It’s a funky old Friday again, so once more, it’s time for fascinating stuff from the wonderful world of science.

First, we return once more to one of my all time favorite avenues of technological research. Long time readers with particularly keen memories will already know which one I am talking about. It’s been a fascination of mine ever since I was a kid watching the short lived sci fi show Automan.

I am talking, of course, of self driving cars. Woo hoo!

The latest development on that concerns some whiz-bang propellerheads over at MIT who have developed a system that prevents collisions by predicting the movements of other vehicles.

Right now, it’s proof-of-concept at best, but it’s still an impressive achievement. They took two remote controlled cars, put them on a looped “death track” guaranteed to put them in serious collision peril, and ran one hundred trials of their new system, and there was only one collision.

Still one more collision than we would want in a real world application, but not bad for a new kind of system.

What I particularly like about this system is the excellent methodology. Basically, they systematically broke all the aspects of driving down to their most basic elements, modeled those elements, and from that developed a predictive model that generates all the possible positions a vehicle can be in within the next few seconds, given its current position and trajectory.

They even included factors like whether or not the vehicle is in an intersection or on onramp.

I am very impressed that they were able to tackle such an enormous number crunching task and produce not merely useful results, but actually quite good results. Of course, part of the reason these sorts of tasks can succeed when they failed drastically in previous areas is that we now have computer chips capable of doing the staggeringly huge number of calculations required to do such impressive predictive modeling.

But still, hats off to the prime nerds at MIT for making it work!

Next up, a story I will admit is only science adjacent rather than directly science related, but still, I thought it was worth sharing with you nice people. It caught my eye both because it happened in the marvelously laid back city of Portland, Oregon, a place I lived for a while, and because… well, you will see.

It’s a story of ecology, nephrology, public works, and the difference between science and pragmatism.

The short version : drunk guy pees in one of the Portland reservoirs. Solution : flush the entire freaking eight million gallons of perfectly good drinking water at a cost of almost $40K.

Obviously, strictly in terms of actual public health threat, this is a massive overreaction. For one thing, urine is sterile, and even if it wasn’t, one guy’s drunken whizz is not going to be more than, at most, a quarter of a gallon going into 8 million gallons of water, thus making it one 32 millionth pee.

There’s homeopathic remedies that are stronger than that.

And really, do you think that open reservoirs don’t end up with a lot more pee (and worse) than that simply from the local biologically active wildlife? Realistically?

But of course, this goes into the realm of human taboo, and that’s not a reasonable thing. Were I the administrator involved, the most important factor would be, basically, does the public know this guy pissed in the reservoir? Because if they don’t know, and are not likely to know, then to me, the cost of replacing all the water is not justified.

But if they do know or are quite likely to find out, then you have no choice, only the full flush will do. The public has to be absolutely sure their water is clean, not just from a scientific or reasonable point of view, but from the point of view of our potent sense of taboo and disgust.

We’re not robots, after all. We’re irrational humans, and when it comes to those most profound of our taboos, the ones involving bodily wastes, there is almost no room for negotiation.

Flush that thing. And we shall never speak of this again.

Getting back to full on science, we have an exciting development in that rapidly blossoming real actual no longer science fiction field of nanotech : a self powering nanotech machine that can transmit wirelessly.

It derives its power from any source of vibration, which is nothing new. There have been vibration harvesting nanomachines for a few years now…. decades in nanotime.

But that’s all they could do. Keep going. You had to put power into them from the outside in order to even verify they were still working.

What makes this one the new hotness is that it has enough power to transmit a wireless signal all on its own, throwing the door wide open for all kinds of self-powering nanosensors that could send information from anywhere at all, forever.

After all, damn near everything vibrates, as optical astronomers trying to take long exposures will readily tell you. And once you get down to nanoscale, even the silicon molecules in the heart of Everest vibrate.

The applications for such eternal nanosensors are innumerable. A world where such sensors are cheap and plentiful would be an information-dense world, with trillions of these sensors feeding information to whoever wishes to look it up.

It’s this kind of thing that makes me think “I am truly living the future”.

It’s a wonderful feeling.

I have been pondering the role of the idiot (the fool, the dumb guy, the wet behind the ears new guy, etc) in comedy a fair bit lately, and just recently, some of it came into focus for me, so I thought I would share the results of my pondering with you, my loyal readers.

First off, we have to rough out a definition. A Comedy Idiot need not be an actual mentally handicapped person. They might just be a fish out of water, a country boy in the big city (Perfect Strangers) or a city boy in the country for the first time (Green Acres), a big time executive forced to live with their redneck family, and so forth. Or they could be a character who is not precisely stupid, but an airhead (like Phoebe on Friends), an eccentric (Kramer on Friends), or just plain shallow (Cat on Red Dwarf, though he may also be just plain dumb. )

So instead, we shall define the Comedy Idiot simply as any character who, for whatever reason, has a childlike simplicity to their view of the world, unsophisticated, yet accessible.

What is most important, in fact, is that whatever their putative problem or personality, they are fulfill their role(s) as Comedy Idiots, which can be any or all of the following :

1. The Idiot as Buffoon. This is the simplest, most common, and most broadly and widely appealing role of The Idiot. This is The Idiot simply as a person who does stupid things. often resulting in their own personal injury. A great deal of what is commonly referred to as “slapstick” in comedy circles fall under this role. Even small children understand this comedy.
2. The Idiot as Fool. One small step up in sophistication is The Idiot as someone who says stupid things. It might not seem like there’s a very large distinction to make between the saying of stupid things and the doing of stupid things, but it’s a very important step, because it is only via this step that the more intellectual layers of The Comedy Idiot are unlocked. As simply The Fool, The Idiot merely says things anyone of standard intelligence will recognize as incorrect. This type of comedy appeals to children just a little bit older, who have enough verbal intelligence and knowledge of the world to recognize the flaws in what people say.
3. The Idiot as Savant This is the beginning of The Satirical Idiot. In this role, the Idiot is used to make acute observations about the world from the point of view of someone who lacks the faculties of a fully functional and informed person and so simply describes and reacts to things as they appear, often cutting through a lot of complex obfuscation that hides the truth from the more ‘normal’ people around them. The use of The Idiot in this way is often mixed in with the other, simpler roles, in order to keep the satirical “even an idiot like X can see… ” edge sharp. Homer Simpson is a perfect example of this. The Comedy Savant Idiot also opens the door for the next level…
4. The Idiot As Innocent A very powerful role for the idiot, of whatever stripe, is to retain, along with a childlike intellect or outlook, a child’s innocence, and hence operate as a sort of child substitute to act as the inner child lost in the adult world in all of us. We feel for the idiot, and even identify with them in some level, precisely because we all retain the child within.
5. The Idiot as Conscience Closely related to The Innocent Idiot is the Idiot as Conscience. Because of their childlike point of view, the Comedy Idiot has the uncomplicated morality of a child, and can therefore function as constant reminder to the more sophisticated characters of what it was like before they had to make moral compromises, and even guide them back to their real morality after losing their way in the confusion of adulthood. Forrest Gump (as portrayed by Tom Hanks in the movie of the same name) is a perfect example of this. The Conscience Idiot can, just like a child, shame those around them into right action simply by refusing to accept (or understand) the moral grey areas in which we, perhaps, hide our less worthy actions.
6. The Idiot as Plot Operator In this role, writers (often bad ones) use the Idiot to move the plot along. If you have written yourself into a corner and the only way the plot can continue is if one of your characters does something extremely stupid, well, guess who that will be? Not a terribly noble use of The Idiot, but it beats the alternative, otherwise stupid characters doing stupid things for no reason that makes a lick of sense.

In all these roles, the Comedy Idiot is also fulfilling the basic role of any comedic character, and that is to be a source for the unexpected. Indeed, part of why the Comedy Idiot is such a solid bedrock of all functioning comedy series is that there is no basic character type with so many angles from which to insert something completely unexpected into the dialogue precisely because their point of view is very unusual, but because it is nevertheless comprehensible (as opposed to someone who simply spoke nonsense), it can operate at the lightning fast speed of comedy.

Those, then, are my recent observations about the role of The Idiot in comedy. It is a rich and complex subject, however, so this article might well be updated and expanded in the future.

Stay tuned to this channel, comedy fans!

I know I usually save these up for Friday, and here it is Wednesday, with Friday only two days away, but gosh darn it, there’s just so much cool and/or freaky science news this week, I couldn’t bear to wait before sharing it with all you nice people.

First off, here is a particularly satisfying entry in the category of Things You Always Suspect Are Now Being Proved By Science : study shows homophobia is directly linked to homosexual arousal in men.

Yes, just like we have all suspected, homophobic men are actually fags in deep denial.

According to the abstract, they took a group of men, rated them for things like aggression, sexual orientation (self described) and homophobia, then exposed them to straight porn, gay porn, and lesbian porn while they were wired up to measure their bodily reactions.

And just guess what group showed marked sexual response to the gay porn despite their describing themselves as straight (in fact, probably as “ONE HUNDRED AND TEN PERCENT STRAIGHT OK? OK? YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT, PAL?”)?

Yup. The gay haters, the fag bashers, the homophobes.

It makes complete sense to me. Who keeps getting caught in gay sex scandals? Anti-gay politicians. Why? Because you have to have both strong homosexual desires and be in deep deep denial or conflict about them to believe the unvoiced assumption of all homophobia, that if homosexuality is not fought tooth and nail, it will somehow “spread” and “take over”.

Obviously, they are projecting their own inner struggle onto the world. For actual heterosexuals, there is absolutely no chance they will suddenly become homosexual. It’s only these poor twisted souls in conflict with themselves who can believe that, because for them, it’s true.

It’s just not true in the world outside their head.

Next up, from arguably the complete opposite of the world of gender, sexuality, and biology, OK doctors are getting ready to perform the world’s first womb transplant.

The idea of transplanting an entire womb from one person to another is groundbreaking (and mindblowing) enough, but there’s a twist.

The transplant is going from a mother to her very own daughter, who was born without a womb.

I think you will agree with me that, freakiness aside, this qualifies the donor as the Ultimate Living Martyr Mother of all time.

Forget about giving up some bone marrow, or a kidney, or a piece of your liver. Hell, forget a full blood transfusion. This women is giving her child the gift of the very womb from which she was born.

I have to confess, I find that all kinds of weird, creepy, and disgusting. But that’s completely irrelevant. There is no room for disgust in science! And what is medicine but our most vitally important applied science?

And the thing is, this is not a merely cosmetic surgery. The whole point of this is for the daughter to have a fully functional womb with which to give birth to the womb’s original owner’s grandchildren.

Again, that is all kinds of fucked up on every level, but that doesn’t matter one bit. I wish them success!

Lastly, if you are looking for a fun and easy DIY science project that just happens to create a black gelatinous devouring horror that would give Cronenberg and Lovecraft the collective heebie jeebie, then check out this article on PopSci about how to create magnetic Silly Putty.

It seems like a harmless enough thing to do. Just take your regular old eerily flesh colored hunk of Silly Putty and fold in some magnetized iron filings like you were making a dessert for a Horta, and voila, you have created Magnetic Silly Putty. Fun, right?

But from such innocent acts comes a frightening beast that looks like Armus sneezed HARD, and that has some eye meltingly wrong looking visuals as this :

Is that not profoundly disturbing? I have to applaud the beauty and purity of its abstract obscenity. For something that is just a half sphere of black putty, it manages to convey a sense of being a living organism with…. orifices…. remarkably well.

But there is one way to make it look even more obscene…

(sorry folks, I just had to do it… )

…. play that last bit backwards.

Rolling on the LOLs ROFLMAOing. That looks extraordinarily and hilarious wrong. Reverse entropy meets abstract obscenity in a glorious collision of madness and joy.

Now if you will excuse me, I really need to go to the bathroom for some completely unrelated reason.

Another week survived means another week’s worth of science news goodies for you lucky, lucky people!

First up : using the body of the car as a capacitor in order to increase the range of hybrid or electric cars.

First, a nit to pick in the article.

The capacitor car parts do not add much energy…

Ellipsis mine. And of course the capacitor car parts don’t add much energy, Popular Science, because a capacitor only stores energy, it doesn’t generate it.

They don’t add energy to the car’s system any more than your kitchen sink adds water to the water system.

(Yes, I know what they meant. I guess I am just feeling persnickety. )

Anyhow, that mental itch scratched, I quite like this idea. Obviously, while it doesn’t specifically mention this in the article, these would be insulated capacitors, so there would be no chance of you getting a serious zap from your car door or hood.

What I like most about the idea, besides the immediate prospect of making electricity using vehicles more efficient by getting around the battery weight-to-power paradox, and hence making them more affordable and practical, is that it shows that people are thinking outside of the internal combustion box and realizing that working with electricity gives you an enormous advantage over working with chemically generated mechanical motion via internal combustion.

There is a whole complicated part of the traditional automobile called the “transmission” because its job is to transmit power from the engine to the wheels. It’s expensive, hard to make, requires a lot of moving parts, and loses massive amounts of energy (and hence efficiency) at every coupling.

In an electric vehicle, power is transmitted by a freaking wire.

Next up, we have Iceland rewriting their constitution with the help of the Internet.

As usual, Popular Science overstates the case by claiming Iceland is “crowdsourcing” their new Constitution and other such malarkey. No country, even one in such incredibly dire straights as Iceland, whose entire economy went south with the economic collapse of 2008, would crowdsource their Constitution.

That would be just asking for a Constitution that was all about boobs and cats.

But what is actually happening is still pretty interesting, because the people who are working on said Constitution are taking an enormous amount of input from the Icelandic people via Twitter, Facebook, and other Internet avenues, and that will make this new Constitution the first one in history with such a wide base of opinion in its foundation.

While I am sure most of what the people contribute will not be terribly useful, what I like most about this approach is that a Constitution is the very sort of thing where you want as many people trying to think of potential pitfalls and omissions as you possibly can. It is, in many ways, the ultimate contract, the contract between a government and its people, and you want to cover as much as you can possibly cover without making the document completely incomprehensible.

So hats off to the men and women at the heart of all this, the ones who have to take all this input, add it to their own best intentions and diligence and intellect, and try to come up with a single, solid document that will stand the test of time.

If all goes well, this new Constitution could be an extremely awesome document, something that expresses the best ideals of our era in language of power and simplicity, just like previous Constitutions did.

Presumably, it will include provisions about keeping government morons from betting the entire treasury on real estate ponzi schemes.

Finally, in their never ending quest to fill the world with awesomeness, Google has recently added millions of miles of oceanographic date to their Google Earth application.

They are calling it Google Ocean, and while it does not cover the entirety of the oceans of the world, it does cover half of what we have mapped, which is an area the size of North America.

So now you can virtually explore thousands of miles of seabed, just like you were Jacques Cousteau, from the comfort of your computer chair.

Who knows, maybe some fresh eyes on a user-friendly form of this data will lead to fresh discoveries!

Well, that’s it for this week’s Roundup. Tune in next week for more science brain candy!

Oh, wait, there’s one last thing, something I haven’t been able to fit anywhere else.

CATS IN TANKS!

Cats in Tanks from Whitehouse Post on Vimeo.

The mystery is that there is no mystery.

Well, okay, it’s a little more complicated than that.

Motivation is a mysterious substance in the modern world of our goals, dreams, and obligations. When talking about the distance between themselves and what they want to do or feel they ought to be doing, people quite often complain about just not being able to find the motivation to do it.

But what is motivation? We talk about it like we all know what it is, but do we really? What is it? Where does it come from? Why do some people have it, and others do not?

The assumption seems to be that there is an inherent motive force in people called “motivation” that propels our actions. Certain potential actions give rise to the desire to do them, and it is this desire that we call motivation. If the desire is sufficient to move us to do said action, we say we had enough motivation. If it does not, we say we just weren’t motivated enough.

Now, from this commonsense definition, it would seem that motivation and desire are the same thing. If you want to do something enough, you do it. If you don’t, you don’t. Simple, right?

But a curious thing happens when you tell someone who is bemoaning their lack of action on some front (usually personal growth) that obviously, they just don’t want said thing enough to be bothered doing what it takes to get it.

Almost always, they strenuously object. To them, it is perfectly possible to want something really really badly, more than enough to do it, and yet, not do it. There exists, to such a person, a wide and deep grey area between the amount of desire it takes to do something and doing it, despite the apparently completely binary nature of the question.

I think this is because, while the same person might complain about their lack of motivation in another context or at another time, when you put it in simpler and more well defined terms, they are brought face to face with the basic irresolvable conflict between what they consider their dreams and the amount of motivation they actually have for pursuing said dreams.

In many ways, it’s easy to have the desire for something when said desire is entirely disconnected from any motivation to pursue it. That way, we can have our dreams without them threatening to disrupt out lives at all or lead us to depart from the soothing regularity of our routine lives, no matter how much said lives might drive us to complain about them.

Said sorts of dreams are particularly good for people who have trouble handling reality. It all stays in your head, where it’s safe.

So what is the difference, in such a person, between that which they are motivated to do, and that which they are not? Such a person might complain about having “no motivation”, but that is an exaggeration. A person with no motivation at all would do absolutely nothing at all, not even roll over in bed.

Obviously, in all people, there exists some degree of motivation. In all people, some actions are judged, consciously or not, to be worth doing. The benefit outweighs the cost. So what determines this? Why are some actions judged worth it, and others are not?

From my observations, the overwhelming factor that dwarfs all the others is familiarity. The familiar, no matter how unpleasant, has known values for pleasure, pain, and cost. Not only does this soothe the soul, but it creates a life which requires very little investment of fresh motivation to maintain.

A routine life is one which just keeps going, seemingly on its own momentum. The individual is obviously putting energy into it, otherwise they would be doing nothing, but they are taking no risks, investing no new emotion, and are gradually soothed into a sleepwalking state by this, until they are no longer merely taking advantage of this form of calmness, they are absolutely emotionally dependent on it. The slightest realistic thought of change (as opposed to merely daydreaming) sends the entire psyche into an uproar, as though the very foundations of reality were shaking.

So when someone in this position says they lack motivation, what they are really saying is that they are afraid to change their lives in any way.

Picture a person in a lifeboat, sitting stock still in the dead center, terrified that the slightest motion will cause their boat to capsize, and hence incapable of taking any action to steer or propel their craft, leaving them helpless before the whims of the current and the rocks.

Sound like anyone you know?

In case you haven’t heard the news, the British authorities have taken the entirely ridiculous step of banning the movie The Human Centipede II.

I won’t go into detail about the film and its predecessor, because the content of the films is not terribly important to what I wish to discuss.

Suffice it to say that the films are shock horror, where the idea is to overwhelm the audience with scenes of violence, sexual perversion, torture, death, dismemberment, and so forth in order to try to generate a visceral reaction in the audience by shocking their sensibilities as much as possible.

If you want to know more, just read the wikipedia entry about it.

This “shock” phase is something art simply needs to go through from time to time. The last time was the 70’s. Film is the perfect medium for shock art because it provides such a rich and visceral experience, easily the medium that provides the closest thing we have with our current technology to a completely immersive art experience. No matter how blood spattered your installation art piece seems to be, it is still clearly art, and the audience can remain outside it and view it dispassionately. Film, especially as seen in a darkened theater, challenges that detachment.

Part of the artistic intent of shock horror and other, similar genres is to create a sensation not just in the audience but in society at large by presenting society with something that violates their sensibilities so strongly, it’s almost daring them to abandon their free speech ideals in order to suppress it.

In censoring the movie, then, the British authorities have played their part in the auteur’s drama. They rose to the bait and gave Tom Six, the fellow behind both movies, all the publicity and ammo for self-righteous pomposity he could ever want.

Personally, I find his outrage a tad disingenuous. I bet when he got the news that the British had banned his movie, he could not have been happier. And not just for cynical, profit and ego driven reasons. The whole intent of shock horror is to throw everything you have into something in order to force people to react, and censorship, from that point of view, would be the best kind of reaction.

I consider this a perfectly artistically valid approach, though not one I would necessarily take myself (at least, not with all the violence and pain… not my cuppa), and I applaud Tom Six for successfully getting the reaction he wanted by making a film that makes even very liberal people question their dedication to freedom of speech and opposition to censorship.

Thanks to the British, and the stir the original caused as well, Tom Six can sit back and watch as his movie stirs up global controversy and prompts pundits and thinkers all of the world (including little old me, obviously) to talk about his movie.

But to me, the issue is quite clear, because when it comes to freedom of speech (and all other forms of communication), I am somewhat of a hardline extremist.

I would legalize everything.

That’s right, everything. There should be no restrictions on art and/or communication whatsoever. The basic principle of freedom of speech is that it is immoral to prevent others from making up their own minds about a given media work, and that does not allow for exceptions. To me, there is no form of art, however much it may offend people, which warrants suppression and punishment. If you do not want to be offended by offensive art, don’t go looking for it.

It really is that simple.

Every form of horror, pornography, or what have you should be equally free and unfettered. They are, after all, only objects of the imagination. No matter how horrific The Human Centipede II’s visuals might be, nobody is actually getting hurt. It’s all make believe.

So the only reason to censor it is because it offends you, and you don’t want other people to be offended by it. But that is quite simply not your call to make. Freedom of speech requires us all to suppress the perfectly natural and in some ways even laudable urge to protect our fellow humans from things which offend us.

It is natural to attack that which has hurt us. When offended by something, our natural urge is to want to destroy it. But that is not how freedom of speech works.

Civilization requires us to restrain out natural urges in many ways.

Resisting the urge to censor is simply one of them.

Do it anyway.

I know it’s scary, and hard, and painful, and too intense.

Do it anyway.

Do it because you know it’s what you should do.

Don’t pretend you don’t know what I am talking about. You know what you should do. You know what you want to do, what you need to do. You pretend not to know, and let your mind spin elaborate webs of complication, uncertainty, and distraction in order to keep on pretending. But deep down, you know. And you know that you know. You know that you have been lying to yourself, telling people that you don’t know, acting like you don’t know, when you know exactly what you should do.

You know, and you have always known. You’ve been lying to yourself for a long time, running yourself around in circles, pretending that you can’t see the way out of the forest of your own creating.

But deep down, you know the truth. The very path you pretend to be searching for has been under your feet the whole time. All the complications, all the doubts, all the lies, all that foliage is just to keep you from having to see the hard cold truth : that you know exactly what to do, and choose not to do it.

Yes, choose. You like to pretend like you have no choice, but you choose the life you lead all the time, every day. The forest of doubt and confusion is testament to that. By spinning such a thick and writhing web of obfuscation around the simple facts to hide them, you offer perfect testimony of your choosing to burying your head rather than face the truth.

You know that moment when you think about doing the things you know you should be doing if you want to advance and continue and then immediately bury the thought because it frightens you and makes you anxious to even glance in the truth’s direction?

That’s the moment you choose. You choose to avoid the thought rather than face the truth.

Or how about those truly noble moments when you start to do something good, something right, something that takes you in the right direction at last, and for a while you are even doing it, making progress, finally getting your shit together…. and then you get so scared and so freaked out by the prospect of leaving your pathetic little nest that you choose to stop and bury all the evidence that you even tried?

Yup. That’s the moment when you choose.

It all boils down to this : every moment is a choice, a pivot point, an opportunity. Stopping out of fear and panic is a choice. Quitting because it’s gotten too hard or too confusing or too close to making you have to actually do something instead of just thinking about it is a choice. Giving up because you have run out of momentum is a choice.

And no amount of fear or doubt or emotional pain can change that fact.

Giving up is always a choice.

“But it’s not that simple. ” I hear you say.

Actually, yes it is. It is exactly that simple. You reaches a point of crisis, of extreme emotion, the moments that test people’s souls, and you chose failure and retreat. You chose to run and hide, when you could have chosen to stay and fight. You decided it was easier to just stop thinking about it and do something else, and then pretended that you had no choice but to do the easier thing every single time.

But you do have a choice. It really is that simple. And you choose to fail, retreat, and lie to yourself.

And so you choose the life you lead right now, and claim to hate. You choose it, and prefer it, because you have decided that you know all the paths out and none of them are worth enduring pain and fear past the point of comfort.

That is the choice you are making every time you give up on your own dreams. You can lie to yourself and blame your parents, your life, your job, the economy, your astrological sign, the bus system where you work, or the color of your sneakers, but the real truth is, it all comes down to you.

Face the tasks you know you need to do in order to get out of the trap you have laid for yourself.

Feel the fear, the panic, the uncertainty, the mad, animalistic desire to run and hide till the world goes away.

Face it all, and do it anyway.

I think I may have written on this subject before, but either way, these thoughts will seem fresh to me.

One of the vexing questions which I ponder when I feel like chewing on a particularly tough nugget of ethics is the problem of stupidity and its effects.

And by its effects, I am not simply talking about the real world direct consequences of stupid decisions. Those are bad enough. Nor am I talking about stupidity in the simple and linear sense of imperfection of intelligence. Nobody has infinite intelligence, potential monotheistic omni-patriarchs aside, and therefore even the very brightest and wisest of us are always operating from finite intelligence, and hence, from the point of view of some entity with greater intellect, being “stupid”.

No, what I am specifically addressing in this article is the effect that these gaps in intellect have in terms of the reactions of the people involved and how said reactions create a serious challenge to our highly laudable desire to behave in a compassionate, patient, and enlightened way that maximizes the public good.

In a previous article, I have talked about this problem from the point of view of the person or persons on the lower end of the intelligence inequality, so I will not go over those points again here.

Instead, I wish to address the issue from the other side of the equation, the side with the higher level of intelligence, and specifically, the tension that arises between the desire to be a good human being and use one’s gifts, whatever they might be, to aid one’s fellow primates however one can, and the kinds of emotions that dealing with people with lower or simply different intellect can cause.

To launch this off, please read the following anecdote from a user at Clientcopia.com, a site devoted to the highly necessary catharsis of sharing one’s stories of particularly clueless clients and thus transforming pain into comedy.

The scene:

12 Senior Executives around a conference table, several of them techies.

Me, 24 year old n00b hired to handle hardware.

Situation: The server room gets too hot, cooling system inadequate.

I pass them 3 quotes I received from air conditioning companies to install a new chiller and to cut the vents to the roof and/or outside walls. Lowest quote is around $10,000.

Senior Vice President of Operations: Can’t we just get a portable air conditioner and put it in the room?

ME: Yes we can, but those units tend to be less efficient and then we still need vents to push the hot air out of the room.

Another Exec: Why do you have to do that?

ME: Air conditioners work by leeching heat out the air going through them and putting the heat outside the room. You can’t actually cool air where it is, you have to put the heat somewhere. Since the server room is near the center of the building, the heat we sent out of the room would make the offices hotter.

All Executives now trying to speak at once to tell me I am full of it. After 1 HOUR of trying to convince them, I lose it. I don’t care if I lose my job anymore.

ME: Look, there is physical law called conservation of energy. Energy is not destroyed only moved and transformed! Heat is energy! This is one of the fundamental principals of the universe! If you run a refrigerator, it takes energy out of the air inside and pushes it out the back! When it is running, the motor actually heats up to cause this to happen, so if you open a fridge to cool your house, the house will actually get HOTTER!!! COLD IS THE ABSENCE OF HEAT! HEAT IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF COLD!

It took a few days for the group to slowly realize I was actually telling the truth and then approve the expenditure. Of course, no one ever acknowledged that I was correct.

Depending on how much of your high school science you remember, you might either completely understand why the sharer of this anecdote reacted how he did, or have no idea what the big deal was, or as is most likely, fall somewhere in between.

Myself, I am fairly keen on science, and while I am far from any kind of engineer, I do grasp the principle of the conservation of energy, and that therefore you can’t destroy heat, you can only move it around. That is why your refrigerator has a radiator on the back. That’s to radiate all the heat that your fridge took out of the air inside it in order to make it cold inside.

But the scientific issue is not what I wish to address here. It’s the author’s reaction, which I understand completely and would likely share, but which I also find troubling, because it is precisely this sort of frustration, anger, and despair that I think impedes the optimal use of human intelligence for the betterment of all humanity.

Too many bright and knowledgable people, who could quite possibly do a lot to help others, instead are driven by such encounters into elitism, intellectual isolationism, sarcasm, disdain, technocratic thoughts, and many other similar forms of unproductive behaviour.

And I must stress here that I in no respect except myself from this phenomenon. In fact, it is my own anger and frustration that primarily drives me to turn this issue over in my mind.

I realize that none of us are saints or angels, capable of universal unassailable calm and patience at all times, and that frustration and anger at not being understood or not being respected as the person with superior knowledge in a particular instance is a perfectly normal and natural human response. When you have higher than average intelligence, a lifetime of being imperfectly understood by others is simply part of the deal.

But from the point of view of someone who sincerely wants the best possible outcomes from all us naked beach apes, and who therefore includes intelligence in that assessment of potentials, I can’t help but see these angry, frustrated reactions as a roadblock on the path to a greater humanity.

I have no clear and simple solutions to offer, but I have a few thoughts for my fellow intellectuals :

1. 
   Remember always that intelligence is situational. Sure, the writer of the anecdote was in the possession of the objective right information and the right sort of intellect to understand it in the situation he himself described, but management tends to favour social intelligence over abstract reasoning skills, and chances are, had the situation called for a subtle and nuanced understand of people and their motives, it would have been our anecdote teller’s turn to be the “stupid” one. In fact, I am sure managers often regale and/or soothe one another with tales of hilariously socially clueless things said and done by engineers. Remember : we are all the dummy some of the time. So when you are on top, remember to treat others as kindly and patiently as you would like yourself treated were the situations reversed.
   
2. 
   Also, remember that no matter how damn clever you think you are in your particular field(s) of expertise, it is vastly probable that there is someone out there who is better than you at it in all ways you yourself find meaningful. Modern society sometimes encourages us to think we are all kings of our own little scrap of turf, but the truth is, odds are, someone could come and take yours from you without a fight. So instead, let’s all be civilized and embrace thoughts of equality, okay?
   


3. 
   Finally, remember that even if you actually are top dog in your particular pound, you are still a highly finite human being who only has a tiny slice of all the potential skills, assets, talents, and abilities that human beings can have. You might well be the best plumber in the world, but you are still not a top chef, a brilliant scholar, a legendary vocalist, or any of the other countless potential niches that human beings can aspire to fill. There will always be vastly more that you do not know and cannot do than you can and do, and so we are all, in a very real and true sense, at the mercy of and dependent upon thousands of others doing what they do well in order to be lucky enough to be around to do what we do well.
   

I think if we keep these precepts of necessary and objectively true humility in mind, we will stand a chance of remembering just how badly we all need one another in moments when we feel the arrogance and disdain of our particular specialties rising and need to ground ourselves in the sobering perspective of reality, and just help out however we can.

I used to call these potpourri entries the Sunday Special, but now that seems like too much pressure.

First up : Remember Billy Ocean, the two hit wonder? Did “Get Out Of My Dreams (And Into My Car)” (in what other decade but the 80’s could you have a hit with a song like that?) and “Caribbean Queen”? And then totally disappeared off the map?

Well, before obscurity completely overtook him, he made this marvelous clusterfuck of a video.

Billy Ocean – Loverboy by papafonk

I have never seen a video that had so little to do with the song or, honestly, even the person singing it. Normally, when a video has absolutely nothing to do with the song, it is because they want to show you the band or the singer performing instead.

In other words, they somehow think that watching a band play is inherently fascinating. You know, our young artists are electrifying performers. We don’t need to make an expensive video in order to promote them. They sell THEMSELVES!

Sure…. if you have David Lee Roth of the 80’s as your frontman. Maybe.

Otherwise, you just made a boring damn video and nobody will remember your band ten years from now.

Billy Ocean, on the other hand, apparently decided to take the opposite approach : make a video you will remember but that will make you instantly forget who made it.

I mean, I loved the Cantina Scene in the original Star Wars (Episode Four for you Sad Bastards) too, Billy, and I also thought the Gelflings from The Dark Crystal looked cool, Billy, but Billy, that doesn’t mean you should spend your money on a video ripping both of them off.

Bonus fact : if you watch the video again, look closely : it does have a plot! Kinda.

Next up, from (quite appropriately) William Gibson’s Twitter feed comes this link to a story about the world’s most amazing free trade bazaar/underground website/drug market in the world.

It’s called Silk Road, and it leverages the latest in anonymizing technology to create something which is basically eBay without limitations. Well, except for one :

You won’t find any weapons-grade plutonium, for example. Its terms of service ban the sale of “anything who’s purpose is to harm or defraud, such as stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of mass destruction.”

This, to me, only makes the site’s credentials as a hyper hip modern digital anarchy destination all the more shiny. They are fighting the system, but they are doing so responsibly.

My kind of revolutionaries.

But other than the aforementioned, anything goes. including every drug in the world. Pot, ecstasy, LSD, cocaine, you name it, you can get it online, through the mail, with full anonymity on both sides of the transaction. Everything comes in extremely dull, ignorable packaging and just like on eBay, the main policing tool to keep out fraud and cheating is a customer feedback system.

“A+++ dealer. Delivery was prompt and discreet. Got so high, I hit my head on God’s taint. Would buy and toke from again. ”

Being someone who would legalize all drugs in an instant (plus prostitution and gambling and all forms of porn),I am tickled pink that the heroic forces of the geek world have created such a beautiful end run around the completely futile, naive, and corrupt “War On Drugs”.

I am all for people’s right to put whatever they want in their bodies. There is no such thing as a victimless crime. No victim, no crime. Modern society has, as one of its bedrock principles, the idea that we are not a society in which everything is forbidden except for the few thins which are allowed, but rather one in which everything is allowed except for the few things which are forbidden.

If there is enough demand for something, you cannot control it by forbidding it. You can only regulate it like we do with all consumer products.

Now, traveling the Silk Road is not easy. You have to go to the website with a powerful anonymizing system call TOR installed, and that’s not a matter of just a few clicks.

And as it happens, I have no interest in illegal drugs (I am crazy enough as is, thankye kindly) so I am not looking to sign up any time soon.

A guy from the Wired story says it best :

Mark, the LSD buyer, had similar views. “I’m a libertarian anarchist and I believe that anything that’s not violent should not be criminalized,” he said.

But still…. I support it wholeheartedly, for as long as it may last.

Finally, I will throw you a link to a story about the interesting new phenomenon of movie producers wanting to bring movies to home viewing faster than ever before.

The story rather misses the point by going on about “how can a movie star be big when seen on a small screen?”. Um, ask television stars. Seriously, catch up with the tour, people.

And while I have greatly enjoyed seeing movies in the theater and absolutely agree with the argument that seeing a movie in the theater, with a lot of other people, is completely different than seeing at home, and a valuable experience worth preserving, largely I am indifferent to the plight of the movie theaters.

They have been making the movie experience gradually less and less pleasant for my entire life, and I have no problem seeing them as being mostly superfluous now. The movie studios have obviously figured out that they can make a lot more money selling the DVD of the movie and leasing the movie to the streaming services than they can from traditional movie theaters, and the theater chains are freaking out so violently because they are just now figuring out how easily they could be cut right out of the process.

The very digital technology that has let them get rid of professional projectionists will ultimately doom the movie theaters themselves. That seems delightfully fitting to me.

My only reservations are about whether it will actually work. After all, right now, the movie’s release acts, if nothign else, as the focal point for the entire promotion machine of the movie industry. In fact, as it stands right now, it’s more like the official movie theater release is just a big advertisement for the movie and a way to recoup some of the capital as quickly as possible before sitting back and waiting for the much larger long term DVD and streaming release money to come in.

I can see imagine a future in which movies are released directly to streaming, with a sliding price scale based on how long it’s been around and how popular it is. It would be released first as pay per view, with a price like 5 dollars (still loads cheaper than the theater experience), and then the pay per view price would slowly go down as interest waned, till it settled down into just being another catalog title for the streaming service.

The movie studios make more money overall (especially with the leaps and bounds being made with green screen technology making movies a lot less expensive to make), we the consumer get to have first run movies at home, and the only people who lose are massive movie theater conglomerates, who get removed from the chain and go the way of the telegraph and the incandescent light bulb and the drive in theater.

Sounds good to me!

Well, to some people it’s the other side. To me, it’s home. It’s the gay/perverted side!

There’s been some interesting developments in the world of the GLBT community lately, and I figured I would share them, along with a few fun and vaguely related videos.

First up, two things that were bound to come together at some point, though I would have preferred it not be like this : homosexuality and homeopathy.

Turns out that the website for the German organization the Union of Catholic Physicians (or whatever marvelous multisyllabic clusterfuck that is in German) has drawn some serious fire from German and international gay and lesbian rights groups because their website apparently recommends various homeopathic “cures” for homosexuality.

I find this completely hilarious. I mean, homeopathy is some of the most pathetic bullshit in the world, so I can’t exactly be bothered to be offended by it. Homeopathy says to “treat like with like”, so in order to cute the gay, they presumably are taking one ounce of gay and diluting it with twenty gallons of water, thus, according to the precepts of homeopathy, making it far far more potent.

So I am guessing the treatment is some water that tastes very faintly of cock. Or cum. Or lord knows what, seeing as homeopathy encourages all kinds of moronic logical fallacy (or is that phallus-ies?) like reasoning by analogy. Maybe they thing the cure for teh gay involves essence of straightness.

So, really dilute Hai Karate, I guess.

In defense of the Union of Catholic Physicians, the head of it says their website has not been updates in a long time. Since the Middle Ages, apparently.

Here’s a video that really takes the piss (which I am guessing they use to treat kidney disease) out of that hole homeopathy nonsense.

Oh, and “A&E” is British for “emergency room”.

Also in gay BLT news, the megacorp Home Depot has come under attack by hate grouns like the American Family Association for support gay pride marches. Their response? Same as Cee-lo’s : FUCK YOU.

The AFA pulled their usual bullshit of claiming they have a petition with half a million signatures of people who have all agreed to totally boycott Home Depot unless they stop supporting gay pride events.

Right wing hate organizations of completely lying about these petitions, or wildly exaggerating the number of signatures, or using laughably flawed methodology to pad the numbers (“Do you like toast? Yes? Well, it’s well known that everyone who likes toast hates gays, so…. we will put you down as supporting our Cure Gays With Fire initiative then… ), so their threats of boycott mean nothing on the face of it.

But even if the number of signatures is legit, it’s still meaningless, because a petition is hardly a legally binding contract, and so it’s a very poor predictor of what people will actually do. Signing a petition when some righteous twit shoves it in your face is easy. Changing where you shop is hard.

But even if they did have the power to cause half a million people to tow the line, not every one of them shops at Home Depot, and those who do might not do a lot of business with them, so honestly, it is no big threat at all.

Add to that the bad publicity that would come from caving to the AFA, and it was a no brainer. The CEO of Home Depot himself personally told the AFA where to go.

Here is the video of the story as told by the person who asked the CEO the question in the first place :

Aww, he’s all butt hurt because a CEO had ethics.

To that kind of hateful talk, I have just this response :

HELL yeah. That is my favorite “gay power” video of all time. Sorry for the low video quality, I acquired this video way back in the day of modems and such. It’s totally worth it. The video has a kick ass message, amazing content richness, and the Gay Pimp Daddy is totally smoking nuclear freaking hot.

If I met him in the real world ans he was even one millionth as awesome as he is in the video, I would probably follow him around like a little puppy dog.

Finally, a tribute to a subject (surprisingly) near and dear to many women’s hearts : vaginal fisting!

Not exactly stellar production values, but still, highly amusing and highly educational.

Myself, the prospect scares me… those lady parts are delicate. But hey, it’s not my vagoo you are spelunking, so hey, whatever makes your cherry fizz, ladies.

See, straight guys? Date a fat chick. They’re more fun!