Via 3quarksdaily

I’m sure you’ve seen the photos of many of those many delighted lottery winners! Yes, they do exist. 

As we all know, though, winning the Powerball requires a lot of luck. For every smiling winner there are millions of people with nothing to show for their money. 

How much luck does it take to win the lottery?  According to this Powerball site, the odds of picking all six two-digit numbers correctly is one chance in 146,107,962. This is bleak, but how bleak?  Some state lotteries show you how to do the mathematics, but I doubt that this complicated math can counteract the heavy advertising done by the lotteries–advertising that takes advantage of widespread innumeracy. How can the small chance of winning the lottery be conveyed in a visual and understandable way? 

I decided to use plain M&M’s (not peanut) and a football field for my thought experiment.  I didn’t really do this demonstration, but you could.  If you’d like to do it, just go out and buy 146,107,962 M&M’s.  Instead of actually buying the M&M’s, I used mathematics.

I decided to allow all six lottery numbers to serve as the coordinates for ONE M&M in a big pile of M&M’s.  I started by wondering whether 146,107,962 M&M’s might cover a football field (the field between the goal lines, not including the end zones).  A football field, between the goal lines measure 300 ft long x 160 feet wide = 48,000 square feet.  That equals 6,912,000 square inches.  Based on my experiments with M&M’s at home, I found that 17 M&M’s will cover about 3 square inches. 146,107,962 M&M’s would thus completely cover three football fields, from goal line to goal line.  

So . . . here’s the proposition.   Assume that ONE M&M was painted silver and mixed into the M&M’s that covered 3 adjacent football fields that had been completely covered with M&M’s. Then assume that a lottery company allowed you to pay $1 to walk out into those 3 huge fields blindfolded to pick up only one M&M with a tweezer–the silver one.  Would you do it, or would you rather keep your dollar?  Or how about this option:  would you scoop up one liter of M&M’s (enough to fill about one quart, which you could do by scooping up a bit more than a square foot) for $549?

BTW, I refered to this site to determine how many M&M’s there are in a specific volume.  It turns out that one liter (which is a little more than a quart) of M&M’s is about 1098 M&M’s.

This thought experiment helped me to understand the low odds of winning the lottery, but I’m curious.  Would this visual have the power to cure anyone else of the urge to spend their hard-earned money on the lottery? Could this serve as an “anti-lottery ad”?

If none of this cures you of the urge to play the lottery, consider this: coming into large sums of money will only temporarily change your happiness level. 

Contrary to the way it is portrayed by Creationists, the theory of evolution wasn’t handed down from the Goddess Athe to her true prophet Darwin, to whose faith all subsequent researchers have to slavishly adhere. From the day each of Darwin’s books were published, and for the century and a half since, serious and powerful researchers (as well as semi-educated and/or pseudo-scientific dabblers) have busily been trying (and mostly failing) to make a name for themselves by finding a flaw — any flaw — in the overall Theory of Evolution. Darwin’s singular contribution, the principle that those members of a population best adapted to an environment will survive, is rarely challenged.

I was inspired to write this post after reading Can God be scientific? Consider the evidence, Part II by Daniel Jarvis. His post makes it clear that Creationists believe that all fields of science that are cited in support of this basic principle of modern biology have to meet criteria set by Darwin. These include astronomy, geology, genetics, tectonics, crystallography, quantum theory, and many other fields of study.

Let’s look at one supporting pillar of biological evolution: Things take time. The best Creationist argument (IMHO) is that all the species could not possibly have evolved in the short time since the beginning of the universe (or just of the world, for those who accept astronomical science) a few thousand years ago. (more…)

The June/July 2007 issue of Scientific American Mind presents in article by David G. Myers entitled “The Powers and Perils of Intuition.” (this particular article is not available online except to subscribers).  The starting point for many articles on intuition is the work Kahneman and Tversky, who explored shortcuts we all take, heuristics, which enable us to make quick and intuitive judgments that often work, but not always.  When they go wrong, these heuristics “trigger illusions or misperceptions.”

It is with human fear that our gut feelings most dramatically mislead us.

Why do so many smokers (whose habits shorten their lives, on average, by about five years) worry before flying (which, average across people, shortens life by one day)?  Why do we fear violent crime more than obesity and clogged arteries?  Why have most women feared breast cancer more than heart disease, which is more lethal.  Why do we fear tragic but isolated terrorist acts more than the futures on the present weapon of mass distraction: global climate change?  In a nutshell, why do we fret about remote possibilities while ignoring higher probabilities?

Myers identifies four factors that feed our risk intuitions:

We fear what our ancestral history has prepared us to fear.  With our old brain living in a new world, we are disposed to fear confinement and heights, snakes and spiders, and humans outside our tribe.

We fear what we cannot control.  Behind the wheel of our car, but not in air plane seat 17B, we feel control.

We fear what is immediate.  Smoking is a lethality and the threats of rising seas and extreme weather are in the distant future.  The airplane takeoff is now.

We fear threats readily available in memory.  If a surface to air missile brings down a single American airliner, the result-thanks to the availability heuristic-will be dramatic for the airline industry.  Given the difficulty in grasping the infinitesimal odds of it being (among 11 million annual airline flights) the claim that we are on, probabilities will not persuade us.  Intuitive fears will hijack the rational mind.

The problem seems to be that the human mind has difficulty wrapping itself around the mathematics that one must truly consider in order to accurately understand risks.  Intuitions are a good starting point.  In  fact, without using heuristics we would be paralyzed in our decision-making.  But intuitions alone cause us to lose sight of the big picture, thus causing us to miss big solutions.  Statistics constitute incredibly effective “glasses” to allow us to “see” and thus accommodate the true risks of the modern world.  Large numbers of Americans struggle with mathematics, however.  They are afflicted with “Innumeracy.”  See, for example here and here and here.  They worry more about snakes than they worry about the long-term dangers presented by dysfunctional government policies relating to energy, population control and global warming.

Myers concludesthat “intuition is powerful, often wise, but sometimes perilous, and especially so when we overfeel and underthink.”

The October 2007 edition of The Atlantic presents an article by Henry Blodget entitled “The Conscientious Investor.”  It is an in-depth discussion of what it means to engage in “socially responsible investing,” or SRI.  Up front, he makes the point that virtuous investing “can cost you.”

To illustrate, if you had invested $1000 in the S&P 500 in 1957, you would have made $124,000 by 2003.  On the other hand, if you’d invested $1000 in Philip Morris (now Altria) in 1957, you would’ve made $4.6 million.

The question Blodget asks to those who are dedicated to saving the world by investing in “good companies” is this:

Assuming perfect foresight back in 1957, would you really have foregone $4.5 million?  Be honest.  And welcome to the world of socially responsible investing.

The article is a good read, focusing hard on the difficulty of determining what companies are “good” and what companies are “bad.”  This determination is so difficult that many people consider the quest to invest in a responsible way to be “silly or offensive.”  Admittedly, there are some easy choices.  Imagine two entrepreneurs looking for your investment dollars.  “One who wants to burn national forests for charcoal and one who wants to power cars with sea water.”  That would be an easy choice.  Most choices, however, are entangled combinations of pros and cons. 

And then there’s the problem with trying to determine which companies are “good” and “bad.”  It must often be determined based upon incomplete information.

Did you visit that factory in Vietnam to make sure your favorite sneaker maker isn’t employing four-year-old slaves, or did you just take the company’s word for it?  Did the company visit every one of its suppliers’ factories? How do you know?  The inherently subjective judgments, combined with the reality that most companies are sinful in some areas and saintly in others, leads some observers to call such rankings absurd.

What follows is an excerpt from an article from Salon.com entitled “Breaking the Iraq Stalemate.”

Trapped by reality, Bush can no longer use his time-tested rhetoric to rally America. Instead, he is forced to contradict his own grand ideological claims. His pathetic speech last week was a preview of what we are likely to see in the diminished last phase of his presidency. The grand rhetoric about “victory” was replaced by the weird CEO-like phrase “return on success,” an expression so plastic it radiated “corporate bullshit spin” from every syllable. Worse, Bush had to acknowledge the destructive facts on the ground. He had to deal with the painful reality that unless he extends tours of duty, which would be political suicide, he has to start bringing troops home, no matter what the situation in Iraq is. This forced him to make the absurd claim that the surge’s “success” in Iraq has made it possible to bring home 5,700 troops by Christmas. Disregarding the fact that these troops were slated to come home anyway, not even Bush’s most ardent supporters could believe that there is any actual connection between the allegedly “improving” situation in Iraq and the redeployment of 5,700 troops.

By insisting that the stakes in the war are nothing less than the fate of Western civilization, yet refusing to impose a draft or ask Americans to make real sacrifices, Bush has painted himself into a corner. If the war in Iraq is really the vital front line of the war against terror that Bush claims it is, he should not be pulling troops out, but pouring more in — even if it means reinstating the draft. For the first time, Bush’s actions explicitly belie his words. Bush, once the great and powerful war god, now comes across as a desperate politician hiding behind a curtain, trying to score popularity points by bringing troops home while simultaneously warning of apocalypse if we lose the war. Bush’s obvious hypocrisy and powerlessness, exacerbated by his lame-duck status, have caused him to lose his image of invincibility — the only thing he ever had going for him.

One of the things that sends me straight up a wall to paw helplessly and violently at ceilings comprised of crushed glass, old nails, and asbestos fibers is when I hear a young woman blithely claim that she isn’t a Feminist and, in fact, “wouldn’t want to be one.” They make this claim with all the insouciant self confidence they might apply to choosing a new dress or deciding which shoes to wear or whether this or that club is trendy enough. Inside, I rage, and want to scream at them “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? DON’T YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU’RE SAYING?”

Of course they don’t. They’ve grown up in a world that has been substantially changed by feminism, a world in which it would no more occur to them that they couldn’t do a particular job if they wanted to than it would occur to them that they might be forbidden to vote, drink or smoke in public, or get a divorce from a man and expect to leave with actual belongings. They don’t understand that the very fact that they can choose not to be a feminist is because of feminism and the struggles of those they now see, probably, as dreary, frumpy, unromantic, possibly man-hating, poorly groomed sexless harridans.

And who wants to be bothered with all that politics and political correctness anyway?

I want to shake them, open their well-coifed heads and pour history into their brains. On the one hand, I’m thrilled they can make that choice, that it is a matter of choice, that they can go on about whatever lives they choose and not be concerned about the fact that some Male might decide—because they have no penis—that they should be barred from certain career choices, or prohibited from opting out of a marriage, or committed to an asylum because of a hysterical dissatisfaction with limitations they shouldn’t question anyway because, after all, women who work out of the home are “unnatural” and “neurotic” and women who want things beyond that which society deems appropriate for them to have are suffering delusions of self-ownership. I am happy about that.

But like any freedom, the utter ignorance of how it came to be infuriates me. As if the freedom now enjoyed is somehow permanent and will never go away.

I’d like to recommend a new book. James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon. For those who may know a little something about science fiction, James Tiptree jr. was one of the finest writers of the Seventies. To my mind, it would not have mattered which genre the work came out in, Tiptree was a first class thinker. As suggested by the title, he was also a woman, one Alice Bradley Sheldon.

Myth surrounded Tiptree almost from the moment the stories began to appear in 1969. He was reclusive to the point of insanity, there were hints that he worked for the CIA, no one knew anything about him, not even the editors soliciting stories. Sheldon allowed and later fed the myths through voluminous letter-writing. It was finally revealed that Tiptree was a woman, after several major figures in the field had made pronouncements about her gender (Robert Silverberg’s is the most famous, made in print, that there was something “ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing.”), and it turned a world-full of preconceptions on end.

The Seventies was the decade of rising Women’s Consciousness. It came after a century of preparatory work and followed hard upon the Civil Rights movement. What women enjoy today in terms of freedom of self and action was established in that decade. So you can imagine that the dialogue was heady and a lot of bad ideas were being touted and shot to pieces and we were all learning a new language. Tiptree, in the small pond of science fiction, had a huge impact simply by virtue of writing work that transcended gender.

But the story is infinitely more complex. Alice Sheldon came from a famous family and had the kind of life we imagine for writers like Hemingway or Genet or Joyce. It took decades for her to come out from beneath the shadow of a very famous mother and find her own voice—and when she found it, perversely, she had to write it in the guise of a man.

Julie Phillips, a freelance journalist, became intrigued, wrote a couple of articles about Sheldon, then produced this superb literary biography which is also a textbook on the struggles of women in the 20th Century. She never makes the mistake of coopting Alice Sheldon’s story for larger purposes of politics, because she recognized how her life and the politics around it were essentially inseparable.It is a book I would like to thrust into the hands and down the cranium of any young female who disses feminism while clearly understanding nothing about it. One passage alone should suffice to suggest that things are Really Different Now—Alice Sheldon was one of the first to join the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps in the early days of World War II (The WAAC preceded the WAC). Her company was part of a WAAC parade for the benefit of Eleanor Roosevelt in Des Moines. And—

“As the women marched in formation through the city streets to receive the first lady, they drew a large crowd of men who kicked slush at them and bombarded them with garbage.” Pg. 113

I suggest it as invaluable reading also for its psychological insight into the problem–the challenge–of any Out Group struggling to be heard by the majority culture. It is brilliant, well-written, and timely. A great antidote for the mindless acceptance of rights and liberties that, for no better reason than simple biology, a world of men are struggling today to remove.

National Geographic’s Genographic Project offers all of us an extraordinary opportunity: a method of tracing each of our family trees back to our African roots.  Yes, each of us is African.  An ever-growing collection of DNA studies unambiguously demonstrate that each of us had ancestors who lived in Africa more than 50,000 years ago. 

Dr. Spencer Wells, a population geneticist, is in charge of a team of scientists responsible for tracing human migrations out of Africa, from which they populated the entire world. The team is getting the job done by taking DNA samples from indigenous cultures around the world.  As you’d imagine, time is of the essence, because the world’s populations are in constant flux and, according to literature I received from the Genographic project, “many genetic signals are being scrambled.”

Dr. Wells and his team have utilized markers on to relatively stable genetic components (mitochondrial DNA) to determine that there is a genetic ancestor shared by every person alive today.  She has been dubbed “Eve” and it appears that she lived in Africa approximately 150,000 years ago.  One other stable genetic component is located on Y chromosomes, which are passed from fathers to sons.  This too indicates another coalescence point, indicating that we all share a male African ancestor scientists call “Adam,” who lived approximately 60,000 years ago.  The Genographic project literature indicates that Adam looked very much like a still existing yet relatively isolated group of African bushmen.  

It is startling to consider that each of us is separated from “Adam” by no more than 2,000 generations. In my mind, there is no better medicine to racism and political divisions than to consider that we are all cousins, no matter how different we appear to be from each other.

“Adam’s” descendents traveled across Africa’s savannas and forests in search of food and water (over the years, climate change made it imperative to keep up with the moving livestock).  Some of these lines of biologically modern humans migrated all the way to Australia.  This Australian migration is substantiated by the existence of highly specific genetic markers found in the DNA of Australian aboriginal males.  50,000 years ago, sea levels were lower and there would have been a way to walk along the coasts of Saudi Arabia, India and Southeast Asia in order to get to Australia.  In fact, Lake Mungo in Australia contains a grave that could be as much as 60,000 years old, making it the earliest known site of human habitation outside of Africa.

Other migrations have been documented into Eurasia and through Siberia, across the Bering land Bridge (this bridge existed when sea levels were low) into North and South America.  According to more compelling genetic evidence, this migration into the Americas occurred no earlier than 20,000 years ago.  The genetic evidence also suggests that the people who originally populated the Americas sprung from a group of perhaps one-dozen people who crossed the Bering land Bridge.

The ability to analyze migratory patterns of humans based upon genetic information is truly inspiring.  “The greatest history book ever written,” Wells says, “is the one hidden in our DNA.”

The Genographic project is ambitious.  It is a five-year program to collect at least 100,000 DNA samples from the world’s remaining indigenous in traditional people.  The work is being done by genetic laboratories around the world.

In addition to arriving at general conclusions regarding migratory patterns of humans, the Genographic project offers something for you too.  For $100, the Genographic project will provide you with a kit with which you can collect your own cheek cells before submitting them for analysis.  My seven-year-old daughter quickly gathered her own cheek cells recently, without complaint, and we are now awaiting her test results. The genetic testing done on your cheek cells

will indicate the maternal or paternal genetic markers those ancestors bequeathed you thousands of years ago, which chart your remote ancestors migratory wanderings and indicate from which branch you hang on the global family tree.

After being tested, you have the option of providing additional information to help National Geographic better understand the “twigs and branches” of human migratory patterns. To arrange to be tested, go here and click on “How to Participate.”  The same site offers an overview of genetics, an analysis of the human journey, and educational videos regarding the project.

According to this article in Alternet, a British polling firm has concluded that “1.2 million Iraqis have met violent deaths since the 2003 invasion.”  More disturbing, Americans have no idea that their invasion has caused such misery and, for the most part, the American media doesn’t care about reporting these tragic numbers.

Field workers asked residents how many members of their own household had been killed since the invasion. More than one in five respondents said that at least one person in their home had been murdered since March of 2003. . .  In Baghdad, almost half of those interviewed reported at least one violent death in their household.

Americans have no idea about the amount of bloodshed in Iraq:

Here’s the troubling thing, and one reason why opposition to the war isn’t even more intense than it is: Americans were asked in an AP poll conducted earlier this year how many Iraqi civilians they thought had been killed as a result of the invasion and occupation, and the median answer they gave was 9,890. . . .  Most of that disconnect is probably a result of American exceptionalism — the United States is, by definition, the good guy, and good guys don’t launch wars of choice that result in over a million people being massacred.

As indicated, the American media has no interest in communicating an accurate picture of the Iraqi disaster to Americans, and the plan is working:

While the stunning figures should play a major role in the debate over continuing the occupation, they probably won’t. That’s because there are three distinct versions of events in Iraq — the bloody criminal nightmare that the “reality-based community” has to grapple with, the picture the commercial media portrays and the war that the occupation’s last supporters have conjured up out of thin air. Similarly, American discourse has also developed three different levels of Iraqi casualties. There’s the approximately 1 million killed according to the best epidemiological research conducted by one of the world’s most prestigious scientific institutions, there’s the 75,000-80,000 (based on news reports) the Washington Post and other commercial media allow, and there’s the clean and antiseptic blood-free war the administration claims to have fought (recall that they dismissed the Lancet findings out of hand and yet offered no numbers of their own).

Most rational people wouldn’t consider running for a prominent political office for fear of what would happen to their reputations.  Their worries are well-founded.  That is why so many people would never run for office, which serves to filter out the best and brightest potential candidates.  This filtering process endangers our democracy.

Exhibit A this concern for one’s reputation is the Swift Boating of John Kerry.  Whatever you think of Kerry’s politics, it was clear that Kerry was a young man who earnestly and bravely served his time in the military.  It is equally clear that the service record of George W. Bush is riddled with question marks.   There’s nothing like millions of dollars to turn Kerry into a questionable character and Bush into a war hero.  

But it could happen to anyone, anywhere.  Here some simple ideas for soiling the reputation of anyone running for office.  This list is by no means exhaustive.   What is important to note is that even great leaders would be vulnerable to such attacks:

Find the candidate’s youthful indiscretions and start questioning their adult judgment in light of them.

If they were in politics all their life, criticize them for being career politicians.   If they are relatively new to politics, question their lack of experience.

No matter what their religious beliefs (or lack of religious beliefs), question their sincerity.

If they are well-to-do, call them elitists.  If they are not well-to-do, call them financially unimpressive. 

If they are women or African Americans, raise questions about whether America is “ready” for them.

Pick on their physical imperfections. 

Criticize members of their family.

If they have worked too hard on the career, accuse them of failing to spend time with their families.  If they’ve spent lots of time with their families, accuse them of not being serious about their careers.

If they haven’t served in the military, argue that they are not qualified to have opinions regarding military issues.   If they have served in the military, dig up someone who served with them who didn’t get along with them.

If they are willing to act on new evidence and new consideration, call them flip-floppers.

“Thou shalt not kill” (often translated as “You shall not murder”) has outlived its usefulness.   It’s time to repeal this Commandment.  Better yet, we should rewrite it to reflect society’s true moral policy regarding human conduct that causes death. Rewrite it as: “You may act in such a way that needless deaths result.”

“What do you mean?” someone might object.   “It can’t be OK to go around randomly killing people.” 

That’s correct.  It’s not a good thing to walk up kill other people.  We should imprison anyone behaving like this.  But we don’t need a Commandment to tell us not to do this.  It’s obviously wrong.  

But why tinker with a Holy Commandment prohibiting killing?  Because it is hermetically sealed—where we most need moral guidance in our convoluted world, “Thou shalt not kill” is useless.  For most people, this Commandment only prohibits affirmative acts of killing–murder–leaving unaddressed all of the acts of negligence, recklessness, thoughtlessness and failures-to-act that result in deaths. I cynically suspect that conservatives insist on displaying the Ten Commandments in public spaces to remind themselves that the only killing specifically prohibited by “God” is intentional murder. In other words, as long as they don’t take an axe to someone in cold blood, they can continue basking in God’s glory. 

As indicated above, many translations of the Bible indicate that the Commandment doesn’t prohibit every sort of killing, but rather only “murder.” What does it mean to commit murder?  Here’s what Wikipedia says:

Murder is the illegal killing of one human being by another. Murder is generally distinguished from other forms of homicide by the elements of malice aforethought and the lack of justification. 

Engaging in conduct that causes deaths is widely accepted.  Most conduct that leads to deaths is not considered “murder.” Almost every one of us is guilty every day.  We just don’t like to acknowledge this. If you’re still perplexed, allow me to explain.   There are many ways to cause the deaths of other people.  Many of them involve negligently or thoughtlessly depriving people of basic resources necessary for living.

Consider Mother Teresa, who exhibited great empathy but also contributed to widespread misery.  For all of the work she did tending to the sick, she was a significant part of a worldwide movement that has caused great despair, pain, sickness and death by preventing people from having access to birth control.  The policies she promoted have resulted in appalling overpopulation and death-inducing squalor in many parts of the world.  For those who dare question her conduct, her apologists can always argue that she didn’t violate “Thou shalt not kill” when she worked to outlaw birth control.  They would argue that there isn’t any Commandment that prohibits discourages responsible family planning, leading to the exhaustion of the Earth’s precious resources, leading to widespread sickness and death.  That’s true.  There is no such Commandment, but there should be.

Here’s another example of death-inducing conduct that, in many peoples’ minds, doesn’t violate a Commandment.  Millions of people are dying in Africa due to the spread of AIDS.  One way to slow the spread is to use condoms.  The Catholic Church, assisted by the United States, has discouraged the use of condoms among millions of people whose lives condoms could save.  It doesn’t take much of a brain to connect the dots.   No condoms means more AIDS and more deaths.  Depriving people of condoms doesn’t violate a Commandment, even though it results in foreseeable deaths.  There isn’t any Commandment such as “Thou shalt not cause millions of people to die by depriving them of condoms.”  There should be.

When people belong to outgroups, we don’t violate any of the Ten Commandments when we fail to assist them. There’s no Commandment that says to “Send food to starving people in Africa,” for instance.  Deaths by omission aren’t covered by the Commandment, only deaths by commission.  24,000 people die every day of starvation, most of them children under five years of age. Because no Commandment actually applies to our choices to not send available food to these starving people, it’s OK to spend that money on things like going to the movies or upgrading your expensive stereo system.  There’s no Commandment prohibiting us from purchasing frivolous things when a billion people are starving. Similarly, there’s no Commandment that declares the undeniable truth that hours and dollars are fungible.  Maybe there should be a Commandment to remind you that the money you blew on gambling last night should have (and could have) been used to save many lives.

I know that many people would protest these examples, claiming that Jesus gave a general Commandment requiring that we love one another.  But such a general formulation is much too prone to shameless self-centered interpretations.  Multitudes of preachers tell us that it’s OK to spend our money on luxuries rather than helping desperate people.  That’s what a general platitude like “love one another” gets you.  See here and here, for example.

Killing is acceptable in many other contexts, of course. Shooting someone in a “war” does not violate any Commandment, according to many Believers.  Even preemptive war is now considered to be a form of “self-defense” by many Christians.  Therefore, killing in “war” might be doubly-OK.   Yes, innocent people die whenever wars are fought.  There’s no commandment prohibiting bombing just because children get in the way of our bombs and missiles, however, even though such deaths are perfectly foreseeable and even though there are often better ways to resolve conflicts than provoking wars.

Does the Commandment against killing apply to those who drive while drunk?  Not on its face.  Same thing for those who fail to keep their small children out of busy streets.  And what about those who overeat so much that they cause themselves to have strokes and heart attacks?  Does the Commandment against “killing” prohibit obesity?  It should, but if the preachers start dissing fat folks, 2/3 of the congregation might get up and leave.

When we capture one of those “terrorists,” the U.S. policy is that it’s OK to water-board him, suffocate him or beat him, even though these techniques often result in deaths.  If he dies in our custody, he probably had it coming, since he hangs around with people who remind us of people we’re afraid of.  Is it killing when we recklessly drown a prisoner we know nothing about?  Certainly not, or there would have been an eleventh Commandment addressing this situation.  

Manufacturers often negligently manufacture goods and people sometimes die when those products eventually fail. Did somebody say “Vioxx?”  As many as 50,000 people dead from using Vioxx.  There’s no Commandment prohibiting the sale of dangerous pharmaceuticals, however, so it won’t send you to hell to work for a company that promotes the use of Vioxx.

Governments often fail to promote cheap and effective health care screenings, preventative measures and cost-efficient measures that could save lives.   Unfortunately, there’s no Commandment that requires us to provide critically important health care.  When the government lets people die, then, it is merely saving money, not violating God’s favorite ten laws.  When governments fail to regulate dangerous activities, people often die.   On their face, however, the Commandments don’t apply to governments.  They should on their face.  They should make it clear that people have non-stop obligations to help the poor avoid dying of preventable medical causes, even if we don’t like them, even if they are somewhat to blame for their predicament, and even if we’d rather cut taxes and spend that money on better vacations.

What about the situation where the federal government fails to conduct basic scientific research that has a 20% chance of resulting in a new method of saving lives, instead of spending money (money that dwarves those research dollars) on preemptive wars?  Some would argue that that is OK because there is no Commandment such as “Thou shalt conduct basic research that might save lives.”  Wouldn’t it be better to add a Commandment requiring us to conduct basic research that might someday save lives?  And how about a Commandment that tells people to not obsess over saving human embryos that don’t yet have any brain cells and, instead, to spend their energies saving real human babies by encouraging stem cell research?

You get the idea. People use blindered interpretations of “Thou shalt not kill” as a salve, as a license to engage in acts and omissions that result in widespread and needless deaths.  As that Commandment is currently interpreted, it constitutes a very low bar, indeed.

Therefore, let’s change the murder-prohibiting Commandment to reflect the cold nasty reality of the modern world.  Let’s knock down the facade of the current Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.”  Let’s make it clear that we are allowed to go forth and cause deaths, as long as it is done with a good conscience.

According to this article in Media Matters, Editor and Publisher have painstakingly gathered data to determine what types of columnists are being published in what markets. The results demonstrate a strong conservative bias in most newspapers.  Here are some of the results from the Executive Summary of the study:

• Sixty percent of the nation’s daily newspapers print more conservative syndicated columnists every week than progressive syndicated columnists. Only 20 percent run more progressives than conservatives, while the remaining 20 percent are evenly balanced.
• In a given week, nationally syndicated progressive columnists are published in newspapers with a combined total circulation of 125 million. Conservative columnists, on the other hand, are published in newspapers with a combined total circulation of more than 152 million.2
• The top 10 columnists as ranked by the number of papers in which they are carried include five conservatives, two centrists, and only three progressives.
• The top 10 columnists as ranked by the total circulation of the papers in which they are published also include five conservatives, two centrists, and only three progressives.
• In 38 states, the conservative voice is greater than the progressive voice — in other words, conservative columns reach more readers in total than progressive columns. In only 12 states is the progressive voice greater than the conservative voice.

Here’s an interview with journalist Lisa Guernsey, the author of a new book on this multi-faceted topic of television and young children.  Her book is titled Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children from Birth to Age Five.

Guernsey was asked about Baby Einstein (I previously discussed this product at DI here), among many other television related topics:

Q: There was a recent study from the University of Washington, which found that Baby Einstein may actually hinder children’s language development, leading bloggers to cackle “Baby Einstein makes baby stupid!” Did you find any evidence that Baby Einstein is beneficial in anyway?

A: I did not. What I did find is that videos like Baby Einstein that may purport to stimulate cognitive development or language learning may not be designed using the principles that developmental psychologists know apply to these very young children.

An example is the way that children learn language. The more a caregiver points to and labels what they’re talking about — “Here’s an apple. Do you want an apple for your lunch? It’s a red apple” — and the more the child is able to see that apple at the exact same time those words are being said, the more children will learn. They’ll get the word “apple.” They’ll start to understand the color red. But a lot of these videos are not designed with those principles in mind.

On a related topic, a recent edition of Science (available only to subscribers on-line) recently published a piece sounding a caveat to those many businesses out there that claim that science can be directly applied to make your child smarter, more attentive, more curious, etc.   The bottom line is that, while cognitive scientists are making monumental progress on many fronts, much of this research cannot be credibly said to be applicable in playrooms and classrooms.  I took these principles (collectively known as the “Santiago Declaration”) to be a pushback to marketers such as Baby Einstein.

Here is a comment on this Santiago Declaration caveat by Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek and John T. Bruer, published in Science as an editorial:

How did the myth of brain-based pedagogy become so pervasive in educational discussions? How did policy-makers, educators, and the public become so misinformed? Current worldwide interest in early childhood development can be attributed to a successful public relations campaign launched in the mid-1990s in the United States. The campaign promoted legislation to fund Early Head Start. Media interest made the campaign’s message headline news for parents around the world. Yet brain science, which is still refining methods to analyze early brain development, is not ready to relate neuronal processes to classroom outcomes. Current brain research offers a promissory note for a future in which developmental models and theories of learning may be refined based on how brain systems support learning. Meanwhile, popular misunderstandings present a serious downside. One example is the emphasis given to the popular, but scientifically unsupported, notion of a critical period during which children’s brains can learn almost any subject efficiently. Belief in a biologically limited critical period for learning mobilized governments, legislators, and media worldwide to pass legislation and fund early childhood programs. The educational literature is now stocked with books and articles boasting brain-based curricula and practices. Brain-based consultants continue to visit school districts. And a market has grown for brain-based toys. The message of synaptic growth and critical periods has affective appeal, but no scientific substance.

Here’s yet another incarnation of Brownie: Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters. As indicated in this Salon.com article writer Katharine Mieszkowski wrote that Peters recently complained that the Minnesota bridge collapsed because frivolous things like bike paths are siphoning too much of the transportation budget.  On PBS’s NewsHour, Peter’s argued that projects like bike paths and trails “are really not transportation.”   Mieszkowski argues otherwise: 

In fact, only about 1.5 percent of federal transportation dollars go to fund bike paths and walking trails. In the meantime, 10 percent of all U.S. trips to work, school and the store occur on bike or foot, and bicyclists and pedestrians account for about 12 percent of annual traffic fatalities, according to the Federal Highway Administration. “We represent a disproportionate share of the injuries, and we get a minuscule share of the funds,” says Robert Raburn, executive director of the East Bay Bike Coalition in the San Francisco Bay Area, who calls the Peters’ comments “outrageous.” Plus, he notes, with problems like global warming, the obesity epidemic and energy independence, shouldn’t the U.S. secretary of transportation be praising biking, not complaining about it?

What really drives cyclists around the bend is that while they’re doing their part to burn less fossil fuel — cue slogan: “No Iraqis Died to Fuel This Bike” — they’re getting grief for being expensive from a profligate administration. “War spending, tax cuts for the rich, and gas taxes are all big sources of funding. Bike spending is not,” fumes Michael Bluejay, an Austin, Texas, bike activist, in an e-mail. “The few pennies we toss toward bike projects is not enough to fix our nation’s bridges, not by a freaking long shot.”

The White House is fond of reminding us that the U.S. is not fighting alone in Iraq, but that we are part of a “coalition.” Marty Kaplan has this to say about that the president’s most recent affirmation that there is a 37 nation coaltion:

Moldova is in (12 troops), but Tonga is out. Bosnia & Herzegovina contributed as many as 37 soldiers in theater, but Slovakia and Hungary have pulled out. El Salvador has stayed, but Nicaragua has gone. Australia, yes; New Zealand, not so much. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, you betcha; Denmark and Norway, gone. Mongolia is in, but Ukraine is out. It appears that Kazahkstan’s 29 troops, and Armenia’s 46, are hanging in there, but Thailand has left the building.

For more, check these stats on Wikipedia. 

What if you told your spouse that you and a “coalition of 36 other friends” bought an expensive  boat?  But then what would your spouse say if he/she found out that you paid for 98% of the cost of the boat?  What if he/she found out, further, that you gave big bribes to the other members of the “coalition” in order to get them to “participate”? 

This set of charts is shocking.   It’s part of a website entitled “Too Much.”   Here’s an excerpt from the “About” page:

Each and every week, Too Much explores excess and inequality, in the United States and throughout the world. We cover a wide swatch of economic and political territory, everything from executive pay and lifestyles of the rich and famous to the latest research insights on how staggering income and wealth divides are impacting our health and our happiness.

You might think I’m being facetious, but I’m dead serious. Let’s select one day per year to remind people to regularly back up their computer data.  I am utterly completely and bewilderedly tired of hearing people tell me “I lost all my data, songs and photos because my computer hard drive died.”

No, fool.  You didn’t lose your data because your hard drive broke.  You lost it because you had no data backup.  You didn’t have a backup because you (YOU) didn’t back up your data.   If you want to know who to blame for your broken hard drive, it might be the hard drive manufacturer.  If you want to know who to blame for your loss of data, just go look into a mirror. 

Yesterday, I heard my most recent loss-of-data story.  A friend claimed he “lost all my photos.”  I asked whether he had a backup.  He said yes, the data was on the backup hard drive. I then asked him why he didn’t just access the photos from his main hard drive, but then the sanity left our conversation:  He admitted that he transferred all of his photos over from his laptop to his “backup hard drive.” He deleted the original data after creating his “backup.”  I was flabbergasted.  I told him, “That’s not a ‘backup.”

Another friend of mine is a network consultant.  Especially following storms he gets a service call and goes out to find out that a business’s hard drive is fried.  He asked the business owner for the most up to date backup and he’s often handed one from two weeks (or two months) earlier.  Invariably he’s then asked whether they “can get all of the data back.”  When my friend (the consultant) originally sets up a system he always gives the business a lecture to back up their data every day.  It’s just incredible how often they don’t listen, especially given the large sums of money a business loses when it loses data.

The reason I’m especially frustrated with these stories is that people simply refuse to understand.  The advice is not hard to understand, but it goes in one ear and out the other.  Sometimes I tell friends that I’ll give them computer advice but they first need to put one of their fingers in one of their ears “so it doesn’t go out the other side.”  Then I tell them the secret of not losing data:

Keep relatively fresh copies of your data in at least two places.  At least one of those copies should not be kept on the same premises as the computers that contain the original copies.

This constant stream of “loss of data” stories really aggravates me because I make a habit of asking friends about their back up procedure and I almost never get a satisfactory answer.  Instead, I get a glazed-over look and a reassurance that they don’t need to back up their data because their computer is working fine.  I don’t know why I still give the advice given that the advice is so rarely taken.  

People!  Listen up!   Your hard drive is guaranteed to break within ten years, maybe a lot sooner.   When will it break?  We don’t KNOW.  That’s why you need to practice good backup hygiene.  It’s a lot easier than it ever was, now that portable external USB hard drives are so incredibly cheap.  

Just get yourself a portable USB hard drive.  It will cost you about $100 for 250 GB.   That’s probably enough to hold your valuable data several times over.  If that size drive is not big enough for you, buy a Terabyte drive for $300.  If your data isn’t worth that kind of money, then you’ve just been screwing around with your computer and not doing anything worthwhile.  For example, in the past year I’ve likely put ten thousand hours of work  into the digital versions of the writings, music and videos I’ve created.  $100 divided by 10,000 hours = ONE CENT per hour worked to insure my work.  It’s one of the best deals on the planet.

USB hard drives usually come with their own backup program for free (or just drag your important files over using Windows, use the Windows XP backup utility).  You don’t have to back up your entire hard drive–focus on your data (You can always reload your applications).  Wikipedia has a more technical article pertaining to backups here. 

You don’t have to stand there and wait for the data backup—it doesn’t go any faster just because you’re watching it.  Just start the process and leave—go watch a movie or go to bed.  It will all be done by the time you wake up in the morning.  Truly, there are no excuses for failing to back up your hard drive.  Nope, I’m not listening.  NO excuses. 

Hence, my plea to establish one day each year as a Day everyone backs up the data on their hard drive.  Is one backup per year enough?  Hell, no.  But it’s a lot better than most people seem to be doing.

There.  I’m done with my rant, except to say this:  Good friends will continue to remind their friends to back up their computer data.  And if they’ve warned their friends, but their friends still lose data, they nonetheless try to be sympathetic. 

The current edition of Science (September 7, 2007- articles available only to subscribers online) contains a short article entitled “The Art of Virtual Persuasion.”  The author notes a wide variety of studies that have shown that “people who mimic the gestures or speech of others are often perceived by those they mimic as more likable and influential.”

In Osama Bin Laden’s latest screed, one of the things he exhorts people to do is give up interest. The charging and paying of interest is forbidden in strict Islam. Known as riba (increase), it was the subject of some of Mohammed’s most vehement condemnations. One can see why with only a cursory look at history. Namely, moneylending was largely an uncontrolled practice that guaranteed a class structure that could not be broken, incurred debts that led to involuntary servitude, and was an all around nasty way to keep the serfs in the fields. Mohammed, rather than suggesting some form of regulation, vented spleen and condemned it outright.  Christians, of course, had their own attitude toward it, which led to out-groups being the only ones allowed to lend money (Jews, famously, but not exclusively). The prohibition was based mainly on two Biblical passages (both Old Testament): Leviticus 25:36–37 (”Take thou no usury…”) and Ezekiel 18:13 (”He that have give forth usury, and hath taken increase: shall he live? He shall not live…”).

The Catholic Church used to excommunicate moneylenders. The law said: Quidquid sorti accedit, usura est “what exceeds the principal is usury.” (The Italian Renaissance, aside from great art and a few geniuses, also revolutionized banking. The bankers noted that this applied only to loans, not contracts, so they erected a facade behind which they could do exactly what they wanted. They made no loans. They traded in Bills of Exchange. Technically, it was a sale of one kind of money in exchange for another that could be paid at a future date. As rates of exchange varied, interest was built in automatically without there seeming to be any charged.)

Islam is not so vague, though. In this article the author explains the prohibition in no uncertain terms. Lending anything with an expectation that it will be repaid plus a profit is prohibited. Period. There are of course downsides to this, as shown in this article. What is permitted in Islam is charity—in fact, there is built in a poor tax, called a Zakat. People of sufficient means pay a percentage of their wealth for the maintenance of the poor.

Which leads us directly to the major problem with such a prohibition (and the assumptions entailed by claiming that the Zakat is just substitute): it is based almost entirely on a notion of static wealth, wealth which is not subject to any deterioration by simple, even low-level inflationary tendencies, of by the more complex medium of economic dynamism based on supply and demand and the introduction of variable factors—population growth, invention, drought and famine, excess harvests, disease, life expectancy—factors which guarantee that the value of coin, no matter how it is determined, changes, because the world in which it exists changes.

In short, there is no mechanism for the predictable increase in personal—or community—wealth. Such increases are made by conquest or accident in such a system. If it is assumed that one may not profit from one’s property other than through the price charged for product, then the system is likely to remain static at best, deteriorating at worst.

Which is what has happened to all the great empires, including the vast and impressive Islamic Empire of the 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th centuries.

All of them accrued wealth through conquest—Greece, Rome, Egypt, the Hittites, even little Israel, which basically kicked the original owners out of Canaan and absorbed what they found. Islam spread like fire in the first couple centuries of its existence, absorbing numerous principalities, and their productive capacities and, most importantly, their latent wealth. The Greeks and Romans had the best handle on how to keep it—through complex trade systems and, in the case of the Romans, premodern banking methods that allowed for variation of local value, periodic economic fluctuations caused by anything from bad harvests to a local invader. Others didn’t really have a good handle on it. Islam continued as an Imperial force by eventually absorbing Byzantium, but even they had to get into a little bit of the borrowing game when Christendom came bashing on their door as competitor. In the transformation of systems that occurs during major wars, a kind of tax on devastation and rebuilding occurs that looks, sometimes, like growth, but really it’s a reconsolidation into smaller and ever more concentrated realms.

It was those Italian bankers that eventually, through the methods they developed and which later turned into full-blown credit systems after the Reformation, that spelled hegemonic doom for any system that couldn’t—or wouldn’t—keep up.

I do not wish to go into a long disquisition about the benefits of credit systems—or their myriad faults— but it is clear to anyone not hampered by culturally-enforced expectations that any system which does not allow for the possibility of one’s neighbor collapsing is itself doomed. Islam does not prohibit trade. Trade is great, it is necessary, it is the thing that keeps the whole show running, but it is not itself a static entity. If, say, after a century of trading commodities with your neighbor, one year a blight wipes out the crop of whatever you’ve been happily trading for. Your neighbor now has nothing to trade. You now have no one to dump your exports on, because they can’t afford to pay you. You either look for someone else to take it, or…

Or what? You now have an excess of what you had before. You can dump it by discounting it to someone who doesn’t need it as much, which threatens stability on the homefront because you’re going to take a loss. You can give it to your longtime trading partner as charity, but now you have a shortfall in what you’ve been getting from them and have to make up the difference from someone else, with whom you do not have the same arrangement. The whole edifice teeters.

Or you can set up credit arrangements and base payments to your domestic producers on what your neighbor will pay you once they’re back on their feet, which of course means you still have the expense of subsidizing those domestic producers while you wait, which is an expense you wish to recoup, so the credit you’ve extended comes with an expectation that they will pay a bit more to cover that expense (over time so it’s not a crushing payment) and gives them time to recover.

That’s called Interest, that fee, and in this scenario is helps maintain the overall stability of both systems.

But there’s a far more personal element in the prohibition against interest that is not often discussed and is more to the point. (more…)

It’s not so much that beliefs clash, but that the basis for believing clashes between those who embrace extradinary religious claims and those who don’t.

Over at Daylight Atheism, Ebonmuse illustrates this topic well, asking why the extraordinary events of the Bible, many of them allegedly witnessed by thousands, fell into a historical black hole.  Here is the basic problem:

One of the hallmarks of a well-tested scientific theory is that it is supported by numerous, independent lines of evidence. We have the greatest confidence that a theory is true when results from completely different fields of science, which have no obvious reason to agree, all converge in support of the same conclusion, like threads weaving together to form a unified tapestry. This coming together of evidence was called consilience by Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson in his book of the same name.

One of the great success stories of science, the theory of continental drift, bears witness to how this process operates. Continental drift is backed up by independent lines of evidence: rock strata that match up across continents, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle; fossils of unusual species that exist in only a few, widely separated places; and magnetic striping in the ocean crust which indicates that the seafloor has been steadily spreading over time. All these unrelated lines of evidence independently converge to support the same conclusion.

This sort of evidentiary consilience is notably absent when we examine religious scriptures such as the Bible. Far from possessing independent lines of evidence that converge on the same conclusion, these texts contain numerous fantastic stories that are uncorroborated by history or even by other retellings of the story elsewhere in the book. Instead of weaving a coherent tapestry, these threads unravel into a tangled, confused mess.

My Smith Barney 401K account statement arrived today. I was pleased to see that Smith Barney is encouraging its clients to go paperless to save trees:

I opened up the envelope to see that I have 7 cents in my account.

You see, this is an account from a previous employer.  I’ve tried several times to completely empty out the account, but to no avail.  They keep sending me a statement every quarter.

BTW, I went to the SB website and tried to sign up as paperless for future statements.  After 10 minutes of trying, I gave up.  It won’t let me into my account–perhaps because it’s an inactive account.

Epilogue:  If I let the money in this account grow for one billion years, maybe I’ll be able to retire on it.

The following is an excerpt from a speech Barak Obama is scheduled to give today in Iowa:

We hear eerie echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq in the way that the President and Vice President talk about Iran. They conflate Iran and al Qaeda. They issue veiled threats. They suggest that the time for diplomacy and pressure is running out when we haven’t even tried direct diplomacy. Well George Bush and Dick Cheney must hear - loud and clear - from the American people and the Congress: you don’t have our support, and you don’t have our authorization for another war.

This post tells you what to do if ever you notice someone with these symptoms:

hallucinations, unusual beliefs, paranoia, mixed emotions, muddled thoughts, hyper-awareness or show[ing] unusual or puzzling behaviour.

I’m having a bit of trouble understanding all of the newly released reports coming out about Iraq.  Luckily for everyone, when Australia Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile recently asked President Bush for an update on Iraq, the President told him “We’re kicking ass.”

OK.  Fair enough.  That sums it up for me.  It’s terrific news and it’s about time.

Because we’re kicking ass over there, let’s schedule a parade through Bagdad.  Let’s have the Bush family lead the parade.  That includes George W., Laura and the twins. Let’s make it a big parade. We can have a prominent float on which Mr. Bush’s friends and co-workers can ride: Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.  What the heck.  Bring everyone: Gonzales, Ashcroft, Scooter (I know that he’s free).  Let’ have everyone who ever worked closely with the President spread some red white and blue cheer.  This will give our highest ranking Republican officials a chance to mingle with the people we saved, the Iraqis.  Can you imagine Dick Cheney walking through the middle of Bagdad shaking hands with the people of Iraq and spreading the good news that we’re kicking the asses of those terrorists?

Let’s plan for our parade to stretch two or three miles through the center of Bagdad, so there’s room for everyone in Congress who authorized the invasion of Iraq.  Since we’re kicking ass, there’s no need for helicopters hovering overhead and there’s no need for anyone to wear flak jackets (like John McCain did during his visit).  Nor is there any need to bring in heavy security.  It’s time to give the military the day off in Iraq.  Call it something like “Iraqi Freedom Celebration Day.” Since we’re kicking ass, let’s announce to the people of Iraq (by dropping thousands of leaflets by helicopter at least a few weeks ahead of time) that this parade is a chance for the people of Iraq to come on out to meet the President of the United States, shake his hand and tell him what’s on your mind.  Maybe the President could dress up in his cowboy boots.   Or maybe he could ride his bicycle.  Let’s use this opportunity to show the citizens of Iraq that we’ll never hesitate to bring a bit of America to Iraq.

Let’s not forget that there are tens of thousands of Iraqi children whose parents have died during the Iraq liberation process.  Let’s construct a few thousand large parade floats on which they can ride, places of special prominence.

Let’s make the Parade Day an even bigger deal.  Let’s invite hundreds of American high school students to travel over to Bagdad with our President to join the parade, then to begin an student exchange program, say for a semester or two.  Our students can live with real Iraqi families outside of the Green Zone, since we’re kicking ass.  They can attend the finest Iraq high schools and colleges that still exist.  They can help tell the Iraqi students about American democracy.  They can tell the Iraqi students that in America, our political system works extra efficiently because money is speech.

In fact, since we’re kicking ass, isn’t it about time to open a few McDonalds and Starbucks in downtown Bagdad?  And how about putting a FOX News corporate office in the middle of town, right on an Iraqi Main Street, so that FOX reporters and editors can have easy access to the real people of Iraq:  those outside the Green Zone. 

Now that we’re kicking ass, let’s really start the reconstruction of Iraq.  I’m sure that many of the people who favored the U.S. invasion are retired folks.  Perhaps they would be willing to come to Bagdad to help fix up at least some of bombed out schools and mosques.  Let’s also invite thousands of American fundamentalists to make the trip too, so that they can open up one of their mega-churches in the heart of Bagdad.  They can tell the Iraqis to worship Jesus instead of Muhammad or Allah.  Now that we’re well on our way to saving the Iraqis from terrorists, we can get busy saving them from going to hell.

I’m getting excited even writing about this big parade.  Finally, this is our opportunity to step up to allow our President tell the people of Iraq, face-to-face, what he’s done for Iraq.