Yes, Michael Jackson is dead, but I don’t need to hear about it 24/7 for the next week. A casual mention in passing will suffice, thank you. Also, please stop saying that his death is a “mystery”. He died from a heart attack, there is nothing less mysterious than that. So he was addicted to painkillers, how is that news? Half of all famous people in the world are addicted to something.
I’m sure something important has happened in the world in the past 48 hours, but I haven’t heard about it because the only thing that’s been on TV is Michael Jackson’s death. So, please, let’s all get on with our lives. I didn’t even like his music. Good riddance.
Tags: addiction, death, drugs, Michael Jackson, music, news, painkillers
Gay marriage used to be illegal in California but then the Supreme Court decided that that was unconstitutional and legalized it. The people didn’t like this and passed an amendment to California’s Constitution making gay marriage illegal again. A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court upheld the Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. And suddenly everybody is pissed.
But we can’t be pissed at the courts since they are only doing what they were designed to do; uphold the Constitution. And we can’t be mad at democracy because this is democracy working exactly as it should; the people get what the people want. The only group of people left to be angry with is ourselves.
We are idiots. As George Carlin famously said, “Think about how dumb the average person is, and then realize that half of them are even dumber than that”. That’s the problem with democracy. Most people are of average intelligence and so we get average laws.
Democracy prevents any one person or group from attaining too much power. We will never get a law that says it’s okay to kill homosexuals, but we will also never get a law saying that everybody has equal freedom in all things. Even the founding fathers who came up with the idea that “all men are created equal” weren’t able to give equality to women or black people.
We will always make progress. Women, blacks, and gays have come a long way, but there will always be a new minority to be oppressed. Democracy is often hailed as the greatest form of government ever created, but it’s important to remember that a democracy can never be better than the people that make up the democracy.
Some people have voiced the opinion that perhaps human rights issues shouldn’t be left up to the majority, precisely because on average we are not smart enough to put aside our own prejudices. However, what’s the alternative; leave it up to an all-powerful judge? That works beautifully until a corrupt judge gets into office.
If you choose to live in the United States, you must accept the fact that you live in a country that is not run by you, nor anyone else. It is run by the average collective wisdom of its people, who are not wise at all. Democracy is the fairest form of government, not the most intelligent.
Tags: California, civil rights, Constitution, democracy, freedom, gay marriage, government, intelligence, love, men, relationships
It takes weeks to schedule an appointment with a doctor, it takes hours to see him once you are there, after seeing you for five minutes he recommends some tests which take weeks to schedule, hours to wait for, weeks to get the results from, weeks to schedule a follow-up visit, hours to spend waiting for the follow-up, and then five minutes for the doctor to tell you what’s wrong. And this is if you’re lucky; if you don’t have insurance you’ll end up paying thousands upon thousands of dollars for this kind of service.
I don’t think I’m alone in experiencing this sort of thing. Hopefully, a few doctors frequent my blog and can answer this question for me, “What takes so long at the doctor’s office?”
I’ve been thinking about it:
- It can’t be the doctor because he only sees you for five minutes.
- It can’t be the paperwork because you only have to fill it out once and it only takes five minutes.
- It can’t be overcrowding because the more patients there are the faster the doctor has to go through them. For example, if a doctor has to see 100 patients over an eight hour period that averages out to 4.8 minutes per patient. He would be going through them like lightning. Conversely, if I have to wait four hours to see the doctor that implies he’s only seeing two patients per day which can’t possibly be right.
- It can’t be that there aren’t enough doctors because there are something like 10 doctors on my block alone. New York City is filled with doctors.
After thinking really hard about this I’ve decided there is only one possible conclusion: doctors and secretaries live in separate time zones. The secretaries are on the West Coast and the doctors are on the East Coast so that when the secretary schedules you for a one o’clock appointment the doctor actually sees you at four o’clock.
Seriously, though, why can’t they do a better job of scheduling patients? Everybody knows there’s going to be a two-hour wait, so why couldn’t they just have scheduled everybody for two hours later?
I know it must be bureaucracy that’s the root of the problem causing all of this inefficiency, but I can’t put my finger on it. Where does the time go? What happens during the four hours that I’m waiting in the waiting room?
This is not an impossible problem to solve. We’ve all found a few good doctors over the years. For example, Dr. Lerner down the street from me is excellent; I’ve never had to wait more than 15 minutes. So, what’s the difference between these good doctors and the other ones?
I’m going to propose an idea: what if we made two “levels” of doctors? Instead of all of them having to have MDs, which requires something like a dozen years of school, let’s create a slightly less rigorous program for doctors who will handle the simple stuff like sore throats, the flu, allergies, sprained ankles, and the times when you are just generally sick. That would hopefully free up all the specialists to do what they do best and treat the people who really need help the most.
Tags: bureaucracy, doctors, healthcare, inefficiency, insurance, medicine, waiting
I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about why women are segregated in sports. For some sports it’s obvious; men are bigger, stronger, faster, taller. Women don’t play football with men because they would be destroyed. Women don’t run marathons with men because they simply can’t keep up. For lots of sports women cannot be competitive against men.
However, what about billiards, darts, poker, and any of the numerous other non-physical sports? First, I don’t think these things should be called “sports”, ha ha, but I digress. Why is there a Women’s World Championship 9-Ball Tournament alongside the regular World Championship 9-Ball Tournament that’s for men only? What could possibly justify splitting men and women in this case? It doesn’t matter how strong you are or anything like that.
The answer I usually hear is that, “Well, men are better at coordination.” An argument can be made for this; throughout the ages when men were out hunting the women were at home caring for the children. Because of this men have evolved to be more coordinated. I also have to admit that having watched both the women’s and men’s tournaments there is no question that men are better at billiards than women. Regardless of why it may be, it does appear that men are better at pretty much every sport than women.
My personal theory is simply that women like sports less than men because they are less competitive. If you have 1 million men playing billiards and only 100,000 women it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that the men will dominate. The best men will be better than the best women and there will be 10 times more of them purely by statistics.
There will always be flukes. I’m sure there are some women out there who are just gigantic and who could probably play in the NFL, but these flukes don’t change anything. However, I’m unclear as to why any of these flukes should be barred from playing with the men.
Let’s now get down to the tough question. If there is such an obvious physical difference between men and women, why is it so hard to accept that there might also be a mental difference? What I mean is, if I say, “Men are better at basketball,” it’s no big deal, but if I say, “Men are better at math,” suddenly it’s a hugely political issue and I’ve offended everybody (especially women). Why is it society screwing over women when you are talking about engineering, but just natural physical differences when you are talking about sports? How do you know that one is nature and the other is nurture?
Women’s rights activist groups always complain that there are fewer women CEOs, fewer women scientists, fewer women programmers, fewer women engineers, fewer women presidents, etc. They say that this is because of gender discrimination and that we as a culture are biased against women. Maybe so, or maybe men are simply better at these things.
I’m not saying “men are better,” I’m simply asking why the most obvious and simple explanation is the one explanation we aren’t allowed to talk about, or even consider. I hate these goddamn “taboo” issues that are simply above discussion. It reminds me of religion. We aren’t allowed to voice any contrary opinion.
I was a math major at MIT and of course almost everyone was male (almost everyone was also Asian; maybe MIT is discriminating against white people). However, I never once saw any evidence of discrimination, either against women or white people. It just seemed to be the way it was. Honestly, 99% of women I meet simply don’t LIKE math, and if they don’t like math what chance is there that they will go into a mathematical profession? I also taught middle school and high school in New York City and I didn’t see any evidence of discrimination there, either. If anything, women were more encouraged to go into mathematics precisely because of this perceived inequality. However, they just don’t.
Back in college I had many discussions that went something like this:
Girl: “We need more women in math!”
Me: “Okay, so why don’t you major in math?”
Girl: “No way! I hate math!”
I don’t think they saw the irony in what they were saying. You can’t just will things to happen. I would love it if there were more women mathematicians out there, but I can’t just conjure them out of thin air.
So, I’m going to come out and ask the question: Is it possible that there are more male CEOs simply because men are better leaders? Is it possible that there are more male programmers simply because men are better at programming? And so on. Conversely, is it possible that there are more female teachers simply because women make better teachers? To use a kind of odd example, when Windows crashes a lot more than Mac OS X you don’t think, “Windows is being discriminated against,” you instead think, “Windows sucks and Mac OS X is better.”
I already briefly addressed the question of “why” but I want to reiterate it again. I think the answer is very simple: each gender likes different things and, in turn, ends up being better at the things they like. It’s not discrimination, it’s just reality.
Let’s also not forget that there ARE female CEOs, and female basketball players, and female programmers. This in and of itself is evidence against discrimination: women who want to and work hard enough are clearly capable of all of these things. Nobody is standing in their way or stopping them from doing it.
At the risk of being offensive, I want to point out an observation of mine that may also help explain the lack of women in certain fields: many attractive women are not nearly as qualified as they think they are. A really attractive woman goes through life with everybody telling her that she’s smart, funny, talented, gifted, skilled, nice, kind, giving, loving, caring, wonderful, incredible, amazing, beautiful, perfect, ingenious, creative, insightful, and absolutely right about everything. Nobody actually believes this, of course, except the woman herself (because everybody tells her so). Because of this, I imagine many interviews go something along the lines of, “Well, dang, I wouldn’t hire her but I would totally do her.” Naturally, the woman doesn’t understand why she didn’t get the job because, after all, she’s perfect, and she ends up assuming it’s because of discrimination. I always find it amusing when someone corrects something a beautiful woman says because she invariably gets completely offended and upset.
Finally, I want to briefly expand this argument into other territories. Black people and white people have obvious physical differences, for example, so does it not also makes sense that they would have mental differences? What about Asians? Or Europeans? It seems incredibly unlikely to me that everybody in the world has an exactly equal brain. The observation that a certain group of people does better in a certain field than another group of people is not at all surprising. In fact, it would be far more surprising if everybody in the world was actually equal. Can you imagine if when you looked at the statistics exactly half of all basketball players were black, exactly half of all the CEOs were women, exactly half of all mathematicians were Asian, that every race of person made on average exactly the same amount of money? Now THAT would be amazing.
Before I go, I briefly want to mention that a certain Nobel Laureate (Dr. James Watson, the man who co-discovered DNA with Crick and Wilkins) got into huge trouble for suggesting that perhaps blacks weren’t as smart as whites.
All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing [IQ and Standardized testing] says not really…There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so. — Dr. James Watson
He was simply expressing the opinion that the most obvious and simplest explanation was the correct one (Occam’s Razor). Again, I’m not saying it’s correct, I’m not saying that blacks aren’t as smart as whites, I’m just saying we shouldn’t ignore the evidence just because it’s politically incorrect or offensive. The problem is that once you decide to ignore a possible explanation, it doesn’t matter how many tests or studies you do, you will never find the truth. This is censorship by societal pressure and there is nothing more dangerous to science.
Tags: bias, billiards, discrimination, DNA, Dr. James Watson, equality, gender, genetics, pay, political correctness, racism, salary, Science, sports, women
I was reading in the New York Times today about President Obama’s plan to allow terrorists to be detained without a trial. Setting aside the fact that this is simply more of the same stuff that we had under Bush, I simply don’t understand it. What could possibly be the downside of allowing people to have a trial? In a trial the defendant is either found guilty and sentenced to prison or he’s found innocent and let go. What are we afraid of? How on Earth could a trial make us less safe?
Allowing people the right to a trial doesn’t mean we are going to let them roam free. It’s not like accused murderers are just walking around town while they wait for their trial date; we actually keep them locked up. Couldn’t we do the same thing for terrorists? Sure, hold them in jail until their trial, but be sure to GIVE them a trial. And, I believe the right is to a speedy trial, not a trial at some vague date 10 years in the future.
The New York Times article also suggested that we already make exceptions to the right to a trial for sexual predators and insane people. Again, why? Yes, sexual predators are evil, and yes, insane people are, well, insane, but why shouldn’t we give them a trial?
Anyway, perhaps someone can enlighten me: what do we gain from detaining people indefinitely without a trial?
Tags: courts, detain, Habeas Corpus, justice, law, Obama, rights, terrorists, trial
The average temperature of the Earth has risen by 1°C over the past hundred years and suddenly humanity is on the brink of extinction, or so say the doomsayers. Don’t worry, this isn’t a global warming denial thread, but it is a *slap* *slap* wake up! thread. It’s naïve to think Earth’s climate will NEVER change.
The Earth has been through four ice ages in its 4.5 billion year history, each lasting millions of years. One ice age was even severe enough to cause the snowball effect, named so because it completely froze the earth over. Believe it or not, we are currently in an ice age right now but for the last 11,000 years we have been lucky enough to be in an interglacial period where the glaciers temporarily recede.
The point? Earth’s climate changes over time, naturally. The question isn’t if global warming is going to happen but when it’s going to happen. The same goes for global cooling, by the way; this interglacial period won’t last forever. It doesn’t even matter if man causes the climate change or not because it’s inevitable.
In Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth he says the Earth is warmer today than it has been for the past 50,000 years. Although true, this is nothing more than fear mongering. First of all, we’ve been in an ice age, of course it’s warmer today. Second of all, 50,000 years is NOTHING. If you compress the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history into a single day it turns out that 50,000 years is equivalent to one second. That’s like going outside and saying, “Dang, it’s hotter than it’s ever been in the past second!” Let’s take a look at the following chart of Earth’s average temperature over the past few hundred million years:
One point apparently causing confusion among our readers is the relative abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere today as compared with Earth’s historical levels. Most people seem surprised when we say current levels are relatively low, at least from a long-term perspective – understandable considering the constant media/activist bleat about current levels being allegedly “catastrophically high.” Even more express surprise that Earth is currently suffering one of its chilliest episodes in about six hundred million (600,000,000) years.
Wow, the Earth is currently as cold as it’s ever been and is roughly 10°C (18°F) colder than average. Other things have changed, too: the CO2 levels in the atmosphere have dropped from 7000 ppm to practically nothing (and there is no correlation between CO2 and temperature). Let’s also not forget that continents have shifted, mountains have risen, oceans have been formed, and valleys have been created. The Earth changes radically over time.
Again, my point is not to deny global warming. I’m sure that human beings are having an effect on the environment and increasing the Earth’s temperature and I’m sure the current ice age will end slightly sooner than it would have otherwise. However, the point I am trying to get across is that it’s ridiculous to assume that Earth’s climate will remain at a steady 14.4°C FOREVER just to make us human beings comfortable.
I think most of the calamity around global warming is simply that human beings are resistant to change. It’s kind of like the Endangered Species Act: We cannot allow any species to ever die! Nevermind the fact that 99.99% of all species that have ever lived are already extinct. Extinction is a natural part of evolution; species have to evolve in order to keep up with the ever changing Earth and those who can’t keep up go extinct. It’s too hot, or too cold, or too much carbon dioxide, or too little carbon dioxide, or too many predators, or too little food, or an asteroid crashes into the planet, or whatever.
Human beings are the first species to ever change the planet to fit their own needs rather than the other way around. Instead of living in warm climates or adapting to live in cold climates, we simply invent heaters and air conditioners that allow us to live wherever we want. We can live in jungles, deserts, tundras, Antarctica, on top of mountains, underwater, in space, and even on the moon! We have an incredible advantage over other species; we don’t have to wait for evolution, we can use technology to speed things along.
I think that we are so used to being in control that not being in control of the climate scares us. Think how fragile a species we must be if a few degrees in temperature change is capable of wiping us out. We shouldn’t be trying to stop climate change, we should be trying to adapt to it. And, with our technology, I think we can. With fertilizers and greenhouses we can grow food practically anywhere. If we really need to, we have the ability to migrate, not a few miles or even a few hundred miles, but thousands of miles over mountains and oceans and across continents. In the future, we may even be able to migrate to different planets.
In the immortal words of Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park, “We do not have the power to destroy the planet. However, we do have the power to destroy ourselves.” I think that really is the lesson to take from all of this. Whatever man does to the environment pales in comparison to the natural changes that occur over time and nothing we do will ever “destroy the Earth”. However, global warming could be an immediate threat (to us, not the planet) if human beings are not ready to handle it. I think that if we all work together we can easily weather the storm that is global warming. Of course, the likelihood that human beings will ever learn to work together is slim at best.
The greenhouse gases our factories are pumping into the atmosphere might cause the Earth to warm up within the next century or two, which might be significantly sooner than what would happen through natural causes. Still, does this really matter? If the earth warmed up 1000 years from now would we be any better prepared? If history has taught us anything it’s that humans cannot plan for the future. What do we do 10,000 years from now when the interglacial period ends and the ice age comes crashing down upon us turning North America into a frozen wasteland?
100 years we can comprehend. When scientists tell us that 100 years from now our children might be in trouble, we listen. I don’t think it will be big trouble, but I suppose it’s worth worrying about. 10,000 years we cannot comprehend, but it’s important to remember that human beings have been around for 10,000 years (the calendar doesn’t start at the year 0). We actually hunted woolly mammoths in the last ice age. Hopefully, we will be around to see the next ice age.
[1] Wikipedia — Ice Age: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
[2] Planetary Temperature: http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-18/dioxide.htm
Tags: Earth, environment, global warming, history, ice age, Science
This is going to be a short post because it’s a simple question: do men enjoy sex more than women?
I eat ice cream about once a month. There are people out there who eat ice cream every day. It’s reasonable to assume these people enjoy ice cream more than I do, yes?
So, if men want to have sex every day with every hot woman they see, and women only want to have sex once a month and only with that “special someone”, is it not also completely reasonable to assume that men enjoy sex more than women?
If women enjoy sex as much as men, what possible explanation is there for them not wanting to have it very often?
And I said, “What about Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”
She said, “I think I remember the film,
And as I recall, I think, we both kinda liked it.”
And I said, “Well, that’s the one thing we’ve got.”
I can’t believe it: one of the greatest choruses in the history of music and it doesn’t even rhyme! I just noticed it. It’s amazing that such a catchy song with a great tune and great lyrics doesn’t even rhyme. I actually think this makes the song even more impressive. They didn’t have to fall back to the tired cliché of rhyming every other line.
Can anybody else think of any other great songs that don’t rhyme?
Another song I really respect is These Are Days by the 10,000 Maniacs. Why? There is no chorus! There are no repeating sections of the song. It’s unbelievable. Also, I just discovered Natalie Merchant is hot! That never hurts.
Anybody else think of other classic songs that defy convention?
Tags: 10000 Maniacs, choruses, Deep Blue Something, music, Natalie Merchant, rhyming
I don’t have a TV, Cable box, TiVo, DVR, DVD player, VCR, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation, stereo, Netflix, CD player, VuDu, radio, SlingBox, or a bookcase full of DVDs (or books, for that matter). Actually, I take that back, I do have all of these things… as software. That’s right, I have a single computer that functions as all of the above. Seriously: my apartment consists of a computer, a bed, a couch, and that’s pretty much it.
I crack up when I hear TiVo advertising new functionality that allows you to watch YouTube on your TV. Really? I’ve been doing that for 10 years. Have you heard about these new HD TVs? My computer monitor has been HD for as long as I can remember. How about Xbox LIVE which allows you to play video games with your friends who aren’t even in the same room? I’ve been doing this for 20 years, almost since I was born. In my youth, we didn’t even need the Internet; we could play computer games over the phone. Have you seen the new Time Warner functionality that allows you to “Start Over” if you missed the beginning of a TV show? Jesus, that one’s not even worthy of a rebuttal. It’s the 21st century folks, do we really have to wait until Monday at 7:00 PM to watch our favorite TV show, and then be screwed if we miss it?
I’m surprised that people haven’t figured it out yet: all you need is a computer (with an Internet connection, of course). I don’t want special functionality connecting me to YouTube (which limits me to a single video sharing site), I want to be connected to the Internet, and thus everything else in the entire world. I don’t want a special console that costs $400 in order to play games, I simply want to download a game and start playing.
Even for computer stuff, with virtualization you only need one computer. My MacBook runs MacOS X, Windows XP, and Ubuntu Linux… all at the same time. Any old computer these days is 1000 times more powerful than what it took to get us to the moon. And, ironically, 99% of people run Internet Explorer and that’s pretty much it.
The truth is, computers should be doing everything (and I have a feeling they will be in the near future). I’m not entirely sure what the holdup is: do companies and consumers not realize that computers are the future, or have they realized but are desperately trying to hang on to their old business strategies of selling us individual, proprietary gadgets for each piece of functionality?
PS Can we also get rid of all the paperwork in the world? Why do I have to fill out a dozen pages every time I go to the doctor; can’t they just email my chart back and forth or something?
EDIT: I think I might have answered my own question — 99% of computers run Windows and nobody in their right mind would trust Windows with anything important. I can just imagine the blue screen of death popping up right as you are sitting down to watch the evening news. Or a dialog box appearing saying, “Are you SURE you want to watch TV?”, or, “Please download Windows Genuine Advantage”, or, “Scanning this television station for viruses…”, or, “Sorry, this is not one of the five computers you are authorized to watch television on” (fine, that last one is Mac). Then again, I’m sure we all know the real answer: corporate greediness, whether Microsoft or otherwise.
Tags: computers, home entertainment, Internet, the future
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