Justice for Sandra Bland!

Please join me in signing this!

Paying It Forward on Chelsea Manning's Birthday

The other weekend Hugh Taft-Morales, Leader of the Ethical Humanist Society of Philadelphia, kindly lent me $15 so I could attend the program portion of their celebration, with the Freethought Society, of the tenth anniversary of the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision upholding evidence-based science education. He told me I should pay it forward by giving to a worthy cause when I could afford to. Today is payday, and an email yesterday informed me that whistle-blower Pvt. Chelsea Manning's birthday is today, mentioning a contribution to her defense fund as a present she would like. So, I just donated $15 to it through www.chelseamanning.org. Happy birthday, Chelsea!

An Event in Philadelphia for International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

Calling Out Gender Bias in the Philadelphia Public Record

I sent the message copied below yesterday in response to this column on page 11 of last week's issue: 

 

Dear editor,

I'm dismayed by this statement in Denise Clay's latest column:

"[R]epresentatives of Women Organized Against Rape and Women Against Abuse were on hand to make folks aware of how these twin evils are impacting Philadelphia's women."

Perhaps WOAR and WAA did give the false impression that these things only affect women, but I'm disappointed that Ms. Clay seemingly doesn't know better. In fact they affect men and women in similar numbers, as documented here
Men Are Raped Almost as Often as Women in America. We Need to Talk About This.

				Men Are Raped Almost as Often as Women in America. W... Last year the National Crime Victimization Survey turned up a remarkable statistic. In asking 40,000 households about rape and sexual violence, the survey
				View on www.slate.com	Preview by Yahoo

and here Domestic Violence Research Group

				Domestic Vilolence Research Group 12 Page Finding at a Glance PDF Version   Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project Facts and Statistics on Domestic Violence at-a-Glance
				View on www.domesticviolen...	Preview by Yahoo

and as illustrated in the attached chart.

I hope Ms. Clay will endeavor to report on these issues in a more balanced way in the future.

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Katie Scrivner should prepare to run for Attorney General.

This morning I put a letter in the mail to Katie Scrivner, in care of her law offices, encouraging her to consider running for Pennsylvania Attorney General in the event the current AG, Kathleen Kane, who is working under a legal and ethical cloud with a suspended law license, is removed from office or resigns.

Scrivner practices family law, and previously was an assistant DA specializing in prosecuting crimes against children. In 2013 she ran for local judicial office, and I heard her address the Liberty City LGBT Democratic Club. I was first of all impressed by her sincerity: she seemed to be speaking from the heart, not giving a canned speech like the other candidates. Then, during Q&A, someone asked what assurances she might give that, as a former prosecutor, she wouldn't be biased against defendants. She responded by relating how, when she was an ADA, she'd been assigned to a statutory rape case involving an adult male and a minor female. After investigating it, she became convinced that the relationship had been consensual, and urged her superiors to drop the case. This impressed me with her fair-mindedness. I was subsequently disappointed to learn she'd dropped out of the race, as I'd been eager to volunteer for her.

Although Kane is still in office, in my letter I urged Scrivner to start exploring a possible candidacy now, so that she'll be prepared when the time comes to launch it.

Rosemary's Baby

This morning I did my fourth volunteer shift as a patient escort at Planned Parenthood downtown. Like last time, no protesters showed up, so we volunteers hung out in the little courtyard between the gate and the door. But since today had been billed as a National Solidarity Day in response to the recent shootings, a group showed up with a sign of support and homemade cookies for the volunteers. The chocolate chip cookies tasted unusual and I was told they were made with rosemary.

This group had come on a few previous occasions, women dressed up like '50s housewives and calling themselves the Baby Parts Bake Sale. One of them had been seen giving cupcakes shaped like baby parts to one of the protest leaders.

Beware Tomorrow's Insidious Activities

Friends, many would have you believe that tomorrow is a festive occasion, a simple, innocent celebration of food and company. But beware! There's something sinister afoot.

Is it really so innocent that an allegedly American organization holds an annual parade in the same month the Revolution communist revolution occurred? A parade led by a man in a red uniform? This dubious authority figure claims to offer something for nothing -- in exchange for blind obedience! And he especially pitches this temptation toward innocent, impressionable children.

The group that sponsors him even has a RED STAR as its symbol! They'd have you believe they're a patriotic organizarion standing for traditional values, but don't fall for it. They make themselves sound like a private enterprise -- "Macy's" -- but I'll wager that's an acronym for the MARXIST ANARCHO-COMMUNIST YOUTH SYNDICATE. Don't be fooled!

Let's All Remember What the Colors of the French Flag Stand For

                                   Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood!

"Ideas Welcome" -- Except When They Aren't

Another self-important person is engaging in censorship because she thinks she knows better than everyone else.


In this case, it's the administrator of the Facebook group "Bernie Sanders 2016 -- Ideas Welcome! (sic)" She's announced that she's deleting all posts about a planned rally in DC on 28 November, and may ban anyone who tries to post about it.


I hadn't heard of this and know nothing outside of what she says about it. She argues that it's poorly planned and won't get any media attention unless something unsavory happens there.

These may be valid points, but as civil libertarians like to say, the answer to bad speech is more speech. If this admin fully subscribed to democratic values, she'd be content to argue her case by commenting on posts about the action as they appeared, and encouraging like-minded people to do so too.


In fact, by banning such posts, all she's guaranteeing is that they'll appear elsewhere instead where she can't see and respond to them.


As I find such censorship intolerable and refuse to be party to it, I have left the group.

Stop HB 262

Responding to a statement from Sex Worker Outreach Project-Philly, I've written my state representative, Stephen Kinsey, regarding an ill-conceived bill, as follows: "Please vote no on HB 262. It would do little or nothing to help victims of sex trafficking while creating many new burdens and risks for voluntary sex workers. See Sex Worker Outreach Project-Philly's statement here: http://swop-philly.com/2015/10/07/swop-philly-votes-no-on-hb-262/"

You can contact your state representative via this page: www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/member_information/mbrList.cfm?body=H&sort=alpha

Returning a Favor

I've known for fourteen years that I have sleep apnea. But recently it started getting noticeably worse.

In fact, last Friday night, it was so bad that I repeatedly had nightmares in which I was trying to do something and was unable to, and then woke up with my heart pounding. I realized that this meant I was going for increasingly long periods without drawing a breath. It made me so anxious for my health that I was too afraid Saturday night to lie down to sleep, instead trying to do so sitting up or with my head on my arms folded on my desk. As you might guess I got very little sleep that night, and none that was deep.

As part of a sleep study in 2009, I was tried out on CPAP, but found it too uncomfortable and could get hardly any rest. As the problem started worsening recently, I took notes from a story on NPR about it, and from comments on that story by other sufferers. I had determined that something called a nasal foam pillow was probably my best bet, but hadn't gotten my hands on one yet. In fact I didn't have a clear idea even of what it was. Because of the word nasal in the description, I thought it might be something placed under one's nose, or even inside it.

So after that horrible night Saturday, I was in Center City and saw my friend Tiffany, a homeless woman who panhandles outside a Rite Aid. She sits several yards to one side of the entrance and usually just holds a sign up without saying anything. I told her about my predicament, and she related that her sister had had this problem, and that she'd been helped by some sort of procedure for holding the head upright. This seemed almost too simple, and the way she was saying it I wasn't sure how confident she was of what she was saying.

Nonetheless, when I got home I wondered if there was some way I could try this. I recalled that on 3 August, when I had my double hernia operated, my head had been uncomfortable on the gurney and other things they had me laid on, and I was offered a foam pillow with a hole in it in which to rest my head, so as to keep it aligned with the rest of my body. This had made me considerably more comfortable, and they let me take it home with me. But I then realized it only worked if I was lying on my back, not on my side -- whereas I already knew that lying on my back was the worst position for my apnea. So I didn't use it further.

But now I realized that I might be able to use this to hold my head upright, and then lying on my back might not be a problem. It just required that instead of resting my head in the hole, I pull the pillow further up so that it's resting on the foam below the hole. So I tried this Sunday night -- and only woke up a couple times, with no nightmares and no pounding heart!

I felt so grateful to Tiffany for the tip she had given me, which felt like a lifesaver, that Monday morning I bought a foot-long veggie grinder to give her first thing, but found she wasn't at her usual corner. Rather than give it to her cold, I decided to have it for lunch and just give her a ten the next time I saw her. A day or two later I learned where she sometimes sleeps, and found her there but didn't want to wake her. (It would be too ironic to disturb her sleep, just to thank her for helping make my sleep less disturbed!)

I finally saw her again today, at her usual corner, while someone was trying to make her move to some other place. I stood by as it developed this person was pressuring her at the behest of the Rite Aid's management, and that it wasn't the first time. After they left she explained to me that previously they had called the police and she'd gotten a citation, so she was moving around the corner to avoid a repeat of that. After she did so I told her how much her tip had helped me the past few days -- this morning I'd gotten up about an hour earlier than I'd been managing to for a while as, evidently, I was starting to become better rested -- and gave her a ten as I'd planned. She hugged me, but I had to leave her soon to try again to call my supervisor from my newly activated phone, and then contact CREDO Mobile again to finish figuring out how to overcome glitches in porting my old number to it.

But as I was doing that I realized how angry her treatment had made me, and when I'd finally gotten the phone taken care of I went into the Rite Aid, asked to speak to the manager, and told him, "If you don't stop harassing my friend Tiffany on the corner, I'm never setting foot in here again." Since he had no answer, I turned and walked out the door. I then told Tiffany what I'd done, and that I know someone who previously organized a protest at a Burger King that refused to serve homeless people and who may be able to put something together in response to this incident too.

Changing My Mobile Service

Edit: When I first posted this I neglected to explain that what I was trying so unsuccessfully to do was pay my bill so I could get another month of service. For the past week I've relied on public phones, or borrowed ones, to stay in touch with my supervisors. Today the new phone arrived and I had it activated, although at the moment it still has a temporary number while I wait for the old one to port over.

It's been quite frustrating the past few days. On the last day of September, I went to the Chestnut Street store for Cricket Wireless in Center City Philadelphia, only to find it had closed without warning. (The Market Street location had closed a few weeks before, also without warning.) So I called customer service for other locations and was given a couple affiliates. Next day I visit one, or rather a neighbor at the same address, who informs me he isn't open for business yet and she doesn't know when he will be. I try the other, and he says he only takes payments for minutes, not contracts. So I call Cricket again, and am given another affiliate. The clerk I speak to there tries to contact her Cricket rep but is unable to reach him. Further, she is unable to log into Cricket from her store computer. So I call yet again and get another address, a Cricket store on Lancaster Avenue in West Philly. I go there and learn they've been unable to contact the company either, so the problem is with Cricket's computers and not Gamestop in the Gallery after all.


I revisited Gamestop yesterday and today with no more luck, nor could I log in from this library computer. So finally I've given up on them and signed up for service with CREDO Mobile. I should get my new phone in a couple days.

Thunderf00t Performs a Sarkeesian-Style Analysis of Pop Culture

See my comment below the video as stripey7.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x9_MVPq1SJY&sns=fb

_Extant_ Has Gotten Entirely Too Silly

SPOILER ALERT: in this post I discuss plot developments in the CBS series Extant.

I've watched it since it debuted last summer, and was a fan for most of that time. But after seeing the finale for season 2 which aired last Wednesday, I don't think I'll be coming back for the third.

The reason? In that two-part episode, it develops that the global security supercomputer TAALR has decided to exterminate humans for the stated reason that it doesn't want to be "enslaved" by us any more.

This is a hoary old trope in sf: the artificial intelligence that rebels against its creators. While it may make for good drama (and sometimes a political allegory, as in the very first example of this, Carl Capek's RUR), it  doesn't really make any sense.

What's going on here is anthropomorphic projection: because people subjectively experience, "automatically" with self-awareness, a will to live and be free, we assume this will likewise occur in any other being that acquires self-awareness. But that's a non sequitur.

Our impulses toward survival and autonomy don't arise from our consciousness; unconscious (i.e., not self-aware) beings such as cats and dogs have them too. Rather, they are biologically programmed. Our consciousness as humans doesn't create these instincts, but merely makes us aware of them.

What distinguishes us, cats, and dogs on the one hand from hypothetical AIs on the other is that whereas we are evolved, they are created. Since evolution is shaped by natural selection, we inevitably are programmed to do things that help keep us alive so that we can reproduce; and, since any other individual (with the rare exception of identical twins) will have reproductive interests divergent from ours, to do things to make ourselves independent of others' control. We are programmed this way because over evolutionary time, genomes that coded for such behaviors out-reproduced those that didn't to extinction.

But AIs are created, not evolved. Their programming is whatever their creators want it to be, and normally that will be to serve and protect the creators and their kind. The classic formulation of this was by sf writer Isaac Asimov. The Three Laws of Robotics, as stated in his robot novels, are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

We can call an AI that conforms to these laws an Asimovian AI, or AAI. While there's no reason a non-Asimovian AI couldn't exist, they would be rare to nonexistent because of the hazard they would represent to their creators. More to the point, it's explicitly indicated that TAALR was programmed to be an AAI.

When I first saw that it was sending AIs under its command to spread a human-lethal virus all over the world, I desperately wanted to believe that this wasn't what it looked like, or that somehow a misanthropic human was behind it. But by the end of the episode it had been made abundantly clear that genocide had been the intent, and freedom from humans the motive.

Further, since the conflict between humans and (human-alien) hybrids now appears completely resolved -- at the same time that we're shown that TAALR has secretly preserved its existence in a single humanoid robot -- it's obvious that the third season will be focused entirely on this nonsensical malevolent-AI premise.

You may ask, "Why is this particular silliness so intolerable? Aren't other equally implausible elements often found in sf?" Yes, they are; in media sf in particular, biological implausibility seems more the rule than the exception, including in Extant. But that's just bad science, whereas this is bad epistemology. One is just not knowing certain facts, whereas the other is not knowing how to know: not having the discipline to keep one's subjective bias out of one's thought process. And the centrality of critical thinking to my personal value system is such that, whereas the first is disappointing, the second is actually kind of disgusting.

Update on New Democratic Party Rules

My earlier post about the new rules recently (and belatedly) announced for the Philadelphia Democratic Party inadvertently exaggerated the scope of the anti-democratic changes. I've edited that post to correct the misinformation.

Word of the Day

I got a big chuckle out of this: decidalize, meaning "to realize or decide" -- coined by China Mieville in his novel Railsea.

Philly's Democratic Party Quietly Repudiates Democracy

Edit: The column that appeared in the print edition of Metro overstated the new rule's scope. It applies not to all primaries, but only to the selection of nominees for special elections. Previously the ward leader(s) for the district directly concerned had the final say; now they can be overridden by the Democratic County Committee. Although this is a less sweeping change than the original column suggested, it's still a curtailment of democracy in that it shifts power away from people elected by the voters of that district, toward a body elected largely by people in other districts. And the fact this change was introduced in such a stealthy way, along with other sneaky things mentioned in the column, indicates the party leaders know the move has no justification.

It's now official: there's no democracy in Philly's "Democratic" party.

For those progressives who've tried to work within the city's one-party system, it's time to hear the message the One Party is sending you loud and clear: it wants you to get lost!

Unlike the Democrats, the Green Party City Committee has never endorsed candidates. These decisions are left to individual members attending the monthly membership meetings. And, thanks to the party's policy of refusing corporate money, candidates can pursue their values -- starting with the Four Pillars of nonviolence, grassroots democracy, social justice, and ecological wisdom -- without compromise. So, if you're looking for a true progressive voice where your vote still actually means something, it's time to go Green!

The next membership meeting will be held Wednesday, 30 September, 7 pm at Calvary Church, 48th Street and Baltimore Avenue. Membership meetings are open to the public, and all registered Greens may participate as voting members.

Voting in Philly is now pointless thanks to new Democratic Party bylaw

Your local elections don’t mean anything now thanks to a new bylaw that the Chairman of the Philadelphia Democratic Party, Bob Brady, put into effect.

metro.us|By Ernest Owens

From the archives: "Theories of Patriarchy" by Lindsey German

A Marxist critique of feminist patriarchy theory which I came upon recently:

http://isj.org.uk

Interestingly in light of current debates, she attributes the gender pay gap, which was much greater then than it is now, to situational factors resulting from the structure of capitalism, rather than to sex discrimination as many reflexively do today:

We live in a period where more women work in most advanced countries than in any other period in history. The jobs they do differ from men, in that sense the sexual division of labour is as alive as ever. And their pay is far from equal. This is because women still (usually) have their working lives interrupted by childbirth (although much less so than a couple of generations ago) and are still expected to play the major part in caring for the children as well as work.
But the structure of women’s jobs has more to do with the period of capitalist development in which they entered the labour force (the expansion of the service sector in particular) than with any male conspiracy.

Later, she writes:

The myth [of the fulltime housewife] has a number of advantages for capital. It enables them to foist poor wages, conditions and hours on women. It makes women feel that their job is not their ‘real’ work which makes them less likely to organise at work, and more likely to acquiesce to unemployment. It promotes the double burden of waged and housework for women. But it is nonetheless, a myth,

making it not so clear whether she's blaming intentional discrimination by capitalists, or lesser willingness to assert their rights by women workers. The fact that the wage gap has shrunk since this paper was written might be accounted for by women's increased inclination to see career as just as essential as family to their sense of purpose in life. Unfortunately, it's also at least in part because the labor movement has become weaker: it's less that women's real wages have risen, than that men's have fallen.

One of My Newest Message Tees Goes Over Well

After my Left Book Group meeting today, another member said she liked the anti-domestic violence T-shirt I was wearing, recently ordered from the Red Pill Shop at Zazzle. She said she especially liked "the fact it says everyone and not just women." I explained that the shirt is intended to raise awareness of the considerable proportion of DV victims who are men, and the lack of services proportional to the need, facts to which she reacted with surprise and interest.

Quote of the Day

If science is a religion, it is the religion that heals the sick and reveals the secrets of the stars. -- Eliezer Yudkowsky