Kicking the Gourd

the end of the gourd / best of 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:03:00 +0000

Check Out My New Blog

The End of the Gourd

In the past year this blog has shifted its scope and focus to different questions, a different aesthetic, different interests. In short, for several months it hasn't felt like the same blog it once was. Not that I've lost any interest in blogging, I haven't. I have a new blog that I've already started posting on which will continue many of the ideas from here. Nevertheless, this blog has a lot of material from several years of my college/grad school experience--including some ideas that I still find very interesting to mull. I am very happy for all that this blog has provided me and my readers. It's been a fun journey. Please consider subscribing to the RSS feed on my new blog! (link above)

I also am working on putting all my poetry and other creative work online--to be available sometime January 2010.

Best of the Gourd 2009

WTFs of the year:
+ DNA not the same in every cell!
+ Why did US Internet Service Providers tell the FCC that Americans don't want faster internet?! And why are we 19th in the world when it comes to internet speed?! (Current U.S. Speed: 9.6 mpbs Japan: 92.8 mpbs!)

Meaning of Life:
be like the squirrel girl
is civilization neverland?
the meaning of life
Next Step: read The Philosphical Baby

Ethics:
is human dignity really testosterone?
Next Step: Read more on Feminist Ethics

Economics:
9 things about free market economics that are hard to swallow
Next Step: Currently reading The Genius of the Beast

Meditation:
christian intention and buddhist consciousness
"Jesus sat down and ate with sinners, and every day when we pray we sit down with all the tax collectors of the mind, con artists and loan sharks all of them."

Atheism/Intelligent Design:
religion is not failed science
intelligent design as antiques roadshow

Best New Movies I Saw This Year:
The Hurt Locker

District 9
Where The Wild Things Are
(Avatar, I hope)

Best Books I Read This Year:
The Importance of Living by Yutang Lin

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Basho
King Lear by William Shakespeare

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Life in the Universe by Bennett, Shostak, Jakosky

Also, make sure to check out the Best of the Gourd 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005!

welcome to the world

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:31:00 +0000

+ China's State Engineers are upgrading Manhattan's subway ventilation. !?!

+ Montreal biker gangs fire bomb cafes.

+ New graphic novel Luna Park looks gorgeous.

+ 1.5 Billion people still live without electricity.

+ Obama's final war council.

+ "Anyone who is only Japanese or American, only Oriental or Occidental, is but half human. The other half that beats with the pulse of all humanity has yet to be awakened." - Huston Smith

more future stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:49:00 +0000

"If you’re under age 30, it is likely that you will be able to live as long as you want. That is, barring accidents and wars, you have centuries of healthy life ahead of you."

The future is all about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) jobs. So, where does that leave me?

The return of the grassland seas! Please, please!

Cool site: Information is Beautiful

Not sure what I think about this guy.

Intel: Chips in brains will control computers by 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:06:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:42:00 +0000

Part 2 and 3 of NOVA's "Becoming Human" are online... mind-blowing stuff!

the meaning of life

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:50:00 +0000

Staring into the wide sky at any time of day, investigating the unique and regular shape of a tree, observing your breath after a hard run, sunlight through a window or leaves, flames licking upward in the dark, starfields and moon watching, the eyes of babies, animals especially mammals, the crawling of bugs, colonnades of trees, cottonwood seeds falling down in the heat, moving or still water, fossil beds on a grassy plain, endless wind, the meditation of a walk, good digestion, a clean house, the ending of a clear day, fireflies in a field of green soybeans, warm tea, watching your own hand writing effortlessly, slow reading, big-hearted laughter, a loving silence, true forgiveness, recognitions (catharsis): seeing yourself in someone else, an unexpected visit from a friend, home when you thought you were lost, things stuffed in old boxes, looking into mirrors, when you begin to see your parents in yourself, when you realized you've learned something, a song you haven't heard in a long time, hearing your name

Moving physically through the world, using one's senses (sense of depth, sense of motion,...), caring for young, learning and imitating, eating and defecating, exploring one's memory, making connections, staring at bright objects. Happiness is doing what you were made to do. There isn't anything else. Happiness is the meaning of life because happiness is life being life. Living is the meaning of life.

panda watch

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:30:00 +0000

From the Daily Beast:

"From global warming to currency levels to human rights, the days when the U.S. could make demands of Beijing are over—we can bargain all we want, but at the end of the day, we know and they know that they are our bank...

"Precisely because Americans haven’t been paying much attention to China, they haven’t fully acknowledged the shift in the balance of power between Washington and Beijing. The more the Obama administration calls attention to that shift, the more abuse it is likely to take.

"As a government, the Obama administration seems ready for a relationship of equals with China. But as a people, Americans have barely begun to come to terms with what that means."

Space and China News

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:08:00 +0000

+ "A Wet Moon Is Hot Again" NASA Watch reports a rumor that NASA could have a lander on the moon in 1,000 days, start to finish. Also, the stakes are raised for the Google Lunar X Prize.

+ The Planetary Society's LightSail tests receive some attention. Of all the speculative technologies for space travel, solar sails are by far the most beautiful idea. And if we develop the right nanotechnology, they might be incredibly cheap. Zipping around within our solar system would be effortless.

+ Vatican debates the possibility of alien life - Nice to see the Church trying to be ahead of the curve on scientific discovery.

China:

+ Obama's books are big sellers in China.

+ China continues to strengthen ties with Africa and Latin America.

+ Clinton: The Rise of China Is Inevitable

+ What do people in China believe? In a polarized world of religious conflict, China holds an interesting position--officially atheist, historically pluralistic. Only a third of Chinese consider themselves 'religious.' It's striking really.

childhood's ends: civilization is neverland?

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:29:00 +0000

There appears to be a relationship between being domesticated and being juvenile. The most obvious example are dogs. Adult dogs are actually wolf cubs. Over time their development has been stunted and they maintain all the physical and psychological features of young wolves. If you are always protected by humans and never live in the wild, you never have to grow up. And over time those physiological processes that make you a grown up fall by the genetic wayside. In fact, many scientists argue that humans are stunted primates. We have domesticated ourselves.

It may seem strange to think that we are juvenile forms of other primates and yet we are smarter than them, but there's likely a connection between the two. As mentioned in the documentary posted below, one of the distinguishing characteristics between humans and other primates is that our children stay children for a long time. Even today, you aren't expected to be a 'full adult' until you are 18! Physiologically you aren't an adult until your early teens. That's incredibly long for any species. It is theorized that this long childhood is what allowed for the development of culture, learning, and the neocortex (abstract throught). When you are safely protected by your parents you have lots of time to play around, daydream, try new things.

In short, civilization is leisure. And leisure begins with a long childhood. And one might also argue that the height of civilization is the return to this leisure time. Galileo gets to build his telescope because he's got the time to do it. Bach gets to compose because he's got a patron, a 'father figure.' Even the development of medical technologies come from excess resources (money = stored time). If I have money, I have free time.

In every generation there are critics who bemoan the loss of knowledge. Our children know less, work less, think less, than we did. Technology seems to take away our independence. Even within society I have people who make food for me, machines that wash my clothes for me. I become less responsible every day. We children are growing up slowly, maybe never. And yet this is what our parents hoped for: that their kids won't have to work as much or as hard as they did. If enough generations are successful at this goal, the great-great-great grandchildren will spend very little time working.

It's strange to think about: the more 'advanced' our civilization becomes, the more childlike we will become. I do not see a good reason why we won't increasingly make technology/computers into our patrons and matrons. Let them do the bills, the work, the food, the cleaning. It all means more time for me to explore, have fun, puzzle over difficult ideas, hang out with friends. Especially if people begin to live to a healthy 100--why not wait until you're 30 to choose a career? ...And what might humans be like 500 years from now? Would we find them a little too soft, too innocent, too wide-eyed?

excellent pbs series on human evolution

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:56:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:47:00 +0000

+ Wu Ming - Italian Novelist Collective... I had not heard about this group. Crazy.

+ There is one major barrier to space colonization: escape velocity. Any current rocket must carry all its own fuel *and* bring everything it needs. You can't 'live off the land' in zero-g or off any planet (yet). But there are sweet technologies under development that could change everything... such as, power beaming - We can beam energy to objects, which means that those objects don't need to carry the weight of their own fuel. This could be used to aid rockets or create a space elevator. (It also could be used to push solar sails at low cost around our system or to other systems.)

+ If we don't get serious about space, China will. So far there has been a ban on militarizing space dating back to the Cold War. But now that China, India, Japan, Russia and the EU are busy in space, who knows?

the paradox of hedonism - dang it

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:23:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:40:00 +0000

+ Antioxidants may help with the flu... yum, green tea!

+ What's up in the solar system in November.

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:53:00 +0000

+ The rise of Islamic creationism. This is a fascinating piece of the rise of the evolution vs. creationism debate in Islamic countries. How does Christian creationism affect Islamic creationists? Will this affect the place of Islamic science education internationally? It's going to be very interesting to see what happens... what happens when you have two theories for creation. How would you decide between the two on scientific grounds? And then there is the relationship of Evolution to the West.

+ China's Ivy League

+ Sita Sings The Blues - saw this movie in Chicago, it was a lot of fun! The full movie is online free.

+ I really want to read this book.

brilliant comics site

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:19:00 +0000

be like the squirrel, girl

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:13:00 +0000

I've recently read a few science articles that mention how miserable the life of our early ancestors were: short, brutal and full of fear. However, if I've read Stumbling on Happiness correctly, we really have no idea what would make us happy as them--perhaps if we had their lives we would be equally happy or even more, even if that life was shorter, more violent and (seemingly) more uncontrollable. Perhaps all those things we avoid today would be very things that our ancestors would say made life thrilling, exciting, wondrous and worthwhile.

Furthermore, most animals today (unless they are domesticated) live, well, like animals. Perhaps the deer has to run from the mountain lion every day of its short life, but it's also developed physically all the muscles and skeleton to do this so well. When humans talk about happiness they often provide this sage advice: Do what you do best. Do what you were meant to do. Find out what you are great at, what makes you happy, and keep doing that to your potential for the rest of your life. If that is true happiness, then almost all animals must be filled with happiness almost all of the time.

In fact, as in the case of the predator and prey, life is game in which the teams are nearly perfectly matched--it's like playing in the ultimate super bowl match every day of your life. And how could that not be fun?

moderates rock

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:10:00 +0000

Law of Politics: The more politics polarizes the more powerful moderates become. (See 538 article on Lieberman) Being a moderate is a gamble--you may not get the full base support (money) but if you can survive you get invited to the White House and your face on every news website, instant fame... like Sen. Olympia Snowe. Those who play nice with the party can only dream to have such attention.

Perhaps this works like a natural check-and-balance in the political world. The more extreme the divide, the more powerful the moderates, which neutralizes the extremes. However, there might be curious correlative law: Without partisans compromisers would never get anything done!

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:52:00 +0000

Jazz in Japan ~ The China-Brazil Connection

The research found a dramatic improvement in ethical behavior with just a few spritzes of citrus-scented Windex. "Basically, our study shows that morality and cleanliness can go hand-in-hand." ...but it's not clear from the study... does Windex make you better or citrus?

Mouse Playing A Video Game - Story Here

confusing chart on NASA site

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:06:00 +0000

I just ran across this chart on the NASA web site. First, you might notice, there are a lot of extra-solar planets discovered. You might also notice that the majority of the planets are Jupiter-size or larger. That's mostly because the technology we have is not fine enough to find many earth-sized planets yet. The crazy thing, though, is that most of these Jupiter planets are about as close to their stars as the Earth. That's odd, but perhaps not surprising that we found them first since they go around their stars fast (thus we see their orbital effects more quickly).

All that said, this chart puts habitable planets / the habitable zone at 1.0 AU, about where the earth is in our system. But certainly all those stars are not around stars exactly like ours, of the same size and age. If the size of their sun is much brighter than ours than the habitable zone is way farther away. If their sun is dimmer than it is closer. Furthermore, as stars grow older they grow brighter and therefore the habitable zone shifts outward. (Billions of years in the future Earth will no longer be in the habitable zone and will turn into a hellish Venus, while Mars will enter the habitable zone more comfortably.) And we haven't even mentioned if they are in binary system which would also shift the zone.

Of course, I suppose this chart would make sense if they have only been searching for planets among stars that are the same size, age and type as ours--which might be true. I think that's unlikely, though, given that only 7% of stars in the universe are Type G stars like ours. Every star has a different habitable zone and that zone shifts during the lifetime of the star--so I think is chart is worthless, NASA!

more cool space stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:55:00 +0000

+ Would you go to Mars if you knew you wouldn't be coming back?

+ The future of human spaceflight will be decided (in part) on my birthday.

+ 75 new planets discovered with many, many more on the way.

+ Sadly difficult to find, but lots of great SETI lectures are available.

You know how some computers have an option to move your computer 'back in time' in order to undo catastrophic changes to your hard drive? Do you think in the future we will be able to do that with our brains? What would life be like with an 'undo' option--at least for memories? Is experience always good or would you get rid of certain memories in order to improve your life?

two crazy things: collider and chembot

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:43:00 +0000

Is the universe attempting to stop the Collider?

“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.”

And then there's this crazy Chembot:

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:50:00 +0000

Turkey and Armenia sign a pact!

"Google organized our memory. Real-time search organizes our consciousness."

The other history: Women astronauts of the 1950s. "Women are lighter than men, requiring less fuel to transport them into space. They’re also less prone to heart attacks, and Lovelace considered them better-suited for the claustrophobic isolation of space."

I would change your password if it's 123456

Plasma rockets are currently being tested--this could be a whole new age in space.

India recently found water on the moon--but did you know an astronomer also found water with organic compounds on an asteroid as well? So we have water on the moon, water on asteroids, water on one of Jupiter's moons, water on Mars. Water seems to be pretty plentiful in the universe.

is human dignity really testosterone?

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:59:00 +0000

In many ethical arguments people will appeal to human dignity. In debates about abortion people claim the dignity of every human life and argue that this is both inalienable and also might lead to erosion of human dignity. In debates about animal rights some worry that to give animals too many rights would lower/damage or be an affront to human dignity. Humans have a dignity that animals do not and to do x for animals would be to either threaten or otherwise defame humans.

First of all, the worry is unclear and undefined. Will a society that lowers the dignity of human life turn into a cannibal society? Will a society that lowers the dignity of human life turn you into hamburger meat? Perhaps we use this term dignity interchangably with value. A person's value is their dignity.

Nevertheless, to do something against someone's dignity is something different than doing something against someone's value. There may be many things that I value--value very much--but to offend someone's dignity is to cause them shame, embarassment, public humilitation.

For most of human history it was a given that it was really men who had to worry about their dignity. A man has honor, perhaps by simply being born a man, and he has to keep that honor and protect it, act according to it, and if it is threatened he must defend it. It is something everyone has but it can also be damaged, harmed, lost. And a man without his dignity is no man at all.

So I suggest here that 'human dignity' is really a masculine ideal blown up to cover humankind. The feminine counterpart to human dignity in ethical debates is human compassion. Human compassion is the motherly compassion--the feeling we get when anything small and fuzzy cries out for help, the immediate reaction to protect and defend the weak and innocent against harm. This feeling is neglected in most philosophical thought experiments, which usually begin with 'someone's got to die, who's it going to be?'

The masculine response to compassion is to explain that we need to make sure it doesn't get out of hand. Compassion is okay but it's mostly irrational. It's spontaneous, without thought, and driven to excess. It leads you to attach yourself to animals and minorities and the disabled much too quickly. The great threat is that you might love something more than it is capable of understanding. You might treat your dog like it's a human--which is highly irrational and very undignified. Human compassion always means lowering yourself, often physically--to the level of a dog or a child, to babble like a baby. Very undignified and not properly hu-man.

Compassion is always the hardest case to make in society because it is so openly criticized for being too soft, too kind, too idealistic, too emotional. It is beneath us to stoop so low. Even many religious people who are very compassionate, very generous will argue that humans have dignity that draws a line between our species and all others. To cross that line would be to become defiled, undignified--it's offensive to think of our lives with animals, as we if were somehow equals.

Like the dignity of man, this idea of human dignity is not something that humans actually have by nature. It must be reinforced by society. To lose one's dignity is to lose one's honor, which is something that happens socially, among others. It is to lose one's face among one's peers. Dignity is, historically, the very force that keeps people from having compassion for others. It is our appeal to dignity that stifles compassion as too beneath us. The threat is that we will become unclean or else seen by others as not 'man enough.'

The reason why we keep human dignity (human rights) is that we feel it protects, or at least identifies, the lines that people should not cross. The strangely troubling thing about human compassion is that it is flighty--it's here in a moment and then gone. We cannot appeal to it in every human being. Human dignity, if agreed upon as a community, can enforce shame (sanctions). Sanctions mean, 'you should be ashamed before your community.'

Humans have rights, our most powerful leverage in society. And the mainstream animal welfare movement is for 'animal rights.' Of course, animals do not have obvious rights and therefore not natural ones. Humans will never give animals rights because animals aren't men. As long as we attempt to give animals dignity we will get nowhere because the idea of dignity is by its nature a conservative, protective move. Compassion, on the other hand, is expansive--it grows. It grows from adult to child, white to black, human to animal.

Why does human dignity need to be defended? Why cannot it be simply assumed? Why are we afraid going 'too low,' of showing too much compassion? Who are we offending, who are we ashamed before but ourselves?

[And for those who are Christians, who believe that one day you will stand before God and give an account for your actions, what do you think Jesus will say? "You spent way too much time taking care of those sparrows. God doesn't care if sparrows go extinct, or about protecting those lillies in the wetlands (I mean, they are only more beautiful than all of Solomon's splendor.) What a total waste of your time." Do you think Jesus would be offended that you stooped so low as to care for the least of the least of these? Is Christianity about expanding human compassion or protecting human dignity?]

happiness, space, china, ramadan

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:20:00 +0000

WARNING: Happiness is highly contagious... as is obesity and quitting smoking. Quote:
Well-connected nodes in the graph (i.e., people with more friends) are more likely to be happier than less-connected nodes, even when the edges represent more distant friendships. Individuals quitting smoking, or becoming obese, influence not only their immediately connected friends but also friends of friends, with the effect sometimes skipping the intermediary node. The contagion effect is most noticeable when a tendency is passed from one person to another of the same sex — friends of the opposite sex, including spouses, are not as influential.
Looking for life in all the right places: First earth-like exoplanet found (and it's very close to us!) "The environment on COROT-7b is probably too extreme to support life. But it’s helping to tell us that these things must be pretty common."

Salvation is from the Jews... as are the Wild Things.

China breaks ground on its fourth space center.

Ramadan is wrapping up for Muslims.

The Framers were Gamers... the U.S. Constitution as game design. (What successful game doesn't have finely tuned checks & balances?)

omodaka

noreply@blogger.com (Ryan) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:12:00 +0000

Created with a Game Boy! ...The song fits Japanese language much better!