Gilligan and his Island friends return home

Today my wife surprised the family by renting a DVD of Gilligan's Island episodes from Netflix. I hadn't seen any of these shows for decades--they originally ran from 1964-1967 on CBS. Not that I forgot that the show was goofy. How long did it take to write one of those episodes, 30 minutes? Yet watching two of the episodes tonight did remind me that Gilligan's Island strongly imprinted its images upon the young version of me, perhaps more strongly than anything I remember from back then (I was 8 years old when it originally ran). The characters looked exactly how I remembered them, and the plots were embarrassingly predictable, just how I remembered them as a child. I'd like to say that viewing these episodes served as some sort of time travel, but I simply can't. And the series continues to live on in syndication and DVD rentals, with new generations being exposed to it. Gilligan's Island is a world-class meme, a meme that allowed millions of people to put up their feet to have a bit of mindless fun once each week. And today I was reassured that Mary Ann was as gorgeous as I remembered her. Yes, I far preferred Mary Ann over Ginger. I always did, even as a pre-pubescent viewer. And I was not alone in my preference. On several occasions over the years, I have found myself in discussions where someone raises the concern that too many of today's children waste valuable time that they should be spending exposing themselves to more intellectually rigorous activities. Inevitably, some high-accomplished person in the room then reminds the rest of us about the huge number of hours that most of us spent watching Gilligan's Island when we were children, the original runs and the re-runs. Yet many of us turned out OK. Or at least that is the argument.

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Connectionist beings and toilet mugs

Many of us would love to believe that we are completely rational beings in the sense that we are able to navigate a world strictly categorized in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Many of us would also love to believe that with sufficient will power all of us can move beyond unwanted emotions and beyond images and thoughts that "don't belong." That description does not comport with reality, of course. Several psychologists once conducted a hilarious experiment: Students were shown a brand new bed pan. Apple juice was poured into the brand new bedpan out of a commercial bottle of apple juice. The students were then asked whether they would drink the apple juice out of the bedpan. Only 28% were willing. My source for this experiment is page 216 of Heuristics and Biases, by Thomas Gilovich et al. You see, we seem to think as connectionist beings and emotional beings, as well as rational beings. Even though we logically and rationally know that we aren't drinking urine, the visual stimuli too strongly suggest otherwise, at least to many of us. Image by Erich Vieth I have written the above as prelude for describing a gift I recently bought for a good friend. A few months ago, I had described a toilet-shaped mug offered for sale by a well-stocked internet novelty company called PrankPlace. My friend indicated that he would not be deterred from drinking out of such a mug. I decided to put his confidence to a test. Today, I handed him his new toilet-mug and he was delighted. He promptly filled his new mug with coffee, and drank from it. Though he successful drank his coffee, he admitted that it was a bit off-putting to drink from the toilet-shaped mug, even though he absolutely knew that drinking from it would be nothing like drinking from a toilet. I think there are serious lessons here. For instance, when one claims that he is not "racist," there might yet be images and emotions haunting him, things that he acquired as a child, that no amount of logical and rational thought could purge. And maybe we viscerally dislike someone because she reminds us of a teacher that we disliked (even though we are certain that she is not that teacher). We are complex beings that are often not capable of defining and rationalizing our way out of disturbing or disorienting situations.

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Deepwater horizon: an event horizon for the oil age?

In a speech given earlier this year, the Chief Economist for BP made his case that fears about peak oil were overblown.

"One factor is resources. They are limited, and a barrel can only be produced once. But ideas of peak oil supply are not true. Doomsayers have exaggerated the issue. The bell-shaped curve of production over time does not apply to the world's oil resources," he told the seminar in Alkhobar city. "Those who believe in peak oil tend to believe that technology and economics don't matter, and I think this is false.The application of technology, the innovation of new technology and economic forces especially mean that recoverable oil resources can increase. If there is a peak in oil, it will come from the demand side. There are always fears, but these remain overstated and exaggerated."
A barrel can only be produced once, this is true. And technology has allowed us to tap into oil reservoirs that were unthinkable a few decades ago. Yet as the catastrophic ongoing oil geyser in the Gulf of Mexico shows us, technology is not the savior the oil majors would have us believe. Advanced technology may allow us to drill for oil a mile under water, but it obviously does not offer any easy solutions when things go horribly awry as they have on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which has been spewing hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for over a month. [More . . . ]

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Who elected British Petroleum to be our government?

No one elected BP to run any level of American government. But we are a government by the money, not the People, so that is a big invitation to British Petroleum to control entire beaches to prevent the news media from from reporting the full extent of the damage resulting from the Gulf of Mexico oil leakage. Mother Jones reports. In the meantime, most Americans passively sit and watch, along with our politicians, giving a well-documented irresponsible company endless opportunity to operate in relative secrecy while 65 miles of delicate Gulf Coast ecosystem has been ruined by oil. If a "terrorist" with brown skin from the Middle East had caused all of this immense damage, we would have declared yet another "war." But it's a bunch of Caucasian men wearing suits who crapped up the Gulf waters and beaches, and they have given huge amounts of money to Congress, so it's all so very very different . . . And keep in mind that this disaster does not simply affect the Gulf Coast. Did you see the photos of the oil-soaked pelicans? The "White Pelicans" aren't simply "Gulf Coast" birds--they migrate all the way from the Gulf Coast up to Minnesota--it has been quite the spectacle to see them passing through St. Louis twice each year. We'll see how many survive to fly next year. And that's merely one species. There is no reason for trusting that BP will do the clean-up job correctly, putting the environment before its profits. From the Mother Jones article (above), we've seen that BP will "fix" the problem by hiding information. News is now breaking that the oil has now penetrated 12 miles into the Louisiana marshes. I'm feeling sick about this disaster and sick about the lack of action by our federal government--Why is the Obama Administration continuing to defer to the "government" of British Petroleum? As soon as the first drops of oil escaped into the Gulf waters, this was no longer BP's disaster; it became an immense American tragedy. You've heard of "too big to fail." Lots of bank money is making sure that we will continue to have "too big to fail banks." If these Gulf oil rigs are too dangerous to fail, we shouldn't have them either (here's the obvious alternative). But no logic, no evidence and no earnest well-directed passion to preserve the environment will overcome huge corporate election contributions. I'm feeling the frustration of Chris Matthews:

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