my_wits_end

M.C. Escher, "Print Gallery" sketch

Me: So how many face cards are in a suit?
Student (high school): Face cards?
Me: Have you ever seen a deck of cards?
Student: Yes.
Me: So, how many face cards are in a suit?
Student: ... ... ... I don't know what a face card is.
Me: *Sigh* It's a card that has [....drawing drawing drawing...] a face on it:

As feminist economist Nancy Folbre has observed, "Patriarchal control over women tends to increase their specialization in reproductive labor, with important consequences for both the quantity and the quality of their investments in the next generation." Those consequences arguably include: more children receiving more attention from their mothers, who, having few other ways of finding meaning in their lives, become more skilled at keeping their children safe and healthy. Without implying any endorsement for the strategy, one must observe that a society that presents women with essentially three options -- be a nun, be a prostitute, or marry a man and bear children -- has stumbled upon a highly effective way to reduce the risk of demographic decline.

Phillip Longman, New America Foundation
Foreign Policy | March 1, 2006

So, this is one of the most disgusting articles I’ve ever seen.

I’m disgusted by humanity lately. Or maybe it's not so much humanity itself, but what this culture does to humanity. Everyone rushing around trying to get their piece of …whatever. The games people play – for money, fame, power, pleasure, attention - to have these things which are considered to be success. The selfishness of people - every sensible person is selfish, says Emerson. That bothers me. The deception, the manipulation, the willingness to mercilessly sacrifice other people in this pursuit. I am no exception. I’m selfish, self-absorbed, I experience schadenfreude and envy.
...

'We're all hungry,' he always says, and he knows it because he's studied people his whole life. He knows it because he is hungry, too.
...

It’s a shame, you know, when you realize that a close friend, someone you trust, someone who has shown genuine caring and concern for you, also has this side to themselves that you can't completely trust. You realize that they’re a human being, and their weaknesses can and will hurt you if you don’t watch out. But you also know that you must forgive them, because we're all just human beings, and if you didn't forgive people for being human beings then you wouldn't have any friends left, including yourself. Maybe it's better to get angry? Forgive me for bringing Nietzsche into this, but he did say something about that.

I’ve had a hard time justifying procreation. It seems almost unethical, really, to inflict life upon another human being, at this point in human history. We’ve been too successful as a species. I’m pretty pessimistic about the future in store for humanity, honestly. It only seems that things will get worse. I just don’t understand the values many people have. Perpetual economic growth? How on earth is that possible without utterly destroying the planet? All of this rushing around, but no one is stopping to think, it seems, or considering the big picture. You can try but everything is happening too fast; there's too much information to take in. This is why I think I’ve had this impulse, this reaction, the thing that causes me to sit for several hours doing absolutely nothing but thinking, or meditating, or reflecting, or whatever you want to call it. It's occurred to me that maybe that is partly in response to the mindless doing that is a feature of this age.

I've seen a lot of wonderful live music recently, for some reason. Went to see Mirah tonight, who played her last show here before she moves away from Portland. The opening Led to Sea was also excellent. And and and the other day we saw The Raincoats. I'm so glad we went to that show. They were all really great, and the violinist was especially amazing to watch. I have a thing for rock bands with violins [and violas].( Some songs. )

1. The effects of ionic and osmotic stress on the isolated brainstem of the leopard frog, Rana pipiens.



Other news:

1. Richard Dawkins is speaking here on Saturday. I'm considering attending.

2. The baby has learned to say 'fock'. I've been teaching her 'Socrates' and 'lobotomy'.

3. I bought the new Soulsavers album. This song*, and this one and also 'All the Way Down'*, which has no youtube video, are very good. This* one is 'devastating' (warning: emo). And I might as well also mention this. Maybe I seem obsessed, and that's probably because I am a little obsessed. But I'm not alone.

*Particularly recommended.

So I read some stuff and I’m still coming to the conclusion that a lot, by all means not all, but a good amount, of writing, academic writing, philosophical writing, especially in highly technical form, is a bunch of fabricated knowledge designed to make the author appear smart. Or maybe to give people something to dissect because they’re bored. People like to study it and 'understand' it because it makes them seem intelligent. But it's not really knowledge of anything real. Things are not really that complicated (or are they?), and, we try to overstep the bounds of our capacity to know. Maybe for some things, mathematics, I can understand why this is necessary. Wait, wait, wait, then I hear that obfuscation was common in Gauss and Euler's time for the exact same reason! Haha, I wonder if that's true.

I've been reading about the ancient Cynics and this is contributing to my skeptical attitude. I would not go so far as to reject all science and scientific knowledge, however. That's crazy.

This of course all revolves around the questions 'what is possible to know?' and 'what is worth knowing?' I've often thought that there is a fundamental nucleus that, knowing this, would make it possible to derive all other knowledge. Like in Euclid. Nietzsche says somewhere (it's driving me a bit crazy that I can't find exactly where at the moment) that the most important knowledge is knowledge of method.

Maybe this is all wrong, though. I'm skeptical even about skepticism. Dammit.

Wow. I saw the most awesome rock show the other night. This band that opened up for Mark Lanegan and the Soulsavers (unfortunately I think we missed the first opening band) was really stunning.



Jonneine Zapata





The other videos are good too. The stage presence this woman has is just... wow. So serious. It seemed like the whole thing was something out of a comic book, my roommate said, and that is really true.

We met the band members after the show! And they were so wonderful. They're from L.A. They kept saying how beautiful it is here and I kept telling them that they should move to Portland. I told Jonneine Zapata, she gave us posters, that I would tell all of my friends about her and her band and that they should go see the show. So, if you can, I would highly recommend it. If I could, I would follow them around the country.

( Here are the dates: )
And there is more music and such at their myspace.

It was not long ago that I discovered I was living so near to one of the best parks in the world. I discovered it just in time for what I decided yesterday must be my favorite time of year, the late summer. I've been going on lots of walks, trying to enjoy as much of the sun as possible until the 6 months of rain sets in.

Yesterday, as I entered the park, a man in a red shirt called out to me and waved hello. I waved back at him. Then I figured, what the hell, and I began to approach him. Ever since my later teen years I've always enjoyed talking to random people on the street. Maybe it originally started as an attempt to overcome a natural shyness, but mostly just because I have an interest in what's going on in everybody's minds, or their souls, even.

He was a large older man in a red shirt and he was sitting on a cart with wheels that was to help him walk. He offered me some of his Coca-Cola, and I said okay and I had some. We got on the subject of the V.A. hospital and what Agent Orange has done to his body. He'd recently had a heart attack. He gets treated for diabetes and PTSD. We talked about war and how I think it's just awful and makes no sense and he agreed. He talked about his graphic design work. Finally he invited me to smoke crack with him in his van. I said no thanks. He said it was a joy talking to me and I said it was a pleasure, and he went to do his thing. Then I walked around the entire park which is huge and grassy and has baseball, soccer, tennis, basketball, track, a community garden, a stage with a giant sun with a face on top, pretty much everything.

I think I’m coming to understand more and more why some people have chosen to renounce the world and spend the rest of their lives living in a cave, in the mountains, contemplating the eternal mystery, or whatever it is they do.

So, life is going well. Or maybe it's not life itself that is going well but my psychological orientation to the life. Whatever. I'm feeling better than I have in a long while. It rained all day today and I was walking around outside. It wasn't cold. It was nice.

I am tutoring a 6th grader who lives in a mansion with an American flag on a pole in the yard. When I first walked up to the place I thought for a moment that it was part of the golf club across the street. Last week he was *stressed out* over his science project. He's like a miniature adult. It's weird. He goes to what is probably the best private school in town. I've also been working with underprivileged minority students. We've been doing history and economics, which is a nice change of pace. The socio-economic-racial diversity is one of my favorite aspects of what I am doing now.

This is interesting: They really love me over in anti_feminism. The attitude in that community is hilarious. The hungrymoon fellow still thinks I'm a dude. I wonder if his reading of my comments would change if he knew?

I've been reading about gender and privilege. Maybe that's not a good idea because it just makes me angry. This is extremely distressing and depressing and infuriating to me. So is this.

Here is a quote from a FtM:

“And as much as I relish in the privilege, I mean I hate to say that but it is just like fucking finally! Finally I am seen for my own accomplishments. And at the same times it’s at the expense of someone else who might be as accomplished but is female.” He adds, “And I feel like I have that much more responsibility [to do something about it] because I am that much more aware.” ...

I'm surprised I haven't heard of Ben Barres before. This is my new favorite person. I've read his article in Nature and now I'm watching the talk he gave at Harvard in response to Larry Summers and Steven Pinker.

It would be much easier if I were just blissfully unaware of all of this myth and went on pursuing my interests blind to gender stereotypes, but this stuff is out there and it's so pervasive and ingrained in the culture that it's hard not to start believing it sometimes. The only way to not become brainwashed (about, for example, math and science ability) is to not completely identify with your sex category. Barres says:

"From the time I was a child, from the littlest, littlest age, I did not identify as a girl. It never occurred to me that I could not be a scientist because I was a woman. It just rolled off my back. Now I wonder, maybe I just didn’t take these stereotypes so seriously because I did not identify myself as a woman."

But the world just will not let a person forget about gender roles.

"Take my experience with M.I.T. If I had been a guy who had been the only one in the class to solve that problem, I am sure I would have been pointed out and given a pat on the back. I was not only not given positive feedback, I was given negative feedback. This is the kind of thing that undermines women’s self-confidence."...

Imagine regularly outperforming males on math and science tests, and then being fed this bullshit from the media, from these men. These people are lying. This is why I've dedicated one of my undergraduate science degrees to Larry Summers. Thanks for the inspiration. I've been meaning to send him a love letter. Steve Pinker as well.

This kind of stuff simultaneously makes me want to forgo higher education in science, because if people don't want or appreciate my help, then I'm content not to give it to them. And at the same time I feel like I have a responsibility to help break down this stereotype. Do I have anything better to do? No, actually, I don't.

I've been working as a math and science tutor for the past several years. I've tutored many students, male and female, of various levels and ages. It has been incredibly rewarding and awesome in all kinds of ways, but it's not really a real job. I've been trying to figure out what to do. It seems that I have too many interests. What I think I ultimately want to do is to teach science at the university level. This seems very remote to me right now, but I don't think it's impossible. I know this should be ridiculous, but I feel like I still need to justify this to myself and everyone else in a way that I wouldn't have to if I had a Y chromosome.

Okay, then. On another note, I've learned that using "gay" as a pejorative adjective is offensive to gay people. I don't think I'm making too many friends over at anti_feminism. It's funny because their community thinks feminists are too PC. I guess that doesn't go for the gay rights. "But I have gay friends!"

I noticed this book called Sex and Philosophy in the philosophy section at Powell's a few weeks ago, and of course I am naturally going to be drawn to such a title, but then, seeing that it was about Simone and Sartre, I had no choice but to buy it. I became particularly fascinated with de Beauvoir and Sartre at the beginning of this year. Yadda yadda anyways, I found this anecdote to be particularly hilarious:

“... Sartre set about trying to create his own theory of the imagination. This led him to an interest in dreams and anomalies of perception, which, in turn, had led him to ask to be injected with mescaline at a hospital in February 1935. While under the drug’s influence, he reported to Beauvoir by telephone that he was having ‘a battle with several devil fish.’ Following his unhappy experiment with the drug, Sartre’s depression deepened and he began to suffer from hallucinations, usually of a lobster that trotted along behind him. After an Easter holiday with Beauvoir in the Italian Lakes, not only did Sartre’s depression become even worse, but he also felt himself followed, no longer by a lone lobster, but by a whole army of giant crustaceans."

-- Sex and Philosophy: Rethinking de Beauvoir and Sartre, Fullbrook & Fullbrook

And it reminded me of this other similarly amusing anecdote that I encountered more recently:

"In his own case, things very frequently got him down--especially in the morning, when his head was still foggy with sleep, or when circumstances reduced him to inactivity: he would hunch himself into a defensive ball, like a hedgehog. On such occasions he resembled a sea elephant we had once seen at the zoo at Vincennes whose misery broke our hearts. A keeper had emptied a bucketful of little fish down the beast's throat, and then jumped on its belly." --(Good heavens, why the jumping?)-- "The sea elephant, swamped by this internal invasion of tiny fish, raised tiny, hopeless eyes heavenward. It looked as though the whole vast bulk of his flesh were endeavoring to transmit a prayer for help through those two small apertures, but even so embryonic an attempt at communication was denied it. The mouth of the great beast gaped, and tears trickled down over its oil skin; it shook its head slowly and collapsed, defeated. When Sartre's face took on an unhappy expression, we used to pretend that the sea elephant's desolate soul had taken possession of his body. Sartre would then complete the metamorphosis by rolling his eyes up, sighing, and making silent supplication: this pantomime would restore his good spirits."

-- The Prime of Life, Simone de Beauvoir

How interesting that Sartre's despair has a marine biology theme.

OMG The spinning of the Earth is slowing down.

I walked out on the job I was working on Wednesday. The impulse had been building for a while, and then something sent it over the threshold. It had to do with the awful music they were blasting -- out of someone's cellphone or something, no less, so not only was the music itself awful, but it was coming out all fuzzy and garbled from a bad-quality speaker -- which added a whole new layer of chaos to the usual disorder of the office environment. This served as the final straw. I showed up and there was nothing substantial for me to do besides putting together clipboards with a bunch of yahoos listening to awful music, who didn't really need my help in any case, and so I was, again, faced with the recurring situation associated with this job, in which I must either actively seek out something to do, which entails interrupting someone else so that this person can actively seek out something for me to do, which entails this person interrupting some other person so that this other person can... ad infinitum, or I just end up taking up space.

So I stood there, just taking up space, and wondering: “Why should I just stand here and contribute to the sum total of senseless, meaningless, needless suffering in the world?” So I decided to put an end to it. I left. I immediately felt better.

I was working on a grassroots political campaign. Since you are probably interested, here is a brief synopsis of the fascinating world that is Oregon state politics:

There is a man called Bill Sizemore who is known and strongly disliked by most people in Oregon. Why? Because since the early 1990's he has been putting extremely ill-conceived, right-wing initiatives on the ballot, and he goes about it in a sleazy way. In 2002 he was convicted of racketeering in a suit brought against him by his long-time enemy, the teachers union, and he has recently admitted to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tax-exempt foundation money on such personal items as gold bars, a time-share in Mexico, and braces for his daughter. Sizemore, as well as a local politician of similar extreme right-wing and socially conservative persuasions known as Kevin Mannix, are funded by out-of-state millionaires such as medical equipment supplier Loren "I never do anything kinky" Parks. These people are all part of the western US tax revolt movement.

The job was informing people about these Sizemore and Mannix measures. But really, I will be *totally shocked* if they pass. Most people I talked to know exactly who Sizemore is and asked me such questions as: "When are we going to pass a measure making it illegal for Sizemore to put things on the ballot?" and "When are we going to vote him out of the state?" and "Why is he not in jail yet?" But apparently these measures are perceived as a dangerous enough threat so as to warrant the substantial drainage of economic resources from the teachers unions and other organizations funding the campaign I was working on.

( Furthermore... )

So, today I read this, from the scienceblog RSS feed:

The Fundamental Axiom of Cognitive Science

It is the scientific consensus that all human behavior is the result [of] activity in the brain. Like gravity and the laws of thermodynamics, this cannot be proven beyond a doubt (in fact, there's a good argument that nothing can be proven beyond a doubt) [link to Hume's problem of induction]. However, it is the foundation upon which modern psychology and neuroscience is built, and there is no good reason to doubt it.

In fact, many of the world's events cannot be understood otherwise. Classic examples are people who, as a result of brain injury, are unaware of the fact that they can see or that the left half of the world exists or think their leg is a foreign entity not part of their own body. The oddest fact about such syndromes is that such patients sometimes are completely unaware of their problem and cannot understand it when it is explained to them (Oliver Sacks is a great source of such case histories).

"It is the scientific consensus that all human behavior is the result [of] activity in the brain."

Is it really? I say that there is good reason to doubt that: 1. it is scientific consensus, and 2. that all human behavior is the result of brain activity.

Regarding (2): Just because the brain is a necessary element in the causal chain that goes from environment to subjective consciousness to behavior, this does not mean that we should say that all human behavior is the result of brain activity, because the nature of that brain activity is determined by other factors.

What other factors? In part it is the result of genetically determined 'hard-wiring', but it is also the result of past behavior and experience, as well as features of the immediate environment. A total reduction of all determinants of behavior to brain states is not really the best way to understand the causality governing human behavior, because this fails to take these other factors -- i.e. the determinants of the brain state -- into account. Why should the brain, which is just one part of this causal chain, have a privileged status?

Say that we are at a dinner party and I ask someone to "please pass the salt," and they pass me the salt. Did they pass me the salt because of their brain state? Sure they did. But why did this brain state arise? It arose because I asked them to pass me the salt. My asking induced a brain state. So we can trace the cause of the brain state out of the brain and back into the outside world.

Some people DO have permanent brain abnormalities which distort the appearance of reality. Sometimes people without physiological brain abnormalities experience states of 'temporary insanity,' or temporary states of physiological abnormality, which cause distortions in the appearance of reality. This article argues that the insanity defense is unscientific because everybody's behavior can be reduced to brain states, and there is no reason why certain enduring brain abnormalities should be privileged over other, perhaps temporary, abnormalities. I'm not altogether certain, but I think that there must be some scientific way to distinguish between people who experience enduring distortions of the appearance of reality due to irrevocable brain abnormality, and those who experience temporary state of insanity, and those who are just knowingly engaging in criminal activity.

Also, it is a scientific fact that we have the ability to modulate our own brain states to a certain degree. So even if we can say that there is no human behavior without some route through the brain-state, we should be asking how responsible are we for the states of our brains? This is a good question.

( Hmm. )

I've watched a great deal of CNN yesterday. This is one of the fun things I do when I'm at work: watch election coverage. Apparently we are in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis! Nearing Great Depression level of crisis, some say. The biggest decreases ever on record for housing prices.  McCain, not too long ago, said that the fundamentals of the economy are sound. He also said, not too long ago, that he is no expert on the economy. And now he is saying that he wants to suspend his campaign to deal with the economic crisis.  He seems to be rather confused.

Bush, last night, in his address to the nation, said that Democratic capitalism has created 2/3rds of the wealth currently existing in the world. Maybe that's true, maybe this is the soundness to which McCain is referring, maybe not, but if so, how have we come to this, then? Something must be fundamentally wrong, and it is difficult to see how throwing money at the situation -- a 700 billion dollar band-aid -- is going to cure it, and not just contribute to further inflation.  

Where is this money coming from? Taxes? Most people do not seem to understand that this unprecedented deficit, which has largely been created during the last eight years, is being approx. 50% financed by Japanese and Chinese investors, and by other foreign investors.  We have sold bonds and securities to these foreign investors, and and if they wanted to, they could just ruin us at any time by putting these up for sale:

This exposure to potential financial or political risk should foreign banks stop buying Treasury securities or start selling them heavily was addressed in a recent report issued by the Bank of International Settlements which stated, "'Foreign investors in U.S. dollar assets have seen big losses measured in dollars, and still bigger ones measured in their own currency. While unlikely, indeed highly improbable for public sector investors, a sudden rush for the exits cannot be ruled out completely." ^[38]

The people who have defaulted on their mortgages, overextending themselves financially, are just following the example set by our government.

( Read more... )

Today I found free stuff: several decks of cards, several mismatched red dice, a strange red and black vinyl handbag that looks like it's an accessory to a golf bag, and a wooden gavel. Ha ha ha ha! I think I will have to devise some kind of game using these articles.

Today I had a fortune cookie and it said: An unexpected event will soon bring you fortune. What a letdown. I don't need a cookie to tell me that. It doesn't even specify the type of fortune. It could be good fortune; it could be bad fortune. I guess I will have to wait and see...

Life is a series of moments, and if you live life such that you are engaged in the creation of beautiful moments, and I believe that this is a kind of art, then these will add up to a beautiful life.



Another thing: if you love life in the right kind of way, no matter what it is, no matter what situation you find yourself in, or what people you find yourself with, then it will open up and blossom before your eyes like a lotus flower.