Thursday, August 31, 2006

Now Who's Desperate?

I staggered over to Technorati today in order to avoid doing anything productive when I was confronted with me own insane face. I figured it must be a glich and refreshed a few times.

It was still there.

I figured that Tech must be very hard up if they were using my picture but, none the less, this was another occasion for bragging at The Critic.

(Me): HA! My picture is on the front page of Technorati! (Critic): As in “America’s Most Wanted?” (M): No, as in featured blogs. (C): Well, I suppose that nobody would bother trying to haul you... (M): Yeah, yeah, whatever – in yo face! (C): (Sigh) What’s this site again. (M): You know – technorati (C): That’s not a porn site? (M): No! It’s a respectable, upstanding kind of thing! (C): (sound of typing) Hmmmm…I don’t see your picture… (M): Now whose being dense? (C): I’m being honest, I don’t see your picture. (M): (refreshes browser) But it’s right there! (C): You use Firefox right? Try IE. (M): WHAT? It…it was right there! Honest…Maybe it was cycled out or something. (C): Try refreshing both of them again. (M): This is weird…it shows up in FF, but not IE. (C): Are you logged in with Fox? (M): Why yes I am and...those bastards... (C): (Sound of laughter) and you bought it! (M): Hey, it was an honest mistake... (C): It was a stupid mistake! (M): (Hangs up phone. A few moments later it rings.) (C): I got this wonderful bridge to sell you (more laughter) (M): Bitch

I knew it was too good to be true.

technorati:

Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

The other day I was shocked to see that there had been THREE WHOLE POSTS to my site! In one day! I asked my “friends” if any of them had done it to make me feel better and nobody owned up to it, so my only conclusion can be that they’re for real. Amazing! Many thanks to the folks that posted; thought one of them pointed out that I’m behind on my payments. I need to pry the digital camera away from the death grip that the SO has on it, but once I do I will be posting about some of the incredible rewards/bribes/whatever that people may (as in probably not) get in exchange for patronizing this site. Now back to our regularly scheduled program…
technorati:

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Bonkers and Abortion

There are a number of things that make me question my sanity, but one of the most annoying is the whole abortion debate. Here are a bunch of people spending large amounts of time, effort and money protesting things like “the Morning After Pill,” and the ability of women to get safe and legal abortions, while at the same time seeming to oppose the health and health care of women, and their children.

One argument that has been raised against RU-486 (also known as Mifepristone and Plan B) is that it is unsafe. One study in the journal Contraception[1] gives the odds of death due to the drug at 1.1 in 100,000. Now compare this with the numbers for pregnancy-related deaths between 1991 and 1997: between 10.3 and 12.9 in 100,000[2]. The chances of death from pregnancy are about 10 times higher, yet pregnancy is considered an acceptable risk.

What’s worse is what happens to children after birth. According to the report “Child Health USA 2003”[3], the USA ranks 26th in the list of industrialized nations with respect to infant mortality rate. This gives the USA a rate that is 1.7 times higher than France and over 2 times higher than Sweden. According to the same source, roughly 3 million children aged 1 to 18, were the victims of neglect or abuse during 2001, or 12.4 per 1,000. If you look at poverty rates, the same report mentioned above indicates 11 million children were living in poverty – roughly 15.8% of all children.

How many infants and mothers could have been saved if all the time, effort and money that went into opposing something like Plan B? How many children who were the subject of abuse and neglect could have been helped if all the people who picket Planned Parenthood clinics were to actually help them? Why don’t the political parties that oppose abortion and contraception support raising the minimum wage from the ridiculous level of $5.15/hour to something that would allow a single mother to support her children by working one full time job? How come the USA doesn’t have universal prenatal care?

Like I said, there are a number of things that make me wonder if I’ve gone off the deep end, but something like this takes the cake.

[1] Safety of mifepristone abortions in clinical use. Henderson JT, Hwang AC, Harper CC, Stewart FH. Contraception. 2005 Sep;72(3):175-8

Link: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010782405001058

[2] Pregnancy-Related Mortality in the United States, 1991–1997 Cynthia J. Berg, MD, MPH, Jeani Chang, MPH, William M. Callaghan, MD, MPH and Sara J. Whitehead, MD, MPH Obstetrics & Gynecology 2003;101:289-296

Link: http://acogjnl.highwire.org/cgi/content/abstract/101/2/289

[3] Child Health USA 2003. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau. Rockville, Maryland: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2003.

Link: http://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa03/index.htm


technorati: abortion

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Very Disappointed!

Looking back over my posts I have to say that this blog has turned out a lot different than I thought it would.

When I created it, I thought it would be a great opportunity to whine, display pictures of nekkid women, carry on about sex, and otherwise serve as a my den in inequity on the web. But noooooo! Instead I’m posting crap about God, Truth, Meaning, etc. And to make matters worse, nobody (that I don’t pay, and pay well) bothers to visit the damn thing!

Sigh.

As the “Evil Hercules” in the TV show said after being abandoned in the “in between” universe:

Very disappointed! Very dis-a-pointeeeeed!

I looked at some of the stuff about how to increase the traffic on your blog and have tried to take the pointers to heart. One of the things that seemed like a good idea was to post to other blogs.

The problem is that my pic, which I dearly love, looks so damn silly that I feel bad about posting to any kind of serious site like http://debrahaffner.blogspot.com. I would even feel kind of bad about posting to the S-Spot (http://shayssexcolumn.blogspot.com) since I feel so strongly regarding the importance of sexuality.

So this leaves me with a conundrum: I need to find a silly site that gets a lot of traffic. Then, these silly people are going to wander over to this site, read some of my blather, and decide that they want to read some more. Just shoot me now.

Very dis-a-pointeeeeed!

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Purpose Without Meaning

As an atheist, sometimes I miss the comfort that faith could provide me. In particular, it would be nice to feel that my life had purpose; that I was here for some reason. But for me, that faith is not an option. It is not enough to follow religious principles, I have to first believe. There are too many things about religious beliefs that make it too difficult to believe: blinding oneself to empirical evidence, the overtones of social manipulation, intolerance, and an overriding belief, arrogance really, that you are right and that everyone else is wrong. For a nit-picky person who writes essays on truth and honesty, it just would not be honest to do so. One thing that I do believe is that human beings, because of their lack of purpose, are all the more heroic and tragic. Consider: if there is no reward or punishment for good behavior, then why behave at all? As I blather about over and over, it is because we choose to. This choice, to be a blessing or a curse the world, is what it’s all about. It’s what sets us apart, at least as far as I know, from other animals. We know what good and evil are, and we always have a choice. Whether we consciously make it or not, we make that choice every day of our lives. If a person behaves a certain way because they are convinced that, if they do not, something is going to beat the living shit out of them and toss you in a lake of fire for the rest of eternity, that’s just an exercise in common sense. There is a choice, but not a very good one. But what if a person decides to treat the world as they would be treated without anticipation of reward or punishment? That person is saying “I think this is good because I say so.” It is a decision against hopelessness and meaninglessness. It is a statement of existence, saying “I am.” Rather than giving an interpretation, I think I’ll just end on that thought.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

What Were You Thinking?!

I remember a skit on “Saturday Night Live” called “What Were You Thinking?!” One of the guests was Walter Mondale – he was a presidential candidate who ran against Ronald Reagan.

At any rate the host and Walter were talking about this:

(Host): Walter Mondale – in the (whatever year) election you said that, if elected, you would raise taxes. (Walter): I know. (H): You made it the cornerstone of your bid for president. (W): I know. (H): No one has ever tried that. (W): I know. (H): Not even on the incorporated hamlet level. (W): I know. (H): What were you thinking? (W): (pause) I don’t know.

And now, we have Mr. Whatever! This imbecile decided to teach one of those on-line courses.

(Host): Mr. Whatever. You actually volunteered to teach an online class. (Whatever): I know. (H): This means working week nights. (W): I know. (H): Weekends. (W): I know. (H): Time you could be spending looking at on line goldfish or perusing midget-p0rn. (W): I know. (H): What were you thinking?!! (W): (Starts crying) I don’t know!

Yes this whole experience should be, as the Chinese curse goes, “interesting times.”

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Yahgoogle!

I did a search for “sucker of farts from dead dogs” on Google today and my site came up! Yay! I exist! My dreams of stardom and the like can’t be far away!

Well…maybe they are.

But at any rate, I view this as a good thing™ since Google keeps choking on the damn RSS feed.

To celebrate, I called up one of my great critics to brag about my achievements:

(Me): HA! My blog now appears on Google! (Her): Not very often. (Me): Yeah it does, search for “insane mumblings.” (Her): There are almost 2,000 results for that, and I don’t see your site. (Me): Alright, try “mumblings insane blather” (Sound of typing) (Her): OK, now I see it. (Me, preening): And you knew me before I was famous! (Her): Yeah, having my site come up when someone types: mumblings and insane blather is a real achievement! (Me): Bite me.

Great geniuses and writers are never appreciated in their own time. Another “friend” points out that this means that, even if I were a great writer™ I should not expect to become a star any time soon.

So now I’m shooting for the title of “rather mediocre but famous writer.” My fiend (oh, pardon the misspelling) tells me that this would be an insult to merely mediocre writers.

I hate my life.

Friday, August 18, 2006

9.8m/s/s

When I took a course in college physics, one of the things I had to do was perform various experiments to determine wiphysical properties like the gravitational constant. The value of this constant is 9.8m/s/s – if you drop an object in a vacuum, it will be moving at 9.8m/s after 1 second, 19.6m/s after two seconds, etc. After performing several of these experiments, I was tempted to write up something proclaiming that, no, scientists had gotten it wrong all these centuries and that the gravitational constant was actually 6ms/s/s or some such.

These experiments always seemed to have three phases. During the first part you and your lab partners would be doing things like they were English Gentlemen:

(Me): 1.2, 1.7, 2.5, 6.3 (Lab partner, jotting notes): Jolly good.

At some point you would reach the “epiphany” where we took at our preliminary results and realized that things weren’t working quite as planned:

(Lab partner): And here we have the preliminary results. (pause, sound of scribbling) (Me): Yes? (Partner): Umm... 6.5m/s/s (Me): What?!!

Then the experiment would enter the panic stage:

(Me): That can’t be right! Lemme see that! (Partner): Don’t blame me, you were the one giving me the data! (Me): Look you, forgot to add this value! (More mad scribbling) (Partner): Well?!! (Me): Ha! See? Here’s the real value… 6.9m/s/s (Partner): Shit! (Me, with a desperate look at the clock): How much time do we have left? (Partner): 20 minutes. (Me): Shit! Shit! Shit! We’re gonna fail! (Partner): Couldn’t we steal someone else’s data?

And mind you, this is a relatively easy experiment.

I don’t know what the instructors of these courses are trying to teach, but what they taught me was to be extremely skeptical of scientific results. Given the number of times that my partner in crime and I exaggerated, fudged, or outright lied about our results for the paltry reward of a crappy physics grade, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be a real physicist. Here’s a person with millions of dollars of finicky, jury-rigged equipment that measures some tiny value that can be screwed up if someone looks at it the wrong way. They spend years trying to get things just right and end up with results that have to be analyzed endlessly, for which their career is hanging in the balance, and make some conclusion based on it.

No pressure.

I imagine that’s why there are so many PhD students – if something goes wrong, you can blame them.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Sex Feedback

Today I was looking forlornly at my blog and noticing the lack of interest from the world at large so I sought some feedback from a friend. Here is what she said:

(Her): Your blog sucks. And basically, so do you. (Me): Perhaps if you took another look at the site.

She did and then came up with this:

(Her): Your mom dresses you funny. (Me): Does not. (Her): Does too. (Me): Na-ah. (Her): Yah-haw. (Me): Poop-breath. (Her): Doody-brain. (Me): Jerk. (Her): Twit. (Me): Sucker-of-farts-from-dead-dogs!

As anyone who is on the receiving end of the dreaded SoFfDD, she was silenced. It also helped that I had hung up the phone.

Seeking feedback from a kinder, gentler friend, he told me the following

(Him): You don’t suck. (Me): Thanks, that means a lot to me. (Him): You stink. Your blog sucks. (Me): Your mom dresses you funny. (Him): Does not. (Me): And you wear dresses. (Him): At least I wear mine under my other clothes. (Me): Screw you guys, I’m going home!

Since then I read the blogspot article on increasing traffic to your blog. I looked at my site, and then at some of the more popular sites. I have decided that I am going to bill myself as a hot, 16 year old girl who is really into boys, from ages 16 to 99, but is also willing to consider other people of the female persuasion…or in between…or animals...perhaps many at the same time.

I have also decided that all my posts will start with the word “sex” (hence the title for this post) or some other sexual term like “ju-ju flop.” I figure I can double the traffic to my site inside a week.

Of course going from 1 reader to two isn’t that hard. Especially when one of the readers is me.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Live girl-on-girl action!

The other day I was messing around when I found an article titled “Live girl-on-girl action!” on the Salon web site (don’t ask). I found the over-all tone of the article to be disturbing because it gave me the impression that:

  1. This was something that girls were doing only to attract boys
  2. Girls are being exploited

(BTW, every time I try to use a numbered list or a "dotted" list, I get flower icons. Anyone know of a way to get the numbers or dots instead of the flowers?)

There were a number of other themes, like how this is caused by online pornography and that it trivializes authentic female homo and bisexuality, but I want to focus on the above issues for this blather/rant.

Girls only do this to attract boys

Fairly early in the article, the author asks this question:

But is this staged bisexuality really a testament to a type of hypersexualized girl power -- or a statement on how far gals will go to please a generation of guys weaned on online porn?

This question implies that there are only two possibilities: that this behavior is either “hypersexualized girl power” or that it must be “a statement on how far gals will go to please a generation of guys weaned on online porn?” Aren’t there other possibilities?

The author quotes Pamela Paul, whose work I am unfamiliar with:

Girls aren't kissing other girls because they want to. They're doing it because they want to appeal to boys their age.

The author quotes some of the people she interviewed, and then proceeds to focus almost exclusively on the concept of women who only do this to attract men. For example:

Females who perform for males say they're not at all turned on by the hookup…

If straight girls who make out with each other really aren't doing it for their own pleasure, but to please guys...

But for girls who get it on with other girls as a performance for guys...

But if these young women are not actually into kissing their girlfriends, why do they feel they need to do it …

But it’s not at all clear that girls do this exclusively to attract guys. One of the women interviewed has this to say:

It was like, look, I'm the center of attention! Everyone's looking at me and cheering me on. It felt good being in the spotlight…

Another reason might be to impress boys and girls that they are cool or whatever. For example:

I was like, Hey, why don't you make out? And then they started to! I was like, oh, damn, they're awesome. I don't know why I thought it would be OK to ask them. We were just testing them -- but then they did it. I told them that made them 10 times cooler.

Girls are being exploited

This aspect is much more of an inference than something stated outright in the article. Thankfully, rants and blatherings do not have to be based on reality, and at any rate, nobody reads this blog anyways :-)

The author quotes one of the people that she interviewed:

"I've heard from some straight girls that they do it because it's fun," says Rachel Popkin, a 19-year-old lesbian in Seattle. "But if women feel pressured to do anything they wouldn't normally do just to please guys -- that's exploitative."

A person who feigns an emotion for the entertainment of others is also called an actor. If these people are doing the same thing, then how is it exploitation?

The primary difference I see between acting and what is described in this article is that these women are experimenting with their sexual power: how much of an effect does this have on the people around them? What are the limits? etc.

I see this as vastly different from exploitation.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Meta Rant

I noticed a problem with my blog so far: it needs more rants. If I’m going create a blog titled “bather-n-rants” then, god dammit, I should have some rant postings!

So I set out to create a good ole rant about a controversial topic that I had a strong opinion about. Being the detail-oriented freak that I am, I wanted to verify the sources on the primary topic, but I was equipped with a story from “comedy central” (www.npr.org), so I thought it would be easy.

It’s times like these that I wonder if there is something seriously wrong with me. I mean, I know that there are things seriously wrong with me, but when I have such trouble finding things on the net, I wonder if, among my problems is a difficulty with searching the web.

So I go to the NPR site and look for the story, using the tag lines that I’m interested in. 5 jillion responses, sorted by date. “Ha!” sez I, “since this was a recent story, it should be right hear!” I find a story that looks promising and bring it up. Zip. OK, I’ll just try variations on the search terms. More hits, still zip.

Alright, I’ll just google the search terms and see what comes up. Everything and nothing, depending on how you do the search. On the “everything” side (a mere 300,000 hits) I don’t see a whole lot that is promising, so I finally narrow it down to something manageable and still come up empty-handed.

Grrrr….

Long story short, I finally found what I wanted on the NPR site, buried in a story that I had already looked at. It seems that, the reference I was looking for was not in the summary or write up, hence scanning through the article yielded nothing, but if you listen to the feed for the story itself it’s in there.

OK, whatever.

So I listen to the story several times to find the pundit/expert that blathers about said controversial issue. In addition to other stuff, said expert mentions a “recent story” from “around here” that contains the annoying issue. No name for the story, no date, no publication.

Alright, well NPR does mention this person’s name and where they work. I try that and succeed in finding the site. It contains studies, news articles, etc. so I try the site search. Zip. OK, vary the terms, etc. still zip. So I try googling the person’s name. Some hits, but not what I’m looking for.

In short after a couple of very annoying, tedious, frustrating hours, I cannot confirm this person’s story.

This “expert” had reported on a trend or whatever and I wanted some basic facts about it: who originally reported it? When was it reported? How many people is it based on? Is this a growing trend, and if so, how quickly is it growing, etc.

One of things I find annoying about news from TV, newspapers, etc. is what Scott Adams of Dilbert fame calls “context free information.” I’ll hear a story like “235 people died from coronary-bypass mad cow disease” or some such gibberish, and then I wonder: is that a lot? Is that in one year, or over a longer period of time? Is that all in one area, or the entire world? People consider the risks of driving to be acceptable, for comparison’s sake, how many people die on the highway each year?”

I guess the moral of the story is that, rather than checking your facts, it is better to just rant. If I had made outrageous claims and then spewed forth several paragraphs based on this shaky premise, I could have had a nice rant on my site.

Instead, all I have is some blather about not being able to rant.

Perhaps this is "rant envy."

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Gawd

For whatever reason, I have always wondered about the notion of an omnipotent lima bean that created the universe. Now mind, when I say “God” with the capital “G” I mean God. Not some clown pulling rabbits out of a hat or some putz who is locked in an “eternal battle” with the Devil or whatever.

God is a being that would of necessity be able to encompass contradictions. Consider the following paradox:

(1) Everything I say is a lie.

(2) I am lying.

If statement 1 is true, then statement 2 must also be true. But that means statement 2 is false, and therefore the statement is true; and on and on. This is what is sometimes referred to by people with glasses, or at least hard contact lenses, as a logical fallacy or paradox. It demonstrates that a single true/false logical system is incomplete (or whatever).

Yet an all-powerful, omnipotent green bean would have to encompass such things. It would have to be able to create a rock so heavy, that it could not move it, and still move it.

Gawd. Capital “G” and all that.

At any rate there are two things that I think about frequently when I come back to the whole G-O-D thing:

  • What the hell were you thinking?
  • Forgiveness

What the hell were you thinking?

This sort of question would actually have several exclamation points after it. The thing is, God would have to answer for that. God would have to answer for everything. Nothing could exist except by God’s will, and thus everything that exists does so by said pinto bean’s will. This being the case, there are a whole bunch of things I would want an answer to.

Now mind you, if we are talking about some lesser fruitcake, sitting on a throne and dispensing “justice” or whatever a la one of Jack Chick’s little comic books, I’d lie through my teeth or say whatever I had to in order to avoid whatever horrible fate was staring me in the face.

But I would always be thinking: “what about PeeWee Herman?!!” in the back of my mind.

Forgiveness

The other thing I would ask for is forgiveness. I can only say "I'm sorry" in so many ways and yet, I bear with me the stain of every perceived misdeed. It seems rare to me that other people feel guilt about what they do, and because they do not even perceive that they have wronged me, I bear resentment. This being the case, I walk around feeling guilt and resentment. I would prefer that this ended, that I was truly forgiven and that I would forgive everyone and everything else. That I would stop carrying around the burdens of guilt and resentment. This is, of course, impossible. But hey, we are talking about God with a capital "G", right?

What came before comes after?

I myself do not believe in God, but I leave myself open to the possibility that such a being exists. One consolation that I feel I have in that part of the mind where faith would dwell in someone else is this: taxes. Actually I do believe in taxes, but I also feel that oblivion would serve the same purpose that forgiveness would. If I did not exist, then I could not be holding a grudge. If I did not exist, I could be blamed for something, but I certainly would not be aware of it. I think that oblivion would be a state that is the same as I was in before I was born. When I think about yesterday, there is the concept of the day before that. Eventually I come to my earliest memories where there is no "before." Then I consider what came before that, and there is nothing. It is still possible that there was something, some experiences that came before birth, etc. but it seems less likely than the simpler explanation that there was nothing. On the other hand, there is a Buddist saying: "Want nothing and have everything. Want everything and have nothing." Since what I want is nothing, it seems like getting exactly that would be everything I want.

fnord

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Sex & Air

One of the things I hate about sex is the way that it shrinks my world. When I’m horny or feeling that nobody wants me or whatever, my world narrows down to people who are getting it, people who aren’t getting it, people who I can get it from, etc.

It kind of reminds me of air, water and food – when I have these things, they don’t seem that important. When I don’t have them, nothing else exists.

I understand, from an animal standpoint, why this is. A critter that doesn’t worry about things like breathing and water will soon be dead. Hence the ones that survive tend to have rather strong drives in those areas.

Similarly, with sex, we have a very strong drive. Animals that don’t reproduce do not pass on their traits to offspring (OK, there is next of kin selection), and for most of the time that human beans have been on the planet sex = reproduction.

The sex drive is weird in that, with food, water and air, the drive to get these things is coupled with a physical need. If you don’t get water, you die. End of story. No air? Well, you are going to have a short and painful existence. No sex? You can expect to live about as long as someone who is getting sex. A drive without a need.

The part where the whole train got derailed and smashed into the natural gas refining plant was when sex got tangled into the social aspects of human existence. For example, human beings do not obsess about water as much as we do about how we look to potential mates, even if we’re “getting some” and we don’t need another mate at the moment.

The actual, physical sex act doesn’t really need to take that long, so why can’t it be like water, food or air: oh, I need to have sex, fine. Lumber over to female or whatever, grunt, grunt, done. Wander off mindlessly and do something else.

But noooo! Is this mate acceptable to my friends? Does the attractiveness of my mate change my status with the group? What about when the two of us are just staggering around? What about her group, do I want to fit in with them? Is this mate of an acceptable age? And on, and on.

And then there’s the whole physical aspect of it. The size of her breasts and butt really don’t have a lot to do with the sex act itself. After you’ve been together for a couple of months or so, it stops mattering even to you. And yet people (alright guys) obsess about these things: are her boobs large or small? Do they sag or are they perky? Are the nipples sorta small or large? Blah, blah, blah.

So it’s really annoying when sex grows to consume my world. There’s a whole universe of things going on: music, philosophy, science, trying to bring world peas, etc. And here I’m stuck thinking about how long a girl’s legs are, or whether she likes “doggie style.”

To add insult to injury, this is all related to reproduction. Having kids. I really don’t think I should have kids. Many geneticists agree.

The mindless beast we carry within can be annoying in many ways, but for me, the worst is when it takes over my thoughts. Of all the aspects of ourselves that we have some measure of control over, like weight, strength, etc. it seems like one of the more responsive things are our minds. We choose to think about something and we think about it. It seems like we should be able to at least control that.

There is nothing more annoying to me then when the ole peskie grey critter gets clobbered by my sex drive so that, no, the regularly scheduled program has been pre-empted by “I dream of booty.” I mean, we can’t control the fact that we age, we can’t control the needs for air, water, food, you’d think that at least we could control what we think.

I guess that’s why I sometimes take the whole sex-drive thing as such a person affront.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Truth & Honesty

I’m often times struck (ouch!) by how some people will rip into you and then justify it by saying something along the lines of “it’s the truth.” With some people, like politicians, you ask them a straight question and get an answer…to something completely different from what you asked. I also recall some statement on “The X-Files” or whatever where a scientist compares human beings to ants and concludes that ants are more “honest about it [how they live].” All these random statements have very little in common, but one thing they do share are the notions of honesty and truth. Being an anal-retentive freak, I kept thinking about it and decided that no, ants are not “more honest” than human beings for one simple reason: they cannot choose to be dishonest. Honesty goes beyond mere truth. One can tell the truth and yet be dishonest. One can lie at the same time they are telling the truth. Consider this pointless experiment: You and another person are sitting around insulting each other when you take out a scrap of paper and, while concealing what you write from the other person, you jot down a number from 1 to 10 and place the piece of paper on a convenient coffee table (not tea mind you). Having thus exhausted yourselves, you and your associate walk into another room to get an alcoholic refreshment. While the two of you are thus occupied, a nefarious individual sidles into the room and replaces the scrap of paper with another that contains the number “5” written on it. Upon returning to the room, you announce to your compatriot that you have written the number “1” on the paper. Consider the following scenarios:
  • You decide to lie to your friend and actually wrote done 5. You told the truth, even though your intention was to mislead your friend.
  • You decide to be honest with your associate and actually wrote down 1. You did not tell the truth to the other person, but you tried to: you were being honest.
The point of this anecdote is to waste time. In addition, however, it illustrates that intention is crucial to whether one is being honest or deceitful. Intention is basically another word for choice: in this case the choice of whether to mislead or not. A politician is deceitful as a matter of course – it’s a politician after all. Beyond that, choosing to answer some question with a load of blather about some other topic is deceitful because their intention is to avoid answering the question. If one does not have the choice to mislead or be honest, then one cannot lie or misdirect. Thus our six-legged buddies with the antennas cannot be honest because they cannot choose to be otherwise. At least as far as I can tell. On the other hand, they do look pretty cool, what with the antennas and all. In a similar vein, there is the notion of kindness vs. cruelty. You could walk down the street, commenting in a loud and obnoxious manner about the weight of people that you encounter. This may be honest from your point of view, but point is that you do not have to do this. You have chosen to try and inflict harm. Thus “being honest” is no defense for someone who is ripping into when no feedback as been solicited.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Blogusus

I was sitting around, not being very productive, when I found myself listening to “comedy central” (www.npr.org). As usual, they were reporting on some outward sign that humanity was burning its little way towards the end or whatever and I found myself ranting at the computer speakers…again.

Muttering to myself, I stumbled around the web and read some things on blogger.com that provoked a few smirks, some outraged gesticulations, and my mouth frothing over. It was then that I realized a cunning plan…

Why not post my inane blather? I could make jillions of bucks! Scantily clad women would throw themselves at my feet! I would have millions of admirers!

I realized right away that these goals were unrealistic. I mean women do not throw themselves at your feet…they usually just walk up to you and then lie down. Much less wear and tear.

At any rate, so here it is! Perhaps when the applause dies down I will post some other crap. We’ll see how it goes.