Why Japanese TV rules

Watch it, just watch it.

The truth about Belgium!

If you thought the truth about black helicopters was disturbing, wait until you read the truth about Belgium. But don’t click the link if you are tense, have had a rough day, or have recently eaten. You will be shocked and appalled. Let’s just say that everything we thought we knew was wrong. So terribly wrong.

Queen of Swords, btw, was able to dig up the profile of the man, if we can call him a man, behind these ground-breaking revelations. It must not have been an easy thing to do since the subject “usually wears make-shift psychotronic shielding; approach with caution.” (We can’t really be the only ones getting a kick out of all this, can we?)

Depressed about Darfur

If four years of following the unchanging situation in Darfur are not enough to make one pessimistic, Bronwen Maddox’ assessment at Times Online ought to do it.

The reasons for the inertia on the part of those who talk the talk are outlined succinctly. Heads of state of the G8 have unanimously ruled out a military solution — our first mistake. Any multilateral solution would be contingent on the cooperation of parties who have it in their interest to oppose intervention, such as the Chinese who profit from sales of arms to Sudan. And for everyone else, the Bugblatter Approach™ is working all too well, is it not?

I’m on the Save Darfur Coalition mailing list, which regularly alerts members of letters and petitions they can send to local leaders. One of the most recent alerts was a pre-written email addressed to Secretary Rice urging diplomacy between the US, France, and China to end the crisis. When I read this one part I laughed out loud:

It is clear that influential nations such as the U.S., France, and China could accomplish more working together than they have thus far by working separately. It is also clear that it is in each country’s best interest to help end the conflict, build a lasting peace, and help bring stability to Sudan.

In the interest of China? Haha! Very funny, Dr. Jones.

Of course I submitted the letter anyway, as I submit all letters and petitions Save Darfur points me to, in the vain hope that it will do something to make a difference. But at this rate we can expect history to chronicle the event in more or less the same fashion as it did Rwanda.

Is the life of an American (or a Frenchman, or a Brit, etc) worth more than the life of an African? Actually, yes.

To our credit we have not yet abandoned Iraq nor Afghanistan, where humanitarian concerns are coupled with national interests (I dare anybody to tell me they aren’t). But the forces at work home and abroad beating a drum of surrender are strong. Where national interests are absent or unacknowledged, the picture from Somalia 93, in which the deaths of a dozen American soldiers was all it took to make us turn tail and run, is a closer match to reality. I’m not in a position to predict what manpower and resources would be required to put an end to the crisis in Darfur, but it must be safe to assume that the number of American dead when all is done would be considerably fewer than the number of African dead stacked up pretty darn high already (in the hundreds of thousands by credible estimates) and climbing with each day.

How much more is the life of an American worth than the life of an African? A lot more, I guess. After the Holocaust our motto was supposed to be “Never again.” Shouldn’t we change it to “Live and let die” or something?

The people versus the censors

While misguided fools blather about alleged absence of freedom of speech in the US there is a real human rights struggle ongoing in the most populous nation in the world. The Internet was used to break the story of a massive child slavery scandal in a Chinese province this month. Information wants to be free, but it has to get past a determined government. With president Hu Jintao calling earlier this year for the Internet to be “purified”, it’s hard to predict how the battle will turn out.

There is some reason to hope that companies may begin to see it in their interest to be subversive rather than complicit in the censorship. Consider Flickr’s efforts to troubleshoot blocked images. Since a business listens only to profit, there is a role for the consumer to play in this fight–support the subversive companies, not the complicit ones. (well, I would like it to be that simple anyway)

H/T to China View

Intelligence is orthogonal to belief

Something good came from watching Penn & Teller’s little presentation “The Bible is bullshit!” (I feel obliged to give the link, but please, don’t mistake it for a recommendation) Penn & Teller brought on Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptics Society and editor of Skeptic magazine, to support various points of their humble assertion. An insight made near the end of this presentation reminded me why I’ve always liked Shermer. It’s an observation explained in detail in his book Why People Believe Weird Things, which I intend to pick up and read one of these days.

For those of us in the business of debunking bunk and explaining the unexplained, this is what I call the Hard Question: why do smart people believe weird things? My Easy Answer will seem somewhat paradoxical at first:

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.

Those reasons can include family influences, societal pressures, educational experiences, emotional inclinations, etc. We are all baptized almost at birth with a myriad of such prejudices which are not easily thrown off. Smart people are particularly adept at defending and rationalizing the ones that they keep. They may be unaware of the cognitive biases at work in their favor.

It’s a common mistake of many atheists, skeptics, and debunkers to assume that belief in religion, superstition, or the paranormal can be attributed to lack of intelligence on the part of the believer. In fact, as Shermer has explained, intelligence is orthogonal to belief. Never assume that because somebody you know believes in something irrational that he/she must be stupid. It may be that the opposite is the case.

Nintendo’s deep dark past

Found some pictures on TechEBlog of what Nintendo was up to before they started making video games–making goofy toys. They look horrendously cheesy, do they not? Like the kind of items you might pay 50 cents for at Goodwill, which would totally be ripping you off. If only they had sported a Mario logo they would all have been successes.

dear mister bush

dear mister bush,

why do you hate muslims? is it becuase they’r not conservative christians like you? over 100,000,000 million have died in your war of aggression. how much is enough, mister bush? The whole world knows your “war on terror” is a lie. we watch CNN after all. there was no wmd in iraq. the wmd was given to saddam by rumsfled.so in short your responsible for saddam having wmd. there was no wmd in iraq (except for the wmd that was in iraq) and that’s only reason for invading iraq. so in short the whole reasons for invading iraq was is based on a lie. “lie” spelled backwards is “eil”. change the “e” to “o” and you get “oil”. and thats’ real reason for invasion, is it not mister bush? now you pretned is was about democracy all along. but you never mention democracy before. anyway everybody knows muslims incompatible with democracy. just like japanese and koreans were incompatible with democracy. everybody knows that. except you, mister bush, and thats why your racist. and the reasons muslims dying in middle east is all becuase of jews and american imperialism. now lookat the tragic waste of money and human life because of your war of choice in iraq. the money could have gone to funding my abortion. we’ve so many problems in america because of your fault, mister bush. like outsourcing jobs and paris hilton. why’s it such a big deal if people in another country want to gas each other or feed eachother into wood chippers? you should let other cultures do as they please if you really care about “freedom”.you should’ve stayed out of iraqi people’s business and just take bribes from saddam like everyone else. also, north korea and iran are a problem too, but only when a democrat presidential candidate says so. I hope you listening to me. basically you’re teh worst president in history of the world. tahnk you for your time.

sincerely,
from a patriot

P.S. please stop torturing innocent civilians across the country too

P.S.S. can I date your daughter?

Reification in language (and in politics)

In gestalt psychology, reification is when form is perceived beyond the explicit information that is sensed. Wikipedia offers these helpful examples:

From the three black Pacman shapes in A we perceive a triangle. From the two ying-yangs in B we perceive a wormy thing wrapped around a pole. From the spikes in C we perceive the bloody brain-splattered ball of a ball and chain. From the curves in D we perceive the Loch Ness monster (or simply a tree branch floating in the water if we’re skeptical).

Reification can also be aural. The principle is at work all the time in verbal communication. It’s what enables us to occasionally understand the speech of drunks, old men, or President Bush. And it’s the reason listening comprehension in a foreign language can be such a bear. Sure, you may know all the grammar and vocabulary being used by the person speaking in the language you are trying to learn, but the casual hurried mumbling of such a phrase as “Wanna touch my monkey?” that is no trouble at all to discern for the native speaker who has heard the phrase a million times before, can be total Greek to the language learner. With enough experience listening and speaking in the language the gestalt becomes easier to perceive.

Haven recently gotten involved in some recreational fansubbing (of Hello! Project videos, you guessed it), this is the roadblock I continue to bump into. I can’t ask the speaker in a DVD to please slow down or to please speak more clearly when he utters words I just can’t make out, even though those words may be known to me. Ultimately what this means is that I need more experience with the language I am attempting to translate to English, in this case Japanese, or that Japanese blows.

Reification can apply to politics too. What most of us perceived when the twin towers went down was an act of terror attributable to a dedicated group of religious fanatics from a part of the world far removed from us. But if you stare at the shapes long enough there is more to behold, oh yes, much more. Many things, wondrous things! Zionist conspiracies, oil/imperialism theories, New World Order plots, the end of the free world as we know it, an Orwellian nightmare in full bloom before our very eyes! Few people have the experience necessary to make out these disturbing forms, and few of those who do even see the same ones. The esteemed intellectual Michael Moore has been squinting at those shapes for some time now and is still finding new animals in them. What hope does the average person have of seeing what is unseen, of realizing what is unreal?

Pakistan or Iran?

Which do you suppose the pro-civilization side of the War on Terror should be more concerned about? On TCS Daily, Gregory Scoblete makes a compelling case that it should be Pakistan. Iran and North Korea have both benefited from exchange of WMD technology with Pakistan, Sunni extremism plays strong among the population, ties between al Qaeda are deep, and the remnants of AQ’s leadership are hiding within the country’s untamed borders. Realpolitik is of course the reason Pakistan is not ostensibly at the top of our list of problems to address; as long as Musharraf continues to be helpful, or to give the appearance of being helpful, it’s likely to stay that way, isn’t it?

Cops who use kung fu

The reporter says this Taiwanese police unit is probably the toughest in the world. Yeah, it probably is. For close range fighting is there anything more effective than Chinese kung fu?