tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61543884399571425922024-02-02T11:57:08.481-07:00The Dave Brown JournalYou're entitled to your erroneous opinion.Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07264143114436464267noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6154388439957142592.post-17348820487547358962013-08-09T18:49:00.000-06:002013-08-09T18:52:30.546-06:00A Practical ManToday I learned that my grandfather Earl Brown has died at the age of 94. <br />
<br />
He managed to avoid ever having a real two-way conversation with me for my entire life. That's just part of the way he was with me, he was a relentlessly practical person and I'm not. We all open up differently to different people, and I know that in some settings and with some people he was far more gregarious.<br />
<br />
But I didn't know him very well, and this has hit me pretty hard, because time is up. I had my whole life to get to know him, and I tried, but I failed. I asked him to teach me to shoot about ten years ago, and we drove out to the range west of town a few times and spent the days out there. I can't say I love shooting, I just wanted to try to get into his head a little. Maybe I did, but what I found in there was mostly shooting.<br />
<br />
But I think there was a time when Granddad reached out to me.<br />
<br />
A year ago I was going through a really horrible time. I don't think many people knew how bad it was, certainly Granddad didn't know the extent. But right in the middle of it, Granddad phoned out of the blue to see if I might have use for a dremel set.<br />
<br />
This was always the way with Granddad ... there had to be a <i>reason</i> to visit. I knew that much, and I hadn't seen him for a while, so I said, yes, I could probably find a use for it.<br />
<br />
So I went by the house and sat down with Granddad and had a beer or something. He said he was sorry to hear I'd broken up with my girlfriend. Me too, I said. That's too bad, he said, I was really hoping to see you two develop into something serious. Me too, I said. He said, well, maybe we could work it out. I said no. He said, are you sure? You both seemed so happy. You never know, maybe you can sort it out.<br />
<br />
"Granddad," I said, "There is another guy."<br />
<br />
"Oh!" he said. He looked down at his beer, embarrassed, I think. "Next subject."<br />
<br />
He thought for a little while, and trying to think of something practical to talk about. We sometimes talked about renting property, that's how he landed a comfortable retirement, and so he said, "How's your renter?"<br />
<br />
"That's the guy," I said.<br />
<br />
"Oh!" he said.<br />
<br />
He thought about that for a really long time. Then he said, "Well. It's not advisable to shoot him."<br />
<br />
That was the first laugh I'd had in weeks. It felt pretty good.<br />
<br />
We talked about something else for a bit, and then he asked what day it was, and I told him it was May 20, or whatever it was. There was a calendar on the wall, and he looked at it and said, "Let's see ... May 20, May 20... yes, there it is. That makes it three years ago today that Edith died."<br />
<br />
Edith, his second wife. I realized Granddad was having a bad day too. Coincidentally, the day that he decided he suddenly didn't need his dremel set anymore. And I, the unlikeliest of his many progeny to ever find use for a dremel set, was the one to bestow it to. It's still under my desk, whatever it is.<br />
<br />
We sat and finished our beer, Granddad announcing whatever unrelated topic came to his mind ... I don't remember what, but I do know it was all about practical things. His computer, or investments, or something. And then he asked if I could use some spoons.<br />
<br />
Spoons? Sure, why not. He had a whole drawer full of spoons. Those I do use, I noticed some of them are engraved KOCR, for King's Own Calgary Regiment. They look very old. Then he started rummaging around in his closet. Do I need a tea cozy? Not really. Well, you could use it as a heat pad or something. Sure, I guess I could. How about these paintings, can I use any of these paintings? I took one, it's a little boy in a cowboy outfit and hangs on my wall next to the closet.<br />
<br />
He went through all his stuff looking for anything he can give me that I might actually use. I had to draw the line at some point, he got into things so profoundly useless and unsentimental that I knew I'd have to throw them away if I accepted them. But it gave us some time in which we could talk about anything at all besides grief.<br />
<br />
There are times when practical subjects are the only ones that don't hurt. That was one, and so is this. Listen in at a funeral -- not his, he was too practical to want one. But listen in at somebody's. Other than an occasional toast to the deceased, that's what people talk about more than ever. Practical things. My first thought when I heard that Granddad had died was that I needed to drop what I was doing at work, go home, and fix my clutch.<br />
<br />
I did leave work, but I'm writing instead of fixing.<br />
<br />
<br />Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07264143114436464267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6154388439957142592.post-25686571767900000782013-05-30T21:46:00.000-06:002013-05-30T22:25:48.629-06:00The World's Most Socially Oblivious Man<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Last night I met the World's Most Socially Oblivious Man. I defy you to present anyone who is even a contender against this person. Here is the story. To protect the sensibilities of bosses and girlfriends, I am using pseudonyms for everyone except me.<br />
<br />
Every Wednesday, I play guitar at open mic night at a pub downtown with my friend Brian. Last night, about an hour before open mic, I went to Brian's place to learn a few new songs and practice for what we'd play that night. Our friend Mike met us there, and a guy I don't know so well, Brian's friend Skeletor.<br />
<br />
Skeletor gets a distinctive pseudonym because, I learned later, some of the guys at work call him that. He's got an angular face with protruding jawbones, a gangly build, bald head, googly eyes, and an oddly vacant intensity. And as you will see, he is evil, but also oblivious. Hence, Skeletor.<br />
<br />
Skeletor showed up last to Brian's place, cornered Brian in the kitchen, and launched into a convoluted story that took about 15 minutes. From the snippets I overheard, it was partly about someone he doesn't like at work, and also partly about where he likes to buy weed. Actually I think he was baked at the time. It's hard to tell with Skeletor.<br />
<br />
The story kept on going and going, and I told the guys we had to get to the bar. I was first out into the hallway, Brian was still looking for his keys or something, and Skeletor followed me into the hall and <i>continued the story</i> as if nothing had changed. I hadn't even been in the conversation when he had started the story. To Skeletor this was not important.<br />
<br />
Actually it wouldn't have helped anyway. Skeletor's stories have a fizzy kind of uncertainty principle to them. One second maybe he's talking about an argument he had with some guy at work, and the instant you start to think maybe you're following him, the next sentence is about which of the My Little Ponies that guy at work most resembles. They're related in the sense that they're both about the same guy, but also completely not related at all. You feel like you must have missed something between those two sentences.<br />
<br />
And he mumbles a lot too, so probably you <i>did</i> miss something. But I am sure that if he were subtitled and I read every word, I would be more confused, not less. I remember thinking that at him in the hallway: "I have no idea what you are saying right now."<br />
<br />
So we get to the bar and take a seat. Somebody is already on stage, and the open mic host, our friend Jake, comes and sits down with us. Brian is on my left, Skeletor is on my right, and on the far side of Skeletor is this table full of people I've seen a few times before. There's a girl at the table who I saw perform last week, she was terrific. She's one of those people who makes music look easy, one of those people who I'm definitely not. I close my eyes when I sing, partly to forget anyone's watching, but mostly because if I'm going to sing and play guitar at the same time, I can't <i>also</i> keep my visual cortex running. Insufficient RAM, gotta close some windows.<br />
<br />
Anyway, this girl comes over to our table to ask Jake when she can go up. Jake starts flirting with her pretty hard, I can't hear what he's saying but she is clearly enjoying every word, and she leaves with a grin.<br />
<br />
"Hey Jake," I said, "How old is that girl, anyway?"<br />
<br />
"Too young for <i>you</i>!" he said.<br />
<br />
"Well, how young is <i>that</i>?" I said. What I should have added was, "...since you're the one flirting with her!"<br />
<br />
Jake admitted he didn't know how old she was, but maintained that whatever she was, it was too young for me. So we got into a brief speculation about how old she <i>might</i> be. For the record, he's in his late 20s I think, and I'm 41. But I wasn't trying to snag her phone number, I was mainly just curious. She's got a face that's hard to guess, I would have believed anything from "fake ID" to "early 30s." Also, as a musician, I was partly wondering how many years it had taken her to get so good. So, we speculated a bit, average guess coming in somewhere around 25, and then we talked about something else.<br />
<br />
Throughout the evening, I was ignoring Skeletor, because I couldn't understand anything he said. I kept having to pretend to understand, and it was making me feel like an idiot. And the one time I did think maybe I had heard him correctly, what he seemed to be saying was, "I always keep a toothpick handy because I have hockey teeth."<br />
<br />
See what I mean? Hockey teeth. He clearly has <i>teeth</i>, somehow they haven't all been punched out yet. So what are hockey teeth? The more you hear, the less you understand.<br />
<br />
With me ignoring him, and everyone else too far away, Skeletor had nobody to talk to but the people at the next table over. That's the table the girl had come from. So he chats with them for a bit, and then he leans back to me, and says, "That's her mom," pointing at one of the women at the table.<br />
<br />
"Huh," I said. The woman appeared to be in her early 40s or so. "Maybe she's younger than I thought."<br />
<br />
Then I went back to ignoring Skeletor, and talking about something or other with Brian. So I only peripherally noticed Skeletor shuffling back over to the other table again. The girl was on stage at this point, singing beautifully, and her mother was watching with rapt adoration and pride as her daughter sang to the angels over the clattering of the pub.<br />
<br />
And into this moment of mother-daughter bonding shambles Skeletor.<br />
<br />
Skeletor, four years older than me, but who was once mistaken for my dad. Skeletor, with his intensely vacant googly eyes and stoner stagger. Skeletor, with a toothpick and a big hockey-toothed grin on his face.<br />
<br />
And he says to the woman, in front of all the woman's friends, "Hey, how old is your daughter?"<br />
<br />
You might already be thinking, damn, you're right, that is the World's Most Socially Oblivious Man. But to Skeletor, this is just laying the groundwork for his magnum opus. Close your eyes for a moment and try to imagine the creepiest, most disturbing thing a man could possibly do or say next without breaking any law. I wager that whatever you're thinking, Skeletor will still top you with what he does. Which is:<br />
<br />
He turns back to our table. He is still standing right next to the girl's mother, literally still at her shoulder. And he shouts the first clear, concise, perfectly pronounced sentence out of his mouth the entire evening:<br />
<br />
"Dude, <i>she's 18</i>!"<br />
<br />
I instantly realize what he has done. Hot murderous rage floods into my system. But if I kill him where he stands, everyone will know he was talking to me. So I pretend not to notice or hear him, I just keep talking to Brian hoping everyone will think he's talking to somebody else, or himself.<br />
<br />
"Dave!" he shouts. "Hey, Dave! Dave, listen!"<br />
<br />
I look sideways at him and mouth, "Shut up!"<br />
<br />
He does not notice that, nor does he notice that the mom and the mom's guests are all listening too. He doesn't care about any of that. He just wants to make sure <i>I'm</i> listening, and not interrupting his amazing discovery with any wild gesticulating or zipper-mouth pantomiming. He waits until I am sitting utterly still.<br />
<br />
Then he shouts. "Dude! That girl's 18! Too young for you, <i>you bad boy</i>!" And I swear to you, he actually <i>waves his finger</i> at me. <br />
<br />
Then Skeletor goes and takes a piss.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKhpBmTWXKTbBeU6gqImg3yJr5LGDPXkBRDUZxxjXLL0RlOGZ70uFCPJvlulqK0U7Yvbn-lTc_jE-X2AMK-lbGp3QJTsDfHPbhOJtVF4WC4GyT4EBXUit0mZm9lDE3BOvGQ-c59gUg05JC/s1600/skeletor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKhpBmTWXKTbBeU6gqImg3yJr5LGDPXkBRDUZxxjXLL0RlOGZ70uFCPJvlulqK0U7Yvbn-lTc_jE-X2AMK-lbGp3QJTsDfHPbhOJtVF4WC4GyT4EBXUit0mZm9lDE3BOvGQ-c59gUg05JC/s200/skeletor.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Too young for <i>you</i>, He-Man!<br />
Ngya-ngya-ngya-ngya-ngya!"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I switch seats with Brian so that I don't have to sit next to Skeletor when he comes back, or talk to him, or rip his kidneys out with a chicken wing. And when Skeletor comes back, in the bathroom he has suddenly discovered social awareness. He sits down and immediately asks Brian why I have switched seats.<br />
<br />
"What's the matter," he says. "I farted or something?"<br />
<br />
I don't recall ever being quite so angry and so amused at the same time. Once a dog took a wet dump into the intake vent for my furnace, that was probably the next closest juxtaposition. Both Skeletor and the dog walked away from their roles without even knowing they had done anything extraordinary. And I ended up elbows deep scrubbing dog shit out of an intake vent, but still chuckling to myself.<br />
<br />
The dog shit in this case is, I play at this bar every week, and it looks like that girl is planning to play there every week too. I will probably see that whole table full of people again. It's not like I can keep a low profile when I'm singing on the damned stage. In fact, the better I play, the more they'll remember, and tell their friends, "Hey, that's the village pedophile!"<br />
<br />
But I also think it's funny. Because actually, she <i>was</i> pretty hot.Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07264143114436464267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6154388439957142592.post-1870019878713534592008-02-27T00:32:00.002-07:002008-02-27T01:51:34.681-07:00Proof of God<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This morning I got an email from one of the religious leaders who spoke at a colloquium I wrote about <a href="http://ddavebbrown.blogspot.com/2008/02/atheists-perspective-on-religions.html">last week</a>. I opened it with some trepidation, because it was from the one I had disagreed with most emphatically. But I needn’t have worried:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><blockquote>Hi David<br /> I am Ataul LaHaye and I spoke on behalf of Islam on the subject of Evolution at the program you also attended last Tuesday. I read your viewpoint on your Blog and want to initiate a dialogue. I have attached the longer version of my address for you to review, in the meantime. What proof will convince you of the existence of God? If your answer is none, then our discussion will be very short. If you have some type of criteria, then we can progress from there.<br /> Sincerely yours. Ataul LaHaye</blockquote><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Exactly the kind of discussion I went looking for. I wrote in my last post that LaHaye and the other religious leaders seemed the type that would enjoy examining their beliefs with someone who doesn’t share them. I’ve been proven right so far.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I read the attachment Mr. LaHaye refers to. I am probably going to bungle his argument, here, I think it would be pretty easy to do. But briefly, it argues that the Qur'an is not in conflict with evolution, that the Qur'an, in fact, beat Darwin to the conclusion. Except it adds the refinement of Allah being the force behind it.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">LaHaye quotes some passages from the Qur'an that do indeed sound a little like evolution, although I bet nobody interpreted them that way <i style="">before</i> Darwin published. Dismantling this argument would require me to read the Quran for parts that <i style="">are </i>in conflict with evolution. We’ll see about that, there are a lot of books to read. And even if I read it and find no conflict, I’d still need convincing that the rest of the Qur'an is true, and that Allah need to be part of the theory.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">But that is another argument. I am more interested in Mr. LaHaye’s question of what proof I would require to believe in God. I’ve been pondering it all day. I’m sure many writers smarter than I have addressed this, but stuff them. A <a href="http://ddavebbrown.blogspot.com/2007/06/writing.html">founding principle</a> of this blog is that I don’t worry about whether I’m writing things that have been said before, or better.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I will assume we’re talking about the least specific form of God. Setting the bar as low as possible, I’ll define that as an intelligence without physical form. I will leave aside questions of what it looks like, whether it intervenes in our lives or hears our prayers, and what it wants us to do on Sundays. Convince me first that the intelligence exists, and then we’ll worry about what it thinks, what it does, and how we know either.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">So, what would proof of God look like?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It would not rely on authority.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>By this I am most concerned with people who “prove” God by referring to “evidence” described only in holy books. For a disappointing intellectual exercise, Google “proof of God.” <span style=""> </span>I found several variations of this chop-logic, an argument so outrageously circular that I’m surprised anyone who makes it can still count. I don’t mean that as a cheap insult, I mean only to say that both reveal errors in basic logic. Holy books have nothing to contribute to the question of whether God exists, because they depend on that very existence for their authority on the question. If you can establish, <span style="font-style: italic;">by some other means</span>, that God exists, and wrote your book, and didn't lie at all in it or get misquoted, then, sure, the book is more proof ... but by that point, why do you need it? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">(I don’t mean to say, by the way, that holy books are worthless if they are written “only” by humans. In fact, I think they are cheapened by the requirement that people accept them to be supernaturally inspired. I am sure that any holy book you care to name contains stories worth reading, even models worth emulating. <a href="http://www.jedichurch.com/">As does Star Wars</a>.)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It would be repeatable.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>All well and good to say, for example, that God spoke to you out of a burning bush. But if you can’t take me back to that bush so I can hear him speak too, then it’s not proof. It's just your say-so.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">As another example, Pope John Paul II, <a href="http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/06/13/pope.gunman.03/">shot point-blank in 1981</a>, attributed his survival to the intervention of the Virgin Mary of Fatima, Portugal, whoever that is. How he reached that conclusion is a mystery to me. I also don't understand how he rules out the possibility that the Virgin Mary of Fatima, apparently in charge of bullets, wasn't trying to kill him. But never mind. My point is that even the Pope would not volunteer to be shot again, expecting the Virgin Mary to save him twice.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">God would be the simplest and least spectacular explanation for the evidence.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> In the burning bush example, when my friend tells me God spoke to him from a burning bush, there are many possible conclusions. God is one. “He’s lying,” is another. <span style=""> </span>If the bush meets my first criteria by talking to me, too, “We’re both nuts,” is another interpretation. I grant you, both my friend and I being nuts in the exact same way is rather unlikely. But people do, after all, lose their minds. My model of the world requires no fundamental restructuring to accept that two might do it at the same time in the same way, not even if one of them is me.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">So, we both go to the psychiatrist, and determine that we’re sane. I <i style="">still</i> want the bush to talk to other people besides us. I also want to investigate the bush’s claim that it is, in fact, God. It might just be a talking, burning, dishonest bush. Of course, that’s not very likely. But I’d still want to rule it out, since it is still a little more likely than an invisible superman who magically creates talking burning bushes.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">In the words of Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It would not force unwarranted conclusions out of unexplained observations.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>Lights in the sky are not aliens until you catch one and prove it. Until then, they’re just lights. Maybe nobody knows why they’re there, but you can’t conclude from that … anything at all, really. You certainly can’t take them as confirmation of whatever your dearest fantasy happens to be.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Similarly, inconsistencies in the 9/11 commission’s report do not mean that Dick Cheney ordered the job, Terri Schiavo twitching once a month does not mean that she was aware of anything, and the as-yet unknown origin of life does not mean God made it.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">It would lead to accurate, testable predictions.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"> Newton’s law of gravitation gets to be called a law because it makes predictions. You can use it to predict when the next eclipse will be, or how long it will take a bowling ball to fall from a bridge. You can fly to the moon and back with it. Sure, after a few hundred years of scrutiny, people found that if you look hard enough, Newton’s predictions are a little bit off. And then there was Einstein, waiting in the wings to make predictions about that too.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Religion, too, makes predictions. But they generally fall into three categories:<br /></span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Wrong. “The end of the world is coming in 2000, 2001, 2002...”<br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Coincidentally right. “The end of the world is coming in 2025.”</span></li><li><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Untestable. “Dave Brown is going to hell.”<o:p></o:p></span></li></ul> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">This last quality of testability is particularly crucial. At the colloquium last week, someone said, “God exists outside of time and space.” I have no choice but to allow that possibility, but with a signing statement: There is no meaningful difference between “exists outside of time and space” and “does not exist.” You can say anything you like about heaven or hell, so long as they are safely on the far side of death. Nobody gets to die, come back from the dead, and tell you you're wrong. (If you just now said, “Jesus did!” refer back to my first point about arguments from authority. If you said, “Near-death experiences!” refer back to my second point about simplest explanations.)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Conclusions<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I know that a lot of these requirements sound suspiciously like science. I may even be accused of “applying science to religion,” an act which an agnostic friend of mine said today is, for some reason, impossible. But science has been, since its invention, our most effective method for determining truth. And, as Richard Dawkins wrote, imagine one day that science <span style="font-style: italic;">does </span>prove God exists. Will religion ignore that proof, since science doesn’t apply? Of course not. Science is only irrelevant to religion so long as it keeps finding things religion doesn’t like.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">Given all my requirements, it does become tough to imagine an actual proof of God. The face of the Virgin Mary on a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4034787.stm">grilled cheese sandwich</a> certainly isn’t going to cut the mustard. How about a four-sided triangle? Or the </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">entire Book of Mormon carved into a mountain of gold on the far side of the moon? That would be persuasive, although I’d still keep an eye out for clandestine rocket launches from Salt Lake City. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I have only ridiculous examples due to a failing of my own imagination, but others have imagined ways that my criteria could plausibly be met. The best I've seen is in Carl Sagan’s novel, “<a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Contact-Carl-Sagan/dp/0671004107/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204102152&sr=8-1">Contact</a>.” It has a fictional proof of God which is so elegant that I refuse to give it away in a blog entry. Even as fiction it blew my mind, and it deserves to be read in context, or at the very least, whispered in private to people who promise I'm not spoiling the book for them. I tried and failed to come up with a proof that comes anywhere close without ripping it off. If Sagan were still with us, I'm sure he could rattle off another fifty suggestions, but he died an atheist.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">In broad strokes, however, Sagan imagines a certain subtle observation which, once noticed, would defeat all my obstacles, leading to the conclusion that universe was designed. It could not lead anywhere else. As evidence, it would be even more convincing than a talking burning bush, better than my Book of Mormon suggestion, better than a sudden and convenient parting of the Red Sea. It may, for all anyone knows, be real, and I am sure there are people in the world looking for it as we speak.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">I hope somebody finds it. I'd love to be convinced. One good thing about a scientific world-view is that revisions are a pleasure.<br /></span></p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07264143114436464267noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6154388439957142592.post-49475210981926343752008-02-19T21:08:00.001-07:002008-02-27T01:52:43.419-07:00Evolution, Imperfectly GraspedI've read Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hutchins. Their books are brilliant, entertaining, and logical confirmations of everything I have already concluded about evolution and religion -- namely, that evolution makes a lot of sense, and the best thing you can say about religion is that it's unnecessary, and sponsors some great architecture.<br /><br />But I'm always open to challenges to that conclusion, provided the challenge meets the same standard of being brilliant, entertaining, and most crucially, logical. So, as I was driving home and heard on the radio about a religious discussion of evolution happening that very night, no more than a kilometer from my home, I went.<br /><br />It was at <a href="http://www.centralchurch.ca/flash.htm">Central United</a>, a beautiful old church located on, I'll go with, the second-nastiest intersection of downtown Calgary. The church and a group called <a href="http://ahmadiyya.ca/">Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Canada </a>hosted a colloquium called "A Game of Chess or a Game of Chance: Religion's Perspective on the Theory of Evolution."<br /><br />I want to say right up front to the people who organized the event, and especially to the speakers, thanks for doing so. It makes me think that you are of that special breed of religious people who tolerate, perhaps even enjoy, discussing your religious ideas with people who disagree with them. I hope I'm right because I'm going to do quite a lot of disagreeing tonight.<br /><br />Now. I don't think the format would have allowed any speaker to provide the kind of challenge I was hoping for, if were he able. It would take too long, and require far too much backtalk from me. I must say, though, that the forum did give the three speakers and the host ample time to showcase some fundamental misunderstandings about evolution. So I'm devoting this column to things I heard tonight that made me wish there was a fourth panelist, representing "People who know a lot about evolution." These are some things that, if you want to sit behind a placard like that one, you absolutely can't say. I am paraphrasing these, not quoting, and if any of the speakers want to clarify or disown these, I look forward to the exchange.<br /><br />The speakers were Dr. Eliezer Segal, a Jewish professor of religious studies at the University of Calgary, Michael Ward, pastor of Central United, and Atual Wahid LaHaye, who is Islamic, and whose credentials I do not have handy, due to a last-minute change that leaves him off the leaflet I'm reading right now. The host was CBC Homestretch host Jeff Collins, who is Catholic. Incidentally, I don't think their religions had very much to do with what I'm going to describe as flaws in their understanding of evolution, just as there must exist many religious people who know more about evolution than do I, an atheist.<br /><br />And, one very last disclaimer -- it occurred to me many times this evening to wonder how much of the unease the religious feel towards evolution could be alleviated by a better understanding of it. It's in that spirit which I present this list of misunderstandings:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. Evolution is an ascension towards humanity in its current form.</span> Mr. LaHaye remarked with amazement that of all the directions life could have taken, it "chose," at every step, the "right" way. I assume by "right" he meant "leading to humans."<br /><br />He is correct in saying that there were many ways in which humans could not have appeared, and yet they did. But imagine life had gone a slightly different way at one of those many crossroads, and instead of being a human reading this now, you and me and Mr. LaHaye are all reading, writing, moon-landing velociraptors.<br /><br />We would not now be saying, "Aw crap, too bad. Life really blew it. We're all supposed to be humans. I guess there is no God." No, velociraptor Dr. LaHaye would be saying that the course of life towards the ultimate goal of velociraptor production proves the guiding influence of a God who, for some inscrutable reason, favors velociraptors. And velociraptor me would be saying, no, wait, imagine if ... well, you get the idea.<br /><br />My dad, Wayne Brown, once dressed this up another way. He advanced his own personal notion that all of human history was a struggle to produce Wayne Brown. You need WWI because it led to WWII, leading to his parents meeting, leading to his birth. Of all the possibilities, there he is. Clearly, then, the universe is engineered towards this magnificent end result, Wayne Brown. Believe it or not, when he made this point, it was in response to me, making nearly the same argument you made tonight. And boy, did I feel silly.<br /><br />It's just the old anthropomorphic principle. If you exist, you are not allowed to be surprised to find yourself in a universe that permits you to exist. It is so basic and obvious an objection that I'm a little embarrassed to raise it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. Life on earth is a progression towards complexity.</span> This idea is closely related to the humans-as-ultimate-goal idea, and refuted just as neatly by the anthropomorphic principle. But there is further objection to be made, because it's untrue in a slightly different way.<br /><br />Stephen Jay Gould -- whose name came up, actually -- illustrated this very well in, I believe, Wonderful Life. The simplest form of life that can be called life at all is bacterial. By no coincidence, bacteria is also the oldest form of life, because however difficult it was for life to get started with something simple, it would have been a lot harder to start off with a giraffe. So, ultimate simplicity is both the starting point, and the obstacle beyond which evolution can create nothing much simpler. But it is free to expand in the other direction, towards complexity. Not a progression. An expansion. The starting point, the bacteria, remains intact and central.<br /><br />If life favoured complexity, you would expect at some point to see no more bacteria. But bacteria, by every measure, are the dominant form of life on earth. By number, of course. Most definitely by longevity. Even by sheer biomass, they physically outweigh humanity, and most likely, outweigh all non-bacterial life combined. By importance, we would not survive a day without them, yet they would be just fine without us. Whoever it was who described them tonight as insignificant should tell that to his own digestive tract.<br /><br />You would also expect to <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> see five mass extinctions in the fossil record which, each time, wiped out the most complex species on Earth, but which the bacteria barely noticed.<br /><br />It is only when your notion of life contains prejudices about some species being "higher" (read: more humanlike) and others lower that bacteria become insignificant. Sure, when it comes to being humanlike, we humans have it down. But shuffle that stacked deck, and it becomes clear that, as Gould wrote, this was, is, and always will be the Age of Bacteria. It is we who are freaks on fringe, the upstart and wholly unproven complexity-centered approach to survival. If we survive another four billion years, perhaps then we can wonder if maybe life was hoping for us all along. But not yet, and even then, bacteria will be up to <span style="font-style: italic;">eight </span>billion and going strong.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. Evolution can't explain the origin of life. </span>Mr. LaHaye brought this up, referring to a textbook he saw somewhere showing a DNA strand floating in a "warm little pond." The DNA somehow turns into a cell, and then the cell becomes an armadillo, or something. He said, I think correctly, that the first step, the DNA floating around by itself without anything living, could never happen, and that the textbook is lying. You can't have DNA, so far as we know, without a living thing to make it, and you can't have a living thing, so far as we know, without DNA.<br /><br />It is a conundrum, that's for sure. If you want to say God did it, OK, your choice. You'll have a problem when people less easily mollified figure what really happened. Or maybe they never will. Or maybe they will, but they'll reveal a deeper and more troubling mystery which you can then attribute to God, for a while. I prefer Carl Sagan's response when asked for his "gut feeling" about whether aliens existed. "I try not to think with my gut," he said. "Really, it's OK to reserve judgment until the evidence is in."<br /><br />You are right, then, to say evolution can't explain the origin of life, but wrong if you think that's got anything to do with the theory. The problem is, evolution from the very beginning has always <span style="font-style: italic;">acknowledged </span>this inability to explain the origin of life. Darwin's book is called the Origin of <span style="font-style: italic;">Species</span>, not the Origin of Life. Mutation and natural selection is all about how one species becomes another. It has nothing at all to say about how you get life started in the first place.<br /><br />In fact, the very language you hear in this objection, the "warm little pond," came not from the Origin of Species at all, but from a letter Darwin wrote to the botanist William Hooker in 1871. It was purely speculative, Darwin himself in the letter called it a "big if." He was wondering whether the beginning of life might be a process that could repeat in an environment where it had already happened before. The big if, in his letter, is the scenario itself -- the origin of life starting out in a warm little pond. If such a pond were around today, he said, you couldn't expect another origin, because whatever the pond produces would be immediately eaten by the previously-originated. Now, that's actually a pretty astute speculation. Note, too, that it's not actually even a speculation about the origin of life, but rather, about whether or not it could originate <span style="font-style: italic;">again</span>.<br /><br />And this <span style="font-style: italic;">speculation </span>on the origin of <span style="font-style: italic;">life</span>, written in a <span style="font-style: italic;">letter to a friend</span>, is not to be confused with Darwin's <span style="font-style: italic;">theory </span>on the origin of <span style="font-style: italic;">species</span>, written in <span style="font-style: italic;">the book we're actually talking about</span>. Confusing one with the other is like saying Led Zeppelin was a lousy band because they wrote <span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><a href="http://www.sing365.com/music/Lyric.nsf/Candy-Store-Rock-lyrics-Led-Zeppelin/885F649156FBD5FF4825688700051B9B"></a>"Hot Dog." It doesn't hurt Zeppelin in the mind of anyone who knows any song besides "Hot Dog," nor anyone who knows that "Hot Dog" is not actually too bad a song, merely less good. But it's poisonous to the speaker's perceived intellectual honesty.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The complexity of life implies a designer, just as a watch implies a watchmaker. </span>Mr. Ward and Mr. LaHaye seemed to have a firmer grasp of cellular biology than do I. I wish that were a higher compliment than it is. But we can all agree that life, even in its simplest bacterial form, is still flabbergastingly complex. Mr. Ward said that his appreciation of this complexity has deepened his appreciation of God. Mr. LaHaye said that such complexity could not exist without a plan.<br /><br />There are entire books full of objections to this idea, but I will bring up just a few that spring to mind.<br /><br />I find something very troubling about Richard Dawkins's objection: The designer is always more complex than the thing being designed. So if complexity is the problem, you can't explain it with a designer who, by definition, must be many orders of magnitude more complex than the thing designed, which in this case, remember, is the <span style="font-style: italic;">entire universe</span>. As I said, it's a troubling and seemingly circular objection. I feel the question needs a complicated answer, and when it's so deftly defanged with such a simple one, it's a disappointment somehow, like a big title fight won by knockout in the first round.<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span>More satisfying, I think, is to look at all the ways that life, if designed, is ridiculous. Have you ever had a good look, for example, at a <a href="http://www.landbigfish.com/images/fish/LBF_Gulf_Flounder.jpg">flounder</a>? You know, that fish that swims at the bottom, on its side, with both eyes on one side of its head, so it's always looking up with depth perception? Flounders aren't going to win any beauty contests, that's for sure. If I were designing a fish, even stupid non-omniscient me could do a lot better. I'd make the eyes and fins symmetrical, for starters. It would see and swim better that way. But if, rather than being designed, the fish started out swimming right-side up, and just ended up swimming sideways, then the flounder make sense. The flounder, in fact, is a living, breathing, transitional step.<br /><br />The human eye is a better-known example. Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay on it, I think Dawkins and Hutchins both brought it up, because creationists love it. It's so beautiful, so seemingly purposeful. The problem is, it's built totally backwards, with the blood vessels on the surface instead of behind the retina. But that too is you'd expect it, if it were instead the product of intermediary steps starting out with a light-sensitive membrane. And every step along the way is, in fact, alive and seeing today, and therefore not so impossible as a transitional step far back in our history.<br /><br />(Those transitional steps, by the way, Mr. LaHaye, are well-documented, both about the eye and almost everything else. Your insistence that there are no intermediary steps in the fossil record, from anything to anything else... well, as my father once said, you're entitled to your erroneous opinion. It would be nice of you to refrain from teaching it to kids, though, until they're informed enough to debate you.)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Darwin says humans descended from monkeys. </span>Dr. Segal brought this one to the table. To be fair, he was quoting a different religious philosopher named Raphael Hirsch, who I'd never heard of until then. I failed to find the quote in context for this blog entry, and at any rate, I'm not sure whether Segal believes it himself. His eloquent presentation was about religious thinkers who found ways to accommodate science within their religion. But anyway, it's a mistake that demands ridicule wherever it is found, and in whatever context.<br /><br />Darwin never said humans <span style="font-style: italic;">descended </span>from modern apes. We're <span style="font-style: italic;">related </span>to modern apes. We and they both <span style="font-style: italic;">descended </span>from a common ancestor. Monkeys, by the way, diverged earlier. Apes are like cousins. Monkeys ... I don't know, second cousins twice removed or something, that you only see at weddings and funerals.<br /><br />It seems like a niggling point placed against these other problems, but I think it's important because it may be the source of problems many people have with evolution. You go to the zoo, you see an orangutan scratching his bum or whatever he's doing, and think, well, I certainly didn't come from <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span>! Apes do things that aren't very polite. Chimpanzees, for example, are territorial. If you, a chimp, wander into the wrong chimp neighborhood, other chimps might gang up and kill you. Did you know that? They also like to fight en mass once in a while, and the winners get to rape the losers' mates. Lucky humans never do anything like that, right?<br /><br />If Darwin had ever claimed that modern apes were our forefathers, I guess I can see how that might bother people who have a vested interest in feeling superior to animals. After all, aren't we supposed to be having dominion over them? But what he actually said was that we have a common ancestor. And that's probably true about <span style="font-style: italic;">everything that lives</span>. Posit all the refinements you like between them and us. Declare, if you must, that we are intrinsically superior to them. No problem. I don't think such a declaration would be very wise, and I would challenge such a pronouncement in other ways. But don't bring Darwin into it. The Origin of Species and the theory of evolution do not contain any particular challenge to that notion.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Evolutionists say it's all just random chance.</span> The very "Chess or Chance" title of the colloquium belies this misconception. I can see how it might be more satisfying to think of life as a plan rather than a random, chaotic jumble, though satisfying doesn't not necessarily mean correct. But anyway, Darwin didn't say it was random. He said it was <span style="font-style: italic;">non</span>-random natural selection, extracting the fittest for survival <span style="font-style: italic;">from </span>random mutation. Now, sure, Gould's refinements have given us a new appreciation for role of chaos in evolution. But worry about that after you've fully understood that natural selection is to randomness as a Lamborghini is to a tank of gas.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Evolution is just a theory and should be taught as such in schools.</span> Two out of three panelists agreed on this at the end. Just in the last ten seconds, it was the very last question: Should evolution be taught in schools? Dr. Segal said yes so fast that I missed it, I am saying this now in an edit only after he wrote and corrected me. I find that comforting, since he is in fact, a teacher. However, Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Ward agreed that it needed to be taught as just a theory.<br /><br />Well, fine. It's a theory. An exhaustively researched theory, fundamental to our understanding of life. And yes, it's still being refined. Gould must be clawing his way out of the grave right now to object to all the times his brilliant theory of punctuated equilibrium has been used to "demonstrate," as Mr. LaHaye did tonight, that even scientists can't agree whether evolution is true.<br /><br />They can agree. They might say there is a lot more to be understood about it. But you won't find any prepared to argue that evolution is not fundamental to an understanding of life, and that natural selection and mutation are not important in the process. And they'll say, if you really press them, OK, you're right, it's still a theory. So is gravity. But you aren't up there demanding we teach kids about <a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512">intelligent falling</a>, right?<br /><br />The three religions represented tonight have the benefit of having final Word on everything, right there in a conveniently amorphous book. I don't understand why it isn't a problem that they have three different books, but never mind. If you hope to see the same finality on anything in science, you're in for a long wait. Science is handicapped by the need to be exact, and to test everything, and to throw out any theory not supported by the evidence, and to never run out of new evidence.<br /><br />And even when science does get all its ducks in a row and manages to say, look, based on everything we've figured out so far, here's how we think things work -- well, that's no guarantee that religion's going to give up the fight, is it? As the very subject of evolution so brilliantly demonstrates.<br /><br />- DB<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><i><br /><br /></i>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07264143114436464267noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6154388439957142592.post-19144520975277401642007-12-12T21:36:00.001-07:002007-12-12T22:42:14.699-07:00The RCMP and the death of Robert DziekanskiMy cop friend in Penticton sent me <a href="http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/third_page/story.html?id=cb385943-2aaa-41cc-bdd4-af58082eb839&p=1">this article </a>tonight about the Robert Dziekanski incident. Dziekanski is the Polish man killed by police last month at the Vancouver airport, tasered at least twice, and subdued with a knee to the neck. The article, which is a Les MacPherson column from the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, is one of few to defend the RCMP in this case. However, whether these Mounties deserve defending or not, MacPherson's defence is poorly thought-out.<br /><br />First, I must admit that I have not watched <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHKk5qQRzL4">the video of Dziekanski's death</a>. I saw Faces of Death in university and once was enough. For another thing, I've found it's best not to write in a state of moral outrage. So I am going only by media reports, and by what I've heard from people who have watched it. A <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/11/14/bc-taservideo.html">former Vancouver policeman </a>who watched the video told the CBC that the man made no threatening moves. The story that bothered me most was an interview on CBC Radio with the man who filmed the video, who said that Dziekanski seemed <em>relieved</em> to see the police, right up until they tasered up.<br /><br />But, even then, there could be circumstances the video doesn't show, things that might reasonably have led the police to do what they did. I'm not second-guessing them, but I do say that they have to be called upon to explain themselves, and not just to other cops.<br /><br />As long as police can use force to arrest people, a certain percentage of people getting arrested are going to get killed. That's force, and it's difficult to imagine a role for police who can't use it. But from all the media reports and from the description of the video, it is a fair question to ask whether the force was justified. Maybe it was, but how do we know unless there is a thorough investigation?<br /><br />Also, there is a distinction between force and <em>deadly </em>force. Force is for people resisting arrest. Deadly force is for defending lives. I will leave it to the investigation and to better-informed people than I to determine whether this was supposed to be deadly force. Since the person who experienced the force is, in fact, now dead, I'd say the question should at least be on the table. But I've read no report that suggests any reason why the four cops who arrested Robert Dziekanski should have been in fear for their lives or the lives of others.<br /><br />It's true that, as the newspaper article says, "For all (the police) knew at the time, he could have been high on illegal drugs, some of which are known to give a resistant suspect the strength of several men. For all they knew at the time, he could have had AIDS or hepatitis and a pocket full of needles."<br /><br />But this one paragraph is the silliest in MacPherson's article. Because it's also true that, for all the police know, all those things could apply to <em>everyone in the world</em>. I have pockets. How do you know they're not full of AIDS-ridden needles? You don't. But you don't get to kill me because of the worst thing you can imagine might be in my pocket. You only get to kill me when I pull it out and try to stab you with it. Maybe that is a lot to ask for $60K a year. But that is, in fact, the job. The guns aren't just there to look cool.<br /><br />The cops at that airport had to think a lot faster than I ever do, and I will feel sympathy for them if there's a proper investigation, not just a press statement from their superiors, that finally proves they did as they were supposed to. Actually, according to Wikipedia, which is <em>never</em> wrong, there are seven investigations going on right now, and two concluded. None of this scrutiny can be any fun for the policemen involved. But when people get killed in this country, scrutiny must follow. The police don't get the benefit of the doubt. Our perception of the police as just and upstanding cool-handed professionals is a distinctly first-world thing which depends on <em>not</em> giving them the benefit of the doubt.<br /><br />We see cops as beneficial because we have rules that force them to be professionals. Sure, most of them don't need to be forced, but that's a result of rules too, rules about who gets to be a cop and who doesn't. I can understand how frustrating it must be to work under those rules and actually get anything done, but I'd still rather have the rules than just trust all cops to be good. Countries with that system end up with a payroll full of violent thugs. I think I've visited two or three. There are countries where people just wouldn't think of calling the police for any reason. If you've already got problems with one armed criminal, why call in eight more?<br /><br />As much respect as I have for almost all the cops I know, I expect any police recruiter would agree that policing is a job to which violent thugs are drawn. Maybe they're not supposed to get in, but I bet most of my cop friends know one or two colleagues who slipped through the cracks. I'm not saying the four who killed Robert Dziekanski are such cops, but I am saying there needs to be a system to make sure they're not. However much of a pain in the ass that system is to them and to other cops, that's got to be part of the job too. If you want to imagine life without it, where cops are trusted to get the job done however they see fit, you have to think about places where that's the case, where nobody <em>outside</em> the government trusts cops, where people assume cops lie on the stand or just beat people for fun, and that few people arrested are actually guilty of anything.<br /><br />- DBDave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07264143114436464267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6154388439957142592.post-91536949987806021772007-08-11T10:04:00.000-06:002007-08-11T10:54:41.159-06:00My hit-listWhen I am elected emperor, the following things will be outlawed.<br /><br /><strong>Baby-on-board signs.</strong> As if the knowledge that there is a baby on board will somehow give me the added strength I need on the brake pedal to avoid slamming into your SUV at the stoplight. But for a moment, let's assume that because everyone knows there's a baby in your SUV (and it's always an SUV), they actually try extra-hard not to crash into you. Do you take the sign down when there is not, in fact, a baby on board at that particular moment? No, you do not. So you're lying, at least half the time, and that makes me want to crash into you <em>more</em>. So really, what the sign should say is, "Look at me, I have successfully reproduced!"<br /><br /><strong>Pennies, nickles and dimes.</strong> My hatred for them was honed to a sharp, bright, angry blade by <a href="http://http//www.cbc.ca/news/background/economy/penny.html">this CBC story</a>, from which I learned that when pennies were initially minted in 1870, their purchasing power was equal to 27 cents in 2005, and there has never been a coin worth less than one cent. Why, then, do we need coins worth 1/27, 1/5, and 2/5 the absolute mimimum value a person considered worth carrying in 1870? But we're still making over $8 million a year in pennies, because people aren't returning them to circulations, they're <em>throwing them away</em>.<br /><br /><strong>Use of the words "I'm like," instead of "I said." </strong>Alright, when you say "I'm like, whatever," does that mean whatever is what you actually said? Or did you say something <em>similar </em>to whatever, such as wherever or what the hell? In which case your story makes no sense. Or did you not actually <em>say</em> whatever, but somehow pantomime it, and if so, how and why?<br /><br /><strong>All commercial radio.</strong> My 2 GB Nano can carry enough songs to repeat less frequently than any commercial radio station in Calgary. And they get their music for free, don't they? (Not like me, I pay full retail price for every song I listen to, yes sir.) Get a few more CDs, why don't they? And when they get one, they ought to listen to the whole thing, rather than just play the one song on it that everyone knows until everyone hates it, and then cut to a Sleep Country Canada jingle.<br /><br /><strong>Jingles.</strong> I'll start with Sleep Country Canada. Why buy a mattress anywhere else? I'll tell you why -- and I <em>did</em> tell them why, in an email to SCC president Christine McGee that I never did hear back from. Because your jingle makes me want to hang myself.<br /><br /><strong>The towing of SUVs behind motorhomes with sattelite dishes.</strong> All three nouns in that gerund are offensive to me, but taken together, steaming down the highway towards the lovely natural beauty that they're wrecking, it's a bit too much. If I spot a baby-on-board sign in the SUV, violence will ensue.<br /><br /><strong>The imperial system of measurement.</strong> For excessive stupidness. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go figure out my weight and height in metric.<br /><br /><strong>Pictures of Olympic athletes biting their medals.</strong> I put up a graphic a few weeks ago at the local ski hill, showing a picture of a figure skater biting her medal in about 1922. That's a minimum age of this cliche. What are they doing, checking to see if it's real gold? They're <em>not</em>. They're gold-plated sterling silver. Going to give it back now? Or did you think it was chocolate? But it's not just the gold medals, it's silver and bronze too. I can imagine some prospector biting a rock to determine whether it's really gold or just iron pyrite, but I don't think it would for silver and bronze too.<br /><br /><strong>Saying something is "out of this world" as a pun to coyly imply it has something to do with space.</strong> That phrase is <em>always </em>implying things have something to do with outer space. It never implies anything else. Therefore it's not a pun, nor is it coy. I issue a challenge. Find me a published instance of "out of this world" being used to do anything but coyly imply that something is spacey, and I will let you write a guest blog entry about how stupid or I am.<br /><br />That's all I can think of right now, but I have a feeling that I'm going to add to this list from time to time, and I invite your suggestions.Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07264143114436464267noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6154388439957142592.post-70710511487373927552007-07-18T23:35:00.000-06:002007-07-18T23:58:45.154-06:00A graphic fantasyOnce in a while something funny enough happens in graphics to be funny to people who have nothing to do with it.<br />I went to a factory this morning to put up some vinyl on an office window. It's something you see everywhere if you're looking, it makes the window look as if it's etched, and you can cut it into whatever shape you want. In this case, it's a grid-like pattern designed by my long-time friend, an old ski-club chum turned interior designer.<br />Anyway, I get to the office, which is at the top of a flight of stairs, meaning everyone on that floor walks past those doors going in or out. And when I walk up and look at the glass door, I get the evil eye from the two women sitting just inside. They're both young, hot and blonde, and sitting at desks doing nothing observable.<br />I stick my head in, and they see all the graphics and tools I've brought, and their icy glares melt.<br />"Oh, good," says girl A. "You're here to cover up our windows? I'm so sick of having everyone leer in on us all the time."<br />Sure, darling, I thought. The leering will be through, just as soon as I'm done. However, I, in my capacity as a graphic production artist, am required to just press my face up against the glass here for a few hours...<br />So I was working on the windows for most of the morning, enjoying the view and also marvelling at the absence of responsibility. They complained a bit about how you have to be 25 to rent a car now. Girl A didn't do anything at all that I could make out. Girl B took a bit of time trying to calculate her salary out loud, and made about three phone calls -- one to her mom.<br />The whole time I was working, people were passing by. Most of the women stopped and said how grateful the two girls in the front office were going to be. ('I wonder <em>exactly </em>how grateful,' said a small but Satanic voice from my left shoulder.) And a guy, outside the office and out of earshot, said, "Dude, you're blocking the view!"<br />I wonder, if there are any women reading, if they will want to reprimand me for thinking this is funny, or for assuming that these two girls don't do anything important simply because they are hot, and don't move, talk, or type.Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07264143114436464267noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6154388439957142592.post-46560422562195478182007-07-05T18:07:00.000-06:002007-07-05T18:50:47.144-06:00Weddings after 30Last post, trying to think of what I'd write about in this post, I said I might explain why weddings are no longer fun. Now one of three readers, Lucas, is steamed because he thinks I had a crappy time at his wedding. Bad though that already is, he also thinks it's because I wasn't drunk enough, which is not what I meant. I <em>wasn't </em>drunk enough, but that's my own fault for driving, and it's not what got me thinking about the subject. I guess I need to explain myself, and also mention to Lucas that his is one of five weddings I've got this summer.<br /><br />First of all, I should have said, "Weddings are less fun," not "Weddings are no longer fun." It's hard not to have a blast at a wedding. The booze is plentiful, sometimes cheap, and occasionally free. There are a million little reunions going on all over the place -- at Lucas's wedding I saw a lot of university friends I haven't spoken to for ten years, and it's hard to think of another occasion that will bring us all together again, until maybe we start in on the funerals. Plus, wearing a suit is fun for those of us who never have to.<br /><br />What's missing these days, though, is the pickup scene. Cute single girls at weddings used to be as plentiful as fight scenes in Bruckheimer movies. I have an older cousin whose wedding I was there for about 15 years ago. It was the one time I've ever seen two girls fight over me, and I'll tell you, I could really get used to that. Something about the booze, the clothes, and the fairy-tale ending unfolding at the head table made them crazy. I actually went out with the victor a week later, but without the wedding to prop me up, the thrill was gone.<br /><br />In the intervening years, though, just about everyone has gotten married. At my friend Sandy's wedding two weeks ago there was, so far as I was able to figure out, one other single person there over the age of 18, and it took me until last call to find her. At Lucas's wedding, the one other single person cancelled -- probably had a party to go to or something. Lucas nevertheless gets a special commendation for putting her at my table. But you can't just go out and order more single friends, and really, there are other things for brides and grooms to worry about.<br /><br />Lucas pointed out in his speech how rare and wonderful it is to have everyone you care about in one room at one time. It's a poignant observation, more profound than anything I'm arguing here. On Saturday I have another cousin getting married, and I've been having a blast just hanging around with all the people in town for the wedding. I'm just saying, weddings used to be like that, <em>plus </em>picking up.Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07264143114436464267noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6154388439957142592.post-86328075694052531342007-06-28T22:35:00.000-06:002007-06-29T00:22:20.833-06:00Writing<span style="font-family:lucida grande;">When I was travelling, I wrote so much and with such joy that I just knew I'd come home and do it forever. Instead, I came home and, in the intervening five years, have written four times. It used to bother me when friends and family asked why I wasn't writing anymore. Now it bothers me that they don't.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">But if you don't write, you can't say you're a writer. Writers write. So here, I'm writing, and it feels good to be doing this instead of just renting a movie or something. As a side incentive, Kurt Vonnegut once wrote that all writers, no matter how poor or otherwise objectionable, have pretty wives. We'll see about that one.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">I abhor other people's blogs, because nobody's got anything to tell me. Actually I can't even say I abhore them, my sample's too small. I think I've read blogs three times. First time, I found out what somebody's cat did that day, or something. I cringed at the smileys, bad punctuation, and letter U instead of <em>you</em>. Second time, I read my dad's. It was actually pretty good, I wonder if he's still writing it. Third time, I found out my girlfriend was cheating on me. So my sample is too small to be representative, I am merely <em>presuming </em>other people's blogs 66 per cent abhorent, and I'm still not reading them.</span><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">But I am judging too harshly. Most of my writing has been either paid, or overseas. When you're traveling it's just too easy to write. My kind of thing is the straight-up narrative of personal experience. People thought I was a great writer, but it was because I was immersed in great stories. The stories did the work, I was just there to jot everything down. </span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">I got invited to a secret cult meeting in the mountains of Japan, and I went. Because I was hoping it was ninjas. But I also knew that any idiot would get a great story out of <em>this</em>.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Likewise, when you're a reporter, you're getting <em>paid </em>to be interesting, and you've got all day, and if at the end of the day you're still not very interesting, you've got editors who will force the issue. I'm not saying reporters have got it easy, they really don't. But they can't <em>not </em>be interesting, or they metamorphose into PR people.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">But now I'm just a 9 to 5 schmoe like everybody else. I'm not saying my new life in the commercial graphics industry is boring, but I will not subject the public to a play-by-play of what I learned about printing today.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">But what <em>will </em>I subject you to? As a rearmed writer, I think this will be my greatest challenge. Here are my goals for this blog.</span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Make something that is as interesting as I'd have written when I was either immersed in weirdness, or getting paid. OK, half as interesting. Starting next post.<br /></span></li><li><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Devote as much time to writing as to TV. All I watch is Battlestar Galactica, but that's still an hour a week. Goals should be lofty, but acheivable.</span></li></ul><p align="left"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">I think to accomplish these goals, I will have to not worry about whether what I say has been written elsewhere, and better. No problem, as I said, I'm not reading any of your blogs. So I will start with my next post, which is going to be about 1) the manipulative power of generosity, 2) stone cold stupid reviews of <em>The God Delusion</em>, 3) why weddings are no longer fun, or 4) some miraculous interesting thing that happens, maybe on the weekend or something, that saves me from writing about 1, 2 or 3.</span></p><p align="left"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">- DB</span></p>Dave Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07264143114436464267noreply@blogger.com3