Author: matthew

I just found a new favorite phrase. “Breathtaking Inanity”.

From E-Skeptic, Judge John Jones III, a US District Judge presiding over the Dover, PA “Intelligent Design” case, had this to say (all emphasis mine):

The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID. We will also issue a declaratory judgment that Plaintiffs’ rights under the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been violated by Defendants’ actions.

Defendants’ actions in violation of Plaintiffs’ civil rights as guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 subject Defendants to liability with respect to injunctive and declaratory relief, but also for nominal damages and the reasonable value of Plaintiffs’ attorneys’ services and costs incurred in vindicating Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.

John E. Jones III United States District Judge

I think that says it all. But the linked article says more 🙂

I’m certain challenges of this type will arise again. But I’m thrilled that, at least for today, science triumphed over breathtaking inanity.

Today’s Blog of the Week is Framing Science.

The beautiful thing about this guy’s site is that he effectively analyzes what constituents are doing to frame the debates to their requirements. The frame which wins is the argument which (usually) wins, so often the debates rage over how to define something. For years, or in the case of controversial issues like Roe v Wade, decades, the front-lines of the framing battles can skew back and forth.

He’s pretty neutral, too: instead of having a liberal or conservative bias, he seems to do a good job summarizing the framing desires of both sides. That’s rare, and cool.

In a thread regarding a song I wrote in 1993 and recorded recently, my neighbor emil posted a lengthy reply to my concerns. In the interest of not derailing a rather old topic, I’m posting my reply as a new primary blog entry. Feel free to chime in.

A few notes before I begin, directed particularly at relatives and friends who visit:

1. This is my opinion. As I mentioned previously, I would not speak so boldly if it were your obligation to believe me.
2. I try not to disparage people’s beliefs. However, institutions, public officials, and dogmas or policies are not beliefs, they are analyze-able, real things which can and should be criticized.
3. When Emil approached me regarding my nonbelief at a picnic last year, I replied that I’d rather not discuss it at a social gathering of that kind. If I recall correctly, I compared discussing religion at a 4th of July picnic to discussing flatulence. Most people aren’t interested and would really rather avoid such a discussion; those who are interested, and attend a meeting for the express purpose of discussing flatulence, should scrupulously avoid offense due to the discussion. So if you regard religious discussions, particularly those which discuss nonbelief in a positive light like the many we’ve had here, as verbal flatulence, you may want to skip this post and move on 🙂
4. I make extensive use of inline quoting. In every case in this post today, I’m quoting a statement of Emil’s. You may want to go back and read the original thread to understand how we got to where we’re at.

Disclaimers: Done. Reply: Coming up.

First, Emil, I’ll share a common sales technique with you. It’s called “Feel Felt Found“. To summarize the approach, first you establish empathy with someone by explaining that you know how they are feeling. Second, you explain how you, or someone you know, felt the same way. Finally, you explain how you or that other person found that the concerns really weren’t that big a deal, or how they actually are a good thing.

I used this technique extensively in my work as a full-time missionary, stake missionary, and ward mission leader. It works, and is emphasized in Church training materials as the most effective method for resolving concerns.

It is used extensively in hard-sell sales presentations, along with a score of other techniques expressly designed to exploit human weaknesses. When used outside of a genuine, mutual-trust relationship, it’s manipulative, abusing well-known practices of influencing people to make decisions against their better judgment, and I dislike it.

The over-arching structure of your post fell into that pattern: you told me you understand how I feel, told me how you felt the same way, then told me that you found a better way. I appreciate you sharing intensely personal, painful experiences, but I think it’s important to recognize the technique you are using while doing so. It may be worth your time to figure out why you’re using it on me.

I don’t think you fell into this pattern intentionally. It’s drilled into members of the church (particularly on full-time missions) as a chief method of resolving many concerns. For many, it’s an unconscious response, as are the use of numerous other sales techniques in presenting the Gospel.

Somewhere in my late 20s, I started questioning things and found reason not to believe.

Common ground. I was twenty-five when I began seriously questioning my faith. I left the church at twenty-nine after around four years of on-again, off-again research; I’m thirty-two now.

I even wanted to believe that there was no God.

Here’s where the differences start. I desparately wanted to believe there was a God. In fact, I kinda’ still do. I’d love it if there were a Sky God looking out for me and answering my prayers. That would rock and be pretty darn nifty. Vengeance on my enemies, rewards for my friends, guaranteed happiness in an eternal hereafter, and all that good stuff. (Note: reassurances of “there is, just pray and find Him!” ring hollow. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt and underwear, thanks. One definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over, expecting different results. I’m not interested in trying that again.)

I reasoned that if I could conclude that there is no God, then it would follow that there really was no right or wrong.

I came to the opposite conclusion. I reasoned that if there are no gods, then Man is responsible for establishing sound personal ethics by following general guidelines, rather than obeying arbitrary moral codes. I have a stake in the fate of humanity, and it behooves me to behave in a socially and personally responsible fashion.

Others come to different conclusions, though. And that’s OK by me. From where I sit, I see an evolutionary advantage to socially responsible behavior, which happens to align in many cases with religious morals. However, there are some pretty stark contrasts here and there where “commandments” look silly from an internalized ethical perspective (See my Ethics vs. Morals post for my analysis of the Ten Commandments from an ethical, non-dogmatic perspective along these lines.)

What I mainly did, was try to prove his non-existence by ignoring him, not praying to him, and just living my life how I wanted.

Ahh. I tried to prove His existence by having faith, being a good Christian and Mormon (yes, I’m one of those people who considered himself both, don’t razz me!), and turning my life over to Jesus for twelve years.

You can see how that turned out. That particular experiment was a failure. I needed a better hypothesis.

I think it’s important to recognize that it’s impossible to prove a negative. I can’t prove God doesn’t exist. I can’t prove Zeus, Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny don’t exist, either. I can, however, state that I consider the existence of any of the four to be equally likely, and have yet to see evidence to suggest any of them exist as more than human inventions.

I guess I did okay “on my own” for a while. But I think that was only because I didn’t abandon everything I had been taught about right and wrong.

Allow me to advance an alternative hypothesis. Humanity has evolved with social patterns and instruction as an important survival trait. Cultures have risen and fallen based upon how conducive their social patterns were to reproductive success (reproductive success implies a whole lot more than breeding like rabbits, btw… a strong tradition of knowledge transfer from the aged to the young requires care for the elderly, and that kind of thing). The actions of an individual which support the societal success patterns of their culture tend to lend toward individual success as well.

You did “OK” because “right and wrong” are social values. Not religious ones. IMHO, God had nothing to do with whether or not you were “OK”. He wasn’t handing you a cookie for doing the right thing. Doing the right thing, by and large, is its own reward, with numerous and notable exceptions which are exploited by those willing to exploit the system for personal gain.

I think you’ll find even some Christians agree with me that doing good doesn’t necessarily bring blessings in life. This is “magical thinking” in action: if I do X random thing, Y will happen. If I pay my tithing, I’ll get a raise. If I don’t wank, then I’ll get into the school I want to. If I keep the Sabbath Day holy, the drought will end. That kind of stuff is pure poppycock… but if you want to see a relationship there, well, the dragons in the clouds are always waiting (see later reference in this reply to finding patterns in random cloud formations).

But living life “how I wanted” did lead me into doing some things I shouldn’t have.

I submit that even if you had lived your life exclusively in the fashion prescribed by Mormonism, you’d still have done things you “shouldn’t have”. Modern-day Christianity presents an impossible standard of perfection which requires redemption by a Savior. According to this theology, there was only one dude that ever lived the perfect life. He died and came back, and is like all holy and holey and stuff, and if you believe in him, your failure to meet the impossible standard is forgiven.

To quote Paul Murphy: “Guilt. Stop being motivated by it.”

You continued with several personal anecdotes. I appreciated them, and feel I understand you a little better after reading them.

When I got back to my computer, I tried that idea and it worked! I know that answer came from God.

I dunno… the Microsoft KnowledgeBase seems like a surer bet than God from where I sit. I work with computers for a living, and you have no idea how many long nights I spent (back when I was a believer) praying that I could fix a terrible problem in time, and yet I still couldn’t fix it or I blew the deadline.

How many times have you prayed about problems and not gotten an answer? The idea that God hears and answers prayers is, to out-of-context quote my friend Justin, “treating God like a cosmic vending machine”. Insert faith and works, output blessings. I submit that, if there is a God, he gave us brains sufficient for our needs. Sure, if you’re a believer, it “came from God”… but it came from Him by way of your extraordinary brain figuring it out.

The phenomenon of ascribing things to unlikely causes is called “counting the hits and ignoring the misses”. You remember the time you were thinking of that song, and then turned on the radio and it was playing. You remember the time you were thinking of your friend or relative, and at that exact moment, they called. You forget all the times you thought of a song and it wasn’t playing on the radio, or thought of the friend or relative and they didn’t call.

It’s a human thing. We naturally hunt for patterns in the chaos, and find them. They are, however, like seeing dragons in the clouds: ephemeral, temporary, and a construct of our own imaginations.

If we seek other answers to explain these things, surely we can invent them.

I agree with this statement. However, I submit that the simplest answer is to look for natural causes, and the “other answers” we “invent” are the traditional, complicated religious ones.

If you add my examples to all the testimonies of others who’ve experienced God’s power, guidance, and love, it really leaves little doubt that he lives and knows us and desires to help us.

The plural of “anecdote” is not “evidence”. Just because an idea is popular doesn’t mean it’s correct or plausible. A billion Moslems can’t be wrong. A billion Hindus can’t be wrong. A billion Christians can’t be wrong. And yet, the theologies are (largely, with caveats) mutually exclusive! Somebody’s wrong, but they’re all very popular.

Matthew quote: “… it’s so obvious what a tremendous mind-job people — particularly youth — undergo in that sort of coercive group-think environment.” Of course, I assume this statement is made on the premise that the things taught are not true.

You assume incorrectly. You can do a mind-job using “true” principles as easily as false ones. You can have group-think about things which are ethical and virtuous as much as ones which are unethical and villainous. The principles being taught are irrelevant; it’s the method that matters. If you use unethical techniques to persuade someone to do the right thing, you’ve still abused a trust in order to achieve your goals.

There are several specific practices in the LDS church I consider coercive and inappropriate. Not possessing an asbestos suit and industrial-grade fire extinguisher, however, I prefer not to post them.

(Note: the above is a metaphor as a response to getting “flamed” by relatives. Posting specific criticisms of the LDS church is a personal no-no for me on this board due to unhappy relatives making my wife’s life miserable when I’ve done so.)

— Matthew P. Barnson – – – – Thought for the moment: Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture on a rock. — New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981

Several years ago, I registered a domain name–barnson.org–on a lark. Initially, I set up a few static pages about topics that interested me, then moved to Movable Type, all delivered on an old Pentium Pro 200MHz machine with 64MB of RAM on my home DSL connection.

After a while, I figured out that upstream DSL was slow. I hosted a lot of my own MP3 files and photos there, and it just sucked. So I looked up low-cost hosting options, and ended up with 65535.net (later jvds.com). I’ve referred a few friends to them, and on the whole, they have been decent, low-cost hosting providers.

Everything changes in time, though. We’ve shuffled IP addresses around, changed software to Drupal, added stuff, removed stuff, and had fun. Along the way, a bunch of friends discovered the site, and I gave them space and posting privileges, and we have a small community with around 1,000 readers a day, and perhaps a dozen regular posters.

So my question is this: have we outgrown the name barnson.org? Is this no longer my little playground, but something larger where people don’t need or want to justify their writing here by explaining their relationship to the webmaster?

To that end, I’ve registered WaywardSun.org. Those of you familiar with my background will instantly recognize this as the name of the band which Sammy G, Wandering Moose, Kevin, Ben, Ed (who has disappeared) and I were in at various times.

Should we change the domain to this name? Other things I could do at that point would be stuff like, for instance, making Sam’s blog be available both mixed with others on the main page, but also at something like sammyg.waywardsun.org. What think you? Change, or no?

It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s just a question of whether it’s a good idea or not.

— Matthew P. Barnson – – – – Thought for the moment: “I quite agree with you,” said the Duchess; “and the moral of that is — `Be what you would seem to be’ — or, if you’d like it put more simply — `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'” — Lewis Carrol, “Alice in Wonderland”

If you listen to political radio, it’s all abuzz this year over what to call the holiday season. “Happy Holidays!” says the left. “Merry Christmas!” says the Right. It becomes a big deal that George Bush’s Christmas cards say “Happy Holidays”, and people accuse him of being unChristian.

Sick of all that?

Well, just in case you don’t have enough silly, worthless videos to watch this Christmas, I propose we change the name of the season to Chrismahanukwanzakah.

(Note: sound required to get the full effect…)

Back in the day, I promised you this story. Well, I ran across my posting, and I figured it was time.

I was working at Wendy’s. Yeah. That Wendy’s. The one across the street from Quince Orchard High School.

I had arrived a the grand old age of 14 in the spring, and had faced a choice of what summer job I wanted: a cush position babysitting the two darling children of a pair of rich doctors in my neighborhood for $25.00 a day, or working at Wendy’s for $3.25 an hour, with a maximum of twenty hours a week due to my age.

I was a moron.

It was hard, dull work. Other than getting to work with the redoubtable Skye Hassan–the previous year’s elected president of my junior high school–there was little redeeming value to the position. I worked under the young, tyrannical manager Jenny, who had as an assisant manager a thickly-accented, extremely portly manager named Mamet.

Jenny made a big deal out of being the youngest full manager of a Wendy’s in the entire chain. Nineteen years old, and she ran her own place. She ended up getting sacked a year later for violating workplace safety regulations.

Believe it or not, this ties in.

So we were short-staffed today. It was only Mamet and me, him in his grease-stained white shirt and tie, and I in my grease-stained apron and manky blue pants.

You know, it’s pretty amazing how polyester transforms when constantly exposed to rancid, spattered beef grease and animal fats from the deep-fryer. You can never really get all the grease out, and so, over time, the pants begin a life of their own. You see, they warm up when you wear them, and become pliable. Then you take the pants off at night and toss them in the cold closet. The next day, you fish them out (because, although you are expected to work 5 days a week, they only issue you a single pair of pants) of the bottom of the closet, and they don’t unfold. They remain shaped in the same form where they’d lain all night: left leg curled up behind, right leg straight down, with a deep crease where they’d folded.

So I unfolded the pants each day. Eventually, I’d actually hear a faint crackle as the embedded grease detached from itself. When it became a struggle to force the pants to resume their leg-shaped forms, it was time to wash them.

Anyway, Mamet and I were staffing the store. I needed to put a fresh batch of fries into the fryer, so I reached down to grab the handle of the metal door which concealed the freezer under the fryer, and pulled, hard.

I missed.

I managed, however, to catch the edge of the folded sheet-metal frying basin with the inside knuckle of my right forefinger and middle finger. With that hard pull, I felt a sharp, stinging sensation. I pulled my hand away, and looked at the damage.

Cut to the bone. Blood flowing freely down my arm from my hand held in front of my face, trickling to the elbow and drip-drip-dripping on the floor. It was a bad cut.

I walked in a fog back to the manager’s office: a tiny cubby nestled between the washroom and the drive-thru. “Mamet,” I began.

Mamet was on the phone. He vaguely shushed me, his concentration intent on the conversation. I waited politely and dripped more blood onto the floor.

A few minutes later, he finished his conversation. “Mamet, I hurt myself,” I said, “I think I may have to go home.”

I held up my hand.

Mamet’s eyes grew wide. “A-let-a me get-a de first-aid kit,” he said in thick Puerto Rican overtones. He opened the cabinet, and we set to work fixing me up a bit and wiping up the blood. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough: blood was soaking through the gauze.

“Maybe I should go home?” I offered hopefully.

“I need you here, Matt,” Mamet said. “I can’t a-hope to a-hold down de store wit a-no help.” He thought furiously for a moment. “I might a-be having somethin’ a-could help,” he began, as he started rummaging through an unusual box next to the manager’s desk.

He pulled out a small, square, flat foil package with the impression of a ring inside. “What’s that?” I asked naively.

“A-this?” Mamet replied. He thought for a second. “A-this…” he said grandly, “is a blood-a-stopper.”

I looked at my hand. “Wow,” I said, seeing the blood soaking through the thick gauze on my fingers, “I cold sure use one of those!”

“You bet!” Mamet replied enthusiastically. He ripped open the package, and pulled out the thin rubber ring. “A-hold up-a your two fingers,” he commanded. I obeyed.

He unrolled the funny-looking, clear, rubber, ribbed blood-stopper onto my fingers. I admired it for a few moments, as the narrow tube of latex tightly cinched together my two fingers and held back the blood. “Looks like it’s going to work!” I said brightly, happy to stay at work and make more money. “But the tip looks funny,” I said. “What’s this little knob for?”

“Ahh,” says Mamet, “That’s a-de brilliant ting! If you a-start to bleed a-more, the reservoir tip will a-collect de blood!”

“Brilliant,” I said.

“You bet!” he said.

The phrase “you bet” was on of Mamet’s favorite phrases.

So Mamet made the executive decision that I was to run the cash register for the rest of my shift, as I shouldn’t be handling foods with my fingers in such a condition, and he would handle the food preparation and grilling. I manned the cash-register brightly, as was usual, waiting expectantly for the next customers to arrive. Within a few minutes, a pair of beautiful juniors from the high-scool walked in to order.

They ordered, and I began entering their request into the register, clumsily whacking at the keys with my blood-stoppered finger.

The girls giggled.

“Dude,” said one, “why are you wearing a condom on your hand?”

“It’s not a condom!” I replied, not knowing what a condom was, “it’s a blood-stopper!”

— Matthew P. Barnson – – – – Thought for the moment: damn, the autonomous mouse movement starts usually after I use a mouse button don’t use a mouse button then 🙂 yeah, right 🙂

I don’t know if your work environment is like mine, but as I look around my desk, I see this:

Two monitors Six computers (two laptops, four desktops) Four keyboards and mice The usual mess of a sysadmin

Now, if you’re like me, all this clutter is darn annoying and inconvenient. Move this keyboard and mouse so that you can use this other one… now move everything back… can’t use your favorite keyboard on this PC… etc, ad nauseum.

Now imagine that you’ve tried some solutions. You’ve tried the VNC and Remote Desktop thing. You just can’t dig how slow the screens respond, the color pallette corruption, and the general nastiness of trying to push an entire display of colors across the network.

Now imagine you have the solution. And you don’t need to imagine anymore.

It’s Synergy. One keyboard. One mouse. Multiple monitors. I used it all night for the first time last night while working.

How. Dang. Cool.

Move my mouse pointer over to the next monitor, and just start typing in a window on my Linux box, using the keyboard atached to my Windows box. Copy and Paste works seamlessly, almost as if they are the same machine. Now that I’ve worked this way, well… there’s probably no going back 🙂 Since the video is native on both machines, it’s as responsive as being on the box.

Sometimes you run across a tool so nifty, you just have to share…

Stuff that doesn’t work: For some reason, on my Linux client, my cursor keys don’t work right in Firefox text boxes, like the one I’m writing in now, but they work fine everywhere else (terminal windows, mail program, etc.)

A big bonus to this setup, for me, is because I run SO DARN MANY applications, I tend to bog one system down. Now I can let Windows get by with just running IE and LookOut, with all my terminal windows and other stuff running on my smokin’-fast Linux box.

Dig it.

So I bought City of Villains last month, and one of the reasons you haven’t seen so much of me online lately is that game.

Really, I only posted this to post the following quote:

I know there are other ways to do player versus player in a more controlled manner. You can have safe zones for new folks and/or danger zones where such combat takes place. Dark Age of Camelot seems to be using this latter strategy fairly well. But that kind of solution doesn’t work for City of Heroes. Maybe if we had two cities – one full of villains, the other full of heroes – warring with one another, it might work. But that would be a very different and, in my opinion, very silly game indeed.

Silly game indeed. This quote was from one Rick Dakan, lead designer for City of Heroes prior to Jack “Statesman” Emmert. Aww, Rick, we miss you, really!

For a “silly game indeed”, it sure is a heck of a lot of fun. One of the aspects I’m enjoying about it is the player-vs-player aspect. They toned down a lot of the characters (like my overpowered Fire/Ice tanker, Crimson Fantom… well, he’s no longer anywhere near the tough tank laying the smackdown like he used to be) in order to make all character classes feel useful and needed in a group, and this had the side-effect of making some PvP battles more interesting.

Tanks still take a long, long time to whittle down in PvP. Blasters are still all about demolishing another player in the shortest possible time. But it really makes that stuff fun. There are missions and objectives which give your “side” of the fight all kinds of bonusses, and wars fought to try to swing the balance of power. Terrifically good fun, though my chosen “main” class of Mastermind is pretty darn weak at it. I usually find a good team, buff the heck out of them, and then retreat into my “happy fun ball” (Personal Force Field, an ability preventing me from doing anything except run around invincible for a while) using my secondary power of force fields.

The Arena battles can be interesting, too. There’s a “gladiator” mode where you control small armies of villains/heroes you’ve defeated in the Player-versus-Environment mode to try to defeat an opponent. Very real-time-strategy-ish. The Arena is a much more controlled, rigid sort of PvP, where you can set and abide by certain rules, such as “no travel powers”. I don’t enjoy Arena much with people I don’t know, but with people I do know, it’s a lot of fun.

So what games are you playing these days, if any?

Thanks Justin for pointing out the recent poster who decided to do nothing but link to a bunch of porn sites.

Comments deleted. Unfortunately, replies to them were also deleted.

It’s interesting, because this isn’t an automated script: it’s actually some dude physically interpreting the pictures and pasting the links. A real, live person, rather than a script.

To quote Tom Cruise:

“You’re a jerky jerk!”

This just in: tinfoil hats actually amplify many radio frequencies. So what’s your item of choice for paranoid prevention of government thought-wave interception?

I think I’ll go for a propeller beanie. Seems just as effective.