These days I’ve been devoting a lot of time to studying quantum physics and abiogenesis. Obviously these subjects can be extremely dry, so a great deal of time goes into just selecting the right authors and books to read. If I pick the right books and approach the subjects correctly, they’re immensely fascinating. A considerable amount of energy also goes to figuring out how to learn different things (what order to learn things in, how to categorize ideas, etc.), so that everything clicks together instead of getting mashed together incomprehensibly in my brain.
Last year I was much more into neuroscience (both the physiology and psychology aspects), various philosophical mind issues (the root and meaning of consciousness, the idea of a soul, the nature of dreams) and some well-known technical debates such as nature-vs-nurture (ie. whether personality and capabilities lean more towards innateness (”human nature”) or environmental programming). This was a very fun period in my life, spent reading Oliver Sacks, discussing pharmacology with some friends and attempting to lucidly dream. Lucid dreaming is fucking cool.
So, though I’ve concentrated on physics and haven’t gone back to the mind sciences in several months, I still actively read up on new findings and articles. Many of these findings appear on Yahoo News, CNN, or other news sites and they seem to be fairly popular. There’s something very satisfying about learning about how your mind works. I jotted down notes on a few of my favorite findings and want to share them. If anyone else has other interesting tidbits to add, I want to hear from ya!
Practically none of this was known just 50 years ago. Oh how far we’ve come:
1. In 1997 Dr. V.S. Ramachandran demonstrated that “very religious” people showed more emotional interest when exposed to sexual stimuli than when exposed to religious stimuli. So much for “complete devotion” 
2. A surgically severed corpus callosum (part of brain which connects the left and right halves, like a bridge) will actually create two minds, each with its own free will and ability to act on its own! Without interaction, one mind will create fictionalized accounts of what the human as a whole is doing. For example, in one study someone was shown a command of “start walking” to the right side of the brain. Later, when researchers asked the man why he was walking, the left side of the brain was only able to say “I was getting a coke”, and was completely oblivious as to why the human was actually walking.
3. New estimates say that the human brain can process 100,000,000,000,000 instructions per second, the complexity of which far surpasses any known supercomputer. The complexity of even a cat’s processing far surpasses any known supercomputer!
4. A child with half its brain removed can still grow up to fully function, suggesting the remaining half takes on all the responsibilities of its missing other half. This degree of “plasticity” disappears once the brain is matured.
5. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t use only 10% of your brain. You typically use all of it!
6. Current theory suggests that as each layer of consciousness is recursively stacked, the mind gains the ability of higher-level abstract functioning but lower, more computational levels are sunk into the subconscious. These lower levels can do incredible feats of math and computation, but they can’t be consciously incorporated into the highest layer. So, in reality, basically we’re all extremely talented mathematicians.
(This idea can be illustrated in some kinds of autistic savant. Remember “Rain Man”?! Some savants can consciously convey lower-level functioning (such as multiplying large numbers easily, or perfectly recalling very long lists of numbers, words or music notes) but have trouble with higher-level abstract functioning (for example, being able to empathize or interact socially). The implication is that innate savant-like abilities may lie latently in us all.)
7. Many types of neurons (brain cells) acts as their own computers, contrary to previous belief that they simply were on/off switches for the larger whole. For example, the pyramidal cell and the purkinje cell. These neurons can gather data from thousands of sources (from other axons), sift through, calculate and prioritize them into very specific representations. So, instead of seeing your brain as a supercomputer you can now think of it as billions of tiny computers all working together to create a whole. An emergent property of this structuring is the capacity for insane levels of parallel processing. Current “super” computer networks come nowhere close; even if they had a sufficient number of linked computers (in the billions), they don’t have the software to conduct such massive threading for any practical application.
8. Time is interpreted subjectively by your mind’s internal clock. If you’ve ever felt like everything was rushing by and you couldn’t make sense of events, this is because your clock is running slow. If it’s running slow, more external sensory information gets packed into each cycle. This makes it harder to make sense of things as they’re coming in. Because the cycles are regulated by the neurotransmitter dopamine (which also regulates motivation in humans), a slower sense of time is often accompanied by sustained feelings of apathy and depression. The reverse is also true; drugs which increase dopamine can make time appear to slow down, and this is accompanied by feelings of extra clarity and elevated mood.
9. If you’re having trouble staying awake, short-wavelength light (such as blue) has been shown to directly increase alertness and help keep people awake. In one study, the effects lasted for as long as the light was applied, and this helped people stay awake and study during times when you’re normally feeling the most tired. While blue was tested my guess is that the effectiveness is directly proportional to the light’s wavelength (as long as the radiation is visible of course), which means that other colors could be used as well. Cyan or green light, for example, would be more effective than red. By this theory, black light (which is ultra-violet) would actually work better than the tested blue light.
10. Within 160 milliseconds of seeing an erotic image a woman’s brain will go into overdrive, exciting neurons 20% faster than when a non-erotic image is shown (this rate is comparable to men, by the way). A sexual image can actually impact someone’s actions regardless of them being conscious of the image or not.
11. Men may actually be slightly smarter than women, according to new studies that show small increases in quantitative and spatial abilities. The results are only relevant as averages when viewing the genders in whole, so scientists are quick to point out that gender-based discrimination on a personal level based on this information would be immoral and illogical. Also, theoretically it would only matter if we lived in a perfect meritocracy, a state which is neither attainable nor sustainable.
12. Money has positively been shown to contribute to happiness, however the law of diminishing returns applies. For example, the difference in contributed happiness between someone making 10K per year vs. someone making 100K is much larger than the difference in contributed happiness between someone making 100K a year and someone making 20 million a year. If anything, the relationship is more logarithmic than directly proportional.
13. New research into PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) suggests it falls into the same category as so-called “flashbulb memories”, perhaps simply as an aggravated version. During a traumatic event, the amygdala prompts release of cortisol and adrenaline; adrenaline excites the amydala (preparing it for the “fight or flight” response we’ve all heard of, which in turn releases more cortisol), and cortisol inhibits the hippocampus. This results in memories which are characteristically vivid yet disorganized. Later, the memory is strengthened by repeatedly thinking about it: The amygdala again acts on the adrenal glands, which produces many of the undesired effects of PTSD such as flashbacks. Strengthening the memory is a cyclical process that becomes harder to control until finally PTSD symptoms peak.
(This suggests, for example, that the difference between Americans remembering 9/11 as a flashbulb memory and those suffering PTSD from it lies in the levels of hormone secretions prompted by the amygdala. A drug, propranolol, has recently been used to treat PTSD by inhibiting adrenaline release.
While this could be taken for any memory basically, it shows promise in treating trauma from things like rape, death of family/friends, war memories, and even smaller things like a bad break-up or being robbed. By using the drug, any negative or troubling memory can be encoded “normally” in the brain instead of risking it getting continually strengthened (as long as it’s used relatively soon after the event occurs. It can’t undo PTSD already present). It can’t erase a memory, like in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, but it’s still creepy that we’re getting closer to that point!)
14. MRI scans have now provided foolproof lie detecting. By directing scanning the areas of the brain responsible for thinking and decision making, the new lie detector avoids all the pitfalls of traditional lie detectors which clever people can learn to exploit. It works because when telling a lie you first have to decide to tell the lie, and so there must be a small difference in brain activity between honest replies and deceptive ones. Scientists have shown that this technique retains 100% accuracy, which means it might someday be admissible in court. An added benefit is that during traditional lie detector testing, innocent people which were simply nervous used to throw off the readings. This doesn’t happen using the new method.
(So far the main downside is that MRI machines are quite expensive and large.)
15. Photosensitive epilepsy (ie. watching pokemon and having seizures) is actually quite rare. Epilepsy itself affects 50 million people worldwide (roughly 1 in 120), and photosensitivity plays a role in only 5% of epileptics. This would be about 2.5 million people worldwide (roughly 1 in every 2,400).
16. There is a good reason why when you meet a friend your smile looks genuine, whereas when you’re asked to smile for a photo it might look fake, stiff, and unnatural. Two different chains of activity are occuring in the brain, and only the former scenario triggers a “smile circuit”, which stems from the basal ganglia. During the latter scenario, your auditory and language cortex are processing information and it gets relayed to the prefrontal cortex, and then to the motor cortex which carries out the smile. This all happens pretty unnaturally and “forced”, and the basal ganglia is bypassed, so the end result is actually an altogether different (and different looking) smile.
Posted in Neuroscience
On planet Nylon of the Gigglefoot-B1 galaxy, there was a family of royalty. Flex and Maya Hendershot, the galaxy’s hermaphrodite king and queen, populated a squat titanium dome with no windows and an underground entrance via tunnel. Such was the style of the time.
Their twin children, Bort and Marlena Hendershot, lived in a cold, dim chamber with a pile of putrid scraps in one corner and a pile of their collected waste in the other. Their daily practice comprised of shambling over to one pile, eating miserably, then shambling over to the other and making a deposit.
When Flex and Maya had important visitors from other galaxies, they gave their childrens’ services, fully and completely. Chubby brown Earthling diplomats, clad in fezzes, little sunglasses, and Mongolian Deathworm-fur coats, would chortle noisily as Bort and Marlena’s heads would bob up and down in a plodding, mordant rhythm beneath the dinner table.
It was one day in particular, however, that Bort and Marlena decided that they simply could not persist in their mutual universe of pain, isolation and filth. The dim pleasures of occasional incest and partially un-digested food in the “food pile” were simply not enough to keep them hanging on at the status quo.
But what to do?
That night, as they curled up to sleep like foetal pigs in a skillet, they began to hatch a plan…
-
The next morning, Gigglefoot’s bleary pink sun shone brilliantly through the pale, lazy curtains as Dr. Josef Mengele strode through the front door and across the foyer–handsome, smooth, intelligent. His eyes failed to exist behind his gleaming purple rocket-goggles, but his smile indicated warmth and mercy.
The only thing about him that did not indicate total glory and power was his slight sniffle. It seemed as if he had a little cold.
He peeled a Jew-leather glove from his hand and shook with King Flex and Queen Maya, wiping their snotty antennae secretions on a maroon kerchief he kept especially for the occasion.
…a sideways smile to the children…
The grown-ups exchanged pleasantries, and Dr. Mengele was invited into the den for social lubricants. He laughed like an angry dog and never spilled a drop of cognac as Flex and Maya waxed their compound eyeball-clusters with oil of cocaine and scraped their wings together politely for the jokes they did not understand.
Then it was time to dine.
The children were summoned by the automatic meathook, which first delivered them to the dinner table and then promptly whisked away Dr. Mengele’s pants. He laughed with the hearty glow of drink.
Flex and Maya had prepared planet Nylon’s national dish, roast beef and twinkies on a roll, and had just finished setting out the condiments when suddenly Dr. Mengele let out a piercing shriek.
The King and Queen had no time to comprehend as the entire table was capsized by Dr. Mengele’s spastic reaction–blood everywhere!
Bort rose from his knees, chewing.
Before they could react, Marlena lunged at her parents with her rusty masturbation needle–dip, split!–and they each fell to the ground, twitching their appendages and grating mandibles in unspeakable pain… the eyes of their species being so big and easy to attack, with three times the sensitivity of human testicles.
Yellow pus dribbled from their ocular wounds and crusted on the palace floor.
Bort spat out the head of Dr. Mengele’s penis and smiled. He faced his sister, and she was smiling too. Their parents were dead–the nightmare was over!
They hugged in a way that only a crustacean/insectoid hybrid can, using all their appendages and most of their mouth antennae.
It was in the warm depth of this hug that Bort first felt himself begin to split. First, simply a sensation of parting… but then, pain, stretching, quivering–he began to scream!–brittle stitches popping, ripping, unzipping–the agony, the pure, incomprehensible agony!
Dr. Mengele was ripping him in half with what was left of his enormous penis!
The bisected twin gurgled and died, and then fell away from Marlena’s face. As he hit the floor, Dr. Mengele extracted himself and stood, hunched, panting, soaked with human and alien blood…
…and stared into her…
…and then repeated the process.
With the four halves of the two twins lying plain and still in the dining room, Dr. Mengele’s immense imagination was sent into flight. He bandaged his stump and laid out the twins’ organs on the floor, broadly, for optimum strength of observation.
Once this was done, he began to feast–far preferring this to the roast beef delicacy prepared by his hosts.
(He had no fear of offending them now, for they were blind and dying, and would not see that he had not taken what they offered.)
And as he ate, smacking his lips with a thin grin and a thick line of crimson dribble parting the various axes of his face, he began to feel wonderful…
…in fact…
…he realized that his cold was better. All better.
No sniffles.
So, bleeding from the loins, he scribbled pensively on his clipboard for three days without food or drink. On the third day, he died an ascetic death–a devout and righteous monk in a temple beyond morality righteousness.
God smiled upon him as he ascended, and Dr. Mengele smiled back. His eyes failed to exist behind his gleaming purple rocket-goggles, but his smile indicated warmth and mercy.
-
Dr. Josef Mengele awoke in his cabin at Auschwitz and grabbed a pen from his sidetable. He wrote on his forearm:
“NEUES EXPERIMENT: kann das Blut von Zwillingen verwendet werden, um den Schnupfen zu heilen?”
It meant:
“NEW EXPERIMENT: can the blood of twins be used to cure the common cold?”
He grinned and pulled his laboratory clothes on. It was a bright shining day in 1945, the sun was rising impartially over Auschwitz, and for Josef Mengele, it was time to get to work.
Posted in Fiction
Description of Fanboy…
The term “fanboy” is most commonly associated with adolescent and teen males but can be applicable to any age or sex. The term originated in comic book circles to describe someone immersed in the fictional worlds of comics and the culture of comics fandom. Common subjects of reverence by fanboys are specific: TV shows; movies; music; anime; comic books; cars; video game consoles, video games and MMORPGs; and computer operating systems, hardware and software.
Popular depictions of Fanboy stereotypes include the Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons and columnist Larry Groznic from the satirical newspaper The Onion. In the songs of the fannish parody musician Luke Ski, many characters proudly consider themselves fanboys.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanboy
Now, as the shadow of July 18th slowly looms in the distance, the fanboys are coming out of the woodwork and amassing their vast nerd armies to saturate all social forums with a march towards Batman. Amid the hysteria of the late Heath Ledger’s last film, and infused with the pandemonium which only comic-book movies (and possibly Harry Potter books) seem to achieve so easily, the fanboys are standing tall and sharing a single voice: They’re creating custom Dark Knight t-shirts, coffee mugs, and wall clocks, posting endless facebook notes and myspace bulletins on new Dark Knight trivia and articles, drenching bookmarking sites like fark.com and digg.com with countless Batman links, sharing behind-the-scenes gossip, limited edition everything, posting long into the night on various message boards, watching trailers on youtube (or going to another movie’s opening just to catch a new Dark Knight trailer, if they need a quick fix), and generally beating the drums of war. This July 18th, the Dark Knight will overtake all other movies and entertainment experiences.
I think it goes without saying that ridiculous concentrations of fanboys will be staying up till midnight to catch the first showing. How did we get to this point? I’ve seen it too many times before… with “Hulk”, with the Spiderman trilogy, with “Batman Begins”, with “Cloverfield”, with the new “Indiana Jones”, or with “I Am Legend”. And, of course, I’m leaving out a few others which instantly come to mind, but I’ll get to that in a second. How did people get that into an upcoming movie? I’m going to recognize July 18th for what it is: The day a 2-hour comic book movie which looks promising is coming out. It’s not the day I’m losing my virginity, or winning the Nobel Prize. I wish others would join me.
Fanboy madness seems to be a culturally-cultivated phenomenon these days. The marketing geniuses work the public like puppets, releasing a viral video here, maybe a computer wallpaper there, plus a few nicely-timed gossip articles. There’s little contests, or giveaways, or some juicy extras for whoever signs up for a newsletter or whatever else. And we eat it all up with a shocking willingness to buy into the hype. Tell me the truth, though. We all know the Dark Knight is gonna be pretty cool, in fact it might even be pretty fucking cool, but is it really worth all the time and energy you’ve spent on following its release. You’ve gotten so worked up over a movie. Not even a movie, but a famous series, the Batman series. There’s gonna be new Batman movies in the future, and there’s plenty out already. Isn’t this a bit silly? Sure, it’s going to be cool, but do we really need this fever pitch?
To the wikipedia description above, I’d add that the level of excitement generated by your typical fanboy seems disproportionate to his/her other interests, and in general seems to be without warrant. Of course, such a point cannot be established because we’re dealing with subjective definitions and poorly-measurable quantities here, but I think people know it when they see it. It’s easy to spot, yet so hard to define. When someone is so excited for a movie that it’s almost as if they directed it or worked on it, or used to write for the series or have family that worked on it, or something like that, but in reality they have no actual connection to the movie, I think that’s a good starting point for describing this “irrational exuberance” I’m referring to, if you’ll pardon the expression.
I mentioned Harry Potter above. It’s true that while comic book movies in particular seem to generate this mindless, endless enthusiasm, they aren’t by any means alone. There are books, video games (GTA 4, anyone?), and other forms of entertainment. And there have been some movies I myself got fairly excited about (never to the point of most fanboys, however, but the excitement was surely there) , namely the “Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars” series. So I don’t mean to be too hard on my nerd brethren, or to appear hypocritical. I just want to point to the fact that the internet has become totally swamped with Dark Knight insanity, almost in a calculated way. The marketers for this particular movie know exactly what they’re doing. I want to question the value in becoming so, so excited about a movie to the point that we’ll do anything to see it. It reminds me of people that camp out in the frigid rain just for the chance to buy a new $2000 Prada purse or something similar to that. It says something about our eagerness to consume new products, and to live in a material society where the latest anything dominates our airwaves, mind waves, and our friends’ interests.
Cafepress.com, a website where anyone can design clothes with their own designs and sell them to others, has right now a whopping 13,400 Dark Knight items (incidentally, searching for “Batman” turns up zero items, since that search term has been disabled so as to discourage non-licensed Batman clothing, which would be illegal. Never mind the 13,400 fucking items labeled with “Dark Knight”) for sale. And the movie isn’t even out yet. Its seems everyone, not just movie executives or Hollywood, is looking to quickly cash out on this latest and greatest movie-going experience. So, I’ll be taking it easy. I’ve seen a trailer or two and the way they intentionally tease the audience is pretty annoying. But, I admit, I’ll go see the movie. I’ll probably be a little excited before it starts. But that’ll be the extent of it. I have bigger and better things to do right now, than to give up my soul to a movie.
Posted in Pop Culture
 If I were to make a list of all of the examples of the exploration of sexual and romantic relations between a human and a robot that appear in fiction and film, it would be about the length of the Bible. One of the more in-depth analysis was done in the Robin Williams-headed, Chris Columbus-directed film Bicentennial Man, in which Robin Williams plays a robot who spends a lifetime making physical alterations to resemble humanity more and more and who fights the courts and society for the right to be human and to be with the woman he loves.
Sex with machines is already common enough: what woman doesn’t own a vibrator? (Note: that was a rhetorical question.) But as A.I. taught us, it’s one thing to have sex with a robot, and quite another to love and be loved by one. It’s fun to consider these relationships in a highfalutin’, theoretical way for the pursuit of art. However, what happens when we think about it in a very real and immediate sense?
David Levy, author of Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, believes that full fledged romantic relationships between humans and robots will be feasible within four decades. The Second Renaissance depicts a version of the future in which robots fight for equal rights and protections of the laws of the lands, often resembling the Civil Rights movement. Should men and women become romantically involved with robots, would these couple face the same trials as interracial couples faced during pre- and even post-Civil Rights era America?
One Georgia man and his girlfriend, Alice, may be one of the first known case studies to consider when contemplating this question. An interview with this fellow appears in a March blog post of Gizmodo:
Zoltan is a 33-year-old guy from Georgia. Average height, average looks, and not a rich man. He works in an arcade, where he fixes video games for a living, and still lives with his elderly parents. No wonder he was nervous about asking his slim redheaded girlfriend Alice to marry him. To make things more tense, she had split up with Zoltan at the beginning of the relationship because she thought he was taking things too fast. Since they got back together, though, Alice has been good for Zoltan—he’s started attending church again, and cut out watching porn. His parents’ initial rejection of her had turned to respect, and the four of them seemed to be living together happily enough. So Zoltan had confidence when he popped the question to Alice—his beloved, who just happens to be a robot.
Zolton and Alice have made headway, as she has won over his family and friend(s?), despite being faced with derision and incredulous curiosity from those of a more “normal” sexual-preference on the internet. Who are we to judge? To question whether or not a human and a robot can love each other is to question exactly what it is that makes us human. At one point it was believed that the color of ones skin was an appropriate litmus test and today, that just sounds silly.
Tags: civil rights, robot sex, robots
Posted in Ethics, Psychology, Science
LEGOLAND, California – As windswept storms and fog battered most of Southern California this frigid, Monday morning, Double Cheeseburger and supporters took to the streets with pamphlets and placards in one last push to secure his lead in Legoland. And after trailing by as much as 15% during the past several months, onlookers said the campaign wasn’t going to take any chances and was still seen in force, aggressively petitioning for votes up until the final minutes.
“We’re not about to count any eggs before they’ve hatched,” quipped campaign manager Jimmy Masish. “Of course Double Cheeseburger is confident that he’ll be the next mayor of Legoland, but we’re still asking all our surrogates and supporters to take to the streets in one more show of solidarity.”
“Vote for change! Vote for Double Cheeseburger” signs could be seen everywhere, dotting the streets leading up to virtually every polling station. Voters we spoke with said that the overt presence was vaguely reassuring, though a bit redundant.
“Double Cheeseburger worked his whole life for change. It’s just great to see him finally get the recognition he’s deserved,” commented Michelle Trazlo, a voter from the Green District. Others voiced similar opinions, while supporters of trailing contender Adam Corre were quick to note that their candidate has the most consistent track record.
“Cheeseburger said he’d rebuild Yellow Bridge #4, but then he flip-flopped a week later. He said we’d have enough bricks to work on a new lighthouse without raising taxes, but then he reneged on that as well,” said Corre’s campaign manager Tony “The Tony” Sandoval during an impromptu pep rally, a few hours before Yellow District was set to open its polling stations. “The people have spoken and they want change, but they don’t want change on all the issues, all the time.”
Double Cheeseburger countered that the city doesn’t even need a lighthouse. “We live 180 miles inland. It was a ridiculous pet project from the very beginning. Our city planners are more interested in building arbitrary structures everywhere that have no use whatsoever. Is this a good use of our bricks? I don’t think so, and the people so far have agreed. They’re calling for change in Legoland, and I’m the candidate that’ll deliver that.”
On the change front, Double Cheeseburger’s campaign staff has sought to imply to voters the historic significance in electing their candidate. Not only would he be the first cheeseburger in office, but the first burger of any kind. Since burgers fought for civil rights during the past few decades, Double has hoped to seize upon that momentum and appeal to voters who want to take part in creating history. An iconic win here in Legoland could pave the way for a presidential bid one day.
However, much of the city lays in ruins and voters were suspicious even while endorsing various candidates. The underlying sentiment is that planners had been so careless, so egregious, and so arrogant in their management of the city that any candidate hoping to win would have to formally spell out every last position.
“We want to know how Double’s gonna arrange bridges and towers alike. Is he gonna stack the pieces neatly or will it be more of the same, with random bricks lying everywhere and unfinished projects littering our fair land? Why are there huge piles of gray bricks lying by our houses? We want answers!”, one voter said while standing in line at a Yellow District polling station by the Large Helipad.
“Double Cheeseburger is a douche bag. He doesn’t stand for anything, and will tell the voters whatever they want to hear. When I win this election my first act will be to watch porn and eat ice cream for a couple days. See, I’m a straight shooter and do what I say I’ll do,” said Corre.
When asked his favorite flavor of ice cream, though, Corre stalled for time and then said he’d have his staff get back to us.
Across other parts of the city, some residents voiced their concerns that a cheeseburger wouldn’t have the experience to govern effectively. They think that during this trying time, a man made of Legos or even a greater ape such as Corre would in better touch with the needs of the public.
“I lost my legs and arms in a boating accident, and have no coins to pay for doctors to pop on new ones. How am I supposed to work to pay the costs if I can’t even move right now? Double Cheeseburger has no ideas for health care reform because he’s a fucking burger, man. C’mon, give me a break,” said 55-year old Clarence Rogers.
At least for now, however, a slight majority see Double Cheeseburger as enough of a break from the status quo to ensure that things will improve. One thing is certain: Both candidates are sweating it out during the final hours and grasping for each remaining vote.
–
Troy Zaleski is a contributing editor to “LegoWeek” and has covered the past two mayoral races.
Posted in Fiction
When I first started high school I bought a notebook to write down my homework and plans in. Usually people buy planners that last one year each, but I bought this big ol’ notebook that, I calculated, would have enough pages for four whole years if I wrote each week on two pages. You know, like when you open it to a page you can see the whole week right on the two pages.
Anyway, so I like to write things down so I don’t have to remember them, and so this planner basically has my life in it. Thing is, when I first bought it I was like, “This’ll be great, the farther along I am in the book the closer I know I am to the end of high school! I can’t wait till I never have to use this book again!”
After four years of doodling in it and eating on it, it doesn’t really look all that new. Actually, it’s getting so worn that a little while ago the entire front cover came off, and the pages in the front of the book are beginning to come off too. A whole month came off one day when I was trying to stuff it back in my bag. I’ll probably be done with it before the falling pages catch up to the point at which I am, but I’m still guilty of picking up the abandoned pages and trying to stick them back on the rings.
I know I’ll get another planner for next year when I’m in college, but I’m kind of irritated that this one isn’t making it. I dunno, maybe I thought that even though I wouldn’t be using it any more, I’d keep it in a drawer or something. I mean it was with me all the time, I just can’t imagine it, I guess, well, what can you do.
Next!
Tags: symbolism high school catharsis
Posted in Non-Fiction, Psychology
Shoplifting is worldwide phenomenon. Fuck it, it’s just stealing shit! Ha, it’s fun too, from the author’s personal experience…
The sad part is when it becomes a chore to steal. When It becomes a battle.
And nowhere is this more true than in the case presented:
Sarah is a small overweight girl of 5′6″ 150 lbs and she needs eyeliner, blush, mascara, lipstick, and a Beanie Baby. She is daddy’s fun loving one and doesn’t need a job for money, but the problem is she spent all the money on marijuana and beer and condoms (here’s a tip, also from personal experience: shoplift the condoms.)
She takes the make-up into the bathroom (can you hear the elevator music?) and does mysterious lady things and… immediately afterwards sits at a prop patio table and pretends to be looking for things out of her purse when she is really just mixing up the make-up she stole with her pussy matrix.
So is this young woman honestly turning her back on society?
Is she striking at the hands of Maybelline and Covergirl and Gin & Tonic and whatever the hell else the whore-face manufacturers call themselves nowadays. Is she striking at them or at society?
I think she is saying: She is a cat. She has sex with older men, she smokes cigarettes, she swears constantly, she enjoys torturing herself and gossiping, and most of all she hates being reduced to a simple two thousand word essay.
She probably watches Fuse and thinks that bands that are really cool are really cool and gives many men pleasure.
So what is the problem?
What is the point of all this?
Illegal Make-up. Fuck yeah.
You guys will make millions of this shit!
Dude, like eyeliner that electrocutes boys into sucking pussy, or poison lip gloss like that skank from Batman 3. Or maybe a kind of mascara that causes other girls’ mascaras to run, shit like that.
Also, imagine when the CIA or the nazis or the Helicopsi or whoever implants chips in our bodies to control every emotion we feel.
Do you think they’d let us be happy then?
Food for thought:
Is lipstick the Jelly of the Rouge family, or is mascara more similar to eyeliner than a charcoal pencil?
Can two complete gay wads twiddle each other on the same dick?
Thesis:
- Girls steal make up because it asserts their cattiness/prowess.
- Illegal Make-up technology is the health code of the future.
- Ugly isn’t beautiful anymore, and the robots and clones can tell if you’re human!
Posted in Psychology
I will probably slowly expand on this posting over the coming weeks. Just some interesting passages to read through, dealing with a variety of subjects.
Paul Davies…
Darwin once chided those who would speculate about the origin of life with the retort that one might as well speculate about the origin of matter. Today, physicists and cosmologists think they know how matter originated, and it turns out to be extremely revealing to compare the process with biogenesis. The observable universe contains about 1050 tons of matter, and the problem of where it came from plagued cosmology for many years. Early critics of the big bang theory rightly objected to the assumption that all this matter just popped into existence at the beginning of time for no apparent reason. The idea that the universe originated with the necessary matter already there, ab intio, struck many as totally unscientific.
A way forward lay at hand, however. Physicists long ago discovered that particles of matter can be created if enough energy is concentrated, a process that can actually be demonstrated in the laboratory using large accelerator machines. Unfortunately, this didn’t quite solve the cosmological problem, because it begged the question of where the energy needed to make the cosmological material came from in the first place. The assumption that the energy of the universe was simply “given” - i.e., it was there at the outset- was hardly an improvement on the assumption that matter was there at the outset. There thus remained an element of miracle, of something-for-nothing, in the big bang theory.
In the 1980s, the puzzle of the source of cosmic energy was solved. It was discovered that the total energy of the universe might actually be zero, and it was therefore really a case of nothing-for-nothing. The reason the universe can have zero energy and still contain 1050 tons of matter is that its gravitational field has negative energy - a peculiar concept related to what I have to say below. The sums show that the two contributions can exactly cancel to leave zero. A convincing mechanism was found to explain how positive energy was channeled into matter, and an equal quantity of negative energy went into the gravitational field. So, in effect, all the cosmic matter was actually created for free! Once cosmologists realized this, it became credible to suppose that at the beginning of the universe space was empty; all the matter appeared later (though still pretty quickly), as a result of a natural physical process. The new theory was regarded as superior and more scientific, because it removed the need to postulate the supernatural input of matter at the beginning of time.Paul Davies - The Fifth Miracle (P. 61-62)
Richard Feynman…
I used to give a lecture every Wednesday over at the Hughes Aircraft Company, and one day I got there a little ahead of time, and was flirting around with the receptionist, as usual, when about half a dozen people came in - a man, a woman, and a few others. I had never seen them before. The man said, “Is this where Professor Feynman is giving some lectures?”
“This is the place,” the receptionist replied.
The man asks if his group can come to the lectures.
“I don’t think you’d like ‘em much,” I say. “They’re kind of technical.”
Pretty soon the woman, who was rather clever, figured it out: “I bet you’re Professor Feynman!”
It turned out the man was John Lilly, who had earlier done some work with dolphins. He and his wife were doing some research into sense deprivation, and had built some tanks.
“Isn’t it true that you’re supposed to get hallucinations under those circumstances?” I asked, excitedly.
“That is true indeed.”
I had always had this fascination with the images from dreams and other images that come to the mind that haven’t got a direct sensory source, and how it works in the head, and I wanted to see hallucinations. I had once thought to take drugs, but I got kind of scared of that: I love to think, and I don’t want to screw up the machine. But it seemed to me that just lying around in a sense-deprivation tank had no physiological danger, SO I was very anxious to try it.
I quickly accepted the Lillys’ invitation to use the tanks, a very kind invitation on their part, and they came to listen to the lecture with their group.
So the following week I went to try the tanks. Mr. Lilly introduced me to the tanks as he must have done with other people. There were lots of bulbs, like neon lights, with different gases in them. He showed me the Periodic Table and made up a lot of mystic hokey-poke about different kinds of lights that have different kinds of influences. He told me how you get ready to go into the tank by looking at yourself in the mirror with your nose up against it - all kinds of wicky-wack things, all kinds of gorp. I didn’t pay any attention to the gorp, but I did everything because I wanted to get into the tanks, and I also thought that perhaps such preparations might make it easier to have hallucinations. So I went through everything according to the way he said. The only thing that proved difficult was choosing what color light I wanted, especially as the tank was supposed to be dark inside.
A sense-deprivation tank is like a big bathtub, but with a cover that comes down. It’s completely dark inside, and because the cover is thick, there’s no sound. There’s a little pump that pumps air in, but it turns out you don’t need to worry about air because the volume of air is rather large, and you’re only in there for two or three hours, and you don’t really consume a lot of air when you breathe normally. Mr. Lilly said that the pumps were there to put people at ease, so I figured it’s just psychological, and asked him to turn the pump off, because it made a little bit of noise.
The water in the tank has Epsom salts in it to make it denser than normal water, so you float in it rather easily. The temperature is kept at body temperature, or 94, or something - he had it all figured out. There wasn’t supposed to be any light, any sound, any temperature sensation, no nothing! Once in a while you might drift over to the side and bump slightly, or because of condensation on the ceiling of the tank a drop of water might fall, but these slight disturbances were very rare.
I must have gone about a dozen times, each time spending about two and a half hours in the tank. The first time I didn’t get any hallucinations, but after I had been in the tank, the Lillys introduced me to a man billed as a medical doctor, who told me about a drug called ketamine, which was used as an anesthetic. I’ve always been interested in questions related to what happens when you go to sleep, or what happens when you get conked out, so they showed me the papers that came with the medicine and gave me one tenth of the normal dose.
I got this strange kind of feeling which I’ve never been able to figure out whenever I tried to characterize what the effect was. For instance, the drug had quite an effect on my vision; I felt I couldn’t see clearly. But when I’d look hard at something, it would be OK. It was sort of as if you didn’t care to look at things; you’re sloppily doing this and that, feeling kind of woozy, but as soon as you look, and concentrate, everything is, for a moment at least, all right. I took a book they had on organic chemistry and looked at a table full of complicated substances, and to my surprise was able to read them.
I did all kinds of other things, like moving my hands toward each other from a distance to see if my fingers would touch each other, and although I had a feeling of complete disorientation, a feeling of an inability to do practically anything, I never found a specific thing that I couldn’t do.
As I said before, the first time in the tank I didn’t get any hallucinations, and the second time I didn’t get any hallucinations. But the Lillys were very interesting people; I enjoyed them very, very much. They often gave me lunch, and so on, and after a while we discussed things on a different level than the early stuff with the lights. I realized that other people had found the sense-deprivation tank somewhat frightening, but to me it was a pretty interesting invention. I wasn’t afraid because I knew what it was: it was just a tank of Epsom salts.
The third time there was a man visiting - I met many interesting people there - who went by the name Baba Ram Das. He was a fella from Harvard who had gone to India and had written a popular book called Be Here Now. He related how his guru in India told him how to have an “out of-body experience” (words I had often seen written on the bulletin board): Concentrate on your breat h, on how it goes in and out of your nose as you breathe.
I figured I’d try anything to get a hallucination, and went into the tank. At some stage of the game I suddenly realized that - it’s hard to explain-I’m an inch to one side. In other words, where my breath is going, in and out, in and out, is not centered: My ego is off to one side a little bit, by about an inch.
I thought: “Now where is the ego located? I know everybody thinks the seat of thinking is in the brain, but how do they know that?” I knew already from reading things that it wasn’t so obvious to people before a lot of psychological studies were made. The Greeks thought the seat of thinking was in the liver, for instance. I wondered, “Is it possible that where the ego is located is learned by children looking at people putting their hand to their head when they say, ‘Let me think’? Therefore the idea that the ego is located up there, behind the eyes, might be conventional!” I figured that if I could move my ego an inch to one side, I could move it further. This was the beginning of my hallucinations.
I tried and after a while I got my ego to go down through my neck into the middle of my chest. When a drop of water came down and hit me on the shoulder, I felt it “up there,” above where “I” was. Every time a drop came I was startled a little bit, and my ego would jump back up through the neck to the usual place. Then I would have to work my way down again. At first it took a lot of work to go down each time, but gradually it got easier. I was able to get myself all the way down to the loins, to one side, but that was about as far as I could go for quite a while.
It was another time I was in the tank when I decided that if I could move myself to my loins, I should he able to get completely outside of my body. So I was able to “sit to one side.” It’s hard to explain - I’d move my hands and shake the water, and although I couldn’t see them, I knew where they were. But unlike in real life, where the hands are to each side, part way down, they were both to one side! The feeling in my fingers and everything else was exactly the same as normal, only my ego was sitting outside, “observing” all this.
From then on I had hallucinations almost every time, and was able to move further and further outside of my body. It developed that when I would move my hands I would see them as sort of mechanical things that were going up and down - they weren’t flesh; they were mechanical. But I was still able to feel everything. The feelings would be exactly consistent with the motion, but I also had this feeling of “he is that.” “I” even got out of the room, ultimately, and wandered about, going some distance to locations where things happened that I had seen earlier another day.
I had many types of out -of-the-body experiences. One time, for example, I could “see” the back of my head, with my hands resting against it. When I moved my fingers, I saw them move, but between the fingers and the thumb I saw the blue sky. Of course that wasn’t right; it was a hallucination. But the point is that as I moved my fingers, their movement was exactly consistent with the motion that I was imagining that I was seeing. The entire imagery would appear, and be consistent with what you feel and are doing, much like when you slowly wake up in the morning and are touching something (and you don’t know what it is), and suddenly it becomes clear what it is. So the entire imagery would suddenly appear, except it’s unusual, in the sense that you usually would imagine the ego to be located in front of the back of the head, but instead you have it behind the back of the head.
One of the things that perpetually bothered me, psychologically, while I was having a hallucination, was that I might have fallen asleep and would therefore be only dreaming. I had already had some experience with dreams, and I wanted a new experience. It was kind of dopey, because when you’re having hallucinations, and things like that, you’re not very sharp, so you do these dumb things that you set your mind to do, such as checking that you’re not dreaming. So I perpetually was checking that I wasn’t dreaming by - since my hands were often behind my head - rubbing my thumbs together, back and forth, feeling them. Of course I could have been dreaming that, but I wasn’t: I knew it was real.
After the very beginning, when the excitement of having a hallucination made them “jump out,” or stop happening, I was able to relax and have long hallucinations.
A week or two after, I was thinking a great deal about how the brain works compared to how a computing machine works - especially how information is stored. One of the interesting problems in this area is how memories are stored in the brain: You can get at them from so many directions compared to a machine - you don’t have to come directly with the correct address to the memory. If I want to get at the word “rent,” for example, I can be filling in a crossword puzzle, looking for a four-letter word that begins with r and ends in t; I can be thinking of types of income, or activities such as borrowing and lending; this in turn can lead to all sorts of other related memories or information. I was thinking about how to make an “imitating machine,” which would learn language as a child does: you would talk to the machine. But I couldn’t figure out how to store the stuff in an organized way so the machine could get it out for its own purposes.
When I went into the tank that week, and had my hallucination, I tried to think of very early memories. I kept saying to myself, “It’s gotta be earlier; it’s gotta be earlier” - I was never satisfied that the memories were early enough. When I got a very early memory - let’s say from my home town of Far Rockaway - then immediately would come a whole sequence of memories, all from the town of Far Rockaway. If I then would think of something from another city - Cedarhurst, or something - then a whole lot of stuff that was associated with Cedarhurst would come. And so I realized that things are stored according to the location where you had the experience.
I felt pretty good about this discovery, and came out of the tank, had a shower, got dressed, and so forth, and started driving to Hughes Aircraft to give my weekly lecture. It was therefore about forty-five minutes after I came out of the tank that I suddenly realized for the first time that I hadn’t the slightest idea of how memories are stored in the brain; all I had was a hallucination as to how memories are stored in the brain! What I had “discovered” had nothing to do with the way memories are stored in the brain; it had to do with the way I was playing games with myself.
In our numerous discussions about hallucinations on my earlier visits, I had been trying to explain to Lilly and others that the imagination that things are real does not represent true reality. If you see golden globes, or something, several times, and they talk to you during your hallucination and tell you they are another intelligence, it doesn’tmean they’re another intelligence; it just means that you have had this particular hallucination. So here I had this tremendous feeling of discovering how memories are stored, and it’s surprising that it took forty-five minutes before I realized the error that I had been trying to explain to everyone else.
One of the questions I thought about was whether hallucinations, like dreams, are influenced by what you already have in your mind - from other experiences during the day or before, or from things you are expecting to see. The reason, I believe, that I had an out-of-body experience was that we were discussing out-of-body experiences just before I went into the tank. And the reason I had a hallucination about how memories are stored in the brain was, I think, that I had been thinking about that problem all week.
I had considerable discussion with the various people there about the reality of experiences. They argued that something is considered real, in experimental science, if the experience can be reproduced. Thus when many people see golden globes that talk to them, time after time, the globes must be real. My claim was that in such situations there was a bit of discussion previous to going into the tank about the golden globes, so when the person hallucinating, with his mind already thinking about golden globes when he went into the tank, sees some approximation of the globes - maybe they’re blue, or something - he thinks he’s reproducing the experience. I felt that I could understand the difference between the type of agreement among people whose minds are set to agree, and the kind of agreement that you get in experimental work. It’s rather amusing that it’s so easy to tell the difference-but so hard to define it!
I believe there’s nothing in hallucinations that has anything to do with anything external to the internal psychological state of the person who’s got the hallucination. But there are nevertheless a lot of experiences by a lot of people who believe there’s reality in hallucinations. The same general idea may account for a certain amount of success that interpreters of dreams have. For example, some psychoanalysts interpret dreams by talking about the meanings of various symbols. And then, it’s not completely impossible that these symbols do appear in dreams that follow. So I think that, perhaps, the interpretation of hallucinations and dreams is a self-propagating process: you’ll have a general, more or less, success at it, especially if you discuss it carefully ahead of time.
Ordinarily it would take me about fifteen minutes to get a hallucination going, but on a few occasions, when I smoked some marijuana beforehand, it came very quickly. But fifteen minutes was fast enough for me.
One thing that often happened was that as the hallucination was coming on, what you might describe as “garbage” would come: there were simply chaotic images - complete, random junk. I tried to remember some of the items of the junk in order to be able to characterize it again, but it was particularly difficult to remember. I think I was getting close to the kind of thing that happens when you begin to fall asleep: There are apparent logical connections, but when you try to remember what made you think of what you’re thinking about, you can’t remember. As a matter of fact, you soon forget what it is that you’re trying to remember. I can only remember things like a white sign with a pimple on it, in Chicago, and then it disappears. That kind of stuff all the time.
Mr. Lilly had a number of different tanks, and we tried a number of different experiments. It didn’t seem to make much difference as far as hallucinations were concerned, and I became convinced that the tank was unnecessary. Now that I saw what to do, I realized that all you have to do is sit quietly - why was it necessary that you had to have everything absolutely super duper?
So when I’d come home I’d turn out the lights and sit in the living room in a comfortable chair, and try and try - it never worked. I’ve never been able to have a hallucination outside of the tanks. Of course I would like to have done it at home, and I don’t doubt that you could meditate and do it if you practice, but I didn’t practice.Richard Feynman - “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” (P. 330-337)
Posted in Science
I fear the smiling retards. It’s not that they’re malicious or anything, but when low IQs and positive attitudes come together I’ve learned to make a careful exit. When that oversized retard sees his sister who he hasn’t seen in a long time and runs, delirious with happiness, to give her a big hug, he will not stop if you’re in his way, and you might get knocked over. And have you ever talked to a salesman who liked his job? One who sells and genuinely vouches for what is not so much something to be desired but rather what amounts to an inconvenience? He is a retard, and he is in a good mood, and he will take your money. Don’t be a loser and a sucker.
Likewise, drugs that force you into a good mood are dangerous for for the same reason why you can’t trust happy retards. Shit like coke and speed will force your brain into a temporary state of constant reward, which of course feels great. But imagine for a moment that you have to guide a blindfolded person to a small object in a room by responding to each of their movements by saying either “warmer” or “colder”. When they hear ‘warmer’ they feel rewarded and continue on with their behavior. When they hear colder, they know they have to adjust their behavior and begin to engage in a more rewarding one, one that will result in tangible, beneficial results. But these filthy drugs deafen you to the ‘colder’ commands. All you hear is, “warmer”, “warmer”, “warmer” no matter what fucking retarded shit you’re doing or thinking and when it wears off you’re stuck in the cold.
Don’t be a happy retard; it severely restricts your consciousness.
Tags: Cat food, tamagotchi, ultra violence
Posted in Rant
On the heels of Rick Shenkman’s new book, “Just How Stupid Are We?“, I’ve been thinking a lot about democracy and voting in America. Democracy is often touted as that loftiest of political ideals, and we shamelessly laud ourselves as comprising the premiere example of functioning democracy in the world. Nobody does it better, we like to say. And, yet, what is the real state of our democracy? I feel like something’s been mucking up the system for quite some time.
That “something” is the average American voter: Misinformed, easily persuaded by propaganda, complacent, ignorant, incompetent and smug in America’s global superiority. The average American voter is the gunk that’s gotten into the fine machinery of democracy. Thomas Jefferson and most serious political scientists would tell you that a functioning democracy depends on an informed public. It’s absolutely vital that everyone participating stay on top of current events, understanding at least the most basic differences in political ideologies, the average voter should be willing to think about things critically and consider multiple points of view. Without that, democracy won’t function as well as it could; it’ll get mired down in emotional or propaganda politics, and voting results would become more uninformed and arbitrary.
The average American has a lazy mind for politics. What’s the difference between socialism and communism? “Uhh, they’re both pretty much the same.” What was the holocaust? The holocaust, for crying aloud! 30% of Americans don’t know. 1 in 5 (yes, 1 in 5…) Americans cannot find the U.S. on a world map.
Only 1 in 7 Americans can find Iraq on a world map. That’s less than 15% of the public. When the world’s strongest empire attacks a country and 85% of that empire’s population can’t even find the country they’re invading on a world map, what’s that say about us? Does it mean societies abroad might be on to something when they call Americans “arrogant”?
Only 1 in 5 Americans know that we have 100 federal senators. 80% of our population doesn’t know this most basic of political facts.
Only 40% of our population (2 in 5 people) can name the three branches of government. Since Koalapop readers make up part of that 40%, we all know that I’m talking about the judicial, legislative, and executive branches.
Only 1 in 5 people between the ages of 18-34 keep up with current events. This is a sobering statistic. As a child my teachers (dating as far back as my 4th grade teacher, I believe) always told me how important it was to watch the news. Why’s it so important? Cause fucking democracy depends on it!!
I can say with certainty that more American (in fact, many more Americans) keep up with American Idol than follow NASA and their space plans. No statistic exists, but I’d bet any amount of money on it. And of course many more follow sports than politics. 50% of Americans can name four of the Simpsons (I’m part of that 50%, proud to say) but only 25% can name more than one of the guaranteed rights in the first amendment. This is the amendment people rioted and died over. Back then, it was everyone’s business to know it inside out. To not understand the amendment would be unpatriotic. Today, it’s only unpatriotic if you don’t wear a flag pin and don’t believe America’s the greatest country in the world.
If the American public is too stupid or unwilling to learn basic facts of geography, philosophy, politics, and history, our own democracy is diminished. Why? It’s diminished because people will be more easily persuaded by propaganda. They’ll vote for a candidate and not understand what policies they’re voting for. They’ll vote on single issues and minor things, and those votes will count equally with informed voters. They’ll get suckered one way or another into voting for something they’ll later regret. And on and on. Case in point: In the lead up to the Iraq war II, a staggering 60% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks. The Bush and neo-con propaganda machine had worked so efficiently on a glazed-over public that Saddam Hussein was now responsible for an attack perpetuated by Al-Qaeda (a group, by the way, which Saddam despised and would’ve fought tooth-and-nail).
If the average voter would’ve been more willing to think critically, the Iraq war might not have been plopped down on us with such ease. But now, it has, and we’re gonna be paying it off for a long, long time. It’s a crushing debt that’ll strangle several generations of Americans to come.
What’s the root of this ignorance? Undoubtedly, there’s several theories and countless minor variations. I think it’s a little of everything, a perfect storm of stupidity. Americans, working harder and longer than ever before, have less time to stay politically involved. They’re in more debt, struggling more and more to keep their job, juggling more and more personal responsibilities, and politics is one of the first things to get thrown out the window when there’s just too much other stuff to take care of. Also, there’s an increasing sentiment that politics “just don’t matter”, that politicians “do what they want and can’t be held accountable”, that politics “is corrupt and hard to influence”. We’re becoming more jaded with politics. We’re also getting more smug and arrogant. We’re the best at everything, and other countries better learn to deal with that simple fact or just shut the hell up. France is an elitist, out-of-touch country for not supporting the Iraq War. They aren’t concerned with freedom, so we shouldn’t listen to them. Few Americans know how blatantly we’ve fought with and ignored the U.N. over countless issues. Everything from foreign occupations to torture treaties, from rules of engagement to global warming. When 150 countries are for supporting a resolution as basic human rights, and only the U.S. and Israel object to and veto it, it must be those 150 countries that just didn’t understand human rights and democracy well enough. This smugness carries through. We all know the all-American, obnoxious patriot who would do and say anything to protect the greatest, best fucking country there ever was and ever will be!
Others point to evolutionary reasons. Though there might be some truth to this, I think the effect is greatly exaggerated, at least given the short-term time scales we’ve been dealing with. The Mike Judge (of Beavis and Butthead fame) movie Idiocracy parodies American stupidity and its logical ending point to great comic effect. In Judge’s world of tomorrow, human stupidity has been given free reign and the results are truly thought-provoking.
An early scene shows an intelligent (presumably progressive, liberal) eco-friendly couple talking about having children. They put it off until they have saved more money. Later on, they worry about whether or not now is the right time. Meanwhile, the movie cuts to trashy, overweight rednecks who are popping out babies by the dozen. “Ahh shit, the condom broke” and it shows their family tree growing dramatically over the years. The point being that dumber people are breeding more frequently, and also that human stupidity is becoming cherished and people don’t stop to learn or read as much as they should. Reading, especially, is something elitists do. Real, hard-working Americans work everyday and raise their family. There’s no time for fancy philosophy and all that, plus who even cares about that kind of stuff?
From anecdotal evidence I know that the U.S. education system is oh-so-forgiving on people who don’t try hard enough. There’s always that silver ribbon, bronze ribbon, “best participation” award, and gold stars for everyone! If you aren’t cutting it with reading and writing, well, “maybe Jimmy is just better at basketball”. We pamper children way too much during this critical learning phase. To criticize a child is considered unacceptable, and setting high standards is mean-spirited. Everyone’s a winner, there’s no such thing as a dumb question, and everyone’s equally talented, just in different ways! Hmm, I don’t know about that. What I do know is that in communist China if you’re a lazy child that doesn’t want to try harder, you don’t get any gold star and you’d better try harder before you get whipped with a bamboo cane.
Given all this and the wealth of supplementary information available online, I’ve been thinking it would be truly dumb to let everyone vote. When I mention this, most friends are kind of taken aback. “One man one vote”, they say. Or “it’s un-American… everyone should get to vote”. But that’s clearly not the case. Felons, for example, can’t vote. An intelligent 17 year old can’t vote but a dumbass 30 year old can. There’s other examples. Why not institute some kind of standardized test every election cycle to determine whether or not your vote counts? Only the dumbest of the dumb would get weeded out, people who clearly shouldn’t be deciding important issues and having their say count as much as an intelligent, thoughtful person’s. Nothing less than a meaningful democracy is at stake.
Listen… if someone can’t find the U.S. on a world map, I just don’t want them deciding whether or not we should have socialized medicine, or if we should allow gay marriages. Something tells me they aren’t that well informed. Why should my infinitely better-informed vote count for as much as theirs? A standardized test would send the message that if you want to take part in democracy, you better at least have a minimal understanding of politics.
But who would design the test? How would we be sure it isn’t biased towards one political ideology? Lots of concerns spring to mind. But I think a test could be implemented, and fairly easily. After all, immigrants have to take a very basic civics test for citizenship. I don’t think anyone says that the test favors one political ideology over another. These are very basic questions, such as “What branch of government enforces the laws of our country?”
In Part 2, I’ll post an example test I wrote up and let all of you take it.
Posted in Politics
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