Moved All Over Again

I just finished seeing Secretary again. I hadn't realized how long it had been -- over 8 1/2 years since the last time, and I think that was only the second. Powerful to see it again -- I couldn't bear to miss a second, and didn't leave the theater until the credits were over. I also noticed this time that the music is by Angelo Badalamenti, which doubtless adds to the quality of the experience. It's my second favorite movie, after Contact. My favorite line from the movie is "Why not?" My favorite line from Contact is "That's a good answer."

http://www.secretarythemovie.co.uk/

Study: Left, Right Equally Prone to Confirmation Bias

Here's an interesting story from this week's On the Media: http://www.onthemedia.org/2011/nov/25/everyone-rejects-inconvenient-facts/

An Unsurprising Story

Interesting news discovered belatedly, and I'm not surprised. I had an encounter with his group in 1996. The way he led the meeting was domineering verging on bullying, as well as homophobic. And he made no apologies for having been running mate to Lyndon LaRouche, stacks of whose cult literature stood near the entrance of the "community center" where the meeting took place.

http://mojoey.blogspot.com/2007/06/hero-falls.html

A woman who also attended -- perhaps the only other person there who wasn't in the cult -- told me afterward that she didn't have the right to criticize him because of his history with the Civil Rights movement (he was one of MLK's "field generals"). I said if she thought he was wrong, it was not only her right but her duty to say so. But doubtless that background did deter a lot of scrutiny he'd otherwise have gotten.

Wednesday evening I came home to find yellow tape blocking the stairs. I tried a side door but found, in accord with past experience, that none of my keys work in it. As it was after hours I had no alternative but to stoop under the tape so I could get to my apartment, even though the new paint on the stairs was still sticky.

Yesterday a neighbor told me she has a key that lets her in the side door. She said she'd show me the trick when she sees me again, but I don't know when that will be as I'm not even sure where she lives.

Meanwhile another neighbor had pointed out that the usual procedure is to paint stairs one side at a time, so that residents don't have to look for alternate routes.

I seemingly had a paranormal experience about half an hour ago, in which I saw a statue move. Unfortunately it was just a dream. But I was so excited at the time that, in my attempts to get others to see it too, I apparently vocalized (indistincty) through my sleep paralysis, much as I've done during certain nightmares. After I'd failed at that the statue, which looked like a mixed-media sculpture of an African goddess resembling Whoopi Goldberg, apported and tossed me a red and white umbrella. As if to make light of the situation I said "Two, two umbrellas!" after the manner of The Count on Sesame Street, and she obliged me with another one. That's when I awoke, heart pounding.

Quote of the Day

"The mosquito women really got inside my head." -- Andrew Murphy

What's that you say -- you want context? That would spoil all the fun! But here's a clue: it was said at Philcon.

Leader? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Leader!

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2011/11/occupy_denver_leader_dog.php

If the Tea Party are going to call themselves that, they should really do something more like the original Tea Party -- like, say, gather at a Boston pier disguised as Native Americans and dump a bunch of sick infants without health insurance in the harbor.

Quote of the Day

"Consciousness, as far as I can tell, is a consequence of the laws of the Universe, not an ingredient of them." — physics Nobelist Frank Wilczek, speaking at Penn this evening

Herman Cain isn't at all put off by the Apocalyptic insinuations about his "999" plan. In fact the campaign is encouraging supporters to have it tattooed on their foreheads. It'll be called "the mark of Cain."

When trade is outlawed, only outlaws can profit from trade -- a thought I had after a radio discussion of economic sanctions on Iran

God's Gift to Women

That's how I went to the Gate Munch Saturday, the fourth time I've used that costume. As always people loved it. I donated a bag of organic wheat berries from Weaver's Way Co-Op for the food drive they're taking part in, called I <3 It In The Can . On Sunday I had a first date with someone Ive known for several years . We had dinner and saw _The Ides of March _. Good thing we both like political movies -- and that she loves George Clooney.

Great Moments in History

Today's anniversary of the (European) discovery of the Caribbean reminded me of a sketch on one of the comedy/variety shows when I was a kid -- it was either _Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In_ or _The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour_:

Boy Columbus is in school and the teacher is telling the class that the world is flat. Then Columbus stands up dramatically and declares, "No! You're wrong!"

The teacher is taken aback and demands, "What do you mean?"

Columbus goes on, "The Earth IS'NT flat. The Earth is shaped... like a CHICKEN!"

Occupy, so we can all be occupied

I'm getting sick and tired of letters to the editor perpetuating hoary old stereotypes about protesters. So I've submitted this letter to Metro:

I'm employed, so I can't take part in the Occupy movement full time. But if I could I would. Capitalism by its nature can't give everyone a job -- only fear of unemployment can force people to work for less money than their labor creates, with the difference going to non-working owners -- so I'm glad that after fifty years I'm finally seeing a movement broad enough to begin building an alternative to this system, one that could guarantee everyone decent work at a living wage and an equal vote in how profits are reinvested.

In one of my dreams last night I read about "take," the practice (according to the article) of geeky people going around without their shirts. It quoted one of them explaining how it helps him deal with his emotional issues, then described his wife making a supportive comment while giving his back an affectionate rub.

Quote of the Year

"The beginning is near." -- slogan on one of the countless handmade signs at Occupy Philly, seen 7 October 2011

Chamber of Commerce Can't Balance Its Own Books

Some people like to say only capitalists know how to run government efficiently. This story from the Public Record might appear to refute that claim: http://www.phillyrecord.com/?p=1866

Take the Offensive Against Gerrymandering

I just sent an email under that header to both my state legislators, as follows:

I hope you will do more than simply oppose the politically motivated attempt to change the way Pennsylvania chooses its presidential Electors. Democrats should take this opportunity to push for reforms that could end gerrymandering altogether.

The key is to point to the hypocrisy of the rhetoric about "making every vote count." Right now, inasmuch as this is a "purple" state, every voter has a modest chance to affect the outcome by coming out and voting, no matter what part of PA te lives in. By contrast, if the Corbett/Pileggi "reform" is adopted, only voters in the "purple districts" — basically the Philly suburbs  — will still have any chance of affecting the outcome. Urban and rural voters alike will no longer have any motive for getting to the polls. That's because this legislation wouldn't abolish "winner-take-all" — it would only shift the operation of that principle from the state to district level.

The real alternative is proportional representation on the state level. This is the type of system whereby 10% of PA voters can choose 10% of the state's Electors, no matter how they're distributed throughout the state. Various forms of PR exist, such as cumulative voting and the ranked-list system; they're all described at the web site of the Center for Voting and Democracy.

Adopting PR for the Electoral College would make every vote count even more than it does now, since it would no longer be necessary for the election to look "close" to give each vote the sense that te has a significant chance of affecting the outcome. Further, there's no reason to limit this principle to presidential elections; we can advocate it for the state legislature as well, and roll it all up into one bill. (We could also include PA's congressional delegation, but this part would likely be struck down until US Code Title I is amended to no longer require single-seat districts.) Proposing to "amend" the present bill by substituting PR for single-Elector districts would put Pileggi & Co. on the defensive by showing that only our plan actually advances the goal that his only pretends to serve; at the same time, by applying PR to other state elections simultaneously, it would completely eliminate any possibility of gerrymandering, since districts themselves would become passe. And if any currently "red" states followed PA's example, that would tend to cancel out any loss of Democratic Electors owing to Pennsylvania.

It's Not What We Don't Know...

I just sent this letter to the Public Record in response to an article in their "You Need to Care About Your Healthcare" section.

The title of your article, "What You Don't Know Can Kill You," is rather ironic, in that its very first statement, "[H]eart attacks are [the] #1 cause of death for Americans," is something we don't actually know.

Why do I say this? Because eight years ago, after my mother died, I was dismayed to discover that doctors are expected to pronounce a cause of death even if they're not really sure, and that my mother's doctor declared her death as being due to heart attack without having physically examined her — based solely on a telephonic communication that was significantly incomplete as to the circumstances in which she was found. She decided to give heart attack as the cause of death simply because, she said, this often strikes people of my mother's age (78) without any prior warning.

This may well be, and it may well be that this is what my mother died from — but if doctors are often making guesses like this, they could often be getting it wrong, and we would really have no way of knowing. In fact, this sort of error would tend to feed on itself in a snowball effect: the more doctors guess heart attack as a cause of death, the higher the statistic for deaths caused by heart attack without prior warning, and so the more likely doctors are to pronounce this cause of death based simply on a guess — and so on.

In no way do I want to minimize the importance of everyone's looking after their heart health. But neither do we want to overlook other possible causes of death because of a possibly exaggerated figure for the number of deaths due to heart attack. Nor would we, in individual cases, wish to close an inquiry prematurely due to an ill-founded assumption that the cause of death is already known. By doing so, we might miss out on important information that would help us forestall our own deaths.

As a general moral principle, it is horrendous that the law actually compels doctors to pretend to a certainty that in many cases they don't really have. Pretended certainties are one of the biggest sources of mischief in our world. Stephen Hawking put it this way: "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge." Or as Mark Twain said, "What gets me in trouble isn't what I don't know, it's the things I know that just ain't so." We should urge our lawmakers to repeal this unwarranted mandate of an artificial, pretended certainty. Let's get used to openly acknowledging our ignorance, when ignorant is what we are.

I will be sending copies of this letter to my state legislators now.

Double Standard?

I read this quote in today's Metro concerning the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind:

“I loved them. I think they were just a great rock band. They had all the sort of great elements that a rock band has. They had that rebellious stance and a clandestine appeal. They were great-looking and rough and messy. [Emphasis added.] And great songs. The whole package was there.”
— Blondie singer Debbie Harry

Seems only a few weeks ago that I read an interview in which someone was complaining about how she can't play without people's commenting on how good she looks, a complaint that was represented as being common among female rockers. Is what's sauce for the gander not sauce for the goose?