Let Us Pray (No, Really, Let Us!)

Pee-Zed reports on a brilliant scheme–a company that, for a nominal fee, will take over that exhausting task of praying. That’s right, they will fold their hands and do nothing at all, so you don’t have to! $3.95 a month for the basic service, or $9.95 for 5 prayers a day! All the awesome power of prayer, harnessed for about the price of your cup of designer coffee. For those people too lazy to sit quietly and murmur.

This service saves your precious time
It might be right for you–
If sitting, doing nothing
Is a bit too much to do.

It used to be that what we did
To make believe we care
Is clasp our hands together,
Doing nothing (call it “prayer”)

But if your life is hectic, and
You want more time alone
We’ll do the nothing for you,
If you’ll just pick up the phone!

When sitting on your ass is getting
Boring, dull, or hard–
It’s just three-ninety-five a month
Come on–pull out that card!

If you think it’s still too much for you
We know just how you feel–
Too lazy to pick up the phone?
We’ve got another deal!

We’re sending people door to door
So you can stay in bed–
No need to find your credit card
They’ll take your cash instead.

We know you wouldn’t call the cops
Or use some pepper spray–
Hell, if you believed in action,
You’d do more than fucking pray!

HRP-4C

I’ve finally found the girl for me—the lovely HRP-4C
If only I could make her see how very happy we could be!

Her slightly larger manga eyes can blink, or widen with surprise,
Or narrow with the thought of lies, or sadden, though she never cries.

She’s pure perfection, every part, a walking, talking work of art
Her fashion sense is sharp and smart, but oh! Alas, she has no heart.

Now, some would choose to bid adieu to her for this, I hear it’s true;
There’s reason here to say we’re through, except that I know what to do—

Although they tell me I’m bizarre, I’ll grow a heart inside this jar
And she will be my shining star, with none so happy as we are!

Karel Capek introduced the term Robot in 1921. Capek’s robots were humanoid,

She’s a robot; she doesn’t look real,
But she still has a certain appeal:
She has silicon eyes
And molybdenum thighs
And an ass made of chromium steel. *

but the vast majority of modern robots are not. My favorite comments on this new HRP-4C, though, remember those days. At Technovelgy.com, we are reminded of two men named Fritz– Fritz Leiber, who wrote The Mechanical Bride in 1954:

“Mr. Shalk supplies the finest mannequins in the world. Streamlined, smooth-working, absolutely noiseless, breath-takingly realistic. Each one is powered by thirty-seven midget electric motors, all completely noiseless, and is controlled by instructions, recorded on magnetic tape, which are triggered off by the sound of your voice and no one else’s. There is a built-in microphone that hears everything you say, and an electric brain that selects a suitable answer. The de luxe model is built to your specifications, has fifty different facial expressions, sings two hundred love songs, and can carry on a thousand fascinating conversations… But she has one serious defect. They all do.

“What’s that?”

“They have no heart.”

And Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis:.
Strikingly similar to HRP-4C, don’t you think?

Research at the Creationist Museum

Over on Pharyngula, PZ has posted a viddy of Michael Shermer at the Creation Science museum, interviewing one of their research scientists. I won’t link the actual video here, because it is just so annoying. The scientist is utterly blinkered, and stays on her points despite Shermer’s rather tepid prodding. She studies bacteria, and the changes that turn symbiotic bacteria into pathogens–that is, the non-evolutionary changes, since they are still bacteria.

Bacteria will always be
Bacteria; we’ll never see
Another organism come
From just a changed bacterium.
We won’t see an amoeba grow
A pair of fins, and so we know
That evolution’s tale is wrong.
We’ve known it, really, all along.

Until a lump of lifeless mud
Transforms itself to flesh and blood
And starts to dance and sing a song,
We’ll know that evolution’s wrong.
The logic’s clear, and all it took
Was looking at our holy book;
The truth about our planet’s age is
Written there within its pages.

If evolution’s true, then god
Deceives us with a false façade,
A tale of time’s expanse so vast,
Which stretches back into the past,
With fossils, footprints, DNA,
To disbelieve and throw away
As “just a test”; and this, we know
Because the Bible tells us so.

Because we fear the pit of fire
We trust this demonstrated liar;
He made his Adam and his Eve
Along with fossils to deceive;
The fossil footprints? Ancient mud
Set down in the Noachian flood
A mere few thousand years ago—
But any older? God says “no!”

If God created all the earth,
Was there for every creature’s birth,
Created Sun, and Moon, and tide,
Then who are we to say he lied?
The words god wrote in bio-data,
Fossils, geologic strata,
Are these words merely so much libel
Because they do not match the bible?

It seems to me that either way—
No matter which you choose to say—
In Earth or Book, it’s no surprise,
You’re telling us that Yahweh lies!

I hope that Dr. Purdom’s work
Includes a decent healthcare perk;
It wouldn’t seem quite right to me
To charge for her lobotomy.

Speaking Of Faith

I turned on the radio yesterday, and caught just the tail end of “Speaking Of Faith” on public radio. The host, Krista Tippett, was asking for listeners’ stories, specifically regarding the recent Wall Street turmoil—“the moral and spiritual aspects of an economic downturn”. The show has produced a series called “Repossessing Virtue”, in which “voices of wisdom and insight” have commented on various aspects of the economic crisis. I was a bit shocked to see, for instance, a piece reporting on homeowners choosing to foreclose on their mortgages rather than give up tithing. Other reports ask of the effects of the market on moral character, or explore the poetry of depression (both economic and psychological).

I suppose it is too much to ask for a regular atheist voice on the program; there are more religious views than can be accommodated on a weekly show already, and sufficient diversity among non-believers that no one voice could possibly speak for us all (but I would love to be one of those voices). For instance, the very notion that there would be a moral or spiritual aspect to the downturn was taken as a given, whereas it really threw me for a loop—at least, initially. But it does make sense. If you believe there is, in this universe, not just order but divine guidance, if you believe that there is a benevolent and just hand at the helm, then you have to wonder, when things go horribly wrong, what you did to deserve it.

An uncaring universe does not promise good things to good people and bad things to bad people. A world that is blind to our beliefs, responsive only to our actions, requires us not to have faith, but to act. Blind faith, whether in god or in Bernie Madoff, leaves us vulnerable to exploitation, and is no virtue. There is no higher morality to be found in clinging to a belief system that actively harms.

If god is great, and god is good, and god is kind and just
As theologians everywhere believe that they have shown,
The losses of my family’s jobs and of our house, then, must
Be well-deserved, appropriate, and yes, our fault alone.

We’ll put some money in the plate, with less and less to give;
We’ll say our prayers, and sing our hymns, with praises to his name,
Each week we find it harder, but that’s just the life we live;
It’s all our fault—the one thing god won’t ever take is blame.

It’s a crisis of morality, a spiritual malaise,
It’s time to kneel and bow our heads and double up on prayer!
I’ll never doubt that god deserves our everlasting praise;
The alternative’s unthinkable—that god just doesn’t care.

So… to answer the questions on the contact site:
» Are you experiencing this economic moment as a moral or spiritual crisis as well?
No. My morality does not depend on being blessed, or cursed, by god or fate or karma. Good times are not a moral reward, nor bad times a punishment. As for “spiritual”, the word is the remnant of a vocabulary of ignorance; this economic crisis is here in the real world.
» Do concepts of trust, of living in community, of what sustains you have relevance in new tangible ways as you face changed economic realities?
I have always lived within a human community. We are all we have, and have always been this. I rely on my fellow creatures, and try always to act such that they may rely on me. This has always been important; perhaps if more people were living for this world instead of passing time through this one while waiting for another, we would not have so many people in such dire need.
» What qualities of human nature do you want to cultivate in yourself or your children?
Skepticism and reliance on evidence. Helping one another is in our best interest; science has been our most powerful tool in all of human history. We are at a point when we need our most powerful tool applied to our common social interest. Religious solutions have divided us and put us at war with one another; if religion has had good effects, it has been only for the winners.
» Who will we be for each other?
Everything. We are all we have. If, as the saying goes, two hands working do more than a thousand clasped in prayer, just imagine the increased potential for good in the world if we actually did realize that we are all we have.

The Digital Pack-Rat, Vol. 15

The objections to stem cell research are not all … rational. Everyone knows, we are working on the ultimate weapon—a gun, made of babies, that uses babies as ammo.

No ifs, no ands, no buts, no maybes,
Merely guns made out of babies–
We need good guns, to go to war;
That’s what we made eugenics for!

I was happy to hear, on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”, about the problems the elves are causing these days. Or is that the fairies? Anyway, it’s somebody who likes to stay hidden.

A book lost somewhere on my shelves
Assures me that there are no elves
Nor fairies, banshees, gnomes, nor trolls
Not one of these, my text extols!
The certainty with which it speaks
Reflects its out-of-date techniques:
It’s mostly full of Bronze-Age tribal
Myths. It’s called… let’s see… The Bible.

(And that’s why I don’t find it odd
That fairies don’t believe in god.)

And the spate of recent news stories of the other apes (the non-human ones) gaining the upper hand prompts this reminder that 2/3 of the planet is still out of reach for them.

With coconuts, and rocks, and feces
Daring plots, and cunning plans,
The battle’s on! The warring species
Want the crown that once was man’s.

The apes will have the upper hand,
Unbound by superstitious gods,
And when it’s done, they’ll rule the land–
The seas belong to cephalopods.

Oh, yeah, it’s not just the apes you gotta watch out for:

When working with an angry horse,
(As well with donkeys, asses, mules)
You’ll find it is the prudent course
To armor-plate your family jewels.
Or else, bring gauze and lots of ice
For when your nuts head further south.
I know this must be good advice–
I got it from the horse’s mouth!

And, oddly enough, one from this strange blog called “The Digital Cuttlefish”. Not quite enough to merit its own post, but (yet) another antireductionist rant in the Dennett thread. Seriously, it reminds me of a line from a Barenaked Ladies song; the line goes “I’m not trying to sing a love song; I’m trying to sing in tune”. The finest description—even to the quantum level—of what an action is, does not explain why it is taking place. A description of my fingers on the keys—even to the quantum level—does not tell you whether I am writing The Great American Novel, or a dirty limerick! Assuming that you were to elaborate on the description at the quantum level such that you knew it was a dirty limerick, you would not know whether I was writing it as a joke, a submission for publication, a mistaken attempt at seduction, or any of dozens of other motivations. In other words, you would not know the cause.

The graphite’s slip is just the same,
With this view thrust upon it,
If I should merely sign my name
Or write a quantum sonnet!

Your answer serves to illustrate
My problem with your view:
I think that answers should relate
To questions—how ‘bout you?

To speak in terms of “gentle slip”
Describes the graphite’s flaking,
But not the path my pencil’s tip
Across the page is making.

Description of the finest kind
Is still not explanation;
Not pencil tips, and not the mind—
That’s misinterpretation!

You act as if reducing mind
To quantum-level laws
Allowed a person thus to find
A true internal cause!

But this, of course, is not the case—
One only finds description!
(A simple fact, which you must face
And not have a conniption.)

Our explanations, grounded in
The world that we can see,
Are where we fruitfully begin
To find what mind must be.

(I also see, parenthetically,
A view that you ascribe to me
That does not sound like mine at all
A strawman, rather, built to fall–
In searching my views for contradiction,
Please have a care not to tilt at a fiction!)

Broke Down On The Road From Albuquerque To Seattle–I Need A Quantum Mechanic

More action from the Dennett thread, and more of me beating the anti-reductionist drum. Reducing isn’t explaining.

Although it’s true, the quirks of quarks
Are what we find when we reduce
The laws of rocks, of tuning forks,
Of cats, of cars, of orange juice,
The truth is, if I know the quirks
Of quarks, and qualms of quantum states
They don’t tell how my pencil works
Or what to do with roller skates.
If (knock on wood) my car should stall
And leave me stranded in a panic
There’s many folks whom I could call,
But none of them a quantum mechanic.
Explosive oxidation of
The hydrocarbon molecules
Is many many leaps above
The quantum tale of fossil fuels;
If, at my car, some stranger spoke
Of many-worlds hypotheses
Instead of just: “your fuel pump’s broke”
He might as well speak Japanese.
Indeed, if one is told a tale
Of how an engine burns its gas,
Of how exhaust comes out the tail,
Of how they make the windshield glass,
Of shock absorbers, front disc brakes,
All sorts of automotive prattle
It would not tell which road one takes
From Albuquerque to Seattle—
Which, if that was what one needs,
Is how the answer should be phrased;
Reductionism here impedes,
And only leaves ones eyeballs glazed.

The actions of a single nerve
Or even of a given piece
Of one, we clearly may observe—
Say, neurotransmitter release—
Where ACH or dopamine
Released in the synaptic cleft
By vesicles, which we have seen,
A process at which cells are deft;
The process may be understood
At many different levels, such
As cell, or body, or a good
Example of a chemist’s touch;
An organ’s function, or perhaps
A function in some social act—
Each level different, each one maps
A different view of one same truth.
The quantum level cannot say
The others now do not exist;
Reducing won’t explain away
A higher explanation’s gist.
Your quantum invocation means
You simply wish our current views
Left something there behind the scenes—
Some agent, with the power to choose.
Alas, there’s nothing there to find;
This entity does not exist—
No moral agent, causal mind
That all of science must have missed.
The science shows no secret curse,
No need to travel back in time
To save Cartesian minds—and worse,
We’ve done it, once again, in rhyme.

The Digital Pack-Rat, Vol. 14

Ok, back to the list… On a pharyngula thread about a scandalously titled recent discovery about the evolution of sex. Well, not sex, per se, but having sex. Sorta. What we really need is a clearer fossil of the action… in action.

To see if fishies copulate, thus little fishies born,
We need some “more revealing fossils” (i.e., fossil porn)

A clear fossil pic o’ flagrante delicto
would really be reason for bragging–
A stone preservation of fish copulation,
A petrification of shagging!

A fossil find of such an act would surely take some luck
But think… for all eternity, preserved in stone, mid-fuck!

“I never drink water. Fish fuck in it.” W. C. Fields

Next, we have a complaint–we’ve driven God out of our schools! Won’t somebody think of the children?! Well, somebody is thinking of the children. They even made a little video, showing all the places where God was too weak to overcome the actions of evil school boards…

It opens with a spotting scope–
God’s rifle, from above–
That seeks to find His victims
Then he’ll pump them full of love.
If God in his omnipotence
Is weak against O’Hair,
Don’t tell the little children;
They might think he isn’t there!
Almighty God is weak, compared
To school boards, so it feels.
Don’t blame him; after all, the buses
All have iron wheels.
I wouldn’t mind the petulance
Of God the Petty Whiner
If only those who followed Him
Could be a bit benigner.

Next… I couldn’t bring myself to write about the actual topic of PZ’s post–the rape of a little girl. The headline spoke of the “alleged” rape. Wow. What sort of … never mind.

Make certain that your bets are hedged
And always use the word “alleged”–
It shows your head is firmly wedged
Where sun will never shine.
That word aside, we can’t escape
The facts: this case is clearly rape
Made even worse because of Pap-
al reasoning divine.

Almost done… a delightful webcomic poked a bit of well-deserved fun at hard scientists, and happened to mention pharyngula. The main characters are furries, which I can’t very well have a problem with while I self-identify as a cuttlefish.

I call myself a cuttlefish, but now I have to worry–
Can one be an invertebrate, but still be called a furry?
I would have thought it simple, but the line seems rather blurry;
If someone here could clue me in, I truly hope they’d hurry!

Now, thanks to Dr. Seuss and Ray Comfort…

In the World Nut Daily, or so the tale goes,
There wrote a strange man that most everyone knows
His name, it was Ray C.; he was dumb as could be
And he never seemed sane—frankly, out of his tree!

Sighed Ray C., this crazy man hatching his plot
“I’m a great many things, but a genius I’m not;
I don’t like to think, cos it makes my brain hurt,
So I’d rather say God made us all out of dirt.”
The evidence, though, left him caught in a bind,
Till Horton the elephant passed through his mind!

“I wonder” thought Comfort, “how elephants bred,
When it takes two to tango—or so it is said”
A thought that showed Ray was clean out of his head.

See, Ray thinks selection gives animals things
Like backbones and fingers, like tusks and like wings
Before they were both male and female of sex—
A notion that’s clearly designed to perplex!

While Ray could not see what was wrong with his view
A smart second-grader could—how about you?

He meant what he said, and he said what he meant;
Ray Comfort’s a pinhead, one hundred percent.

And lastly, PZ tells us that his Trophy Wife does not share his squid kink…

Oh, trouble and strife! The Trophy Wife
Doesn’t quite get the cephalofetish?
But think, if she did, and dressed up like a squid
To entice you to someplace that’s wettish–
She would use both her charms and her tentacle arms
To entrap you in utter delight–
We’d just stare at the walls, while Pharyngula stalls
Cos you’re too effing busy to write!

The Digital Pack-Rat, Vol. 13

Lucky thirteen! A fairly large one today, too–I have let this get away from me.

I’ll start with one posted on Evolving Thoughts, (and later posted as a comment in the Dennett thread), commenting on the arguments regarding consciousness. Worth reading the original, BTW, and the comments.

It seems to me philosophers have somewhat been seduced
By the metaphor of storage, and conclusions it implies.
The self, itself, it promises, is something that’s produced
Via information transfer in that blob behind our eyes.
All too often this assumption underlies their exploration;
The conclusions that it leads to seem a normal path to follow
But inherent in the metaphor is one sort of explanation;
By removing those assumptions, it’s a tougher bite to swallow.
If the structure of the person helps to form what’s introspected
(And the social and environmental atmosphere as well)
Then feelings, thoughts, or memories just cannot be dissected
From the person as a whole, as information one could tell.
“Ah, but that’s just further information”, I have seen in practice,
When I try this explanation—and I want to pull my hair—
You could stuff it in, of course, but it’s like sitting on a cactus:
Just because it can be sat on, doesn’t mean the thing’s a chair.

Next, a short little verse inspired by George Will’s habit of making shit up:

Republicans observe the news
And don’t like what they’re seeing;
They dream up facts to fit their views,
Then Will them into being.

A poll gets pharyngulated, and all the votes coming from PZ’s link get deleted. Too bad, because I know more on the topic than the author of the poll does. Guaranteed.

I’d wager I’ve read much much more on such topics
Than he has, and yet he deleted my vote!
With evidence rarer than snow in the tropics
The chances of life after death are … remote.
But out with the bath-water, there goes the baby,
Throw out the bad votes and good votes as one:
The lesson that’s there to be learned is that maybe
An internet poll should be nothing but fun.

A little musing on the topic of spirituality–all the benefits of religion, without the actual social part of getting together with your fellow humans:

I’m spiritual, but not religious;
egotistical, not prestigious;
belligerent, but not litigious;
deviant, but not prodigious.

Take the extreme, remove the part
that shows I have a working heart;
Whatever’s left is what I am,
Because I do not give a damn.

The benefit, but not the cost
Is mine–if something might be lost,
It’s paid by others, not by me–
Three cheers for sociopathy!

Ack! The real world beckons! I guess there will be a volume 14 up very soon, but this one gets cut off prematurely.

Truman The Octopus!

Ok, first go read the actual story.

I’ll wait. It’s worth it. Come back when you are done, and you can read the verse. Teaser–it’s about an octopus, doing something really really cool. Oh, and… Truman is especially cool. I have pics of him on my camera–the dude is amazing.

Truman the octopus saw the locks
That closed the outer, bigger, box,
Inside of which, he had a hunch,
Was one more box, which held his lunch.

Truman the octopus could have tried
To break the locks and reach inside
Or else, he could have set the goal
Of fitting through a two-inch hole

Truman the octopus, big and strong,
Some 30 pounds, and 7 feet long,
Saw lunch, and would not be denied;
The tiny hole? He crawled inside!

Truman the octopus filled the box,
But never did release the locks;
He tried for nearly half an hour,
But found no crabs he could devour.

Truman the octopus slithered out
(To plot some more, I have no doubt)
The truth? I’d give fantastic odds:
The next world leaders? Cephalopods.

(Edited to add: There are some additional pics of the event here, where you can get a feel for the real size of Truman.)

Oh, yeah, buy the Open Laboratory book and my own book. Check the earlier posts, and you will find the links.

Open Laboratory 2008!

Over at Bora’s, the announcement has been made–the 2008 Open Laboratory (the best science writing on blogs) is now available at Lulu, and people (or cuttlefish) like yours truly can proudly put up a nice clickable link like this:

Which you can use to go and purchase your own copy. (It will be available from Amazon later, but buying it from Lulu means that the proceeds go to organizing ScienceOnline ’10 next January.)

Of course, this much more generic button
Support independent publishing: buy this book on Lulu.
would lead you to where you may buy my own book at Lulu. If you buy both, of course, you guarantee that you will be the coolest kid on your block.