Hooray, Pitzer College! The first to acknowledge
The worth of the secular studies
Which will offer a few new alternatives to
A theology class with your buddies

And now if a student considers it prudent
It’s there as a major or minor
In an oddly strange quirk, it is clearly the work
Of a truly intelligent designer

Of course, that intelligent designer is, in this case, Phil Zuckerman. The secular studies major was announced a short while ago, but the NY Times has a nice story up as of yesterday, on how Zuckerman put it together.

You may remember Zuckerman from this paper, a tremendously useful resource when combatting negative stereotypes of atheists. If you haven’t seen that paper, you may want to bookmark it; if your experience is anything like mine, you’ll run into the same “arguments” again and again, and Zuckerman’s paper is a handy weapon tool to have.

Oh, and…

One of the many useful features
Of social creatures

Is the ability to band together to do what cannot be done
By one

It doesn’t take a Confucian
To see that if you have enough people working together, it doesn’t matter if they are small, tiny, or downright Lilliputian

So long as each does their bit
And does not quit.

And so, I join with the members of Team Underdog, and raise my voice with theirs to say, although it won’t be easy
Beat PZ!

If you want more information about Camp Quest, and why it is worthy of support, click here. Or you could just trust me. And at this point, frankly, it’s mostly about seeing how many midget wrestlers it takes to bring down Andre the Giant. Having been PZ for a day, I have some idea of the amount of traffic he gets, so when Greta Christina asked if I would join Team Underdog, my first thought was “You’re gonna need a bigger boat”, but my next thought was “I wonder if it can be done?”

So, it’s an empirical question. And we love empiricism around here. And even though I just got back from spending 5 hours and 1000 dollars fixing a car, and would much rather have a fund raiser for myself, I can’t resist all those godless kids. Well, I can resist them one at a time, but when they gang up on me… well, that’s kinda the point, I guess.

The rapture is coming on May Twenty-First
And the man with the sign is expecting the worst
He gave me a pamphlet that tells me I’m cursed
And I’m shocked at the news I’m receiving
The earthquakes are coming; the dams will be burst
The believers, they will be leaving

It’s a tale of God’s glory, and a tale of God’s wrath
And the terrible justice and judgment God hath
With humanity here on a difficult path
We must always be true, but we’re weaving
We’ve crunched all the numbers and done all the math
The believers, they will be leaving

So wives leave your husbands, and husbands, your wives
And it’s too late to care about your teenagers’ lives
And remember, it’s better if no one survives
For the ones who remain will be grieving
We’ll know it when May twenty second arrives
The believers, they will be leaving

So leave your possessions; abandon your jobs
Go proselytize to the uncaring mobs
Their laughter today very soon will be sobs
As with sorrow their sides will be heaving
You’re a beacon of hope for the atheist snobs
The believers, they will be leaving

Go tell all your family; go tell all your friends
To pray for forgiveness and make their amends
There’s limited time till the universe ends
And no more that they should be achieving
They should grasp for the hand the lord Jesus extends
The believers, they will be leaving

There are some who look forward to that terrible day
When told of the Rapture, they solemnly say
Just don’t let the door hit your ass on the way
If you’re stealing away, then get thieving
And the ones left behind will shout hip hip hooray
The believers, they will be leaving

We’ve seen it before in other media; this time it’s NPR’s turn to report on the end of the world. Well worth a read or a listen–it puts a human face on an unbelievable story of belief. In a story we’ve seen scores of times before, somebody “crunched the numbers” in the bible and found that the rapture is upon us. In just a couple of weeks. Confident predictions have been made before, but that does not stop people from leaving jobs and families to hit the streets warning us that the end is near. Some families believe together; some families are torn apart by differences in their belief.

If you, like me, read comment threads like others read the comics, please note a couple of things. First, the number of calls for interviews on the 22nd. If history teaches us anything, it is that a great many of these people will have their faith strengthened by disconfirmation–I predict that their great show of faith is what saved us. Second, note the number of predictable comments. It’s the law.

…It’s The Law

It was not my intention, but I like the way it sounds: “the law of the predictable comment“. My little verse, referred to as canon. Well, internet canon.

I approve.

In fact, I encourage one and all to police comment threads for similar malcontents, ne’er-do-wells, and trolls, and to slap their wrists with “the law of the predictable comment”. You know you’ve seen them everywhere–now you have a response!

(Ok, in truth, I’m just envious that my pal Kylie has her own well-deserved Wikipedia page, and I probably never will, so I’m aiming for a bullet point in “internet rules”, well beneath Godwin and Poe…)

There are dozens of internet laws
Which police our rhetorical flaws
All I want is one more
So I beg and implore
Won’t you please lend your weight to my cause?

“The emergence of mind” is a devilish question;
The way that it’s phrased is a trick in itself.
We’re looking for something that’s somehow “emerging”
Not merely complex, but a difference in kind

So take a step back, is my humble suggestion,
From dualist analyses filling the shelf
The hidden assumptions could use a good purging
That lay in the phrase “the emergence of mind”

The mind in inferred from what people are doing;
(A skull’s not transparent—we don’t look at brain)
An answer depends on the question we’re asking:
The way that we look may distort what we find

Reductionist models are just misconstruing;
They merely describe, though they claim to explain
To look at our neurons may merely be masking
The real explanation of “emergence of mind”

Over on NPR’s 13.7 blog, one of my pet peeves is on display, if only as a small part of the post. The big question is one of the influence of technology on our ability to observe; clearly, technology expands our senses hugely–allowing us to see spectra far beyond what evolution allows us, for instance, or to curve that radiation and focus on objects too small or too far away for our own eyes. Technology can let us hear, smell, or taste things (rather, detect the existence of pressure waves or molecules in air or water) beyond our own senses. We may have a tough time feeling the difference between 10 pieces of paper and 11, but technology can build us a scale that can measure even the weight of the ink it took to sign one of those papers.

Some problems are easier, some more difficult–some more linear, others chaotic.

As I tell my students, most of the easy problems (those that can be solved analytically) have been dealt with. Now, we must move on to the tough, nonlinear domain. Among the many open problems in many fields, here are three: the climate, the emergence of mind, and the origin of life. Not too shabby. None will be thoroughly understood without computers or, as scientist Katy Börner of Indiana University calls them, our “macroscopes.”

And there we have my pet peeve. The emergence of mind, being written about by a theoretical physicist. Now, I don’t mean to imply that “mind” is necessarily an easy thing, but it does not help that we continually ask the wrong questions about it. The very phrase “emergence of mind” (sometimes other, similar phrases are used, like “gives rise to consciousness”) implies a qualitative difference, a difference in kind between the biological meat puppet and the controlling mind. Even when this is not intended, the language gets fuzzy, and possible answers are entertained or denied in part due to how they fit this fuzziness (quantum consciousness, anyone?).

In the discussion at 13.7 (as, it seems a law of nature, with similar discussions wherever the question is raised), the complexity of the brain is trotted out, and it is implied that mind somehow emerges (or cannot, depending on your stance) from the workings of the brain. This view is so commonplace now that to question it seems heresy. But it is wrong.

We infer mind from behavior, not from brain activity. My car has a mind of its own, as does my computer–I say this because neither acts the way I want them to, and the real explanation for what they are doing is beyond my personal knowledge. When the external causes of X’s behavior are unknown to me, I put the causes inside of X; this “theory of mind” allows me to predict what a person, an animal, a car, a computer, will do. Imperfectly, of course, from which I infer that it has a will of its own (rather than just admit my ignorance of causes).

Our observation of the behavior of others, combined with our vocabulary describing this, is what leads to an understanding of “mind”, and indeed to “mind” itself. Aaaaand, I think I’ll leave this here for now. I can unpack it more, and have done so, but I’d have to start charging you for tuition. Bottom line is, a given problem can seem more intractable than it actually is, when you pursue it by asking the wrong questions. We are complex enough when we ask the right questions.

Oh! and I almost forgot– for one of my all-time favorite discussions (for my money, it is the best comment thread in all of the history of blogging) of this topic, take a look at the comment thread on this post from a couple of years ago, in which my commenters clearly outclass me.

From the simple gut reaction that’s dependent on your faction
(Everybody wears their heart upon their sleeve)
We can see, with no confusion, how you came to your conclusion:
What is true depends on what you first believe

Chorus:
And it’s hip, hip, hooray
For the thing I learned today!
That convinced me I was always right
     and you were always wrong
And it’s cheer, cheer, cheer
Cos it couldn’t be more clear
I’m not boasting, I’m not bragging,
     but I knew it all along!

All around our mighty nation, finding brand-new information
Makes us more convinced of what we thought before
There’s no need for a detective; every comment is projective;
Dr. Rorschach, we don’t need you any more!

Chorus

Simply take a look around you, and it’s liable to astound you
The objective world has all but disappeared
With our inner thoughts projected, we see just what we expected
And the problem is exactly what we feared

Chorus

Our opinion of the President’s not tied to his accomplishments
Instead, it’s based on what we think of him
If some Teabag son or daughter saw Obama walk on water
They’d complain because “the President can’t swim!”

Chorus

Ok, so I’m not 100% happy with this one, but I had to say something. Regular readers will both recall that I loves me some comment threads. After the Bin Laden news, comment threads have been both a delight and a source of tremendous frustration. Every bit of information that comes in seems to have the effect of strengthening the positions people held before that bit of information showed up.

 Republicans are praising the president for his actions which led directly to the death of our #1 enemy… that’s president Bush, of course. Democrats, though, somehow see no reason to credit W at all. Go figure. The president’s decision was tremendously brave and embarrassingly cowardly, depending on whom you ask. Torture was and was not useful. Hell, Bin Laden was or was not killed, and Obama was or was not born in the US.

I am reminded of the time my mother-in-law cheered for Reagan when he said he wanted prayer in school.  The dyed-in-the-wool Republican that she is, it must have slipped her mind that she is an atheist.

Two buns diverged from a breaded mass,
And sorry I could not, like a snake,
Unhinge my jaw to let it pass
Took one small bite, affecting class,
And thought it likely a mistake.

Then took another, as just a tease
And knowing I could not eat it all—
The deep-fried patty, stuffed with cheese—
I gobbled up with seeming ease
Until the point I hit the wall

And, gut distended, there I lay
With melted cheese upon my shirt
Oh, I lived to eat another day
And try again? Perhaps I may,
When I’ve recovered from the hurt.

I shall be saying this, with a sigh,
When fever fades, and I’m making sense:
Two buns diverge, and I will not lie,
This Heart Attack could make you die
And that would make all the difference

If you have never seen “Wait Wait… Don’t Blog Me!” and their regular feature “Sandwich Monday”, then you are missing one of life’s great joys. Today’s sandwich is the Heart Attack On A Plate, which is… well, hey, go take a look. When you read their first paragraph, you’ll see where my verse comes from.

“Justice” is a funny thing
Unless I am misled
It acts like restitution
But it can’t bring back the dead
When lives are lost, it’s horrible;
There is no greater price
But Justice cannot pay it back—
Instead, it’s losing twice.

I know I’m not alone in this, but I get the feeling I am in a small minority. I can’t celebrate someone’s death. I hope last night’s news brings peace to those who have lost loved ones, and I hope (in vain, I suspect) that there will be a positive effect on peace, at least in the long term. But I can’t celebrate this death any more than the thousands of others connected to it, before, during, and after 9/11.

If (and it is a legitimate “if”, not a given) we hold Bin Laden responsible for the actions of our own troops and allies, by the logic that “he started it”, then we must look at how and why he came to be in the position to “start”. By the same “if”, our own actions supporting “Afghanistan’s Freedom Fighters” against the Soviets, and our actions in Afghanistan and elsewhere over the decades, are also causal strands in a grand web of interconnected influences.

Yes, he was very bad. Sadly, he’s not alone in that.

“Justice has been served.” What a strange phrase. I am far more concerned with preventing future loss, than in whatever justice means. Calling this justice allows us to paint ourselves as the good guys, and him as a bad guy. And yeah, I’ve been told that my view “lets him off the hook.” Well, no. He’s on the hook. His actions are not ignored. But if we want to prevent, rather than simply avenge, future actions, we must look at all involved. Including ourselves.

And self-examination is not something that leads to cheers, chants, and dancing in the streets. But it is something that might lead to peace.

By my reckoning, there are still just under 5 hours left (or 6, 7, 8, 9, or 11, depending on your time zone) in National Poetry Month. If you haven’t properly celebrated, you don’t have much time left.

As a public service, then, I give you a push-button that sends you to the best collection of cephalopod-authored verse to be found anywhere. I’d say “operators are standing by”, but I suspect they are all computers, and thus not standing at all.

That’s it, right there.

What a pointless waste of money!
What a frightful waste of time!
This is lame, disgusting drivel
And it isn’t worth a dime!
What a waste of a reporter
When this clearly isn’t news!
Your priorities are foolish—
Give us something we can use!
This misguided bit of effort,
Lacking substance, style, or taste,
And my time it took to read it
Are an utter, total waste!
That’s ten minutes of my lifetime
That I’ll never, now, get back,
Spent deciphering the writing
Of a clueless, brainless hack!
All this focusing on nothing
When there’s suffering and pain—
What’s the point in what you’ve written?
How does anybody gain?
You should give your unearned paycheck
To a charity, this week,
So someone else can benefit
From something, when you speak.
Editorial discretion
Means the choice was yours to make
But your choices are deplorable
This time, for goodness’ sake!
You must have though it worthy—
I, of course, must disagree
And even brain-dead idiots
Would surely side with me!

My time is very valuable;
You’ve wasted it, you know.
Without a trace of irony
I write to tell you so.

NPR can’t win. At least, it seems so in their comments. As I’ve written before, I like it when NPR airs something I dislike; if I only listened to stuff I already know, or already agree with, I might as well not listen at all. But there are those in the comment threads–for nearly every story, it seems–who have taken it upon themselves to act as the arbiters of what is and is not worthwhile. In the midst of dozens of supportive comments, someone will show up, complaining that no one wants or needs to hear anything about [whatever the story was about]. If it’s a “human interest” story (or, frankly, a story about any issue but the commenter’s pet issue) it is a waste of time, and evidence that NPR is out of touch, a waste of taxpayers’ money, and clearly biased toward/away from any given political view.

Today’s example brought out the “this is news?” crew, the “this is art?” crew, and even the “this is vandalism?” crew. The topic? People who knit or crochet stuff and put it on public statues. I saw some of this in Austin a few months ago, but apparently it is world-wide. I’m all for it–which means I clearly don’t care about the homeless, or about what is news, or what is art, or what is graffiti, or… and I clearly have too much time on my hands, if I am reading comments on such a story. Or writing, well, everything I write.

It’s not limited to NPR, of course, but I find it most amusing there. There are even regular commenters, who post several times a day, simply to complain that NPR is a waste of their time.

And they say irony is dead.