Millenialism and the pursuit of profit

The New York Times > Opinion > Frank Rich: A Culture of Death, Not Life

Frank Rich notes the recent passion for mega-funerals, and loops back to the new "Revelations" series ...

...No one does the culture of death with more of a vengeance - literally so - than the doomsday right. The "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins all but pant for the bloody demise of nonbelievers at Armageddon. And now, as Eric J. Greenberg has reported in The Forward, there's even a children's auxiliary: a 40-title series, "Left Behind: The Kids," that warns Jewish children of the hell that awaits them if they don't convert before it's too late. Eleven million copies have been sold on top of the original series' 60 million...

...This Wednesday the far right's cutting-edge culture of death gets its biggest foothold to date in the mainstream, when NBC broadcasts its "Left Behind" simulation, "Revelations," an extremely slick prime-time mini-series that was made before our most recent death watches but could have been ripped from their headlines. In the pilot a heretofore nonobservant Christian teenage girl in a "persistent vegetative state" - and in Florida, yet - starts babbling Latin texts from the show's New Testament namesake just as dastardly scientists ("devil's advocates," as they're referred to) and organ-seekers conspire to pull the plug. "All the signs and symbols set forth in the Bible are currently in place for the end of days," says the show's adult heroine, an Oxford-educated nun who has been denounced by the Vatican for her views and whose mission is underwritten by a wealthy "religious fundamentalist."

The great constant in American life is the pursuit of wealth. The Left Behind authors are wealthy now beyond the dreams of mortals, the Revelations series can't help but be a big winner (heck, I'd watch it if I watched TV*).

What happens when profit and a bloody-minded fundamentalism combine in a self-reinforcing feedback loop? I'm hoping the audience will burn out...

Geek's have their own armageddon, known as the Singularity. Opera lovers have the Ring Cycle. What we really need is an all-Doomsday sweeps week special, from Revelations to the Ring Cycle (Gottdamerung!) to The Singularity to (what the heck) Nuclear Terrorism and Supervolcanoes.

It's enough to turn a contrarian sort into a raving optimist.

*Update: My wife claims I wouldn't last five minutes.

Exploring British Columbia by google's new satellite imagery maps

Brian Faughnan - A Lost Person

I started at Rainbow Mountain (I think) by Whistler and navigated to the coast, then up the coast of BC to Juneau.

Stunning. Even frightening. Mostly, however, awesome.

No Black Holes? Say it ain't so Joe.

news @ nature.com -- Black holes 'do not exist' --These mysterious objects are dark-energy stars, physicist claims.

Universal time is required by quantum mechanics, but is denied by general relativity. General relativity says nothing happens at black hole boundaries, but quantum mechanics says very odd things happen.

Ooookkkkaaay.

But what if there are no back holes (and thus no science-defying singularities)? What if dark energy makes black holes impossible (except perhaps for those pion-spittling strong-force black holes we just discovered). Oh wait, pions are just positrons on a different scale (note how many letters they have in common -- that must mean something). And maybe dark-energy stars spit positrons ...

Now I get it!! Yes, it's alll clear nnoooooowwww [hiss of static, then elevator music plays from the radio].

Physics is beginning to remind me of economics.

Yahweh vs. Ganesha in the American Supreme Court

Kudos to Salon for covering a topic I've not seen mentioned elsewhere. I'm reminded by this odd silence how feeble American journalism has become, but Salon shows there are a few of the old strain left here and there.

The Supreme Court is having to rule on the practice of displaying the Ten Commandments in prominent public locations, including courtrooms. These are displayed without a competing array of, for example, the moral tenets of the Wicca or Scientology or Eckanckar. More significantly, displays also omit the conflicting tenets of the Ojibiwe, of Hinduism, of Buddhism ... Or, for that matter, Mormonism.

So this case is really not so much about the "seperation of church and state" as whether America has one state religion (and does it include the book. I thought it interesting that when Bush assembled religious figures post 9/11 he didn't include any representatives of native americans or any other non-biblical faiths. Now the story unfolds ... (emphases mine)

Salon.com | In gods we trust

Among the groups that filed a "friend of the court" brief against the Ten Commandments monument was the Hindu American Foundation, along with Buddhists and Jains.

How significant is this ranging of American non-Christians against the Decalogue? The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, conducted by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, discovered an America that is changing rapidly with regard to religion. In the 11 years since the first such poll (done in 1990), the number of Americans who considered themselves to have no religion increased from 8 percent to 14 percent. In real terms, these open unbelievers increased from 14 million to nearly 30 million, as extrapolated from the polls. In addition, the proportion of Americans who identified with a specific religion fell from 90 percent to 81 percent...

...The elephant-headed god Ganesha is a favorite of Hindu worshippers, especially in western India. Ganesha has come to America, too. If you visit the Web page of the Bharatiya Temple in Troy, Mich., you will find a hyperlink to the left marked "Images." In Old Testament language, it might as well say "graven images." A statuette of Ganesha is displayed there. Asian and other non-Christian religions (Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and so forth) still do not make up more than about 4 percent of the American population, but their adherents grew from about 5 million to over 7 million between 1990 and 2001 in the SUNY poll (which probably undercounts the smaller groups). As the Asian population grows in the United States, the number of Buddhists and Muslims will increase significantly. The United States adds a million immigrants a year, many of them from Asia...

...The friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Hindus and others notes, "To members of non-Judeo-Christian religions, the Ten Commandments do not merely recite non-controversial ethical maxims; several Commandments (e.g., the first, second and third) address the forms and objects of religious worship." Underlining that there are nearly a million Hindus in the United States, and some 700 Hindu temples, the brief says, "Nor can Hindus accept the First Commandment's prohibition against 'graven images.' The use of murtis (sacred representations of God in any of God's various forms) is central to the practice of the religion for virtually all Hindus." The government-sponsored posting of the Ten Commandments implies a U.S. government preference for a theology that Hindus cannot accept. As for the country's 3 million Buddhists, the brief is even more blunt: "The conception of God, or the notion of worshipping creator gods, is considered an obstacle to the enlightenment sought by Buddhists."

America has not always separated church and state, indeed I think that separation has waxed and waned over the past 4 hundred years in both British-American and America. At times the state combusted certain non-believers, at other times we added pseudo-occult non-Christian symbols to our currency.

This should be an interesting court case.

Update 7/27/07: I researched what happened to this story today. It wasn't easy to find out how it went! None of the sites that had the original story linked to the conclusion. As best I can tell, the Christians fundamentalists won this battle, though it seems the key Supreme (Breyer) decided the key factor was a relatively limited religious component to the monument.

A silent liberal majority in America? The BBC's Justin Webb thinks so ..

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Justin Webb | Schiavo case tests America

A BBC Commentation is stunned by his "discovery" of what he considers a "silent liberal majority" pushing back against the seemingly dominant forces of social conservatism (emphases mine):

...The reason the Schiavo case is so important, the reason it has Americans talking and arguing, and the reason it should, in my view, have the rest of us re-assessing our view of this nation, is that Americans were corralled but rebelled.

They were emotionally blackmailed but refused to budge, were told that their deepest held religious beliefs should push them in one direction, but thought for themselves and thought differently.

America is often portrayed as an ignorant lazy sort of place, full of bible bashers and ruled to a dangerous extent by trashy television, superstition and religious bigotry, a place lacking in respect for evidence based knowledge.

I know that is how it is portrayed because I have done my bit to paint that picture, and that picture is in many respects a true one...

...There is plenty of barminess and plenty of nastiness here if you look for it, but for me, the revelation of the Schiavo case was that there is plenty of good sense as well.

Plenty of honest disagreement among reasonable people, religious and non religious, Republican and Democrat.

And in the end a majority who value what we can call, without irony, the American way of life, and believe their politicians and the right-to-life campaigners over-reached themselves in this case...

...It is possible at least that the high watermark of social conservatism has been reached. Its limit set by the will of a silent liberal majority.

The founding fathers must be watching from their heavenly perches and wondering at the power of the constitution they created.

It is common to scoff at American attempts to export Jeffersonian democracy, but after these two weeks the scoffing should stop.

This system work.

I think he's drawing too many conclusions from a single media eruption, but I liked the conceit of a "silent liberal majority". His opinion of America is so low that he finds even modest rationality astounding. I think that's the interesting aspect of this article. The world now thinks so little of the US that we can't help but exceed their expectations.

Google Ride Finder - I thought this was an April Fool's joke

Google Ride Finder

It's not. My jaw just dropped. Google's integrated GPS sensors in some taxi companies with Google Maps. This sort of thing has been predicted for some time, but it always seemed to be "next year". Now it's hear.

This is all so pre-singularity.

American Torturing Jobs Increasingly Outsourced

WASHINGTON, DC—AFL-CIO vice president Linda Chavez-Thompson, representing the American Federation of Interrogation Torturers, released a statement Monday deriding the CIA's 'extraordinary rendition' program, under which American torturing jobs are outsourced to foreign markets. 'Outsourcing the task of interrogating terror suspects to countries like Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia is having a crippling effect on the Americans who make a living by stripping detainees nude, shackling them to the floor, and beating the living shit out of them,' Chavez-Thompson said. 'And specialists within the field—corrosive-material chemists, ocular surgeons, and testicular electricians—are lucky to find any jobs at all. How are they supposed to feed their families?' Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended extraordinary rendition, saying the program will create jobs in the long run by fostering a global climate of torture tolerance.

Thank you, Onion.

How social security solvency problems will be addressed - through immigration law changes

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: Max Sawicky Reports on Brookings

The last election cost me whatever residual faith I had in the wisdom of the nation, but it does seem that Bush is having a hard time convincing people that solvency and privatization are somehow inextricably linked. Here DeLong quotes a Sawicky summary of a recent Brookings presentation on the topic. The kicker is DeLong's comment:

Bob Gordon is--as is almost invariably true--smart. Raising immigration by 0.3% of the workforce every year wipes out nearly half of the 75-year Social Security deficit.

Ok guys, the game's over. Everyone can go home now.

If the US emulates Canada's mercenary approach to immigration (anyone who thinks Canadians are altruistic goofs hasn't studied Canadian immigration policy) then a very large chunk of the social security solvency problem goes away. The rest can be dealt with in routine and well understood ways (a bit of longer work here, a bit of tax increase there, a bit of compromise on the annual benefit increase).

This is the kind of backdoor solution that politicians will be unable to resist. It's also not a bad solution.

Gmail goes to 2GB -- take that Yahoo!

Gmail: Help Center

Yahoo plans to go to 1GB, so Yahoo has gone to 2GB - with (far?) more to come. So much for my already hitting 19% of my limit. I keep copies of all my mail locally, bug Gmail is now my main mail client. It's a better client than Eudora or OS X Mail.

Storage is an important part of email, but that doesn't mean you should have to worry about it. To celebrate our one-year birthday, we're giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able...

...Fonts, bullets and highlighting, oh my! Gmail now offers rich text formatting. And over 60 colors of the rainbow.

The RTF is very nice as well. I have 50 invites; I've managed to convert a few of my friends. (I think anyone who has a legitimate desire for a Gmail account probably has one by now -- just ask a geek friend. I only give them out friends and acquaintances -- I'd rather not encourage misuse.)

Is DeLay getting nervous?

The DNC has put together a rogue's case file for Tom DeLay: DNC Special Reports: Tom DeLay Case File. It's pretty interesting.

Meanwhile DeLay is making veiled threats against the Schiavo judges.

I wonder if he's getting nervous.

Political Animal spots the Heritage Foundation's Creationist Event

The Washington Monthly: Kevin Drum

Kevin Drum spots this description of an April 19th event to be held by an old bastion of conservatism (emphases mine):

A growing number of scientists around the world no longer believe that natural selection or chemistry, alone, can explain the origins of life. Instead, they think that the microscopic world of the cell provides evidence of purpose and design in nature — a theory based upon compelling biochemical evidence. Join us as Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, a key design theorist and philosopher of science, explains this powerful and controversial concept on the mysteries of life.

Growing? Philosopher of science? Powerful? Compelling?

Good. Very good. Keep it coming.

Ok all you remnants of the old Republican Party ... are you awake yet? Remember, you probably voted for Bush.

Guardians, Awaken!

You are (probably) very, very rich.

Global Rich List

Crooked Timber sent me to this one (read the post). The test doesn't actually measure wealth, it instead ranks yearly income on a worldwide scale. $40K a year puts one in the top 4%. Americans who consider themselves 'upper middle class' will be ranked as fabulously wealthy beyond all reason.

If one were to extend the range to include all Homo sapiens sapiens throughout time the scale would probably shift another order of magnitude.

Which reminds me of this scale.

Once you take the survey you're invited to donate to CARE -- my favorite charity. They're the only charity I've ever worked with that has been able to leave me completely and totally alone. When I started donating I wrote that I'd continue with my yearly donations as long as they never called, emailed, or otherwise pestered me or even shared my address. With one trivial exception (forgiven), they never have.

I don't think any other charity could manage that. Highly recommended.

Does chronic fatigue syndrome involve a neuropsychiatric failure of the placebo mechanism?

The New York Times > Health > For Chronic Fatigue, Placebos Fail the Test

Studies suggest that placebos relieve the symptoms for about 30 percent of patients suffering from a wide variety of illnesses. Migraine headaches, for example, respond at a rate of about 29 percent to placebo treatment, major depression at about 30 percent and reflux esophagitis at about 26 percent.

In some diseases, placebo treatments are even more effective - 36 to 44 percent of patients with duodenal ulcers improve on placebos, depending on how many of the treatments are offered each day.

But by pooling results from more than two dozen studies, the researchers, led by Dr. Hyong Jin Cho, a professor of psychiatry at King's College London, found that, among people with chronic fatigue syndrome, only 19.6 percent responded to placebos, not the 50 percent found by previous, less systematic studies.

Two NYT articles this month based on the same issue the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine? Good for them!

This is tantalizing. The article quotes researchers arguing that this proves CFS is "organic". Phaw. To a reductionist everything is "organic" -- including joy, sadness, laziness and all varieties of fatigue. The question is really about mechanism and intervention. Most pain and suffering syndromes, including fairly severe angina (this was shown in a famous and impossible-to-replicate study of a sham surgical intervention for severe angina) respond very well to placebo. In general anything that is "perceived" by the brain responds to placebo. In contrast malignant melanoma does not respond to placebo (though pain due to MM will).

Many of the symptoms of CFS are things that live in the brain -- sensations of tiredness, fatigue, malaise. They ought to respond to placebo. If they don't then one wonders if the pathophysiology of CFS somehow degrades the normal placebo response.

One interesting study would be to take a group of people with CFS, inflict an ethical amount of discomfort, and give half a placebo and half a pain medication. Do the same thing for a control group. It would be interesting to compare the therapeutic gap in both cases.

Maybe when we understand the neurophysiologic basis for the placebo response, we'll understand CFS.

Hmm. That's a lot of speculation ...

Hyperlipidemia and IQ

The New York Times > Health > Vital Signs: Abilities: The Smart Side of Cholesterol

People with high levels of cholesterol do better on a variety of tests measuring mental ability, researchers from Boston University have found. The study, led by Dr. Penelope K. Elias, appeared in the January/February issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.

The findings grow out of information compiled by the long-term Framingham Heart Study, and are based on the medical histories of 789 men and 1,105 women over about 18 years.

Although high cholesterol increases the risk of serious illness, including heart disease, the researchers found that when it comes to the brain, it may be a slightly different matter.

When the volunteers were given tests to measure mental skills like memory, concentration, abstract reasoning and organization, those with cholesterol levels that were borderline-high or greater (200 and above) scored somewhat better.

I wanted to find this interesting for two reasons:

1. I've long been interested in the neuropsychiatric effets of lipid-lowering agents. For pete's sake, lipids determine a lot of the physical properties of the cell membrane. There's long been a concern that some lipid-lowering agents seemed to be associated with a higher risk of accidental death and many have wondered about a connection between lipid-lowering agents and neuronal function.

2. Hyperlipidemia is fairly common, yet it seems to only have downsides. That's a bit odd, even for an inbred species like the east african planes ape (humans).

Alas, there's probably a reason this wasn't published in a major medical journal. Doing this kind of analysis on a data set obtained for an unrelated measure has a high risk of finding a misleading association. Even if the association were true it could be that both mental skills (IQ) and hyperlipidemia were related to wealth -- and thus lots of Haagen-Daas ice cream.

So, despite my enthusiasm, I suspect this is probably meaningless.

Be the Best You can Be: Five siblings with varying flavors of autism spectrum disorder

Great USA today article. Utterly brilliant blog posting. (OK, so it's my blog.)