Quote: National Security

"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom."

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"How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?"

Dwight D. Eisenhower
34th President of the United States
14.10.1890 - 28.03.1969

A new star in comedy heaven

I'm watching American TV quite often because they have good comedy shows. For a few weeks now I'm following the shows of a new comedian. She is really funny! And the media seem to like her, too! I didn't see a comedian getting more airtime and being more discussed in the news. Her name is Sarah Palin.
In her shows and interviews she pretends to be a running mate for McCain and tries to show American voters the pitfalls in conservative politics. With her excessive standpoint she points out where stupidity, narrow-mindedness and fundamentalist viewpoints could lead, when combined in an influential political person.

If only the majority of Americans would see it that way. Let's come back into the real world. Unfortunately roughly 133791000 Americans (21.10) see it differently. For them, Sarah Palin is no reason to vote against McCain as president. Lately, not a single day passed where I didn't ask myself: Why?
American media and conservative politicians deliberately create a culture of fear which, as a new study suggests, might play into the Republican's hands. But that doesn't explain why conservative voters would vote for somebody who is clearly incapable of running a country.

Let's see which traits Sarah Palin has: She likes hunting, is fundamentalist christian (or close), "hockey-mum" and follows small-town values.
This is not a post against religious views, but is somebody who labelled the war in Iraq a "task that is from God" and wants to teach creationism in biology class able to make decisions on a global scale? Who does God want us to attack next? Iran? Pakistan? I think that history has shown that we don't want one of the biggest military forces on the planet in the hands of a (quasi-)theocratic government.
So what else do we have? I googled for small-town values. I wanted to know what exactly they are, but there seems to be a bit of confusion online. I couldn't find a comprehensive list! What comes to my mind when I'm talking about small-town values is narrow-mindedness, babbitts, often subliminal racism and cronyism.
If I look at that list, Sarah Palin apparently really would bring small-town values to Washington. After all, she managed to put those values to good use as major and governor. "She has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance." (NYT). This often happens on a local scale, but are 8 years of small-town values in the White House not enough? Do we really have to push it to the next level?
Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to vote in the USA. But I really beg the American voters to think before making that cross in 2 weeks. A president doesn't need small town-values, but the ability to solve global problems. A president has to be able to make informed decisions which are not dictated by the oil industry and religious fanatics. Science, almost forgotten as a source of information in the last 8 years, can help there if it is not suppressed by political and/or religious agendas. In a global economy, one of the most important issues is an intelligent foreign policy. And being able to see foreign countries from your porch doesn't improve these abilities. It only means you have a property with a good view.

So to all the "real" Americans: Stop being pro-American and start being pro-intelligence and pro-skepticism. America has lost a lot of credibility the last years. You can make a change!

Quote: Web of Discourses

"The strangest and most wonderful construction in the whole animal world are the amazing, intricate constructions made by the primate, Homo sapiens. Each normal individual of this species makes a self. Out of its brain, it spins a web of words and deeds, and, like the other creatures, it doesn't have to know what it's doing; it just does it. The web protects it, just like the snail's shell, and provides it livelihood, just like the spider's web, and advances its prospects for sex, just like the bowerbird's bower. Unlike a spider, an individual human doesn't just exude its web; more like a beaver, it works hard to gather the materials out of which it builds it's protective fortress. Like a bowerbird, it appropriates many found objects which happen to delight it - or its mate - including many that have been designed by others for other purposes.
[...]
So wonderful is the organisation of a termite colony that it seemed to some observers that each termite colony had to have a soul (Marais, 1937). We now understand that its organisation is simply the result of a million semi-independent little agents, each itself an automaton, doing its thing. So wonderful is the organisation of a human self that to many observers it has seemed that each human being had a soul, too: a benevolent Dictator ruling from Headquarters."

Daniel C. Dennett
(in "Conciousness Explained", 1991)

Speaking English

Traveling was different when I was younger. You decided where to go and then prepared by learning enough of the language to survive the most important everyday situations. I always had a small guide book with me with the most important sentences and was proud, when I was able to order my food without having to open it. Of course I knew English at the time (although admittedly, I was far from fluent), but often the people I spoke to didn't know it or were only as good as I was.
So the natural thing to do was to learn as much native language as possible.

Times have changed.
Living in England has improved my ability to speak English by a lot and suddenly, I expect all people in the world to understand and speak it as well. I became as arrogant as many American or English people when it is about traveling. Having English as the world's language doesn't necessarily mean that everybody is able to speak it. Of course this slowly changes. I recently visited Finland and even in the countryside, almost everybody spoke clear English. But does that mean I don't have to learn foreign languages any more? What am I going to miss?

Language evolved alongside with the culture of an area and therefore can be a mirror which reflects many cultural aspects and differences. The way natives use the language and how it differs from your own can hint to cultural conventions and attitudes. Learning a language shows people that you respect and are interested in their culture and their way of living. In many countries (there are exceptions, e.g. France) people are genuinely pleased when you try to speak to them in their tongue and make an effort, even if it is far from being perfect. They often help and correct you and many times it can be the start of an interesting conversation.

Living in an English-speaking world should not be an excuse for not making the effort. If you really want to experience a country, there is no better way than learning its language and trying to speak to its people. And I know that it's often not possible, because the visit is to short or on short notice (e.g. business meetings). But especially in these situations we should always remember, that we are the guests in this country. We should never expect the natives to understand us if we didn't make the effort. It makes things easier for us if they do, but if there are language barriers, we are the ones who have to apologise

Quotes: George Carlin

"I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
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“Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist”
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"Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong."
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"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
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“I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.”
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“If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little”
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(more, more and even more!)

George Carlin

Final Curtain

"Hey, did you hear? George Carlin died!"
"George Carlin? I just saw him yesterday!"
"Yeah.......didn't help! He died anyway!"
Unfortunately this conversation was bound to take place two days ago. George Carlin, one of the greatest stand-up comedians of our time, died of heart failure in Santa Monica, California. And although it is all but impossible to write an obituary for every great person that passes away, I have to write one for him before his friends delete his entry from their address books in 6 weeks.

As George, I don't believe in an almighty, invisible GOD and therefore not in an afterlife, heaven or hell. But I do believe that people live on after their deaths: In the minds and the memories of people who knew them. And nowadays technology can help a little bit as YouTube, Wikipedia and other pages in the internet can act as external memories.
And lucky for us, George left us many there that can help, big time!
I only saw the first video of him on the web a few months ago and hardly ever enjoyed a video that much! Perhaps that's the reason why the news of his death hit me hard. I know that there a no more new shows coming!

Now that he gives less than a shit about the sanctity of life let's see who this comedian was:
His life is well documented on Wikipedia and I don't have to repeat that here, so let's look at his shows!
He said the seven words you can't say and even things no one ever said before. He had a lot of good business ideas worth looking at! He knew, he was ahead of his time, unfortunately only 1.5 hours. He knew we can't save this planet and was asking about the difference between abortion and an omelette.
He was also very efficient! He managed to slash the 10 commandments down to 3 by removing unnecessary redundancy. On the other hand, he was very confused about phrases and words constantly changing!
Google for videos of his shows and you find many more. Whenever I go to YouTube I find new ones that I don't know yet. Take the chance to get to know him and make sure the memory lives on!

Now on the off-chance that there is a heaven and a God, I can only hope this God has more humour than his self-appointed clerical workers down here who didn't get the best of the bargain in Carlin's shows. But anyway, if Carlin really went to heaven, let's go to the topless bar near the airport and bow to the man who said the things many of us should say more often!

You've been labelled!

If we look at a scenery, all that our eyes deliver are colours and intensities. But what we consciously see are trees, bushes, fields, cars, and so on.
Our brain extracts features in real time from the eye's input and matches it with objects in its database. This matching process is amazingly fast and efficient. We recognize an object as tree even if we've never seen a tree with this exact structure before. The brain tries to match anything to something it knows.
This ability is vital for us. If we face a tiger in the jungle, we are dependent on the speed our brain recognizes the animal as "Tiger". "Animal" or "Cat" would not be enough for some people, as trying to feed it wouldn't go as expected.

So we can roughly say (many scientists and philosopher will hate me for that) that the eyes deliver a picture and the brain labels everything it can find. What reaches our consciousness, is a picture with a lot of post-it notes on.
But it doesn't stop there! These post-it notes not only tell us the name for this object, they also tell us everything we know about this object. So if we can see "Chair" with the property "brown" and "grained" attached to it, we might also find "hard", "able to hold average person", "not painted" and "uncomfortable". Our brain matched the picture with "wooden chair" and gave us all the information we can remember from past encounters. This works with everything. We see a glass and know it breaks easily, we see a keyboard and know we can type on it, we see a stranger and know he's an idiot .... ok, I'll come back to that later.

One interesting observation is that the more familiar the object is, the less we question these post-it notes. Or to be more precise, the better an object is defined in our brains, the more we trust the attributes. Is that a problem?
Just before World Cup 2006 in Germany, an artist placed footballs all over Berlin. The balls were chained to nearby walls and looked exactly like footballs. Except for the fact that they were made from concrete. People who passed by, got the note "football" with the attributes "round", "leather" and fatally "can be kicked".
The artist was arrested after countless broken feet.
This is just one example were this labelling goes wrong. By changing the attributes of a familiar object we can easily trick the process. The more familiar, the easier.
Just imagine a chair made out of foam but covered with paint to make it look like wood. Would you test the attribute "able to hold average person" before sitting down?

So we know we constantly get post-its that are generally correct but can contain wrong information. In everyday life (except you live together with a clown or a Youtube lover with a camera) this doesn't matter as we very rarely encounter foam chairs.
But we should keep in mind, that we have to reassess these attributes as things change constantly. So should our post-its.

Now let's come back to the special object mentioned above: Humans. Our labeling machine labels everything, also humans. What is on these labels? If it is a friend for example, this could include name, job, history, wife's name, connection to other friends and so on. This is ok, but think about the "closest match" process. If we see a stranger, this process also tries to find as many attributes as possible. And there, things go wrong. We immediately label people as soon as we see them. But you might add, if we get to know them, we change the labels and keep them up to date, don't we? Do we? Here the fact that we don't constantly test attributes traps us! And things do go wrong.

The process that is vital to us in so many situations, gets in our way. It is sometimes really difficult to change the image we have of somebody. They are labeled. And the fact that human-to-human contact is a mutual process reinforces our dilemma. If we react strangely because of an overhasty label, they label us differently in return.
Many of you just thought "Oh, I'm not that bad". Really? If you see somebody with a beard and a turban, do you thing "Ah, muslim" or "Hmm, perhaps muslim"?
If you see somebody with a suit, do you think "Could be a hippie on the way to work"?

We label all the time and this is good and often vital for us. But we have to learn to constantly reassess the attributes we gave to objects. Especially to humans. Attributes for people we just met is a good starting point for that. Apart from the attribute "holds gun" perhaps.

Quote: Only a few decades

“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?”

Richard Dawkins
(in "Unweaving the Rainbow", 1998)

Alice in Wonderland

I'm sure if you look straight over the screen, you can see a wall. It looks (depending on the office you sit in) more or less solid, has a certain colour and you just start asking yourself why the heck this wall could be interesting! Think about the things you know about this wall: We all know this wall consists of different molecules and if we look even closer, atoms. For the sake of simplicity, let's think of atoms as spheres made of tiny electrons circling around a core (called nucleus). The size of the atom or it's nucleus depends on its type. Carbon for example has a atom size of 70 picometres (=0.00000000007 metres) and a nucleus diameter of about 2 femtometres (=0.00000000000002 metres). That means the carbon atom is about 35000 times wider than it's nucleus. If you imagine the nucleus to be the size of a football, the electrons would circle in a distance of roughly 4025 metres (=2.5 miles) around it. This means a lot of empty space! To emphasize this point a bit more: The volume of the whole atom is about 42875000000000 times bigger than the volume of the core!! So if we could look inside an atom, we wouldn't see much, would we?
Let's come back to our wall! The wall consists of many different atoms with different sizes. For this thought experiment, we assume for simplicity that the atoms in the wall are stuck together like a lot of small balls. We are looking at an awful lot of balls here! But we just calculated that an atom is mostly empty space, so a lot of atoms together (with small spaces in between them) are just more empty space dotted by very small nuclei.
So why do we see a solid wall? We are also made of atoms, so if we are only considering cores and electrons, I should be able to walk straight through! With the odd wall electron bouncing into one of my nuclei or electrons and vice versa! A bit of wiggling should do, to resolve this.
But I can't.
Why not? As it's mostly empty space, what keeps me from seeing through? As the atoms themselves have no colour, where does it come from? Why do the materials have different properties? They all consist of atoms, don't they? Ok, different types different properties, but diamonds and charcoal are made of exactly the same type! Would you put a piece of charcoal on a ring?

Even the most boring thing in the world (and I guess most people would consider a standard wall pretty boring) holds enough open questions for us to make it appear magical. We just stopped looking at items that we can see around us all the time . If you take the time and look closely at them, they all hold a door ready that leads into a magical world.

There are always more questions and there always will be. Don't stop asking them!
You might not find speaking white rabbits or hookah smoking caterpillars, but it is going to be a mind-opening and magical journey for sure!

Sven

P.S: I found the same idea in "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. It seems I'm not the only one looking at walls in a strange way..... ;-)

Quote: Small Lies

'Thank you. Now...tell me...'
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM?
'Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?'
NO
'Oh come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact!'
THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.
She turned on him.
'It's been a long night, Grandfather! I'm tired and I need a bath! I don't need silliness!'
THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.
'Really? Then what would have happened, pray?'
A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.
They walked in silence for a moment.
'Ah,' said Susan dully. 'Trickery with words. I would have thought you'd have been more literal-minded than that.'
I AM NOTHING IF NOT LITERAL-MINDED. TRICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE HUMANS LIVE.
'All right,' said Susan. 'I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable.'
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
'Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little--'
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
'So we can believe the big ones?'
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
'They're not the same at all!'
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET-- Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME . . . SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
'Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point--'
MY POINT EXACTLY.

Terry Pratchett
(in "Hogfather", 1996)