Considering the list of embarrassingly stupid questions ABC asked Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton last night (see also here, here, here, here, and here), one has to wonder why the candidates prefer such unproductive distractions to engaging the positive and enlightening Science Debate 2008.

It was infuriating watching Barack Obama be questioned about his relationship to Reverend Wright for the bazillionth time, an issue that is old news, when he could have been explaining his policies to ensure American competitiveness online, to tackle Climate Change, and to improve our Educational system..

It was an outrage to watch Hillary Clinton confronted with the same old silly questions about her Bosnia story gaff, when she could have spent those precious moments talking about her plans to switch America to alternative energy, to mend our Educational system, and keep America a high-tech leader in the world.

In taking their discussion to ABC, the candidates simply fed the already-obese media gossip machine. No one was enlightened. With a science debate, they could have demonstrated the very job skills we are interviewing them for with this whole political process, the purpose of which is finding the right person to lead America into the future.

“There was a time when reading wasn’t just for fags. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories that made you care about whose ass it was and why it was farting. And I believe that time can come again!” – Joe Bowers, Idiocracy

Channel-surfing with my siblings during a family visit, I happened to come across Mike Judge’s film Idiocracy right at the opening, a film I would not even know existed if it weren’t for HBO playing it perpetually for several months now. We LOLed through most of it, and when the credits rolled and the laughter subsided. Someone stated what we were all thinking:

“That movie hit a little too close to the mark.”

Quick Synopsis: Joe Bauers is a completely average person, average in every way. He gets put to sleep and wakes up 500 years in the future, where centuries of increasingly inane entertainment, Fox News, and commercialism have brought average IQs down to what we consider mentally challenged today.

The opening clip is totally awesome (language advisory):

Although Fox had a contractual obligation to release this film, they did nothing to promote it. Probably because the film’s critical satire of Costco, Starbucks, Carl’s Jr., Fudruckers, and Fox News wasn’t good for advertising.

Mike Judge has a Bachelors in Physics and his film Office Space was very funny and insightful. While his shows King of the Hill and Beavis and Butthead had mass appeal. This blend of intelligence and accessibility make Judge perfect for making a movie like this.

Judge’s depiction of the culture of stupidity is actually frighteningly realistic. Watching the dittohead assault on academia or spending an hour browsing MySpace profiles confirms that, when a doctor in Idiocracy diagnoses Joe, “Ah, you talk like a fag, and your shit’s all retarded,” Judge is taking a page from a segment of today’s society.

Friday night’s at the comic shop, we gamers are subject to endless verbal abuse from drunk people hanging out at the neighboring nightclub. They laugh at us, call us fags, and deride our preference for intellectual stimulation to chemical intoxication.

We laugh at them with films like Idiocracy.

When I had to learn SQABasic for automated testing, I downloaded and printed out the 902 page reference guide, three-hole punched it, and put it into a three-ring binder. The only nice thing about this otherwise idiotic and wasteful act of mine was that I printed it two-up and double-sided to conserve paper.

Now I’m in the process of migrating into Database Development. Having to learn the intricacies of our relational database, I downloaded the Ingres 2006 SQL Reference Guide. It’s a PDF file, and it’s taking every ounce of my willpower now not to print it out.

In the comments section of his July, 2007 article, A Defense of the Book, Alan Wall argues:

I value computer technology, and could not function without it (here I am, after all) but I am yet to meet anyone who would rather read Paradise Lost on a computer screen, or read Dickens on a train from a laptop.

He’s correct that there is a strong resistance to people reading entire books electronically, but this is not proof that print-books are intrinsically superior to e-books. The resistance has much more to do with what’s familiar to us. Print books are incredibly inefficient and devoid of features when compared to the same literature placed in an electronic medium.

There’s no “Find” function in a book. I can’t cut-and-paste my favorite quotes and blockquotes into other files, I have to transcribe them by hand or scan them with text-reading software. I can’t store a book online and reference it from any computer in the world, including my cell-phone.

If I cite a book in one of my posts, anyone who wants to check my sources has to call the library or check the book’s availability online. Then, if the library doesn’t have the book, they call another library and have it sent over. At some point, the scholar has to physically visit the library to pick up the book, and then physically visit the library again to return it.

In a utopian future, libraries will offer nothing but free Internet access and experts to guide people to books online. Romanticists get cold-chills at such a future, as if we are somehow losing something classical rather than gaining something magical. It’s the same nostalgia that keeps us from adopting the Metric System and Dvorak Keyboard layouts.

We didn’t have E-books when I was a kid, so now I must unlearn my habits and port my mind to this Information Age paradigm. Don’t let your personal resistance to E-books prompt you to saddle your children with the obsolescence of printed texts. Get them reading books online today, and put the world’s library on their bookshelf.

Project Gutenberg is a great place to start, with a collection of over 25,000 classic text available for free online.

Dare County has made English its official language, and I say it’s about time somebody finally took a stand!

They show up in our country in droves, usurping our traditional values, and turning our culture on its head. Studies show they are bringing down our children’s grammar skills. They don’t pay taxes, and their influx of cheap labor is forcing countless honest, hardworking Americans into the unemployment lines.

Some people say we can’t do without them, that our economy depends on their labors. That if we exile them from our borders, our modern way of life will collapse, but our lifestyles are increasingly consumed with catering to their needs, all because they are apparently incapable of learning our common tongue.

This is America, and we speak English in this great union. Perl, COBOL, VBScript, PHP, C++, SQL, Java, cold Fusion, Lojban, Python, and other programming languages are un-American, and the schools that teach them and programmers who speak them are bordering on treason.

I say computers either need to learn English or get the heck out of our country!

Extropia Dance Party

In David Brin’s science fiction book Kiln People, people make copies of themselves to aide with multi-tasking. Something we’d all like the power to do at times. Time isn’t money, it’s much more precious.

Extropia

Saturday night, unable to physically travel a hundred-plus miles to hang out at one of the parties celebrating space flight, I decided to go virtual and attend a party in Second Life hosted by Extropia a community of Transhumanists–an international intellectual and cultural movement that seeks to use science and technology to ameliorate human suffering and shortcomings.

Extropia Dance Party

However, I was also very busy that night. So while I was at the party, I set my avatar to dance automatically, while I caught up on some writing. It was awesome! I got to dance with hot cyborg ladies in one window, while keeping up on research in the next.

Extropia Dance Party

I had a great time, and just like real life parties, I don’t remember much of it. Unlike real life parties, I didn’t get behind on my homework.

Extropia Dance Party

Also unlike real life parties, I’m an excellent dancer in virtual reality… after downloading the appropriate dance moves that is. : )

More photos here.

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Monument to Yuri Gagarin in Moscow Courtesy Wikipedia

“Outer space is eternal and extends indefinitely far out. There is enough room for everyone there.” – Yuri Gagarin

Can’t make one of the parties tonight? Go virtual and attend COLAB’s Yuri’s Night party in Second Life. It begins 11AM PDT and runs until 11PM PDT, with live virtual music performances scheduled all throughout the day. I’ll be wearing my virtual Yuri t-shirt, if I can find it.

Extropia in Second Life also has events planned all day. David Brin will be giving a speech at 1PM PDT.

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This Saturday Night! Be there! BE THERE!! BE THERE!!!

Head out to Yuri’s Night World Space Party, a series of parties being held across the world to celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of Human Space Flight, and Yuri Gagarin

Find a party in your area, attend, and then tell me about how cool it was… since there aren’t any parties within 150 miles of where I live.

Two short sets this week, two big sets coming over the next two weeks.

Mountain Cove Forest

Inside the NCMoNS is one great big recreation of a forest, filled with taxidermied animals. The Mountain Cove Forest was the last of these. I prefer live animals to dead ones, but this was definately one of the better presentations I’ve seen.

Luna Moth

Complete flickr set here.

Tropical Connections

Lots of cool live animals in this display, and one set of taxidermied animals I didn’t mind: a collection of hummingbirds. A great demonstration of biological variance and adaptation.

Sword-Billed Humingbird

Complete flickr set here.

Religion has FREE FOOD:

Free Food at the New Life Church

One of the local Elizabeth City churches gives out free dinners every night of the week. This is a fantastic community service, crucial for our impoverished small town. This isn’t just good works, it’s good business.

Of course, it was science that refined the agriculture, making it productive enough to feed our planet’s population explosion. It’s science that makes sure the food is safe to eat. It’s science that built the complex technological infrastructure to deliver the food hundreds of miles at incredibly low cost.

When I explained this to a religious member of the local community, she replied, “I am grateful for science, and I am grateful for god making science.”

Science needs to open a soup kitchen.

Alien… Weird… Foreign… Alterity… Strange… Xeno… Other.

Scientists and philosophers have had a field day with the issues raised by communicating with aliens. Consider the Problems of Interplanetary and Interstellar Trade. When we finally do meet the aliens, at least we can rest assured that they’ll speak geek.

Nothing compares to the otherness found in science fiction. Even when artists take existing structures found on Earth, and simply add another layer of complexity to them, the result is remarkable, as we can see in these two videos by 1stAveMachine, where insects and jungle plants are made alien by simply adding additional organs to them:

And another:

Wayne Barlowe creates some of the most alien creatures of all, and makes them all the more real with hard SF details. There is some concept art that was used in making the CGI speculative documentary Alien Planet, about robot probes visiting a distant planet called Darwin IV, where life is detected in the future. Barlowe also has several great books collecting aliens from SF literature, which could make for interesting coffee-table books.

I covered America’s sanctioned prejudice against non-believers awhile back, but noted that there were some notable improvements in tolerance toward people of no faith in more recent years.

Then Representative Monique M. Davis (D-Ill.) let loose a horrible attack on Rob Sherman, an atheist testifying against the state government’s plan to give $1 million to rebuild a Baptist church. Sherman was not allowed to respond to Davis’ deplorable, intolerance, where she raged he “had no right to be here” and that “It’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists.”

Listen as she flies completely off the handle at him:

She says she’s “trying to understand the philosophy.” What philosophy would that be? The philosophy of religious tolerance, even of non-religion? The separation of church and state, which allows people to live without religious tyranny, like being shouted down and forbidden from speaking in a public forum by a sick sick woman abusing her power?

This woman has turned her back on Thomas Paine, father of the American Revolution. John Locke, who inspired so many of the Founding Fathers. She is completely ignorant of the philosophies of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington. She is even ignorant of her own government:

no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
U.S Constitution (Article 6, Section 3)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
Article 11 of the U.S. Treaty of Tripoli

When Monique M. Davis fears the philosophy of atheism, she oppresses tolerance, free-thinking, inquiry, rationality, and egalitarianism. Monique M. Davis is incapable of upholding American principles and must resign.

Bees Forsake Their Own Reproduction for the Benefit of the Hive Photo by Todd Huffman

Humans are funny animals. We cooperate at a level of sophistication seen nowhere else on planet Earth. Teachers, food servicers, law enforcement, medical workers, farmers, entertainers, engineers, truck drivers, and a bazillion other specialized laborers make our survival in its present convenience possible. The majority of us would die in a few weeks without our worldwide social support network.

Homo Sapiens behave altruistically toward one another. Human altruism is so strong that it even goes beyond our own gene pool. We are so nurturing that we adopt and care for members of other species like cats, dogs, houseplants, ant farms, hamsters, snakes, lizards, and other pets. We undergo Herculean efforts to save beached, stranded, or wounded whales.

Homo Sapiens care a lot.

We aren’t alone in this regard. In nature, we see cooperation and self-sacrifice everywhere. Primates like Chimpanzees and Gorillas work in cooperative altruistic fashion, as do pack animals. My two pet cats will often spend quality time grooming one another’s fur on the couch, taking turns licking those hard to reach places like on top of the head and chin. Another cat was documented mothering orphaned skunks. It’s obviously natural for members of a species to care for one another, and sometimes even outside their species.

Drone bees work tirelessly to feed their hives, even though they have no hope of reproducing themselves. Their queen, however, shares their genes, and if she survives to reproduce, the drone’s genes will survive as well. Lacking higher brain functions, the altruistic behavior in bees must be instinctual, carried within their DNA. The success of bees is living proof of the success of altruistic genes.

British evolutionary biologist W.D. Hamilton figured out that when an animal’s genetic relatedness to another (r) multiplied by how much altruism would benefit the recipient’s survival chances (B) was greater than the personal cost to survival of the altruistic animal (C), then the genes for altruism would propagate. Expressed mathematically as rB>C, it is known as “Hamilton’s Rule,” and some consider it the E=mc² of biology.

Hamilton’s Rule

The science of Game Theory provides an example of altruism’s strength in numbers. In each round of a game called the “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” two players have the option to either act altruistically or betray the other player. If they cooperate, they both get three points. If they betray one another, they only get one point each. If one betrays and the other acts altruistically, the betrayer gets five points and the altruistic player gets zero.

Scientists have devised all sorts of strategies for winning this game, and those strategies put into algorithms and put into competition on computers. Of all the strategies put into this virtual world, the “Tit-for-Tat” (TFT) comes out on top. This strategy’s first action is altruistic and after that it simply does what the other player did on the previous round, rewarding altruism with altruism and betrayal with betrayal. When TFTs exist in the community, the other more altruistic strategies succeed with them, forming a cooperative community.

Between the success of TFT’s and mounting support for Hamilton’s Rule, we are finding that being good to one another not only makes moral sense, but logical and mathematical sense as well.

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Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 1976.

See also my previous post Nice Guys Finish First exploring the math behind the Prisoner’s Dilema in further detail.