Koyaanisqatsi

The newest Ring cycle, by the New York Metropolitan Opera, is -- something else. Something exquisite, but also in a way opera rarely is: something that speaks not only to the opera lover but also to those who yearn for experiences with some depth to them.

I did not see it in person. I can see where that experience would be very different. Parts of what I saw may definitely have been improved by the high-definition feed: and I must wonder if future productions will always be designed with an eye to the filming and the feed. One thing the sound balance was not able to filtre out entirely was the sound of a 25-ton set re-adjusting: and that too would have been more noticeable in future.

I cannot speak of the voice quality of this singer or that. I do not have that kind of expertise. I know only that in what I heard, I have no complaints: but I also recognise that this too may be a function of sound balancing. Other reviews have different opinions.

At times, reading those other opinions felt like a war of the traditionalists vs. the innovators: except that each seems to want nothing less than a completely traditional performance or a complete innovation with no traditional elements whatsoever. Some liked the innovative set, others hated it: but each wanted more of the same direction in the entire production. (All wished the set could be made more soundless.) For the traditionalists, the old static sets should have been brought back in their entirety. For the innovators, costuming that created the illusion of ancient epic was too traditional. Ironically, many of those who complained that the set did not show enough (eg. Valhalla, suggested rather than shown by the rainbow bridge) also complained in different places that the set showed too much. If the ransom hides Freya from the giants' perspective, must it hide Freya from the audience as well?

Especially, the reviewers this time seemed caught with their backs against the wall in an end-stage holding action against the epic. Many noted that this production would appeal to those who enjoy epic films: as though that were a mark against it.

Oddest to me was the assumption that the production ought to "say" something. It has been the fashion for many years now for theatre circles to re-interpret productions through costuming, setting, even selected editing to give this message and reject that message. Some pieces lend themselves to such ambiguity. One of the beautiful open questions of Evita is whether Juan Perón truly loves his mistress or simply uses her.

Yet Wagner's Ring cycle can stand quite firmly on its own themes, without any need to drag in outside metaphors. Wagner's Ring grants power at a cost. This is something which simply is. To forge the gold into the Ring, Alberich must give up love. For those who would wish to possess the Ring after it was taken from Alberich, they must accept his curse along with the power. There is no inherent imperative or morality within that basic truth, unless we wish to create one.

When left to its own devices: what we see in a Ring which tries to stay clear of such imperative or morality is what we bring to it. Should we then complain that the production does not show what we think it should show?

The one thing that has always stood out to me when I listen to the Ring cycle -- the one thing that no one else ever seems to mention -- is its striking similarity to the plotline and themes of The Lord of the Rings.

This Ring will be the first to have been produced in its entirety since Peter Jackson completed his film version of LotR, and the set and light work and even the costumes definitely evoked some of LotR's camera work and costuming. When Wotan and Loge descend into Niflheim: that dizzying "vertical" illusion stands up astoundingly well against the LotR camera swoop from Gandalf's lofty prison down to the mining depths. If the similarity is deliberate: perhaps this Ring says much more than we think it does.

For myself: I can say only that the New York Metropolitan's production of Die Rheingold held me spellbound from beginning to end and for many hours after, when my thoughts drifted back to what I had just experienced. Avatar cannot hold a candle to that.

Another month, another document dump by Wikileaks. At this point, the United States law enforcement agencies might be best served to start thinking of these releases as test cases, not even so much to try to find the sources and plug them as to determine whether a non-egotistical, non-boasting internal source is still findable within the growing intelligence bloat. How much longer can the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (now part of Homeland Security), and dozens of other alphabet soup agencies imperfectly under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence -- not to mention all the private contractors doubling and quadrupling the cost of trying to keep track of things, adding to the nation's GDP without actually improving anything of substance -- continue along these skew lines before even inept bombing plots such as Friday's attempt by Mohamed Osman Mohamud fall between the cracks?

Of course, these massive releases hurt Wikileaks publicity not at all. It remains an open question to what extent future releases will be driven by the public interest v. Wikileaks' own rising profile. It becomes difficult to tell the difference.

Many, including the White House, have accused Wikileaks of "reckless and dangerous" behaviour. Ttwo days before the release, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange explicitly invited the United States Department of State to review the material and identify any information that would "put individual persons at significant risk of harm that has not already been addressed". Surely by now, there could no doubt that Wikileaks was not bluffing either about having the information or being willing to release it. Recognising the potential danger to individual people, Assange extended an offer of compromise in the interest of protecting individual people: yet the Department of State legal department refused.

The statement to Assange would seem to indicate that the United States government does not negotiate, some would say "with terrorists": yet the diplomatic cables show some interesting negotiations indeed. Perhaps it might be more accurate to say that, in the true spirit of realpolitik, the United States government prefers not to negotiate except from a position of power.

Some journalists have criticised Wikileaks as not acting in the public interest precisely because these releases are unedited, uninterpreted, nothing other than a mass of documents. Wikileaks has made no specific thesis statement of corruption nor of anything else: nor does the document leak purport to support this or that allegation. It simply is. Yet without a specific suspicion and a focused reason, there are those who believe that the Wikileaks release does not serve the public interest because it does not have an explicit purpose beyond the release itself. By this line of argument, documents such as these should be released only where they provide supporting evidence for a specific allegation.

Myself, I find the lack of an explicit thesis statement refreshing. Stating and then having to support a specific argument limits the ability to see solely to what can be used to defend or undermine a particular argument. Anything that does neither can be readily ignored as easily as an e-mail that need no longer be considered because it does not deal with an immediate problem or demand. The very process of defending makes it impossible to adjust to new evidence except from the perspective of support or opposition. Pretty or ugly though a particular story may be, it gets us no closer to the sense of a broader picture.

Instead, Wikileaks mostly leaves us to read for ourselves and even to make up our own minds about what we see. This might seem to suggest a basic faith in our ability to do just that. (I say "mostly" because the "-gate" suffix has carried its own set of connotations for several decades now.)

The current document release differs from previous releases by targeting diplomatic cables rather than the previous military-oriented releases. Several United States departments have been doing damage control ever since word of the impending leak hit the fan.

Yet surely any nation which believes in democracy, transparency, the (educated) will of the people, and a basic mutual respect for the free will of others -- and which acts at every level on those principles -- should have nothing to fear from any diplomatic leak?

I write nothing of the content of that release here. Why should I immediately limit perception by inserting my own pigeonholes? I will say only that there should have been no surprises. If you did not expect what you read, it was not because it was not there to be seen before.

... Which, in itself, could prove a useful mirror in which to see the truth of oneself, and perhaps also to see clearly for the first time the lenses through which one chooses to see the world.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, without Joss Whedon?

No doubt the major plot elements will be preserved ... which may be an interesting way to discover just how much more Whedon brought to the series than a simple chronological series of events, a clever turn of phrase, and a bit of comedy.

"No evidence exists" is not the same as "negative evidence exists."

Governments and pundits have long based their policies on the absence of any concrete scientific evidence which would oppose a desired policy direction. Yet both government and private research funding is based almost entirely upon pre-existing solid precedent: with private enterprise funding additionally looking for good investment returns on new innovations and reasons not to discontinue existing profitable production.

Where there is no desire to find negative evidence, all the pieces are in place never to find any.

Among many other similar issues, I am open to independently corroborated evidence that low-frequency sonics such as those produced by wind turbines can harm a person's health. Frankly, any such findings would not surprise me.

Yet if the same people doing the complaining have no problems running a subwoofer as part of their home theatre system, I would suggest that there may be other factors involved in the complaints: and not all of those factors may have independent objective existence.

(For my part, I have never been able to run a subwoofer. The first time I used one I ended up with a horrible headache, but I could not identify the cause. The second time, the timing suggested the sound system. A third test involving a different friend's sound system -- and the sudden complete difference when the subwoofer was disconnected -- confirmed the source.)

Anecdotal evidence may point to a future line of research, may even be an early warning system for factors we should be examining more closely for our own sakes: but it should never substitute for independent, objective research.

I would go so far as to say that National Opt-Out Day was a big bust.
- Genevieve Shaw Brown, spokesperson for Travelocity

By now it is a very rare person in the continental United States who has not yet heard of the airport security pat-down furour. They may not know John Tyner's name, they may not all have seen the recording; but most people are certain he missed his flight as a consequence of an overly-intrusive search -- and everyone knows the four key words which sparked a nationwide protest against overly intrusive security measures which secure nothing at all. In the name of sanity, they were prepared one and all to make a statement by making life as difficult for the Transportation Security Administration screening personnel as possible, whatever the personal cost.

Or not.

Only actions can speak for themselves. Actions have weight, which is made stronger by immediacy. Belated action could also be taken at the ballot box: but realism and long experience hints darkly in the background that whatever might be said during election campaigns, for a representative to vote to reduce security measures at this time will be death in the following election.

Words without acts are meaningless. No matter how many people wear a popular protest t-shirt, it means nothing but a popular fashion statement, to be lost at the back of the closet after the issue has lost its immediacy and eventually turned into rags or donated to charity. The power and threat of free speech is that the words are supposed to be able to seed the kinds of actions which make a difference. If the words turn out repeatedly to be just a lot of hot air, free speech is meaningless.

Actions which involve true difficulty or risk have a different weight than actions which are incidental, inertial, and which carry no consequence. On Travel Wednesday, flights to bring family together are not incidental, not a casual get-together for which alternatives can be found. Miss the flight, and you have missed Thanksgiving.

It seems very few people were prepared to risk that. Of the few visible protestors, most were not even planning to fly that day.

The TSA screeners themselves are not particularly happy about the current state of security screening. While these kinds of pat-downs are virtually the only reliable method of getting around the many ways in which there are to conceal a weapon, all of which are helpfully described or even modelled in gun and weapon magazines: the screeners and the travelling public alike have a nagging suspicion that there must be another way.

There is: but would you truly want it?

An individual human being is a wondrous thing, capable of so, so very much.

We are the wave-makers, not the wave-tossed things. All things created and caused by people, no matter how great or small, are sourced in individual human beings. Our own personal ripples may seem small at first, may even sometimes seem to have vanished altogether, but they can end up paying great dividends: to ourselves, to others, to the world. We are not lost in the ocean unless we wish to be.

A single human being is no less important than the choices which impact upon millions. At their core, they are no different. No matter if the matter touches millions or a single human heart, the same human principles are always involved.

Have faith in yourself.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has just broken the story that, based on the evidence collected by the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission and an independent police investigator, Hezbollah was behind the 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri. Neil Macdonald, the investigative reporter who put together this report, also has a few choice things to say about the competence and diligence of the UN commission in question.

As so often in Lebanon, the truth may not be nearly so simple.

Since long before French colonial times, Lebanon has been more sectarian than united. Which country is not? but unlike most western countries, Lebanon stands between several of the world's powers: and its sectarian divisions reflect that reality. Lebanese government is not only a religious compromise between Shi'ite, Sunni, and Maronite but also a delicate balancing act between Syria, Iran, Israel, France, Saudi Arabia, and the United States: all of which countries have an interest in ensuring that the others do not gain too much of a power base in Lebanon.

Some Lebanese side with one or another of these countries as the path to Lebanon's future unity and (ironically) ultimate freedom from sectarianism. Some hate all of them equally. Most Lebanese wish all the occupiers and foreign interests would just go quietly away: but however hopeful, most Lebanese are also realists. Years of invasions and civil war will do that to you.

Three key pieces of evidence stand out in the CBC investigative report.

The first is the inexplicable absence of Colonel Wissam al Hassan from the motorcade at the time of the explosion. At that time, Hassan was Lebanon's chief of protocol, in charge of Harari's security and required by his job to be at Hariri's side at all public functions. A year and a half after the assassination, Hassan became the head of Lebanese intelligence.

The second is the intricate networks of cellphones shadowing Hariri in the days before he died. These networks were carefully isolated from each other, but cellphones in proximity to each other use the same cell towers. Through painstaking correlation, Captain Wissam Eid traced each network to the next, until he ended up at four cellphones which had been issued by the Lebanese government. There the trail went blank but for one oddity. On the long list of telephone numbers on the goverment record provided to the commission, four entries are highlighted, with the word "Hezbollah" written beside them in Arabic.

The investigative report makes no mention of who made these notations, or why. At the time of the assassination, Hezbollah was one of several political parties and a part of the governing coalition. Macdonald does mention that shortly after getting to this point in the networks, Eid was contacted by Hezbollah and

told that some of the phones he was chasing were being used by Hezbollah agents conducting a counter-espionage operation against Israel's Mossad spy agency and that he needed to back off.

Macdonald adds:

The warning could not have been more clear.

Yet there are two ways to take what had been said. Macdonald chooses to assume that what was said is a lie. Since we hear Eid only through Macdonald's parsing, we cannot say what Eid thought at the time.

Elsewhere in the report, Macdonald also notes that in September 2006, Samir Shehade, who was Eid's superior, was nearly killed in a bomb blast. He was replaced by Hassan. What Macdonald fails to mention is that Shehade was not the only anti-Syrian official, politician, and other public figure killed or nearly killed during the months following Harari's assassination by far: even though the Syrian army had already left Lebanon in April. Although it seems clear that Hezbollah certainly knew of Eid's investigation by the time he reached the government telephones, nothing happened to Eid at this time, even though he was still taking a predictable route to his workplace. The attack on Shehade is thus unlikely to be connected directly with Eid's investigation.

The third key piece of evidence does not appear in the CBC report. Between November 2008 and June 2010, several Israeli spies have been arrested in Lebanon. Some reports mention dozens of spies, even as many as a hundred. Accounts vary. What all the accounts agree on, however, is that many of the Israeli spies had been in place for fifteen or more years, and many of them had been employed with mobile telephone companies. Israel has thus far remained silent on the issue.

This final piece of evidence would suggest that, at the very least, Israel would certainly have known about the plot to assassinate Hariri. Israel's computers are just as capable of crunching numbers and making correlations as Eid's were: with presumably more manpower behind them.

The days immediately after Hariri's assassination were a public relations mess. Most Lebanese immediately blamed Syria: which led to large, country-wide demonstrations that became known as the Cedar Revolution. Syria ended up withdrawing all its 14,000 soldiers and intelligence agents from Lebanon on April 27, 2005. Observers one and all sounded stunned at how quickly the movement had swelled and how determined the demonstrators were; but I cannot think that anyone familiar with Lebanon could have been surprised by the Lebanese public's reaction to Hariri's assassination. It was a thing waiting to happen. It needed only the proper spark.

Most western media also assumed that Syria was behind the assassination, although opinion was split on whether Hezbollah had been involved as well. Many people who had known Hariri suddenly remembered things that had been said; and many of those who suddenly remembered were also known in Lebanese circles to change sides from time to time: at least one of them the British Broadcasting Corporation has called "the country's political weathervane". The western media also gave a brief mention to Hezbollah's claim that Israel was behind it: although not nearly as well reported in western newspapers was that Hezbollah had presented evidence against Israel.

Some of Hezbollah's evidence consisted of intercepted spy-drone video footage. Curiously, Hezbollah also showed evidence that the Lebanese telephone network had been sabotaged and otherwise compromised by Israeli spies.

So, we now have two sets of stories, neither of which can be discredited on the basis of available evidence. The truth hangs upon a series of telephone calls. (Unless of course one assumes, sight unseen, that one side is truthful and the other is not.)

Ask, then, what possible other action could have so united a divided nation as to force out an occupying army. Ask who stands most to benefit by Syria's departure, and who gains not at all.

Syria's presence has never been altogether welcome to many in Lebanon: but it did stabilise the nation. Syria's withdrawal left a power vacuum, a Lebanon once again divided within itself.

Ask again: who had most to gain?

In the end, Eid did not survive his investigation. One day after his second meeting with the United Nations team, Eid was killed in a car bombing. Before he met with the UN team, Eid had been working on his investigation for two years. Clearly the UN team had a leak: quite possibly Hassan. Just as clearly, Eid's investigation was not seen as a threat, even though it was known previously to Hezbollah.

But who is Hassan working for?

As a road to peace, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is worse than useless. It was broken even at the very moment it came into existence.

The (1970) NPT is based on three pillars: non-proliferation, disarmament, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Since it came into existence, the number of nuclear states has doubled (not even counting the breakup of the Soviet Union), we probably already have the first case of a non-state power owning nuclear weapons, and the net destructiveness of all existing nuclear weapons has increased. Secret and semi-secret weapons-sharing agreements have been dodging and outright violating the spirit of the NPT even as it was being negotiated.

Nor have the nuclear nations showed any real interest in complete disarmament: which in turn is seen by non-nuclear states as acting in poor faith. Only one nation, Canada, has ever had nuclear capacity without developing nuclear weapons: although for military purposes, Canada could well be seen as a satellite of the United States.

If anything, research into actual practical use of nuclear weapons in tactical warfare has skyrocketed. Back in 2003, I gave it a 50:50 chance that someone would set off another nuclear weapon in war (or terror, if you prefer) within the next decade. Nothing I see today gives me any reason to change those odds.

The only thing the NPT has ever done successfully is to define the basis upon which future military power is to be measured, and to draw an arbitrary line in the sand to permanently separate nations which have such power from the nations which do not. It should come as no surprise that the permanent, veto members of the Security Council are all nations which possessed nuclear power prior to 1970. Consequently, an outsider nation which finds itself in sudden need of negotiating power beyond what a conventional land/sea/air military can provide -- as was the case when North Korea unexpectedly found itself lumped in with the "Axis of Evil" in 2001 -- has every incentive to ignore the NPT or withdraw from it completely.

Despite the best intentions of the NPT, there will be no putting this genie back into the bottle. If non-proliferation and reductions are truly desired -- something of which I am not altogether certain -- a different approach is needed.

May I suggest simple economics? To divert resources to nuclear weapons research is not cheap. If more countries are competing for the same limited resources, be they raw materials, technical equipment, or the human minds to develop nuclear weapons technology: the price for each will rise accordingly.

Perhaps most importantly, an economic approach would allow each nation to decide its priorities for itself. Given all the other priorities of a typical country, many, perhaps most, nations simply won't find it cost-effective to pursue this line of research -- but they will have chosen this path for themselves, not had it forced upon them. That could make all the difference.

Replacing the NPT with an economic route would open the door to some interesting power shifts -- which really have already been there for quite some time, economically: but which were "invisible" solely because they do not catch at public perception the way a nuclear weapon does. Maybe these power shifts bother me less than most because I have never pretended that one nation is inherently more ethical than another.

(It would be interesting to see to what extent Israel would be able to maintain its own current level of nuclear weaponry without the heavy economic aid it receives from the United States. Israel has proven in multiple wars that it does not need nuclear weaponry to maintain military superiority in the region.)

South Africa developed nuclear weapons after the NPT came into effect, but chose to dismantle them in 1991. Officially, the reason was international pressure, combined with a change in government which would lead to the final eradication of apartheid. Yet South Africa's military strategic position has not significantly changed. At the same time, any internal uprising still cannot be quelled effectively with nuclear weapons. Whatever might be said in public: for South Africa, getting rid of nuclear weapons was simply cost effective.

I don't say this often, but a fully free market system might be at least as effective in controlling or even reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons as the NPT. It could do no worse!

MirrorBallQuest.org?

Reality television which allows viewer voting has always been a cross-sectional microcosm of its country's psyche. Most notice only that on-line and telephone voting rules are so loose as to seem meaningless. For determining a winner on a merit basis, they are.

Yet from my perspective, this type of voting reveals trends and pattens in a way that direct question polls cannot. It even automatically pre-selects for those who feel passionate enough about a person to make the effort to vote for them: possibly the single most important variable in any political race. It does not even matter whether rules technicalities are exploited to achieve a result. Unless a celebrity fan group happens to be particularly tech-savvy (remember Steve Wozniak?), exploitation of loopholes cannot devalue any such patterns: since any such exploitation is likely to happen in proportion to the number of fans voting and the importance of the vote to them. (Vote early! Vote often!) Where the voting appears to skew against technical merit, it becomes that much more fascinating.

(My perspective may be different than most. I don't watch the show because of who is on it. Most of the time, I have never before heard of the people on it. The joy of the show, for me, is only that people stretch their boundaries by attempting skills they had never before tried to such a demanding level. No matter the individual reason for participating: almost every one of the contestants will have come away from that show having chosen to step outside their zone of security and learn something new. In such small steps is hope built.)

Nearly every contestant on this season's Dancing With The Stars who has received the lowest score was also eliminated within the next two weeks of having earned that score. David Hasselhoff tied for low score in the first week, and was immediately eliminated. Michael Bolton, Margaret Cho, and Mike Sorrentino were all eliminated the same week they received their first non-tied lowest score from the judges. In week 6, Kurt Warner came in lowest on the judges' leaderboard: he was eliminated in week 8.

Only Bristol Palin has managed to buck the trend: by earning the low score on five separate weeks without being eliminated. In two of those dances, she was alone in having the lowest individual score. Starting in week 4, there were only two weeks where Palin has not been at the very bottom of the judges' scoring. In both cases where she was not, there was only one person below her: and both of those contestants were eliminated well before the finals.

A different, parallel trend started in week 5. From that week forward: the lowest scoring couple of that week was no longer the one eliminated.

The pattern stood out most sharply in the penultimate week: when Brandy was eliminated after having earned a perfect score. Against Palin's 53/60, Brandy's 57/60 was not enough to keep her in contention.

Dancing With The Stars never releases the total number of votes cast during any episode, except to say "millions". Out of sheer curiosity, I totalled the number of votes for Bristol Palin explicitly mentioned in the thread linked earlier: ie. counting only votes in posts where commenters gave specific numbers of votes that had been cast or the number of e-mail accounts/telephones that had been used (@ five votes each). A few posters returned to the thread later to update their numbers: so only the last numbers from these posts were used. I also did not count any votes for support comments who did not give numbers, or people who promised to vote but did not confirm those votes. On that basis, from a 149-comment thread, I came up with 607 votes from ten different people.

Now, it gets interesting.

With only three contestants left, voting patterns concentrate. Both Jennifer Grey and Kyle Massey are much stronger dancers than Bristol Palin. Barring a catastrophic mistake by both, nearly all audience voting based on technical merit alone can be expected to go either to Jennifer or to Kyle.

That leaves celebrity voting: which has always been a key component of these kinds of reality shows.

Two years ago, retired political correspondent John Sergeant was cast on the original British show which launched the "Dancing" series, Strictly Come Dancing. Dancing did not come naturally to the 64-year-old Sergeant, yet his fans supported him so strongly that it became all too clear he would have a very real chance of winning, lack of dance skills notwithstanding. Sergeant chose to resign rather than compromise the integrity of the show.

(In passing, it is worth noting that when Buzz Aldrin, one of the very few men to walk on the moon, was a contestant on Dancing With The Stars last year, he was eliminated in the first two weeks. Such are our choices for our preferred celebrities.)

Dancing skills aside: Bristol Palin has no reason whatsoever to resign now. She knows as well as her mother that the final results of this particular Dancing With The Stars season will be a useful straw poll for Sarah Palin's chances in the next presidential election. When voting on this basis, any vote for the daughter is understood to represent support for the mother.

The situations for both daughter and mother are strongly parallel. The majority of those watching Dancing With The Stars feel that Bristol Palin's dancing skills are not up to the level of the other contestants: yet, in theory at least, it is on her dancing skills that she is being judged. A recent poll shows that 57% of all United States residents feel that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be the president: yet (in theory at least) it will be on her presidential skills that she will be elected or an also/never-ran.

If the popular celebrity vote can give Bristol Palin the mirror ball over and above skills-based voting: it will tell us much about Sarah Palin's future chances to become president.

Two perfect scores for Jennifer? Could it be any more obvious that the judges want her to win?
- rightmindedmoms

And yet, if Bristol Palin does win on Tuesday: it could all backfire. Before, it was just entertainment. Once the possibility of winning becomes a certainty, the fence-sitters may well begin thinking about exactly what this pattern could mean, two years from now.

"Vote like Democrats," I keep telling people. "Early, often, and vote for cats and dogs and dead or imaginary people. Just like Democrats do in real elections".
- Hillbuzz

(I wonder if my inability to find an equivalent anti-Palin thread means that this hypothetical "left" seems to have had better things to do? Although if you know of such a thread, either pro- or anti-Palin, please do link it in the comments below. I would appreciate as complete a picture as I can get.)

I asked it once before and now I ask it again:

Now that you know, can you ever look again at winning without wondering: did I truly win this entirely on my own merits and my own skills? Did I win this on a level playing field? Could I win this on a level playing field?

Now that you know: will it matter to you? Or will you follow the comfortable road, choosing to forget all else against the dazzling light of the winner's trophy?

From You might be a Christian Fundamentalist if::

You complain when Christians aren't allowed to practice religion in other countries, but you go berzerker when someone tries to set up a Mosque in your neighbourhood.

For the record, I consider the quoted section to be the highlight of the entire article and subsequent comment thread. For example, one of the following points

You believe we were created from dirt.

applies just as well to evolution as to most religions ... which may be part of why I have never seen why there has to be such a determined chasm between religion and science.

We have heard so much about evolution/creationism and pro/anti human-caused climate change: yet that road goes in both directions. If Stephen Hawkings narrates a series on genius, enlightenment can only ever refer to science: and that only in the context of how science has benefitted mankind. An examination of the growth of steam power must never once mention the killer smogs of Victorian London, any more than the Christmas postcards do.

Sometimes the omissions can be glaring. I sometimes wonder if future generations will look back upon us as the Dark Ages for what, today, might be an entirely unexpected reason. Is it any wonder that so many of the faithful see atheism as a root cause of war?

Hawking has no problem stepping beyond what can be proved by science: but has quite a bit more trouble stepping outside his familiar frameworks. (True also for his scientific work, although he is scarcely unique in that.) Other, as yet unmet alien species must inevitably have the same mindset as Renaissance European explorers. The universe operates by natural laws: and thus no God is needed. And perhaps above all: how could a compassionate God inflict amyotrophic lateral sclerosis on anyone?

In the eighteenth century CE, Isaac Newton and many other scientists of the time had no problem reconciling a universe that ran by clockwork with a universe set in motion by God. The very inevitability of the natural rules argues just as easily for a divine framework as not (but only if one is open to it). Physics alone cannot prove the point one way or the other. There is a reason these kinds of questions fall into the realm of meta physics.

Nor does a universe set thus in motion negate the power of God. Omniscience, omnipotence, and atemporality covers that issue quite nicely. Change it ever so slightly from "God does not play dice with the universe" (Einstein) to God being co-aware of all possibility: and atemporality need not even contradict free will.

The final question coelesces into eleven words all the bitterness and frustration and confusion that have always plagued humanity. Why must some of us be born poor? Why must most of us get sick? Why must we get old? Why must we die? Add to all these the newer, pro-evolution versions: if God is all-knowing and all-caring, why would He design such an imperfect eye/wing/foot ...?

(Yet at the same time, any examples of the opposite -- eg. of a seemingly perfect pairing -- are immediately seized on as proof of God's existence. Apparently our world appears capable of both -- simultaneously!)

To me at least, to ask why we must die is to ask why stars come to an end. To ask why things are not perfect is to ask why it is that we think things should be perfect. The answer would be no different.

Why do we assume that nothing short of healthy, prosperous immortality would be "fair"?

Stephen Hawkings has become a powerful symbol of transcendent mankind: a mind which can strive to understand the workings of the universe, trapped in an earthbound body. The actuality has forced him to focus on mathematics as few others can. The symbol has given his words a singular power. Although there are many others of his calibre in the world, he is forever set apart and above: and this is to large extent because of his paralysis. Take it away -- imagine it had never been -- and what is left but just another theoretical physicist?

Does it really matter which explanation for the way things work another person chooses? If they are true to their understanding of the world and themselves, things will work out quite well. It is only when we start cherry-picking to suit our own conception of ourselves and how we interact with others that an unwanted mirror starts showing us hypocrisy: and it is in fighting that unwanted image that we really start running into trouble.

Yet many of us are still determined to reject all other views and convert others to our single "right" view, lest they be damned.

Possibly related is the increasing trend toward assigning deliberate motive (usually malice) to all words and actions which don't accord with the viewer's worldview. However neutral the language I use -- and again for the record, although it points out possible hypocrisy, nothing about the linked quote above or its subsequent comment thread is neutral -- people seem to be quicker than ever to cry "Hate!" Even if I lay out a situation such that simple ignorance is entirely likely to be the cause, it will still immediately be called lying.

Interestingly, these kinds of reactions only ever happen where the other person is somehow out of step with the viewer. Where there is agreement -- even if the situation is identical -- no one assigns motivation. Agreement is so deeply assumed, it becomes invisible. The end result is that silence must never be broken except in ways which are completely acceptable to a large enough number of those dominant in an audience.

I wish I knew why these types of reactions are increasing in frequency. It strikes me as a dangerous trend to automatically assume the worst of the other.

It's not so much the falling leaves I mind. They don't ever stop, not really, but then That's only to be expected of fall. I do not really mind so much at all. To falling leaves I'm pretty much resigned. They have to fall. Why get all upset when They're only doing what leaves do in fall? You'd think I had no perspective at all. Why sigh that more are always left behind? Of course there's more behind! It happens when These trees keep growing leaves right up to fall: They're so prolific. I don't mind at all. It's just some frigging leaves! Why would I mind? It's obvious that they'll fall and fall, and then They'll fall and keep on falling fall through fall -- They'll never stop. They'll never stop at all -- You know, I'm almost tempted to withdraw. It's only common sense to let it lie. To the shed with the rake! Now, where did I _\\ -- @$#*%! -- Honey? Remind me. Where is the chainsaw?

The job of customer service is to close the files on customer issues as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.

If customer issues cannot be quickly and cheaply resolved with actions the company is willing to take, the job of customer service is to stall problems until they go away. Obviously if a customer issue goes away "on its own", the issue has been resolved (or never was a real problem in the first place).

Yet some issues just refuse to go away until they are resolved for real. Some customers are just stubborn that way.

As a last resort, if the problem still refuses to go away quietly, most companies have some version of a phrase in the small print:

We reserve the right to terminate your membership/refuse further business for any reason or no reason and at our sole discretion.

Throughout the process, customers are "problems", never people. As such, it is not important to listen closely to what they are saying. Since there are only a few company-acceptable courses of action, a good 90% of what customers will be told during the customer service loop will repeat again and again what has already been said: even if the customer has repeatedly demonstrated why what is being said is not relevant.

When what is being said is in the customer service script: how can simple logic penetrate?

Thank you and welcome to my second annual first show.
- Conan O'Brien, introducing his new show Conan

On the surface of things, it is hard not to use the words of a younger generation and say that Conan pwned his opening night ratings. With more than 4.1 million viewers, Conan's show handily outpulled everyone else in the (early) late show bracket, including both his Tonight Show predecessor/successor Jay Leno (3.5 million) and late night powerhouse Jon Stewart (1.3 million). Even after Conan's ratings levelled out later that week, they may even still be among the highest ever for TBS. The earliest ratings have already topped all late night telecasts on basic cable, ever.

Yet examining the figures more closely reveals a sociological divide which has absolutely nothing to do with late-night television in itself. Late night television and its ratings are only symptoms of something much deeper.

Viewership for The Daily Show dropped by 13% (but that can be expected to recover fairly quickly). For The Tonight Show, viewership dropped by just 2%. Based on the Nielsen ratings (flawed though they be, they are nearly our only measure of such things), it seems that nearly all of Conan's audience were those who no longer regularly watch late night television. Apparently nothing in existing late night television really speaks to Conan's audience: not Leno's safe, lightly right-wing milquetoast, Letterman's slightly edgier Mr. Rogers, or Jon Stewart's unrelenting sarcastic bitterness.

Conan gave his audience something very different. First and foremost, Conan's humour asks its audience to suspend the tensions of daily life. It asks us all to try very hard together not to bring politics into it -- which invites us to be active participants, not just viewers. It balances on the fine line between easy-going and just a little edginess. What other Caucasian television host would dare say something such as

That's right – the whitest man in show business is back – on the second blackest channel on TV!

Yet Conan can get away with such things because his humour never reviles, never gets cynical, never hates. We need to laugh, so let us laugh at ourselves. And, of course, it is late: so let's all relax and be a little silly together.

Tying it all together is a fundamental sense of decency and respect for others. When the writers' strike took away the paying jobs of non-union workers, Conan immediately paid their salaries out of pocket: and only then did a few others in the same position belatedly follow suit. Throughout the writers' strike, Conan went out of his way to illustrate -- with humour -- how essential writers are to a show such as his, and he was very careful never to infringe on the writers' domain. During the Tonight Show dispute, Conan negotiated not only for himself but also for his staff, nearly all of whom had been dislocated to the opposite coast to work on the Tonight Show with him -- and then paid their extra expenses out of pocket. He bought pizza and drinks for the fans who gathered to support him in the pouring rain; and overturned Hollywood pre-ticketing precedent during his last two weeks to bring those fans into his show. He nearly turned down the tentative TBS contract because it would have put George Lopez into the same situation as Conan had been in earlier: and only accepted it after Lopez explicitly assured Conan that he was okay with it and wanted Conan on board. Even the new website of the show is Team Coco.com.

Always, he is "Conan". No one ever says "O'Brien". This is a person you are comfortable knowing on a first name basis.

These elements are all independent of the medium of television. Exactly the same elements came through during his "Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour" and his playing with the concept of Twittering. Something about Conan has always been different from all the rest -- and so, even during the darkest days of the imposed television blackout, he was never out of the headlines.

And it pays dividends. When Conan chose a single fan to "follow":

I've decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change.

Sarah Killen managed to live up to the Conan challenge and turn her newfound fame to benefit the charity she had quietly been working to benefit for months, in silence. Just in case: Conan's staff had also asked her ahead of time if what Conan was about to do was acceptable to her, after warning her of the likely outcome.

Yet even before she was thrust into a world of unexpected publicity, Sarah Killen was a fan of Conan O'Brien.

Even after numbers level off further in a few months, Conan has nothing left to prove. Television executives, on the other hand, might well wish to consider whether they wish to retain more of this "new" audience which has no use for conventional late night television and increasingly no use for televisions at all -- or not.

Why is there a holiday to honour soldiers, but none to honour firefighters or electricity linesworkers? Why is there no holiday to honour the farmers and fishermen who put food on our table by working in jobs where injury and death are far more likely than for people serving in the military?

Why are soldiers worshipped while these others toil and are often killed to ensure our continued safety and sustenance -- in utter silence?

At two ends of a popular polemic are two statements:

Wealth creates wealth.
Wealth perpetuates those who are already wealthy.

Both tend to be repeated as truisms which need no further consideration. Both have elements of truth, but neither reveals the full story.

Wealth creates wealth in a community only if its proceeds are invested in that community in proportion with the growth of that wealth. The much more common road has been to safeguard wealth by creating trusts and diversify wealth by investing in existing international ventures. If wealth has been achieved by buying low and selling high, odds are rather good that the buyer is not wealthy and is rather unlikely attain wealth by having bought high. Simultaneously, the action of having bought large amounts at low prices itself raises prices, frequently beyond what others might have been able to afford otherwise.

By the same token globalisation -- which is really the same process on a larger scale -- tends to divide countries into those which can pick and choose where to buy and how to allow domestic investment, and those which have no choice but to accept open markets for cash crops and open all their resources to foreign investment and foreign takeover. Here too, we are told that allowing domestic resources to be sold off is to the country's benefit. Wealth creates wealth: but only if that wealth is re-invested within the country. If it is removed overseas (and the removal cannot be balanced by equivalent international investment by locals), it benefits the country not at all.

Yet many countries fall in the middle: and this brings me to the second truism.

Wealth does perpetuate a wealthy class, but the gap can still be crossed through one's own abilities. Outside studying business management -- which seems increasingly to act like a union card for wealth entitlement -- wealth can still be built through innovation and enterprise, or even through thrift and wise management. It is difficult, especially if one no longer thinks in terms of generations of growth. It is almost impossible if one cannot disconnect needs from wants.

The eternal quest for the get-rich-quick is a lottery against time: if you catch exactly the right moment, you can make a killing on the real estate market or any other bubble -- but most won't.

(Or you can read the signs carefully and take full financial advantage of the misery of others. That, too, is a road to wealth. You can always justify it to yourself by arguing that if you don't do it, someone else will.)

It does not help that the new rules of building wealth have been written by those who are already wealthy, in such a way as to best preserve their own wealth. But even so: it is still possible.

Yet where the truism that wealth only perpetuates a wealthy class is repeated blindly: there is no reason even to try.

The most beautiful sunsets do not happen in clear skies.

In this day and age, to be too highly educated -- or even to be tarred as highly educated -- is the kiss of death to a political career.

This pattern is often explained as a broad dislike of elitist attitudes: yet nearly all of those cited as having such attitudes are firmly entrenched in academic careers with no desire to venture into the political arena. Why should they? Thus far, they have had absolutely nothing to gain by it.

(Although that has changed in the past, and may yet change again.)

More relevant, I suspect, is a suspicion of knowledge that has not been channelled into appropriate (practical technological or medical) directions: and most especially of knowledge which touches upon human nature. We "know" too much of human nature to be easily convinced of anything different. We are so certain of our own free will that we cannot accept any suggestion that our choices may not be as independent as they seem. We cling to such truisms as core values of self-identity.

And so we fear and hate knowledge which threatens our self-identity we cannot comprehend. We fear and hate those who challenge the root of our being. Especially we fear what might transpire, should those truisms ever fail.

Consequently, whatever the cost, we must reject any finding which challenges the bedrock upon which we have built our self-identity.

Rejection is easiest when it begins by building distrust of the sources. Fairly easy to build, this: not least since those who have the background to comprehend and evaluate necessarily become lumped in with those whose work they are evaluating. This particular manifestation of confirmation bias thus builds distrust precisely along the fault lines of previous knowledge. To have the knowledge to evaluate is automatically to be suspect.

In the end, the only way to escape becoming pulled into the circle of those to be distrusted is to conceal one's own education and set aside one's understanding until it can never threaten core identity again with unwanted knowledge that goes against what everyone already "knows".

Only then will you be electable.

From a comment by Human445:

//Initialize
present = startOfUniverse

//main loop
while (present < endOfUniverse){
simulateAllUniverseStuff(present)
present+=planckTime
}

Whether or not the information from Craig Hogan's elegant laser experiment turns out to be of any immediate practical use, it is rather nice to know that experiments sophisticated enough to determine whether the fabric of the universe is actually quantised and holographic (loosely reminiscent of Michelson and Morley's accidental disproving of the ether) do not have to impose any risk on the world as a whole. It seems that scientific knowledge can indeed move forward without elbowing all other considerations out of the way.

(And by research standards, it was cheap too!)