The Pubescent Philosopher

Cutting Corners

2007-05-27T21:04:00.000-05:00

Over the last two days I refereed about 19 hour-long games at a youth soccer tournament. People are always moving around the fields during these games, and inevitably they cut the corners of the fields to save about five seconds on their trips to and from the concession stands. It pisses me off to know end because they are in my way while I am trying to ref (especially when I am the assistan referee and I have to run up and down the touchline), but I do understand why people do this. They are evolutionarily inclined to cut corners.

Cutting the corner saves about five seconds. Just like water takes the path of least resistance because is conserves the potential energy of the water, so to do humans save energy when they cut corners. That is five seconds more of energy that our ancestors had to run from a predator, which could have been the difference between life and death. This means that the proto-human monkeys that survived and passed their genes on to us - the corner cutters of today, were those that had the corner cutting genes.

The only thing that could be a bit confusing about this is how there can be a gene to cut corners. Sure your shoe size has some hereditary predicatability, but not complex brain function. I would agree that cutting corners isn't just one gene, but rather an entire complex of cerebral proteins that developed alongside other cognitive abilities over millions of years, but nonetheless the habit did develop as a result of evolution.

So, to all you corner cutters, I'll get over it. I understand why you do it. But to all of you stray brothers and sisters that awkwardly glance up at me to see if I'll say anything because you know that you shouldn't cut the corner of the soccer field, I hope a cheetah catches you and eats you and all your genes for dinner.

The Scottish Case

2007-05-22T21:51:00.000-05:00

Up until March 24, 1603 (the date of Queen Elizabeth I's death) England and Scotland, two kingdoms on the same islands, were completely separate, with different capitals, different allies, and most importantly, different allies. On that date, King James VI of Scotland, the heir-apparent due to some daft English politics, was proclaimed the King of England as well, with the regnal title King James I.

The independence that Scotland enjoyed up through this date was a source of national pride. For hundreds of years the people of Scotland had fought to preserve their independce from England. Their national heroes were wrought from these wars, and their kings were descendents of the wars' victors.

For over one hundred years the Stuart Kings ruled both independent nations, each with its own parliament and capital. However, on May 1, 1707, Queen Anne's Act of Union came into effect. The Act of Union was law passed by both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. It merged the two nations and the two parliaments, and joined their monarchs under one crown, creating Great Britain or the United Kingdom. Scottish opposition to the Act was strong, but it nonetheless passed through the Edinburgh based parliament. England and Scotland were both still considered sovereign states by the Act, but they could exert no independent initiative. They wholly acted as Great Britain, with its capital and parliament very far from Scotland in London.

For nearly 300 years, until 1999 Scotland had no parliament. All decisions were made in London. However, due to nationalist sentiments, Tony Blair spearheaded the campaign for the establishment of a new Scottish Parliament, which now sits in Edinburgh with jurisdiction over domestic affairs.

The people of Scotland feel as if they were taken over by England. History stands in the face of this assumption, but nonetheless the sentiment persists. When James became the first monarch of both nations he explicitly intended to bring Scotland under English auspices. Although legally they are wholly independent nations of each other, governance for Scotland, for the majority of the last 300 years has been based in England. English kings and queens now rule the Scottish country. Although the ascension of a Scottish King on to the English throne makes it seem nearly as if Scotland took over England, the opposite feels the case.

And so we come to the affairs of the present. The 300th anniversary of The Union, felt with disdain in Scotlan, was just two days before general elections in Scotland. The Scottish Nationalist Party, campaigning on a platform of Socttish independence won majority in this election, and it is their intention to repeal the Act of Union of 1707. The extent to which they will be sucessful is not the basis of this post, but rather the impetus for such an action.

Divorce Rates

2006-10-22T20:37:00.000-05:00

Watch Dr. Phil. He loves divorce and the high rates of it in the United States (and in other developed countries, such as South Korea and the EU). Often, these rates are linked to moral degredation. However, I wonder if increasing divorce rates are rather the result of other trends in society.
It isn't any secret that women have some more social liberties nowadays. More and more females work, and single mothers aren't scrutinized quite like Ms. Pryne was anymore. I wonder if divorce rates are results of this trend rather than moral degredation which people love to talk about.
More evidence of this is that in non-developed countries, where women remain repressed and religious stigma remains preminent, divorce rates have not increased as hey have in developed countries in the last half-century. I guess, maybe to frame the hypothesis a bit more clearly, the increase in divorce rates isn't a result of moral degredation: immorality has been around the whole time, but only now do women have a recourse against it.

Nurature?

2006-03-29T19:55:00.000-05:00

On March 4th I wrote about my views about the nurture vs. nature debate. I sided with nurturalists. However, my views were skewed by my belief that nurture and nature are mutually exclusive. Today (in biology class) I learned otherwise.

In 1965, François Jacob and Jacques Monod, along with Andre Lwoff were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for discovering the lac operon. (lac being lactose). Basically, the lac operon is a component of the DNA of E. Coli bacteria, although operons are present in the DNA of all organisms. This particular operon was the first discovered and is the canon example. E. Coli usually consume glucose. Sometimes though glucose isn't available, but E. Coli have evolved mechanisms that break down lactose into the two components of its di-compound figure (two different compouns fused together): glucose and galactose. Glucose can then be consumed by the bacteria as normal. However, making the protein that breaks down lactose - Beta-Galactosidase) take energy to such an extent (like making all proteins) that it is disadventagious to the cell. Therefore, the cell has evolved a mechanism to supress the synthesis of Beta-Galactosidase unless lactose is present. This mechanism is the lac operon.

In other words, the natural functioning of the cell can be altered by environmental conditions. Nurture and nature collide. Colbert features nurature as The Word. Opponents of the homosexual agenda implode. Gay marriage is allowed. Conservates submit to sepuku. The world ends. Obviously not. I don't know the extent of the impacts of operons, plus they've been known for a long time so I'm sure scientists have considered this, so I guess the lesson of the post is don't dichotomize nurture and nature (like I did, on March 4th).

Holt: Math Murders

2006-03-13T15:38:00.000-05:00

Math Murders

By JIM HOLT

Published: March 12, 2006

Counting the dead is a paradoxical business. Suppose I told you that around 150 million people have died over the last century in wars, genocides, man-made famines and other atrocities. This number might evoke in you a certain horror. But it is, of course, only a wild guess. Its very vagueness lends it an air of unreality. Yet what purpose would be served by making it more precise? Where mass death is concerned, the moral significance of scale seems to be one of those things that our brains aren't equipped to handle. A single life may have infinite value, but the difference between a million deaths and a million and one strikes us as negligible.

The moral meaning of death counts is further obscured by their apparent lack of objectivity. Take the war in Iraq. How many Iraqi civilians have died as a consequence of the American invasion? Supporters of the war say 30,000, a number that even President Bush finally brought himself to utter late last year. Opponents of the war say more than 100,000. Surely there must be a fact of the matter. In practice, though, there are only competing methodologies and assumptions, all of which yield different numbers. Even if we could put politics aside and agree on one, it would be hard to say what it meant. Does it matter, for instance, that the higher estimate of 100,000 is the same order of magnitude as the number of Iraqi Kurds that Saddam Hussein is reckoned to have killed in 1987 and 1988, in a genocidal campaign that, it has been claimed, justified his forcible removal?

"It is painful to contemplate that despite our technologies of assurance and mathematics of certainty, such a fundamental index of reality as numbers of the dead is a nightmarish muddle," wrote Gil Elliot in his 1972 volume, "The Twentieth Century Book of the Dead." Figuring out the number of man-caused deaths is rarely as straightforward as counting skulls in a mass grave. You can kill people with bombs, guns and machetes, but there are also more indirect ways: causing them to die of starvation, say, or of exposure or disease. (The disease need not be indirect — witness the radiation victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) Of the nearly two million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge, for instance, perhaps half were executed outright. By contrast, in the ongoing civil war in the Congo — the deadliest conflict since World War II — 2 percent of the estimated 3.9 million victims have died of direct violence; the rest perished when their subsistence-level lives were disrupted by the war.

Quantifying man-made death thus means, at the very least, having an idea of the rate at which people die naturally. And that entails recordkeeping. In 17th-century Europe, registers kept by church parishes — dates of baptisms, marriages and burials — made it possible to gauge the devastation caused by the Thirty Years' War, which was deadlier for civilians than for soldiers. The last century, strange to say, has not always matched this level of demographic sophistication. Even in the case of Nazi Germany, supposedly a model of efficiency, the implementation of the Final Solution was so chaotic that the number of victims can be known only to the nearest million.

If our methodology of counting man-made deaths is crude, our moral calculus for weighing the resulting numbers is even cruder. Quantification, it is often thought, confers precision and objectivity. Yet it tells us very little about comparative evil. We feel that Hitler was every bit as evil as Stalin, even though Stalin was far more successful in murdering people (in part because he had a longer run). Mao may have been more successful still; in their recent book, "Mao: The Unknown Story," Jung Chang and Jon Halliday estimate that the Chinese leader was responsible for "well over 70 million deaths," which would come to nearly half of the total number of man-made deaths in the 20th century. In relative terms, however, Mao is easily eclipsed by Pol Pot, who directed the killing of more than a quarter of his fellow Cambodians.

Raw death numbers may not be a reliable index of evil, but they still have value as a guide to action. That, at least, is the common-sense view. It is also part of the ethical theory known as utilitarianism, which holds that sacrificing x lives to save y lives is always justified as long as y is greater than x. This utilitarian principle is often invoked, for example, in defense of President Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed between 120,000 and 250,000 Japanese civilians, on the assumption that the death toll would have been worse had the war been prolonged.

Yet some thinkers (like the British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe) have questioned whether, morally speaking, numbers really count. In a choice between saving 5 lives and saving 10, they ask, why should we be dutybound to act in behalf of the greater number? Because, you say, it would be worse for 10 people to die than for 5 people. They reply: Worse for whom? Arithmetic misleads us into thinking that deaths aggregate the way numbers do. Yet in reality there are only individuals suffering. In a dilemma where the deaths of one group of people or another is unavoidable, why should someone have to die merely by reason of being in the smaller group?

This sort of skepticism about the significance of numbers has some perverse consequences. It implies that all atrocities have an equal command on our moral attention, regardless of scale.

Yet a refusal to aggregate deaths can also be ethically salubrious. It helps us realize that the evil of each additional death is in no way diluted by the number of deaths that may have preceded it. The ongoing bloodbath in Darfur has, all agree, claimed an enormous number of victims. Saying just how many is a methodological nightmare; a ballpark figure is a quarter of a million, but estimates range up to 400,000 and beyond. Quantitatively, the new deaths that each day brings are absorbed into this vast, indeterminate number. Morally, they ought to be as urgent as those on the first day of the slaughter.

Jim Holt is a frequent contributor to the magazine.

In Spatial Terms

2006-03-13T15:25:00.000-05:00

The last few days (especially yesterday - I did a lot of driving an skiing) I have been thinking about how we perceive space. Pretty much, we look at it in terms of lines - those lines being the roads that we drive on and live off of. However, this can't be how things were in spatial terms forever, because we didn't always have roads. Sure the Romans had some, but thorughout most of the Middle Ages they were in disrepair. Rather, the forests were what we had to navigate, and seafarers traversed currents and wind trends. That is a big shift from some seeming random events to the predictably linear roads we now live.

So then, would recreational skiing ever have been accepted in the non-linear world of today? I doubt it. Recreational skiining implies lines, because all trails are fixed lines. This also accounts for the appeals of glades (runs through trees with no cleared trails). Glades are a novelty at most mountains, and pretty popular, for no apparent reason except that they are different. They are different in that they don't adopt the contional linear trails practice but rather take caution in allowing people to ski freely (in fact many mountains heavily post warning about glades, becuase they are a bit more perilous than the open trails). I would describe glades as a modern event.

With the modernity of glades in mind I would propose that a certain mountain in Montana that only has glades, no conventional trails is thepostmodern ski mountain, finishing the progression from the classical to the denying postmodern. Any thoughts?

The Quantification of Rights - 1.5

2006-03-11T10:14:00.000-05:00

Anyone who is interested in my blogging about quantifying rights I would highly recommend that you read the article from this week's New York Times Magazine "Math Murders" by Jim Holt. It pretty much says what I say, but just better because he is a better writer than I am. The article is posted following this post.

Spanglish

2006-03-06T19:11:00.000-05:00

Today in my Spanish class a reading we had sparked a conversation on Spanglish, and if its use is proper or not. My argument was that it was, simply because communication is communication, and if it works, let it be becuase it is doing what it should be doing.

Later on in the day I was doing some more thinking and thought of this. A communication system is like a gene. If it works it will stick around, get passed on from generation from generation, proliferate horizontally, and become well known. If a communication system is not practical, expect the "mutation" to die out in a generation or two.

An example: Esperanto. Esperanto wasn't understandable to people. Most people could already communicate, so Esperanto never had a chance to become a competitive language gene, because it wasn't practical. Now it only lives on the Google language option toolbar. Spanglish on the other hand has some practical use. Predominant English speakers can use it, and so can predominant Spanish speakers. Therefore, it is useful for transcultural communication between the two groups, and has some staying power as a good langauge gene. We'll only see with time.

Nurture vs. Nature

2006-03-04T16:21:00.000-05:00

In a word: nurture.

For a human trait to be natural it has to be from the human genome. The human genome is passed on from generation to generation. Therefore, traits that favor allowing an organism to reproduce have a better chance of being passed on and multiplied. Homosexuality does not favor sexual reproduction for obvious reasons, therefore it is unlikely that 10% of the population codes for it.

Another natural explanation could be mutation. Random mutations of the genes of a human could lead to homosexuality. However, having 10% of a population randomly mutate the same gene is a statistic that far surpasses the rate of mutation in the genome. Therefore, there would have to be a natural explantion as to why a particular gene mutates more often than any other gene in the world.

Amidst those odds, I would negate any claims that homosexuality is nature. Howver, I'm already skeptical of me saying that it is nurtural. Could there be another reason besides nature or nurture? Who know. But I know that it is not natural.

Asymptotic Reality

2006-02-18T22:50:00.000-05:00

For a long time people could not see cells. Then we saw cells only for a long time, before molecules were discovered. Molecules gave way to elements, which eventually gave way to the atom. Atoms begot subatomic particles (your good old protons, electrons, and neutrons), and yet still theese have been reduced to quarks, photons, neutrinos, etc..

And so it seems that matter, the stuff that animates reality (well, I guess energy animates it, but you know what I mean), comes closer and closer to completion without ever reaching it. The word for such a concept is an asymptote. Reality is asymptotic. We can get closer and closer to reducing it, but we never will, for everything we find takes space, so it is reduced further.

And this is the perplexment with reality. Even though something gets smaller and smaller, it never ceases to take up space. Currently we perceive reality as linear, but it is asymptotic in nature. And so is the fault in a reductionist mindset. A reductionist mindset perceives reality as linear, able to being reduced, but that is impossible, since reality is asymptotic, not linear.

Male/Female Syndrome

2006-02-16T20:06:00.000-05:00

Over the last two days in biology class we have been learning about various genetic disorders. If note are those when X and Y chromosomes (the sex chromosomes that determine sex) do not segregate as they normally do. This nondisjunction can manifest itself in various ways. Turner Syndrome is when a person has only one X chromosome in their cells. Normally, females have two X's, and males have an X and a Y. Klinfelter's Syndrome is when someone has two X's and a Y. THe list goes on.

What I'm commenting on is the fact that we don't label XX or XY syndromes, but rather we call them normal. The normal sex chromosome arrangement is arranged in the same process (meiosis) that arranges the aforementioned genetic syndromes, so why do we not also have Male Syndrome and Female Syndrome alongside Klinfelter and Turner? The sex of zygotes are determined by near-random processes out of the hands of humans, and so are the processes that lead to chromosome nondisjunction, so why the difference?

Obviously, the answer lies in statistical probabilty. Males (XY) and females (XX) are statisitically probable, while trisomy is statistically improbable. Why then is statistical probability the variable that we utilize to define the norm? I'll throw in an answer that I just thought of (unlike many philobloggers are don't prepare my posts - I write and see where it takes me). Last week I read Claude-Levi Strauss's Myth and Meaning a short summary of some lectures he once gave. In it is pointed out that humans organize things into dualisms. There is only right and left, male or female, yes or no, justice or injustice, ad infinitum. I believe he atributes this to the distinction between the two lobes of the brain. The TWO lobes.

When processing sex humans are inclined to construct a dulaism for the concept. Since mostly observed (hence statistically probable) are XY's and XX's, we end up with male and female as a norm and all else sequestered as syndromatic. Hence, we have why there is no such thing as Male or Female Syndrome.

The Veil of Ignorance

2006-02-15T21:42:00.000-05:00

Recently, I've been arguing with someone about teh veil of ignorance. Since neither of us have a copy of A Theory of Justice handy, I'm posting here to see if anyone else can clear this up for me.

When one makes a decision, to act from behind the veil of ignorance, are they to shed their status in society, or remove themselves from society in total. I have been arguing that one is only to remove their status in society so that any decision could possibly affect them, thus guiding their decisions. Others claim that you remove yourself completely from society so that your decision is completely objective. I would counter this by saying that this conception of the veil of ignorance isn't true to Rawls, but rather to Rousseau. A decision maker completely withdrawn from where the decision is to be implemented is what the Law Giver does. Someone acting in the Veil of Ignorance on the other hand, although not completely detached, acts without knowledge of their own position because it allows them to walk in the shoes of everyone that their decision affects, becuase they would naturally speculate how the decision could affect them. They could be in any pair of shoes.

I'll give an example to clear it up. Eminent domain. If you detach yourself from your position in society you would be against eminent domain becuase you could be the one with the condemned land. But if you detached yourself entirely from the community you would probably be pro-eminent domain because you could only consider the benefits to the community but not consider the individual impact.

Which is it? Or maybe neither.

Saul Kripke

2006-01-29T20:44:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I read in the New York Times an article about Saul Kripke. The journalist characterized Kripke as the greatest living philosopher, but I've never heard of him. Have any of you? Is the article an understatement, an overstatement, or just right? What is his main thesis? Is he worth reading at an introductory level? Do let me know.

Horizontal Politics

2006-01-26T22:24:00.000-05:00

Although recently I have been reading multitudes of non-fiction (in fact I just completed Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and an introduction to the philosophy of political science is on the way from the library), my favorite books I suppose will never cease to be Tolkien's works. Today, thinking about all the different races that populate his lands, I superficially applied some philosophical thought to Middle-Earth. Mainly, I was pondering political workings, the social contract, and other political applications.
All of the philosophers that have worked in the political sphere have worked within a certain parameter: humans are the only rational beings capable of politics. However, in Tolkien's works different rational species copopulate the same land. Tolkien's political organizations compensate for this in two manners. First, the races do not live within the same sovereign borders. This eliminates horizontal as well as vertical hierarchies (can you even call them hierarchies if they are horizontal)? Secondly, political boundaries and actions are partially decided upon by lucid communication with the Gods, which aids in quelling disputes. These two aspects of Tolkien's organization make the organization of Middle-Earth politics like that of Earth: different states, representing different races, vying for power. Replace races with species, and you have Middle Earth.
However, what I wondered was how would horizontal integration into political organizations influence politics? Frankly, I don't believe that these sorts of organizations could exist peacefully. When humans bicker over different needs, desires, values, resources, etc., in communities, these differences are relics of culture. Cultures which all exist within the parameters of the human mind and body and so can be reconciled with the same mechanisms. However, when different physiology creates differences, they are inherent and can't be reconciled, but must be recognized and provided for. Therefore, horizontal coexistence is nota viable method of copopulation since conflicts cannot be peacefully resolved.

Moral\laroM/moraL\Larom

2006-01-15T16:53:00.000-05:00

Today I realized that in a day students (at least at my high school) are exposed to a new moral system that we are urged to embrace by our teachers. Health class is just a semester of statistics that attempt to scare students out of certain activities. Statistics and number lend themselves to a utilitarian system in which the number of dead people is what we measure. Social Studies and history classes take up the other end of the spectrum. In analyzing the wrongs of the past we are meant to soak up that we cannot use others as a means to an end: deontology. English literature follows another path. In studying the virtues and heroics of novel characters we soak up altruistic tendencies of characters. Science classes are mainly void of moral lessons. Gym class i mainly amoral, valuing the dominance of the fittest (in literal terms).
Some may say that this is a positive affect of school: it exposes students to various plausible value systems which they can choose from. However, this isn't what the teachers demonstrate. THe teachers all send the message that they agree on moral issues categorically. In other words, they believe more or less the same moral system. How then can they teach conflicting versions?
You can extrapolate implications galore from this analysis, but I just wanted to expose the contradiction more than hypothesize its harms (if they do exist). What do you think?

Baltimore Sun: Brothers Killed Driving Home From Wedding

2006-01-09T18:52:00.000-05:00

Brothers Killed Driving Home from Wedding

Two Carroll County brothers were killed when their speeding car jumped a guardrail and hit two trees as they returned from their sister's wedding early yesterday, police said.

David Speicher Booth, 22, who was driving, and Michael Lippincott Booth, 35, both of the 3400 block of Green Meadow Lane in Union Mills, were killed instantly.

Another passenger, Alyse I. Vanepps, 24, of Millville, Pa., was flown to Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, where she was in serious but stable condition, police said.

The accident, which occurred at 1:20 a.m., took place on a curving section of Halter Road in Union Mills, in a 35-mph zone.

The car, a 1998 Subaru Forester, slid along the guardrail for 40 feet before going over it, striking a ditch and then the trees, according to Cpl. Anthony Riley of the Maryland State Police.

The elder Booth was sitting on Vanepps' lap in the passenger seat at the time of the accident. They had been bringing wedding gifts home for their sister, Riley said.

Police said speed and driver error appeared to have caused the accident.

Police were continuing their investigation yesterday.

Death and Numbers

2006-01-09T18:48:00.000-05:00

On Friday I unfortuantely attended the funeral of my friend Dave Booth. Dave was killed in a car accident alongside his brother driving home from his sister's wedding. Dave was a counselor at camp from 2001 - 2005 and in addition was the counselor in Cabin 13 in 2002, when I was a camper. I really liked him. He was 22. I posted a local article following this one if your are interested.

Time after time I have heard that the tragedy in his death is his age. Again I see this as a quantification of something that should have a nebulous value. If youth implies value than one could say that tyrants are logical in forcing parents to kill themselves in order to spare the lives of their children. No!

A life should not be measured by the breaths it has taken. I wouldn't even call a brain dead person's existence a life. Life should not be measured! In its lack of quality lies its value. What would the Mona Lisa be if the cost of the paint used and the canvas was only adjusted for inflation? I suppose little. What too, would a life be if it was only identified by an equation adding oxygen and food? I do not know if or what signifies the value of life, but I know age is not it.

1 Year

2006-01-02T13:49:00.000-05:00

Today, the Pubescent Philosopher is more or less one year old. That is to say that the Earth was in the same place in space 365 days ago as it is today. The Pubescent Philosopher started out as a Xanga supplement to my boring everyday blog, and it quickly became a philosophical exposition. The Xanga began one year ago, so here it is one year later.

Analyzing all of the post, a recurring theme I see is the condemnation of just about everything that is. If something is pretty routine and widely accepted, I have gotten to it already or will eventually. In the past year I have also read many philosophical texts. They include:

Freedom Evolves - Daniel Dennett
Finite and Infinite Games -James P. Carse
Orientalism - Edward Said
Discipline and Punish - Michel Foucault
Rights From Wrongs - Alan Dershowitz

I have dabbled, but not completed some others. Currently I'm reading something not philosophical but a topic that I believe fits in - Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. The only book I gave up on was Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard. Maybe something got lost in translation, but I just didn't get it. It's funny; you can tell exactly how far I made it in the book because my feverish notes in the margins just abruptly end. I did get a 100 on an English project thanks to the book though.

I addition, besides for the books I already have in mind that I would like to read, I would like to immerse myself in non-European modern philosophy. The only non-European or American on my Amazon Wish List currently is Peter Singer, an Australian. I have read a little about African philosophy, but I'm not interested because it seems to only be about the continent, not philosophy applied to a wide range of things that comes from Africa. Any suggestions?

This time next year I hope to know where I will be studying philosophy in college. So until next year, blog on.

Friedman: A Shah with a Turban

2005-12-23T11:20:00.000-05:00

A Shah With a Turban

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: December 23, 2005

I'd like to thank Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for his observation that the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews was just a "myth." You just don't see world leaders expressing themselves so honestly anymore - not about the Holocaust, but about their own anti-Semitism and the real character of their regimes.

But since Iran's president has raised the subject of "myths," why stop with the Holocaust? Let's talk about Iran. Let's start with the myth that Iran is an Islamic "democracy" and that Ahmadinejad was democratically elected.

Sure he was elected - after all the Iranian reformers had their newspapers shut down, and parties and candidates were banned by the unelected clerics who really run the show in Tehran. Sorry, Ahmadinejad, they don't serve steak at vegetarian restaurants, they don't allow bikinis at nudist colonies, and they don't call it "democracy" when you ban your most popular rivals from running. So you are nothing more than a shah with a turban and a few crooked ballot boxes sprinkled around.

And speaking of myths, here's another one: that Iran's clerics have any popularity with the broad cross-section of Iranian youth.

This week, Ahmadinejad exposed that myth himself when he banned all Western music on Iran's state radio and TV stations. Whenever a regime has to ban certain music or literature, it means it has lost its hold on its young people. It can't trust them to make the "right" judgments on their own. The state must do it for them. If Ahmadinejad's vision for Iran is so compelling, why does he have to ban Beethoven and the Beatles?

And before we leave this subject of myths, let me add one more: the myth that anyone would pay a whit of attention to the bigoted slurs of Iran's president if his country were not sitting on a dome of oil and gas. Iran has an energetic and educated population, but the ability of Iranians to innovate and realize their full potential has been stunted ever since the Iranian revolution. Iran's most famous exports today, other than oil, are carpets and pistachios - the same as they were in 1979, when the clerics took over.

Sad. Iran's youth are as talented as young Indians and Chinese, but they have no chance to show it. Iran has been reduced to selling its natural resources to India and China - so Chinese and Indian youth can invent the future, while Iran's young people are trapped in the past.

No wonder Ahmadinejad, like some court jester, tries to distract young Iranians from his failings by bellowing anti-Jewish diatribes and banning rock 'n' roll.

What is a fact is the danger someone like Ahmadinejad would pose if his country developed a nuclear weapon. But that is where things are heading. Iran today has so much oil money to sprinkle around Europe, it doesn't worry for a second that the Europeans would ever impose real sanctions on Tehran for refusing to open its nuclear program.

"The West has lost its leverage," notes Gal Luft, an energy expert at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. Europe is addicted to Iran's oil and to Iran's purchases of European goods. At the same time, the Iranian regime has been very clever at petro-diplomacy.

After the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, "the Iranians knew they needed an insurance policy," Mr. Luft added, "So they did two things: they concentrated on developing a bomb and went out and struck gas deals with one-third of humanity - India and China," the world's two fastest-growing energy consumers. So it is highly unlikely that China would ever allow the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran.

The whole world seems to be getting bought off these days by oil. Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor, just became chairman of a Russian-German gas pipeline project - controlled by the Russian government - that he championed while in office. The man just stepped down as the leader of Germany and now he's working for the Russians! I guess Jack Abramoff was not available.

The word from the White House is that President Bush is trying to figure out a theme for his State of the Union speech and for his next three years. Mr. President, what more has to happen - how many more Katrinas, how much more reckless behavior by Iran, how many more allies bought off by petro-dollars - before you realize that there is only one thing to do for the next three years: lead America and the world in an all-out push to conserve energy, reduce dependence on oil and develop alternatives?

Because three more years of $60-a-barrel oil will undermine everything good in the world that the U.S. wants to do - and that's no myth.

Divestiture

2005-12-23T11:19:00.000-05:00

Today, I steer away from philosophy and into foreign affairs for this post. Thomas Friedman's op-ed this morning, A Shah with a Turban (posted after this), in the New York Times was about how President Bush and Europe is allowing Iran and its oil reserves to do anything they please. The United States is reluctant to impose sanctions in fear of East Asian repercussions (India and China receive the majority of Iran's oil), and Europe has similar qualms since the money Iran is invested throughout Europe. Friedman basically dare Bush to "do the right thing." Phat chance! You then might say that we are doomed - Iran will run rampant. I believe though that there is another way to influence Iran's actions.

My proposal doesn't come from the government, but from the private sector. In a word: divestiture. To end apartheid in South Africa companies (I believe that IBM spearheaded this assault) decreased their dealings with the nation, putting economic, not political pressure on the nation. And in light of this, apartheid was ended. Why don't companies around the world do the same thing for Iran? The private sector is private for a reason, so they are independent of the trepidation governments have over sanctioning Iran.

Thinking about this a little more, the effects of a divestment would most likely be coupled with the often discussed youth of Iran. They are the ones who enjoy the products of these companies, so they would have to spearhead the grassroots assault on their government for incurring the divestiture. Just maybe though, Iran's President's recent attempt to curb Western influence in his nation was truly an attempt to anesthetize the youth, making them immune to imminent divestiture.

We'll see.

The Unknown

2005-12-21T19:40:00.000-05:00

Since I was much younger (well before philosophical puberty) I always got a sense, from the basics I learned in school or the deductions I made in life that just about all processes followed, more or less the same rules. For instance, when you add more cool water to a warm substance is gets cooler. Also, when you add more numbers to a mean equation the average usually balances out. Even though they have nothing to do with each other - a mean equation and the temperature of water - they seem to follow the same general pattern (Do realize that of course I've always had great examples for this, but now that I need them I can't think of them).

**I just thought of a good one. Biochemically, as acidity increases in cells, molecules become more negatively charged and it becomes more difficult for the cell to easily tolerate them. For people, often when a food is more acidic it is less easy for the person to tolerate the food. Same concept, different applications.**

Over time, while I became more skeptical of things, I still held this truism with me, but I was reluctant to adopt it categorically. Then today. Philosophical Fragments made a post that posited something that I found very interesting: with more we know there is more to know. Frankly, I think this is wrong. Although it seems that with more technology new knowledge is opened for discovery, I believe that there is only so much to know. In the Platonic sense, the ideals have always existed, we just didn't know them. Therefore, with new knowledge we only find that old knowledge fits the same bill. In other words, the rules I discovered as a kid are not coincidences in there constant occurence, but the same rule (the same piece of knowledge) multiplied by the "discoveries" of the human mind. The discovery of the disgust by people in sour food shouldn't be analyzed physcologically so that new knowledge be found, or even that the discovery manifested new knowledge. It should be analyzed, alongside the anions, not biologically, but through the lense of the ideal of tolerability. It is not new knowledge, just a new application.

In the post Philosophical Fragments proposes two possibilities - that we are either nearing closer to the obtaining of all knowledge, or that knowledge spawns itself. I propose that neither are true. Knowledge now is just the reapplication of knowledge then. Quarks, photons, electrons aren't manifestations of the ideal of the building blocks of matter, just as arms, legs, and torsos aren't manifestations of the ideal of parts of the body. Rather, they both manifest reductionism. When we analyze this way, will we be able to escape the quicksand that burries us in new knowledge.

More Quantifying Rights

2005-12-21T19:30:00.000-05:00

Today Long Sunday made a post that compared death statistics in the Vietnam War and the different receptions different numbers had. Although long Sunday used some ratios, a concept I haven't used in my calculations on the impact of quantifying rights, I believe the main premise we both have is very similiar. If we quantify rights (in the case of Long Sunday's post, the right to life, arguably the ultimate right) then some people will be superior to others. In this case, Long Sunday shows how Americans quantifying rights during the Vietnam War lead to a superiority of the American human to that of the Vietnam human. I might express an equation for this eventually, but until then, ruminate upon what I just wrote.

Update:

Let:
x = value of the life of a person from one group
y = value of the life of a person from another group

if x = y then -10y / -1x = -100y / -10x

-10y / -1x ≠ -100y / -10x
therefore x ≠ y

Age in Retrospect

2005-12-17T23:24:00.000-05:00

Back in March I made two posts about age and measuring time. Basically, I was skeptical of designating legal distinctions based on years, but years do not correlate to the biological issues that the law addresses. This afternoon I thought of two more reasons why these distinctions aren't good.

First of all, what do we do with people who do not know how old they are? Some people do not know. Either records were lost, or records were not kept. I know people who have no record, and I'm sure that their are cultures who do not keep records to be kep or lost.If distinctions are based on age, there is then no way to distinguish these people.

But secondly, time is recorded differently in different places. I use a solar calendar; Jews a lunar calendar. How do we reconcile between the two accounts without staking superiority for one? If conceptions of time are molded by the recounting of time that a culture keeps, how is it even possible to have two different calendars work together?

"Now, knowing that there are other methods to measure our existence, why don't we use those. Why don't we celebrate our birthday every time the moon is situated as it was at the time of our biological birth? Why don't we celebrate every time Halley's Commet comes around? That is also a constant calculation. It is also a satellite of the Sun. To the former one might say (I might as well confess. I find my bio teacher to be a complete idiot, and when I say one I often mean what would that idiot say or what did she say) that every month (on the Jewish calendar), month or so on ours is too often to celebrate. The celebration would return too recent to the previous one for it to matter and be profound and meaningful. To the former one may say that it happens too few times in a lifetime, and thus would not allow for a celebration of one's biological birth. Both of these responses are innacurate, because our society excepts the solar calendar and has years as a method of measurement entrenched in our minds. Our conceptions of time, and subsuquently "recentness," a description of this are based on the Sun, so of course proposals of its rejection will be rejected. So, can we accept them all, at least theoretically as equally valid methods of classification?"
- Not a Call to Arms

If two conceptions come to compeet, the majority predisposition will most likely trump the minority. But maybe the minorities have a point, but the molding of the conceptions by the accounts won't allow for the consideration of this.

O what shall we do to make distinctions?

Lindgren: Generation Xbox

2005-12-17T13:40:00.000-05:00

Generation Xbox

Heidi Schumann for The New York
TimesPlayers of Counter-Strike during the World Cyber Games in New York this year.

Review by HUGO LINDGREN

Published: December 18, 2005

Here's a theory that may be neither original nor empirically defensible but feels true: The more fun an activity is, the less interesting it is to read about. War producces great journalism; water-skiing does not. Can you guess where video games fall on this spectrum? In the last few years, a great many words have been expended to report on this flourishing cultural phenomenon. Most accounts begin with a hyperactive presentation of statistics, which we will not rehearse here. This is all you need to know (and perhaps already do): Video games have grown into a huge business, outpacing the movie industry and bulldozing childhood as we knew it. We adults are not safe, either. Whether they admit it or not, you probably have friends who can be found awake at 2 a.m. disemboweling orcs, foiling terrorist plots and scooping up fumbles and running them into end zones.

---

SYNTHETIC WORLDS
The Business and Culture of Online Games.
By Edward Castronova.
332 pp. University of Chicago Press. $29.

SMARTBOMB
The Quest for Art, Entertainment and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution.
By Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby.
287 pp. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. $24.95.

---

It is the opinion of Edward Castronova, author of "Synthetic Worlds," that such electronic experiences are not merely a hedge against boredom but a profound indicator of where the entire world is heading. Online, off-line; reality, fantasy - these distinctions will cease to matter as more and more of us pass our time in virtual environments. Economies will evolve as we pay real money for virtual goods and vice versa. Conflicts that begin online will spill into the real world and back. Laws will be written to protect our newfound interests.

Castronova's vision has elements of both utopia and dystopia. But mostly he is bullish. Life in these alternative zones may eventually become so fulfilling, he contends, "that a fairly substantial exodus may loom in the distance." He means this, really. Like the Irish and Italians who left their native lands in the late 19th century to come to America, gamers could create a genuine human migration, away from the real and into the virtual. What will be real then?

The specific object of Castronova's scholarship is Mmorpgs, the inelegant acronym for "massively multiplayer online role-playing games," which can involve hundreds of thousands of players plugging in from all over the world. A disproportionate number of these games revolve around dwarfs, wizards, quests and magic lands, though the content is becoming ever more diverse. These days, there's a Mmorpg out there to suit the interests of just about anybody. One game, The Sims Online, merely simulates suburban life, and it is madly popular.

Castronova is an economist who teaches telecommunications at Indiana University, and among academic economists he is a bold contrarian, if only because he dares to take computer games seriously. My oh my does he take them seriously. In dense, lifeless prose, he sledgehammers away at his major themes, constantly pausing to review the material he's just covered and preview what is to come. His sweeping conclusions are intriguing - get ready for governments sending agents into virtual worlds and waging war with avatars! - but he's not a vivid enough writer to animate most of his futuristic abstractions.

In "Smartbomb," Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby try harder to entertain. They've organized their history of video games as a study of ambitious individuals, breaking it down into a series of breezy, magazinelike profiles of uneven quality. A lot of the original reporting seems to take place at gaming conventions, which is not where one imagines the really interesting stuff happens. But the stories are pretty good, even when they don't break new ground. Rereading the legend of Nolan Bushnell and the founding of Atari is like hearing a bar band play a spirited "Twist and Shout" - enjoyable, but no additional points for Degree of Difficulty.

In two spots, though, Chaplin and Ruby really score. In their chapter on Mmorpgs, they sensitively profile David Reber, a 30-year-old Californian who spends every free moment chained to his computer, acting out a series of intense fantasy existences that provide him with the companionship and sense of achievement missing in his real life. Just as Castronova would predict, Reber withdraws from the real world as his fantasy life deepens - he has lapses at work and when Chaplin and Ruby last check in with him, he's moved back in with his mother.

The other winning portrait in "Smartbomb" is of Will Wright, the creator of SimCity, as well as its offshoot The Sims, and a new simulation called Spore in which players guide a new creature from its biological origin onward. In an industry that mimics Hollywood's craven predilection for cheap, gory theatrics, Wright stands apart as a humble philosopher in love with the potential of games to expand the human experience. Though Chaplin and Ruby don't have much to say themselves about the significance of video games, they wisely hand matters over to Wright, who foresees a future that might just keep us all staying up past 2 a.m. "I think one thing that's unique about video games is not only that they can respond to you but down the road they'll be able to adapt themselves to you. They'll learn your desires," he says. "It might just be that games become deeply personal artifacts - more like dreams."

Implosion

2005-12-17T13:35:00.000-05:00

MH's comment earlier in the week on Baudrillard resources has sparked my interest in Baudrillard again. This morning the New York Times printed an article in the book review section that I believe summarizes Baudrillard's theory of implosion without every mentioning his name. The article follows this post in full.

The article is about online role playing games, that consume the lives of teenagers and adults alike in simulated worlds, taking on the role of simulated creatures and people. Consult this Wikipedia entry to see some of the effects that this these RPGs have on people. They become so enthralled by the games that they will spend extra money than that they spent on the game to auction items in the game, as well as services, bribes, or tribute to other players. One player even went so far as to kill another player (physically, not virtually) over an in-game dispute. Obviously, the line between the real and the virtual is at least blurred in the vision of avid players.

This, I believe is an example of Baudrillard's implosion. People can't distinguish between the virtual and the real, so therefore elements of the real permeate into the virtual, and visa versa. The lives of people are run by the lives of non-people. Their characters dictate themselves - not only financially. When one bank account is related to their success or lack os success in an rpg I see nothing other than implosion.

Any thoughts on why this is a bad thing, not just an ineresting observation?

Minority Magnification

2005-12-16T23:58:00.000-05:00

Why do so many of the world's problems stemp from the existence from so few of the world's people? I speak of minorities, and their prescence within states dominated by others. Why is it that Hittler worried about the Jews when there weren't as abundant as others? Why do the Turks fret over Kurds and an impending state for them? Why did the United States war with Native Americans? Why is it that the focus of a state on its constituents is not proportionate to the percentages of the constituent-groups? Basically, why are minorities magnified?

To start, I give you a less extreme example. This year my school has no vacation in February. When we asked a teacher why she explained that she thought it may be because Jewish holidays took up time in the middle of the week. Pressing it further, she then explained how teachers in our school had in their contracts that they are not to start school before Labor Day. She knew the real reason, but she used Jewish holidays instead. Why would she do this? Obviously, as she is a teacher, she doesn't want to blame herself. But why does she then magnify the importance of a minority?

Obviously this has similiarities to other occurences in world history. Hittler wouldn't blame Germans for Germany's problems so he blamed a minority.Gays no longer have the majority of AIDS cases but they are still blamed and ostracised for the disease. I'm learning as I'm writing, and the attern I'm finding is obvious. When a majority is at fault (or a similiar term) they blame a minority to exonerate themselves. I guess then my question of why are minorities magnified the same as why do people attempt to deny culpability?

I guess, this is to avoid the implications the culpability will have. If a political group is the root of a recession, if they blame themselves they won't get elected again, so they blame a minority. The ostracization of AIDS is not desireable, so the majority dump the stigma on gays.

The significance of minorities is magnified so that majorities can exonerate themselves of culpability and thus avoid the punishments society imposes for the faults they have commited. And here I (believe) I expose a paradox of society - The standards of society condemn from the start some not to fulfill them (even if they really do and it is the actual creators of the standards who are the perpetrators).

Any thoughts?

Simulacra

2005-12-08T22:16:00.000-05:00

A simulacrum (pl. simulacra) is a copy, reprsetation, simulation, what have you, of something that does not exist. In the little philosophy I have dabbled in, I have been introduced to this concept in Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, as well as a few discussion with my debate coach (who mentioned Baudrillard) and debate teammates.

Where am I going with this? If you saw the latest episode of CSI (the original) that ended just 20 minutes ago here on the East Coast (snow storm impending and school is effectively cancelled, so there will probably be a post from me to curb boredom and procrastinate, avoiding the homework I have to do over the weekend) you would know. Tonight's CSI was the story of a mother who killed her two-year old son after being traumatized to the extent of delerium by the death of her husband in war. However, she refuses to accept his death, and she fabricates his entire existence. She made his finger paintings and used Photoshop to create family photos. She bought new clothes for him on a regular basis. She even found another boy that she thought was her own (hence sparking the kidnapping investigation that the show was based on).

I see this as none other than a simulacrum. The actual did once exist. She used to have a son. Tragically (and at his mother's hand) he died. She then went about fabricating his life and making the entire world belive he existed, without him actually being real. A life was simulated, without the original anymore existing. Recall the definition of simulacrum I presented at the beginning of the post, and you will recognize what I recognized. Her son's "life" after his death was a simulacrum.

After I wrote that last paragraph, I was about to publish the post, but I realized that it was shorter than I wanted it to be, so I pondered for a while what more I could add. In the end now I realize that this is just The Pubescent Philosopher. The whole point of this blog is that I do not have more to add; I am still developing. That is why I enable posting from all entities on almost every post. Development must be augmented by something, and those read this and comment about it is one method for this augmentation.

El Mortérito

2005-12-05T20:45:00.000-05:00

Many of my English teachers have exclaimed that it is a great tragedy that students are not even remotely introduced to grammar until they start studying a foreign language, usually in their middle school. For me, I was in my first year of middle school (6th grade) when I first was introduced to Spanish. Over time I became aware of different tenses, and how tenses were utilized in the English langauge, and how they differed from their counterparts in Spanish.

In 7th grade, two things important to this post occured. First, I took Spanish every day rather than every other day, and secondly, my Grandfather died. In writing about him and talking about himwith others I felt myself at a loss for words. It wasn't that there weren't adjectives that propoerly described him, it was that I couldn't decide what tense to describe him in. Should it be the imperfect tense (he used to be, he would) (Spanish: imperfecto), the past tense (he was, he did x) (Spanish: pretérito), or should I still use the present tense (he is, he does x) (Spanish: presente)? This wasn't a latent qualm I struggled with, but I was able to conciously grapple with it because of my exposure to different tenses I had in Spanish class.

Soon it became apparent to me that a new tense was necessary that is used exclusively to describe that which is now dead, but once alive. However, I conceived it as a Spanish tense, not in English, because I was more adept to the workings of verbs in Spanish, due to my exposure to it. I called it el mortérito. El mortérito is necessary because things are preserved perfectly in death. They retain the state they had before they died. Personalities do not alter in death so the past or imperfect tense is not effective, but the descriptions are not expressed anymore so the present tense is not sufficient either.

I never actually sat down and made el mortérito. The verb endings and irregular verbs are just as much a mystery to you as they are a mystery to me. El mortérito is only important in the concept it portrays, not in its unadopted usage. Every time I mis-characterize something or someone dead with a flawed past or imperfect verb, personally I feel fulfilled, because I know that at least I know what I really mean about that thing or person (especially my Grandfather).

Addendum:
I forgot to insert this into the original post. I'm aware that in many languages you address different people different ways. For instance, in Spanish someone you are acquainted with on a casual basis is addressed differently from someone you don't know, just met, or have a formal relationship with. Japanese has a similiar system, in which different people in their feudal hierarchy are addressed differently. Obviously the emperor has an exclusive verb ending, while samurais must have one that they are all addressed with.

Quite possibly, a culture with a history of ancestor reverance may have a verb tense or some linguistic structure at least similiar to el mortérito I am proposing. My question: Is anyone aware of any other languages that have different structures from the English one I am familiar with for adressing different people in different states of being?

Essig: Clemency for a Crip?

2005-12-02T17:02:00.000-05:00

Clemency for a Crip?

By MARK ESSIG

Published: December 2, 2005
Long Beach, Calif.

MERCY" is not the first word that comes to mind in reference to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. But he now has an opportunity to change that. To do so, however, he'll have to buck a historic shift in America away from the granting of executive clemency.

A judge has set Dec. 13 as the execution date for Stanley Williams, the co-founder of the Crips street gang, who was convicted on four counts of murder in 1981. During his years in prison, Mr. Williams, who is known as Tookie, has become a voice against violence, writing children's books that urge youngsters to avoid gangs. His judicial appeals have been exhausted, and now Mr. Williams's only hope appears to lie in a grant of executive clemency by the governor.

In legal terms, clemency can refer to both outright pardons and commutations to lesser sentences. The practice is as old as capital punishment itself. Pilate, after a voice vote of the gathered throng, granted clemency to Barabbas rather than to Jesus.

In the United States, a request for clemency shifts a case from the judicial to the executive branch. In the process, the question changes from whether the prisoner is guilty to whether he deserves mercy. In our colonial period and the early days of the republic, roughly half of those sentenced to death were pardoned. The appeals court system at this time was rudimentary at best, and clemency was about the only way to correct errors at trial or to consider facts that came to light after conviction - and thus to keep the innocent from being hanged.

Often, however, clemency was granted to the guilty as well as the innocent. Before the rise of the penitentiary system in the 19th century, the death penalty was virtually the only punishment available for serious crimes, and it was applied broadly, for rape and robbery as well as for murder. When two young men in 18th-century North Carolina were condemned for counterfeiting, the governor issued a pardon because their crimes could be attributed to "the unsteadiness of youth." The death penalty painted justice with a broad brush, and clemency offered a way to consider finer details.

Mercy was also used to make a moral point. In 1731, two condemned burglars in Philadelphia were hoisted onto a cart that also contained their coffins and paraded through the streets to the gallows, where nooses were placed around their necks. Only then did the sheriff read the men's pardon, which he had carried with him from the jail.

The authorities in many cities performed this sort of theater of the last-minute pardon as a way to dramatize both the severity of the law and its mercy. (This sort of thing became so common that prisoners came to expect it, and some were surprised when the gallows trap opened and plunged them into the void.)

By the 20th century, clemency had become less stagy but no less common. Records show that from 1909 to 1954, North Carolina governors, for example, granted clemency in a third of all death sentences. Florida commuted a quarter of its death sentences from 1924 to 1966.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the practice has nearly disappeared. There have been 999 executions, leaving 3,400 prisoners remaining on death row, and yet only 230 people have been granted clemency on humanitarian grounds (171 of them as part of the blanket grant of clemency in 2003 in Illinois stemming from flaws in the state's judicial system).

What happened? The Supreme Court got involved, as did politics. In its 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court rendered every state's capital punishment law unconstitutional, leading to a transformation of the death penalty. Once a matter left largely to the states, the death penalty became deeply enmeshed in constitutional law, and long appeals became standard.

In some ways, the system improved: cases once appropriate only for clemency - condemnations of the obviously innocent, minors or the mentally incapacitated - were now usually handled by the courts.

But another, less benign cause for clemency's decline has been political. In the 1970's - spurred by voters' fears of rising crime rates - politicians discovered an advantage in appearing to be tough on crime. That is why the decision by Virginia's governor, Mark Warner, to grant clemency to a convicted murderer on Tuesday, on the grounds of evidence that had disappeared, made national headlines.

If Governor Schwarzenegger were to allow this prisoner to go to his death, he would suffer little political damage. Tookie Williams fits no one's definition of innocence. He was convicted of murdering four people - a 7-Eleven clerk shot twice in the back during a holdup, and three members of a family during a robbery at a motel - and as a leader of the Crips he set in motion a criminal enterprise that destroyed countless lives.

But his notoriety, his former viciousness, is precisely what gives him credibility in his current work - persuading young people to avoid gangs. His claim for clemency rests on the good work he is performing in prison, and that is a decision that the court system is not designed to handle. Rather, it is up to Governor Schwarzenegger to decide whether allowing Mr. Williams to continue living behind bars might better serve society's interests than sending him to his death - that is, to decide whether that older conception of clemency still has a place in our culture. (As he weighs this decision, Mr. Schwarzenegger might consider that the last California governor to grant clemency to a death-row inmate was his political hero, Ronald Reagan.)

Commuting Mr. Williams's sentence would almost certainly bring charges that Mr. Schwarzenegger is soft on crime. But the governor has prided himself on being a political maverick. What better way to confirm his strength than by revealing the quality of his mercy?

Mark Essig is the author of "Edison and the Electric Chair."

The Death Penalty as a Political Issue

2005-12-02T16:07:00.000-05:00

This week, from Singapore to New York, the death penalty has been a hot topic. When I think about the death penalty I think of it as a moral issue. Is it ever right to kill someone? The nature od this week's news is odd in that this is not the fundamental principle being questioned. Rather, the death penalty was being scrutinized from a political perspective.

The first event this week that hinted to the death penalty was the killing of an on-duty New York City Policeman. In New York State the worst crime that you can commit is just that, and the death penalty is often reserved for the people who commit just such crimes. Interestingly though, the Governor of New York, George Pataki, is in favor of the death penalty and would endorse its use on cop killers, while the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, is not in favor of the practice because sees hints of discrimination in its use. Not ony has the use of the death penalty not been morally examined this week, but Bloomberg's opposition of it does not focus on the morality of the practice, but the politics of its implementation.

As a side note, I do not believe that the death penalty will ever be used again in New York State. It is reserved for cop killers. Most cop killings occur in New York City. The recent reelection of Bloomberg, someone who opposes the death penalty, shows that the people of New York City do not endorse the practice. Even though the imposition of the death penalty is a state conviction, the court will most likely be in the city, the judge will most likely live in the city, the jury will most likely be from the city, the family of the killed cop is probably from the city (I know the cop was Jamaican), and Pataki, if necessary, will most likely sucumb to the will of The City.

Shortly after those events in New York on Monday, the attention shifted to Virginia. On Tuesday the Governor of Virginia, Mark Warner, commuted the sentence of a convicted murder from death to life in prison. This didn't exactly make headlines because it was a granting of clemency. It was important because the execution would have been the thousandth since the Supreme Court effectively reinstated the death penalty as a practice in 1976. The explicit reasoning behind the commutation was that evidence pertaining to the conviction may have been lost. The latent reasoning behind it, some speculated, was that Warner didn't want to hurt his chances to possibly run for the Presidency in 2008. In other words, people didn't morally scrutinize the clemency, they politically scrutinized it.

Wednesday was a particularly slow day on my death penalty radar for the week. Thursday is another story. Shift to the other side of the world, namely Singapore-Australia. A man, convicted of smuggling drugs into Singapore was sentenced to and hanged on Friday (it came to the headlines in the United States on Thursday) for the act. The major reason this became a big deal though was that the man was not from Singapore, but Australia. Although Australia appealed for clemency on the same moral grounds that they abolished the death penalty for, it was portrayed as a political matter. The international aspect of the execution was magnified, along with the involvement that Prime Minsiters of both the countries. In addition, practices in both countries were compared and contrasted, and the legal dispensations that Singapore made to the family of the convicted was reported. Not once was I exposed to the actual moral principles behind Australia's denouncement of the practice. The execution played out completely in the political arena.

Then came Friday. First of all, the 1000th execution of the man who was originally going to be the 1001th before clemency was issued in Virginia took place in North Carolina. Of course this was only reported because of its political implications as the, I guess you could say 1000.5 execution in the country. Secondly, President Bush came out in favor of the death penalty on moral grounds, saying that it keep people safer. That was a shocker - President Bush making a warranted moral argument. Nevertheless, it happened, but notably only in response to a political event, not as a general statement. Thirdly, an article was printed in the New York Times about clemency (the article is posted in full following this post). The author, Mark Essig, exclusively weighed the political implications of allowing or commuting the execution of a gang founder, not even scathing the top of the moral issues at large in the controversy over the death penalty. In addition, he mentions the clemency in Virginia, a political event.

I can't think of reasons why the death penalty has been portrayed in this manner, or implications of it, but I can say that it surprised me that it was portrayed in this manner.

Just to comment, I didn't use capital punishment becuase I believe euphemisms disguise meaning and thus hinder comprehension.

Blogg-errrrrrrrr

2005-12-01T22:15:00.000-05:00

I wonder if anyone else has the problems with formatting that I have with Blogger.

In my most recent post on the quantification of rights I can't get the fonts and sizes correct even though I have redone them numerous times (this is a problem I have had before).

Also, in my most recent post - my ongoing outline of Discipline and Punish - all of the indentations that I made were not retained when I posted my work. This makes the outline much harder to read, and I might take it off the blog eventually.

There, I just wanted to vent.

Barbieri: Your Mother Would Know

2005-11-29T19:18:00.000-05:00

Your Mother Would Know

By CAROL BARBIERI

Published: November 29, 2005

Atlantic Highlands, N.J.

IT'S been 14 years, but I can still feel the terror that gripped me when our son's cardiologist asked my husband and me if Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome ran in our family.

Getting my husband's family medical history was as simple as calling his mother. But I'm adopted: I didn't know who in my family may have had this heart condition, and it wouldn't be easy to find out.

And yet, my medical history was crucial to treating our son. If the syndrome did not run in my family, the doctor counseled that my son would run an elevated risk of sudden death, and she'd be inclined to perform the corrective operation right away. But its rate of success at the time was just 50 percent. She was hoping she could postpone the operation for a few years until surgeons grew better at the procedure. The difference could mean life or death.

It had never before occurred to me that because I had no medical history, my son didn't have one either. I'd never needed a medical history. Neither did our son, until he turned 14 and began having symptoms.

As a New Jersey adoptee, I could access "nonidentifying" information about my biological family, including the vague medical histories available at the time of my relinquishment in the 1950's. But for the facts that might save my son's life, I would need to talk to blood relatives. EKG's weren't around back then; if a relative of mine had died suddenly, the doctors couldn't have known that it was from Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. The doctor told me that the condition "skips around in families," and that, if my son had it, it was very likely that a sibling of mine had it, too.

But I didn't know if I had any family members. I didn't even know my real last name. My birth records were collecting dust in a vault somewhere. New Jersey law forbade me or my son from opening them. If I waited for court orders and hearings, the information might come too late. For the first time, I felt inadequate as a mother. Simply because my son was the child of an adoptee, his rights were being denied.

And so I set out to find my family any way I could. I lied, stole and broke a few laws. I assumed different identities. I called agencies pretending I was someone else. I got people to do things for me that would have gotten them fired if their superiors ever found out. I slipped records in and out of police departments. I copied confidential records and no one but the official who looked the other way was the wiser. I didn't care if I got arrested. All I cared about was keeping my son alive.

I didn't care about protecting the identity of my birth parents. What was their privacy compared to their grandson's life? My adoptive parents' feelings, which had always been important to me, now dropped to the bottom of my list of priorities, too. I no longer cared that they never wanted me to search for my birth parents. Keeping my son alive was infinitely more important to me.

I was a victim of a system that was set up to protect everyone in the adoption triangle except me. And that system was now making my son a victim too.

I found my birth family the hard way and learned that I had five siblings. Luckily, all of them are healthy. But I learned that after my son's ordeal, a second cousin of mine died of a heart condition that the doctors think was Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. Sadly, if he had known about us, we could have helped to save his life.

Our son is doing fine now, after three heart operations. The successful one came two years into the search for my family, in response to an acute episode that required immediate treatment. By that time, the procedure was better studied than it had been at the condition's onset. Still, it was a difficult time for us - one that would have been much easier if I'd had access to my birth records.

Both birth mothers' and adoptive parents' rights should be protected. But what about an adoptee's rights? We were too young to voice our opinions and desires at the time of our surrender, so our decisions were made for us.

But we're not children anymore. We should have the same right as any other adult to make decisions. And now the New Jersey Assembly has the power to help us. New Jersey Bill A3237, which would allow adopted adults the right to obtain copies of their original birth certificates, has been waiting a year to be heard by an Assembly committee; the Senate has already passed an identical bill. The passing of this bill would give rights not only to adoptees, but to their children, too.

Carol Barbieri is a songwriter and musician.

The Quantification of Rights Continued

2005-11-29T19:09:00.000-05:00

On October 25th I posted about quantifying rights - notably when rights are said to be equal and the implications this has. Today I further. In the New York Times this morning there was an op-ed contribution by Carol Barbieri titled Your Mother Would Know. Posted following this is the article in its entirety, so I will only summarize it here. Basically, Mrs. Barbieri concludes that the right to privacy of some is hindering the rights of others to life, so legislation should be passed, trumping privacy in certain circumstances.

A basic premise of this argument is that some rights are greater than others. This is extremely similar to premises in hypothetical scenarios I proposed in my first post on the quantification of rights. The main difference is that the first scenario I gave was an equation - a man exclaimed that his rights were equal to another man's rights. The real experiences outlined in this article are even more profound because they express in inequality. The author very clearly argues that some rights are greater than others. Values are clearly being assigned to rights here and the exact implications that I predicted in my last post were expressed in the article:

"I didn't care about protecting the identity of my birth parents. What was their privacy compared to their grandson's life? My adoptive parents' feelings, which had always been important to me, now dropped to the bottom of my list of priorities, too. I no longer cared that they never wanted me to search for my birth parents. Keeping my son alive was infinitely more important to me."

Purposefully absent from my first post was an alternative, or even a reason why an alternative was necessary to the current uses of rights. Reading this article, I am inclined to side with Barbieri. Maybe the answer to my qualms lies in reexamining rights as a utilitarian rather than a deontological concept. After I write that sentence, I realize that someone has already done that: John Stuart Mill (JSM). However, I do recall that when I first heard about his theories, I found them odd as I had never thought of rights in that manner. Obviously the reexamination that JSM proposed wasn't implemented, and maybe they should be.

The quantification of rights is not a phenomenon limited to local or state issues. Evidence of it is in recent Supreme Court decisions. In the 2004 Supreme Court case Rasul v. Bush Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote about an "ascending scale of rights." This was a stari decisis reference going back to 1950 when Justice Robert Jackson wrote:

"The alien, to whom the United States has been traditionally hospitable, has been accorded a generous and ascending scale of rights as he increases his identity with our society. Mere lawful presence in the country creates an implied assurance of safe conduct and gives him certain rights; they become more extensive and secure when he makes preliminary declaration of intention to become a citizen, and they expand to those of full citizenship upon naturalization. During his probationary residence, [*771] this Court has steadily enlarged his right against Executive deportation except upon full and fair hearing. The Japanese Immigrant Case, 189 U.S. 86; Low Wah Suey v. Backus, 225 U.S. 460; Tisi v. Tod, 264 U.S. 131; United States ex rel. Vajtauer v. Comm'r, 273 U.S. 103; Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135; Wong Yang Sung v. McGrath, 339 U.S. 33. And, at least since 1886, we have extended to the person and property of resident aliens important constitutional guaranties -- such as the due process of law of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356."

What is important and implied by this paragraph is that there are rights that one gets as soon as they step on United States soil, because they are universal, fundamental, inalienable, human rights that transcend borders simply because of their value. Then there are subordinate rights that are assesed based on the condition of the alien within the States. This establishes a clear hierarchy of rights valuing certain rights above others.

Again we then return to the question I originally posed. Isn't assigning value to rights contradictory to rights? Aren't rights only valuable insofar as they are valueless? The paradox that these Supreme Court decisions establish, as well as the senario Barbieri illustrates and the one I fabricate in my original post is the reason that rights need to be reworked.

I received the Supreme Court examples from Alan Dershowitz's Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origin of Rights. If you are interested in reading a book quickly and not getting confused when reading read that book.

Family Size

2005-11-28T21:37:00.000-05:00

This previous long weekend I attended a family reunion. It was for all Morgensterns (that's one spelling of a few). Morgenstern's are my patriarchal grandmother's mother's relatives. Originally there were 19 first cousins in my grandmother's generation.

This is contrasted with my mother's family. I don't believe that anyone that is a second cousin of mine had more than two children or siblings or what not. The distinctions I am trying to promote here is that my dad's family is big and my mom's is smaller because my dad's family has more kids than my mom's. The following is going to baffle you: WHY?

My preliminary attempt to answer this (I'll admit I went no further either) listed a few similiarities and differences between the two families, as well as some unknowns that could be factors in family size.

Similiarly, I found religion. Both families are Jewish. Differing though is their origins. My father's family came from a part of Europe that had border shifts every week. You could call it the Austro-Polish Ukraine. My mother's family comes from two areas - Palestine (straight out of the Old City some of them) and Russia (Kiev to be exact I think). Unknown is their wealth compared to each other.

To answer this question I have I may take a look at a few resources. The Freakonomics blog recently posted a link to a collection to research on families. Definitely worth a look. I'm also wondering if David Ricardo's Iron Law of Wages applies to my inquiry. As I inquire, what do you think?

Matronymic Nomenclature Revisited

2005-11-09T18:35:00.000-05:00

First of all a clarification.
Matrynomic is names based on mothers, and patrynomic is names on the father.

Pondering mtDNA further and my proposition of matrynomic nomenclature, I happened upon a flaw in my system. I proposed to revamp a lineage tracking system that is falsely based solely on the father. However, adopted children are often happily given the names of their married parents, no matter the name of the parents. Adopted children have no common lineage, so this then disproves my assumption that nomenclature is a function of lineage. Therefore, I see no harm in revisiting my original proposal.

Jon Roe?

2005-11-07T18:52:00.000-05:00

Take a name. Jon Doe. Jon was the son of John Doe and Jane Roe. Where I live, even if I didn't know his family, I can assume that his father was Doe, because usually a male's surname is adopted from their father. Sure, I can theorize why this is. One can't deny that at the very least males at least thought that they were in charge and superior. Therefore, their prestige was important. Their masculinity had to be preserved. Therefore, their sons took their name.

The fault in this system is that it is not an accurate portrayal of lineage. A male is just as much a product of his mother as he is a product of his father. Every generation is a hybrid of their parents (girls and boys alike), not a pure continuation of his father. Therefore, no one name can be continued forever. That is, if the names are patriarchically designated.

Matriarchal designations are a different story. Bear in mind, this story goes way back. A long time ago there were these bacteria that resembled present day mitochondrion (yes, the energy conversion organelles in our cells). They came complete with their own membranes, ribsomes for protein synthesis, and even DNA (mtDNA is its short designation) (which is circular - standard for bacteria, while animal DNA is linear). These mitochondrion crawled into another cell, but rather than having a parasitic relationship, symbiosm commenced. So, these bacterias stuck around. Over time, they became completely integrated into the cells which eventually developed into the modern human. However, their unique DNA still remains.

The impact of this DNA is what makes a matriarchal nomenclature practical for tracing lineage. When a sperm fetilizes an egg, the head of the sperm, containing the nucleus which has the haploid genetic code travels into the egg towards the egg's haploid DNA, and together the two genetic codes recombine. However, the mitchondria of the sperm never recombines with any material in the egg. Therefore, the mtDNA in all generations is identical to the mother's barring any mutations, since after fertilization only the mother's mtDNA remains in the new individual.

A matriarchal nomenclature is thus most practical becuase it allows for an accurate tracing of lineage. Passing on the name of a male is futile because DNA is recombining generation after generation, making male lineage a fragmented and hard to trace process without any biologically sound function. However, mtDNA is traceable and slow to change. Therefore, since lineage is best traced from mother to mother, names would be most effective in the same manner.

Back to Jon Doe. Maybe his name should have been Jon Roe, since his mtDNA, the only consistent lineage in him is traceable only to his mother, not to his father.

The English Language - A Power Structure?

2005-11-02T22:11:00.000-05:00

Previously I have had success on this blog posing questions about Foucault. Maybe this will be the same. Tell me if I'm right, wrong, or if my ideas just need some qualifications.

The only reason that we speak and write English as we know it to be, standardized, is because that is how certain people in power positions want it.

First, teachers. Teachers evaluate one's usage of the language. If you don't use it how they want you to, then you are penalized, thus forcing the same usage in everyone they have the ability to penalize.

Second, (and most importantly), society. English society, for all of those cool linguistic reasons, developed a language. That language then diffused through relocation to The Colonies. Becuase the people in charge of The Colonies spoke this language, they enforced their ability to create a power structure to ostracize, reject, what have you anyone who didn't use their conception of communication. This persists. That is why all the teachers have the same expectations of the language. Basically, they are at the ground level, the GIs of the power structure.

Why is that whenver I write a post I always have one of my teachers in mind?

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In Retrospect

2005-11-02T21:57:00.000-05:00

Currently am I reading Freedom Evolves, and in it the author puts forth a lot of ideas that I have written in this very blog. However, I think that a retrospective commentary to understanding the post I am referencing (and many others are applicable as well) is necessary.

On March 14th's Your Personal Predestination (borrowing from the book) that our actions are predetermined. I said that we have no control over the actions that we take. That genetics, and the world around us dictates our every decision. Obviously, our lack of control is a ludicrous idea. My exagerating of it was an attempt to prove its existence, even in the midst of determinism. The book presents a mechanism for the will that we posses.

Many other of my posts can be taken similiarly. I didn't actually mean what I wrote in Why King George the III Loves Decaf, but rather it was an attempt for me to dabble in post-colonialism.

In the future from me expect more on quantifying rights (I doubt I will ever propose an alternative, but I do want to expand the idea), and maybe some more stuff about determinism if I ever finish this book (going slowly I admit). With debate now in full swing ideas fly and I always grab some, so things may come more fluidly.

The Quantification of Rights

2005-10-25T16:45:00.000-05:00

If x = y, then x + y > [x,y]
Therefore - [x,y] < x + y

Someone finds rights valuable insofar as they are inalienable. They entitle someone, universally, to something. Therefore, they transcend everything as they are omnipresent, making them paramountly valuable. Rights do not need a quantity because they are always superior.

However, rights are often quantified, as in saying that one's rights are equal to another persons', or that one's rights in something trumps another person's right in something else (arguably less valuable, thus being quantified). In these situations, rights become hierarchichized. Hierarchies, identifiable by their quantified values, are contradictory to the concept of rights, because they allow for the prioritization so that the highest values of the hierarchy can be achieved. Rights become alienable in this quantified conception of them.

Therefore, quantifying rights subtracts the aspect of them that makes them valuable: their inalienability. Their value itself lies in their lack of quantity, because it makes it so they can't be outweighed or trumped, so quantifying them decreases the importance that they hold.

What is Democracy?

2005-10-22T21:32:00.000-05:00

Here is the question I pose and wish to answer:

Is democracy a system of decision making in which the people affected by the decsions make the decisions in order for their will to be portrayed in the decision, or is it a system of decision making in which the people affected by the decisions make the decisions?

I know that there is a difference between democracy, liberal democracy, and illiberal democracy. I just don't know where the delineate between the first two. Obviously, the reason that the Greeks invented such a system is in order for the will of the people affected by the decisions to be portrayed in the decisions. However, this doesn't mean that it is, or ever was part of the definition. Over more than 2,000 years definitions change. Could it be for the system to work properly the will of the people must be portrayed, so it mustn't be included in the defintion in the first place?

Inequality through Equality

2005-10-22T21:23:00.000-05:00

Usually I withold comment on a subject if there is a breadth of work in the area and I have not dabbled in it. Included is queer and feminist theory. However, in terms of feminism I feel that I do have a unique expirience level in the area, and so I present this short piece to express some observations and conclusions I have made.

I referee youth soccer. Some games are girl games. Some are boys games, and some are co-ed. IIn addition, I have a gym class every other day that is co-ed.

In co-ed soccer, the interaction between the boys and girls changes with age. At the beginning, although more often tah not the boys are more skilled than the girls, this does not hinder participation on the part of the girls. This is most likely due to the lack of understanding from either the boys or the girls that by getting the ball to the guys their chances of scoring will increase. However, as they get older this changes. As they realize this, the job of the female on a co-ed team becomes to ge the ball to a male. This has a few impacts. Of course it entrenches male superiority which isn't necessarily factual, but based on stereotypes and past expirience, but worse it stunts any fostering of female skills that the sport could bring.

A common practice in sports is to allow the most skilled girls play on boys teams. This, also I believe is detrimental. The girls are held to a higher standard - that of the boys. Should standards be equal in co-ed sports. Is it co-ed? It entrenches the beliefs that boys are better than girls by saying that girls can play on boys teams, but boys cannot play on girls teams.

Then there are the gym classes where gym teachers make it a rule that passes must be made to girls, but it is not mutually true. What ensues one girl called 'reverse descrimination.' In attempts for equality it forces the girls to work harder, because they, unlike the boys, are always necessary for team success. In addition, it justifies the belief that boys will always marginalize the girls, by the fact that the rule is not mutual. This is not universally true. In actuality, it leaves those boys who have skills similiar to those of the girls left out because they are passed over for that final pass for the girls who are open, because the girl is ecessary but the boy is not.

Lastly, something that bothers me may sound a bit sexist, but it is probably the result of thousands of years of accepted opression. When girls do have some sort of equality, they often complain when they get it.Tackle a girl on the opposite team, and they complain, claiming fragility. I'm sure that the Amazon Women disprove this fragility bs. They seem to want to be held to a distinct standard, in which they are extended equality but don't want to accept it in full. Again, is this fair?

Yes, I know, this is very rough, but I present what I've been thinking.

Panic Calculus

2005-10-22T21:17:00.000-05:00

In the media I often hear governmental officials saying that they can't release information about potential risks to the people (often terrorist related) as they may cause a mass panic that could kill more people than the actual event (if it is not prevented, as prevention is the main aspect of most of these shows/movies). My theory: This is a fabricated calculus used the justify the government witholding information.

Here's the logic - A nuke attack could kill a whole lot of people. Tell the media, and everyone hops in a car and gets out of their. Sure, looting would run rampant. Sure, there would be speeders that kill on highways. But that "panic" would not kill the potential millions that the explosion could.

The empirics - Anthrax attack. Public knew. Panic, I don't think so. People may say that the anthraz attack was not as dangerous as other forms of threats. That was not known until the attacks. Originally a few spores were thought to have the potential to kill thousands.

Hurricane Katrina - Havoc in New Orleans after Hurricane killed less than those that died directly because of the Hurricane. The evacuation of the city killed few (if any people).

I'm sure there are more, but truly, I think this is a fabricated calculus. Let the perpetuation of governmental power begin.

Hiatus

2005-10-22T21:16:00.000-05:00

I know that I have not posted in a while. Sometimes I have no motivation or inspiration. I have some drafts saved, maybe I'll touch those up and post, but tonight, since the spring, is a post. Not as much philosophy as some other posts, but still constructed like I usually think.

Graphing Time

2005-05-04T19:51:00.000-05:00

Last year I had a science teacher I enjoyed learning from. I remember one day we were working on graphing (a necessary skill for passing the state administered test at the end of the year), going over x- and y- axi(?). Someone in the class asked what the z-axis would be. I thought that since the x was horizontal and the y was verrtical, that the z was diagonal (the line which we call x=y). Obviously I was wrong. Our teacher explained that it was the axis making the graph 3-dimensional. An axis stemming away from the origin of the graph.
Today, I was in that same teacher's room, bored during study hall. And I got to thinking about that little lesson. And then I thought that x, y, and z together represented the three spatial dimensions. But then why do we sometimes represent time on them? Time, hmmm. Then I remebered a little thing I once read in Dinotopia - time isn't linear (like the graph) but helical. Then I remembered a discussion I had with someone about how they once wrote an essay about that same concept. My question here - is representing time linearly accurate (in and of itself) and, is representing time linearly acceptable if time's nature is actually best represented by a different geometric shape?

This is one of those posts where the title of this blog acts as a disclaimer. I have read nothing about philosophy of time. I haven't had the time. I am young. If I have some horrible misconceptions about time, tell me.

Power Abuses

2005-04-20T20:26:00.000-05:00

Everyone always says that we need to avoid concentrations of power (in the non pomo) sense becuase power corrupts and concentrations lead to abuses of it. I have never heard why. I will try to explain my belief as to why people do these things with power. My point in doing this is to (maybe) expose some alternatives to avoiding power concentrations, if they exist.

When people get power they can use it. People want to use it because it makes them feel different, is a special way. When we abuse power we alter the actions of someone else, or we obtain a certain end without the normal exertion necessary. Thus, we feel different. But we also feel special because made a positive accomplishment. Therefore we distinguish ourselves from others. We fill a space that is closer to God than man. The pride from the abuse of power feels good, we want to be closer to God, so then it becomes a chronic abuse. This then leads to corruption. Constant abuse to obtain a certain feeling from it.

This post is a work in progress. I'm sure when I'm sitting in class one day thinking about this for no apparent reason I'll think of a better way to articulate what I'm actually thinking. Until then...

Confused

2005-04-17T20:26:00.000-05:00

Ponder this, and by all means, please answer this:

When we categorize people by ethnicity we put people with certain differences in groups, and excalim that everyone in the race has the same attributes. This is how race is constructed in at least the society I am immersed. However, this is innacurate for at least two reasons I can conceive: First, ethnicities blend. They don't just change based on geography (An Egyptian (African) is not to a Sinai Peninsulare (Arab) as a Tanzanian (African) is to a Sinaian), plus marriages create new indivivudals with unique mixes daily. Second and more importantly, genetic studies have shown that those traits of an indivivudal that we equate to an individual's ethnicity (mainly those physical) are less than 1% of our entire genetic makeup (I hate witholding facts though: I have heard (though I could be wrong) that our "self" is not made up by all of our genes. Some are simply wasted).
When one member of one of these groups does something that another group dissaproves of its usually gets a label of being a wrong action. Therefore that person commits those wrong actions. However, becuase all members of the group have the same attributes, all members of the group must commit these wrong actions. Remember though, this is a fallacy because the construction of the group is based on false principles, so a false prejudgement (stereotype) is formed.
National vs. community standards. A nation sees groups of people. It asks for ethnicity, religion on official forms. A community sees people, not groups, and can see their real attributes becuase of their communal interactions. Therfore, national standards reflect stereotypes and communal standards don't.

Two things to ponder:
I'm trying to understand Foucault's Discipline and Punish - does this relate?
If community standards are so perfectly not-stereotypical why did the Jim Crowe Laws come about? Where is the flaw in my logic, or an I mislead in believeing that communities are notoriously racist?

Servitude

2005-03-26T22:14:00.000-05:00

I think it is safe to say that in Judeo-Christian, most likely Moslem, and maybe most of the world, it is commonly held that children ought to go to lengths to show gratitude to the parents. I think I'll state my thesis bluntly: I want to go back in time and kill the power-tripping lazy bastard who made this bullshit up.
Now any family that would expect this on a child is a normal family. They probably wanted to have the child. We needn't concern ourselves with extraneous questions. So, living in a society, knowing its expectations a two parents decide to have a child. In the beginning the child is 100% dependent on the parents, especially the mother. This is what nature dictates. There does come a time when they can sustain themselves, they are capable of making wise, autonomous decisions, but yet they stay with the parent. Society has dictated the stay with the parent maximum at 18.
Anyway, this stay with the parent often translates into help out in the family. I.E. servitude to the family. The justification for this enslavement of the child's freedom is that they are only asked to reciprocate a small amount of what the parent does for the child. In some places they are often equal in the livelihood of the family. No matter. They ought to reciprocate the gift of life that their parents gave them. I contend that it is impossible to reciprocate life, as it is valued as the supreme possesion of an individual, so it cannot be given back. Rather, I believe that by making a child the parents bond themselves in servitude, doing all for the sustenance of the child until the societal norms allow for free rolling. The child did not ask for the gift of life, he doesn't have to reciprocate it, because there can never be a condition attached to something that is either forced (I insist, you must take it) or done without knowledge (giving life, surprise parties).

A Call to Arms

2005-03-22T21:50:00.000-05:00

Now my last post was not a call for action. I told you that for the most part our perceptions of time worked out so we should let it be. However, I do have a complaint.

Lawmakers say that the age they appropriate for driving is when teens are developmentally able to drive safely. At least in my state, considering traffic and streets and such (these conditions do change in Vermont) they say that this developmental maturity occurs at or close to 16 years of age.

I highly doubt that by some coincidence the astronmical measurement of ones age lines up almost directly with the biological measurement of one's maturity (and subsuquently their age), being that the sciences that the sciences do not correlate. My skepticism increases when policy makers relate these seemingly unrelated issues time and time again. Other issues that personally I get a tick from are voting and drinking restrictions. I refrain from the word "ages" because that's exactly what I think it ought not be based on.

Not a Call to Arms

2005-03-22T21:27:00.000-05:00

Recently I have asked a few people what a birthday celebration is. The most common answer being a celebration of our life, and its continuity for one more year. And then I further, but why that day, why do we celebrate at the year's mark. Here is when the eyes squint in perplextion. Often they answer because it is a year. I press no further.
You I do ask, press it further. Think about what a year is. A year is a measurement of existence in the fourth dimension equal to how long it takes the Earth to revolve around the Sun. Apply this to a birthday celebration again. Every time our Earth returns to the same place in orbit and we are still allive we celebrate.

A brief interjection. The above is completely based on Montrosian conceptions of time. Other cultures = other uses of astronomy to measure existence in the fourth dimension.

Now, knowing that there are other methods to measure our existence, why don't we use those. Why don't we celebrate our birthday every time the moon is situated as it was at the time of our biological birth? Why don't we celebrate every time Halley's Commet comes around? That is also a constant calculation. It is also a satellite of the Sun. To the former one might say (I might as well confess. I find my bio teacher to be a complete idiot, and when I say one I often mean what would that idiot say or what did she say) that every month (on the Jewish calendar), month or so on ours is too often to celebrate. The celebration would return too recent to the previous one for it to matter and be profound and meaningful. To the former one may say that it happens too few times in a lifetime, and thus would not allow for a celebration of one's biological birth. Both of these responses are innacurate, because our society excepts the solar calendar and has years as a method of measurement entrenched in our minds. Our conceptions of time, and subsuquently "recentness," a description of this are based on the Sun, so of course proposals of its rejection will be rejected. So, can we accept them all, at least theoretically as equally valid methods of classification?

What this is to show is that one cannot meausre the biologicals with the astronomical because they simply don't correlate. They are different sciences. THem both being a science does not suffice. This makes the celebrations of birthdays, New Years, etc. completely arbitrary.

This is not a call to arms. Just because they simply don't correlate does not mean we sould topple society in order to implement new conceptions of the fourth dimension. Maybe what I do wish to convey is that you should be aware of what you are saying next time you cite your age. (I'll give you a hint: I have been around the sun x amount of times)

Your Personal Predestination

2005-03-14T22:18:00.000-05:00

When the head leaves the birth canal - after the first breath of a person's life is taken on Earth - even before the cord is cut, nay, before the entire person leaves the mother's protection one has a choice to make. I see what is in front of me. Do I now look to what is at my right, or shall I have m head send impulses to my neck and eyes to gaze upon that it is at my right. How one goes about making this critical decision I don't have the answer to; however, I am sure there are people who have devoted their lives to the answer of this question. Maybe this decsion is made inside the womb. Does the amniotic sac to my left or right appeal to me more. No bother. All that is to be shown here is that there comes a point in the development of all in which the first autonomous decision must be made, free of the protection of the mother and the dictates of the gametes' genetics. That which is retained from this decision is the beginning of memory. From memory we begin to collect expiriences. All of our actions are based on our previous expiriences and the external forces we cannot control (mainly science and the expiriences of others). I believe that science can tell us this, but I provide an example. At a young age I touch something red. It happens to be scalding, and I painfully burn myself. A time later the opprotuinty to touch something red presents itself (this condition in itself was not controllable), but I do not touch it, becuase all I can remeber from my expiriences, premised in my my memory of red equate to pain which I do not like. Anyway, all of this means that your entire life is based on this first decision. Some may tell you that life is all about choices, but the choices you make, even if you sit sown and consider your choices is based on the expiriences you have culminating from that decision. There are two points I wish to express with all of this:

How do we make our autonomous decision?
Our life is not predetermined, but rather our autonomous decision prdetermines all the rest.

In all, what I expressed above I don't believe is true. Let me explain. I can probably say that the autonomous decision (I consider it the only one becuase it affects all others) is most likely dictated by genetics, and thus not autonomous, making a human's capacity for autonomy nothing. Therefore my second statement does not follow. Our life is predetermined by those little squares in biology we make up for different alleles. But wait, the textbook tells us which of the four outcomes to arrive is completely reandom. This randosity is what I consider the miracle of life and they mysticity of life.

Sometimes I Wonder

2005-03-07T16:08:00.000-05:00

Often I dismiss claims of the entrenchment of anti-Semitism and racism as taking thinking a bit too far, but sometimes I wonder...
Today Joyce (see Idiot Teacher of the Week Award) was asked why we don't have Spring brea this year. The answer, as far as I know is because the teachers have in their contract that they can't start school before Labor Day. This year Labor Day was a week later than usual, so subsuquently school started a week later than usual. This didn't give us ample time for a large break and to finish for summer.
Joyce on the other hand answered by saying that she thinks there are more Jewish holidays this year. I don't think she is anti-Semetic, but episodes like this make me wonder...maybe the entrenchments really do exist.

The Ideal Library

2005-03-07T15:30:00.000-05:00

Outspoken are libraries in their purpose: To give knowledge, a powerful tool to all. And this they do achieve. Somewhat. Premise this on Dahl's argument that democracy as he sees it needs to have a mechanism to educate the people. A library does this. However, now we must recall that we must protect ourselves from the threats of government power. Dumb people are really great at this, so by taking away libraries, governments can consolidate power.
So then, logically, make libraries private institutions. That won't work though. Private institutions don't collect taxes so they would have to charge dues. Only people with the ability to charge dues would then get the education they need to educate themselves against government power. So now how do we use public funds AND bypass public institutions to make a public institution?
Now, as I write this I'm thinking of the answers to the questions I am deeming necessary to be posed. What came to mind for this one was that we should have a public contract. It differs from a soical one. It can collect taxes for the purpose I outlined above. Then I thought, wow, schools, maybe museums also can be under this agreement. Why on Earth is it different now? And then I remembered, O, I'm just making another government. Well, kinda...
The social contract that democratic governance is kind of based on takes rights - freedom and property. Freedom in so far as the Harm Principle can be implemented (or so I think it should), and property so many can be seized in order to perform their duties. Now, the public contract that I conceive would seize people's entitlements to property. And this I cannot conceive a safeguard against being abused.
Possibly it could be said that to abuse this entitlement would be suicide because it is the only thing keeping them from government power. However, what is to stop the government from giving this public magistrate a personal incentive to do it. In the end, I don't find it conceivably possible in the perfect form. What this comes to prove is that utopia is impossible. I believe that it may show more, but I am not prepared to illustrate that right now.

Why King George III Loves Decaf

2005-02-28T22:16:00.000-05:00

America the Beautiful. The Star Spangled Banner. Hail to the Chief. Long Live the $2.50 Cupa-Coffee. Why isn't this tune in our nationalistic songbook? The answer to that question lies in our post-colonial identity crisis.

An imperative aspect of any post-colonial nation is the formation of a unique identity, becuase without the sense of nationalistic pride it conveys a lack of interest in one's nation can trigger the backslide into colonial trends or the onset of an opressive regime becuase of citizen indiffernece. Often these identities contradict the identities of the Mother-country because issues raised by dissenters, those things that become slogans and such dissent against Mother-country policy. Nevermind why or if the United States needs protection from government power, we make a big, nebulous deal about civil liberties to protect us from government power anyway because we had no protection from that crazy Hanoverian.
A pivotal moment in the United States' colonial struggle was the Boston Tea Party. The Brits love their tea, and so did their mercantile servants. So now why do Americans cherish that jolt of energy that the caffeine in a morning cup-o-joe gives us? It is common knowledge that an apple (or God forbid a full night's sleep) gives you more wake up power than coffee, so why do we continue to crave caffeine. Obviously there is the physiological addiction apect, but more of the answer lies in our post-colonial identity. Those Limies love their tea, so we should, nay, we have to love its epicurean rival. Question the rivalry? The French, Britain's rival are stereotyped for their cafes. The British East India Company was based heavily in tea.
Our post-colonial identity crisis originates in an alarming trend: the decafination of coffee. Every sip of it you take King George III regains some of his dignity, and George Washington writhes in his grave in utter disbelief. With all this known it is no surprise to me (but still alarming) that George Washington now ranks 7th among Americans for favorite Presidents behind our idolatrous 42nd and the man who was reelected in the era of Desperate Houswives because of "moral values." Tony Blair seems to be his bend-over-buddy. Do you smell decaf propoganda? I think so.
On a final note: For God's sake - what is the former Prime Minister of England doing at the funeral of a popular US President? An execution or the impeachment proceedings I could understand and praise in the name of post-colonialism, but not the celebration of American achievement. Blame it on decaf. At this rate, America risks backslide into colonial rule or opressive rule due to indifference.

A Critique of Social Darwinism

2005-02-17T20:36:00.000-05:00

If you don't know what Social Darwinism is, check out the wiki on it. Here's why I don't agree with it. Social darwinism is premised on the fact that humans, despite the capacity of their brains are still animals and suceptible to the laws of nature. However, the capacity of our brains makes for a relationship with nature different from all of the animals. The human brain can make adaptations, rather than utilize those inherrited or perish. This allows us to surpass the laws of nature, so natural selections does not apply to us.
Something natural (either genetics or the ability of the human brain to get bigger and thus process more because of the acquiring of carnivourous habits) made the human brain superior to others. With it we began to surpass nature. Darwinism is based on variations in nature, but humans have surpassed nature. Our inventions and our adaptations are most likely going to decrease evolution because we are avoiding natual selection. In nature organisms must have a favorable adaptation to survive nature and pass on the gene, but now we make our own adaptations, they aren't natural to us by variation. Therefore, natural selection, the basis of Darwinism isn't occuring. This is why you can't apply Darwinism to humanity. The two just don't match.
Malthus is not a Social Darwinist. He doesn't say that we should see if the weak die, but rather just that people will die. His beliefs may bring us to a level in which Darwinism can be applied to humanity (we'll see where global warming goes) but until he redeems himself, Social Darwinism shouldn't be applied.

Your Bodie's War

2005-02-03T22:15:00.000-05:00

Over the past two days my biology class has been learning about the blood. Today we focussed on the immune system. The terminology used is laden with war references. Defeat, kill, battle, defend, commander, and the list goes on. I challenged myself to find alternate terminolgy, but I couldn't conceive other usable terms. The question I pose here is why do we associate war and violence with our body protecting itself from foreign pathogens?

A preface. I may be completely wrong in all of this, simply because my teachers are idiots and even if there is other terminology, they don't have the brain capacity to know or use them.

One reason I can conceive is our desire for dramtics. We live an existential life. One lacks purpose. With this we struggle with when we are up or down. Plots suppose a purpose - that of overcoming the conflict. Therefore, because we can suspend our own existential dillema, we like the drama. War is drama because it has the necessary conflict to overcome. Our immune system implies the same thing, a conflict (pathogen) to overcome, so therefore, we relate the two.

Civil Liberties

2005-02-02T17:24:00.000-05:00

I have done a bit of research on what civil liberties are. Mostly people just list a bunch of them and expect people to know what they are. But if we only have a list of a few, we cannot determine all of them because the one thread that all have in common isn't told. I have, however, determined that what all civil liberties have in common is that they the entitlements an individual has to protect himself from the government.

When someone hears about protecting themselves from the government, or curbing its tyranical power, they don't blink, but rather (at least in the United States) they are grateful for their expression rights which givem them the ability to dissent and gain supporters for that cause. Never do they question why the fuck we need to protect ourselves from the system that is supposed to provide for us services that we are not able to provide for ourselves (I commonly cite protection, mail services, efficient transportation, etc.). What is the flaw in our governmental structure that gives our governement the ability to harm us?

This is not a discussion that can be completed in one blog entry, or even in a blog devoted to it. However, I will discuss to one opinion I have. That concerning power. Power is the ability to influence others, or resist the influence. The more influence you have, the more powerful. Politics is the ordering of a society. So political power is the influence one posseses in determining how a society is to be ordered. To measure political power one determines how much influence one has in a society, how large the society is, and in how many societies the individual has the influence. Here is a clear example of power exertion. President Clinton tells people to donate to tsunami relief, and people, because of him, do so. An example of the exerting political power is the President of the United Stes of America saying that states should put into effect welfare programs, and governors do so because of the expression. On surface, there aren't any inherent hegatives involved with this exhertion. However, take the following example. The President tells on the State of the Union Address (ironic, that is tonight) that he would like Congress to pass bills making separate community institutions for Negro-Americans because he believes that they are not equal human beings. Congress does so because of the President's address. The justification for the law is simply not true, and the law that it legitimates harms people because of the inadequicies they will be receiving, so the power was exerted for a negative reason. The President is a servant of the government, so this is an example, hypothetical, of the government exerting power to the detriment of the people. Things like this have happened, so it isn't far-fetched.

I just realized something, and I think I will leave the discussion at this. These civil liberties are in the framework of our nation because before we were a nation, we were not part of a democratic nation. There, we needed protections from state power. To reaffirm our separation from King George III, we put these safeguards in our foundations. This is one, of most likely many reasons for them.

Wow, this was a rant.

The Birth of Various Societal Institutions

2005-01-30T21:52:00.000-05:00

On Friday my Amazon order came in the mail. It contained Michel Foucault's Birth of the Clinic and Discipline and Punish. I have already begun to read Birth of the Clinic. It is very dense. It takes me a half an hour to read one page. However the epistemology he is presenting is extremely interesting, and I found it to be true. For instance, he explained how pre-18th Century diseases were classified by their symptoms. Now, in the, dare I say it, post-modern era they are categorized by what part of the body they afflict. Last Spring, I got mesenteric adenitis. An internet search turned up info saying that it is an inflamation (temp.) of the lympth nodes caused by any number of bugs. The man is smart.

O yeah. This Foucault is not a pendulum head (Dad).

From the Archives

2005-01-27T22:12:00.000-05:00

This was posted on the former Xanga Pubescent Philosopher:

Dictating the Truth (Saturday, January 22nd, 2005, 8:23 P.M.)

Have you ever watched news anchors scowl or cringe, complain or sympathize with viewers when their weatherman forecasts snow in the upcoming week. When they do this, they are telling people that they should dislike snow. This is because anchors are portrayed as normal citizens, and people believe it. Because the anchors are perceived normal, and people strive to be normal or see themselves as normal, they will too hate the snow. Anchors should not dictate the truth because the news is an information delivery service. At the point in which they aren't delivering information, but rather dictating the truth, they are fundamentally not news anchors. I could make micro-political impacts, but nah.

A follow up to this was posted later in the evening, but it isn't pertinent to comments to follow.

Democratic Participation Revisited

2005-01-26T22:01:00.000-05:00

Democracy as I know/see it is state policy being made by the people it affects so that the policy reflects the values and the interests of the people affected. I see this as contradictory. If we premise this discussion on Maslow, the number one interest of any individuals is self-actualizing. This mean finding out what a meaningful life is to you, pursuing, and then achieving it. Some people (one of whom being myself) have decided that an appropriate conception of having a meningful life is attempting to order society. Call us politicians. For everyone else, they have other conceptions that aren't necesarily bad (maybe ordering society is bad. Maybe our democraticly trained lifestyles have made it acceptable, but it is truly a waste of time. Maybe Lincoln didn't self-actualize). Here's the contradiction. If their interest deciding how to order society and they have to do so they aren't pursuing their interests, which is what democracy is. They are taking away from their time to pursue a meaningful life (the reflecting values and interests part). Now, I am no expert on The Hierarchy of Needs, but this is clearly a contradiction. Does this mean that it is impossible to self-actualize in Australia because everyone has to vote? I don't know. I can pretty much say that it is harder in some degree or another. I can also say that the Hindu in seclusion, rejecting any materialistic needs are probably closer to self-actualizing then many, if not all Australians. Definitely all Americans. Here comes the Eastern philosophy for you. Where's Charlie? Is self-actualizing a prerequisite to the reaching of Moksha/Nirvana. Still, I have no answer. Damn, this would make a good K. The Maslow K? Sweet!

Remember, this is all premissed on Maslow. If you can defeat Maslow (which I can do in a heartbeat - the man first said that he attained self-actualization, then he repealed all of his writings and attempted and/or succeeded in killing himself) then democracy is legitimate again. Or at least for the time being. You know what, no. I'm not saying that democracy is illegitimate. I'm saying that either it is a) iligit, b) my conception of it is wrong, or c) participation isn't necessary and sufficient for a democracy. Damn, this remember paragraph was only supposed to be a line long.

A Fictional Link to a Philosophy

2005-01-26T21:10:00.000-05:00

Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth has a good story. It's a piece of fiction. Also interesting is that it tells a story that prove physiocrats wrongs. I highly doubt that Pearl meant for this to be, but rather, since their theory is wrong, her novel was able to prove it wrong. adam Smith's contemporaray, the most commonly mentioned physiocrat is Francois Quesnay. Funny how we learn about the book and Quesnay both in 10th grade history at my school.

The First Post?

2005-01-26T20:38:00.000-05:00

If you are reading this post you were most likely redirected to it by clicking on the link to it from the former home of The Pubescent Philosopher, a cozy corner of Xanga. I find this cozier. This site will be a bit more philosophical, with less of the my pop culture crap that you may have been acustomed to. Usually I get more than one post out daily; however, usually there is an insightfully philosophical post once every other day or so. Until then, enjoy.

O yes. Do not forget to check the sideblog that is comfortably situated on the side of this blog. It may be philosophically insightful, or have some of that my pop culture crap you are craving since I left Xanga in the dust. Generally it's for my small comments though. Until then, enjoy.