Author: matthew

In the “cool gizmos that I like” category today, I bring you self-heating coffee. Yeah, if you’re a Slashdotter, you’ve already seen it, so sue me 🙂 I think this is a very, very cool… erm, warm invention. So much so, I can’t wait for them to do this with other things… apple cider, hot cocoa, etc…

I regret to inform you that effective immediately, I will no longer be able to serve the Southern United States on Christmas Eve. Due to overwhelming current population of the earth, my contract was renegotiated by North American Fairies and Elves Local 209. I now serve only certain areas of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan.

As part of the new and better contract I also get longer breaks for milk and cookies so keep that in mind. However, I’m certain that your children will be in good hands with your local replacement who happens to be my third cousin, Bubba Claus. His side of the family is from the South pole. He shares my goal of delivering toys to all the good boys and girls; however, there are a few differences between us. Differences such as:

1. There is no danger of a Grinch stealing your presents from Bubba Claus. He has a gun rack on his sleigh and a bumper sticker that reads: “These toys insured by Smith & Wesson.”

2. Instead of milk and cookies, Bubba Claus prefers that children leave a RC Cola and pork rinds (or a moon pie) on the fireplace. And Bubba doesn’t smoke a pipe. He dips a little snuff though, so please have an empty spit can handy.

3. Bubba Claus’ sleigh is pulled by floppy-eared, flyin’ coon dogs instead of reindeer. I made the mistake of loaning him a couple of my reindeer one time, and Blitzen’s head now overlooks Bubba’s fireplace.

4. You won’t hear “On Comet, on Cupid, on Donner and Blitzen…” when Bubba Claus arrives. Instead you’ll hear, “On Earnhardt, on Wallace, on Martin and LaBonte. On Rudd, on Jarrett, on Elliot and Petty.”

5. “Ho, ho, ho!” has been replaced by “Yee Haw!” And you also are likely to hear Bubba’s elves reply, “I her’d dat!”

6. As required by Southern highway laws, Bubba Claus’ sleigh does have a Yosemite Sam safety triangle on the back with the words, “Back Off!” The last I heard it also had other decorations on the sleigh back as well. One is Ford or Chevy logo with lights that race through the letters and the other is a caricature of me (Santa Claus) peeing on the Tooth Fairy.

7. The usual Christmas movie classics such as “Miracle on 34th Street” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” will not be shown in your negotiated viewing area. Instead, you will see “Boss Hogg Saves Christmas” and “Smokey and the Bandit IV” featuring Burt Reynolds as Bubba Claus and dozens of State Patrol cars crashing into each other.

8. Bubba Claus doesn’t wear a belt. If I were you, I’d make sure you, the wife, and the kids turn the other way when he bends over to put presents under the tree.

9. And finally, lovely Christmas songs have been sung about me like “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” and Bing Crosby’s “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”. This year, songs about Bubba Claus will be played on all the AM radio stations in the South. These song titles will be Mark Chesnutt’s “Bubba Claus shot the jukebox”; Cledus T. Judd’s, “All I want for Christmas is my Woman and a Six-opack”, and Hank Williams Jr’s “If You Don’t Like Bubba Claus, You Shove It.”

Sincerely Yours, Santa Claus

(Member of North American Fairies and Elves Local 209)

We’re rapidly hurtling towards the annual Yule celebration, and I happened across this little gem, a tongue-in-cheek look at the mingling of religious traditions in modern holiday celebrations. Thought you might get a kick out of a little fun-poking at our conglomeration of traditions…

A sample…

The word “yule,” like the word “dog,” is so old that nobody really knows where it came from…

I can always tell when solstice is coming because the newspapers fill up with mopes from Christians about how the heathens have all appropriated Christmas. You know: all that biblical stuff like putting lights on pine trees and making wreaths and celebrating it in December (Latin for “tenth month,” which just goes to show something or other). Basically, the early Christians grabbed the existing holiday, filed off the serial numbers, and started accusing everyone else of stealing it.

I really like how he ends the piece, though, with a deep reflection on why it is we need solace… solstice… in the midst of the grip of the longest dark of the year. Nice piece.

So today I ran across this book: Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence. Just in reading the reviews and the sample first chapter, this book resonated with me deeply. I think I’ll have to buy it.

I’ve noticed this with my own kids: despite a “no guns” rule in our house, my boys (and girl!) find ways to make weapons out of everyday objects. Today, that little decorative hunk of plastic is a wand from Harry Potter, with Elijah pointing it upwards shouting “Expecto Patronum!” Tomorrow, I discover Zach sheepishly changing that same hunk of plastic from a “gun-position”, making “bam bam bam!” noises, to a “musical conductor position” when he sees me glance at him questioningly. Sara smashes that same hunk of plastic against that of a playmate the next day in a sword battle, with occasional epithets shouted in make-believe language.

I have no doubt that young Joshua, when he is of an age to begin acting out make-believe, will join in the fun.

I keep hearing in the media how video games are “corrupting our youth”. News outlets make sure to emphasize how youthful killers were involved in Dungeons & Dragons, violent video games, or other forms of roleplay.

And every time I hear of these correlations, I find myself thinking “they just don’t get it.”

For me, as a kid, violent video games were the catharsis that I needed to avoid taking out my aggressions in real-life on other people. It’s make-believe. It’s pixels on a screen. Pundits against video-game violence, however, say it’s “desensitizing” to real violence.

I don’t believe that for a heartbeat.

I watched a man try to shoot another man to death on an East Los Angeles street. I was shocked and horrified, running for cover, adrenaline pumping through my veins as I had no idea what to do. Yet I’d seen that same scene many times in movies and video games.

I stared, aghast, at video footage of an F-16 bombing a group of insurgents in Iraq the other day. It was hard to believe I was seeing what I was seeing, yet it was real life, not make-believe. I was physically ill at the thought of just having watched several dozen Iraqis die, even though I knew they were armed and running to join a fight against U.S. soldiers.

The audio of Nick Berg being executed played on the radio several months ago, left me speechless and teary. I had to shut it off because I couldn’t take the stress of hearing it, or hearing anything more about it.

The way I see it, violent video games provide a way for children to feel powerful in a safe environment. They allow them to explore and master their “darker side”, preventing it from becoming the dominant force in their personalities. Even as an adult, being able to blow away the bad guys late at night allows me to be more gentle and tolerant with my own family during the day.

A powerless child needs some way to feel powerful and dominant, even if it’s only make-believe.

I think Christy gets this, too. This Christmas, despite the “no playing guns” rule that has been in place around our house since our children were born, we bought them four Lazer Tag guns. And I suspect that my kids are going to feel like, at home beating me in Lazer Tag, they can exercise the power they lack at school.

Recently, the governor of Illinois announced an initiative to ban violent video games. I think such a move would be a recipe for disaster. I can understand that certain types of violence, acted out in a video game, make us squeamish. And yet kids relate to this stuff on an entirely different level than we do, as adults.

Unfortunately, the power of correlation is difficult to oppose for the masses who don’t understand logic and statistics. For instance, let’s say that serial killers frequently mutilated small animals as a child. There’s a correlation. It doesn’t mean that small animals should be banned, or that small animals are the cause of the violent behavior as an adult. The correlation is that people with mental illness of the sort likely to make them into serial killers frequently act this out against small animals. It is something that should be observed, noted, and prevented through medication and therapy to normalize the child before he becomes a violent adult.

Make-believe violence, as much as our culture despises it, is, in my humble opinion, the solution to a lot of real-world violence. I think it’s a powerful argument in favor of “virtual violence” that, since 1993 when ‘Doom’ was released, heralding the beginning of the “ultra-violent video game age”, that crime in the U.S. began a sustained and dramatic decline. Something to think about.

(Note: I’m not advocating sitting your toddlers down in front of slasher flicks. The subsequent weeks of little sleep due to nightmares would be enough to discourage any parent. I am advocating that stories and play which enable a child to feel powerful and explore emotions in a safe environment, like a video game, can help them develop a fully-fleshed, dynamic personality.)

—
Matthew P. Barnson
– – – –

Thought for the moment:

Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United States we really shouldn’t complain — it’s still only two cents a day.

You know, I remember reading this amazing story about how to achieve the lowest-possible SAT testing score some months ago, but thought it was time to share. I never took the SAT; I took the ACT instead.

Yep, it turns out that using a laptop computer on your lap may reduce your ability to father children.

I have four kids. Maybe I should compute with my laptop in my lap rather than on a table more often?

So here’s the question of the day: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Yeah, I know, I’m thirty-one years old. It’s probably a little late to be considering this question. But I think of all the people who’ve done great things with their lives well after age forty, and keep doing them up until their dying day. For instance, I think about Arthur C. Clarke, still writing great science fiction and pushing the frontiers of modern science to this day. (For those who don’t know, Clarke was the discoverer of the “Clarke Belt”, that special zone of space about 28,000 miles from earth where a satellite will appear stationary from a given point on Earth. You owe Clarke for your television broadcasts, many radio programs, and other inventions which rely on geosynchronous satellites.)

So what do I want to be when I grow up? Among other things, a philanthropist, a scientist, and a PhD. Not sure what in, really, but I’d like to involve law and sociology in there.

If you think that’s one of the farthest things from UNIX systems administration (my current career), you’re right. I’m taking “the long view”, and thinking of what I’ll be doing once all the kids are out of the house twenty years from now. I’ll be fifty, and, with luck, looking at thirty more years of fun, adventure, and pushing the frontiers of human knowledge. Looking at that perspective, though I’m probably at least 1/3 done with my lifespan, I still have plenty of time to make my mark on the world.

I heard two great quotes today, that are only tangentially related:

We do not inherit the world from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.

Power does not corrupt. The corrupt seek power.

What about you? What do you want to do when you grow up?

It’s late, and I’m wide-awake. Thought I’d share some thoughts while I’m up!

I’ve recently been playing a game called City of Heroes. It’s a pretty fun massively-multiplayer superhero game (for those who want to play some time, I’m on the Champion server, and when Issue 3 goes live, I’m picking the handle “Barnboy” if I can get it). Anyway, there’s a point to this post that isn’t about online games 🙂

CoH has a unique feature among the MMO (Massively-Multiplayer Online) genre: there is no “loot”. There is no “currency”. As a matter of fact, as far as your heroes are concerned, you don’t live in a world where you require food, shelter, or any other mundanities. The closest thing the game has to anything resembling “loot” is the idea of “enhancements” which improve your hero’s abilities, and “influence”, which is supposed to represent your hero’s popularity and is “spendable” on “enhancements” or “inspirations”.

This got me thinking of how we handle influence in real life, and after having recently read Robert Cialdini’s Influence, Science and Practice and Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things. And much of my thought on the matter can be summed up in this one quote:

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart reasons.

Rather than expounding on this myself, I’ll re-publish Shermer’s food for thought verbatim. This is a post I intend to follow up on with comments, but thought I’d open it for what you think first.

Today, I find myself pondering decisions I’ve made, and those of others whom I care about, in light of this thought. Shermer’s book specifically deals with pseudoscience such as magnet therapy, holocaust denial, aromatherapy, and other practicies that cloak themselves in the mantle of “science” while having no scientific validity, but it has a much broader application across a whole spectrum of belief. Combined with Cialdini’s insights into why people find themselves agreeing to things which they have no intent of agreeing to, leads me to the conclusion that, most of the time, we human beings (including myself!) make decisions for all kinds of reasons. Last among those reasons, generally, lie facts and logic.

---

Smart People Believe Weird Things

Rarely does anyone weigh facts before deciding what to believe.

By Michael Shermer

In April 1999, when I was on a lecture tour for my book Why People Believe Weird Things, the psychologist Robert Sternberg attended my presentation at Yale University. His response to the lecture was both enlightening and troubling. It is certainly entertaining to hear about other people’s weird beliefs, Sternberg reflected, because we are confident that we would never be so foolish. But why do smart people fall for such things? Sternberg’s challenge led to a second edition of my book, with a new chapter expounding on my answer to his question: Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart reasons.

Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weigh them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational explanation, regardless of what we previously believed. Most of us, most of the time, come to our beliefs for a variety of reasons having little to do with empirical evidence and logical reasoning. Rather, such variables as genetic predisposition, parental predilection, sibling influence, peer pressure, educational experience and life impressions all shape the personality preferences that, in conjunction with numerous social and cultural influences, lead us to our beliefs. We then sort through the body of data and select those that most confirm what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away those that do not.

This phenomenon, called the confirmation bias, helps to explain the findings published in the National Science Foundation’s biennial report (April 2002) on the state of science understanding: 30 percent of adult Americans believe that UFOs are space vehicles from other civilizations; 60 percent believe in ESP; 40 percent think that astrology is scientific; 32 percent believe in lucky numbers; 70 percent accept magnetic therapy as scientific; and 88 percent accept alternative medicine.

Education by itself is no paranormal prophylactic. Although belief in ESP decreased from 65 percent among high school graduates to 60 percent among college graduates, and belief in magnetic therapy dropped from 71 percent among high school graduates to 55 percent among college graduates, that still leaves more than half fully endorsing such claims! And for embracing alternative medicine, the percentages actually increase, from 89 percent for high school grads to 92 percent for college grads.

The siren song of pseudoscience can be too alluring to resist.

We can glean a deeper cause of this problem in another statistic: 70 percent of Americans still do not understand the scientific process, defined in the study as comprehending probability, the experimental method and hypothesis testing. One solution is more and better science education, as indicated by the fact that 53 percent of Americans with a high level of science education (nine or more high school and college science/math courses) understand the scientific process, compared with 38 percent of those with a middle-level science education (six to eight such courses) and 17 percent with a low level (five or fewer courses).

The key here is teaching how science works, not just what science has discovered. We recently published an article in /Skeptic/ (Vol. 9, No. 3) revealing the results of a study that found no correlation between science knowledge (facts about the world) and paranormal beliefs. The authors, W. Richard Walker, Steven J. Hoekstra and Rodney J. Vogl, concluded: “Students that scored well on these <science knowledge> tests were no more or less skeptical of pseudoscientific claims than students that scored very poorly. Apparently, the students were not able to apply their scientific knowledge to evaluate these pseudoscientific claims. We suggest that this inability stems in part from the way that science is traditionally presented to students: Students are taught what to think but not how to think.“

To attenuate these paranormal belief statistics, we need to teach that science is not a database of unconnected factoids but a set of methods designed to describe and interpret phenomena, past or present, aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation.

For those lacking a fundamental comprehension of how science works, the siren song of pseudoscience becomes too alluring to resist, no matter how smart you are.

—
Matthew P. Barnson
– – – –
Thought for the moment:

Murphy’s Discovery:
Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to women? They say, “Trust me, go all the way with me, and everything will be all right.” And what happens? Nine months later, you’re in trouble!

I ran across this interesting opinion piece the other day, and thought it worthwhile to post here. I was once a Rush-Limbaugh-Listening blue-collar worker who thought the only people that disagreed with right-wing political opinions were commie liberals. Considering my position change over the last decade, it’s an interesting read for me; hope it is for you, too.

(For those interested: Yes, I’m a Republican, and plan to continue to be so, working to reform injustices from the inside rather than hop to a party that’s only marginally different.)

My opinion? I’m glad we have strong differences of opinion in this country, because with such vehement disagreement, we can come to compromises that best benefit the population as a whole. It’s one reason I’m concerned about the Republican shift in the Senate, because now we have one party dominating two out of the three branches of government. And with conservative appointees certain to be rubber-stamped to the judiciary over the next four years, pretty soon one party will cover the third branch, too.

---

*A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN*
(Author unknown)

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of coffee, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs.

Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry. In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government- subsidized ride to work.

It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.

Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

Its noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive.

His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home.

His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.

Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”

So yesterday morning around 10 AM, I walked into my new offices with the large company I work for (who shall, as always, remain nameless in public). Interesting experience!

Part of the security procedure is a check-in, assigning a badge to an individual, and taking that person’s fingerprints. It’s part of the routine; in order to get into the server room floor, or certain parts of the building, you must not only have your badge, but also put your hand on a fingerprint scanner. It works fairly reliably, and is a sensible part of general security policy, which is “what you are, what you have, and what you know: choose to verify at least two of the three for reasonable security.”

So I’m chatting with the security guard, and he blurts out, “You sure seem a lot more like a salesman than a computer guy.”

<blink> <blink>

“No, really,” he goes on, “you seem to have the personality. You enjoy people; you should really consider a career in sales. It could be good for you.”

<blink> <blink>

“It’s financially rewarding, and really, it’s all about building good relationships. You seem to have that down pat.”

Fact: I hate sales. With a passion. It’s a necessary evil, I suppose, but it’s something I watched my Mom stress out over for twenty years. It’s not a place I’m interested in going. I’m a tech, and was pretty much really anti-social until 10th grade when I decided it was time to get some hygiene and get some friends.

“Well,” I responded, “I’ve been some sort of computer admin for about ten years now. I’m pretty good at what I do, and I enjoy it a lot.”

“Fair enough,” the portly security guard responded as he turned away to finish setting up my badge and handprint security settings, “but I think you’re missing out.”

The thing is, this wouldn’t have been so weird if I hadn’t felt like I’ve had this exact same conversation every place I’ve worked for the last ten years.

“Why are you a meter reader? You’d make a great salesperson.”

“Wow, Matt, you’re far too sociable and friendly for me to imagine you stuck behind a computer screen being a geek all day.”

“I think you got into the wrong career, son; you should have been a salesman.”

What is it? Is it my short hair? My slightly-plump friendliness? Reasonably good hygiene?

(Which reminds me, after putting my hand on the same hand scanner as everybody else in the building, I better go wash my hands. Ugh.)

It’s hard to develop a serious reputation as a UNIX geek extraordinaire when most people seem to think I’ve missed my calling!