Jesus the Judge

There is an analogy that I have heard for Christianity which I think bears discussing. I heard it a few times on radio sermons, and I recently had it presented directly to me in an email exchange that I had with a Christian acquaintance.

It goes like this: Imagine an honest judge in a state with a "3 strikes" law, who has his daughter come before him for the 3rd time (ignoring that he'd have to recuse himself from the case). His beloved daughter has had warnings to change, but she ignored them. Though he loves her, he has no choice but to sentence her, and apply the "wrath" of the state to repeat offenders.

But wait! Then the judge finds a way out: "I must sentence my daughter to prison, but I don't want her to go because I love her. The law demands that the sentence be carried out. Therefore I will go to jail in her place."

The point of the story is that you are the criminal, and God is the judge. By law, you deserve death for your sins, but Jesus came down to carry out the sentence in your place.

This story also tries to deal with the common question, "Why would a loving God send people to hell?" With God cast in the role of a just but sympathetic judge whose hands are tied, the "angry god" image is softened a little.

The story about the judge and his daughter is very cute and heart warming, except for one little thing. Once you stop to think about it, it doesn't make an ounce of sense.

In the first place, the law -- and I'm talking about real world, American law -- doesn't recognize the validity of one person being punished in another person's place. And it's a good thing, too! Just imagine if a serial murderer was brought to trial, and the judge sentenced him to five consecutive lifetimes in jail. But then the murderer's mother steps forward and says "Hold on! Don't put my boy in jail! I'll serve the sentence for him!" The judge would have to be COMPLETELY INSANE to allow that sort of thing to happen. Suppose the guy goes and kills again, then how good an idea was it to put the mother in jail? In principle, we don't punish crimes just because we believe in "eye for an eye" retribution. We put people in jail because it stops them from committing more crimes, and deters others from committing crimes as well.

Which brings me to the second point: Once the daughter is set free, there is no purpose for the judge going to jail, other than symbolism. Who is benefitted by having the judge locked up? Certainly not the judge. Not the daughter. Not the victims of the crime.

No, part of what makes the story sound superficially reasonable is it uses an unjust law as the example. Let's face it, "three strikes" is ridiculous. A kid who is caught possessing marijuana for her third offense has no business going to jail for the rest of her life. Whereas if the crime had been murder, or grand theft auto, the story would make you go "Hey, waaaaaait a minute..."

So if the judge decided that the law was unjust, then there are a few simple solutions: Just let her go! Strike that law from the books! Get her off on a technicality! Find her guilty and then help her appeal to the Supreme Court, hoping they'll rule the law unconstitutional! But the judge actually serving in her place? That's not noble, it's silly.

The bigger problem is that when you apply the analogy to God, you realize that the judge also created the law. Then it makes even less sense. Why does the judge "have no choice but to sentence her"? If the law has a really good reason behind it, then she should fulfill her own sentence. If she girl shouldn't be serving the sentence after all, then maybe it's time to rethink the law.

I'm reminded of Iolanthe, a comic play by Gilbert and Sullivan. In this play, a fairy falls in love with a human judge and marries him. According to fairy laws, the penalty for marrying a mortal is death. There is a dramatic scene in the end, where the fairy queen agonizes over her decision because she loves Iolanthe and doesn't want to kill her. But Iolanthe's husband, bragging about his legal expertise, has a brilliant solution: Why don't they just add a word to the law, so it says: "Let it stand that every fairy shall die who DOESN'T marry a mortal"? So the law is changed, and all the fairies scramble around to find husbands and live happily ever after.

Now that's a hilarious story. But it doesn't seem any more hilarious to me than an all-powerful being who decides that he has to subject himself torture in order to avoid carrying out a law that he wrote himself.

An atheist goes to church

This past Sunday, I went with my friend Matt and my wife Ginny to attend a late morning church service.

It was Matt's idea; I just went based on a whim. Matt was looking for new material for The Atheist Experience, so he called me on Saturday afternoon and told me he was thinking about going to church. I immediately said "I'll go!" The truth is, I've been thinking about giving it a try for years now - just walking in on a service to see what it was all about. I don't think I've ever just "gone to church" before. Being of Jewish heritage, I've been to plenty of temple services. I've sat through Christian weddings in church, and sung with various choirs in cathedrals that have some great acoustics. But I've never actually sat in on a Sunday preachin' session.

So really, I was ready to go and all I needed was an excuse. Having Matt along made it sound that much more fun; if it was boring, I wouldn't be bored by myself. Ginny wasn't going to go originally, because she goes hiking with a friend every Sunday. But the hike was rained out, so she drove back from whatever remote location she'd picked and showed up just in time for us all to get seats together.

Matt already talked about the experience on the 7/2/06 episode, and if you already saw or listened to that episode then much of this will be simply a retread. But I like to write things down.

Matt decided we were going to the Gateway Church, a location Matt picked primarily on the basis of a massive advertising blitz wherein they presented themselves as a very laid back, hip, young people kind of church. There's one billboard featuring a blue jean-clad pair of legs, with an electric guitar next to them, and next to that is one of their slogans like "Come as you are." For the sake of getting the FULL experience, I might have preferred a full on fire-and-brimstone Baptist church, but this is what Matt decided on this week.

The church was a great big auditorium with stadium seating. There was a big jumbotron type screen overhead, and before things got started, there was a countdown to worship time. There were three cameras to capture all the action. The show opened with a live band, and then there was a rock hymn with the lyrics displayed on the overhead screens, karaoke style.

Then IMMEDIATELY after the opening music, the collection plates came out. The lights went dim and some guy started playing a rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" on his bass guitar. He was a good guitarist, or at least Ginny thought so. I was a little too distracted by the blatant manipulation of patriotic fervor while they were collecting money. In addition to the song selection, the screens were displaying a big ring of stars on a blue background, superimposed on a waving flag. Needless to say, we didn't contribute any money.

The lights came up and a skit started. The skit involved a cranky, bitter young woman who feels that her life is empty. She comes home and talks to herself. It seems that she's got everything she wanted when she was young: marriage, kids, a good job, a nice apartment... so why does she feel so empty??? She doesn't feel satisfied with her life, and she makes herself depressed by looking at women in magazines whose body she'll never have, and she doesn't feel satisfied with the fact that she achieved some goals.

Then some more music played. Part of the conceit of the skit was that the woman lives next door to one of the guitarists and yells through the walls about how much her life sucks, so he soothes her with pretty music.

Then finally we got the pastor. The pastor was a young man in his twenties. He was casually (but hiply) dressed and his arms were covered with tattoos. He had a good crowd voice and generally came across with the air of an accomplished motivational speaker.

The theme of the sermon was "sand castles." It's based on a Bible verse that says, in a nutshell: "Build your life on a foundation of Jesus. Because if you build it on anything else, it's like building a castle on sand." ("The other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em! It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up!")

So the pastor started by telling an anecdote about building sand castles when he was a little kid. The ocean washed it away, so he built the next one on the hood of the car. But at the end of the day, they had to drive away and that castle fell down too. The way he told it was very cute and entertaining, but the whole story was so contrived that I had a strong suspicion that it didn't really happen to him, even though he told it very earnestly in the first person. It seems more likely to me that there are books of these sermons that pastors are supposed to "borrow" but personalize.

Anyway, the sermon continues the theme of the whiny woman in the apartment: all your accomplishments are irrelevant, because life sucks without Jesus. To drive the point home, the pastor went through a checklist of some things from which people might derive pleasure and satisfaction, and proceeded to knock them down and ridicule them. "What should you build your life on? The approval of OTHER PEOPLE? Huh? Well guess what, other people aren't always gonna approve of what you do. My wife doesn't even approve of me all the time! But God will always approve of you!"

Wait a minute. Now I may not be up on my salvation lingo, but I thought the whole point of the Jesus story is that God DOESN'T approve of you. God FORGIVES you, because Jesus covers your sins through his sacrifice, but you're still a sinner, and that still pisses God off.

And no, as an atheist, I don't seek approval from all people all the time. However, I do find it consistently more rewarding to be on good terms with most people, some of them being close friends, most of them maintaining a basic level of civility, and nearly all of them just agreeing not to kill me thanks to social order.

To continue: "What are you gonna build your life on? Your ACCOMPLISHMENTS? Huh? Well I've got news for you, your accomplishments are a waste of time. You think you'll be happy if you get that promotion, or buy that big TV, or lose that weight. But you won't! Because when you accomplish something, you're left with an empty feeling... you mean that's ALL?"

Again: that's not my experience. The problem is that this mentality assumes that there is an endpoint to happiness. There will be a certain pinnacle you reach where you are absolutely happy, and then there's no need to strive for any accomplishments ever again. This makes no sense. Striving to accomplish things is part of what makes life fun. When you reach a goal, you search around to find a new goal for yourself. I enjoy getting a new goal. I enjoy working towards that goal. And I enjoy the satisfaction of looking back and seeing that goal completed.

Just because I'm pleased with what I'm done, doesn't mean I'm in some state of ultimate, final happiness. But nor does that mean that I am miserable and my life sucks. Things just are the way they are. You can enjoy things the way they are, or not enjoy them.

My problem is that the sermon was clearly intended to steer you towards the "not enjoy" category. It was a subtle encouragement to look on your own life and find things to get depressed about. Like any good sales pitch: create a void in the customer's life. Then state that the void can only be filled with all-new better-tasting Jesus soda. It was a very cheerful, bouncy, and upbeat presentation. But the message is an astoundingly negative one.

Another amusing point is that while the pastor was talking about empty accomplishments, he said "Now just because your accomplishments don't have ultimate significance doesn't mean that you should just give everything up. If you're the CEO of your company, I'm not saying quit today and walk away." At that point Ginny leaned over and whispered, "Yeah, because they need your money!"

Unlike some churches, there were no Bibles in the seats. Instead, every time the pastor referred to a particular verse, the passage would appear on the overhead screens. Except that the language in the Bible verses was unusual. They were using some weird translation, like the "New International Hipster Version." There was all sorts of modern lingo. Jesus is referred to as "driving" while you're a "passenger". Paul apparently talked about something being like a "house of cards." And there was one verse about a smart carpenter and a stupid carpenter, which I'm quite sure isn't how it goes in King James. Overall, nearly every verse sounded slightly jarring and anachronistic in some way.

It was clear that every aspect of this church was meant as a marketing gimmick to pull in 20- and 30-somethings. The pastor's speech was just larded with references that kids from the 80's would get. At one point, he referred to three or four movies in one quick analogy: 16 Candles, Top Gun, and The Breakfast Club are the ones I remember.

It's a marketing ploy that delivers. The audience was all very young; I would guess that I was in the top half of the age range at 31 years old. And they were all quite casually dressed. I dressed up a little bit nicely, not knowing what to expect: black slacks and a button-up blue shirt. I was clearly overdressed.

I'm not really complaining, as such. If I actually wanted to go to church, this is probably something that I might like and not be intimidated by each week. Then again, the friendly atmosphere doesn't change the fact that the message is so profoundly negative. You are miserable, everyone is miserable, and you are doomed to always be miserable until you accept this meme and start believing in things that can't be shown to exist.

Of course, another interesting question that the new hipster churches raise is: what about Pascal's Wager? Is it actually good enough to go once a week in your grungy clothes, sit and watch a rock show, a skit, and a kid who gets you jazzed up about the 80's? If it is good enough, then why do so many churches bother with the stuffy atmosphere and the fire and brimstone "believe or die" mentality and the behavioral commands? And if it's not good enough, then won't all those so-called "Christians" be surprised when they find themselves in hell, or left behind at the rapture? Hmmmm...

Anatomy of a propaganda attack

Anybody heard about this one?

There was this dad in Lexington, MA, David Parker, who has embarked on a crusade to protect his seven year old from hearing about gay people. The son brought home in a reading bag with books about different types of families, including gay families. He complained to the school board - which is fine with me. I don't agree with his attitude, but I suppose he should have the right to opt out. In this case, he carried his protest so far that he refused to leave the school grounds and got arrested.

Then a few weeks later, this story pops up: Seven-Year-Old Beaten at School For Father's Stand Against Homosexual Activism.

I first encountered the story on alt.atheism last week. Naturally, every right wing media outlet picked it up as fast as they could and used it as a bludgeon. You can probably guess what they said, along these lines: "Shameful! These so called 'tolerant' liberals support physical assault to intimidate believers in family values! Why won't the liberal media pick up this story?"

The first question that springs to my mind is, "How do they know that the beating had anything to do with the dad's anti-gay crusade?" The second question is, "Seven year olds are really THAT concerned with gay politics?"

Here's the school's side of the story:

Some of you may be aware that the press has received a news release related to a playground incident at Estabrook. The Estabrook principal has investigated the issue over the past two days, talking to the adults and children involved. The following are the facts as she understands them.

On May 17, several first graders were involved in a disagreement over who would sit where in the cafeteria. As a result, upon going outside one child took another by the hand and brought him to a third student in an area of the playground that is somewhat difficult for the adults to see. (The student who was hit said that he went willingly.) All children who saw agreed that the third student then hit the student who had been brought to him two to four times in the chest/abdomen (children’s accounts vary) and he fell to his knees. The student who was hit says he was hit when down; the other children say he wasn’t. One child reports that one student held the arm of the student who was hit; however, the child who was hit and the other children did not report this. The children involved named five children who were nearby watching but not directly involved. Several other students were close enough to see a cluster of students but not close enough to see what was happening. The student who did the hitting suggested that others also hit, but none of them did so. Based on the children’s accounts, this all may have happened in under a minute. The aide on duty saw a group of children gathering, and as she walked toward them was approached by a child that said someone was being bullied. When the aide inquired what was going on, the child who was hit identified one student who hit him, and the other children agreed. The child who was hit said he was not hurt and did not want to go to the nurse. He reported that his feelings were hurt, because the child who hit him was his friend.

The child who did the hitting was sent to the assistant principal’s office and while talking with her acknowledged his behavior. As a result, he filled out a “think sheet,” to reflect on his behavior and choices, missed recess on two days, and wrote an apology. In addition, the classroom teacher called both sets of parents and a class discussion was held about not hitting and speaking up when there is a problem on the playground. The teacher indicated that both parents took the matter seriously and seemed satisfied with the outcome. Following the incident the boys were observed arm in arm at school and subsequently the child who was hit went to the house of the child who hit him for a play date.

On May 31, the parents of the child hit casually inquired of the assistant principal as to the consequence given to the other child, and they were told that the child’s parents were informed and a consequence given. Other than this brief interaction, between the time of the phone call by the teacher to the parents on May 17 until June 14, there were no complaints of injury or dissatisfaction with the process to the teacher, nurse, or the administrators. On June 14, school administration received a call from a local paper stating that they had received a press release that a child had been assaulted at Estabrook.

In this case, we followed all of our usual procedures and worked with both sets of parents to resolve this issue. We are surprised that it has resurfaced in a press release issued by a group calling itself Mass Resistance without any prior contact with the school. The press release states that the incident was "fueled and incited by adults (and yes, school officials).” We have found nothing in our investigation that would support this allegation in any way. Nonetheless, in the interest of an open and thorough review of the incident, the matter has been referred by the superintendent to the Lexington police, District Attorney’s office, and the Department of Social Services for independent investigation.

At Estabrook, playground safety and student behavior are school improvement goals each year. The school, like all of the schools in Lexington, works hard to establish behavioral expectations, teach students social skills, and provide strong supervision on the playground. In the seven years that Joni Jay has been principal, we have more than doubled the adults watching students on the playground and our coverage ratio at Estabrook is at or above all other Lexington elementary schools. We have separated older and younger students and have fewer students on the playground at one time. We have trained and hired skillful aides who stay actively involved with children, equipped with walkie-talkies and actively walking around identifying potential problems and working through them with students. The Open Circle program, adopted this year, has provided students with skills to help them resolve problems verbally. Administrators discuss with children the reasons for what happened, the consequences, and future alternatives every time there is a problem. We involve parents and teachers when a child has broken school rules, and if the nurse treats a child due to a playground incident. Each incident is documented, and referrals are made to the counselor and other support personnel when appropriate. As a result of the efforts of staff and parents working together, physical altercations on the playground have been reduced significantly.

A major goal of the Lexington Public School system is both to help all children feel safe as well as to help the child who has erred learn. We are continuously looking to improve the playground experience for children and welcome your input.

A few points of interest in the story:

1. David Parker claims that "a group of 8-10 kids suddenly surrounded Jacob and grabbed him." The school says that it was one kid who actually hit him.
2. In the conservative media story, "According to Mr. Parker, school authorities determined from an investigation into the assault that the beating was indeed planned and premeditated." While according to the school, they had not determined any such thing. Rather, the kids "were involved in a disagreement over who would sit where in the cafeteria."
3. Despite the allegedly severe beating, the parents declined to file a complaint with the police. Apparently, filing a complaint with a local right wing mouthpiece was enough... two weeks later.
4. "Following the incident the boys were observed arm in arm at school and subsequently the child who was hit went to the house of the child who hit him for a play date."

My conclusion? Unfortunately, kids get in fights. This is a bad thing and should not be excused in any way. The little brat who attacked Jacob Parker should be (and seemingly was) disciplined.

But the father seems to have used his status as a loudmouth political activist to act like his child was a victim of anti-bigotry-bigots. The conservative press jumped all over this claim without even bothering to verify that he had any evidence.

4.0

My grades have probably been posted for longer than I realized, but I finally figured out where to look yesterday. I did, in fact, get straight A's in my first semester at school.

This is the only time in my life that I have EVER had a 4.0 grade point average. I don't necessarily expect it to last, but I'll savor the moment.

It looks like the curve was pretty generous in some spots of my Data Mining class. I got 19 out of 40 on my midterm exam, but the median grade was something like 19.01, so I didn't get killed on that as badly as I had expected. On the other hand, the professor sent out an email saying that this was an unusually weak class, and the curve reflected that by giving a lot of low grades. So I guess by one way of reckoning, that makes my A worth more.

My homework grades were consistently above average, but not tremendously so. It was my final class project and paper topic presentation that gave me the huge boost I needed. I had to give three public addresses in one weekend of two classes. Thanks to my public speaking experience, both of them killed. I mean, the class laughed at my jokes and asked questions that indicated they were interested in the subject. What more can anyone ask for?

Software Validation and Verification was an odd class. There was a simply enormous volume of technical papers that we were supposed to read in the month between each class. I tried, but the subject was fairly dull and it was very tough to slog through a few of them in any given month. Then, in the month before my last class, I realized something amazing: there WASN'T GOING TO BE A FINAL. In other words, reading the papers was mostly useless. There was a 20 minute "quiz" that was like a midterm; there was one homework assignment; and there was the paper topic. And I had managed to round up an excellent team of four students to work on a project that was basically my idea. There was lots of communication and meetings, and everybody seemed to share fairly equally in the work.

The professor was kind of new, so I suggested to him that it might have been constructive to give a few take-home quiz questions on selected paper topics. It would have meant more work for me, but without that kind of feedback, I definitely didn't feel like I was getting what I was supposed to out of the reading.

No, I wasn't that annoying kid in class who says the teacher forgot to assign enough homework. I'm a grownup now, dammit. I paid $X0,000 so that I could learn things.

I think I said before that I'll be posting my final papers on my web site soon, in case anyone is interested. I recently upgraded my very old hosting account from 50 megs to a gig, for very little extra money. So now I can actually put stuff on my site freely without worrying about quotas. I'll do that someday soon.

More thoughts on Ann Coulter

Jeff, Denis and I had a very interesting discussion about Ann Coulter this weekend on the Non-Prophets this weekend. I'd say it lasted a solid half hour, and Jeff gave me a new perspective on what her motives might be in naming the book "Godless".

In her latest train wreck of a column, Coulter complains that people aren't getting properly offended by the central thesis of her book.

My book makes a stark assertion: Liberalism is a godless religion. Hello! Anyone there? I've leapt beyond calling you traitors and am now calling you GODLESS. Apparently, everybody's cool with that. The fact that liberals are godless is not even a controversial point anymore.

To Coulter, "godless" is a worse insult than "traitor." And she's frustrated that this isn't what bothers people.

Jeff Dee wrote a blog entry a year ago that addresses what this issue is all about. Like many things I write, some of this post is a wholesale ripping off of ideas that he gave me.

First of all, the reality. Most atheists do in fact vote Democratic. It's simply a fact... somewhere around 70-80% of the atheist vote went to Gore, and then to Kerry.

But of course, most Democrats are godful. Not all Democrats are atheists; many are liberal Christians, or wiccans/pagans/new agers/whatever. This reflects that fact that Democrats are actually a highly diverse coalition of people and interests. The godless and the laid back religious form one issue oriented segment; then there's gay rights advocates, pro-choicers, environmentalists, pro-science people, anti-war people, civil rights pinkos, and so on. Many times these interests converge, but not always. Democrats have varying individual agendas and tend not to move in lockstep. Being "liberal" on one or several issues is no guarantee that you'll agree with the rest of the party platform.

This is as contrasted with the Republican party, which by and large demands complete loyalty on all issues. Sure, they have the "enrich the rich" big money guys on one hand and the very poor rural theocrats on the other. But the poor rural theocrats have also been persuaded to believe that eliminating the estate tax is in their interest; while the big money guys regularly use hyper-religious language to woo the rural theocrats. In short, Republicans have managed a kind of cohesion that Democrats don't have.

Ann Coulter's nasty routine tries to drive a wedge into the already tenuous alliance among Democrats. Liberal Christian Democrats are driven to say "We're not Godless, you mean lady! Look how much we love God!" And then they try to find ways to make the Democratic party more overtly religious.

Then what happens? It alienates the atheists, of course. We atheists -- who make up a not insignificant fraction of the party's base -- see that the Democrats are starting to pander to the religious left, and we get discouraged, and the votes start to fall off.

THIS is what Coulter and her ilk are really after. Internal rifts in the Democratic party. With the last two elections being won by less than five points, a chunk of 10-20% of Democrats becoming convinced that there's no difference between the parties could ensure Republican victories for a long time to come.

If Democrats were smart, their reaction to being called Godless would be one of unambiguous solidariy with atheists. Easy for an atheist to say, right? But they don't have to agree with our position. They could say, "You know, most of our party are not godless, but we gladly accept people of all religions and no religion. We understand that there are differences among individuals, but we celebrate those differences." The people who find "godless" to be an automatic insult will avoid the Democratic party, but they already do that anyway.

For IBM Help, please do NOT call...

The correct number for IBM internal support is 1-888-IBM-HELP.

As I learned today, the number is **not** 1-800-IBM-HELP. That appears to be a phone sex line.

Using www.phonespell.org, I learned that the same numbers also spell 1-800-4-ANGELS.

I'd rather be Godless than insane

Sometimes -- not often, mind you -- I wonder about Ann Coulter. She seems to be a potential soul mate for Fred Phelps (the "God hates fags" guy). Both of them appear to be in the business of saying things that are as offensive as possible, and then playing the victim when people react to them. Fred Phelps makes sure NOBODY likes him, so he can make money by suing people who take a swing at him. Coulter, on the other hand, sells books, so clearly she actually has a target audience. However, the stuff she says is so stupid and insulting that it's hard to believe that even she believes it.

So I wonder about her. I haven't ruled out the possibility that she's deliberately created a character for herself, like Stephen Colbert. If she is a walking satire, she's not that funny and really, REALLY dedicated to it.

Take her latest book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Now, I happen to be a liberal AND godless, so the subject matter doesn't bother me as much as it undoubtedly will bother some other people. In fact I'm quite looking forward to seeing excerpts from the end of the book, most of which is supposed to be spent on Intelligent Design, and the usual tiresome charge that I worship Darwin. I'm sure the web will be rife with hilarious take-downs, and that's something I always enjoy reading.

Speaking of hilarious take-downs, recently Keith Olbermann devoted a segment to pummeling the crap out of a clip of her being interviewed. Watch the segment. I guarantee it won't disappoint you.

This is what Keith Olbermann was responding to. Coulter's book goes on a rant about the four "Jersey Girls" -- 9/11 widows who have become prominent political figures criticizing Bush on national security. They were at least partly responsible for the formation of the 9/11 commission.

Matt Lauer (reading from Coulter's book): "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, revelling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' death so much."

Coulter: Yes.

Lauer: Because they dare to speak out?

Coulter: To speak out using the fact that they're widows. This is the Left's doctrine of infallibility. If they have a point to make about the 9-11 Commission, about how to fight the war on terrorism, how about sending in somebody we're allowed to respond to? No, no, no, we always have to respond to someone who just had a family member die.

Ann, of course, is completely full of shit. There is absolutely NO REASON why she wouldn't be allowed to "respond to them". I wouldn't hesitate to disagree with widows, if I didn't completely agree with them anyway.

Except that in Ann Coulter's twisted mentality, "respond to" is a synonym for "slander the character of." It's all that she has ever known how to do. And she is completely stymied by the Jersey girls, because when she attacks them, she sounds like a bitch from hell. Ann asks, "And by the way, how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy." Cute. Classy. No, wait a minute, that makes her sound FUCKING EVIL.

But in a way, that's what she's complaining about. She's used to making character attacks and being basically shielded and supported by her fans, but when she says crap like this, nobody likes her. So that's how she came to the conclusion that she "can't respond to them" -- she lost the ability to "respond" in the only way she knows how: by screaming at them.

And she can't stand it. She doesn't know the difference between a legitimate discussion and a screech fest. She interprets this lack of support as inability to hold a discussion with them. But in fact, the reality is that she is incapable of holding a serious discussion with anyone.

Putting this shrew on TV only dignifies her. "Enjoying their husbands' deaths" indeed. In a sane world, the only possible response to that would be "Go fuck yourself." The fact that any other response is expected, frankly mystifies me.

Last weekend of class

I'm sitting in my Data Mining class now. My first semester will be over tomorrow. What a relief.

This month, and especially this week, have been very rough on me, and I think even rougher on Ginny and Ben. I've been either working continuously or meeting with somebody every night. Ben hardly sees me, and when he does try to get me to play with him, I usually have to shoo him away because I'm so busy. Ginny says he's been unusually unruly during the day, and she thinks it's because he's stressed too.

At 10:00 I'll be going up in front of the class with my partner, Chip, to do a ten minute presentation on a published paper (not ours) about gathering marketing information from blogs and message boards. This afternoon, I will be in a group of four presenting a system that we wrote to translate logic puzzles into visual solutions. The program parses natural language and then shows what categories it puts people in. Then tomorrow, back in Data Mining, I'll be showing our data on how gun laws affect crime rates. That paper is 14 pages. I'll probably put both papers up on my web page sometime soon.

So anyway, I worked my ass off this month, and I'm ready to take a big break. I still have to go to work, of course, but just working is a piece of cake compared to working in the day AND doing class work at night.

We're planning to go to Sea World soon. No responsibilities until my next class starts in a month. A very welcome change.

Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within [GC, **]

I've owned Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within for over a year now, I think. Usually I either win a game within a few weeks or get sick of it and don't finish at all. With Warrior, I played it for a while and then set it aside, having the best intention to return to it eventually. Recently, I've given it another go.

I love the Prince of Persia series. I played the original game as a freshman in college. The second game was one of the first I ever played after I bought my first sound card, so I fondly remember the experience of hearing ACTUAL VOICES in the game for the very first time.

In the Prince games, you play a character with extraordinary athletic abilities. The first two games were side-scrollers. In a typical gaming session, you might be running from a bunch of angry guards, then you duck through a gate just as it closes, jump over some spikes, and finally leap across a wide chasm, just barely grabbing the ledge.

Also characteristic of the series is that it is both brutally hard on mistakes, and generous in allowing you to recover from them. Miss the ledge, and you'll plummet to your death many screens below as the prince lets out a terrified scream. (Hooray again for the invention of sound cards.) Then you'll be transported back a couple of minutes to the beginning of the scene, where you need to start running from those guards again. Luckily, you get infinite lives. The first two games had a time limit; later games have given that up, which I considered a wise move.

In the latest incarnation of the series, the prince has gone 3D on GameCube, PlayStation 2, and XBox. (Actually the Prince went 3D in an earlier PC version called Prince of Persia 3D, but that one was so bad it's best not to speak of it.) In Sands of Time, they introduced a terrific game mechanic, which was the power to control time. You get a limited number of "sand tanks", which you can fill by fighting enemies. If you get killed by one of the many cliffs or deathtraps, you can rewind time to a point just before you died as long as you still have time sand. It was a clever way to stick with the spirit of the series, because it allows you to feel that the world is deadly while still giving you an opportunity to recover from your mistakes without starting over very often. It reduced a lot of the frustration but still kept the tension high, because if you run out of sand then your next screwup kills you. The character was well designed and the new moves (such as running along walls and flipping around poles) were very cool.

In Warrior Within, it's like some committee of corporate non-gamers tried to redesign Sands of Time to make it "hipper," realizing that Sands is a great game but not having any understanding of why. In Warrior, the prince is darker and edgier. The fighting is more violent, and requires you to memorize "combos" -- buttons you have to press in a certain sequence in order to win the battles. Also, the introductory movie has a hot goth chick in chainmail, and there's actually a closeup shot of her chainmailed butt. I like skin shots as much as the next guy, but it was just so utterly gratuitous that it was stupid. It's not all that relevant to the plot and it feels wedged in to the Prince of Persia universe.

All that aside, though, I finally managed to enjoy the game for a while, until I gradually realized that there is one aspect of Warrior Within that I truly, truly hate.

Some games are linear, dragging you from event A to event B to event C on rails. That's okay. Some games are nonlinear, giving you free reign to explore what you want. That's okay too.

But in Warrior Within, the designers have chosen the worst aspects of both. The game is linear in the sense that you must unlock events in a particular order. But the geography of the game is nonlinear, because at any given time, you can travel to just about anywhere else you've already been. And the enemies are all still there.

In other words, it's really hard to tell which way you're supposed to be going. I just recently backtracked very close to the beginning of the game, fighting newly resurrected enemies all the way, before realizing that there's nothing happening there. Apparently there was some other branch that I was supposed to take. So I went back to hunt for the other branch, and got sidetracked going to another useless location.

Adding to this horror, some areas can only be accessed by a very roundabout route, but once you're there, you can instantly take a one-way path that drops you right back where you were. So if you make a wrong jump, you'll slide down a banner and land on the floor, only to realize that you're now in the same place you were 15 minutes ago when you started climbing, leaping, swinging, and shimmying your way to the top. Now you get to do it all over again.

Finally, the game gives you nothing in the way of hints about where you want to be. One button reveals a "map", but the map is just a big artist's sketch of the exterior of the palace. There's not even a large, friendly "you are here" arrow. At the top, it just says "Gardens." At the bottom, it helpfully says "Goal: Open the second tower." Say, it would be nice if you could let me know where the second tower is, you unhip suit-wearing fogey bastards.

It's a shame that there is such a high quantity of anti-fun in this game, because there really are strong hints of the elements that have made the entire Prince of Persia series so much fun. When you're climbing around an enormous yawning chasm, and you make a dangerous running leap, and JUST BARELY manage to grab on to the ledge as you fall past it, it gets the heart pumping while simultaneously conjuring up a delightful nostalgia for the original side scrolling games.

But the first game had different levels, and once you enter a new level, the door closes behind you. When you're on level 20 and about to rescue the princess, you can't accidentally drop down a few ledges and suddenly be back fighting the guys from level 1.

I rarely give games one star, preferring to reserve that rank for the absolute worst stuff I've ever played. This isn't that bad. But it's not good.

Score: ** (out of five stars)

Libertarianism, part 2

Since I wrote my post on libertarianism, I've received quite a few comments, including a few by email and phone. Some are highly positive about what I wrote, some less so.

One particular poster, "Philanthropic Patriot", is now a repeat visitor to this blog and has written a fairly lengthy reply. I decided I can't do it justice without starting a new post. Thanks for your interesting feedback, PP.

Kazim:

"I believe that we are better off for having a government that actually does stuff. Not that I think the government is in good hands right now; I think that we are being run by a bunch of insane bunglers who are incapable of long term planning. Nevertheless, I believe that a government, run by competent and rational people, is critical for managing aspects of a decent society that the free market doesn't address. That's right, there are things that the free market does not, never has, and cannot do."

Philanthropic Patriot:
"The assumption on the left is that people, left to their own devices and attmepting to improve their lot in life will naturally end up rushing the planet and society headlong to their own destruction. It is believed that if we can only get the correct legislators in place and leave important decisions to these more enlightened, socially responsible individuals is the only way that man can be prevented from destroying himself. Yet I ask, what suddenly makes an elected official less self destructive than the rest of us, and why should we really want universal sufferage given the self destructive nature of most people. Are we to trust people to vote on the best legislators to solve their problems, but not trust them to solve their own problems?"

Okay, hold it right there. You're already trying to turn me into a straw man.

Sorry, you are incorrect. The belief held by me (and whether this is typical of "the left" is open for debate) is *not* that people, left to their own devices, will isolate themselves from one another and destroy themselves. Quite the contrary, I believe that because people are smart, they will eventually recognize the fact that there are things they can't do on their own, and band together in groups to accomplish larger and more important works than scrabbling out a bare existence. This is a huge distinction from the words that PP is putting in my mouth.

For example, suppose I'm writing an essay on the virtues of technology. My eyesight is awful; I correct that with very powerful contact lenses. My running speed is not very fast; luckily I can and frequently do zip across the landscape at 60 miles per hour in my car. Also, luckily for me, I am able to feed myself readily available food without bothering to learn how to hunt or farm; and luckily for me, I am able to communicate my thoughts to people thousands of miles away by tapping my fingers on a piece of plastic. Technology is terrific.

Now suppose somebody comes along and says: "The assumption of the technologists is that people, left to their own devices without their cars and computers and optometry and grocery stores, will naturally end up dying young. Why do they have such contempt for mankind?" Well, no, it's not contempt. If you take away my technology then I'm going to have a much tougher time surviving. That's why I'm pleased that humans are so intelligent and resourceful as to have invented all those things. Before those things existed, life was much shorter and more unpleasant. That's our niche. We do things the smart way.

Government, like contact lenses, is a technological advancement. Go read Guns, Germs and Steel sometime and you'll see the point. In a primitive society, it's pretty much every man for himself, and most of what occupies their time is finding or growing food. Even in primitive societies, of course, there's typically some sort of rudimentary social structure, either family based or chieftain based, but dealing with other tribes is a sketchy business.

Once a tribe discovers the principles of agriculture, suddenly it becomes easier and easier to grow food. All of a sudden, people are no longer limited to eating what they can grow by themselves. They can do other things with their time. There then arises an enormous idle class, and what those idle individuals do to occupy their time is what makes a tribe powerful. They develop technology and weapons. They organize themselves and make laws to keep things running smoothly.

The cultures that do not do this, get crushed or assimilated by the ones who do. History demonstrates, over and over again, that failure to organize is an evolutionary dead end.

"You go on to point out that a free market cannot think far enough ahead to invest in fusion research despite the potential advances for humanity in general. I could point out that politicians rarely think past 4 years, but I will instead say that the market can and would support such research when humanity needs it. If oil prices continue to rise (due to scarcity rather than inflation) than more money will be invested into finding energy alternatives. Politicians love to invest in so-called green technology, but not having any market forces to help them determine when and where that technology is needed, they are more likely to invest in useless technologies as helpfull technology. (and with our current political system I would claim that they would be much more likely to invest in technologies pormoted by those with the most political clout.)"

And yet, nevertheless, governments somehow managed to get an impressive array of large projects that individuals failed to do by themselves. Little things, like, you know... stop lights. Sewers. The internet.

I'm also kind of keen on how we no longer have widespread child labor, or a 50% poverty rate among the elderly, or 70 hour work weeks.

"However, if you tax away all the rich people's 'excess profit', you also have to deal with certain consequences. Seeing as how rich poeple invest far more heavily in new businesses and new jobs, taxing away their excess capital reduces future job growth. Reducing future job growth then reduces workers ability to negotiate for higher wages as they will end up having more competition for the fewer jobs available."

That would be a swell point if it weren't another irrelevant straw man. At no point in my post did I say a word about "taxing away all the rich people's excess profit." See, I believe that your income should be taxed at a marginal rate that is greater than 0% and less then 100%. I do think that people who have more money are better able to afford taxes, but taxing away ALL the excess profit, golly, that would be a dumb thing to say, wouldn't it?

"Your talk about vouchers is a bit misleading as any libertarian I know wants government out of education completely. Any voucher system (in fact any government money) will come with strings attached which will compromise the private school and move it closer to a public school. So what would happen if we got rid of government schools.

Many progressives assume that poor people would get no education."

What an unreasonable assumption. I guess they only say that because poor people never *have* been educated effectively in a society with no publicly supported education. Still, why bother with trifling things like evidence?

"This stems from a belief that public education is 'free education'"

No it doesn't. It stems from a belief that public education is publicly supported, in such a way that people who can't afford it get educated. Homeowners pay for it, with people who live in more expensive homes paying more. By so doing, they get to buy the privilege of living among an educated populace who don't feel that their only avenue of profit is stealing stuff from the rich houses.

"Another effect the ending of compulsary education would have would be that some people would choose not to school their children. Before public schools were common in the U.S. some of the best selling books were reading primers and there was no illiteracy problem in our country. If I have a succesfull carpentry business and I choose to keep my son home and teach him my business and what I feel he needs to learn, why is that wrong?

You go on to claim that poor children would end up in the worst schools, yet right now only wealthy people can afford to send their children to private schools because they have to, in effect, pay for that schooling twice (once through thier property taxes), so the poor are already going to the worst schools. If, however, they went to a poor private school, that school would have incentive to improve (attracting more students) that public schools lack. In addition, many businesses would understand the need for a well educated work force and would set up scholarships and other financial help for the poor. Believe the poor would be excluded from private schools? Read this:
http://www.educationnext.org/20054/22.html
And this:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/egwest/research/privateschools.html"

Nope. I don't believe that the poor would be "excluded" from private schools. One of the things I have noticed throughout this post is that you are constantly engaging in thinking that everything is all or nothing. For instance, if there are a few dimly lit ratholes serving as "schools" for a fraction of the children in third world countries, that doesn't make it an impressive substitute for widely available education.

Interesting that you need to look in underdeveloped and impoverished countries to locate examples of the ideal libertarian educational situation. Why do you suppose that is?

"You say that the free market does not provide good meals for the poor and, in this, you are correct. While charitymay not be the perview of a free market, it is much more so that it is the perview of the government. Most charity does, and should, come from private individuals yet corporations do have a good track record of giving to charity. Is that good for the bottom line? Well, it turns out it is. Companies do not just put up a sign that says 'my busines' and automagically have customers, they have to attract those customers and many businesses realize that goodwill from the community can be better than paying a high priced Madison Avenue ad firm."

Again, this is an example of all or nothing thinking. You imagine that, because a few companies have the incentive to give to charity, suddenly the problem of meals for the poor -- poof! -- just vanishes. The question isn't whether some poor people get fed; the question is whether ENOUGH poor people get fed to massively reduce the number of people who starve in the streets. While I'm sure that lots of private charity makes up some of the shortfall, it's never managed to offset hunger the way a fully funded government program does.

Prove me wrong. Find me a society of comparable prosperity and size, which has no public welfare programs and manages to stave off starvation among the poor better than we do. Or should I take this assertion on faith?

"Yet when someone is in need. Truly in need of a meal and a bed to keep them alive, do they turn to the government? No. They go to the Family Kitchen for a meal and to the YMCA for a bed."

You are talking about a starving person looking for a last resort to keep them alive. Yet you dismiss the fact that "the government" is what keeps many people from reaching that point.

---

Moving on to post number two...

"Your analogy of a multicelled animal with humans as the cells really gives a good insight into the progressive mindset. Viewing humans as lumps of material to be molded by those better able to see the good of society into a functioning whole. You ignore the fact that those cells (humans) have intelligence, free will, thier own hopes and dreams and even thier own ideas on how to best organize society. Individual cells in a body don't wake up every morning worried about bills, about forgetting their anniversary; they don't wake up in the morning thinking about that girl they met at the party the night before or the bonus they are hoping to get this quarter. If you look at humans as aimless, lifeless masses to be organized by 'your plan' for society than your plan is going to fail."

This should win an award for "most strained attempt to take an analogy literally." Yes, PP. My dad made that analogy because he thinks that human beings are literally microscopic cells with no brains. He's just the stupidest scientist in the world.

Or perhaps the reason that the analogy between people and cells actually works is because people, like cells, function best in a larger context. Don't believe me? Then go ahead and abandon society, cut yourself off from human contact, and become a hermit. I'm sure you'll be a very wealthy hermit. Maybe when you've managed to truly free yourself from the shackles of governments and laws, you can serve as a shining example of someone who has truly made it on his own, with no help from anyone.

"I don't know about icelands history, but I do know of a society that was far closer to the ideals of libertarianism than any socety today. This society watched over some of the greatest achievements and discoveries by man, had a booming economy, practically inflation free money, no income taxes, true property rights and a judiciary who zelously defended those rights, and a level of freedom almost unprecedented in human history."

Nothing I read about Iceland since this subject was brought up have in any way indicated to me that the economy was "booming". On the contrary, the article by Jared Diamond that I referenced earlier had this to say:

"Medieval Iceland became Europe's most backward country, poorer even than Albania. In contrast to the rich burial goods found in Viking graves elsewhere, all of the gold and silver recovered from Viking graves in Iceland could be accommodated within a small bucket. Everyone lived on scattered farms: until the 1700s Iceland didn't even have any villages, towns, or full-time merchants. It had no roads, carts, or wheeled transport until the late 1800s; at that same recent date most Icelanders still lived in houses built of turf."

The other "perks" that you mentioned seem to be either things that we already have, such as "true property rights," or cases where you are simply begging the question, such as "no income taxes." Income taxes pay for a lot of the great stuff I mentioned we have in our society, which the Icelanders seem to have notably lacked.

"You probably already know I am refering to the first one hunder and fifty years of our Constitutional Republic, before the standard bearer for the progressive movement, FDR, decided the Constitution was too binding for his plans and bullied the Supreme Court into redefining it. Now we have far too much ignorance about what the Constitution says, even among our legislators who all swear an oath to defend it. As far as I can tell about progressive thought, the Constitution starts with Amendment I and ends with Amendment XXVII."

No, I agree that people should be familiar with the whole Constitution, such as the part where it says that the government is supposed to do things like "promote the general Welfare" and "establish Post Offices" and "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." (And yes, before you ask, I am fully aware that the definition of "welfare" is "health, happiness, or prosperity.")

"Finally, I find it funny that you spend some time disproving that Iceland was libertarian and then you turn around and say that Iceland is proof that libertatrianism is self-defeating. Which is it?"

I suppose I can concede here that you've caught me in a bit of a contradiction, which is probably understandable since, as I said, I'm not all that familiar with medieval Iceland.

So let me try to clarify. It's clear that medieval Iceland was not a pure libertarian society, but of course, there is no such thing. It does, however, make sense to talk about degrees of libertarianism, and I'll also grant that medieval Iceland was definitely CLOSER to the libertarian ideal than the United States has been in any century. Certainly there was no centralized government across a largish group of very small areas. There were laws within the tribal families, but the authority was clearly broken up into smaller groups.

So I'm going to rescind my statement that Iceland wasn't a libertarian society; it was "sort of" a libertarian society, before the scheme collapsed under the weight of the warring families. As for whether they were prosperous, I don't see any evidence of that. The fact that they simply survived for a while doesn't impress me very much.

Woodrow Wilson once said, "Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance."

Wilson was right. Liberty doesn't "come from" the government. As Thomas Jefferson said, people are endowed with inalienable rights. (Though, as I am an atheist, please excuse me if I disregard the"by their creator" part.)

But as Jefferson also went on to say, governments are instituted among men, to secure these rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Jefferson had just lived through a period of unjust government, so I presume he knew what he was talking about. Once Jefferson and his compatriots was free of a tyrannical monarchy, did they say "All right lads, clearly government is inherently evil, so let's abolish government from this day forward and create an anarcho-capitalist utopia"? Nope, they proceeded to spend thirteen years crafting the details of a new government, which they felt would be the best vehicle for securing their rights. I guess that was a pretty good idea.

This is how big a nerd I am

In Fox Trot this weekend, there was a comic where Jason creates a paint by number. But since Jason is a little math geek, he doesn't just write in the numbers; he writes large numbers that are either divisible by 13, 17, or 19, or else they're prime.

Based on the caption, I figured it must be a picture of his sister Paige, but I couldn't just let it go without a solution. So I wrote a quick Perl program to interpret the numbers for me so I wouldn't need a calculator, and then I solved it in MS Paint.

Here you go.



Update (4/11)
I emailed Bill Amend to let him know I solved his puzzle. He wrote back today.

"The 2261 space should've been orange, not red. Not your fault. See the
note about the ambiguity on my web page.

Bill Amend"

Also, somebody else added the correctly colored puzzle to Bill's own blog.

Damn it!!!

Why I Am Not A Libertarian

Hi. I'm a liberal.

No, really. I mean it. I'm a liberal.

For some reason, a lot of people hear that and they feel compelled to say "Oh, you don't really mean that. If you believe in freedom then you should be a libertarian." They're wrong. I'm still a liberal.

I've occasionally touched on libertarianism during my time talking on The Non-Prophets and The Atheist Experience, but whenever this happens I feel the urge to tread lightly. These shows (especially the TV show) are targeted at a general atheist audience, and so I don't want to get into liberal/conservative issues more than necessary, because I don't necessarily want to alienate right wing and libertarian atheists. Also, I am friends with a few libertarians, though not that many.

There aren't many atheist Republicans, but there sure are a lot of atheist libertarians. I suspect that this is because libertarians share much of their economic philosophy with Republicans, and yet recognize that the Republican party is hugely dependent on the religious right. Hence, people who want to be Republicans but can't stomach the Bible thumpers wind up as libertarians.

In principle, libertarians believe that they incorporate the most "pro-freedom" elements of both parties. From liberals, they believe in social freedoms such as the right to read and watch whatever you want, and have sex with whomever you want. From conservatives, they believe in the freedom to "keep your own money" and not pay for any social programs. Libertarians believe that all taxation is theft, taken at gunpoint. I prefer to think of taxes as a cost of living in a civilized world. Since I'm a liberal, I apparently hate your freedom.

I believe that we are better off for having a government that actually does stuff. Not that I think the government is in good hands right now; I think that we are being run by a bunch of insane bunglers who are incapable of long term planning. Nevertheless, I believe that a government, run by competent and rational people, is critical for managing aspects of a decent society that the free market doesn't address. That's right, there are things that the free market does not, never has, and cannot do.

Galt's Imaginary Gulch

I've read Atlas Shrugged. I quite liked it on first reading. For those who don't know about this book, I'm going to provide spoilers but you have to read them anyway.

Atlas Shrugged is a philosophical novel written by Ayn Rand, who is in many ways a hero to libertarians and the originator of many ideas within the movement. In the story, the world is increasingly run by stupid and lazy people, and clearly going to hell in a handbasket. The stupid people believe in "altruism", which in Rand's world always means "forcing productive people to give their hard earned money to people who don't deserve it."

The productive people feel more and more powerless as time goes on, and one by one they seem to disappear off the face of the planet. Finally it is revealed that they are living in Galt's Gulch, a hidden libertarian utopia where only productive geniuses (inventors and manufacturers and such) are allowed to stay. They hide in their little corner of the world until the hero, John Galt, decides the time is right; then they break out, Galt makes a speech that lasts roughly 100 pages, and the competent people take over the world again.

There were many reasons why I liked the book. For one, I appreciate the view that smart and competent people are the ones who ought to run things, and that often doesn't happen. Overall, I agree with the message that "selfishness" is not always wrong, nor in conflict with the greater good. And I like the emphasis that Rand places on individualism and creativity.

At the same time, there were a few things that bothered me about the book, but I couldn't put my finger on them until later. One of the key "villains" was a scientist, who was doing his "altruistic" research on government money. Why, this scoundrel couldn't even prove that his work was PROFITABLE enough to deserve private money, and in the Rand universe, not being profitable is the worst sin imaginable.

Here's the problem: in a nutshell, that's my dad. My dad does fusion research, and relies on the existence of a government that values the pursuit of scientific knowledge in order to generate long term benefits. If my dad and his colleagues are successful in their work, fusion could someday provide cheap energy for everyone in the world, and drastically reduce our dependence on oil.

Fusion research requires a massive amount of research dollars, over a period of decades, with no guarantee of ever recovering enough profit to justify an individual investment. This isn't the way the business world works. Stockholders who are obsessed with a three month profit and loss sheet simply don't recognize concepts such as "decades". Furthermore, it's not necessarily clear how a private company could turn an exclusive profit even if they did unlock the gateway to easily produced fusion energy. Such a momentous scientific discovery could benefit humanity best if the knowledge were freely available to everyone, and sooner or later, it would be. The long term benefit of CHEAP energy should be obvious to everyone, but "cheap" and "profitable" don't always go together.

The other problem with Rand's universe was pointed out to me by a friend whom I met only after finishing the book. Think of any child character (let's say under the age of 12) who is portrayed in a positive light in any of Ayn Rand's books.

Go on, I'm waiting.

There aren't any. And here's my theory about why there aren't any: Children are leeches on society. They don't turn a profit for their parents. Occasionally, a child will grow up and take care of his parents when they are old and feeble, but this is the exception rather than the rule. On the whole, most parents pour a lot more time and money into a child's upbringing than they get out of it, and parenting is its own nebulous reward, with financial incentives being very hard to see.

Of course, I understand that Ayn Rand, along with many other people I know, remained childless by choice. And hey, that's okay by me. If you're deliberately child-free, then all I can say is, thank you! I'm acutely aware of overpopulation. I'm a step-dad twice and a dad once. The fewer kids other people have, the more resources will be available to my descendants.

But that's not the issue. The issue is that there are billions of kids in the world, and kids aren't self-sufficient. It's not because they're lazy, it's not because they're leeches, it's because they are physically and mentally incapable of taking care of themselves. As a parent, my job is to provide the kids' physical needs to the extent that they can't provide for themselves, and supply sufficient mental and philosophical guidance so that they hopefully become the kinds of functioning adult that a Randist utopia would require.

There's more to it than that. Rand libertarians naively imagine that Adam Smith's "invisible hand" fairly and equitably distributes money purely on the basis of merit. If you're poor, it's because you're lazy and stupid and you deserve to be poor. If you're rich, it's because you are hard working and smart.

Right. And I have some beachfront property to sell you in Las Vegas.

Of course innate smarts and diligence matter, but what also matters is being in the right place at the right time. I am a moderately successful guy, and I like to think of myself as pretty smart and at least occasionally hard working. I support a family as the sole income earner, and I expect to make more after I get my Master's Degree in two years. It would be easy for me to arrogantly assume that I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and accomplished everything on my own.

But I didn't. I am lucky to have been born to a middle class family in twentieth century America. Had I been born in Rwanda, all the smarts and dedication in the world wouldn't have brought me the amount of food, shelter and comfort that I enjoy today. Had I been born in medieval Europe, it's overwhelmingly likely that my parents would have been peasants, which doesn't afford a kid much social mobility.

Furthermore, I had the benefit of two remarkably smart and dedicated parents, who valued education and pushed me to go farther than I could have without their help. I've lived in good neighborhoods. I went to some good schools, both public and private. I commuted to one of the best public high school districts for miles around. And I got to earn my Bachelor's degree without having to pay for college myself. I had inspiring teachers, and my dad used some pull help me get my first job, though I was only in it for about a year before moving on to better things.

I'd have to be one smug, pompous son of a bitch to sit here and say that "I made it on my own, with no help from anyone." I made it to where I am partly by being smart. But it only mattered because I was working within a remarkably effective system where people thrive. Hardly anybody really "makes it on their own."

But that's what I get from libertarians. They dismiss the carefully crafted government system we have, with its public works like schools and roads and zoning laws, with its cleverly constructed system of checks and balances. All this they call the tools of a tyrannical society that wants to rob you of your hard earned money. The assumption is that if you have money and success, then it's because you earned it.

Clearly this is not the case. Just look at Paris Hilton. Is there any reason in the world why she should be famous, other than her daddy's money? She's not especially talented, her looks are mostly the result of surgery and expensive makeup, and she has one of the most abrasive personalities I've ever seen. Yet people can't seem to stop being fascinated with her life. Clearly she has top-notch PR people. But PR people cost money.

This isn't an anti-rich people rant, by any means. But the economic system we have is known as "capitalism", which means that what you get rewarded for is HAVING capital. We don't live under a strict meritocracy. Often, happily, the two systems coincide with each other, so that the brightest and most deserving are rewarded with great wealth. I'm all for that, which is why I am basically a fan of capitalism over most of the alternatives.

But there's a dark side to capitalism: capital amplifies itself. The more you have, the more you are likely to get. There's an old joke: How do you make a small fortune in the stock market? Start with a large fortune. That's funny but true, and not just true of stocks. If you start with a huge pile of money, your successes amplify that money while your mistakes don't wipe you out. If you start out with nothing, a few people will be good enough to scrabble their way to the top, but most also end up with nothing. This is a simple fact of life, which any effective system of government has to take into account and deal with.

For example, what is one of the best predictors of how well a student will do in school? How well their parents did, according to a study done by the Educational Research Service. Which makes sense, of course. If your parents are smart and educated, as mine were, they'll drill into you the importance of getting your own education, and this in turn will affect the way you approach your studies. If your parents are dropouts, often they'll convey the message, whether intentionally or subliminally, that school isn't worthwhile.

We Don't Need No Public Education

One key cause célèbre for Libertarians is their opposition to public schools. This is a point where I happen to fundamentally disagree with Libertarianism, and it serves to illustrate why I disagree with the whole concept.

As everyone knows, our public primary and secondary school system is not the envy of the world. We routinely see studies lamenting how far American kids are behind kids in other countries, when it comes to subjects like math and science. Libertarians use this common knowledge as a talking point to promote their desire to ultimately eliminate the public school system altogether, replacing it with a school voucher system. The new system would give everyone a certain amount of money in vouchers, which they could then spend at the private school of their choice. Vouchers, they argue, would spur schools on to ever more excellent performance. The laws of natural selection would weed out the underperforming schools, and the great schools would thrive.

In a sense, they're probably right. Given extra funding from the government, a lot of really good private schools WOULD thrive and improve. Then they'd become more competitive, and the best and richest students would have a top notch education.

But wait a minute. The best and richest students can ALREADY get a top notch education at private schools. It's just that they don't get extra government funding on top of the money they already have. The point of funding public education is not to give an extra edge to the rich kids; it's to make sure that the poor kids also have access to a decent education, thus leveling the playing field.

The thing about free markets is that they're very efficient at giving people exactly what they can pay for. If you're rich and hungry, you can go get a steak prepared by a world class chef and served by a polite and attentive waiter. If you're not rich but still hungry, you can get a Big Mac served by a surly teenager. If you're barely scraping by, you can eat Ramen every day until the all-carb diet eventually leads you to an early death. There's simply no profit in serving you decent food.

The question that we need to face is whether we want poor people to get the educational equivalent of Ramen at every meal. That's what we'll ultimately get with the voucher system. Those who can afford to pay for great private schools, will do so and use their vouchers to pay a bit less. Those who have nothing but the vouchers, will be paying the bare minimum and going to whatever schools they can get into. Chances are very good that the best publicly supported schools will be better than they are now, and the worst schools will be much worse once their funding is yanked and only the poorest people go there.

So what do I care? you might ask. If I'm a reasonably affluent parent, then MY kid is going to get a good education, using MY money. I don't want to pay extra for some poor kid's education; that's theft. Worse yet, I might be one of those childless-by-choice adults, in which case I'm paying for other kids' education but getting nothing out of it. Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

Here's where that logic goes wrong. You do get something out of funding education for the kids of other people. You get to buy the privilege of living in a society where people are not completely uneducated morons. And in that society, other people's kids grow up to be more intelligent and productive, which benefits everybody. The educated kids are also, statistically, much less likely to commit crimes, and that also benefits you.

And this is what really gets to the heart of where I disagree with libertarianism. None of us live in a vacuum. We have to deal with other people on a daily basis, whether we like it or not. Unless you're planning to become one of those society hating hermits who lives out in the mountains with a personal arsenal of assault weapons, the things you do affect me. If you don't get a decent education and that turns you into a violent thug, that affects me. If you dump crap in the water I'm trying to drink out of, that affects me.

And as for taxes? I pay for the things that make up the societal infrastructure that makes me comfortable, thanks very much. Schools that educate kids. Roads that allow me to go from place to place. A post office that delivers EVERYWHERE, even those middle of nowhere places that wouldn't turn a profit if they were privatized. Law enforcement for everyone, not just those who can afford to hire private guards and live in gated communities.

Me paying for those things is not theft. On the other hand, if you decide to be one of those "protestors" who refuse to pay their taxes, while you still enjoy the benefits of the roads and low crime that I'm paying for? That's theft.

America is not a pure libertarian society and never has been. Yet people who live here generally believe that they are living in the greatest country on earth. We didn't get to be a great country without taxes and government work. In fact, many of the things we take for granted today, we have BECAUSE of the system of government and regulated economics that are in place.

Getting back to school vouchers, libertarians argue that we should do away with our public school system because it's broken. But what are they comparing it to? Which are the countries that outperform us in math and science? Countries like Japan, Canada, and Germany. Do these countries model the libertarian ideal? Of course not. Like us, they have public schools with national standards. They do the same thing we do, but better. Are there ANY examples around the world of the voucher program being successful?

Like so many features of libertarianism, the answer is no. So many of the concepts in a libertarian utopia have never been pulled off in any successful country. Thus, it is simply a matter of faith that creating a true libertarian society would actually work. There's no evidence to measure against. Of course, they say "If only somebody would TRY creating a society based on Libertarian ideals, it would quickly be clear how successful the theory is." Sure. That's what Communists say about their system, which has never been tried either. It's easy to make such claims when there's no evidence either way.

Losing That Loving Feeling

A story appeared in the news a few weeks ago about some libertarians who want to take over Loving County, Texas. Why Loving County? Because it's one of the most sparsely populated areas in the country, boasting a population of 71. The highest concentration of people in the county live in the "big city" of Mentone; 16 people live there. Their plan is to move en masse into Loving County so that they can set up a libertarian utopia -- a mini version of Galt's Gulch, if you will. According to the article:

The goal, said an e-mail message attributed to a group member, was to move in enough Libertarians "to control the local government and remove oppressive regulations (such as planning and zoning, and building code requirements) and stop enforcement of laws prohibiting victimless acts among consenting adults such as dueling, gambling, incest, price-gouging, cannibalism and drug handling."

Yeah, that's right: cannibalism! Because if there's one thing that's a threat to my personal liberty, it's the damn government sticking its intrusive laws in the way of my right to eat people!

But seriously. Why do the libertarians feel the need to take over a county of 71 people? If their ideas are so great, why don't they just do a PR campaign in a normal sized town, saying "Let's repeal all these laws! Why just imagine our town in ten years. You can duel me for insulting your honor, and if I lose, you can eat me!"

I'll tell you why they don't do it that way: because they'd lose. Badly. Know why? Because people LIKE having laws against cannibalism. And dueling. And price-gouging. And so on. Those laws, along with the many other laws we have, are there to maintain a stable, sane community. The things that these libertarians want... they AREN'T POPULAR.

And in a way, that's the paradox of libertarianism. If people are free to do what they want, the people will speak and they'll vote themselves laws that regulate what their fellow citizens can and can't do.

And that's a good thing.

My secret thespian life

I've neglected to post anything for a while. I'm working on a post called "Why I Am Not a Libertarian", but it's fairly long already and I'm having a hard time getting everything I want to say come out right. In the meantime, here's some randomly embarrassing information that you didn't know about me.

I've always been kind of into theater. In fact I've always been something of a ham, which is why I found it so natural to become the host of a public access TV show and set up a radio show. I could never make it as a real actor, though.

The first time I can remember acting was when I was somewhere around age 6-8, and I played Haman in my Jewish school play. I didn't want to play the bad guy, but my mom convinced me that it would be fun. She made me a cordouroy beard, I sneered and ranted, and at the end of the play I was physically dragged away from the king by the kids playing guards. It was a terrific time.

When I was about eleven, my parents signed me up to be part of an enormous cast of kids in a local Santa Fe production of "Oliver!" I didn't get the title role, and I think that's all that might have been open to a kid my age. I didn't even get to be one of Fagin's kids, who were very prominent on stage. Nope, I was a street vendor. I did get to sing as part of a large chorus of other kids and adults in a lot of musical numbers, though, and my favorite part was dramatically trembling in fear as Bill Sykes stormed across the stage. I had a rocky time with some kids that I didn't get along with, but I also made a couple of good friends, and one girl (I learned secondhand) had a crush on me. I never did anything about it.

The biggest impact I got from that experience, though, was professional training in how to do a cockney accent from a professional director. It opened my eyes to all the different ways people talk, and from that day on I started privately rehearsing all the accents I ran into. Southern, French, New York, Upper Class Twit, Irish, German, Surfer Dude... I worked on them all for my own amusement. I also enjoyed watching My Fair Lady, which we'd recorded off the Disney Channel.

My dad also took me to a local performance of HMS Pinafore that year, and that triggered a lifelong fandom of Gilbert and Sullivan. In fact we enjoyed the performance so much that dad hired the director, Manos Clements, to direct my family in a performance of The Mikado for my bar mitzvah two years later.

In high school, I also learned to juggle and I picked up a book on ventroliquism. I did a ventriloquist act one year at summer camp with a monkey puppet. I think it bombed, but then again, at least half the acts were preteen girls with lame choreography dancing to cassette tapes, so any comedy routine was a welcome break. I also participated in a lot of other skits at camp.

In high school I considered being in the acting club, which was called Olions. Basically I did one very poor audition in sophomore year, got offered a part as an extra, snottily decided I didn't want to do it if I couldn't be in a main part, and didn't bother trying out again. Thus did my career focus shift to professional geekdom. I did, however, join the speech team, and I participated regularly in an event known as "humorous interpretation", where I would do one man skits involving multiple characters. It was a bit like standup comedy working off someone else's scripts. I did a Monty Python bit called "The Bookseller" one year, and I killed. I should have kept doing that one the next year, but I switched to a Sherlock Holmes spoof called "The Defective Detective" which still did pretty well, but my Python was better. I still have most of it memorized.

I also got involved in French class skits for several years in a row. In my senior year, we did a skit based on "The Wizard of Oz." I was the witch. And not to be modest about it, I think I was personally responsible for nearly all the funniest material in it. In the first scene where I met Dorothy, when I couldn't get the ruby slippers, I whipped out a pair of sunglasses, folded my arms, and said in my best Terminator voice: "Je serais de rentre." ("I'll be back.") Near the end of the skit, when they throw water on me, I scream for a few seconds, then laugh, then open my cloak and reveal that I'm wearing a clear plastic thing. "J'ai une veste impermeable!" I cackle ("I have a waterproof vest"). In rehearsals, they always pretended to throw water on me. In the live version, the bucket was full. Needless to say, some of my screams were real.

In my senior year, I joined the school chorus and learned to sight read music pretty easily. I started out in the general purpose chorus -- I think the title of the class was "I'll pretend to like singing for an easy A." However, I took to it so easily that halfway through the year, I qualified for the All-State concert and then was promoted to the much smaller, elite chorus class, "Encore".

I continued singing through college. I took a class called "Symphonic Chorus", which I discovered was a student gateway into the community chorus, where I remained for all four years. I got to perform in some incredible pieces, including two versions of Carmina Burana, one time fully choreographed with professional dancers. The dancers were hot, but I didn't get to watch them much because I had to focus on the conductor. Nor did I hook up with any of them.

As I approached my last year of college, it was clear that I would have to be in school for an extra year, but I would easily meet the requirements of my Computer Science degree in that fifth year. I had some extra cushion time, so I started considering what sort of blow-off classes I would take. I wound up taking Acting 1, Acting 2 (summer session), Playwriting 101, and Set Design. I hated set design, so I dropped it. 3d games were a new thing then, and I was playing with the Duke Nukem 3d level editor, so I had an idea that set design would help me learn more about constructing 3d worlds and lighting. Ultimately I decided that wasn't where my interest lay, and of course I wound up not in games but in web development. Which is fun too, and more secure.

Anyway, my acting classes were when I knew for sure that acting would never be more than a fun diversion for me. The teachers had an awful time getting me to stop smiling during serious scenes that I was entertained by. I discovered that it's easy to memorize dialogue and understand the mood, but very hard to convince people that you're actually a character instead of an audience member. I also had a chat with my Acting 1 teacher who told me what a miserable life it is to be an actor unless you are one of the incredibly rare and lucky few who hit the big time. I'm not much of a gambler, so I decided that I'll stick with computers, thanks.

I do have something to show for my playwriting class, though. Here's the play I wrote for my final class project. And I gained a greater appreciation for storytelling and movies, which has stayed with me.

My theatrical "career" pretty much ended when I graduated. I joined another community chorus in San Jose, but then I moved to Santa Cruz after just a few months, and it wasn't practical to commute all the way back. So I didn't do any more performance until years later, when I discovered the joys of being on The Atheist Experience.

One last thing I still do is read to the driver on long car trips. I love reading books out loud, and I have an opportunity to do it with my wife, Ginny, and my sister Keryn. I still do characters and accents. Right now, Ginny and I are reading A Clash of Kings, second in the "Song of Ice and Fire" series, which is just about the most awesome fantasy series I've ever read. It's slow progress, which is frustrating because I'd like to just read the whole thing, but I enjoy the experience more with my wife. To Keryn I'm reading Ender's Game, which I've already read many times before, but it's new to her.

I've discovered that my favorite character to voice in the "Ice and Fire" books is Tyrion Lannister, the brilliant angry dwarf. My favorite Ender character to voice is Bonzo Madrid. After all these years, I still love playing evil. Thanks, mom.

So if you kept reading this far, you must be just fascinated by my life, so thanks for listening. But I'll get back to politics and religion soon, I swear. Stay tuned for "Why I Am Not a Libertarian".

The knowledgeable world view

I haven't blogged any atheist thoughts for a while, so I thought I'd dredge up a board post that I wrote last October.

Christians like to frame things in terms of "world views", saying that being a Christian changes the way that you think about everything, which is why they have such specific views on "moral" issues like abortion and homosexuality and so on. Of course, many liberal Christians don't align with those views, but that's okay; fundamentalist Christians just write them off as not True Christians^TM who are duped by worldliness.

I kind of believe in "world views", but I don't believe they are caused by religion. I think a major component of your world view, INCLUDING how seriously you take your religion, is influenced by the way in which you regard the concept of knowledge.

Whether there is a god or not, human knowledge is imperfect. Everybody realizes that, or ought to. Theists generally believe that there is a god, and their god knows everything. Therefore, True Knowledge is obtained by listening to what God says.

The problem with that is that, even if their god is real, he isn't down here issuing public statements on the issues that we deal with right now. Take abortion, for instance. Anti-choice Christians will point to portions of the Bible which they say clearly prohibits abortion. But on the other hand, pro-choice Christians will just as easily point out passages in the Bible that supports THEIR position as well. I suppose the god could have clearly said in the Bible "don't commit abortion" or "abortion is a-OK with me!" But it probably wasn't known in those exact terms back then, and it's been a while (2000 years) since he supposedly communicated with us.

So even if you personally know an omnipotent being, that doesn't really do you much good unless he tells you clearly what he thinks. And the Bible sure ain't it. Hence we have the concept of "faith", which is believing things sincerely without evidence, just because it makes you feel better.

Now, "faith" may well be an excellent way to become personally fulfilled and at peace, but historically it has proved to be a notoriously bad way to actually know things. Even accepting the idea that there is a particular kind of faith which is right, and which will reveal the absolute truth, that still leaves open the sticky question of what to have faith in.

There are thousands of religions in the world now, as well as thousands more historical religions that are now defunct. It's hard to be objectively certain that you're not simply participating in a religion that will, hundreds of years from now, be studied with the same kind of bemused curiosity with which we currently regard the ancient Greeks. Furthermore, these religions can't all be right, because many of them hold as a fundamental tenet that the other religions must be wrong.

The fact that there have been a lot of false religions doesn't PROVE that any particular religion is wrong. But it does illustrate that people put their faith in an awful lot of things that turn out to be false. If you were an educated person born in ancient Greece, chances are good that you'd probably believe in Zeus. Being born in 21st century America, chances are almost nil that you'll believe in Zeus.

What changed? Did Zeus once exist and then disappear to make room for Jesus? No. We know for pretty certain that Zeus doesn't exist and never did. But as an ancient Greek, you wouldn't KNOW you were wrong, because you wouldn't have the perspective that hundreds of years later, everybody would "know" that Zeus is a silly idea. Whereas the idea of a man who was born of a virgin, walked on water, and rose from the dead is a far more sophisticated idea that represents the real truth.

In short: really, truly BELIEVING something is a bad yardstick for verifying what's actually true.

So if faith isn't the way to go, then how do we go about the business of actually finding things out and being pretty sure you know the things that are true? I think that at some point, clearly the answer has to be that you come up with unemotionally applied tests that can be repeated by everyone. You have to be able to admit that you don't know what you don't know, and apply what you do know to form an overall informed opinion of the world.

Unfortunately, sometimes even your most informed opinions will be wrong. There's no way to escape this because, as I said before, all human knowledge is imperfect. But the ability to recognize and admit when you're wrong is actually a strength, not a weakness. Because every time you understand that you have been wrong, it allows you to switch to a position that is (more likely to be) right. And there's a word for the process of investigating things and trying to weed out wrong ideas. It's science.

I think that even the most die hard young earth creationists understand the value of science in principle, because that's what religious apologetics are all about. At their best, apologetics are meant to be logically sound arguments that persuade the listener to objectively accept their opinion as true. If faith were enough to really know truth, then apologetics would be a waste of time, because logic would be irrelevant.

And I know that the promoters of Intelligent Design (or "stealth creationism" as some prefer to call it) recognize the value of science as a way of understanding the world, because that is after all what ID is theoretically about. It is an effort to meld a belief in God with the respectable objectivity of the scientific method. Again, if faith were enough to go on, there would be no need to make scientific arguments, and ID would not have come to be in the first place.

In a sense, I applaud the concept of ID. Although I happen to not believe in any sort of intelligent designer, I understand that many people believe it very seriously. And if there is one, I want to know about it. I would like nothing better than to see the question settled once and for all from a scientific perspective.

Where I have a beef with Intelligent Design is not their goal to marry science with God; it's their unfortunate tendency to repeatedly declare victory before they've actually accomplished anything at all. If you really want to put science and religion in harmony, then I say throw money at research. But you have to be sure that your money is actually funding RESEARCH, and not a PR campaign. Not lawsuits. Not politicians. Not school boards. Tell them to stop trying to buy respectability by getting museums to show designer-friendly movies.

Really, I think everyone who truly cares about ID should be DEMANDING that the Discovery Institute start spending their donations on hiring brilliant minds to do genuinely original research, instead of more lawyers. I think it would be a great day for science if that happened.