raatcharch

12:40 pm: Today's Thought
A friend once told me that
God will forgive anyone,
but they need to ask him to.
I understand this now;
I just always thought that
God should be better than me.

02:17 am: Our Finite Place in the Universe
I missed a GAGG meeting tonight. Accidentally slept through it, on account of a 10-page paper needing to be written.

No one called me wondering where I was. No one tried to wake me up. The meeting began and ended without me, and the name for next year's Running GAGG was decided without my vote or direct input.

For five years GAGG has been a part of my identity. It did not ever occur to me that I honestly and subconsciously believed that it was defined as much by me as I was by it.

02:29 am: Bacon vs Boas: Round 1, FIGHT!
Today I encountered an interesting incompatibility in my worldview.

The so-called “Hard Sciences” (aka chemistry and physics) have always been fascinating to me. They help us to understand the natural world around us, and the universe we live in at their most elemental (ba-dum-ching). Carl Sagan is a personal hero of sorts to me, making the arcane world of physics accessible and digestible to a layman, like me. I am a science fan boy. I want nothing more than the advancement of science- think of all the really neat stuff it can give us, and all the amazing things we can learn from it! It’s difficult for me to exactly describe why I love the idea of science so much. All I can say is read Carl Sagan’s Contact and perhaps you’ll be filled with the same wonder I was. It’s an amazing feeling, knowing that the universe is impossibly vast and that we know so very little about it. Who knows what could be out there!

I also like to believe that I have a fairly level-headed, rational mind, despite my propensity for goofiness (and random bouts of melancholy- see previous entry). As such, I view the scientific method as a useful tool for examining phenomena that will always be useful. Remember, science can never prove anything, it can only disprove. The scientific method can never give us answers, only data. The results I get from exploring phenomena using this method are subject to scrutiny, but in my world view, the method itself is near flawless.

And in that last sentence lies the problem. As many of you know, I am a hopeless relativist. Blame my anthropology training. Basically I believe that everyone’s point of view is equally valid. The way I see the world is no more or less correct than Billy Bob Thorton’s worldview. To compound this, take the cornerstone of modern American anthropology: cultural relativism. Basically, this concept states that the norms, values and beliefs of all cultures are equally valid. This isn’t just liberal arts bleeding heart bullshit, I actually do largely believe this.

The scientific method is very, very, very much a Western concept, as is reason, in the classical Greek sense. Many other cultures do not have the same idea of “logic” that we do because of their enculturation. Western “logic” is a cultural trait, not a universal human trait. So if the scientific method is always a useful tool for examining phenomena, and all culture’s norms values and beliefs are equally valid, and not all cultures would view the scientific method as being useful…

I’m stumped. If I accept that the scientific method is not a universally useful tool for examining phenomena, I large cornerstone of my worldview crumbles away. On the other hand, saying that it is would amount to me saying that my culture and worldview are superior to others, which is an equally nauseating prospect for me. Anyone out there want to take a swing at this problem?

09:34 pm: Introspection
I see a shadow
Flickering on the cave wall
I wish I were him

10:28 pm: Crime and Punishment
What is “Justice”? Courtesy of Merriam-Webster: “1 : the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments. 2 : the quality of being just, impartial, or fair.”

Today on the news I saw a story about a kid who was driving drunk and crashed, resulting in the death of one of his friends, who was a passenger in the car. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison, and the judge who sentenced him said he did it as an example to all the other young people not to drink and drive.

What is “just” in this case? Well, according to Webster’s first definition, I’d say that 23 years in prison is reasonably “just.” The laws are there, and he was assigned the merited punishments for his actions. That is, he drove drunk and killed his friend in the process (I didn’t follow the case well enough to be able to tell you exactly what the courts charged him with). This type of justice is subjective. Laws and moral codes differ all over the world. What is considered just in one place may be considered terribly unjust in another. Just think of the use of capital punishment around the world and throughout history, and I think you’ll see my point.

It is the second definition that I want to talk about, however. “The quality of being just, impartial, or fair.” Since “justice” is what we’re trying to define, let’s just cut the word “just” right out of the definition. “The quality of being impartial or fair” is what we’re left with. So unfortunately, we’re left with a rather subjective idea of justice once again. Is it “fair” to the kid who died in the crash that his life ended at such a young age? Of course not. But since he’s gone, we can’t compensate him for his loss. So where do we go from there? Well, there’s a grieving family to deal with. But how does 23 years of prison time soothe the family’s grief? It doesn’t bring their son back. It just gives them a selfish sense of closure.

Is 23 years in prison fair to the driver of that car? Absolutely not. He made a mistake in driving drunk. It’s a mistake made by thousand and thousands of people across the country every day. We all know someone who’s driven drunk and gotten away with it, or who has driven drunk and was sentenced much lighter than the boy I’ve been talking about. In fact, many of us care very much for someone who’s guilty of a DWI. Driving under the influence is a horrible thing, but those who commit this crime are regular people, just like you and me. Most of the time, they’re good people. Now, of course, I don’t know this kid who I saw on the news today. But since the vast majority of people in the world are not bad people, I’m going to assume that he is a good person at heart. That being said, I find it highly unlikely that he wanted to kill his friend. In fact, I’d bet he would give up quite a lot to bring him back to life. And I’ll bet he will never, ever take another human life as long as he lives.

I see prison as having two purposes:
1) To retrain and rehabilitate those who have fallen by the wayside of society. (Hence the term, “correctional facility.”) As anyone who takes care of children knows, the purpose of a punishment is to erase a behavior and too teach a lesson. Applying punishment simply for the sake of punishment would be pointless.
2) To protect society from those individuals who cannot be corrected and will remain a danger to the public as long as they are alive and free.

I do not see our young felon as falling into either of these categories. He made a very great mistake, one that I imagine he must feel an unimaginable burden of guilt for. Since I feel this person is just like you and I in many ways, it’s ridiculous to think that he is one of the extremely rare people who are truly psychotic.

If neither of the purposes of prison apply to our felon, who I feel has already learned his lesson and who is not a psychopath, then what is the purpose of sending him to prison for 23 years? Well, the only thing left is punishment for punishment sake. The family of the victim selfishly wants closure. What the hell is “closure” anyway? The punishment of one of his best friends does not resurrect him, and while I don’t know there is terms of the friendship, there’s a good chance that he wouldn’t want to see his friend punished so harshly.

Is it fair to send this kid to jail for 23 years? A accident that resulted from a foolish mistake took a human life. Now with full intent we (and since this is a democracy, we are the judicial system!) take away half of another. Any hopes this kid had for his life are now largely dashed to pieces. When he gets out of prison, he will be in his mid-forties. He will be unable to get any good jobs because of his felony. It is very likely that he will have completely missed any opportunities to get married and have a family. The prison experience and 23 lost years will likely create and empty shell of a man who is useless to everyone.

The life of a young man was lost. Instead of cutting our losses there, we then took away the life of another man who, like all of us, had infinite potential to invoke positive change in our world. No one gains anything from his imprisonment, and everyone loses just a little bit, even if we don’t measure it in anything more significant than tax dollars.

We still hate our fellow man, but we comfort ourselves by calling it “justice.” Humans have infinite capacity to do good, but we get very selfish when we are wronged. There are no angels wielding fiery swords; our inability to forgive one another is the only thing keeping us out of the Garden of Eden.

03:18 am: Females, Comics and Japan: The True Axis of Evil?
As I'm sure most of you know, I love comic books. I've been reading The Fantastic Four religiously for over a decade now (although I temporarily left the faith during "Hero's Reborn". All I have to say is that Marvel comics definitely deserved their bankruptcy after that crap. I will now return to speech that people apart from myself understand), and have a collection that is getting a little too big for my bedroom. I grew up wishing I could be a superhero, and cheering my favorite characters on as they did things I only wished I could. It never really struck me as odd that nearly every single one of my comics were about superheros. I mean, after all, that's what comic books were all about, right? Since I read Wizard Magazine (the best-selling magazine related to the comic book industry), I was aware of non-superhero comics, but they were mostly made by small companies and didn't usually sell very well. I never really stepped back to notice that the comic books were a very unoriginal format. Was the superhero glut due to the fact that superheros were all that sold or were the companies not being creative and daring enough to try new things?

Comic books have been going through a fascinating change in the past 10 years. After their near self-destruction in the mid-nineties, the comic book industry has realized that it cannot rely on it "collectablity" alone. They've been making a concerted effort to get new readers onboard, and they've been doing a pretty good job at it, especially considering Marvel Comic's amazing success at the Hollywood Box Office in the early Aughts. Most of the effort in finding new readers is trying to get younger kids to read the comics that they've been successfully publishing for years. It wasn't until realized that the big comic book companies are missing GIGANTIC population demographic: girls.

Girls have been almost completely ignored throughout the history of American comics. While there are definitely girls out there who just love the X-Men, compared to males, there are not very many who buy it every month. Over the years, attempts have been made to target the untapped female market, but there's a reason high-school romance comics have never really caught on: they're sexist and crappy. Hate to break it to you Betty and Veronica, but you guys suck too. Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane...well, this comic's main claim to fame is that it provided plenty of material for the immortal webpage "Superman is a Dick", as can be seen here: http://www.nationallampoon.com/supermanisadick/default.asp

But girls are becoming increasingly interested in comics these days, except it isn't the superheros attracting them. So what is it that draws the other 50% of the population to spend their hard-earned allowance? Japan. Manga has a lot of things going for it, and because of that, it's a huge hit here in America. Don't believe me? Go to Borders or Barnes and Noble and look at the Manga display vs. the tiny rack of American comics. You'll see what I mean. Manga has female cartoonists who can both write and draw well who are writing comics that girls will actually read. And they can do it without being either sexist or obnoxiously feminist. Many of the most successful "shojo" (girl-oriented) comics are driven by exciting and truly likeable characters coupled with clever and endearing plotlines. Many of these comics are so well done that they can even appeal to males who are open-minded enough to read them. Courtney introduced to her favorite series, a Japanese import entitled "Fruits Basket" a while back. Not only is it the best-selling shojo comic in America, it's actually...really good. I usually read them after she's done with them. On top of that, Manga is done in a very clever format. First of all, manga in typically done in black and white, cutting down production costs. When sold in America, it is sold in a book about the size of a thin paperback and collects 6 separate isses, all for under $10. That's a much better than the deal than the $3 per issue American comics are charging these days, and that's without Marvel or DC comics having to pay licensing or translating fees.

So here's my question. After nearly killing themselves not even 10 years ago, why haven't the major American comic book companies realized that girls exist and that girls will buy comics if you give them a good reason to? Believe it or not, American comics, you may need more than Wolverine on the cover to stay alive.

01:44 am: The Straw Man and Christian Science
While working on a project about pseudo-science for my archaeology class, I stumbled across the following website: http://www.s8int.com/dino1.html

This page is from a Christian website, and makes the claim that dinosaurs are still alive today in remote parts of the world; or at the very least co-existed with man at some point. This is all well and good. It’s the Internet after all, live and let live.

What really irked me about this site was the following statement:

“Within the man/dino controversy there exists at least three distinct groups;
1)Creationists who (for religious reasons- Christianity) would like proof that man and dinosaurs co-existed because it would support the Biblical view of creation,
2)Scientists, who (for religious reasons: Evolution) do not want to see any proof of man/dinosaur coexistence because it would do radical damage to the theory and 3)Objective scientists who for scientific reasons want to know what the facts actually are.”

Sub-category #1 I feel is right on. Creationists want to prove such outrageous things because it furthers their agenda of proving the Bible to be infallible.

Subcategory #2 should be extremely offensive to anyone who claims a love for science, as the makers of this website (ironically) seem to do. Any scientist who blinds himself to new evidence because it will harm his or her pet theory is a bad scientist to begin with and not worthy of the title. On top of that, their use of the word “proof” is also in grave error, along with their claim that science is a “religion”. Science is not a religion. A religion claims to have ultimate knowledge and perfect, infallible truths behind it. (If anyone can prove me wrong on this point, please let me know!) Science, on the other hand, claims no infallible truths. It only has “laws” which are believed to be universal were only named as such after years and years of observation and near infinite amounts of data supporting them. The most important thing to know about science, however, is that it is a self-correcting discipline. If verifiable evidence arises that contradicts a long accepted law, scientists will test the data and place it under heavy scrutiny. If the evidence hold up, however, the scientific knowledge base is altered to accommodate for it. This can result in massive shifts in what scientists believe to be true, and this is very evident if we look at history. There is no such thing as “proof” in science. Only disproof. Proof is impossible because our knowledge base in incomplete. Scientific “facts” that are widely accepted to be true are so accepted because there is a massive amount of data that supports that fact. It only takes one piece of heavily scrutinized evidence to disprove an entire theory; a theory must fit all the facts (one cannot bend facts to fit a theory). There is no ineffability in science.

Subcategory #3 only furthers my frustration with the authors of this site. An “objective scientist” most certainly does want to know “what the facts really are.” But that doesn’t mean he will go around believing any poorly-supported crackpot theory that was posted on an internet site. He will test all the evidence for himself to see if it holds up. Odds are, he will conclude that dinosaurs did in fact die out 61 million years before the first creature that could even be considered vaguely human even walked the earth on two legs.

What the Christian Scientists of this site, and many others, are guilty of is what is called the “Straw Man Fallacy.” The Straw Man Fallacy is as follows (from http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html):
“The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:
1. Person A has position X.
2. Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
3. Person B attacks position Y.
4. Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.”
If that was too much for you, this cartoon sums it up nicely: http://www.qwantz.com/index.pl?comic=516

I am not trying to undermine the Bible or prove Christian beliefs wrong. All I’m asking is for Christian Scientists to behave responsibly and not try to gain legitimacy by misrepresenting actual scientific thought.

12:21 am: The Tragedy of Good Fiction
What role does fiction serve in our daily lives? I suppose it means something a little different to everyone. An English or Literature scholar might say that the purpose of fiction is to be able to express deep and meaningful truths about the world around them as well as to cathartically alleviate the anguish the author feels due to these truths all wrapped into an art form. A savvy writer can turn simple words into a thing of true beauty. The average citizen might be more likely to say that the purpose of fiction is to entertain the audience, and little else. My view is that both of these viewpoints are correct. Good fiction can appeal to both audiences.
The next question is, what makes a piece of fiction good? A novel about the tide coming in on a beach somewhere, no matter how brilliant the word craft would be dreadfully boring if nothing else happened. At the same time, a TV show featuring a bunch of nameless cops chasing down a bank robber in a non-stop action scene full of car chases and gun shots is also not worth the celluloid it’s filmed on. Characters make or break a piece of fiction. If you can believe in the characters in a movie or book, if they seem absolutely real to you, then you are likely to consider it a good piece of fiction. We are much more likely to respond to a piece of fiction on a truly emotional level if there is something in one of the characters reminds us of ourselves or someone we know.
Once in a while, we find something in fiction that truly speaks to us. Perhaps the characters overcome a challenge that you have faced as well. Maybe the characters were just so real to you that you grew very attached to them. As you read the book or watch the movie, you share in the characters’ successes and failures. You really get to know them very well, and sometimes they’ll share a side of themselves with you that they would never show anyone else. Sometimes you cry when love is found or lost, and sometimes you’re even forced to suffer the pain of mourning their deaths.
Unlike real friends, however, once the book ends, once the credits role, you will never see them again. You must endure the deaths of your favorite characters, even if they survived the story. Because the characters you grew to love will never change again. They will never grow, they will never suffer the pains of love, they’ll never make you laugh again nor have an adventure of every sort. Even if you reread the book or press the play button again, you’re not bringing your friends back to life. You are simply looking through old scrapbooks and photo albums, remembering how much fun you had back in the Golden Days.
The magic of first discovery is a powerful thing. The first time you watch your favorite movie, the suspense makes it magical. What will happen to the characters you’ve so recently fallen in love with? After you wind it again, however, you already know all that happens to your new friends. But you’d enjoy listening to their story again, and you learn new things about them that you missed the first time. But after the third and fourth viewings, new things to learn become few and far between. Your friends have stopped growing, stopped changing. But you just can’t bring yourself to love them any less. Finally, the magic is almost entirely gone. Your friends are dead to you, and all you have is the bittersweet memory of falling in love with them for the first time; an experience you can never repeat. Paradoxically, Gilgamesh found his immortality when his story was preserved in clay, but Enkidu was still doomed to die.
The only change you have to defeat despair is to seek out new friends and new experiences. Keep on reading new things, and soon you’ll fall in love with someone new!