God: Irrational Rationality

I had one of those "eureka" moments today. Maybe it's something ridiculously obvious to everyone else, but it never occurred to me. Or maybe I just Figured It Out and it's time for me to be acclaimed along with Abraham, Aquinas, and Nietzsche.

Belief in God is irrational. Sure, various folks have tried to argue otherwise (Locke's "The Reasonableness of Christianity" comes to mind), but most people - even believers - acknowledge that at best, this belief is not based in reason. They may argue that the existence of God or not is a question that reason can't answer, which I suppose is fair. But it's still irrational. And yet, most humans (when pressed on the question by an opinion pollster) believe in something we commonly call "God".

The irony is that humans are (to my knowledge) the only creatures to have this belief. We're also (again, to my knowledge) the only creatures capable of reason. Goldfish don't believe in God. Pigeons don't. Dogs don't. Chimpanzees don't. Whales don't. Apparently it takes a rational being to believe in something so irrational.

Which makes perfect sense, actually. This was my "eureka".

Humans believe in God not in spite of of our rationality, but because of it. We are rational. We want the world to be explicable in rational terms. But it isn't. The world is crazy, unpredictable, and chaotic. Maybe on some super-newtonian, sub-quantum level it all makes sense, but not on any level we can appreciate. It just doesn't make sense from here. And we can't accept that.

So we fabricate an irrational belief to accommodate it. We create God.

So we can still believe in a rational, knowable world. It all makes perfect sense... really, it does. And when it doesn't, well... the Lord works in mysterious ways, doesn't He? It's the perfect escape hatch. Even those of us who - quite rationally - don't believe in God, sometimes want there to be one.

Even if it's only to vindicate our belief that somebody, somewhere - even if it's a nonhuman spiritual entity with the necessary omniscience - actually grasps the rational explanation behind it all.

Feast or Famine

A year ago, I was tired... tired of fruitlessly searching for decent jobs to apply for, in the middle of a 10-month dry spell.

Now, I'm tired... physically and emotionally tired from working overtime at my day job, trying to get 50 new computers installed, plus another 150 old classroom computers moved and reconfigured in time for classes to start next week.

Which is not to mention the recent evening meetings with clients, one of whom wants me to do your standard logo, marketing materials, and e-commerce web site for them, the other wants me to overhaul their patchwork office network. Plus the call tonight from my uncle, asking when we can meet to discuss some major work he wants done on his business' web site. I managed to put off all three of them until late next week, when the day-job rush will be over. So it'll be out of the frying pan, directly into... another set of frying pans.

I'm not complaining. If all of these freelance/consulting gigs go through, and I get paid what I expect to get paid, it'll make up for a lot of last year's lost income, and maybe set me up for future work. It might even pay off last year's debts. That'll be a huge relief.

But it's also going to mean a lot of time spent working, with very little time for relaxing. I didn't really enjoy having so much time to myself last year, but I did get used to it. And I found ways to appreciate it; I took advantage of it to start working on some projects just for the fun of doing them. For the next few months, that won't be possible. The book's gonna have to wait. Same with the new web site. Maybe even my blogging frequency. So I'm going to miss that time.

The money will help make up for it... but not entirely.

Better than the Draft

Ever since the U.S. abolished the military draft, the condition of our armed forces has gotten worse. There were plenty of compelling reasons for doing it at the time - not the least of which was that no one wanted to go fight in Vietnam - but it was the wrong solution, and the "no one wants to go fight in ____" reason comes and goes... and it was never a truly sound reason to begin with. Folks weren't crazy about going to Europe in the 1940's, but it's arguably a good thing they were sent.

Without the draft, it's even easier for privileged people to get out of serving in the military: they simply don't. (The whole question of whether Quayle or Clinton or Bush was a draft dodger would be moot if they'd been born a couple decades later.) It's become harder for poor people to stay out, as the armed services have become a kind of "last resort" employer for any high school graduate with no particular skills but a reasonably healthy body. It affects our foreign policy because (as Michael Moore overdramatised in Fahrenheit 9/11) our legislators generally don't have to worry about their own children dying in military undertakings overseas. And even the hawks are chiming in, pointing out that our armed services are no longer staffed by our best and brightest... and they're simply understaffed as well.

Many people are suggesting that the solution is to bring back the draft. But it was the wrong solution in the 1960's and it's the wrong solution today. The privileged would still get out of service (or at least harm's way) one way or another. (Seriously, the idea of sending the Bush girls - or the child of any highly-placed politician - into combat is just idiotic; does the word "hostage" conjure up any Really Bad scenarios?) The draft was always unfair, and that was one of the things that led to its downfall: Some get drafted, others don't.

A better solution would be universal compulsory service. Say, two years, starting when you turn 21. Or 18, if you really want to do it sooner (and sober). Everyone, regardless of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, handicap, etc, would do a stint. There'd be suitable options for pacifists, the disabled, etc. In peacetime we could deploy a lot of these people on public works projects, or tutoring kids, or whatever else needs doing but isn't being done.

Sure, the Bush girls would get assigned to something incredibly safe, but with the mother and father of every other young adult thinking daily about their still-a-child-to-them off building bridges or planting trees or even in combat overseas, there'd be plenty of pressure to make sure it was genuine service of some kind.

This isn't an entirely off-the-wall idea. I understand Israel has been doing this for quite a while, and it seems to work pretty well for them. There are probably other countries doing it as well. The only good argument against it is that it would require young people to take another two years out of their lives before finishing school. I think that'd be good for them: get them out of the classroom and experience something different. If they find they enjoy the service, and they're good at it, there'd be a promotion and a career waiting for them at the end. If not, they'll go back to civilian life (school, the job market, etc.) with a better perspective on it. I loved my first time in college, but I got more out of the second time, because I'd been away from it.

People are talking about bringing back the draft, but I don't think it stands any chance of happening. It'd be political suicide, and don't think that even a President Ashcroft would try it. But maybe the voters would be more tolerant of something less divisive, more equitable, and frankly a lot more useful.

Scotty was Right

Do you remember the scene in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home where Scotty is trying to get materials on primitive 20th Century Earth to build a whale tank? I always cringed watching that bit. Not only because there's no way Scotty could so quickly get up to speed on using an antique computer (not even a Mac Plus), but the material he was whipping up the formula for was so absurd: "transparent aluminum". As if.

Well, maybe so.

Researchers have developed a method for combining aluminum oxide with other elements and compounds into a see-through glass. In other words "transparent aluminum". And soon enough after the events of STIV:TVH that Scotty's flippant attitude about meddling with history seems justifiable.

Bon Appetit

I just learned that Julia Child died last week. I fall pretty far short of being what is known as a "good cook", but I was always fond of her. I'm not sure if it was because my mother watched the show, or just because I enjoyed watching the lady with the funny voice, but she was a fixture of my childhood. Sure, I mostly made fun of her (and nearly wet myself when Dan Aykroyd lampooned her on SNL), but I wouldn't have paid enough attention to her to mimic her mannerisms and speech patterns if I didn't enjoy her.

As I said, I'm not much of a cook, but I think I owe some of my modest skill to her. Despite the pretentious name, The French Chef was almost like reality television, showing Julia dropping the chicken or burning the sauce, and generally assuring the audience that it was OK to screw up in the kitchen. And really, unless you have the courage to screw up, you'll never be able to get beyond reading the preparation instructions for a box of macaroni and cheese.

I admit that I haven't gotten very far beyond that. From time to time back when Andy and I were an item, I'll attempt something complicated enough to require a recipe, and it'd turn out OK, but I don't have anyone to do that kind of cooking for anymore, so mostly it's simple stuff. But when I'm chopping up a couple carrots or some onions to add to my mac and cheese, or mixing some strawberry jam into my pancake mix, in the back of my head there's a hint of a squeaky upper-class woman's voice prattling about how to get the best results from it.

Bon appetit, Julia.

World Wide Wiki

I don't do a lot of exploring on the Web. If there's something I want to know about, I go looking for it, and when I find it, I close the browser and get back to whatever I was doing before. There are a few sites I visit pretty regularly, but that includes places like my credit union and Weather Underground: pretty practical, mundane stuff. Some of that's because I'm jaded about this while internet thang... I've been on it longer than the Web, so it's lost its novelty for me. It's just a tool to me now, not a universe to explore.

But I've recently found a "new" way for me to waste a whole lot of time on the Web: Wikipedia. I've heard about it over the last year or two, and increasingly found it showing up in my search-engine results, and being rather helpful. The other day I decided to give it some real attention. And I think I'm hooked.

A "wiki" is a system which allows multiple people to collaborate on documents. Basically, anybody who wants to edit them... can. If you've got a bunch of people working on documentation for a piece of software, it has obvious advantages: anybody can update anything they see wrong or missing.

But you'd think such openness and freedom would crash and burn if you did an open-ended project and let absolutely anyone in the whole world update it. But that's exactly what Wikipedia is doing. It's an encyclopedia, done wiki-style. Anyone can contribute to it, on any topic.

You'd think that the signal-to-noise ratio would quickly degenerate, but surprisingly, it hasn't. If someone creates an article and fills it with garbage, anyone else can come along and delete it. Or fix it. Wikipedia keeps a record of changes, so it's easy to roll back an article to its previous state if someone removes everything from it, or adds a bunch of crap.

Just as importantly, Wikipedia is licenced under the same terms that govern GPL documentation: it's free for anyone to use. The people behind Wikipedia are aiming to make printed encyclopedias obsolete, and I think they're well on their way.

A big question people have is about bias and accuracy. At least Brittanica or World Book has standards for who writes their articles, so you know you can trust them. Or can you? They've got volumes of pages to fill, so they hire "experts" to write for them, and don't necessarily check thoroughly what's submitted.

By contrast, Wikipedia publishes their entire content for review online. If someone knows better, or thinks the author of an article is overly biased... they can fix it. And if the "fix" just makes it worse, someone can put it back. And on and on, until what's left is a heavily-reviewed article that balances the various biases involved. Their articles on "hot" controversial subjects have evolved this way.

On the other hand, there are oodles of Wikipedia articles that no one has ever really reviewed. They have some built-in mechanisms to look for obvious garbage entries, but if I were to create a new article about an obscure topic that no one else has bothered to check up on, I could get away with making up all sorts of bullshit about it.

The only solution to this is some skepticism on the part of the reader, which I'm afraid we really can't count on. But fortunately it is possible for any reader to look at the history of an article, and if there's only one person contributing all of the info, and no one's correcting him, then you know it's not a very authoritative article. But at least it exists. Which it wouldn't in a print encyclopedia, or even one of them new-fangled digital ones, like Encarta.

In some ways, Wikipedia is like what the World Wide Web is supposed to be: the sum of all human knowledge. But it has a few key differences. One is that Wikipedia pages don't go offline. There may be a web site out there with all sorts of excellent information about ____, but there's no guarantee it'll be there next year. With information entered into Wikipedia, it probably will be. There's also the benefit of some consistent structure to it. And that whole peer-review thing; if someone posts an "informative" web site that's full of shit, no one else can correct it.

Wikipedia is never going to serve as a substitute for searching the Web, but it has some unique benefits as something to be part of the Web.

And as someone who believes that he knows a hell of a lot about a hell of a lot, it's going to keep me pretty busy.

Abe Lincoln Was Wrong

Nearly every school kid in the United States reveres Abraham Lincoln. With the possible exception of George Washington, the man who held the country together is universally considered the nation's greatest president. After all, he freed the slaves, which was certainly a good move (albeit more of a tactical maneuver than an act of principle). But the other thing he did was a big mistake. He should have let the South go.

I'm not saying this because I'm a northern liberal who'd rather be rid of the reactionary rednecks (and Florida) who keep spoiling national politics. I just think it was a mistake to try to keep such a large, divergent nation-state together. And it's only gotten worse in the century and a half since.

Before going any further, I'd like to address the question of slavery. It was already on the way out in 1860, whether the Confederacy became independent or not. The northern states had been dropping it, as had Britain and so many other slave-holding nations. Even the Confederacy banned the importation of slaves. Industrialisation was simply making slavery obsolete. And it's arguable that the voluntary abolition of slavery in the South - rather than having it imposed militarily - might have led to less racist resentment from the white population. The Civil War was fundamentally about states' sovereignty... and I think the rebel states had a point. So back to the structure of the government:

We like to call our system of government a democracy, but except for ad hoc ballot proposals and millage requests, it's not. Democracy simply doesn't scale well to anything larger than a small city (like Athens was, back in the day), which is why our government is really a representative democracy. Democracy once-removed.

The framers of the Constitution set it up so that there would be a representative in Congress for every 30,000 people. They started with a House of Representatives with 65 members, which was manageable. But a century later, it had swelled to nearly 400. In 1911, a law was passed limiting the number to 435, requiring the size of districts to grow to compensate. Today each member represents nearly 650,000 people. Seven entire states have only 1 representative in Congress. (Montana, Vermont, and the Dakotas used to have more, but since their populations aren't growing as fast as other states', they lost all but their guaranteed minimum.) If we'd stuck with the original rule of 1:30,000, Congress would have 9,380 members, and we'd surely hit 10,000 with the 2010 census. We'd have to build a new Capitol Stadium just to fit them all.

Evidently representative democracy doesn't scale that well either.

And when we get to the single closest approximation to an example of national democracy, it gets really broken. I'm referring of course to the presidential election. If we ignore the skewing formality of the Electoral College, the presidency is one of the few things that every citizen in the nation gets to vote on. So let's look at it:

Every candidate - including the sitting president - has to commit a year of his life or more to campaigning for it. It costs obscene amounts of money, mostly because of the scale of the campaign. Jetting the candidate across the country every few days is just the beginning of it; you need staffed campaign offices in every state (preferably every major city), advertising time in expensive media markets, innumerable yard signs and buttons, payoffs to countless local political machines, and on and on. Europeans' jaws drop when they see how much it costs to run for office here... because they live in smaller countries where representative democracy is still able to function.

It's not working here.

The most obvious solution to this would be to break the nation up. There's clearly some lingering - and fresh - desire in the South to separate. There are also movements in various parts of the country (such as in Vermont, Hawaii, Alaska, and Texas) to separate from the rest of the U.S., and a couple nationwide projects to encourage like-minded people to move to either New Hampshire or South Carolina, then secede.

I'm not saying that these are all good ideas that I support. Some of these people creep me out. But it underscores the fact that there's conflict between states that would be reduced if they were allowed to go their own ways more.

I don't think it would help for this state or that state to break off by itself. That might make the locals feel a little better, but it wouldn't address the larger problem of the larger nation. We don't need Washington building more embassies to independent American states, and (let's be honest) then pushing these nations around diplomatically (like we already do with Britain and Canada, and to a lesser extent Mexico). What we need is a good, orderly break-up. No more United States, with Washington as its capital. Instead, how about untied states, separated from the current federal government and then reassembled into smaller nations, with smaller federal goverments?

This map is my back-of-a-cocktail-napkin idea of how to do it. It was actually pretty easy to draw lines, with maps of Electoral College results highlighting how regional political trends line up.

The Pacific: These states share a common lean toward the left (except for Alaska) as well as cultural and economic ties to their Pacific counterparts in Asia. California would probably have to be split into two or three states to avoid it dominating the others... which is something many Californians want to do anyways. San Francisco would make a nice capital for Pacifica. (Top-level country domain: .PC)

The Mountains and the Plains: These states share the heritage of The West, which survives to this day in its fierce distrust of a Washington that wants to take away their guns and regulate their land. This way they wouldn't have to contend with that. Texas would be an obvious center of power due to its population, but represenatives from the other more sparsely-populated states would still outnumber Texans. Probably better to put the capital of the Free States of America in, say Pueblo, Colorado. (Top-level country domain: .FS)

The Great Lakes: The shipping lanes of the Lakes and the Ohio/Missisippi Rivers historically tied these Midwestern states together, and they share a centrist approach to politics, with a few of them being chronic "battleground" states between the two major parties. No single state would dominate the others population-wise, so it could continue this tradition of compromise between them. Chicago would be an obvious capital for Heartland. (Top-level country domain: .HL)

The Northeast: A haven for "intellectual elites", they could follow their socialist and libertarian muses without the South and Mountain/Plains folks holding them back. New York was always the most logical choice for a national capital, but it didn't happen for geopolitical reasons, so let's establish Manhattan (or maybe all five boroughs) as a new capital and federal district (with voting rights). By taking NYC itself out of NY, that'd help keep the state from dominating the New America legislature. (Top-level country domain: .NW)

The South: The membership of this nation doesn't match up exactly with the original Confederacy (I omitted Texas, and added the then-disputed border states of Kentucky and Maryland, and yes even the District of Columbia) but it captures "the South". Overall very socially conservative. I think they even have a flag ready. Although the city of Washington would be part of this nation, it might be best to dissolve the District of Columbia into Maryland, and put the capital in Atlanta (rather than Montgomery or Richmond) to establish that the Dixie Confederation isn't your great-grand-pappy's confederacy. (Top-level country domain: .DX)

Five nation-states, of roughly equal population, each with their own distinct and fairly cohesive character. The sociopolitical realignment might be a bit unsettling for any fudamentalist Christians living in the Northeast, or any socialists living in the Plains... but jeez, aren't you already uncomfortable living there? These five nations would - out of necessity - maintain strong economic and diplomatic ties, so it wouldn't be difficult to emigrate to a nation whose politics and culture were more to your liking. Visiting would be like going to Canada, or even like traveling from France to Belgium, which is a non-event today.

Or if you decided to stay, you'd actually have a better chance of getting your voice heard in the new federal legislature, because districts could be smaller. A liberal university town could more easily elect one of its own rather than being lumped in with the surrounding conservative farmland, or a conservative enclave away from the liberal urban center could do likewise. Heck, we might even end up with just as much diversity of opinion within the legislatures of these nations, but on a more manageable, human scale.

This barely scratches the surface of the idea and its implications. International relations would be affected dramatically, even more than the dissolution of the USSR did. But the way we now talk about the United States being the last super-power... maybe the world would be better without any? If so, I'd rather see that happen this way than through the decline of the lumbering behemoth that is the federal goverment of the United States of America.

Moving in Place

When I was a kid, my parents (and the rest of us) moved every seven years. Not from one city to another, just a matter of a few miles each time, mostly "trading up" to a nicer place. Then when I went away to college, I moved every year, and kept that up for a few years after graduation. It was like I had an instinct to move periodically.

But then I lost my wanderlust and settled down. I got an apartment I liked, and I stuck with it. I did move once since then, in the wake of a double whammy: an unsuccessful attempt at cohabitation, and a huge increase in my rent. But the place I moved to has been a keeper; I've been living here for well over seven years now, and I have no wish to move.

Part of the reason for that is that from time to time, I move... in place. I rearrange the furniture, switching one room to another purpose, etc. One room has, at various points in my time living here, been the bedroom, the office, the guestroom, a storage room, and the TV/exercise room.

I'm doing a little bit of that right now. Not only does it give me some of the variety I might otherwise be missing, it's also a good motivator to clean the house. I'm not a slob, but I usually have much more interesting things to do with my time rather than clean and keep things organised. So the place tends to devolve over time. But I really do prefer living in a tidy environment, so if moving the sofa to the other side of the room requires putting away a bunch of monitors, keyboards, and computer cases I've been stacking next to the wall, and it reveals a herd of mutant dust bunnies clustering on the floor where the sofa sat... it's a good opportunity to take care of that.

Superstitious Patterns

I don't believe in any of this, but when you've got superstitious fundamentalists like Falwell and Robertson blaming homosexuals, feminists, and general American godlessness for hurricanes and the September 11 attacks, I figure it's worth pretending, kinda like pretending to believe in Friday the 13th being bad luck.

Watching the satellite images of Hurricane Charley bearing down on Florida, I couldn't help wondering if maybe this is punishment for screwing up the 2000 election, timed to serve as a fresh reminder during this one.

Then of course there's the interesting coincidence of 1992 and 2004: President George Bush, previously thought be a shoe-in for re-election following his "triumphant" invasion of Iraq, faces a serious challenge from a centrist, business-friendly democrat stressing the poor state of the economy and the president's apathetic attitude about it. A huge early-season hurricane hit Florida. And Bush lost.

The recent devastation to parts of Florida is tragic. But given that it's happened, one can hope to see history repeat itself.

A Plea From Abroad

"Dear listener, well may you ask, 'Why is this limey whining on about our country, when, it's nothing to do with him?' I have no vote in your presidential election yet it's outcome will directly affect my future and the future of millions of other people around the world. Forgive me for putting the immense responsibility on your shoulders, but I implore you to take part in the democratic process this year however imperfect it may be. Remember, when you elect a president, you are electing a president for all of us. Please be more careful this time."

- Billy Bragg (English musician) 1988

Why I Ride

I'm in the distinct minority of people in America who both own and routinely use a bicycle. Not just for recreation, but for transportation. People sometimes wonder (or misunderstand) why I do. Am I some kind of health nut? Don't I own a car?

The answer can be a bit complicated, because there are several reasons. But it can also be as simple as two remarks: "Because I can." and "Why not?"

When I was a kid, everyone in my family had a bike. Nothing fancy, just sturdy Schwinns from the neighborhood bike shop. So I got used to riding to places when I went there on my own, especially to school. Lots of kids did. And of course we rode around just for fun. In high school, I had a magazine delivery route, and depending on the season, and which street, it was often faster and easier to do it on a bike. Also, sullen teen that I was, I discovered that going for long bike rides was a good way to get away from everybody.

Then a couple of my friends started talking about taking a bicycling trip across Great Britain during the summer after we graduated from high school. They invited me to go with them, which first turned me into a "serious" cyclist in anticipation. In the end it was only two of us who made the trip. Although I was definitely the "follower" of the two (not only did he usually ride in front, he was the one who usually set the goals for the day's riding and other activities), it was a coming-of-age milestone, spending 7 weeks away from home, away from parents, away from everything familiar, and fending for ourselves as adults. We also put over 1000 miles on our bikes, cross-country. So I'm not fazed by things like hills or heat or wind or distances of over a mile.

Since then, I've had periods in which I didn't ride much, and some in which I tried to ride more, but didn't have much success. I was guilted a bit when my boyfriend (during our brief, ill-fated attempt at cohabitation) started using his bike as his primary form of transportation. Even during the cold, snowy Michigan winter. But I stuck with the car. For one thing, I worked 30 miles away. For another, the only other places I ever went were the grocery store and other places where I needed the use of a car.

Recently, things have come together nicely to turn that around. Now the shoe is on the other foot. My job is only 2 miles away, a convenient distance for biking. Some of the various other places I go during the course of a week or a month are also near enough to bike without difficulty. And it helps that the weather is usually nice this time of year. Plus, the new job doesn't provide free parking nearby, so it's actually cheaper and faster and more convenient to ride my bike than to drive my car.

So the scale has been tipped, and the bike has become my default mode of transportation. If I can take the bike, I do. If it's raining, or it's too far, or I can't carry everything on my bike, or when the roads get snowy and the windchill dangerous, I'll take the bus or the car. But those are the exception, not the rule. Even in January, when the bike is definitely going to sit idle, it will only because the answer to "why not?" ("because you'll freeze to death and will either wipe out or get splattered because of the snow/slush on the roads") is actually a compelling reason not to take the bike.

That (believe it or not) is the "simple" answer.

The more complicated answer is that I have many reasons for riding the bike. None of them are the reason, but together they make a pretty good one. 1) It's healthier. My doctor says my cholesterol is too high and I'm a bit overweight, and exercise is one of the best ways to fix that. Biking is good exercise. 2) It's cheaper. I don't have to pay to park my bike downtown, nor do I have to pay to put fuel in it. 3) It's more environmentally friendly. My gas-sipping sub-compact car may not be a major smoke-belcher, but it's still part of the problem. 4) It's psychologically therapeutic.

The psychology is a big one. Contending with idiot motorists doesn't help, but being out in the open air, travelling under my own power, does make me feel better. It even appeals to my inner sullen teen, relishing the opportunity to get away from all the soulless grown-ups trapped in their cars, and just move... even out of synch with traffic. It also puts me in better touch with the real world around me, making me pay more close attention to the weather. I'm no new-age pantheist, but I do think that this slower pace and awareness of my surroundings is good for me.

When you ride a bike instead of driving a car, you need to think more about optimising your travel time and distance. If you need to visit a bookstore out on the southeast side, and you know you're going to the hardware store out in the same direction, you combine the two into a single trip, rather than doing one today and the other tomorrow. This has spilled over into my driving habits as well. This may sound like inconvenience, but I prefer to think of it as intellectual exercise, rather than sloppy and lazy thinking. And it saves me time.

There will come a day when "because I can" is no longer true. When the time comes, I'll give up the bike. (But I'll probably switch to a motor scooter before I make the car my primary mode of transportation.) But until then, I'm gonna ride whenever I can.

Wonderfalls: Proof That TV is Broken

Over on complex superior there's an article about Wonderfalls, a very-short-lived mid-season replacement that appeared on Fox for a few weeks this past spring. While it was no M*A*S*H or All in the Family or even Cheers, it was entertaining. It was about a young woman who hears inanimate objects (shaped like animals) telling her to do things, and when she (against her better judgment) does what they tell her, it has a remarkable impact on the course of people's lives. Of course she's the only one who hears them, and she's not sure she's not crazy... but assuming she's not, she wants to understand who/what is behind it and what their agenda is.

I enjoyed it. So of course it got cancelled after four episodes. And we viewers were all left twisting in the wind, with no hope of ever finding out.

But wait: there's more. Nine more, to be exact. Apparently all 13 of the episodes Fox ordered were made. And somebody's been leaking them, with the last of them - the season (and series) finale - now available through the usual legally-questionable channels.

This speaks volumes about the insanity that pervades the entertainment industry. Not just the fact that a good TV show got canned after four episodes, but the fact that so many people worked so many hours and put so much creative effort into producing nine episodes of entertainment... which then got put on a shelf. It was finished. It was paid for. So it wasn't a question of whether it was cost-effective to employ overpriced directors, and writers, and actors. They just needed to broadcast it. And they didn't, because somehow they could make better advertising money showing America's Funniest Home Videos or whatever.

And this isn't an isolated case. Every year, all six commercial broadcast networks launch new programs, and invariably some of them get cancelled after a few weeks. Granted, many of them deserve to die (and never should have been carried to term in the first place), but nearly all of them die with episodes on the can, that aren't even (financially) worth showing.

This isn't a completely new phenomenon (though it has gotten worse in the past decade). But there's a new twist that's developing: dead series can rise from the grave. There have been several series in recent years that got cancelled by one network then got picked up by another. But Wonderfalls is reportedly going to see a temporary revival on home video. So instead of the traditional advertiser-supported broadcast model (where it isn't financially viable), it'll be released to the public via the buy-it-and-keep-it model.

Maybe that isn't especially "viable" either. It could be just an attempt to recoup some of the costs by getting the hardcore fans who really loved the show to pony up some cash to see the rest. But there seems to be a growing market for TV programming on home video (whether VHS or DVD).

Personally I've never really understood that. There have been a handful of TV series that I would bother to watch more than once, but most of them really only stand up to a single viewing. (Not that there's anything wrong with that; even the best-prepared food is only good the first time you eat it.) So it makes more sense to me to see it in a disposible format (broadcast) than in a permanent format (DVD). I studiously recorded every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Babylon 5 when they were being broadcast, but I've only re-watched each series once or twice. Buying the DVDs instead would be quite excessive; even renting them would be iffy. Same with most movies.

But if the increasing inability for broadcast TV to make money bringing programming to the viewing public is any indication, the buy-it model may be where we're headed. Subscription-based TV channels like HBO are another possible home of future programming. Either way, it looks like I'm going to be watching less TV (of whatever kind).

They're OK, Maybe I'm OK

I wasn't sure how well I was going to deal with the incident that happened to me last night. To be honest, I can be a bit of a misanthrope, and exclamations such as "I fucking hate people" roll off my tongue pretty easily at times. They don't seem to give a damn about me, so I'm sorely tempted to tell them all to go fuck themselves. I tossed and turned in bed last night, and I've been in a foul mood today.

Fortunately I got a little test this afternoon, an in retrospect, I feel good about how I reacted.

I was walking down the street, on my way home from voting in the primary. A pair of kids rode by on their bicycles. Seconds later, I heard a clatter and a short cry behind me. I turned around to see that the girl had fallen, and was sprawled on the tarmack with her bike. I didn't hesitate; I trotted back to help her. And when I saw that she wasn't moving, I ran, principles of first aid racing as quickly through my head.

It turned out that she wasn't hurt badly... just lying still before she risked moving. As I helped her get up, she winced at some injuries, but assured me that she was OK. I loitered briefly to make sure that she really was, and she thanked me. So did her brother or friend. (A few passing cars also stopped, which helped to support my often-shaky faith in others' goodness.)

So it's good to know that my altruistic instincts are still intact. And I should add that the two kids here were (like the ones who randomly attacked my car last night, and the adults who brushed me off when I asked for their help) black. A fact which had no impact on the fright I felt at seeing her lying there. But the thanks I received from them did help to compensate for the apathy I encountered last night, reminding me... chiding me, really... that most people aren't all that bad. Including me, I guess.

Racism Tonight

The following is a true story, about something that just happened to a black friend of mine, and it pisses me off:

This guy was driving home after dark from the grocery store, through a nearly-all-white neighborhood. From a side street, a group of 4 or 5 kids (between 10 and 15 years old) lobbed a bag full of sand at his car. He braked to avoid it going through his windshield, and it landed on his hood. They ran down a side street. He quickly spun his car around to follow them, but they ducked into or behind houses, and because it was dark and they were several houses down the street, he couldn't make out which ones. He only saw them well enough to guess at their age, and to see that they were white.

He parked and walked down the street a little, hoping to see where they'd gone. No luck. He came to a house with three white men sitting on their porch. Had they seen anything, he inquired. Nope. Not a thing.

Regardless, my friend called the police on his mobile phone and told them what had happened. Wanting to give the police complete information, he asked the three men what street he was on. They wouldn't tell him, pretending astonishment that this guy didn't even know where he was. As the only black person around, it was obvious to them he was out of place, and deserved no help, just ridicule. They clearly didn't give a damn what had happened to him.

After telling the story to the police, my friend returned to his car, figuring it was pointless to stick around, since he had no hope of the perps being located, and especially not of them being turned over. But he saw a couple getting out of their car and walking to their house, and he told them what had happened, so they'd at least be aware of what was happening on their street. Maybe they'd be able to help prevent this happenning again.

She said that she'd seen those kids around, and they'd been making trouble. When my friend suggested that they keep an eye out for these kids and maybe let them know that they were attracting police attention, the man started giving him attitude about this being their neighborhood, and he shouldn't be telling them what to do. (He lives about 3/4 of a mile away, and pointed this out.) He ended up apologising for this supposed impertinence, got back in his car, and drove the rest of the way home.

Now, I can't imagine that my friend would have received this kind of treatment if he'd been white. But because he was black, he was immediately categorised as "them" and basically told by the three men on the porch, and the couple by their car to go fuck himself. That's racism, plain and simple. And it happened just like that, tonight.

Oh, except for one thing. I lied about two things: the "friend" was me (I'm white), and everyone else in the story (except perhaps the police dispatcher) was black.

I do recognise that white racists and black racists aren't equivalent. One has the safety of being in the majority and the institutional power of The System on his side. And the other has extenuating circumstances (see the preceding remark) that partially justify his hostility. But they're both racist. And they're both wrong.

This isn't any new revelation to me, so if anyone's tempted to cheer that "whitey finally understands what it's like", I'm afraid you're a couple decades too late. I've understood deep down for quite a while that racism is hateful and vile, and that it's a double-edged sword that hurts both majority and minority. This isn't my first experience on the unpleasant side of it, either personally or vicariously through frieds on the other side.

But it's something that happened to me tonight, and I think it warrants recognition. I'm not stupid enough to think that all black people don't give a shit about what happens to a white guy, but the fact that several of them do demonstrates that racism is still a problem, and it's a problem that (among other things) contributes to a handful of juvenile delinquents being sheltered from punishment for their crimes. And if there's any white folks reading this who think that racism isn't their problem: Buy a clue. It is.

John Kerry in Grand Rapids

I just got back from a rally in downtown Grand Rapids for John Kerry. For those who don't know, West Michigan is Republican territory, where the GOP primaries often determine the outcome of local elections, because the Democrat doesn't stand a chance. But we still had a crowd of (reportedly) 20,000 people show up on Calder Plaza downtown in the hot sun on a workday.

I actually spent as much time standing in line as I did standing on the plaza. The local Democrats distributed free tickets, which were mostly for the sake of figuring out how many people were there, because they didn't actually check the tickets to get access to the plaza. (There were also "blue tickets" for those people with party connections, which I assume got people in more quickly and probably gave them places to sit.) I saw former governor Jim Blanchard walk by; people waved at him, and he smiled and waved back.

Michael Sak, the one local Democrat elected to the Michigan House of Representatives, was the first speaker I was close enough to hear. He was followed by Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin. Levin's one of my heroes, and Stabenow is a good egg. Governor Jennifer Granholm was on the platform, but unless it was before I got close enough, she didn't speak. (She got to speak at the Dem's national convention last week.) The main speakers were Teresa Heinz Kerry, who talked quietly about a variety of topics, including the value of women's perspective in politics, and about her current husband John, who wants to be president.

I liked most of what Sen. Kerry had to say. He was absolutely (and obviously) right about how America needs to play better with other countries, and how urgent it is to get rid of Bush so we can do that again. Of course as a mainstream candidate looking for votes, he did a lot of nationalist posturing about how American workers are at least as good as workers in other countries and apparently are more deserving of jobs. But he talked about the need to get the burden of health insurance costs off the backs of employers, which he plans to do by putting the highest-cost catastrophic cases under a government-funded plan. And I like his idea of offering college students free tuition at state colleges in exchange for two years of community service, which would not only help them get an education, but also give them experience in the real world, and more time to figure out what they want to do with their lives before selecting a major in college... which is to say nothing of the benefit to society of the work they'd do.

Grand Rapids was the first stop on Kerry's tour in which they're promoting his and Edwards' new book Our Plan for America: Stronger at Home, Respected in the World. You can also read it online. Good to know they have one. (Another item online worth reading is Ron Reagan's article in Esquire, The Case Against George W. Bush.)

I couldn't help noticing that the Democrats are currently suffering from Clueless Campaign Song Syndrome, much like the Republicans. The GOP has a history of using - without irony - songs like "Born in the U.S.A." and "Pink Houses" (both about the failure of the American Dream) and the inane "Don't Worry, Be Happy". The Dems at least used to use songs like "Happy Days Are Here Again" and "Don't Stop Thinkin' About Tomorrow". Well, here the Dems were using "Glory Days" as some kind of pump-em-up anthem, despite the fact that it's about old-timers whose best days are behind them. Apply that to John Kerry, and it's a pretty unflattering commentary about a hero from a bygone war.

I'm certainly hoping that John Kerry's got 4 or 8 years of "glory days" ahead of him.

More Election Night Nail-Biting

Geez, I'm on something of a political kick lately. I gotta go read a book or take a walk or something. But first this interesting little-noted development in the real presidential election: the vote of the Electoral College.

As everybody who follows US elections knows (especially after the 2000 debacle), the Constitution set it up so that presidents are elected state by state, with the winner of each state taking all of that state's allotted votes. Everyone who "knows" that is mistaken.

There's nothing in the Constitution that says the votes have to be handed out winner-take-all. In fact, in recent years Maine and Nebraska have changed their rules to dole out the electoral votes according to Congressional district. For example, if Bush were to win the popular vote in Maine's 1st District, and Kerry won in the 2nd, they'd each get one vote. The other two votes (based on Maine's two Senate seats) would go to whoever won the popular vote in Maine, overall.

This development hasn't received much attention, because Maine could at most give only a single "split off" vote, and Nebraska's not that likely to give any of its votes to Democrats in any case. But Colorado has a proposal on the ballot to do the same thing, and it has as many electoral votes as Nebraska and Maine combined. As a bloc, it's probably going to go for Bush, but politics across the state are not uniform. For example, in contrast to the haven for right-wing activist wackos that is Colorado Springs, it has two districts that have elected Democrats to the House, which could mean a couple more electoral votes for Kerry. Or if Kerry manages to score a majority there (which is conceivable), it'd ensure that some of the votes would still go to Bush.

The kicker is that we won't know if this is what's going to happen until after the election. Because the Electoral College doesn't actually vote until December, this new process would go into effect for the 2004 election itself. So if the electoral-vote projections come down to a few votes, and the outcome of the Colorado amendment is at all close, the talking heads are going to have to do a lot of hemming and hawing about the number of votes Bush or Kerry gets from Colorado.

Personally, I think this amendment is a good idea, and not just because I think it would probably work against Bush this time around. The whole notion that the winner of a given state should get all the votes for that state is - and always has been - ridiculous. The existence of the Electoral College as a way to insulate elections from the popular vote is anti-democracy (read up on the 1876 election for an example of just how bad it can get), but it's there in the Constitution and would be nearly impossible to get rid of.

But the states are free to drop the winner-take-all tradition, and they should. It would encourage candidates to court voters in states that are otherwise "safe" for their opponents, and it would also allow smaller parties to get their foot in the door, by picking up electoral votes a Congressional district at a time, rather than having to scale the high sheer wall of winning an entire state to get on the election-night map.

Thanks to electoral-vote.com for pointing out this development.

Road Bicycling

I've just been doing a little referrer-surfing, checking out sites that have linked to me recently, and found this little rant (reproduced here in its entirety) on one of them. It's not on a blog, so there's no commenting option, so I'm responding here:

A bicycle is either a motor vehicle or it's not. If you are sharing the road, all I ask is consistency. If you use your bike as a motor vehicle, then obey the rules of the road. Don't sneak up beside my car at a red light; don't ride through the crosswalk; and don't run stopsigns!

I understand where you're coming from here. Although I commute by bicycle (weather permitting, otherwise I take the bus), I also have a car that I drive places, and I've also seen bicyclists do some really stupid things. But if you're going to demand "consistency", I'm going to have to ask for the same in return.

If you don't want me pulling up next to you at red lights, then you motorists are going to have to stop doing the same to me. If you expect me to pretend that there's a full-sized car around me like that, then you better do the same, and stay behind me unless there's a passing lane. Not just when stopping at intersections, but all the time. Even when I'm going 15mph or slower.

That last bit's my legal right (at least in Michigan), but it's unrealistic, of course. Unless there's a bicycle lane, we're expected to just stay to the right (i.e. riding in the gutter, dodging sewer grates, parked cars, and loose gravel) and let motor vehicles pass us. So it's only fair to let us pass you when you and your road-clogging cohorts are backed up three blocks long at a traffic light.

I will admit to arbitrarily reclassifying myself as "vehicle" or "pedestrian" at a moment's notice. I often have to, for my safety. There are places where it's simply unsafe to ride in the road as a vehicle: too much high-speed traffic, no room at the side of the road for a bike, or the road is too full of holes and debris, etc. Likewise, there are places where it's unsafe to ride on the sidewalk: there are pedestrians, cracked cement, pavement slabs that don't line up, overhanging branches, curbs at intersections, etc. Depending on local laws, riding on the sidewalk can be illegal. It's also dangerous, simply because motorists don't pay attention to bicycles (or pedestrians, for that matter) on sidewalks.

The problem here is that there isn't any place for us. I'm sure it varies, but around here, the law usually considers bikes to be just another vehicle, with all the same responsibilities, but only some of the same rights. And the unwritten rules of the road are even less charitable. That's unfair, and I don't apologise for taking a few liberties to make up for giving up those rights.

The other day, as I was exercising my legal right to make a left turn using the left-turn lane, some asshole in a pickup truck yelled at me to get out of the road. I shot back, "Why don't you? It's my road too." As a matter of fact, it was "mine" before it was "his". That's right: paved roads were created for bicycles, not automobiles. For example, the Michigan Department of Transportation, the road-building arm of the state goverment, was founded in direct response to lobbying by bicyclists, who complained that dirt roads, while suitable enough for horses and horse-drawn vehicles, and even those motor-propelled thingies, weren't adequate for bikes.

Bicyclists got the roads paved.

You're welcome.

Since then, motorists have taken over our roads, quite literally pushing us to the margins and even off them altogether. Thanks a lot.

As a bicyclist, hardly a ride goes by without some thoughtless motorist violating some rule of the road or acting in defiance of common sense, and putting my safety in jeopardy in the process. By contrast, the greatest threat a misbehaving cyclist typically poses to a motorist is to dent the hood and bloodstain the paint on their SUV. We're on the look-out for you people all the time; you folks seemingly never are for us. See any inconsistency there?

Go to Hell?

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished me to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how I matched up against all the levels:

Gee, who woulda thunk that I'd score best on the "heretic" section of the test? I'm not particularly ashamed of my high score on the "lustful" section, and I take pride in my score as a "virtuous non-believer", because that's how I think of myself.