pictures were related to global warming, or alternative fuels, or space exploration. Because most people only need to know enough science to vote intelligently and not fall for obvious scams. I love science, but that's just it: I learn science because I love it. Some people do not. I have absolutely no problem with the average citizen not being able to write the Simple Harmonic Motion lab reports that stopped me from uploading yesterday. In fact, I'm rather pleased that they can't, in much the same way that I imagine painters are glad that I can't paint as well as they can. I'm content if everyone understands what global warming means and why you shouldn't smoke cigarettes at the gas pump. That isn't what this image is about. This image is about insisting that everyone absolutely must share your interests. And insisting that anyone who doesn't share your interests is a cancerous sore on the body politic is a great way to have no friends ever.
P.S. For curiosity's sake, from the top left and going vertically before horizontally:
Stephen Hawking, Marie Curie, Nichola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Thomas Paine, Christopher Hitchens, Carl Sagan, Charles Darwin. Snooki.
P.S. For curiosity's sake, from the top left and going vertically before horizontally:
Stephen Hawking, Marie Curie, Nichola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Thomas Paine, Christopher Hitchens, Carl Sagan, Charles Darwin. Snooki.
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
Post 17: Anti-Anti-Slacktivism Slacktivism. Also Kony.
Samuel here.
Toronto is basically a billion degrees and absurdly sunny today, and residence services has yet to put a screen in my window, so for the first time since September I can lean out my 8th floor window with a mug of coffee and enjoy a couple hundred pages of Kissinger (my favorite!). So you'll understand if I have trouble getting convincingly worked up about anything right now. I have a nice angry post ready to upload, but today I wanted to talk to you about something super-contemporary while everyone's still talking about it. Plus, if I uploaded a post that I had already written, I would be writing my history essay right now instead of writing this post. And what a waste of time that would be.
So it turns out that I'm psychic. I can make unerring predictions about the contents of other peoples' Facebook News Feeds. Don't believe me? Watch this: if you have a Facebook account, you will have these three statuses on it, and they'll be in this order chronologically:
- A link to this video, followed by something like “Please watch all of this or else you eat puppies” (NOTE: this isn't like my other posts. You don't have to watch this to understand what I'm talking about. PLEASE don't think that you have to watch this to know what I'm talking about.)
- A status like “slacktivism is actually the Holocaust I'm not even joking” (slacktivism is the derisive term generally applied to those who spread the news of social issues online and are content to leave their involvement in the issue to that)
- A status where someone linked to this tumblr, saying something like “I'm not yet coming out completely not in favor of Invisible Children per se, I'm just saying that maybe there's something a little bit less than ideal going on with this organization and maybe some healthy skepticism shouldn't be avoided PLEASE DON'T HATE ME.”
I have absolutely no interest in writing about whether or not Invisible Children is legit. I don't want to tell you whether you should support the (bizarrely named, bizarrely branded) Kony 2012 campaign. I watched some of the video, I read the tumblr post, and I've sort of made up my mind. You probably should too. I'm perfectly happy to let you make up your minds about statuses 1) and 3). What I want to talk about is the dickheads responsible for status 2).
I'll try to put the best face on these complaints that I can. One of the main reasons that I'm doing this blog is that I like to break these things down in a way that most people don't seem to; I think that no argument is worth examining until you have stated it syllogistically with all meaningful premises stated explicitly. And no one ever writes or speaks in syllogisms when they're casually arguing. And that leads to really shitty arguments that go absolutely nowhere. If you state a conclusion and I take issue with it, and we go back and forth about increasingly unrelated ideas for 15 posts, then probably at some point you will say something blatantly wrong. Then I can fixate on that and ignore your conclusion entirely, while remaining smug in the idea that I have won the argument and that your conclusion must be wrong. I sincerely believe that this is why no one ever changes their minds about anything. So let's not make that mistake here!
The best argument I can think of against slacktivism proceeds, quite roughly, as follows (NOTE: This argument applies only in situations where this actually is the best argument I can think of. For example, for the Kony 2012 video, there is substantial reason to believe that it's riddled with errors, and insubstantial reason to believe that it's intentionally misleading. So this argument only applies to when people complain about factual videos on important issues being shared with good intentions. Thanks to Isuri and Sophie for pointing out the need for this qualification) :
Premise 1: Meaningful social change is effected when many people do something to measurably advance a social cause.
Premise 2: Sharing a video on Facebook does not measurably advance any cause, nor does it lead to any cause being measurably advanced.
Premise 3: People who share a video on Facebook often think that they have done something to measurably advance a social cause.
Premise 4: People only work to advance a social cause if they feel they have not already done something for that cause.
Conclusion: From premises 1) and 2): Sharing videos on Facebook never constitutes social change. From premises 3) and 4): Sharing videos on Facebook actively discourages social change. Allowing that social change is desirable, then sharing videos on Facebook about social issues is wrong.
If you think I have misstated the issue, or stated a weaker version of the argument than you would like, please leave a comment telling me that I am a tool.
Here are my problems with the progression above:
Premise 1) is just my personal definition of social change, so naturally I don't have a problem with it.
Premise 2) seems too counter-intuitive for me to be comfortable with it. The usual response to this is that “it raises awareness”, which I think is a very valuable point: my politics and outlook are of course heavily shaped by what people who were close to me told me when I was young. I am certain that videos and images in the classroom and on television played a major role in forging my present worldview. I wouldn't exactly say that I have meaningfully and measurably advanced any worthy causes yet, but I certainly hope to in the next few decades. If I hadn't been exposed to the right things, who knows if I would be studying political science? It seems like a very, very weak premise to take that my exposure to videos like the Kony one played a negligible role in my social development. Very weak.
Premise 3) and premise 4) again are deeply unsatisfying, for the same reason: why do you think that? How do you know that's true? Before we actively discourage people from sharing videos, shouldn't we make sure that we're right that it decreases the action that people will actually take? I bet you it won't. I don't tend to share videos like this one, but one the very rare occasions that I have, I never sat back and thought to myself “well, I win. Suck it, Global Warming.” You could respond that I thought this on a subconscious level, but your argument is just getting more and more tenuous.
We get so caught up in these layers and layers of increasingly fragile justification that we forget that we can actually measure things. If you are against slacktivism, I want at least some reason to believe that your premises are true. Or present better ones to me. Meanwhile, I'm going with the intuitive assumption that the more people who know about a bad thing, the better. Even if it seems unpreventable, I can't think of a better way to figure out how to prevent it than to ask a whole ton of people. That's the only way that anything ever gets done.
But here's the part that really bothers me: I have a lot of trouble believing that anyone actually agrees with the argument that I laid out above. In fact, I submit to you that people who complain about slacktivists are complaining only because they hate to see other people doing something that makes them feel good. They aren't really accomplishing anything by sharing the video, and for some reason we believe that it makes them feel better about themselves, so we set out to take them down a notch. It's the same impulse that makes us derisively call scantily clad women “slutty”; we're too inhibited to do it, for whatever reason, so we hate to see other people do it. It's a petty, mean, absurd thing to do. Stop.
P.S. Simon and I will be ideally geographically located this weekend to bring you another cooperative post. So watch for that.
P.P.S. My mother just started a blog. If you like books, you should check it out. She's a writer, so she actually knows what she's talking about, which will be a welcome change from this blog. Anyways, by promoting it here, I can only assume that I have officially re-payed her for 18 years of food and love and stuff. You're welcome, mom!
Wednesday, 29 February 2012
Post 15: In The Unexpected Flurries A Young Man's Fancy Lightly Turns To Thoughts Of Love
Samuel here.
So! Turns out I'm pretty unreliable. Surprise! But I'm back. I currently have two really heavy politics-type images that I really badly want to write about, but I also have two really heavy politics-type essays that are consuming all my liberal self-righteousness. So to my one reader who actually appreciates my 8 page diatribes on libertarianism (Simon, although I'm beginning to suspect he only reads them to get context for Philippe's comments), I will post some politics-type thing within the next week.
I was going to write a summary of the article, which can be found here, but when I finished writing the post I decided that it's not absolutely necessary to read it in order to understand what I'm talking about. So while I very strongly encourage you to read the article, so that you can start reading my post with an opinion of your own already formed, I don't think it's necessary enough that I'm going to bother writing a summary. This should be useful for those of you with enough time to read exactly 6 paragraphs but no more.
You all know how I feel about ad hominems. If you don't know that I avoid personal attacks like the plague, then you are an idiot. I know that it would be impolitic for me to point out that things obviously just never worked out for the author, and she ended up in a loveless marriage out of desperation. It would be similarly crass of me to ask how her husband must have felt when he read that he and his wife "were never nuts about each other". I also would have to be pretty tactless to point out that everything she says about her ex-boyfriends seems to suggest that she is just really good at falling in love with really awful people. And this is my first complaint about this article: it's just one massive case study in sample bias. All of her reasons for not appreciating romance seem to be that she has fallen in love with tons of assholes. The article would be completely different if she had fallen in love with some non-assholes. Her error is that she thinks that a substantial number of people also only fall in love with assholes. She also says that she has friends with the same problem. But I have no clue why the solution is to ignore romance. It seems to me that the solution is simply to get out of unhealthy relationships. The author is railing against romantic love, calling it "responsible for more mischief and misery than any other myth", but I don't get it. What does that mean? That's not just hyperbole; it's abstracted enough from anything verifiable that it's simply nonsense.
I'm not someone who normally says that you should follow your feelings over your thoughts. You might wonder why I would prize an evolutionary relic over, say, reason. The answer comes in two parts. Firstly, axiomatically, it is more fun to be romantically involved with someone you love than with someone you do not love (this is, in one sentence, why I disagree with her article). The axiom comes with the addendum that certain negative qualities make for exceptions (if the person you love is abusive, say, or if they don't like dinosaurs). Disagree with my axiom?* Go fall in love. Then get back to me. Secondly, I'm not sure how much I agree that romantic love is an evolutionary relic. Understand that I have literally no formal training in biology, but nonetheless this is something I have been thinking a lot about lately by means of universally accessible thought experiments. The theory of evolution suggests that a female should pick her mate based on who can provide the most physically viable offspring, while a male should be out mating with as many females as he possibly can. Why, then, would a woman ever feel romantic love for anyone but the most physically sound specimens, and why would a man not feel romantic love for as many people as possible? There are three obvious answers, neither of them very satisfactory. One is that we see exactly this behaviour in cultural stereotypes: attractive men have muscles, and men shop around and cheat on their spouses. But I still don't understand why, if love is a purely evolutionary exercise, it wouldn't be the best idea for women to just only mate with football players. I recognize that you need a varied gene pool to not all get wiped out with the same disease, so you can't restrict all the action to too few dudes, but surely there's some trade-off there that involves fewer men getting any. The second answer is that women are attracted to muscleheads and men are attracted to everyone, but we all have to settle for what we can get. This is unsatisfactory because it would imply that if someone's in love with me and some other dude without glasses and terrible knees comes along, she will automatically leave me. So I automatically reject it on the basis of my own overconfidence. The third answer is much more subtle: while women mating with super buff guys and men mating with everyone is the ultimate result of evolution, it is an ongoing process and we have not yet reached a point of optimal efficiency to perpetuate a species. Evidence of this exists in the persistence of, say, asexuality and homosexuality (I realize the persistence of varying sexual orientations is way more complicated than that. Forgive me). So some day almost all women will be attracted exclusively to male football players and almost all men will be attracted to every fertile woman. But, and I could be wrong about this, I think this is what we see in the non-human animal world. I think evolution selected for that behaviour pretty quickly, and by now everyone who's left pretty much has that algorithm down. So none of the answers satisfy me.
Here is my solution: I think that romantic engagements are a cultural, not a natural, construct. What is the stereotypical description of a romantic interest? "He's smart, he's interesting, he's funny..." None of these have to do with reproductive viability. I think that when we claim that love is simply an evolutionary tool, we leave out something quintessentially human. I think that with sentience comes a subconscious ability to select a romantic partner on the basis of intellect, how interesting they are, and other cerebral cortex-type things. And you know what? Language agrees with me! That's why we distinguish between love and lust. Someone you love is someone you want to spend as much time with as possible, with whatever cultural and natural addenda that includes. Someone you lust after is simply someone you want to procreate with. I do not specifically advocate following lustful impulses, much as I do not advocate following hateful or vengeful or angry impulses. I advocate following your heart. And I don't see this as being even a little bit contradictory with my generally Mind Over Matter philosophy. I think that romance, and the constructs we have invented to house it (relationships, marriages), are uniquely human and almost universally good.
Here is my solution: I think that romantic engagements are a cultural, not a natural, construct. What is the stereotypical description of a romantic interest? "He's smart, he's interesting, he's funny..." None of these have to do with reproductive viability. I think that when we claim that love is simply an evolutionary tool, we leave out something quintessentially human. I think that with sentience comes a subconscious ability to select a romantic partner on the basis of intellect, how interesting they are, and other cerebral cortex-type things. And you know what? Language agrees with me! That's why we distinguish between love and lust. Someone you love is someone you want to spend as much time with as possible, with whatever cultural and natural addenda that includes. Someone you lust after is simply someone you want to procreate with. I do not specifically advocate following lustful impulses, much as I do not advocate following hateful or vengeful or angry impulses. I advocate following your heart. And I don't see this as being even a little bit contradictory with my generally Mind Over Matter philosophy. I think that romance, and the constructs we have invented to house it (relationships, marriages), are uniquely human and almost universally good.
Now, the woman who wrote the article obviously has a bit of a problem. She seems to only fall in love with jerks. In her case, I think she made the right decision. Maybe if you have a long track record of falling in love with assholes then you should not be following your heart. This isn't too uncommon a thing (I know people like that), and clearly there is often something slightly haywire with the human ability to select romantic partners. But she turns this into a blanket condemnation of romance. It's like losing to a final boss 10 times and deciding that the video game is impossible. Her article is just a temper tantrum. Love didn't work out for her. That's sad. But leave the rest of us alone.
*Dearest darling math people: I know that I use the word "axiom" quite loosely sometimes. As a social science student and a physical science student with a mad insatiable rigor fetish, I recognise that a lot of claims like "you're happier with someone you love than with someone you don't love" can get pretty murky and impossible to verify. I call them axioms because I have arrived at them from personal experience, whether that means firsthand experience or my general understanding of the subject. I treat them as unverifiable, and therefore axiomatic, because I can offer no better proof than "try it for yourself".
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Sorry!
Samuel here.
So those of you who read last week's article to the end will already know that I'm not uploading a post this week. Sorry! Once the blog is a bit more established, I'll have a storehouse of articles so that I can always have something to upload (that's part of how I'm going to spend Reading Week), but with the blog as new as it is, it's still the best I can do to write a post 3-4 days in advance. I promise to make up for this next week, when I talk about [SPOILER ALERT] 1) why bitter old ladies shouldn't write blanket condemnations of romantic love (seems like a bit of a no-brainer, but apparently someone needs to hear it) and 2) why people who can recognize a picture of Snooki but not of Ayaan Hirsi Ali aren't necessarily terrible humans.
But, for now, I'd better go do some physics. Stay tuned!
So those of you who read last week's article to the end will already know that I'm not uploading a post this week. Sorry! Once the blog is a bit more established, I'll have a storehouse of articles so that I can always have something to upload (that's part of how I'm going to spend Reading Week), but with the blog as new as it is, it's still the best I can do to write a post 3-4 days in advance. I promise to make up for this next week, when I talk about [SPOILER ALERT] 1) why bitter old ladies shouldn't write blanket condemnations of romantic love (seems like a bit of a no-brainer, but apparently someone needs to hear it) and 2) why people who can recognize a picture of Snooki but not of Ayaan Hirsi Ali aren't necessarily terrible humans.
But, for now, I'd better go do some physics. Stay tuned!
Friday, 10 February 2012
Post 12: Where 1984 Isn't Coming True
SPECIAL NOTE: Given that Sinclair Lewis was born in 1885, and Mussolini, the figure most associated with Fascism didn't come to prominence until at least 1919, I think it's safe to say this quote is about a century off. This is a minor nitpick, but those desperate to uncover the "truth" about politics might lead by example, and take the three seconds necessary to uncover the truth about their own quotations.
Let's start off with something we probably all know, but too often are willing to forget. Fascism was real. There were Fascist governments, Fascist armies, Fascist secret police forces and, by the millions, Fascist victims, those who were beaten, jailed, and very often killed by forces too powerful to even try to stop. It was the great scourge of the 20th century. The same is true of Communist regimes, and of theocratic ones. Right wing or left, religious or atheist, dictators have, and do, dominate large parts of the world. They have done so for millenia, they might very well continue to do so, though, thankfully, trends in the last fifty years suggest they may be on the decline.
I would imagine none of this to be a great surprise to any reader, who may wonder what the point of such a lengthy opening memento might be. You're right. Here it is: You can do those victims of dictatorship no greater disservice than to equate your suffering to theirs, and that's precisely what posters like this try to do. "People were rounded off and sent to concentration camps? I feel you man - Ron Paul wasn't invited to the Fox News debates. Fascists are everywhere." "Forced collectivization in the Soviet Union? Rough business. Sounds to me of Obamacare." What could be more insulting to victims of autocracy that, despite everything we know about their atrocities, all the education and testimony and direct evidence we have about how truly cruel these regimes were, there's still a compulsive need among a great many of us to make it about ourselves (going much further in this direction might risk some overlap with Samuel's most recent post - which, interesting and provocative, can be found directly below -, but don't forget we're still partially in preamble mode here).
>This problem isn't a universal one. Godwin's Law, and more recently the First World Problems meme has done a lot to spoof this attitude, but even they can't do the job (my own Law says that as a conversation, online or no, goes longer, the likelihood of any topic being broached approaches one) or worse, becomes a tool of those who don't really get it ("Whining about homework? What a First World Problem. Let's talk about some real concerns... like Harper being a Nazi.")
Whenever the topic of dictatorship coming to America (or Canada, or Western Europe, or wherever else it won't happen) arises, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is inevitably brought up. I'm not personally a fan, but it would be pretty stupid to try to deny the book it's status as one of the most important of the last century, and, while far from the first dystopian work, the one against which all others have and will be judged. Its extremely vivid depiction of how totalitarian government could control every aspect of its citizen's lives hit most of its readers particularly hard, and for the last sixty years almost every sentence has been parsed, deconstructed, and hotly debated by every totem on the pole, from top tier academics and literary critics to seventh graders, many of whom act like they're its first readers. For these men and women, Nineteen Eighty-Four is no longer a fiction or even an allegory, it's a both predictor and descriptor of the future. The first world will turn out like this they say. Every new bit of legislation brings us closer and closer to Orwell's vision, which is entirely accurate. It is my assertion, as no doubt you've guessed, that this is far from the case. As I see it, the publication of this book virtually guaranteed it would never, at least in the first world, become a reality. Because of how iconic things like "Big Brother" or "NewSpeak" have become, as a population we've become so overcautious about their possibly coming true we've almost eliminated the chance they ever will. But this is only the beginning of where this book's devotees go wrong.
>For starters, there's not much evidence that this was, as Orwell saw it, a prediction of things to come. In fact, most evidence seems to suggest it was instead a satire of pre-existing totalitarian regimes, especially the Soviet Union, with little sprinkles of World War II-era Great Britain, where censorship and rationing was at a relative high. Rather like Animal Farm, his other main claim to literary fame, Orwell is doing what he, and all satirists are famous for, exaggerating the worst of what already exists in order to make fun of it. Defenders of Nineteen Eighty-Four-as-prophecy might then question my attempt to guess Orwell's motivations, or instead point out that just because the author has a certain attitude toward his own work, does not mean that it's the correct one. To some extent I agree (I may even write another post just to deal with the topic), this point I made may be tenuous. But I would also say that the side that has tenuous evidence is always preferable to the side that has none.
More important than how Orwell looked at his work, or what inspired it, is the question of how accurate he was. I can think of one example in particular in which he was very wrong. I mentioned NewSpeak earlier. In the novel, the government, in an attempt to stifle the free speech of its citizens, create NewSpeak, an increasingly simplified form of the English language. The party reasons that, by banning certain words, its citizens will be unable to express certain concepts. But this is absurd. Orwell seems to be under the impression that words determine thoughts (a strong version of what's known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis; the Wikipedia link can be found at the bottom of the article), a once popular theory long since debunked and tossed aside by linguists. But it doesn't take much linguistic training to see how silly the concept really is. Look at euphemisms: When coloured became considered offensive, people started saying negro. When that became offensive, the term became black. When that became (to some) offensive, we started saying African-American. At no point did banning the word coloured (or negro, or black) restrict anybody's concept or ability to express the idea behind the word. We just came up with new ones. That one aspect of the book, no matter how crucial, is inaccurate is not in itself a total damning of its credibility, and I hate to give the impression of short changing you out of a fuller analysis, but in the interest of both not taking up reams of space, and staying on point (we're not going to become a dictatorship), I should start to think about calling it quits.
The writing of this post made me think about the general direction this blog is heading in and it seems that we've made our theme overreaction, or, more specifically, how best to avoid or rectify it. This wasn't really intentional, although perhaps it was unavoidable given our stated purpose (a place to put especially long rebuttals to statuses our friends posted). Needless to say, I feel I should close on the same note our other posts have all, in one form or another, have: With a sincere request we chill the fuck out. There are no ghosts in the attic, no monsters under the bed, and no spectres in our government.
PS: For those interested in learning more about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Post 11: Wherein The World Is Really Really Cool
Samuel here.
You guys! Little-known fact, you guys: hating the world is not a passport to Coolsville. I know plenty of people who will tell you at great length that humans are fucked up and society sucks, but I personally believe that the world houses some pretty rad dudes. Let's explore this at length!
So we fucked up everything, huh? We fucked up everything. Well, what are you reading right now? I'm no one important. I just woke up this morning and decided that I had some things to say. It took me about two hours to write something that anybody in any place at any time can just sit down and read. Basically forever.
Where are you? Because I'm in my room. I'm alone. I'm not talking to anyone. You could be in Bangladesh
This thing that you're reading my post with, what else can it do? Just take half a second to think about that. Until 100 years ago, just two human generations, anything you were seeing was actually in front of you. Until 150 years ago, three human generations, anything you were hearing was right there with you. Until 5,000 years ago, maybe 170 human generations, anything you were learning was from someone who was literally right beside you. For tens of millions of years of human history (depending on what you consider to be human), you could only experience things in your immediate vicinity. In our grandparents' lifetime that permanently changed. We are no longer restricted by time and place. It doesn't matter to us. It's that simple.
Go to a window. Look up. Since you're on the internet, and are therefore only awake at night, I'm going to assume you can see the moon. Take a good look at it. People have been there. People have been there! That is incomprehensible.
Much of the world still lives in the Middle Ages. We have the capital to lift them out of it. But that has changed tremendously, and increasingly rapidly, in the past 50 years, and almost every political scientist and economist will tell you that it's going to keep happening and it's going to happen faster.
We have traversed the Earth and we have ascended into space just to make sure we didn't miss anything, and now I can sit at home with a $200 computer and a free copy of Google Earth and I can literally see any part of any piece of land on Earth. I can take sightseeing tours through Madrid Madrid Madrid
Literacy. Medicine. Plumbing. I could literally write fifty pages about how mind-bogglingly better things are than they used to be. I am thoroughly, firmly, unshakeably convinced that we have created for ourselves an awe-inspiring, free, and functional world. I think that the vast majority of the people I know are very good people, and I think that the vast majority of people alive are, too.
I lead an indescribably good life. Nothing truly bad has ever happened to me. I have never had a sibling or a close friend die. That's ridiculously new in the timespan of human history. I have never caught polio or scrofula or the bubonic plague. I was born with severe myopia, but it couldn't matter less; I happen to have been one of the maybe 0.000001% of history's myopic humans who has access to corrective glasses. It doesn't even begin to affect my quality of life. The kings and the queens of history would kill to enjoy the quality of education, health care, or transportation that I do. They would be floored to encounter the ease with which I can communicate with anyone in the entire world. What does it say about our society that any reasonably intelligent person with a decent work ethic can, within a couple decades of their birth, learn something substantial about the universe that literally nobody in human history has ever known before? Ever met someone with a PhD? I bet you have. One of the most dominant institutions in our society, the institution of higher education, is designed to enable ordinary people to figure out things that literally no one in the history of the human race has ever figured out before. That is completely new to the last generation. It is pretty much unique to the last fifty years.
Even our political structure is fucking awesome. You hate politicians, right? Well, get a life, dingus. Do you know how remarkable it is to have freedom of speech? To have literally no meaningful fear whatsoever of police officers spontaneously arresting and torturing you, to be able to choose your career for yourself and to live your life with a person you love, to have finally freed yourself from the shackles of institutionalized racism is something tremendously remarkable. Mitt Romney doesn't excite you? Barack Obama turned his back on you by not horsewhipping senators into not fillibustering? Stephen Harper is...Stephen Harper seems kind of mean? What absurdly petty complaints! You're getting handed a briefcase full of money and you're complaining that the bills are folded wrong. The fact that you even know what Barack Obama is doing on any given day should be more than enough reason not to whine so much.
How about the morning after pill? How about abortion? 1966 is the hallmark year in the history of women's liberation. Sex, whether rape or consensual, no longer has to change your life forever. That is the most empowering thing I can imagine. And it just happened. It just happened.
Look, I get that some things suck. I'm the first to tell you --- and I have at great length, in previous posts --- that poverty today is more widespread and more preventable and more despicable than I can possibly describe, let alone conceive of. I am deathly afraid of nuclear weapons; I cannot believe that everyone who will ever get their hands on them will fear their own destruction more than they wish for the destruction of others. I am frightened by epidemics, I am frightened by decreasing biodiversity, I am frightened by those who insist that birth control is more wicked than the systemic disempowerment of women. But how long have these been problems? 40 years? 50 years? 70 years? Not even the blink of an eye. We're in a race against the clock, but it's really not the first time. And what happens if the worst should happen? What are we losing? Nothing except what we've built ourselves. If we fucked everything up, why does it even matter if we lose it all? And what have we fucked up other than the stuff that could make us lose it all? It's a self-defeating argument: "nothing we have is worth having because it threatens what we have". Listen to yourself, cartoon! Everything meaningful that we are risking is relegated to this planet, and is our responsibility. At worst, all we risk is undoing our work. We fucked everything up? Give me a break.
As Louis C. K. says, "everything's awesome, and nobody's happy". It's one of the most important messages I have ever heard from anyone. I live in a democracy where I befriend whomever I want. I love my fellow humans and I can tell them anywhere at any time. I have never met a human who does not work for the good of the human race, and I doubt that you have, either. Time and time again, we confront our demons, and time and time again it is our angels that prevail. What Earthly reason could I have to want to devolve? I am the blessed member of a blessed species. And anyone who thinks otherwise can respond in the comments section with their impossibly common near-infinite-distance instantaneous communications device.At the risk of blunting the message, I would like to add an unrelated post script: please do leave a comment. We write these for other people to read, so the more comments we get, the happier we are. And if you leave a comment giving us advice (longer, shorter, post about this dumb thing on my news feed), the better we will understand what people want from us. And anyone who knows me understands that disagreeing with me is an excellent way to make me write unreasonable amounts of stuff, which is always great fun. So commenting can only ever be a win-win situation.
Other important Post-Script note: I will not be updating next Wednesday. I have a math midterm that day and a physics midterm two days after, so I will be doing super important stuff that night (drowning my sorrows). However, the next week is reading week, so I'll update at least twice then. Until then, keep on trucking.
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Post 9: Wherein There Is Exciting News
Samuel here.
So, it is possible that you've noticed that there was no scheduled update yesterday. Sorry for not giving you notice on that, but we would like to gloss over this fact with some exciting news:
Simon and I were finding the two updates a week thing a bit prohibitive in terms of time commitment, especially since we are now entering the midterm season and the real crunch time in terms of assignments. Believe it or not, it does take a reasonable amount of time to put these posts together, and we felt that in the long run it simply would not be sustainable. So we offered Mr. Ian Martin an exciting package ("write for us and Philippe will argue with you!"), and we are pleased to announce that he will be taking over the Sunday evening time slot. He is a good writer and a humorous individual, and he gets as angry about things on Facebook as the next guy, so he makes a welcome addition to the team.
This need not mean the end of collaborative blog posts, though; if people want us to, I imagine we can work something out so that the three of us can collaborate on posts in the future. But you would have to express an interest in that, because we sure aren't running this blog for our own amusement. Well, okay, we are running this blog for our own amusement. But you're important to us, too!
Also, in general, thanks for reading. We are getting substantially more page views (and comments) than I think either of us expected we would be getting 2 weeks in, and that's awesome. So, thanks!
So, it is possible that you've noticed that there was no scheduled update yesterday. Sorry for not giving you notice on that, but we would like to gloss over this fact with some exciting news:
Simon and I were finding the two updates a week thing a bit prohibitive in terms of time commitment, especially since we are now entering the midterm season and the real crunch time in terms of assignments. Believe it or not, it does take a reasonable amount of time to put these posts together, and we felt that in the long run it simply would not be sustainable. So we offered Mr. Ian Martin an exciting package ("write for us and Philippe will argue with you!"), and we are pleased to announce that he will be taking over the Sunday evening time slot. He is a good writer and a humorous individual, and he gets as angry about things on Facebook as the next guy, so he makes a welcome addition to the team.
This need not mean the end of collaborative blog posts, though; if people want us to, I imagine we can work something out so that the three of us can collaborate on posts in the future. But you would have to express an interest in that, because we sure aren't running this blog for our own amusement. Well, okay, we are running this blog for our own amusement. But you're important to us, too!
Also, in general, thanks for reading. We are getting substantially more page views (and comments) than I think either of us expected we would be getting 2 weeks in, and that's awesome. So, thanks!
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
Post 8: Wherein finally SPACE
Samuel here.
First thing is first! Simon and I keep noticing a very large spike in pageviews on midnight on the days when we update. That is SUPER gratifying, because it means that people are actually hanging around the site when it is supposed to update. What it also means is that we can't slack off and upload, say, 58 minutes late because we slept for 2 hours last night and had to start and finish 2 problem sets today around an ordinary day of classes. So rest assured that that sort of thing doesn't happen around here! No, sir! Also, I'm sorry. Now, on to the meaty stuff.
Did you know I like space? I like space! So when Newt Gingrich recently announced he wanted a base on the moon by 2020, I got pretty excited. I have spent much of the past week fantasizing about Newt Gingrich's space policy winning him a landslide victory in Florida
I'm not going to discuss in this article why I think that space exploration and colonization are necessary, because I simply don't have enough time or space; I am essentially building my life around that philosophy, so I would like to give it a little more room than a weekly blog post allows for. So, for the sake of this post, let me take the axiom that space exploration and colonization are both desirable.
Anyone who thinks that space policy is the most important aspect of this election should be out campaigning for Newt Gingrich right now. Every other candidate's space policy sucks. Throughout this whole Republican primary, everyone but Gingrich has consistently brushed off questions about NASA by making irrelevant statements about government funding or about really, really caring about the middle class. Newt Gingrich has always taken a hard line in favour of government-led exploration and colonization of space. That impresses me a great deal. I acknowledge that his motives are different from mine; Gingrich wants to see increased space exploration because he wants to feel that America
"Hold on", you say, "slow down! We must immediately know why Newt Gingrich is the best candidate on space policy!"
Good! Let's talk Republicans.
Herman Cain probably put the second-most thought into space policy. He wanted to de-fund NASA, and instead provide incentives to private corporations. But that doesn't make any sense at all. If his objection is to the government directly employing space systems engineers, he has to understand that pumping as much money into the private sector will employ just as many engineers. If he wants to cut spending, just cut the NASA budget (please don't cut the NASA budget!). If he wants nationalistic space innovation, obviously it's better for NASA to be an organ of the government. What suddenly defunding NASA would do is to take all of the people who know everything about space travel, destroy the structure within which they operate, and scatter them about the world. We would see a massive spike in space disasters from upstart companies that simply didn't have the expertise to launch craft, we would see a whole lot of way too risky business plans that would flop and take taxpayer dollars with them, and worst of all I'm not convinced we would ever see any exploration or colonization again. There is no profit incentive in exploration or research. No private company would ever have launched the Hubble Space Telescope or the International Space Station. SpaceX sure isn't going to pay to house a woman on Mars. Private companies simply perform a very different function than government-mandated ones. NASA exists for far-seeing presidents to tell the world that they want a man on the moon and they're going to get it before the end of the decade. Boeing does not take orders from the president, and it shouldn't have to.
Mitt Romney has been relentlessly jabbing at Newt Gingrich for the idea of having a moonbase by the year 2020. He claims that such elaborate schemes would be to the detriment of the U.S. America Kazakhstan Florida Cape Canaveral . It's as simple as that. Now, I know the Republicans aren't generally the biggest proponents of Keynes, but Gingrich had no trouble playing that tune on the space coast when he made his announcement. Once again, Mitt Romney is taking the easy way out.
Rick Santorum seemingly has no opinions about space. That's like having no opinion about dinosaurs. It's like thinking that love is "pretty okay". It's like going for a walk alone late at night and all you can think about is arithmetic. I can only surmise that Rick Santorum is made of cardboard.
Ron Paul, of course, would de-fund everything. That goes against the axiom that I arbitrarily selected, so sucks to be Ron Paul in this analysis.
And I will ignore Michele Bachmann and John Huntsman and whoever else may at one point have been running, because they certainly were not memorable for their space policy.
I am also going to ignore Barack Obama for the time being, in the hopes that his space policy develops over the course of the general election. I don't like to compare actions to words, so I would like to wait to hear from him again about this first. If the Democratic party line doesn't change, though, please tune in for more whining. But let me say this, for now: I want the manned space program back.
So why do I like what Newt Gingrich has to say? Well, honestly, I don't really like it. But it's way better than most people would have you think it is. Firstly, there are few humans alive today who would not agree that the landing on the moon was one of the greatest moments in the history of our species. Let us not forget that that was, if you'll excuse the expression, totally just a shot in the dark. There was absolutely no reason for Kennedy to believe that it would be possible to place men on the moon by 1970. And yet, with sufficient political willpower and a shitload of money, they accomplished it.
Unlike the second commenter on the status, I have no trouble believing that a similar fiscal and political push would get us a permanent colony on the moon by 2020. The first commenter suggests a concrete platform, but that would require either bringing concrete there (and mixing it along the way?), or synthesizing, pouring, and moulding concrete on the moon, which is absurd at best (sorry to harp on this, but I once lost a space design contest to someone who suggested exactly that for a Mars colony). No, we easily have the technology to build a moonbase, and I have seen it myself. Basically, you just send some of these rovers to the moon and have them flatten out a spot of ground. Then you can stably land craft there. Inflate some places to live and all the rest is for the biologists to figure out. For those of you who think that the political molasses is too strong for us to fund colonization projects within our lifetime, I would like to direct you to Project Horizon and more generally to this Wikipedia article. Is it night? Are the skies clear? If so, walk outside and look up. And then you will truly understand why we can and will summon the political courage to branch out into space.
"That's all fine and dandy", you say, unaware that nobody actually speaks like that, "but there are still huge engineering problems with colonizing the moon!" Yup. Watch. We'll fix them. We always do.
"But how does that justify campaigning on that platform? We want our politicians to have vision, but not to be impractical." This is usually true. But I don't see anything wrong with wanting to do something really, really worthwhile that you aren't sure you'll be able to do. The only problem with impracticality in politics is if it could be damaging; removing social security or Medicare, for instance, is impractical. By all means, if we're making people suffer because we're colonizing the moon, then we're monsters (moonsters?). But there is absolutely no reason that Gingrich should have to hurt people in order to get to the moon.
I think that the third commenter perfectly sums up everything that was wrong with the public reaction to Gingrich's suggestion (the youtube link is a link to circus music). This is the most courageous thing I have seen anyone do in this election cycle so far, and Newt Gingrich should be applauded for trying to sell something that he believes in. I can only hope the Democratic Party picks up their tremendous slack, and --- this is hard for me to write --- follows in the footsteps of Newton Leroy Gingrich.
P.S. I'm not going to touch all that stuff he said about lunar statehood. What a nutbar.
Keep on trucking.
Keep on trucking.
Sunday, 29 January 2012
Post 7: More Rabble Rousing Gibberish
Simon and Samuel here.
This is a picture that we are largely sympathetic to. The first post on this blog was a massive rant against libertarianism, and this picture appeals to our lily-livered commie sensibilities. But we think that it misses the mark in several very crucial ways. Libertarianism is a sensible ideal with very broad support, and arguments against it should reflect that. This picture does not. We are tremendously sympathetic to the plight of the poor, and please don’t forget that as you read this post. It’s just that you cannot defeat poverty without understanding why it exists, and you cannot vanquish dangerous ideals without thinking through your arguments.
For starters, this picture misses the meaning of the word enterprise. I’m not sure how much more can be said about this. It’s an admirable thing, working day in and out with the goal of feeding your family. But it isn’t enterprise. Almost more importantly, no one has ever claimed that enterprise - or the much more ambiguous statement of “hard work” - will lead, or even should lead to wealth. Under a purely capitalistic worldview (the kind we imagine Mr. Monbiot is speaking for), your work will only lead to prosperity if it’s the kind of work people are willing to pay you for. Trying to self-sustain doesn’t qualify. We understand what Monbiot is saying - these women break their backs (we shudder to use the word “slave”) on a daily basis, and need help. But his approach, just like the Assange-Zuckerberg comparison from last week, is a cheap way of putting it. A picture of two women, tired, sweating, and uncomfortable, is sad. It is not a debate.
But it’s also irrelevant. We have never heard anyone claim that wealth is the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise. Poverty in much of Africa is the complex result of a lack of infrastructure (roads, policemen, hospitals), the withholding of financial aid by corrupt governments, and an inability to coordinate sales or trading across much of the countryside --- and that is without even mentioning the lasting institutional horrors introduced by colonialism. No one ever says that African women are poor because they are lazy. That argument, which was the primary criticism used against the #Occupy movement, is always used against American youth in American cities. Why is that an important distinction? Because America has infrastructure. America has roads and policemen and hospitals. America’s government does not withhold money from the people, and if they do then they can be fired and replaced. The internet, cell phones, and highways make it exceptionally easy to coordinate sales across rural America, while its government and its institutions are its own by choice. The argument then would be that any American who is poor is poor of their own volition. We might not agree with that, but there is a genuine debate to be had there, and how you answer that question pretty much decides whether you are or are not an economic libertarian. But if you ask the question about Africa, no one is going to say that the women of Botswana are poor because they choose to be so. No one says that girls of Namibia are too lazy. This picture doesn’t address any meaningful school of thought.
What could it have done for us to agree with it? Easy. It could have shown a fifteen year old Mexican migrant worker in California, picking oranges after dark for $2.5 an hour. That would have been a powerful image with a powerful message. Instead, we get a totally off-the-mark piece of pathos to counter an argument that doesn’t actually exist - an all too common tactic of the soundbite school of debate. What a wasted opportunity.
But, once again, we would like to end with an impassioned plea. If any of you aren't into charity, we don't imagine we'll convince you in a few brief paragraphs. Thankfully, one of the greatest philosophers alive today wrote a pretty damn compelling book about it. For those who donate to charity, we would like to direct you to this wonderful website. Don't like charity? Disagree with anything we've said? Leave a comment!
As always, stay cool and keep on trucking.
Friday, 27 January 2012
Post 6: On the Nature of Awards
Just like with Samuel's most recent post, the status here is largely a pretext for a broader discussion; namely, the role of film - and particularly Academy - awards and ceremonies, both in the industry and among viewers. Is it hackneyed to write about the Oscars in Oscar season? 100 percent. Not even going to try and make an excuse. As an aside, I realize that starting with a status and then immediately moving on to a much broader topic isn't something we should make a habit of - this is after all the News Feed fact check, but this is still week one, and footing needs to be found. Besides, 50/50 was a mediocre schmaltz-fest, and there's only so much you can say about those.
Award ceremonies never fully satisfies anyone who watches. They disapprove of the nominees. They disapprove of the winners. They disapprove of the clothes. This is as true of the Best Actress Oscar as it is the Nobel peace Prize. The only real reason people seem to watch these broadcasts is to find an excuse to be angry.* No one, for instance, ever loses an Oscar. They were robbed. There was politicking. Bribes. It's bordering on lunacy to assume a group of six thousand independent voters came to a different conclusion about a subjective topic than you did. There had to be some kind of treachery. It's an understandable phenomenon. Getting angry is one of the most fun things a person can do, and if the anger is self-righteous? Hoo daddy! That's the kind of high that'll keep you going to the grave. More than that, unlike a jerk professor of unhelpful cab driver, your Oscar complaints are universally understood. Even if they don't reach buff or fanatic levels, everybody loves the movies. They're among our culture's biggest shared experiences. When you tell your friends your opinion on the results, they all know what you're talking about. It's gratifying. I shouldn't try to seem like I'm passing judgment on the people who get wrapped up in awards - I definitely fall victim to it myself. For example, a win for George Clooney - the dictionary definition of "mediocre" - this year over the great performances from Brad Pitt, Jean Dujardin, and especially Gary Oldman (I'm not immune to the clutches of fandom) will put me into a rage. I'll post angry Facebook statuses and punch my pillow and hold my breath until I turn blue. I know it's preposterous. I also know it's inescapable. (Of course, a win for Oldman would make me giddy for as much as days to come. The sensation does undeniably run both ways)
* This is no longer entirely true. The popularity of Ricky Gervais as Golden Globe MC, especially last year, has led to agroup of people saying they watch the ceremony for the host. This is usually accompanied with the same superior sneer people have when telling you they see the Superbowl, "but only for the commercials."
But other than on the night itself, do the Oscars have an impact? Have they ever? Well certainly in the industry they do. As far as the good people of Hollywood are concerned, the Oscars are a major career boost, distributors and studio chiefs going to absurd lengths to boost their hordes (the Weinstein brothers, Harvey especially, may be the best known example of this). And they can be. The main reason I'm happy when someone I admire wins is for just this season. If an actor, a win almost guarantees better roles in the future (a notable and tragic exception to this is F. Murray Abraham, who had a few quick years of stardom and then very quickly faded away). If a writer or director, their future projects have a bigger chance of getting made. This is a big deal, especially for as self-congraulatory an event as an awards show. But as for the importance they have on the average viewer, I have to say I'm skeptical. I don't mean on the night itself, that we've looked at already. But outside that. Think of your favorite actor / director / whoever. Do you know how many Oscars they have? If so, was that a factor in coming to like them? Can you even remember the last time you were told "Let's see / rent that one - it won an Oscar!" I certainly haven't. Not from myself, my friends, my parents. Not even from the video store clerks. A movie may be marketed as "award winning," but very rarely consumed as such. So unless I'm mistaken, other than the ceremony itself, this is a serious emperor's new clothes situation.
Speaking of awards - and here I guess I seriously undercut my attempts to seem above it all - I feel I have to digress to mention that the BAFTAs, the United Kingdom's own film academy, has chosen to give this years lifetime achievement award to John Hurt. This (2012) is Hurt's fiftieth year in the movies, and for most of that time has been one of the most consistently top notch actors, as well as one of the most prolific (about 175 films, if imdb is to be trusted). Last year alone he appeared four - the final Harry Potter, Immortals, Melancholia, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (out now in Empire theatres everywhere!) - a diverse enough group to ensure most cinema goers saw him at least once (though those of us in the know made sure we saw every one). Harry Potter probably will end up being his widest exposure, but he really has, particularly in the 70s, broken a lot of ground. Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant (1975), one of the first sympathetic portrayals of a gay man on screen. Caligula in I, Claudius (1976), the high point of what was already the high point of television. Kane in Alien (1979), the focus of one of the most memorable scenes in film history, and wouldn't dream of ruining for you. The title role in The Elephant Man (1980). I could go on and on and on, we haven't even touched on most of my favorites. John Hurt is not my favorite actor, but in terms the importance and flair he brought to his industry, he's undoubtedly the most deserving candidate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNXcl-AE8TA <- Here is a brief, recent clip of Hurt promoting a play he was in. Just listen to that voice.
Stay cool,
Simon
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Post 5: Wherein I Remember It Isn't All About Politics OR Why I Hate Gamers But I Don't Hate You
Samuel here.
I'll record this some day etc.
Don't let the picture fool you! Writing a post about Magic: The Gathering is the last thing I want to do. Instead, I want to talk about gamer culture, and more specifically, what it is about gamers that makes us do things like post rude comments about games on Facebook photos.
This is a picture of a card that they are seeing for the first time, and it is being posted by a third party retailer to inform people that this card is coming out soon. It's important to note that this card is definitely going to be sold soon; thousands of copies of it have been printed already and are currently sitting in warehouses waiting to be shipped to stores. And yet, these people complain. The first commenter seems to be deeply invested in the general quality of cards, writing that it is their "disappointment of the set", as though they were really hoping that this specific card would be awesome. And not only did the second poster agree with them, but 9 people liked it. And the next two posters thought that we desperately needed to know how much they wished the art could have been used on a better card. As if just looking at this card is so revolting to them that they simply cannot appreciate the picture.
So why do we do this? Why do gamers have this compulsion to vomit their opinions at the world? I will let you in on a terrible secret: gamers are horrible, horrible people. Let me share with you an anecdote: there's a store in Ottawa that holds regular competitive Magic events, and I haven't regularly gone there in 3 years. Last month, I thought I would peek my head in and play for an evening. When you arrive at such an event, you are expected to sign up by the time it is scheduled to start, or else the event will commence without you. If you're late to sign up, it's generally accepted that you have to just suck it up and wait until the next week. When I went to this event, however, there was a kid, maybe ten years old, who had tried to sign up on time but the event software had failed to correctly process his transaction, and so he was not registered for the event (despite having already paid for it). As we sat down and got prepared to start the event, he brought it to the attention of the staff, who announced to everyone that we would have to wait for about five minutes for him to register the kid. And with a 10 year old kid talking to a staffer at the front of the store, literally 5 or 6 men, probably between the ages of 25 and 50, all became outraged that they would have to wait for 5 minutes. "If he didn't sign up on time, it's his fault. He has to learn a lesson". "Too bad". "He can play next week."
Even worse, this sort of thing is relatively common, especially online. I know tons of awesome gamers, many of them among my very best friends, but when you're playing games, the people you notice are the really obnoxious ones. I have spent much of my life doing really fun things with really terrible people. Here's what really frustrates me: gaming culture scares away players, and yet games are so much more fun when more people play them. Better strategies will be developed faster, more people will be more skilled at the game and so it's harder to rise to the top, and there's a higher chance you'll bump into someone in real life who plays the game and can talk with you about it. But bigotry and obnoxiousness are the best way to make our community steadily worse.
And yet, I play games. Games are fun. They make me think harder than just about anything else. And they have very tangible payoffs; often I win money, often just respect, but either way it is great to consistently win at something. And now that video gaming truly is an industry, with dozens of genres of games, being really good at a game is increasingly accessible to everybody. Are you bad at video games? No, you aren't. Seriously. I can believe that you're bad at first person shooters, I can believe that you're bad at racing games, but have you tried independent aerial combat puzzle solvers? Probably not.
So this is where you come in. Often when I play games, I am playing with misogynists, with racists, with sore winners and sore losers. I play with grown men who throw tantrums when asked to wait 5 minutes. I don't like that. I hate it. Games deserve better. So here is my plea to you: pick up a game. Whoever you are. Find a cheap one that you enjoy, maybe talk to a friend of yours who plays games, and just play it until you're done. It really is a universal joy. Everyone likes playing games. If enough people who don't hate women start playing the games I like, then I won't have to put up with bigots any longer. And if reasonable people start playing the games I like then maybe they will see that in limited, 2R for shock in a metagame that has a 1-damage and 3-damage red spell and a whole ton of really conditional removal isn't terrible when that shock also has a flashback. And isn't that a dream worth clinging to?
P.S. Ian Martin tied me up in his basement and improved this blog until I couldn't take it any more. Please visit http://communistgoblin.com/ or he will beat me. Which, depending on what you think of Julian Assange, may or may not be a good thing.
EDIT (March 28, 2012): I've played with this card a lot now, and, exactly as I suspected, this piece of versatile hyper-value removal is really, really good. Everyone who was whining about it is bad at magic.
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