Jorrit Wiersma writes about why it is hard to explain his research, and by proxy Relativity theory.#

In theory, (special) relativity is very simple. Einstein simply postulated that the speed of light is the maximum possible speed and that this speed is the same everywhere. The rest of the theory follows from these two simple assumptions. But the consequences can be quite weird. One of them is that an object that is moving with a speed close to the light speed will seem shorter than it is at rest. Another, perhaps even weirder, effect is that particles that normally decay within a very short time can live much longer if they travel with very high speeds (because in their own rest frame much less time passes).

So why do we think that these kinds of things are weird? They are just laws of nature. In reality it is absolutely normal for things to behave like this. Well, okay, the answer is quite simple, of course: we think those things are weird because we never experience them first hand. Things around us (much less we ourselves) never move with speeds close to the speed of light. Perhaps they reach the sound speed, but that is still a thousand times slower.

When I want to explain to you how (classical) gravity works then it's simple. I talk a bit about falling apples and how soccer balls fly through the air and it's all pretty much intuitively clear what I mean. But when I want to explain that particles that move with the speed of light only emit radiation along their direction of movement then I'll be struggling.

The reason it is hard to explain things that are unrelated to anything else is that words do not convey meaning completely. They are just sign posts. And if put up a sign post over a hill that you've never been over, it's just like I never put it up at all. We have to find a road you're familiar with and go from there.

Richard links to Why Your Wife Won't Have Sex With You, a blog about the subject.#

Michael Feldman writes about what he wants his politicians to be like.#

Where are the public figures (I cannot deign to call them "politicians") who champion Truth and Transparency? Who dare to challenge even the fundamental paradigms of the day, and have the power to reach into the hearts of each and every citizen an touch them where they live?

Who was the last American politician who could write like Robert Kennedy? Or like Martin Luther King? Will we never again get to hear a President read something scrawled on the back of an envelope, and which turns out to be the Gettysburg Address? My guess is that the answer is yes - when we elect a true Blogger to the White House.

[...]

The problem with the American political system has become the essential nature of those it calls to service. Fundamentally, they are individuals drawn to the acquisition and exercise of power. They are super-straight, type A alpha males, and in my opinion this is not the kind of person I want making decisions for me. Compounding this perverted prerequisite is the political process itself, which guarantees that even should some truly righteous person feel the call to public service, by the time they reach the top their souls are so deeply mortgaged that they have lost their moral compasses.

Joi Ito writes aouthe the Dalai Lama's dinner speech he attended.#

At the end, he took questions and answers. A young Japanese man talked about how he was trying to change the world one person at a time and how he hoped Japan would plan in important role in bringing religion and science, East and West together. He asked whether it was OK to make a movie about how the Dalai Lama was reborn in Japan to help lead this movement.

The Dalai Lama smiled and said that the Dalai Lama Institution existed only as long as the people of Tibet felt it was necessary. He has a prayer that as long as his soul was active, he would dedicate himself to helping human-kind everywhere. He said that if for some reason the people of Tibet decided that they didn't need a Dalai Lama any longer and he could find suitable parents in Japan, it was quite possible that he would be reborn in Japan to carry on his mission to help human-kind.

Tony Pierce writes about his girlfriend, Anna.#

people ask me why i dont like her husband and i say easy, just look at him, or better yet (or worse yet) listen to him.

they say whats wrong with listening to him.

i say, if i was given the ability to sing, do you think i would sing that sort of crap? would you sing that sort of crap?

i say, if i was married to her, dont you think i would be wearing tshirts that said anna on it.

i would.

and on the back it would say fucker.

Doug Miller replies to my conversation about the death of old institutions and the creation of new ones.#

Oddly enough, I was thinking along similar lines this morning before I read Jay's post - and about how my dreams and hopes and aspirations used to be centered around changing the world. I'm less concerned about changing the world these days, and less convinced of my ability to do so. I'm more concerned about just hanging on and making through to another day. It's tough to be engaged in changing the world when you're mostly concerned with day-to-day things, like paying the mortgage and your kid's education.

I'm awful glad though, that Jay and his generation are thinking about changing the world - it's their turn to do so. Changing the world is a game for the young - the young and those who have enough power and wealth that they don't have to worry much about the day-to-day. It takes energy and attention and focus and enthusiasm, all things that an aging father of two with a new job and too little savings finds in short supply.

I'm glad that Doug will write about his thoughts, because being young and unwise I strive to absorb as much wisdom as possible from elders. I'd like to also note that I think the idea of "changing the world" is flawed. You can't change the world, you can just change yourself and show the world how great it worked for you. Maybe then it'll follow suit and if not, at least you're happy.

Gandhi: "Become the change you want to see in the world."

Daniel Drezner writes about the important debate about pornography.#

My point is not to suggest that Joyner's completely off-base -- despite what I just said, I have the same preferences regarding the sensory advantages of real women. However, my sneaking suspicion that some men prefer two-dimensional fantasy to three-dimensional reality. David Amsden makes a similar point in his recent New York Magazine cover story. An example that eerily echoes Wolf:

Over beers recently, a 26-year-old businessman friend shocked me by casually remarking, "Dude, all of my friends are so obsessed with Internet porn that they can't sleep with their girlfriends unless they act like porn stars." A 20-year-old college student who bartends at a popular Soho lounge describes how an I-porn-filled adolescence shaped his perceptions of sex. "Looking at Internet porn was pretty much my sex education," he says. "I mean, in school, it was just, 'Here's a gigantic wooden dildo, and now we're putting a condom on it,' whereas on the Internet, you had it all. I remember the first time I had sex, my first thought as it was happening was, Oh, this is pornography. It was a kind of out-of-body experience. I was really uncomfortable with sex for a while." (emphasis on original)

A Beautiful Butterfly#

Faré responds to a letter from David Madore.#

David:

Suis-je cinglé, d'aller regarder un 'blog libertaire si je n'ai pas pas beaucoup d'intérêt pour ça, et en tout cas si je ne suis pas un libertaire (ou alors un libertaire << modéré >>, ce qui est un euphémisme pour dire que le verre est aux trois quarts vide) ? Peut-être, mais est-ce que l'intérêt d'une argumentation n'est pas, justement, de convaincre les gens qui ne sont pas déjà convaincus ?

Et en l'occurrence, je ne sais pas si tu t'en rends compte, mais tout ce que tu racontes n'a aucune chance de rallier à tes idées quelqu'un qui n'y serait pas déjà acquis (bon, ce n'est peut-être pas le but, je ne sais pas) ; tout ce que tu risques de faire, c'est de le braquer contre toi à force de troller (<< troller >> dans un sens neutre, je ne prétends pas que tu racontes des conneries, mais que tu cherches délibérément à provoquer, ce qui est parfois - mais pas toujours, et certainement pas ici - une bonne façon de convaincre), de troller au-dessus de leur shocklevel.

David says that he's not really sure he agrees with the libertarian idea and wants to read what Faré writes so that he can believe and be convinced. He says, 'Isn't it the whole purpose of stating an argument to convince someone who is not convinced?' But, Faré generally does not write about introductory ideas and generally criticizes the libertarian idea and tries to make it better. So, he thinks that Faré is awfully negative, and thus unconvincing:

Maintenant, si tu veux persuader les gens que les idéaux libéraux sont beaux, il faut leur communiquer une vision, et pas une frustration. Il faut parler du bien, et pas seulement du mal. Il faut les rassurer sur leurs peurs et pas les titiller sur leurs croyances. Il faut leur donner de l'espoir et pas de la haine. Et tu échoues à tout cela parce que tu n'essaies même pas.

David says you must show beautiful and wonderful libertarianism is. Share a vision not a frustration with the vision. Give hope not hatred. Faré, he says, does not even try to do this so he fails.

Faré responds,

Je me rends parfaitement compte que mon argumentation aura peu d'impact sur les personnes qui ne sont pas déjà convaincues, ou du moins, qui ne sont pas déjà fortement réceptives aux idées libérales. Mais si convaincre autrui est sans doute un but à long-terme de l'argumentation, ce n'en est certes pas le seul intérêt. Pour moi, l'intérêt immédiat de cette exploration conceptuelle est de mieux comprendre le sujet, et d'aider ceux qui partagent mes aspirations à mieux comprendre eux aussi, et peut-être même à sauter un ou deux pas conceptuels. Mon public est restreint, donc, mais il n'est pas vide.

En fait, la prémisse implicite à ta question est que mon idéologie serait quelque chose de fixe, bien défini, connu, et qu'il ne s'agirait "plus qu'à" argumenter pour convaincre (ou éventuellement se faire convaincre, ou accepter un désaccord, ou dé-poser une question). Alors qu'au contraire, mon idéologie est mouvante; lle évolue, elle se raffine, elle change plus que jamais. C'est en écrivant que, pour purifier les concepts, j'atteins mes propres shock-levels (tiens, d'où ça vient déjà, cette notion de shock-level que j'ai vue employée d'abord par Izys? Ah, d'Eliezer!)

Faré's purpose is not to convince anyone, he sees his writing as a way to formulate his ideas and better understand them himself. David makes the mistake of (a) assuming Faré is trying to do something he is not and (b) suggesting that there is a fixed philosophy behind Faré's writing that is unchanging and can be "understood." It is not something that can be fixed in place because it grows with the needs of the thinker.

----

I'm writing this because I think that Faré's process of thought is very useful and helpful in thinking about anything. You must accept and embrace the change that is constant in the universe. Reading and writing helps me jump start my brain and develop my ideas.

Christopher Lydon interviews Jim Behrle on Robert Lowell.#

"At first I thought you couldn't really be a poet unless you'd killed yourself," recalls one of the liveliest blog poets in our town, Jim Behrle. [...] "I rode that train into Boston," Jim remembers, knowing that "there was a poet who wandered around here. His father died here. It made me feel connected to a new world that was peopled with poets." Lowell fortified the fancy, Jim says, when he became a poet, that "I was joining the brightest ring of angels."

I love you, but just so-so.#

Why is Allah so wonderful?#

Let Allah switch gears now and tell you something else that is on his mind. He is loath to mention this since he realizes how often it is that he speaks of infidel women endangering his pants, and he does not want you thinking he is just some kind of cosmic horndog or whatever. But credit must be given when credit is due, so here it is: Is it just Allah or is Virginia Postrel kind of looking aaa-ight? Fellas, Allah knows you shall have his back on this one. It is a great affront to god that a woman so saucy should also be learned, but there is the problem with your women in a nutshell, America. Pro: They are looking good. Con: They attend school. You must accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Often has Allah had this same thought while contemplating the loveliness of his own imaginary girlfriend--WHO, you shall be surprised to learn, apparently has something going on on the side with a certain demonic Asian Jew. It is bad enough that you have deflowered half of the ummah, Jew, but you DARE to mack on Allah's woman? WHY? Never shall Allah give her up voluntarily, unless of course a terrible "accident" should suddenly befall the Satan Eric Olsen and Allah's favorite Hebrew suddenly end up back on the market. Ahem. Until then, though, how do you propose to compete with the creator of worlds? You, a smooth-talking playa with a hype blog skin, versus the master of all he surveys? Oho! But fine. If you want to throw down with The Man, he is happy to oblige you. All Allah will say is that you best bring robots, chump. Until then, Allah wishes you to know that he loves it when she calls him big pop-pa, yeeeaahhh.

Strange Women Lying in Ponds calls Allah a pussy. Why? He doesn't fight fair.#

Only a wimpy little girly-man deity would send car bombers to blow up innocent civilians. I mean, Jehovah slew entire armies, and he did it standing toe to toe with the heathen enemy like a real man-deity. Even David slew Goliath in a fair fight. You don't read stories about David disguising himself as a woman and hiding a bomb belt under his hijab.

But Allah? No, he has to be, shall we say, "different?"

Kaye Trammell makes a very interesting point that I hadn't thought of yet.#

Today's question was asked by Dr. Richard Ferdig about implementing blogging into the curriculum.

I won't bore you with the theory that I used as a framework for a pedagogical approach. But, I have been thinking about the question a lot since I turned it in. I've thought about how there is no "one" approach to bringing blogs into the classroom and that each class (science, journalism, history) would need a different goal for project blog.

But the thing that has me most stumped is a bit more historical. I wonder if there was this much discussion about the proper way to teach a new technology when books became more accessible to the common man. Yes, blogging is different because honestly anyone can blog but not everyone could write a book. Even so, the greater question is this: was the technology & it's ability to shape the learning process questioned?

Faré writes about believing in the lies the government tells us.#

A friend of his on a libertarian mailing list wrote, 'The French State is corrupt and poorly managed.'

Faré notes that the statesman are intelligent and very effective, but not effective in the way you think. Quoting himself:

Non, non, non. Il ne faut jamais sous-estimer l'adversaire. Les hommes de l'Etat français sont d'excellents gestionnaires; simplement ils ne gèrent pas pour nous, mais pour eux-mêmes. Et à ce jeu, la preuve qu'ils sont excellents, c'est qu'ils sont au pouvoir, et que leur pouvoir est plus grand que jamais. L'administration est très efficace. Simplement elle n'est pas efficace selon ses buts affichés, ceux qu'elle martèle dans sa propagande. Mais elle est efficace dans ses buts réels, ceux desquels dépendent sa survie et son extension: créer des problèmes pour lesquels on l'appelera comme solution plutôt que de se rendre compte qu'elle en est la source.

En affirmant que l'Etat est inefficace, vous commettez la présomption fatale de l'étatisme, qui est nécessaire et suffisante à vous ranger parmi les ennemis de la liberté: vous admettez implicitement que l'Etat a un rôle positif à jouer, un but louable, une cause pour laquelle il est inefficace mais pourrait être efficace; vous vous en prenez aux hommes en place sans remettre en cause le système. Bref, vous êtes assimilé, vous faites partie du Borg.

Faré is saying that you should never underestimate your enemies. The leaders and managers of the French state are excellent - but they work for themselves, rather than the people. His proof of this effectiveness and efficiency is that they are powerful and large. The problem is that what they claim their goals are, the goals they hammer into the brains of citizens with propaganda, are very different than the true aims of their organization. He writes that their true aim is to perpetuate the system by creating problems that the State is the solution for and avoid problems where it is obvious that the State is the source of the problem.

Faré criticizes the idea that the State is ineffective because you are admitting that you have been assimilated by the "party of the Borg" by agreeing that that the State has "a positive role to play, a creditable goal, and a cause for which it is ineffective but could be effective." You should always call the system in for questioning when it is serving itself rather than you.

Chris Bertram asks a question that appeared in a paper by Ray Sorensen (PDF) about gambling with the devil.#

You are in hell and facing an eternity of torment, but the devil offers you a way out, which you can take once and only once at any time from now on. Today, if you ask him to, the devil will toss a fair coin once and if it comes up heads you are free (but if tails then you face eternal torment with no possibility of reprieve). You don't have to play today, though, because tomorrow the devil will make the deal slightly more favourable to you (and you know this): he'll toss the coin twice but just one head will free you. The day after, the offer will improve further: 3 tosses with just one head needed. And so on (4 tosses, 5 tosses, ….1000 tosses …) for the rest of time if needed. So, given that the devil will give you better odds on every day after this one, but that you want to escape from hell some time, when should accept his offer?

The comments to this post are very interesting. One reader (ayjay - no permalink) notes that the question is asking what you should do, rather than what you would do. He says that it is up for argumentation about whether or not you could be a rational person in hell where "you are at every instant in torment that exceeds anything you could possibly imagine from your earthly experience."

Another comment in which Jonathan Ichikawa writes...

Suppose it's now day k. I could take the chance now, or wait until tomorrow. By choosing to wait until tomorrow, I incur the disutility of an additional day of torture — but I also gain some finite probability of an infinite utility — to leave hell. Therefore, this probability should carry greater weight in a prudential judgement than the finite day of torture, and I should wait another day.

Of course, if this is right, it suggests that we should NEVER take the devil's offer… and that's pretty clearly just dumb. I'm not sure what this tells us, other than that this is an interesting question.

Oliver Willis on "When the Left Goes Liberal Bashing."#

It's sort of the Alan Colmes-ing of the left, where they nod and pretend to give a damn what you think while laughing it up behind your back when you play patsy. I'm not saying that Michael is an idiot, it's quite obvious he outweighs me in the smarts department - but I think what he doesn't get is that these guys ain't our pals.

Democrats and the left in general have for too long allowed themselves only enough latitude to play in the right's sandbox. That was both the blessing and curse of the Clinton era, because while he played the game their way he was smart enough to beat them at it. As it is now, sidling up to these guys and giving in to them on their caricatures of the left ("too smart", "too wimpy", "too earnest") weakens whatever liberalism there is.

Camilo links to Scientific American on the Holographic universe.#

Ask anybody what the physical world is made of, and you are likely to be told "matter and energy."

Yet if we have learned anything from engineering, biology and physics, information is just as crucial an ingredient. The robot at the automobile factory is supplied with metal and plastic but can make nothing useful without copious instructions telling it which part to weld to what and so on. A ribosome in a cell in your body is supplied with amino acid building blocks and is powered by energy released by the conversion of ATP to ADP, but it can synthesize no proteins without the information brought to it from the DNA in the cell's nucleus. Likewise, a century of developments in physics has taught us that information is a crucial player in physical systems and processes. Indeed, a current trend, initiated by John A. Wheeler of Princeton University, is to regard the physical world as made of information, with energy and matter as incidentals.

The Morning News has new endings to the "Hook" story.#

Nothing says Halloween like a gutted teenager, or some other urban legend told around the candy bag. But hasn't everyone already heard the ending? The Writers and Editors band together for a dozen new ways to finish your story.

One night a year American children are actually encouraged to ask strangers for candy, so obviously scary stories are a part of our culture, something we begin hearing from the cradle. But most are stock from the barrel: who doesn't know the one about the guy with a hook for a hand, slaughtering teenagers post-coitus? New stories are needed, or at least, new endings.

Or maybe, a dozen new endings? To celebrate Halloween, we asked all our available Contributing Writers and Editors to complete the following urban legend/horror story. The first half is provided, and then follows each writer's ending.

My favourite endings are: Kevin Fanning, Tobias Seamon, Kevin Guilfoile, and Leslie Harpold.

AKMA makes me want to go to Church and become a minister so I can believe in how great the world through his eyes is.#

In spite of all the learned have said
We hear the voices of the dead.

This is the beginning of a favorite poem of mine, John Hollander's "The Widener Burying-Ground" (alluding to the name of the Harvard University library). The poem evokes a way of thinking about interpretation that disarms some of the imaginary barriers to rich, exhilarating interpretations of the texts our ancestors have left to us. We who preach are neither undertakers, who dress up still corpses as best we can, nor Frankenstinian scientists who shock a semblance of life into dead bodies. We who read poems and prophecies assimilate the words we read into our selves, and we renew their echo in a joyful, rich, responsible freedom to take up and resonate again.

Jenny Levine links to Ernest Miller who writes about Nosferatu.#

Released in silent black and white in 1922, Nosferatu is an unauthorized adaptation of the novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker and is widely considered one of the classics of cinema. Certainly, many think it is the best adaptation of Dracula in film, one of the most influential horror movies of all time and a masterpiece of Expressionist filmmaking. Thanks to copyright law, however, this film was very nearly lost to us (The Saga of Nosferatu).

Florence Stoker, widow of Bram Stoker (who had died in 1912), sued the producers of Nosferatu for infringement and won. As part of the 1925 decision, all copies of Nosferatu were to be destroyed. Most were. Over the next few years, any copies that became public were also destroyed. This may have meant the end of the film, except that a few isolated copies managed to survive Florence Stoker's death in 1937.

Lisa Rein has a clip from the Daily Show on her blog.#

What the Shrub says, and what his press secretary clarifies later, is that it's the Navy's fault for misrepresenting that the war was over with the "Mission Accomplished" sign. (Despite the fact that all the Navy did was put up the sign that the White House printed up and brought to the event.)

Jon Stewart: "The White House is basically saying they can't be held responsible for what the Navy does with a sign that they made and brought to the ship."

A side note, Lisa calls Bush by the nickname "The Shrub" - Amazing.

Seth Gordon writes about the Tower of Babel.#

One striking thing about the Tower of Babel story (Genesis 11:1—9) is the absence of names. In between the geneology of the ancestors of the "seventy nations of the world" (10:1—32) and the line from Shem to Avram (11:10—32), there is a story in which "a man said to his fellow, 'let us make bricks…' And they said, 'Let us build a city and a tower … and make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered all over the earth'" (11:3—4). Why doesn't the text identify who invented the brick, or who first proposed building the city and tower?

Today, when political theorists model how people act in society, it is popular to treat every behavior, even behavior that seems altruistic and civic-minded, as an person's attempt to advance his or her individual self-interest. (The truly au courant, of course, talk about genes promoting their own self-interest.) Two and three hundred years ago, philosophers were more sophisticated. Having seen the brutal wars between Catholics and Protestants in Europe, they understood, among other things, the human capacity for selfless cruelty. People do horrible things in the name of Great Causes that they would never imagine doing for their personal benefit.

Sébastien Paquet quotes from a piece by Philip K. Dick.#

Here's an interesting text by science-fiction author Philip K. Dick that starts out examining key questions he's been asking himself for all his career - "What is reality?" and "What is the authentic human?" - and segues into rather strange thoughts on theology and the (non-)existence of time. The origin of the quote "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." is explained near the beginning.

I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe—and I am dead serious when I say this—do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.

Real Live Preacher continues of dramatized version of a story for the Book.#

Jesus spoke softly to the disciples. "I'm going to tell her the truth. She deserves that much."

"What do you mean, the truth?" asked James.

"I mean the truth. I'm going to tell her exactly why I cannot heal her daughter. I'm going to tell her what our people think of her people. And she's going to hate me. She will absolutely hate me, but hating me is better than her thinking that her daughter isn't worth healing."

Michael, of 2 Blow Hards, writes about "husbandly inadequacy."#

She stopped me here and said, "No, you were handing out unwanted advice."

"OK," I said, "but I only started handing out unwanted advice after you explicitly told me that you didn't need to do any venting."

And she made this response, with really impressive conviction: "But you should know that when I say I don't need to vent, I really do."

Not for the first time, I find myself ruefully marveling over the number of things a husband is supposed to know about how to handle his wife. Do you suppose there's a school where I might spend a semester working on remedial skills? In any case, I suspect it'll be a few days before I'm once again up to donning my cape and emerging as my alter ego, The Man Who Isn't Afraid of a Woman's Feelings.