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Hillary Clinton, when recently asked if she could name one economist who thought her “Gas Tax Holiday” was a good idea, responded:

I’m not going to put my lot in with economists… We’ve got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans.

Now, I’ve got my problems with economists. Economics is a field that I think too-closely resembles weather prediction, a complex system prone to the effects of chaos theory; however, I would never dismiss economists for working so hard to at least try and know what they are talking about.

Given the choice between Al Gore and George Bush, voters went with Bush because he was someone they could have a beer with (despite the fact that he is a teetotaler and recovering alcoholic). Dittoheads despised Gore because he was educated and wasn’t ashamed of it. We can see what going with our drinking buddy as leader of the free world has gotten us.

Barack Obama is often attacked as an elitist (See also here, here, here, here, and here). It’s an easy charge to make for some people. Obama was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, graduated with a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.

He has an impeccable academic background for the position for which he is currently serving as a Senator and the one he is applying for: President of the United States. He is extremely qualified for protecting our Constitutional rights and upholding the rule of law; however, in America, a large portion of our population see this as a defect, and would prefer to have a lovable doofus lacking even a high school understanding of our constitution to run the free world (in)competently.

Imagine this irrational position applied to other situations. When, if in need of heart surgery, Americans choose doctors with less qualifications but were lovable doofuses. If, when we need technical support, we went to the bar and found someone “down to Earth” enough to service our computer, car, or home, rather than someone certified in an area of expertise.

It’s absurd that we factor this criteria into choosing the person who will manage the governmental policies that will affect all of our lives.

When American’s go to the doctor, they want an elitist, someone who’s spent nearly a decade studying the human body. When we choose a lawyer, we’re looking for an elitist, someone who’s spent nearly a decade studying law to pass the bar exam. When we look for computer programmers, engineers, academic institutions, economists, scientists, or any other field requiring specialization and years of intense intellectual training, we want an elitist to fill that role.

If a candidate is well-educated, mature, and has demonstrated an effective leadership style, then I can overlook the fact that they don’t enjoy watching a bunch of rednecks make four left turns for four hours, hanging-out in smoke-filled bars, or show any proficiency for hunting, bowling, golf, or any other activity unrelated to making America run smoothly. I want an egghead running my country, a policy wonk who keeps abreast of current events so that I don’t have to worry as much. I’ve been worrying too much these last eight years.

Stephen Colbert satirized it best on his show The Colbert Report, when interviewing Susan Jacoby about her book The Age of American Unreason:

My sister and I had some difficulty getting into the MoMa because the street was closed so the Pope could come down one of the adjacent roads. Luckily, my sister showed me how to get past the police barricade (you wait until their dealing with someone else and walk past them). Of course, a friend who we were meeting at the MoMa made it there another way, she got off at the subway stop that opened onto the closed road. : )

When we got out of the exhibit, it just happened to be time for the Pope to travel past, so we hung out and I tried to snap a photo. This is the best I could do:

Rare Pope sighting

I think this is supposed to be like seeing a rock star for some people, or like seeing Neil deGrasse Tyson for me. Once Mr. Pope had passed on by, I noticed a bit of irony in the address we were standing at to see him:

I’m going to hell

: )

I was in New York recently to see this fascinating exhibit before it moved on, and I was not let down. Science, knowledge, and technological progress are cultural tools available to us all, and they grow exponentially. The more science we know, the more doors to knowledge are open to us. The more technology we innovate, the more ways we can recombine it into solutions adapted to every new problem that emerges.

This Wall of Photovoltaic Leaves harnesess sun energy with the leave surfaces and wind energy as the leaves flutter

View the entire flickr set here.

Even if you can’t check out the exhibit in person consider buying the book, which includes just about all of the exhibits and then some, with great discussion of each piece. Or you can check out the online exhibition, which is a delightful presentation in and of itself.

Note: The Victimless Leather display from the exhibit featured a tiny leather jacket grown from mouse stem cells. Unfortunately it had to be euthanized for growing to big for its display. Fascinating.

A recent study in the BMJ Suicide and the Internet, found that results for suicide-related search terms most frequently support or encourage suicide.

I like to think of the Internet as one big ecosystem of ideas, or memes, where our minds naturally select out the good ones. Obviously, if most sites are pro-suicide, then we need to get some better memes online.

So if you’ve stumbled across this blog post after googling “how to commit suicide” or “should I kill myself?” or seeking other suicide advice, please take a moment to consider the following reasons not to logout of this great big game of life:

Don’t you want to know what happens next? Like what’s that show Lost all about? I mean, really, what’s the deal with that freaky island? Is it a crazy scientific experiment, a paranormal limbo, or the imagination of some four-year-old girl playing dollies in a sandbox somewhere? If you kill yourself, you’ll never find out! And there’s a lot of other stuff you’ll miss out on too, like movie sequels and xkcd comics and the end of George Bush’s Presidency!

Do some charity work! Giving to others has been scientifically proven to make people happier. Suicide might end you, but everyone else has to live with the burden of your death. Instead of transferring your pain to others, work to easy their pain, and improve your own outlook on life in the process.

Puppies! Ending yourself denies you the opportunity to meet all the puppies still to come into this world!

Puppies Just another reason not to commit suicide. Photo by ehecatzin

Pain isn’t forever. It only feels that way. Death is forever. That means it lasts longer than high school, bankruptcy, heartbreak, and the extended director’s cut of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (Yuck! Too Geeky even for me.).

People will make fun of you. (Q: How does Kurt Cobain collect his thoughts? A: With a dust buster.)

Kittens! Awwww… Wookie da wittle kee-kees! Aren’t they just adorable? Go pick one up from the SPCA today!

Kittens They don’t want you to commit suicide Photo by Ruskis

Stop taking life so seriously! Look, according to Dr. Nick Bostrom at Oxford University, chances are pretty good that we are living in a computer simulation and Brian Whitworth at Massey University has even got a pretty good explanation of how our physical world is a virtual reality. And I’ve got a short story online exploring the implications of this hypothesis. Go spend some time in Second Life to get some perspective.

Do you know what happens to Super Mario every time he dies trying to complete a level? He has to go back to the beginning and start all over again. If life’s a video game, then you’re gonna have to relive all this until you get it right.

Don’t log out of the game, get into it!

Microsoft has come up with a novel solution to the issue of security in Windows Vista. The basic principle is don’t let the user do anything. You see, if users are prevented from any productivity whatsoever, they can’t screw things up right?

Take for instance User Account Control. This is a new “feature” (note the scarequotes), which asks the user for permission every time they try to do something:

Vista also disables screenshots when this dialog appears, so I had to get this photo with my digital camera.

It works like this: When you double click on Firefox, you get this pop-up stating that it appears Firefox is trying to run. Do you wish to allow it? You click OK. You try to share a folder, and you get this pop-up stating that it appears something is trying to share a folder. Do you wish to allow it? You click OK. You double click an MP3 and get a warning that Windows Media Player is trying to run. You click OK.

Turning off this “feature” walks you through the depraved sadism that must exist in the minds of Microsoft Developers. I could really feel their contempt for me as a user when I first went to the Windows Security Center and found User Account Control listed there, set to “ON,” with no way to modify it.

There was, however, an unhelpful link below this meaningless status indicator reading, “How does User Account Control help protect my computer?”

How indeed. The help topic unhelpfully explained that User Account Control protects my computer by making me click “OK” every time I want to do something.

Truly fascinating, but as Benjamin Franklin wisely cautioned, “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” So despite the immense security clicking all these “OK” buttons was affording me, I decided I would trade security for freedom and efficiency by turning them off.

The help topic on this “feature” had nothing to say about how to do that.

So, of course, I consulted that great oracle of how to’s for usurping Microsoft’s bureaucracy, Google, and found this article, which directed me to “User Accounts and Family Safety.” Where I was able to disable the feature, after, of course, being informed that something was trying to disable User Account Control and clicking OK.

Now every time I start Windows Vista, I get a helpful alert message warning me that User Account Control is turned off.

Windows Vista is extremely pretty though.

Lawrence Solomon of Energy Probe has an extremely whiney column in the National Post complaining about the refusal of Wikipedians (which he refers to as Wicked Pedia. Ho. Ho.) to let him edit articles based on his personal experience.

The article in question was Wikipedia’s entry for Naomi Oreskes, whose very informative lecture on the history of Climate Change skepticism understandably has skeptics like Solomon’s ears burning.

Solomon claims that he found an error in Naomi Oreskes wikipedia entry stating fellow skeptic Benny Peiser had admitted error in his one of his criticisms of Orsekes. Solomon called Peiser, who denied making the admission of error. So Solomon edited the Wikipedia entry, removing the reference to Peiser’s admission, and claiming himself as the source.

A Wikipedian named “Tabletop” zeroed in on the change instantly and removed it, which confused and offended Solomon:

Why can Tabletop speak for Peiser but not I, who have his permission?, I thought. I redid Tabletop’s undid and protested: “Tabletop is distorting Peiser. She does not speak for him. Peiser has approved my description of events concerning him.”

Tabletop parried: “We have a reliable source to this. What Peiser has said to *you* is irrelevant.”

Poor, befuddled dittoheads like Solomon don’t understand the basic principle of citation. Tabletop did not “speak for Peiser,” she referenced him. Specifically, ehe Wikipedia entry referenced this post on Deltoid, which references this post on the PostNormalTimes, which references this article written by Benny Peiser himself, and where he makes the following admission in the comments section:

I accept that it was a mistake to include the abstract you mentioned (and some other rather ambiguous ones) in my critique of the Oreskes essay. It certainly deflected attention from my main criticism, i.e. that her claim of a unanimous consensus on AGW (as opposed to a majority consensus) is tenuous.

So in summary: Solomon believes it is unfair that Tabletop’s reference to Peiser’s own words posted to the Internet is unfair, because Solomon spoke with Peiser, who gave him permission to argue that those words, which everyone can see for themselves, don’t actually exist, and that we should take Solomon’s word for Peiser’s word that Peiser’s words aren’t really there.

References to Benny Peizer have been since removed from Oreskes’ entry, which is probably best, since a post referencing a post referencing a post isn’t the best citation method (neither is using comments posted to a thread), but Solomon’s position, that Wikipedia should simply let him edit its content referencing nothing other than his point-of-view, is pure hubris.

Wikipedia’s strength is it’s transparency, and there’s a great discussion over this issue on the site, something you won’t see in Solomon’s columns. There’s a conversation happening on Wikipedia, and Solomon wants to co-opt it with his make-believe authority.

I recommend he try his luck editing Conservapedia, where the readers are more accustomed to swallowing such tripe.

Note: Solomon’s organization, Energy Probe, claims to promote “alternatives to coal and nuclear power” and while their 10 Principles are sound, what exactly are they doing to promote alternative energies and protect the environment? From reading their multitude of articles posted online, NOTHING. Actions speak louder than words, and an organization claiming environmental principles that does nothing to uphold them is worse than actively working against the environment. Shame. Shame.

If you are reading this, then you are a member of the human race.

You are a member of Kingdom Animalia, meaning you are multicellular, but, unlike plants, your cells do not have a cell wall. You are a member of Phylum Chordata, meaning you have a central nervous system, and Subphylum Vertebrata, meaning you also have a backbone to protect your dorsal nerve cord.

Your warm bloodedness and mammary glands put you in Class Mammalia. Your Subclass, Placentalia, means you were fully gestated inside your mother before birth, as opposed to being grown in a pouch like kangaroos.

Modern and fossil hominid skulls: modern chimp in the upper left-hand corner, then a chronologic sequence of hominids ending with modern humans. Image courtesy NSF (Click for Larger Image)

Like other members of the Order Primates, you have grasping hands, fingers, and both incisors and molars for teeth. Being in the Family Hominidae, you stand upright, have a large brain, stereoscopic vision, and a flat face. Your Genus, Homo, defines you as having an s-curved spine, and your Species, Homo Sapiens, means you have a well-developed chin and high forehead, which provides room for your brain’s frontal lobe, giving you cognitive ability to imagine the future and plan ahead.

There are presently 6.5 Billion beings in this club we call the Human Race. Even though we all share this taxonomic classification, we still exhibit a tremendous amount of diversity in our genes. Unless you have an identical twin, the chances of someone else having the exact same DNA sequence as you is 1 in 6 million, meaning there are in the area of 1083 people on this planet genetically identical to you.

Despite sharing this identical internal genetic code, known as your genotype, your outward expression of this code, your phenotype, is very different. Our DNA gives our bodies a great deal of plasticity when it comes to growing into our environments. All sorts of environmental factors, such as nutrition, climate, your mother’s womb, and physical experiences have all made your personal DNA expression unique.

Even if your genes did express themselves in the exact same way, as they almost do in identical twins, your personal experiences would be unique. Only you occupy the precise space and time in which you currently exist. No one else can occupy your space-time coordinates, and experience the world the way you do.

You will glimpse less than a century of the Universe’s projected googolplex years of life in your own lifetime (one followed by 100 zeros). The atoms that currently make up your body, atoms forged in the centers of stars millions of light years away and billions of years ago, will disassemble. Some of these will find their way into other living things, all of them will continue to venture throughout the Universe in one form or another until the end of time.

But nothing exactly like you will ever experience this Universe the way you are now. You are the Universe observing itself in this momentary flash of consciousness. Savor it.