sudo life

This story gets under my nerves.  A professor asked his students to write an essay critical of U.S. VP Candidate Sarah Palin.  The article doesn’t provide any details of the assignment directly, but off the top of my head, I can’t think of any reason why such an assignment would be wrong, especially at the college level.

This isn’t about your views.  This isn’t about whether you like or dislike Sarah Palin.  Reading the sentence on it’s own merits, it doesn’t even necessarily mean finding flaws in Ms. Palin:

criticize
1. To find fault with: criticized the decision as unrealistic.
2. To judge the merits and faults of; analyze and evaluate.

I would like to draw your attention to the second definition, as it is the one most commonly used in higher education.

But let us suppose that this wasn’t the case.  The assignment really was to write an essay that found fault with Sarah Palin.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with that either.  One thing any well balanced should be able to do is formulate an argument whether they agree with it or not.  It is a necessary part of being able to understand anything.

Where is the problem?

It drives me batty that anyone attending an institute of higher education would not recognize this.  It drives me batty that the press are even paying attention to this.  Isn’t the skill this lesson is aimed towards a fundamental part of being a journalist?

I’m planning on voting for Barack Obama this fall.  Here are a few faults he has:

• His recent FISA vote was so wrong, that to completely explain why would not be appropriate for this blog post.
• He appears to think it’s wrong to criticize other people’s religion.
• A few of his commercials have not been completely honest in their criticisms of his opponent.

Those are three things right off the top of my head.  If I sat down to think about it more, I’m sure I could come up with several more.

I fear the real issue here is avoidance of being self-critical.  If you agree with Sarah Palin, criticism of her is criticism of you.  We can’t have that in the classroom, obviously.

Dammit, grow some courage, people.

“We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. -Carl Sagan”

Philosophy critical thinking, education, Philosophy

After the events of last night, I am sorry to inform everyone that the world did in fact end, and what we are currently experiencing is merely a figment of my massive imagination.

You read that correctly.  Every thought, every sensation, everything that exists is now just the rapid firing of the nuerons and synapses in my brain during the last few nanoseconds before it completely disintegrates.

Considering this possibility as fact is known to lead to madness unless you hit upon the phrase, “I think, therefore I am.”  Although, when you think about it, even your brains are a figment of my imagination, so while it might be a comforting thought to you, it doesn’t change reality…

Enjoy your existence!

Note:  If you start seeing an abnormally high number of references to the following things, have no worries, as this is just part of the normal functioning of my brain:

• Pickles
• Onomatopoeia
• An increased density of truly stupid puns.

Philosophy funny, Philosophy, physics

Recently, there have been a plethora comments coming from people who should know better concerning terms like ‘hacker,’ or more appropriately ‘hacking.’  I would link to some of the examples, but they have been removed. It is ironic that many of these comments came from atheists who should be sympathetic to being labeled as something that has different meanings depending on if it’s self-labeled or applied by someone else.  Atheists realize they are only ‘non-theists’ while many theists have the tendency to view atheists as something much more horrible, and very far from reality.

When the lay person uses the word ‘hacker’ or any of it’s forms, they are usually refering to some sort of illegal, or at the very least, annoying activity.  Things like breaking into someone’s computer, launching ddos attacks, stealing identities, and the like.  This is not how the term was originally meant to be used.  The proper word to describe these activities is ‘cracking.’  A person who cracks into computer systems is a cracker, not a hacker.

So what is a hacker? Here are a few definitions from the Jargon file:

1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users’ Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.
2. A person who is good at programming quickly.
3. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example.
4. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to view these as good things – as things to strive towards.

It is a big problem that the words can have such varying meanings.  Even though I know the difference, I’ve been known to use them inappropriately when talking to people who don’t know the difference and don’t want to know the difference.  It’s very frustrating when these people are atheists people who should know better.  I don’t know how to solve this problem, but I’m open to ideas.  I like the label of hacker, though I don’t think it can really apply to me.  I’m simply not good enough.  Never-the-less, I do hope that this post has raised some consciousness about the issues involved here.

Philosophy Atheism, pedantry, Programming, technology

I’m on vacation this week, and it’s been glorious!

I’m not watching the olympics this year.  Actually, it’s been several years since I last watched either the summer or the winter olympics.  I’ve just felt there is something wrong with them.  I wasn’t sure what until this year.

It started when I bought the awesome series off the iTunes store called “When We Left Earth.”  If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.  It chronicals NASA starting with the Mercury program to the current day.  While I watched this, there is something that repeatedly jumped out at me:  the difference between calling the achievements of the program ‘American’ achievments or ‘Humanity’s’ achievements.  I realized that don’t really view the moon landings, for example, as the fomer of those, but the latter.  When I think about those events, they don’t make me proud to be an American.  They make me proud to be a human.

There are those that go the other way.  At the time, NASA was a source for national pride, and that continues to this day for many.  We were better than those Commies, and we showed them.  I understand that’s important, but we would be better off without it.

From the perspective of space, you can’t see the borders of nations.  There is only one earth, and everything in it is connected to everything else by location.  All our quibles are meaningless from that perspective.  Carl Sagan said it much better than I ever could.  And so I get tired about hearing about all of it.  I get tired about hearing what comes down to idiotic squabbles like the Russian-Georgia fiasco, or our own country’s fiasco in Iraq.  Or China’s censorship and human rights violations.

I always thought the olympics were meant to be a place where we could set aside our differences and participate in sporting competition.  But when I hear the coverage, it continues to be portrayed as just another place for nations to duke it out.  “Hey, look!  China has the most Gold medals.”  “We Americans lead the medal count, HA!”

You know what I want to see?  I want to see an event that can bring everyone together, but in a way that doesn’t reflect nationalities.  We need a worldwide event dedicated to celebrating the abilities of humanity itself, not the ‘products’ of it’s nations.

And that’s why I don’t really care about the Olympics.  As long as it continues to be some way for a nation to exert it’s superiority over another nation, my reaction continues to be: meh.

Philosophy humanity, inspiration, nasa

I have a recurring nightmare where I dream the entire school semester, and then I remember at the end of the semester there was that English class I signed up for and went to the first week, and then forgot all about it and never went again.

I’ve had this dream for *years* – even now, when I’m not even attending school.  Every time, it freaks me out as well.  Sometimes the dream takes place in high school and others in college.  I’m not sure why I have this particular nightmare.  It’s true that while I was going to school, I was known on occasion to completely forget to go to class.  I took a political science class where I skipped an entire month because I didn’t need to go.  Well, and I was working through a horrible break-up with my girlfriend.  Still, that was over six years ago.

I could probably analyze this deeper.  Perhaps it has something to do with a fear of not being good enough, or failing to meet the requirements for something because I was goofing off.  Or something.  I don’t know.

I just hate these dreams.

Personal dreams, musings

Ever since I first started looking into what Buddhism is, I’ve been fascinated by it. In the last month especially, this fascination has grown rapidly as I started to practice meditation and mindfulness. I’ve already seen tangible improvements in my life, so this practice will continue as far as I’m concerned.

The object is raised, however: “Josh, you seem to be so against religion, especially Christianity. What is it about Buddhism that draws it to you?”

Well, there are several things about it. Let me explain.

First, when Buddhists say ‘test everything, and only believe in what you feel is true’ they actually believe it, unlike Christians who say the words and don’t really mean it. Don’t believe in karma? That’s ok! Don’t believe in reincarnation? That’s ok, too! Don’t want to chant to the white tara? That’s perfectly acceptable. Don’t believe that meditating on the suffering of others will do anything to actually improve the suffering of others? No problem.

Christians may have a hard time understanding just what this means. Basically, imagine someone walking into church and going ‘well, I don’t believe Jesus was the son of god, but he said some rather interesting things.’ Or ‘I don’t think god exists, but I like some of the moral precepts laid out in the bible.’ Is there any church that would accept this sort of thing without trying to completely convert them? Perhaps some unitarians.

Why is this important? Because I’m a scientist. I don’t want to follow some dogma. I want to discover reality as it really is. There is empirical evidence that certain types of meditation lead to tangible improvements. I’ve been able to confirm this through my own experimentation.

The second draw to Buddhism is that I see it as a way to hack your brain. I’m not going to say much more about that here.

There is a much more fundamental philosophical difference that draws me to Buddhism, and it stands in stark contrast to the philosophical basis for Christianity.

In Christianity, humans are fallible, and must be saved from on high. They have an external source for improvement.

Buddhists, on the other hand, understand that humans can improve themselves. Within each and every one of us is the potential for greater understanding, compassion, and enlightenment. Within you is the Buddha nature.

That’s a powerful idea, and one that I agree with completely. Not only that, but I think it’s a much healthier outlook on life than the self-loathing inherent in Christianity.

There is so much more that could be said on this topic and has been said. As always, this is just the way I see it.

Buddhism Buddhism, mindfulness

As the drama surrounding the release of ‘Expelled‘ continues to unfold, there seems to be a lot of confusion around the difference between Plagiarism and Copyright violations.

A copyright violation is when you take the copyrighted work of someone else and use it in a way that they have not given permission for. Want to video tape an NFL game and show a portion in a classroom? That’s a copyright violation. Want to copy a DVD and give it to a friend? Technically, that’s a copyright violation. IANAL, so the subtleties of copyright continue to elude me, but that’s the basics.

Plagiarism is where you take the work of someone else and claim it as your own. If you take a photograph off of flickr that has been released under a certain creative commons license and you claim it as your own, that is not a copyright violation. It is plagiarism. If you take a copy of my .NET Geotagging library and claim you have written it, that’s not a copyright violation, since I released it to the public domain. It is plagiarism.

Taking a video, recreating it without the authors permission, and claiming it as your own? That is both a copyright violation and plagiarism. You fail.

P.S.  This great explanation has been posted over at ERV in the comments:

What the fuck is the matter with those people???

It’s beginning to look like some of them think that this is what scientists actually do all day. They muck about a bit, copy each other’s work, and ad lib their own bullshit on top. More cargo cult science. “Waah, why isn’t it working for us?” I don’t know how they are missing the parts where we collect new data and do experiments.

Philosophy copyright, education, Science

“But Science doesn’t have all the the answer, you know”

I’ve been told this so many times, usually by Christians trying to convert me back to Christianity. I usually respond with something along the lines of ‘who says it needs to?’ but today, I’ve been reading something that has changed my perspective on this a bit.

For the first time, I really understand that these people think I’ve made science my ‘religion’ of sorts. This idea was so absurd to me that I never really gave it that much weight. Science as a religion? It’s crazy! Science is the opposite of everything religion is.

But the statement is pretty crazy with that even. It implies that where science fails to answer some questions, Christianity succeeds. This is simply not the case, unless you find the answer ‘god did it’ satisfying. It doesn’t satisfy me at all; in fact, it only leads to more questions, questions that have no answers.

Yes, science leaves us full of questions, and the more we learn about the universe, the more questions we have, and the more complicated they become. This is across all people, though. Science applies to every one. Being a Christian, or being a member of some other religion doesn’t make science ‘false.’ No matter your beliefs, the questions of science are equally valid due to it’s objective nature.

Thus the problem is revealed. Even if I did become a Christian again, I would only add to the questions I already had, questions that can’t be answered. Why would I want to muddle my life like that? Why would I want to split my attention like that? No thanks.

Their objection regarding the answers science hold fails.

Philosophy Atheism, christianity, Science

I’m getting kind of tired of people scoffing at the idea that science can make things more beautiful. For some reason, many people seem to think that knowing about something makes it less beautiful. I call bullshit, and it’s very easy to demonstrate my position.

Would the people who think understanding the world develops dullness think the same about people? Do people grow less beautiful the more you get to know them? You see a girl. She’s pretty, but doesn’t necessarily stand out. But as you talk to her and get to know her, does her beauty grow or diminish? In my experience, it’s nearly always the former; the exceptions are those rare occasions when you actually have a pretty ugly and hateful person. Ann Coulter comes to mind.

Why would it be any different for a flower, or a rainbow, or the night school, or the sunrise? Or any of the other endless examples of beautiful phenomena that we encounter everyday. It seems to me that looking staring at a sunrise without really wondering how it works is missing much of the experience. While it’s not necessarily a shallow experience, it’s certainly not as full as it could be.

It’s more meaningful to me to look at something that I have some understanding of and wonder at it. The feelings are intensified through knowledge, not dulled.

Maybe for some people, it’s the opposite. Maybe they view the world fundamentally different. That wouldn’t be terribly surprising. If that’s who they are, that’s reality, and there’s no use denying it. But I really would like you to stop scoffing at my own way, and to assume that you have it all figured out. If there is one thing that true understanding cultivates more than anything else, it’s the humility that you really know very little at all.

That’s something we can all learn from.

Philosophy Atheism, beauty, Science

Here is a recent article in Seed, written by Thomas W. Martin, entitled, Scientific Literacy and the Habit of Discourse. Excerpt:

Science eventually yields impressive answers because it compels smart people to incessantly try to disprove the ideas generated by other smart people.

Can we make this required reading?

Mr. Martin hits upon another issue I have a real pet peeve about:

In the present cultural climate, altering one’s beliefs in response to anything (facts included) is considered a sign of weakness.

Political races especially have illustrated this perfectly. It’s a side effect of not having any popularly accepted standard of truth. People would prefer to deny reality itself in order to ‘feel-good’ or, in the political arena, appeal to some sub-group of people.

Philosophy education, Science