Fire Deepak Chopra!

Today on the Huffingpost, noted crazy person and charlatan Deepak Chopra has an essay pronouncing the Good News that he, finally, has found the soul. In eight pages of questionable science, bad logic, and pseudo-philosophy, Chopra and his co-author Stuart Hameroff re-package the rather worn belief that questions of metaphysics and spirituality can be solved through a rather gross misapplication of quantum physics. The whole article is really a waste of time - five of my hours, to be precise - but is interesting in its masquerading of religious beliefs as scientific theories. It actually wouldn't be worth anyone's time if it were not for the fact that ascription to this kind of tripe is widespread, and, in my opinion, a symptom of our country's greater dissatisfaction with our medical industry. As more and more Americans are let down by "conventional" medicine, more and more of them will turn to this form of New Age-ism as providing easy answers to difficult questions.

Here are a few of the most egregious claims Chopra makes, with commentary. The complete essay is here.

All Apologies.

Can Science Explain the Soul?

(Joel: Stop right there. No. The answer is no, right? Because science, by definition, must have nothing to do with matters of the soul, right?)

Redefined by the new field of quantum biology, the soul could be the link that connects individuals to the universe, a dynamic connection that could explain how consciousness came about, and why the cosmos itself seems to mirror our own intelligence and creativity.

(Wait, I need to hypothesize the existence of the soul in order to explain my connection to the universe? Damn! That's why I haven't been able to move or touch things or communicate with other people! And maybe the cosmos mirrors your intelligence and creativity. If it mirrored mine, there would be way more Dino-Riders.)

Unable to fathom a rational explanation for out-of-body and/or after-death consciousness, modern science ignores such reports. (Boo! Modern Science! Boo!) Short-sighted skeptics reinforce the assumption that they are either subjective folly, hallucinations, or outside the scope of scientific proof.

(They are hallucinations. If by "hallucination" you mean "the perception of objects with no physical reality usually caused by a disorder of the nervous system." Also: Boo! Skeptical scientists and their need for "proof"! Boo!)

The central weakness here is that modern science can't explain normal, in-the-brain consciousness. (Really? It can't? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience) Despite detailed understanding of neuronal firings and synaptic transmissions mediating non-conscious, 'auto-pilot' perception and behaviors, there is no accounting for conscious awareness, free will or 'qualia' (QUALIA!) -- the essence of experienced perceptions, like the redness, texture and fragrance of a rose. Philosopher David Chalmers refers to this as the 'hard problem' -- explaining qualia and the subjective nature of feelings, awareness, and phenomenal experience, -- our 'inner life'.

(Yes, this is the Cartesian challenge, the foundation of Modern Western Philosophy. And here is a list of great thinkers who have provided non-magic based solutions to this problem: Kant, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, William James, J.L. Austin, G.E. Moore, Richard Rorty, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.)

It seems there's an edge, or boundary between two phases of reality -- the quantum and classical worlds, and that consciousness may have something to do with that edge, also known as 'quantum state reduction', or 'collapse of the quantum wave function.'

(A red flag immediately goes up at "two phases of reality... quantum and classical." This is playing with language, not putting forward scientific statements. Everyone knows that physics operates differently when dealing with very small objects (atoms) or very large objects (stars). But this does not lead to the claim of there existing "two phases of reality." It is an entirely unnecessary jump that violates scientific method and, if we make it, it makes us believe that there must be a soul, or something to solve this problem of the duality of mind and body. It's probably in the pineal gland.)

What is the universe composed of? (Facts, not things.) If we were to shrink in size, smaller and smaller, we would see that atoms are mostly empty, as is the space between them. If we shrink smaller and smaller, (Heelllllpppp meeeeeee.....) 25 orders of magnitude smaller than atoms, we would eventually come to Planck scale geometry, laden with information and patterns around the Planck length of 10 to the minus 33rd power centimeters. Descriptions of Planck scale geometry include quantum gravity, spin networks, twistor theory and string theory. Which of these is correct remains unknown.

(Oh, really? Because they're all impossible to test? And therefore not scientifically valid?)

But we do know that Planck scale information is down there. And despite the vast difference in scale, it can influence our world, as spacetime is organized like a hologram, or fractal, with information repeating nonlocally and at different scales. (We can't describe it, we don't know anything about it, but we know it must exist, and it can influence our "world." Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the monad.)

Penrose and Hameroff (This essay's co-author.) published several papers on Orch OR in the mid 1990s, prompting near-immediate skeptical rebuke from many directions, having offended computer/artificial intelligence proponents, neuroscientists, philosophers and physicists alike.

(From which we must "conclude" that there is a massive conspiracy to keep the truth hidden from the masses, right Mulder?)

Clinical studies of patients who survive cardiac arrest have revealed consistent reports of so-called near death experiences (NDEs), white light, being in a tunnel, serene calm, life review and in some cases out-of-body experiences (BOOBs). Many people report similar phenomena unrelated to cardiac arrest, e.g. associated with meditation, psychological trauma, drugs, or straightforward life events.

(All of these are interesting events that can be explained through non-"quantum" science. In fact, if you want to explain psychological trauma, it is much, much more useful to the patient to deal with this on a real, social, human level. Telling him that his trauma is due to his personal connection to quantum reality through infinitely small particles in his brain not only violates Occam's Razor, but is also unethical and dangerous.)

Conventional science rejects the possibility of an afterlife.
(AAAAAGH!!! NO! 100% MISLEADING, FALSE, NOT TRUE!)

Could consciousness exist outside the body after death?
(I don't know. Do green ideas sleep furiously?)

When the blood stops flowing and metabolic energy can no longer drive microtubule quantum coherence, (It's like I'm in an episode of Star-Trek...) quantum information relating to the subject's conscious experience and memory isn't necessarily lost or destroyed, but may dissipate to the universe at large, remaining entangled as a unified soul-like entity grounded in Planck scale geometry. (Woah slow down there, chief... is it "The Soul" or merely "a soul-like entity"? Get your pseudo-terminology straight, man.) If the body is resuscitated, the quantum information can return, and the subject may report an NDE or BOOB experience. If the body is not resuscitated and the patient dies, the entangled quantum information constituting the subject's consciousness and memory may persist in spacetime geometry, perhaps entering an embryo in the context of reincarnation. (Perhaps. Or maybe it just goes to that never-ending party in the sky.)

Science attempts to explore the ocean of consciousness from the outside. That is, the universe is taken to be 'out there', divorced from subjective experience and therefore measurable without personal bias. But if the brain is connected to the universe at the quantum level, the distinction between subjective and objective experience, between 'in here' and 'out there' no longer holds. The spacetime geometry configuration of the observed world is reproduced in the brain. Again, the Beatles said it well: 'Your inside is out, and your outside is in. Your outside is in, and your inside is out.'

(Yup, that's right. The only cited source in this entire spiel is The White Album. He even fails to mention that that Beatles quote is from "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey." Oh, the irony. )

We two authors (SH and DC) differ slightly with regard to the ocean of consciousness, and the subject/object split.

(LOL. "No, you can balance an infinite number of angels on the head of a pin!" "You fool! Everyone knows that the divine mathematics dictates that the number must be equal to infinity plus one!" )

These proposals are testable, and falsifiable. (No they're not.) We welcome critical analysis. (Here ya go.)

- FIN

Sign! Structure! Play!

One of the most frustrating and fascinating parts of my new job is following - and, grudgingly, policing - my students' use of language. This doesn't merely entail checking vulgarity or your standard, run-of-the-mill verbal abuse, but also, maddeningly, remaining abreast of all the new slang and code words that they use to harass, tease, humiliate, and otherwise bug one another.

For example, this week we teachers have had to ban the use of the word "sausage" in every single one of our classes. "Sausage" has become a way for the students to "get" to each other; everyone will be working quietly at their desks when, suddenly, someone will blurt out or mutter "Sausage!" and then suddenly everyone in the room is all in a tizzy and it takes us a good twenty minutes to calm them back down. Therefore, now each and every time someone says the word, "sausage," he or she is immediately given a detention and threatened with further disciplinary action.

Now, "sausage" is a little unique because it carries with it certain phallic and, in our case, homophobic connotations. (i.e., "Jones likes sausage!") But the real absurdity of the situation begins after the initial banned word has been marked as forbidden or taboo by the faculty. A new word - or, in fact, an entire chain of signifiers - comes to stand for the original marked word ("sausage") which itself was standing as shorthand for a more vulgar insult. So we'll have entire dialogues of supposed asides between two students, orally jabbing back and forth, "Biscuits!" "Waffles!" "D- likes maple syrup!" "Ssssss- Bacon!" Playing a sort of linguistic chicken with each other, daring the other guy to risk uttering the marked locution. The upshot of this, of course, is that we're not allowed to talk about breakfast in math class.

The craziest part of the whole thing is that it doesn't, in the end, matter what actual word is being used by the students to "get" at one another. (Because it isn't simply insults that are being thrown about the room. The kids call it "roasting" or "frying". I don't know what's up with the culinary metaphors.) Sure, "sausage" has a certain phallic logic to it, but over the course of the school year we've also had to banish at one point or another, "bunny," "cheese," "grandma," and "meow." Generally these words retain their mysterious power over the kids for a month or two, and then they're over, and they're replaced by the newest bon mot.

I find this all fascinating - as maddening as it can be trying to police this behavior - because I see it as a kind of microcosm for how words become endowed with such massive power over us and over our lives. Our student D-, who is very smart and has a keen sense of self-awareness, if only he could learn to keep his mouth closed, asked me once (while serving a detention), "Why can't I say sausage? Why can't I say, 'Oh, wow. I like sausage'?" And he has a point. Sausage is delicious. I would love to share my love of sausage with the world. But D- is a part of a community that has endowed "sausage" with the power to harm people - could I call this a kind of political power? - and the word "sausage" has now become a sign, a stand-in or substitute for everything that they are not allowed to say while in school. And so I, the Man, which is a role I hate to play, have to treat the stand-in as whatever it is that it's standing in for. By giving D- detentions.

What is spoken derives in manifold ways from the unspoken, whether in the form of the not yet spoken or of what has to remain unspoken - in the sense that it is denied speech. Thus the bizarre impression arises that what in manifold ways is spoken is cut off from speech and from speakers, and does not belong to them; whereas it alone holds up to speech and to the speakers those things to which they attend, no matter how they reside in the spoken elements of the unspoken.

- Martin Heidegger, The Way to Language

The Three Criteria of Knowledge: A Play in Two Acts

ACT I: Discount DVD rack at the Schnucks supermarket in Urbana. R.A. and Joel have stopped to peruse the selection.

Joel: Oooh! We could get Ghostbusters 2 for $5.99!
R.A.: meh....
Joel: "Pirates of Treasure Island"? Starring Johnny Mepp?
R.A.: It can't be nearly as good as Transmorphers.
Joel: Good call.
R.A.: Here we are. Heathers. We should get this, because Ted Hughes is dead.
(pause)
Joel: Don't you mean John Hughes?
R.A.: Oh, yeah, John Hughes. Who's Ted Hughes?
Joel: I don't know. Maybe he's dead, too.

ACT II: 15 minutes later. R.A. and Joel are walking with their groceries and new copy of Heathers towards the bus stop.

R.A.: Ted Hughes is dead!
Joel: What?
R.A.: Ted Hughes. He was married to Sylvia Plath. And he is dead.
Joel: Oh. (pause) So you were right when you said "Ted Hughes is dead."
R.A.: Right.
Joel: And you believed it when you said it.
R.A.: Right.
Joel: But you still didn't know it when you said it!
R.A.: Exactly.
Joel: Oh, snap!

END.*

*Saturday was a weird day for R.A. and names. She also managed to mention the great novelists "David Pynchon" and "George Hemingway" that day. Something about manly dude writers. How odd.

The Bart, The

So I'm reading up on APA style for proofreading, when I come across this peculiar sentence:

"Note a word used as a word, or a foreign term, with italics, for example, hutte means hut in German."

I pause.

That can't be right - what good does to do to tell someone that hutte means hut in German?

Oh.

Hut as in small house. Not der Hut as in "hat."

What a horrible example.

And "note a word used as a word"? What does that mean?

What I am Reading This Morning

The New York Times' grammar blogger Philip Corbett on Subjunctivitis - the recurring dilemma in the English language of trying to use a verb form that doesn't really exist, or, at least, is being slowly pushed into oblivion. But I think that Corbett does a nice job of explaining the dos and don'ts of the subjunctive, and pointing out how even professional journalists often get it wrong.

CQ Politics posted an article last night on the Oregon Senate race between Gordon Smith and Jeff Merkley, and how that race has remained very tight going into the home stretch before election day. In terms of political press, Oregon has gotten a little spoiled lately. We were relevant in the presidential primaries for the first time in, like, forever, and, even though we're not a swing state this year like we were in '00 and '04, this Senate race is becoming extremely important as the Democrats try to build a fillubuster proof majority. And I, for one, am hoping for a Merkley upset, even though (a) Smith does have a record of working with Democrats and (b) Merkley has two hands. President Obama is just going to need that super-majority in order to push through (quickly) bills dealing with rebuilding our infrastructure, developing renewable energy, and achieving universal healthcare.

And, finally, Crooked Timber has this picture from a "George Salter designed cover for a 1930 German edition of Dos Passos’ The 42nd Parallel." (It's pretty funny. I think my favorite line from the blogger's is "I don't know what army is invading Chicago.") In the 20's and 30's, Germans went nuts for American Western/ Frontier narratives, epitomized by the fictional-autobiographical writings of "Old Shatterhand" Karl May. And I'm not sure that the craze has even passed: A few weeks ago, I was at the Art Institute in the "Western Art" room, which was filled with oil paintings and bronze sculptures from the early 20th Century depicting "authentic" Western life. There were two German women in the room with me, and they were soooo excited to be there. The security guard even had to shoo them away after one of the ladies started 'petting' a bronze-cast Indian pony.

I've Got Your Signs of the Apocalypse Right Here! (Part Two)

And by draft I mean that the Large Hadron particle Collider is up and running! (Sound the bugles!) Yes, finally, after years of development, the 8-billion dollar, 17-mile long particle accelerator buried deep beneath the French-Swiss border has been turned on, and is about to start slamming protons into each other like tiny subatomic bumper cars, if those bumper cars could reach speeds of 99% that of light and then shatter into even smaller, never-before-seen kinds of bumber cars upon collision. I am stoked.

Why, you ask? Well, other than the fact that the LHC could begin to answer some of the galaxy's most perplexing questions, questions like, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Well, then maybe it's because I take a kind of perverse joy in seeing people flip their lids over the possibility that the LHC might inadvertently destroy All-That-There-Is by creating a black hole that will devour first the Earth and then the solar system and then the entire Milky Way (nom-nom-nom).

For example, check out this article from last week on DailyTech.com. (Footnote: Why is an article "in" a magazine but "on" a website?) It turns out that some people are so absolutely terrified by the possibility of the end of all existence that they're actually sending death threats to the scientists in charge of the LHC demanding that they take the collider off line. Of course, the mad scientists will have none of this pish-posh, as the article says:

According to Professor Brian Cox of Manchester University, the public animosity is so severe that American Nobel prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has received death threats. Professor Cox, typically sedate, adds irritatingly, "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a t---. "

I really would like to know what Dr. Cox meant by "t---". I'm guessing, since he's from Manchester, that it was "twat." However, I am not ruling out "teet," nor the possibility that DailyTech.com is really PG and he said "twit."

But here's what really interests me about this situation: The fact is that the physicists cannot say that there is a zero percent chance that they'll create an Earth-eating black hole because there isn't. In fact, there is a (roughly) one in ten-to-the-thirty-first-power chance that they will cause such a space vacuum. That's a 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance for the end of all existence. But those are really pretty good odds, especially when you consider that the Earth has only existed for roughly 16,425,000,000,000,000 days, so that even if the scientists had conducted one particle collision per day for the past 4.5 billion years, they would only have a (roughly) 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000 chance of destroying the world. (i.e., one in one-thousand trillion, if my math is right.) Of course, these statistics only apply if you believe in evolution. (And FYI, they're planning on doing at most two experiments per day.)

But we human beings can't comprehend those kind of numbers in our tiny (monkey) brains. So all we hear is when the physicists say "1 in 10 to the 31st", is "not 0." And when he hear that - or when we hear that there is any kind of mathematical chance for destruction - we think of that chance as a kind of a flip of a cosmic coin, or, at best, the roll of divine dice. And so we freak out because when we hear the true statement from the scientists that, "We could destroy the Earth," we can only understand that word "could" in terms of, say, "Human activity could be the cause of global warming," or, "A black man could become the President of the United States," or even, "The Cubs could win the World Series."

And that possibility terrifies us all.

Post-Script: I really like this scene.

Witness the Sexism Inherent in the Language!

So I'm browsing through the e-version of the New York Times, and I decide to read, "Drawing a Bead on the Press," by David Carr, about how Sarah Palin has just totally taken the media by stork, er, storm (oops! Freudian slip!) and how everybody loves her and oh my God the Democrats are doomed and blah blah blah. He's going on about the media reception of Palin, saying that:

Her cultural resonance is familiar to anyone who’s ever read a fashion makeover article or clipped “Lose the Baby Fat in a Month!” But it is fundamentally different from what we’ve come to expect from women running for higher office. Senator Clinton is a politician who also happens to be a wife and mother. Ms. Palin is a wife and mother who also happens to be a politician. She is a parent of five who joyfully juggles it all, up to and including firing the chef and the driver, a kind of aspirational model that still seems attainable.

OK, I'm thinking, that's somewhat legitimate, if Carr is saying that most Americans can only be comfortable with a powerful woman (or a powerful anybody, for that matter) if they can place her or him within a pre-constructed character archetype, such as "parent of five who joyfully jiggles - I mean, juggles - (Jesus! What the Hell is wrong with me today?) it all," and that they are more ready to accept Palin because she, unlike Clinton, falls easily into that (imaginary) category. Although I would question the use of "joyfully" up there.

But then Carr goes and does something with his language that's just as questionable as what I've been doing here, if not more so: he uses the wrong word (by which I mean, inappropriate) without realizing and/or admitting it. While commenting on Palin's speech at the RNC, he says:

Even her styling for the speech spoke volumes. Avoiding the fashion traditions of both show business and politics, Ms. Palin looked great, but not glamorous — more like the put-together neighbor down the street who got gussied up for date night with her husband.

"Gussied up?" Is that what our neighbors do for their date nights with their husbands? And this is how Palin looked? Not, say, "professional," or "in charge," or "like someone prepared to be the President of the United States"? But then I got to thinking - maybe Carr knows what he's talking about, and I just don't know this particular usage of the phrase "gussied up" that means, y'know, "presidential."

So I hit the series of inter-connected tubes (ah, Sen. Stevens, we hardly knew ye... yet...) to try and find out exactly what "gussied up" means. Merriam Webster says that to "gussy up" is synonymous with to "dress up" and to "embellish." (Suggesting what, exactly? That womanly trait of being insincere and disguising the truth?) It also gives an origin date for the phrase of 1952, but not - interestingly - an etymology.

I went next to the Online Etymology Dictionary , which claims that the verb "to gussy," means "to dress up or decorate in a showy way." OK - a similar connotation of a decorative appearance. The OED (hmmm...) also gives the origin date for the phrase as 1952, but adds that it comes, "apparently from Gussy (1940), schoolyard slang name for an overly dressed person, perhaps related to gussie (1901) "effeminate man," and somehow connected to the nickname for Augusta and Augustus."

Now this last part made me pause. Because if getting "gussied up" actually means "dressing in a way reminiscent of Caesar Augustus," well, maybe it wouldn't be the smartest thing for a politician in a democracy to do, but at least it wouldn't be a derogatory thing to say of them. And maybe Carr is trying to say something subversively ingenious by claiming that Palin is a success because she looked "more like the put-together neighbor down the street who [dresses as Ceasar Augustus] for date night with her husband." Damn right! Palin, like your neighbor down the street, is not afraid to give herself life-long power over the Senate or invade a Middle Eastern nation and depose of its ruler for her own personal benefit! (Isn't that the VP's job, anyways?) And whenever she goes out with that bum of a husband Todd, she is sure to put on her best laurel crown, just so that everyone who sees them knows who's in charge!


Fig. A: "All gussied up."

But probably not.

There are lots of different theories about where the term "gussied up" comes from. My speculation? That it is somehow associated with the 1936 movie, "The Gorgeous Hussy," starring Joan Crawford, James Taylor, and Jimmy Stewart. I couldn't find any reference to a Gussy (1940), but the use of the word and its place as a piece of slang suggests that it could be a combination of "gorgeous" and "hussy." This would also account for its entering the vernacular circa 1952.

The word "hussy", unlike to "gussy up," has a long and illustruous pedigree, stemming from the Middle English huswif, or "house wife," first being used to signify the mistress of a household in 1530, and, again according to the (not) OED, "by 1650 was being applied to "a woman or girl who shows casual or improper behavior," and a general derogatory sense had overtaken the word by 19c. "It is common to use housewife in a good, and huswife or hussy in a bad sense." [Johnson]" The Etymology Dictionary goes on to list "queen," "minx," and "slut" as alternatives.

So, yes. It means you look like a whore.

5 Thoughts On A Thursday: Turbo Edition

It's been awhile since I gave an update as to my happenings. I don't really have the time for a full report right now, but just so you know:

1) I owe several of you e-mails/essays/Facebook messages. They are coming. I haven't forgotten. Sorry for the delay.

2) The Cubs are a league best 33-9 at home this year. But when I go to see them, they're 0-2. I think that management is considering banning me from Wrigley Field.

3) I am currently in the midst of an intensive three week German language course. So if you see me and I start to you like this speaking, or I use words like Officefortheworklesspeopleoftherepublic, that's why. Entschuldigung Sie, bitte.

4) I'm done with this class in two weeks, and by that time I need to have a real job. So if any of you know of any job in the Chicago area that pays at least $30,000 a year, provides full insurance benefits, has flexible hours, does not require a car or any prior experience, and needs someone with a background in 19th Century philosophy with a remedial knowledge of French and German, let me know. I'm your man. Oh, and is OK with me leaving at any time to go back to graduate school.

5) Gratuitous Philosophy Quote:

"How fortunate I am, Meno! When I ask you for one virtue, you present me with a swarm of them, which are in your keeping. Suppose that I carry on the figure of the swarm, and ask of you, What is the nature of the bee? and you answer that there are many kinds of bees, and I reply: But do bees differ as bees, because there are many and different kinds of them; or are they not rather to be distinguished by some other quality, as for example beauty, size, or shape? How would you answer me?" - Socrates

5 Thoughts on a Thursday

1) If you're looking for something to do tonight and are in the Chicago area, I suggest that you got to see The Easy Tease play tonight at the Town Hall Pub in Lakeview on North Halsted. Why the superfluous plug, you ask? Well, because....

2) The band members are currently asleep on my living room floor.

R.A. and I know The Easy Tease from their early days as a Bard College Band, playing on the weekends on campus. Or, at least R.A. says that we do. Both she and the band members claim that I went to multiple shows at Bard, but for some reason I have no memory of ever seeing them live. Of course, this may be because whenever they were on stage at the Multi-Purpose Room, I was outside in the snow with my hooligan friends, "guarding" the kegs. But I have listened to their music on CD and MP3, and they're really good, especially if you're into a kind of folk-rock with cellos and banjos, which I am.

The band got in late last night after playing a "gig", as they say, in Lake Villa, Illinois. They're almost finished with a month long tour that has taken them to pretty much every part of the country that I have yet to see: Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota. After Chicago, they go on to Ohio and then back home to New York.

This is the third time this year that old Bard friends have come to visit me and R.A. here in Chicago, and it's always a great time. (For me, at least.) R.A. and I are definitely going to be staying in Chicago for at least another year, although we're planning on moving out of Hyde Park at the end of summer and finding a place somewhere on the North Side. So if you or your traveling gypsy band are going to find yourselves anywhere near the Windy City ever, be sure to look us up. We will have ample floor space and gin.

3) I hate bluetooths. Blueteeth? Bluetooth devices? Whatever. I can't stand them. I understand your need and desire to multi-task, to be able to drive and talk on the cell phone and eat a Big Mac all at the same time (the very definition of the modern working man). But those wireless headsets just make you look like the aliens have got their brainwave-controlling spawn lodged in your pineal gland, and that you are now a mindless zombie drone of the Great Overlord Zerlak. It's creepy.

4) I was in the University dining hall today, eavesdropping on people again. One conversation that I overheard included one sorority girl (and, I'm not stereotyping - she had her sorority bag with her) telling her friends, "I accidentally got drunk last night."

Accidentally? Did she trip and fall into a vat of blueberry vodka? Did she think that she was sipping all night on cranberry juice that I had just gone a little bad? (Now I am stereotyping.) [Note from the Future: "I had just gone a little bad?" Hmmm... nothing Freudian here....]

Actually, I'm being too hard on the girl. I know exactly what she meant: she went out with her friends last night, having told herself that she wasn't going to drink. But then she started feeling a little awkward being the only kid at the bar without a drink in her hand, and then one thing led to another and the next thing she knew she was neck deep in her third Cosmopolitan. (She wasn't a very big girl.)

But this is a situation where splitting grammatical hairs is useful. Because she didn't get drunk involuntarily (unless someone tied her to a chair and poured booze down her throat). And she didn't get drunk by mistake (unless someone tricked her into thinking that a Long Island Iced Tea was actually tea.). But she did get drunk accidentally - she intended to stay sober but then had that breakdown of will that comes with being offered sweet, sweet liquor.

5) I'm running out of time and thoughts (Damn you Great Overlord Zerlak!), so I'll sign off with the first of (hopefully many) Gratuitous Philosophy Quotes:

"Perhaps the modern European discontent is due to the fact that our prehistory, the entire middle ages, was given to drinking thanks to the influence of Germanic tastes on Europe." - Nietzsche

Why I Am an Obama Boy

The following is from Senator Obama's victory speech after the North Carolina primary:

This has been one of the longest, most closely fought contests in American history. And that's partly because we have such a formidable opponent in Senator Hillary Clinton.

Tonight, many of the pundits have suggested that this party is inalterably divided, that Senator Clinton's supporters will not support me and that my supporters would not support her. Well, I am here tonight to tell you that I don't believe it.

Yes, yes, there have been bruised feelings on both sides. Yes, each side desperately wants their candidate to win. But ultimately this race is not about Hillary Clinton; it's not about Barack Obama; it's not about John McCain.

This election is about you, the American people.

Did you catch that? I'll give you a moment to look over the text again. Take your time.

Oh, yeah. There it is:

"Tonight, many of the pundits have suggested that this party is inalterably divided, that Senator Clinton's supporters will not support me and that my supporters would not support her."

A perfect use of the subjunctive tense.

Cicero himself would be proud. Obama strikes that perfect chord of suggesting the inevitability of his nomination without outright saying it. In other words, Clinton's supporters are going to support him; they won't have any choice. On the other hand, if we were to imagine an alternate universe in which Clinton somehow managed to win, then we should assume that Obama's supporters would, in that special case, support her.

Wouldn't it be nice if we were to have a President who could use the English language for rhetorical purposes. (Ignoring, for the moment, the fact that the subjunctive doesn't technically exist in English...)

Getting Out The Midget Vote

So I got my Oregon absentee ballot in the mail the other day, and promptly sat down with a pen and a bottle of Jim Beam and exercised my civic duty to vote. However, I opened my envelope to discover, much to my surprise, that there were, like, a million different things that I needed to vote on! "What gives?" I said to Coraline the Cat as I took a shot, "I just want to vote for the nice colored fella with the big ears!" But here they had all of these people I had never even heard of, running for offices I had never even heard of, like "Secretary of State," and "Senator"!

Being the conscientious citizen than I am, I opted not to vote for whichever candidate's name came first on the ballot, or for whomever had the best-sounding name. (Sorry, Pavel Goberman.) Rather, I took to the internets, hoping that they could objectively inform me about the candidates and the issues important to Oregonians. But instead, they gave me something way better:






Steve Novick has a hook for a hand! A hook that he can use as a bottle opener! Not only that, the guy is also 4'9", on account of not being born with any fibula bones. A hook-handed midget who drinks? Does he spend his free time sailing the sea, plundering and carrying off booty? Now there's a candidate who shares my values! My vote is sold!

"But Joel!" said the cat, "Not only are you vaguely racist, but you are also picking your candidate on a purely superficial basis, thereby abusing your rights and responsibilities as a voter!"

"Shut up, Cat!" said I, "Steve Novick spearheaded the fight against Bill Sizemore's Measure 91, which would have cut the state budget for schools, health care, and public safety by more than 20%! He has been endorsed by former Governor John Kitzhaber and by The Oregonian, which said that 'he has the potential to make Oregonians proud'!"

I paused to take another shot.

"Plus, he's a midget-robot-pirate."

Dr. Albert Hofmann (1906-2008)

Dr. Albert Hofmann died yesterday in Switzerland, at the age of 102. According to the article in the Times:

Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid.

I have a couple of questions. First, would you say that Hofmann "invented" acid, or "discovered" it? Based on the use of the word "synthesized" up there, I'm betting that its more accurate to say that he invented or, perhaps, created it. But I think I can see how someone could look at this situation and conclude that the compound LSD was "out there", waiting for us to "discover" it, and thus begin constructing a kind of Platonic theory of knowledge, that everything that we can know exists already, and that what we call learning is more a process of recognizing what already is and incorporating that knowledge into ourselves. But I think its clear that LSD was not discovered - it didn't exist absent human manipulation, unlike, say, plutonium. (Or most other elements.)

But later in the article, the author gives us a different perspective on how acid came to be:

It was during his work on the ergot fungus, which grows in rye kernels, that he stumbled on LSD, accidentally ingesting a trace of the compound one Friday afternoon in April 1943. Soon he experienced an altered state of consciousness similar to the one he had experienced as a child.

It seems a stretch to claim that Hofmann "invented" LSD if he did so by stumbling upon it. To me, when you "stumble upon something" that means that you found it, even though you weren't in particular looking for it. This is definitely not an act of creation or invention. But on the other hand, I feel like, historically, a lot of what we consider to be inventions are "stumbled upon" by their inventors. Contrast this with penicillin, which was discovered, but a use for it was invented. (In other words, it had "standing reserve potential.")

So did Hofmann invent LSD, or did he discover it, or both, or neither? And, likewise, did he invent a use for it, or did he discover one? Again, the fact that he "accidentally ingested" acid suggests that he probably discovered a use for it. But if we want to maintain that we can only discover what already is "out there", then it seems that we should say that he invented or created a use for acid. Maybe this is a false premise - maybe we should say that it is appropriate to label some act a "discovery" even if what is being discovered in no way existed prior to discovery. But this seems to jive against the etymology of discovery: to "dis-cover", to reveal, to make known.

OK, now for what I "find" to be the ridiculous part:

On the following Monday, he deliberately swallowed a dose of LSD and rode his bicycle home as the effects of the drug overwhelmed him. That day, April 19, later became memorialized by LSD enthusiasts as “bicycle day.”

He took acid and then rode his bicycle home? Granted, I'm sure that there were a lot less police and cars (two things everyone should be naturally afraid of) in Switzerland in the 1940s than there are now, but still - riding your bike while being "overwhelmed" by acid seems like a very bad idea. What if he hit someone? What if you got run over by someone on a bike on acid? I imagine that the ensuing conversation would go something like:

You: Hey man! You just hit me with your (expletive) bicycle!
Albert Hofmann: The owls are not what they seem.
You: What? Hey - are you paying attention to me, man?!
Albert Hofmann: I am now paying attention to you, man.
You: Good! I think you broke my arm.
Albert Hofmann: Can I put it back together again?
You: No! Ow! Stop grabbing my arm! Are you on LSD or something?!

At this point, Albert Hofmann would get a horrified expression on his face, and then run into the woods, leaving you with a broken arm and no one to sue. On the plus side, you would have a new bicycle.

Of course - being that Hofmann was the first person ever to take acid - your average pedestrian in 1943 Switzerland would probably not make the assumption that he was on drugs. Instead the conversation would probably include the line:

Sie: Haben Sie die Syphilis oder wass, mein Herr?

And then Albert Hofmann gets to come down from his trip to discover himself in a straightjacket in an insane asylum, having been successfully diagnosed with, and "treated" for, syphilis.

Stupid President, ooh! I Hate Him So Much!

Most of the time, I try to approach our president with a kind of zen attitude. Sure, he's horrible and hateful and has ushered in a disastrous age for America, but after seven and a half years of anger and bitterness, I decided that it was best to just try and relax and not get so worked up over the things that he says and does. After all, all that being mad does is raise my blood pressure and increase the odds of me meeting an early death.

But then he goes and gives a speech so dripping in utter hypocrisy and deceit that I can't help but shake my tiny fists in rage and then go on a very long drinking binge until I drown out all of the stupidity and inanity that pervades our nation and makes myself want to bathe in, as Chaucer said, sweet liquor.

The source of my anguish this time was Bush's speech welcoming ex-HJ member Pope Benedict XVI to the White House. If you're a masochist like me, you can find the text of the speech here, but if you really want the full effect, you should watch the video here. But if you absolutely have no time to spare, which is unlikely since you're reading this (GET BACK TO WORK!) let me give you the proverbial highlight reel:

BUSH: Here in America you'll find a nation of compassion. Americans believe that the measure of a free society is how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us. So each day citizens across America answer the universal call to feed the hungry and comfort the sick and care for the infirm. Each day across the world the United States is working to eradicate disease, alleviate poverty, promote peace and bring the light of hope to places still mired in the darkness of tyranny and despair.


This isn't so bad, except for the fact that it isn't true. This administration has probably done more than any other administration in our history to ensure that the weakest and most vulnerable among us are forgotten and that the hungry, sick, and infirmed stay that way. But this is just par for the course for Bush. In the "How Audacious is He?" this rates a mere 3 out of 10. But it gets better.

Here in America you'll find a nation that welcomes the role of faith in the public square. When our Founders declared our nation's independence, they rested their case on an appeal to the "laws of nature, and of nature's God." We believe in religious liberty. We also believe that a love for freedom and a common moral law are written into every human heart, and that these constitute the firm foundation on which any successful free society must be built.

This passage doesn't get my blood worked up as much on the moral audacity level (although I feel that Bush's concept of "religious liberty" is just a little, um, anti-liberty) as it is philosophically bizarre. Do we welcome the role of faith in the public square? Is our nation rested on natural laws? You can't really blame Bush here for asserting controversial arguments as if they were universally held beliefs. After all, logically speaking, the proposition that "All men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." is a self-evident truth is well, wrong. Very wrong. "All triangles have three sides," now THERE'S a self-evident truth! Also, while I'm here, I want point out that the last sentence from this quote might as well come right out of The Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. I didn't know that Bush was a Kantian - oh, wait, we're all Kantians. But I digress.

In our nation, faith and reason coexist in harmony.

No they don't!

In a world where some invoke the name of God to justify acts of terror and murder and hate, we need your message that "God is love." And embracing this love is the surest way to save men from "falling prey to the teaching of fanaticism and terrorism."

Okay, so this is where the Audacity Level kicks it up a notch. Who do I know who invokes the name of God to justify acts of terror and murder and hate? I mean, no Christian could ever do that. And he's saying that the surest way to save men from falling prey to the teaching of fanaticism and terrorism is to embrace the message of the Pope? Next thing you know, the White House will be releasing those photos they obtained of Osama bin Laden playing bocce ball with Satan himself. In the streets of Tehran. With Ahmadinejad serving them tea and crumpets. And Nancy Pelosi was invited, but she was too busy trying to turn America's youth gay. (Sure as Hell that never happened to Germany's youth!)

Does Bush realize that no matter how much he kisses the Pope's... ring, Catholic dogma still says that he is Hellbound? And, by Dante's count, that he technically has qualified for circles six, seven, and eight already? That's like, the triple crown of damnation. But again, I digress.

In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred, and that "each of us is willed, each of us is loved" -- (applause) -- and your message that "each of us is willed, each of us is loved, and each of us is necessary."

Yeah, yeah, Blah, blah, blah. Life begins with conception and ends by lethal injection. I also like how the people at whitehouse.gov made sure to include the spontaneous applause in their official transcript of the speech.

So Bush has covered all of his bases so far - God = good, terrorism = bad, America = good, abortion = bad, and thereby, through his expert use of logical syllogisms, concludes that abortion=terrorism. His usual schtick. But then he goes into his grand finale, and even I have to admit that I didn't see this coming:

In a world where some no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong, we need your message to reject this "dictatorship of relativism," and embrace a culture of justice and truth. (Applause.)

"Dictatorship of Relativism"? "Dictatorship of Relativism" DICT-ator-SHIP of RELATIV-ism
Really, Mr. President? Really? That's what I need to fear and loathe today? Not Islamic Fundamentalism or Terrorism but Moral Relativism? Granted, Bush is borrowing this phrase from the Pope - whose fatherland, I might add, has always been on the frontlines of resistance against the Dictatorship of Relativism - but it seems to me that the belief that we cannot distinguish between SIMPLE right and wrong has not caused most of today's problems in the world.

In the grand scheme of things, I feel that Moral Relativists aren't amongst the movers and shakers of world affairs. That is to say, they're not in the powerful positions to make the crucial decisions for America or the world. They're not, shall we say, "the deciders". And even suggesting that there could be such a "Dictatorship of Relativism" is absurd, like saying there's a Church of Atheists, or the Anarchist Party.

Etymologically, a dictator is someone who dictates, who speaks. It's his job (sorry feminists, no lady dictators) to say what is right and wrong, what is true and false, to give laws, and to generally tell people what to do. But Moral Relativism (at least the kind I am acquainted with) holds that no one can ever know right from wrong. So what on earth would a relativist dictator say? "What is your bidding, oh benevolent leader?" "I don't know." "Oh, ok... I'm going to get a snack pack, then." "Cool." It would be a very inefficient way to govern.

A better way to govern - or at least, more efficient way - would be to tell everyone that there IS a moral right and wrong, that you know it and have special access to it (say, like, a voice in your head tells it to you) and that there are bad and dangerous people out there who are to trying to convince the people that there isn't such a moral authority and want the people to think that you (benevolent leader and conduit for the higher moral Truth) are full of shit. And that these people are only out for power and don't actually care about the people the way that you and your magic friend do. Oh, and your magic friend sometimes gets cranky and starts smiting people because it is all powerful and all-knowing. So watch out. Stop masturbating.

I guess that I just want to know more about this Dictatorship of Relativism. Who are its citizens? Intellectuals, I bet. And atheists. And Jews, too, although only the bad Jews from Hollywood and Manhattan. Not the good Jews in Jerusalem. And homosexuals. And the Communists were invited, but they wouldn't shut up about some other Dictatorship they were working on. And those filthy Papis....oh, nevermind. And who is the Stalin-esque dictator of this dictatorship? Zizek? I bet it's Zizek. If nobody has any objections, I am hereby nominating Zizek to be the dictator of the Dictatorship of Relativism.

Our next meeting will be Thursday at 5 in the Old Grange Hall.

Punch and pie will be served.

The Ballad of Bubbles P. Bubbles

This dialogue ensued on the way back from the laundromat, after I saw a little girl blowing bubbles on a street corner:

Me: Look! Bubbles!
R.A.: Bubbles P. Bubbles!
(long pause)
Me: What?
R.A.: Bubbles P. Bubbles.
Me: oh... What does that mean?
R.A.: Didn't they make you read that in L&T? ["Learning and Thinking Workshop" at college]
Me: No.
R.A.: Oh.
(long pause)
Me: So what does "Bubbles P. Bubbles" mean?
R.A.: It's from this short story that we had to read. Actually, I didn't read it. But my some of my friends read it and they thought it was hilarious.
Me: uh-huh
R.A.: And in the story the author ends one sentence with the words "Bubbles P." And he starts the nest sentence with the word, "Bubbles." So on the page, it looks like the name, "Bubbles P. Bubbles."
Me: Oh.
(long pause)
Me: So did he end the sentence with the letter "P" or with the word, "pee"?
R.A.: With the letter. Why on earth would he end a sentence with the words "bubbles pee"?
Me: I don't know.
(pause)
Me: Why would he end a sentence with the words "bubbles P." ?
R.A.: I don't know. I never read the stupid story. It was just that my friends saw the words "Bubbles P. Bubbles" and that was sort of a thing that we had for the rest of the year.
Me: Oh.
R.A: It's kind of an inside joke thing. It's hard to explain to someone.
Me: I see.
(pause)
Me: But I still don't think there is any possible way to end a sentence with "Bubbles P." Like, grammatically.
R.A.: Of course you can. You can end a sentence however you like. That's how the sentence ended.
Me: What was the sentence?
R.A.: How should I know?! I told you, I didn't read the story!
Me: But your friends still thought that it was funny that one sentence ended "Bubbles P." and the next started, "Bubbles".
R.A.: Yes!
Me: This is the worst conversation we've ever had.
R.A.: No it's not.
(pause)
Me: Top five, at least.
R.A.: Yeah, maybe top five.

An Explanation

In case you were wondering, the name of this blog comes from three epithets of the Greek god Hermes., who is, in my opinion lately, the best Greek god. Hermes Logios means Hermes the orator or the persuader, as he is depicted in Plato's Republic. Also, early Christian philosophers saw Hermes Logios as the light of divine intellect that emanated from God down to Man.

Hermes Dolios is Hermes the trickster and schemer. I like this because it reminds me of the gods from other pantheons, like Loki, Coyote, and Maui. Also, this is related to Hermes Logios because the ability to speak, persuade, and educate entails the ability to lie, deceive, and misdirect.

Hermes Eriounios is Hermes the bringer of luck. He is the god of travelers, merchants, and vagrants, and these people are in dire need of good luck as they travel down the road from place to place.

So I see "Logios Dolios Eriounios" as translating to something like "Language (truth), Language (lies) and good luck, Jack."