Pick up the pieces

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Wednesday 5 November 2008 @17:21

Lawrence Lessig is an inspiration. In honor of him and many other fair-minded Californians, I retract my earlier harsh words about their pacific state.

Hours after the vile proposition 8 passed, Prof. Lessig rallies us to pick up the pieces and restart a campaign to convince our neighbors about equal protection. This isn’t his battle… his marriage has nothing to gain or lose either way. And yet Prof. Lessig commits to this, recognizing that discrimination against any of us diminishes all of us. That sentiment finally brings forth the tears of joy that I can now share with so many fellow patriots on this historic day. Thanks.

What’s the inverse of a silver lining? [explicit]

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Wednesday 5 November 2008 @12:06

I’m thrilled about Obama, of course. I hope it’s the sign of my country turning a new leaf, and shedding some of the painful past.  Other than overcoming the obvious racial barrier, I hope this signals the end of the anti-intellectualism that has been rampant for a decade or two. Obama is an inspiration to millions and sharp as a tack. That, my friends, is a rare combination. It won’t be easy, but if we can hold his administration to half of the ideals that inspired us to support him, the country will be back on track.

Unfortunately, it’s not all unicorns and rainbows for me today.  Four states banned gay marriage or adoption, including probably (still officially undecided as I write this) our beloved California.  I’m feeling the tyranny of the majority today.  I’m not effective as an advocate for gay marriage, because I take it very personally… usually the only argument I can muster is “F— you!  Don’t you criticize my 10-year committed relationship; hold yourselves to the same standard, you goddamn pricks.”

Even well-meaning straight couples take the civil aspects of marriage for granted.  I can’t count how many times I’ve been at a wedding and heard “We actually got the marriage certificate two months ago, but it didn’t feel like we were married until today.”  I call bullshit — it’s precisely the opposite.  Anybody can throw an elaborate party for friends, family, and imaginary deities of their choosing.  But it’s not an effective union until your state and country acknowledge, accept, and enforce the literally thousands of rights and responsibilities you have to each other.

California: thanks for the 55 electoral votes.  But otherwise, fuck you.  Same to Arizona, Arkansas, and Florida, and the LDS.

Five moments in the evolution of an atheist

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Friday 7 September 2007 @10:00

One (ca. 1988): As a teenager, I believed in ghosts. I was a big fan of the Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown series. Ouija, witchcraft, psychic phenomena — these were themes of my adolescence. One morning following a sleepover, a friend’s father ridiculed us pretty harshly for believing such nonsense. Then later that day he attended mass and professed belief in virgin birth, miraculous resurrection, and divine retribution. Even then, I recognized this as deep hypocrisy.

It’s not that belief in one impossible thing necessitates belief in six more (before breakfast). But when you’ve abandoned objective tests for truth, the distinction between cherished belief and childish myth is arbitrary and personal. So there’s not much point in ridiculing someone whose classifications differ from yours.

Two (ca. 1991): As I went off to college, I read more widely and experienced a wider world. I quickly grew to dislike fantasy novels and started reading popular science, by the likes of Weinberg, Hawking, Sagan, and Dawkins. I gained an appreciation of “god as nature,” a concept that I learned went back to Spinoza (ca. 1670), and was endorsed by Einstein. This is not in any sense a ‘personal’ god; it does not intervene in the world, and does not even receive prayers. In other words, it’s a god even a budding rationalist can believe in.

So for many years, I was happy with Spinoza’s god but agnostic about a personal god. I didn’t really accept the label ‘atheist’ because I thought it implied a certain arrogance: we don’t know everything about the universe, so how can we rule out god?

Three (ca. 1996–7): Gradually I realized that if you define ‘god’ however you want, then claiming belief in it is meaningless. When most people speak of God, they refer to a supernatural creature of some sort that hears prayers and intervenes in the world. If you think this is a falsehood, you’re an atheist. Spinoza’s god is just a philosophical construct; conceiving of god as a set of physical laws and constants does not constitute theism.

Four (ca. 2003) A health issue landed me in the hospital for 3 nights. While not exactly a brush with death, being the youngest patient in the cardiac ward did provide an opportunity to ponder my own mortality. I seriously considered whether I was on the right track, or whether I should maybe loosen up on the rationalism. But I got through it with the help of amazing (but non-miraculous) science and technology. Later I found some thinkers who provide ‘spiritual’ healing and inspiration without the hocus-pocus. Carl Sagan wrote the following as he was dying from cancer. It brings a tear every time:

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

Five (ca. 2006–7) A greater awareness of atheism as a political stance has arisen. Partly inspired by excesses of the Bush administration, I joined the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Inspired too by recent books of Dawkins and Dennett, I joined the Council for Secular Humanism and subscribed to Free Inquiry and the Skeptical Inquirer. I regularly listen to the podcasts Point of Inquiry and Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. If moment #3 was about self-acceptance, then this one is my coming out.

What marriage penalty?

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Thursday 9 August 2007 @9:39

Nothing like a little reminder from the HR department that you’re a second-class citizen:

In other words, the university offers tuition remission to dependents, spouses, and same-sex partners of employees. But the IRS counts it as taxable income if you’re gay. (Graduate tuition is taxable for everyone, so this difference is only for undergraduate tuition.)

Another confidence-builder

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Tuesday 7 November 2006 @9:03

Computers suck. Just when information is most critical, it’s unavailable:

I’m responsible enough to know already where my polling place is (unless I arrive there and it’s mysteriously closed — that remains to be seen) but is that true of everyone in the state of New York?

Does the ‘plsql’ in the URL mean they’re using Oracle?

Update: contrary to my expectations, it was up again when I checked 15 minutes later. Just bad timing maybe.

Up-update: we should all re-familiarize ourselves with the definition of confirmation bias. I never would have posted (or even noticed) if the site had worked right away.

The more you know

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Saturday 1 July 2006 @14:54

I just watched a 45-minute ACLU video on how to assert your rights during police encounters. It reviewed the 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments, complete with reenactments and alternate re-reenactments. It was fairly cheesy production-wise, but an important message in my opinion.

One thing that bothered me though, is that in most of the scenarios presented, the targets of police attention actually did appear to be guilty of some crime. The white kids driving to the concert did have pot in the car, for example. They had everything to lose by consenting to a search. And so the video could have been titled “How to get away with doing illegal stuff.”

This is unfortunate, because one could easily come away from watching this video with the all-too-common sentiment “if I’m not doing anything wrong, then I have nothing to fear.” What is much more interesting to me is persuading people that it’s vital that we assert our rights even when we’re not doing anything wrong.

Lately I’ve been trying to promote signed and encrypted email again, among less technical friends. And I routinely encounter the similar sentiment, “My email is just not that personal or interesting.”

I first used email in 1991, and first learned about strong cryptography (PGP) in about 1992. I was thrilled, and I immediately dashed off encrypted messages to my good friends Alice and Bob. If you had told me then that in 15 years, people would still be sending plain text messages out in the open where anyone could read or alter them, I’d have thought you were nuts.

Oh sure, it’s fairly common for computer nerds to have PGP or GPG keys, but in most cases they’re not routinely used for email; it’s just too inconvenient. (They are routinely used in some quarters for signing code; c.f. Debian.) But isn’t it strange that my bank would send me an email with a URL where I can read my latest statement? Why not send the statement directly through the email? Answer: because we have reasonably good, wide-spread encryption standards for the web, but still not for email.

So I tried to look into what wide-spread standards do exist for email, because it certainly isn’t PGP/GPG. I haven’t quite straightened out all the acronyms yet, but it seems like the X509/PKCS7 is fairly common. Thawte offers free personal certificates, so I got myself one. I even met with a network of enthusiasts to get notarized (at a Starbucks on the upper west side). This just means that — in exchange for showing my passport to a couple of strangers — I can now put my real name in my certs, rather than just my email address.

All this stuff is supported fairly well in Apple Mail and the Keychain Assistant. My partner and I now routinely exchange encrypted messages. And now I’ve started signing messages I send to others, to see how their systems deal with it. The results to date are not encouraging.

Anyway, our esteemed president can take credit for my resurgent interest in the bill of rights. One day last month I got so pissed off by some executive transgression or another (sad that I don’t even remember which one) that I joined three organizations on the same day: the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Do I hear an ‘Amen’?

Oh yeah, the president has even made me appreciate the 2nd amendment more, which I interpret as being primarily about the ability (and responsibility) of the citizenry to overthrow a tyrannical government. But YMMV, as IANACS.*

*CS = Constitutional Scholar

Truth is often the jester

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Thursday 8 June 2006 @13:48

Many bytes have been spent comparing Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to the ‘legitimate’ news organizations, most notably when Jon appeared on CNN’s Crossfire in 2004. Today I just want to point out a particularly great moment I witnessed on Tuesday night.

The guest was conservative author Bill Bennett, pimping his new book, America: the Last, Best Hope. The ‘hope’ in the title refers to the hope of all people to live free, and this history of the United States is a narrative about the progress of freedom.

Jon Stewart jumped on this to get Bennett to defend the talking points on Bush’s constitutional amendment to restrict marriage—once and for all—to straight folks. How is that about the progress of freedom?

Bennett began, predictably, by defending the traditional family structure and the stability it provides. This led into Stewart’s strongest moment:

Stewart: So why not encourage gay people to join in that family
arrangement if that is what provides stability to a society?

Bennett: Well I think if gay… gay people are already members of
families.

Stewart: What?

Bennett: They’re sons and they’re daughters…

Stewart: So that’s where the buck stops? That’s the gay ceiling? [laughs]

Bennett: Look, it’s a debate about whether you think marriage is
between a man and a women.

Stewart: I disagree. I think it’s a debate about whether you think gay
people are part of the human condition or just a random fetish.

Slam! Huge cheers from the audience. The conversation continued, and they even split it over the commercial break, which is rare. It only got worse for Bennett, but to his credit he seemed a very gracious guest, even in defeat. There are video clips to be found on YouTube if you’re so inclined.

I guess I don’t need to say much else about Bush’s marriage amendment, except that I find it difficult not to take the right-wing rhetoric personally: “Watch it, that’s my family you’re libeling, you pricks.” I think a perfectly rational response is: “how I live my life is none of your god-damned business.” But it doesn’t seem to hold much sway with these folks.

To my conservative friends: yes, I know very well that Democrat candidates don’t tend to endorse gay marriage either, and that Clinton sold us out years ago by signing the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Furthermore, at least the position of some social conservatives seems to stem—at the best of times—from their deeply-held (though misguided) convictions. Democrats that don’t fully support gay marriage seem to base their positions on the poll numbers instead, which I admit is pathetic.

One more of Jon Stewart’s lines from the segment: “Divorce is not caused because 50% of marriages end in gayness.”

Opinions are like a**holes

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Wednesday 31 May 2006 @15:24

To me, one of the great things about the explosion of writing on the Internet is that we don’t need to formulate our own opinions on anything anymore. No matter what opinion you’d produce, on any topic, most likely someone out there has already expressed it; all you need do is adopt it.

This leads to a kind of shopping experience: whenever you encounter a new topic of debate, rather than carefully considering the facts and drawing your own conclusions, just Google for others’ opinions and decide who you agree with. Easy peasy!

Take all of the above as facetious, if you prefer. I’m not yet certain how serious I am. (Which reminds me of The Simpsons: in Homerpalooza, one teenager says to another, “Are you being sarcastic, dude?” “I don’t even know anymore.”)

We may think it would be a better world if everyone’s opinions were independently researched and thoroughly considered, but that is unrealistic. And shopping around for opinions from diverse sources is perhaps far better than getting all your opinions from one source, whether it be your church, parents, political party, or home-town newspaper.

Example: I’m basically pro-choice, but mostly because people I trust tend to have that point of view. Personally, I have a hard time caring about the issue much either way. I will never get pregnant because I don’t have the right apparatus. And I will never get anyone pregnant because, well, I’m a Kinsey 6 and in sexual terms, women are about as appealing as Jabba the Hutt. Pretty effective contraceptive, that.

If anything, maybe parents ought to be permitted to extinguish their children until they’re 3 or 4 years old. Ah, but I jest. (I think.) And anyway, many folks who do slaughter their kids appear to be the same brand of fundamentalists who get all huffy over abortion.

This all started with me browsing magazines on amazon.com, and wondering if I am missing anything by relying solely on the Internet and not subscribing to opinions in print. It might be nice to receive some glossy monthly tome packed with various atheist-progressive-rationalist-libertarian-humanist-determinist points of view.

There are a few candidates, but it’s hard to tell which I would like best: Reason, Free Inquiry, Skeptical Inquirer, Skeptic, American Atheist, Mother Jones, Liberty, American Prospect, etc. I should try to skim some of these next time I’m at the book store.

Ask thyself not

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Tuesday 30 May 2006 @23:01

Am I tired of politicians and bureaucrats recasting questions directed to them in interviews? Yes, definitely. Does the technique lead to a dreadful rhetorical style? It is certain. Does it remind me of using the Magic 8-ball as a kid? Without a doubt.

I heard an interview on NPR this morning — I was too groggy to catch who it was — but when the interviewer asked a question, the interviewee ‘responded’ by asking a sequence of his own questions, to which he then gave abrupt answers (2–3 words each). I’m not sure whether this technique started with Donald Rumsfeld, or whether he just popularized it, but please stop already!

I can conjecture a few reasons why this style evolved. (1) Asking your own questions is a novel way to evade entirely the reporter’s questions. (2) It limits the scope of the reporter’s question. In this case, the speaker seems to say, “your question is not nuanced enough, so here are five narrow instances that I will address.” (3) The speaker is incapable of constructing complex sentences with multiple dependent clauses, so to communicate a complex viewpoint he must rely on a long sequence of curt answers to narrow questions. (4) The speaker believes the listener or reporter incapable of comprehending complex sentences with multiple dependent clauses.

At any rate, this style makes the speaker seem either simple-minded or arrogant (usually both), and it demonstrates contempt for both interviewer and audience.

Is this something I unwittingly do when fielding questions in a class or seminar? Better not tell you now. Will my interlocutors please call it to my attention if they catch me doing this? Reply hazy, try again.