Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Scientists can do some pretty amazing stuff.  They can see specks of light, suns,  that are billions of miles away and figure out, through minute variations in the light they emit, whether they have planets around them, how big those planets are, how close to their sun, how quickly they are orbiting, all sorts of amazing stuff.  They can send particles so small we can’t see them at all whizzing through underground tubes between France and Italy at speeds thousands of times what you’d see on any freeway, even in Europe, and know when those particles have split into other particles.  I don’t know how they do it, but they’ve got machines for that stuff.  They can dig up bones, wrapped in rags, and figure out, due to the rate of nuclear degradation of carbon atoms, how old they are.

She Left Her Mark

Sometimes, though, it comes down to the simple, obvious stuff.  Like this.

Now, I am a full grown adult and had thought, up until an hour or so ago, that I had a pretty good idea about the differences between men’s and women’s bodies.  But I did not know that men’s ring fingers tend to be longer, slightly, than their index fingers, whereas in women those fingers tend to be the same length.

Apparently, up until a couple of months ago, nobody had actually thought of measuring the fingers of the handprints in the various cave paintings around the world.  Everybody thought the artists were the men of the tribes, the hunters, because the drawings were usually of animals.

But, it appears that about 75% of all the cave paintings were done by women.  It makes sense.  They were probably spending more time in the caves.  They are the ones who like to decorate the  home.

But, the thing is, 75%/25% is not 100%.  Once the idea of painting on walls was invented, probably lots of people tried their hand.  Young people, old people, men, women, handicapped people who couldn’t go out on the hunt, proud hunters who were bragging, all sorts.

Sort of like today. They were pre-technological but they were every bit as individual, multi-faceted, and complex as we are.  We have no reason to think they weren’t.

In a quick retrospective, it seems like it was an unspectacular weekend.  Except for attending a friend’s 60th birthday party last night (my Aunt Bernice, in New York, celebrated her 100th this weekend.  Although I got regular facebook updates, we obviously weren’t there), I pretty much didn’t get out of the flat all weekend. 

I did get quite a bit done on a writing project I’m working on now and I’m enthusiastic about, but I’m not at the creative stage yet.  Basically, I’ve been handed a lot of notes, stories and musings of a somewhat eccentric expat, and tasked with turning it into a book.  There is a lot missing, like chronological order, coherence, and good spelling and grammar, but the stories are interesting, so I have high hopes.  I finished a couple of proofreadings, and watched a  pretty good movie (Hancock) on TV.  I don’t think Will Smith is really a great actor, because he  basically just always plays Will Smith, but I almost always like the movies he’s in, which puts him up there with Schwarzenegger and John Candy.  I mean that in a totally complimentary way.

Had quite an interesting discussion today about religion, the role of religion in our society and, a bit deeper that that, the  difference between  belief and  reason in arriving at the opinions we want to call our own.

My opinion (theory, if you will, or perhaps more technically, hypothesis) is this:  Religionists are  worried.  They are pressing for religion  in schools, more religion in  government, they speak of America as a Christian nation, and they use the word atheist as a sneer, as a curse.

Of course, partly it’s just force of habit, and they do these things because they always have.  But partly, it’s because they are worried.  For thousands of years, they have had the power to execute people, torture people, throw people in jail forever and  confiscate all their  property if they didn’t sign  up for the appropriate religion.  We have a way to go before we have a purely secular society, but they can’t do that any more, outside of a few countries, and those countries are not the ones shaping the future of the world.

They have lost their biggest  recruiting tool.  Without force, there is very little reason for anybody who didn’t start out as a believer to become a believer.  Sure, they’ll recruit a few impressionable souls here and there.  People looking for enlightenment may try 5 or 6 over the course of their youth.

But, in every generation, a few more will grow beyond the superstition.  A century from now, or maybe two centuries, religion as we know it will be a thing of the past.

I keep seeing the word “backbone” with regard to politics, as in “What the Democrats need is to show a little backbone” or “if only the Demoocrats had a backbone, the teabaggers wouldn’t be able to get away with this shit.”

It’s like the old “we need to get tough on crime” argument, and it is also the argument of every tyrannical husband, father, and boss in the world, ever.  A little bit more toughness and everything will fall into line.

Bullshit.

What we need is a way for the good guys to win out over the bad guys, and the problem is the bad guys are plenty tough.  The teabaggers not only have backbone, they have skulls of solid rock and a total lack of shame or embarrassment.  We will not be able to outbluff them or beat them in a “who will blink first” contest because they are too stupid to even realize the contest is going on.  They don’t blink because they are snakes, and do not have eyelids.

No, what we need is to be smarter than they are, and that really should not be all that difficult.  Obama needs to figure out a way to either get the government financed without the House’s approval, or to find some way to trick the House into co-operating.

Personally, I like the “trillion dollar coin” solution.  The president has the power to mint a commemorative coin, like a Franklin Mint thing, of any denomination.  Mint one trillion dollar coin (it doesn’t even need to be a real coin, it could be a symbolic thing) deposit it with the federal reserve, and voila, the money is there.

But I’m sure there are other creative options for doing an end run around the House of Representatives.  Maybe some kind of funny sting operation, get a couple of dozen of them arrested for kinky porn on their computers (again, doesn’t even have to be real) and while they’re trying to crawl out from under that rock, the temporary leadership could restore order.

Any other suggestions?

With my 5th graders today, I separated them into two teams and asked them to write down a list of things that they would have in their house in 2025, which basically gets them to write down every noun they know, and maybe some of the dumber ones learn something from the smarter ones, and they at least have fun because it’s a game and a competition.

I’d hoped they would think of all sorts of futuristic high tech stuff, but mostly it was just random nouns – TV, toilet paper, teacher.  I said “In 2025, you will probably have robot teachers” and I was joking but I realized as soon as I said it how cool that would be and how many advantages a robot teacher would have in a classroom of unruly 5th graders. 

Just start with peripheral vision.  And literal eyes in the  back of their head.  And perfect hearing, and the ability to process ten or twenty different conversations at once.  When she says that he hit her first and he says that he was being good, I never know who to believe, but the robot would have the goods on them.

It could hear the mouthy, sarcastic, little brat at the table in the back making mocking comments, reach out an extendable robot arm in less than a quarter of a second, grasp the snot nosed little miscreant by the neck, just under the chin (with padded, safety gripperhands, of course, robots could do this sort of thing without any risk of physical injury), raise them up to the ceiling while their legs flail wildly and they (and the whole class) learn a lesson they’ll never forget.

Then, the teaching process could begin.

I believe it was James Carville who described Washington as “Hollywood for Ugly People” and James Carville, if anybody, would know.  Many other politicians have joked about the similarity between politics and show business.  Ronald Reagan certainly made good use of his acting skills in his role as President.

Gary Miller, a Man With Something to Hide

But it’s one thing to joke about it, and another thing to start to believe the hype.  Politicians are not actors.  Congress is not a TV series.  Apparently, congressman Gary Miller (R-Ca) doesn’t seem to understand that.

Actors get stalked by paparazzi.  They stake out their homes, hiding in the bushes.  They follow them to their vacation sites.  They know the routes their children take to school, and they love pictures of children.  Personally, I’m a big advocate of freedom of the press and even, to some extent, sympathize with the paparazzi.  It’s their job.  If the stars don’t want to be photographed, they can stop being famous and move to a ranch in Idaho.  Paparazzi will follow somebody to the Bahamas, but they won’t usually go to Idaho.  Idaho is boring.

But, I digress.  When an actor gets agressive with the paparazzi, throws their camera to the ground and gives them a swift knee-punch to the nuts, the public cheers.  They are defending their privacy.  They are defending their families.  The public laps it up.  Especially if there are photographs.

Politicians deserve no such sympathy.  They work for the people.  They are expected to answer reporters questions.  And the question this reporter was asking wasn’t out of line at all.  It wasn’t about his family, or a sex scandal, or anything even vaguely off limits.  It was about how he would vote on ending the government shutdown.  It is a reporters job to ask questions like  that, and it is a congresspersons job to answer them.

Not to put their hands over the lens as if they are some kind  of Hollywood big shot and the reporter is a paparazzi scumbag.

Come to think of it, there’s one other class of people who routinely treat photographers like that.  Criminals.