Social Warfare, Drawing the Lines

While it may not be obvious to many, there are several social wars underway that, if ever resolved, will determine the direction of society itself.

It's understandable if you aren't aware of them, or hear of them only in passing. The world is so busy today, with longer work days, automation leading to greater expectations at work (contrary to the initial assumptions), more leisure activities to distract. In addition, there are the societal demands of your spouse and children to eat into ones time. With all these distractions, there simply isn't time for most people to be socially aware.

So what I thought to do in this and the following blog posts is to summarize some of the most hard-fought wars that are currently underway in western society.

1) Creationism vs. Evolution
This simply won't go away. The lines were drawn with the publication of Charles Darwin's famous book Origin of the Species, however, I'll argue that the seeds for this war were sown with the origins of the Catholic Church.

2) Digital Rights Management
Simply put, this is a war over who has the rights to control that tech device you just bought. This is actually a subset of an much larger and more insidious war. Simply put, corporations are trying to control...well, everything. It sounds like a conspiracy theory when written, but anyone who pays attention to the machinations of Big Biz will note the trends.

3) Go Green
This, arguably, is the simplest and yet most complicated of the wars currently being waged, and the only one that, if one side is right, has a time limit. To make it more complicated, it has become my view that we could lose regardless of who wins unless calmer heads prevail.

In the next few blog posts I'll go through these issues trying to show where the lines are drawn and what each side has to win and lose. Of course, I have a side I favour and, sorry to disappoint, but I won't pretend to be impartial. Unlike the media, who pretend (or at least pay lip-service to the idea) that each side of an argument is equal, I will try and show the logic of one side over the other.

If you haven't guessed my leaning yet, I'm a humanist. I believe that everyone is born with the right to a healthy, happy life. It's not achievable for all, since there are people who are made happy by gaining power over others, but those people, regardless of their social position, should be considered to have a mental illness. As intelligent people building a healthy future, we should take the path that makes the majority happy (the meek shall inherit the Earth?). It has always struck me as strange that those who gain happiness from physically hurting another we lock up in prisons while those who gain happiness from controlling and making suffer thousands of lives, we reward with big houses and huge salaries. Ultimately, this is the mentality we will have to break, if we are to truly harness the power of the coming technology.

Religious Thought of the Day

Christianity is the McDonald's of religion.

It took something that had existed for thousands of years before, made it tastier and more accessible, and introduced kiddie versions to 'get them hooked while they're young'.

Reality TV Xtreme

So what's with all the wimpy reality TV these days. I never watch the shows except when flipping to catch a few minutes when nothing else is on. I did, however, watch survivor reruns about 6-7 years ago when the station would play them every night. Perhaps that's why I see the difference when I'm unfortunate enough to catch a few minutes of Stranded or whatever the show was called where they're supposed to be marooned on a dessert island (not that survivor was all that 'survivor' either). I mean, the entire time was about various quasi-romantic liaisons, and everyone was nicely showered and wearing good clothes. I really must be missing something here, but where's the 'reality' in this 'reality TV' or the feeling of being stranded and needing to survive?

What I'd like to see is something much more reality:

-Stack an island with props / food / challenges / cameras
-Drop teams at either end of the island
-Leave them to their own devices to get food, water and find the way off
-Each evening the teams do a secret ballot to remove one member. That person is taken off quietly/secretely while the groups sleep.
-Various challenges are added each day, but without knowledge of groups (until the challenges are encountered). That could mean that, as they move through the island, their path behind becomes perilous also.
-Challenges are set so that teams figure everything out on their own, and eventually when getting to the end, there is only one person left
-Important: at no time does anyone from either team come in contact with show hosts or anyone setting the challenges (except when taken from the island or for medical reasons). The challenges are not scripted (i.e. there are no instructions to read, no one telling them what to do). Everything is totally 'real'.

That's what I would called survivor reality TV. Not this club med stuff that's on now.

Of Afghanistan and Video Games

As ever more British soldiers are killed in Afghanistan (204 as of writing), ever more questions are asked by the British media and public. Before I go any further I'd just like to state that I support the idea of removing the Taliban from Afghanistan and I believe it should have been the main goal in the region even before 9/11. The resources poured into the illegal invasion of Iraq would have been much more useful in Afghanistan where they could have actually combated an evil/terrorist supporting regime.

Be that as it may, it seems the US/UK still hasn't learned their lesson (or aren 't actually serious about taking Afghanistan?). Somehow, the governments are still playing at WWII tactics and haven't realized that most of their wars since then have been more akin to guerrilla warfare than European urban warfare. I saw an interview with a government official this morning who insists that over the last few months the troops realize they've been making substantial progress. Then, when questioned further on a timeline, he goes on to say that both he and the general believe that very real progress can be realized over the next several years.

What?

He's spouting such a can of hogwash it isn't funny. The short of it is that, as of now, Afghanistan is basically another Iraq (if you consider the real Iraq battles to have started after Hussein was ousted). And that is precisely because the government is being wishy-washy and is not fully committing either way (going full-on or pulling out). Granted, the terrain of Afghanistan does present some formidable problems as does the guerrilla nature of the conflict against an army of fundamentalist zealots. Which is precisely why the governments need to decide go-or-no-go and stick to it. A policy of perpetual war might have been useful for them in the past, but considering the internet for disemminating information/opinion and considering the financial crisis and a wishy-washy policy is far more detrimental to all involved than almost any other option.

The numbers I've seen are that there are an estimated 20,000 Taliban. The report this morning said the UK military is requesting there be 9000 UK troops and the US around 30,000 troops with a total internation forces of around 65,000.

?

Either someone hasn't been doing their math right, or, as I suggested above, they're treating this as an urban European war. If these numbers are correct, the international forces outnumber the Taliban around 3:1 To have any chance at winning a guerrilla war the attacking forces (us) typically requires 10:1 numerical superiority. So, the numbers alone will tell you that this war will not end any time soon (and probably never with a favourable outcome for us).

Conspiracy freaks have your way with this info (i.e. either someone has goofed big time, or someone doesn't want the war to end).

So where do the video games come into it? Only regarding battle experience in relation to numerical superiority. Anyone who has ever played a real-time-strategy game (RTS) such as Warcraft, Starcraft or any of the numerous others in the genre quickly realizes that without appropriate numerical superiority there is very little hope of victory. In fact, the only thing that stops an devastating counter attack is lack of resources by the enemy.

For those of you who don't like numbers, keep hoping that something good will come of it. Those of us who've looked at the numbers know that a finish to this is very unlikely in the near future--and the finish we desire much less so even then.

If God does exist...so what?

I've spent much of my life questioning the existence of God. I was twelve when I told my parents I wasn't going to church anymore because I didn't believe. And that wasn't just a kid complaining about an unpleasant chore. I didn't believe because it was my impression that the events of the bible could more likely be carried out by aliens than Gods. Seems even at twelve I instinctively understood the burden of proof, or more accurately, the truth behind the phrase: an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence.

Be that as it may, I think I've reached the point where it's time I've moved on to a new question. I'm now more concerned with the idea that, even if God exists, why should anyone worship him?

Perhaps I come at the whole religion thing differently than most people and that's why I can't understand the common thinking. I believe that, if God(s) exist it/they are simply being of a greater scale than us. Even as we are of greater scale than other beings. They may even have created the universe from an older universe outside ours (or maybe universe creation is just a natural even of the cosmos). But even if they did create our universe...so what? That still doesn't leave any reason, in my mind, for worshiping them.

I suppose many believe that such a god holds the key to other dimensions--afterlives, if you will--and that worshipping them, getting in their good books will come with rewards. Yeah. Whatever. If you believe that a being capable of creating universes has anything but a passing interest in your existence then...well, let's say, I have some property in Atlantis to sell you. Do we take any serious notice of ants? When we stick them in an ant farm, do we really care about them. Do we feel any great, long-lived angst when we empty the farm in the back yard when it's time for us to move on? 'Higher' beings do not, and never will truly care for 'lower' beings except as pets or curiousities.

So whether God(s) is creator, higher being, or imaginary friend, there is absolutely no reason to worship him/her/it/them except self delusion.

Dark Matter / Dark Energy Could They Be...

Something a bit different this time, a bit of recent cosmological speculation of mine coming as a result of reading the non-fiction book Parallel Worlds by the physicist Michio Kaku. It is a credit to his layout of the book and a bit of extrapolation relating to my digital 3D artwork that I had this idea.

Let me start from the beginning.

Michio leads off with an overview of the book in which he describes the idea of parallel worlds/universes as becoming a popular idea in modern cosmology. He also likens this to a combination of religious ideas where you can have your creation and your perpetual universe too. That is, he suggests the idea that the multiverse could be thought of as universal 'bubbles' constantly 'banging' (as in big bang) into existence amid the timeless sea of a greater cosmos.

He continues by discussing results of WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) and 2002 measurements of the background radiation that put the universe, very precisely measured, at 13.7 billion years old.

Another thing that WMAP did was to show us just how much of our universe is not composed of the periodic elements. We now see that only 4 percent of the universe is made up of matter of a type we understand. The rest is made of dark matter and dark energy (a mind boggling 73 percent is dark energy).

Now, I don't have any more idea on the fundamental nature of what dark matter or dark energy could be composed of, however, what did occur to me is that, if our universe is not strongly bounded but rather a quasi-loose collection of matter (galaxies, stars, etc) then the situation may be more akin to a dandilion dander floating in a river. Conceptually, one could think of this (here's where the 3D art part comes in) as a sphere whose volume has been textured with patches of colour (galaxies) and patches that are transparent. Or, to put it another way, imagine our universe is permeable to the greater cosmos (that sea of the multiverse). Now, instead of being self contained, we are part of the whole and the whole can flow through out universe. i.e. the dark matter energy may actually be fundamental 'stuff' of the greater cosmos, the structure of the multiverse, that flows like an immense river through our (and other) universe.

Conceptual representations of different universe 'types'. The top image represents a bounded, homogenous universe as a sphere bobbing in the sea of the cosmos. The middle image is the general view of our universe as a bounded sphere that has matter inhomogeneity (galaxies, stars, etc). It is still an entity unto itself. The lower sphere is that of a unbounded, inhomogenous collection of matter that floats as a loose sphere in the cosmos. It is only this last version that is transparent to the 'stuff' of the cosmos (dark matter/energy?) and allows the matrix of the multiverse to flow within it.

So, if my idea is right, then by studying dark mater/energy we could actually learn about the fundamental nature of the mulitiverse, that currently hypothetical area 'outside' our universe.

Edwin Rydberg
June 24, 2009

jobs and the environmentally friendly world

I'm really getting tired of the excuse that 'we can't go green because it will destroy thousands of jobs', or 'it will change our way of life'. If your car stalls on the train tracks with a train coming toward you, do you stay in it because you can't bear to leave your car? Of course not.

So, first things first. Yes, it will change our way of life. It has to. If our way of life didn't change, then nothing would have changed and we will keep marching down the road to oblivion. But that's actually irrelevant because...life is constantly changing! Many people somehow seem unable to see this. I personally blame religion (especially the Abrahamic ones) because living your life around one ancient book tends to give people the idea that things shouldn't change. Buddhists. on the other hand, see everything as constant change. So do biochemists. Without change there is very literally no life. The biochemistry that gives us life requires flux, change. If the system is at equilibrium (i.e. no net change) the organism is dead. So on a fundamental level change is always happening and is crucially necessary. But so too on a larger scale. Is the world the same as it was last year? five years ago? ten years ago? Was our way of living the same a hundred years ago as it is now. The people who use this argument are intending to imply (without actually saying it) that our way of life will somehow be worse if we live better and more harmoniously with our environment. I suppose, for them, it might since most of the people starting such ideas make their money from destroying the environment.

Now onto my real pet peeve (yes the last argument was just a warm up). Will we lose jobs if we go green. Yes. And no. Once again, this comment is said with the suggestion that we will all be destitute when we stop building gas-guzzlers or stop running coal-fired power plants. That simply isn't true. You know and I know that just because we don't make gas-guzzling cars doesn't mean there won't be cars, they'll just be more fuel efficient--and who is going to build those fuel efficient cars? New technologies, in energy generation, transportation, and others, will require factories and plants of their own. It will mean retraining, at least for some. Although I'm sure in many cases the retraining wouldn't have to be that significant. But if fear of retraining is the only real argument you have against this then I say go live in a cave or get with the age of technology because things are only going to move faster from here on. So going green, in and of itself, will not necessarily cause any net loss of jobs and will open up many more new jobs and industries.

Thus, the only real arguments against shifting to a green society real boil down to laziness or fear of not being in first class on the big business money train. But, if we don't go green either through habits or technology, then we'll be forced to change in ways we never wanted to.

Postman Pat should be fired!

Those of you with young children will likely know what I mean. I often watch Cbeebies on BBC with my young daughter and one of the shows is 'Postman Pat' - now the Special Delivery version. In writing terms, each episode of Postman Pat follows the ' idiot plot ' model. Which is to say that all the characters have to be idiots for the plot to work. And this is precisely what I believe Postman Pat should be fired. Normally, the post suggests to us that a 1% failure rate is very reasonable (that itself is questionable, since they deal in millions of objects and 1% failed delivery amounts to tens of thousands of objects not being delivered...). Regardless of whether we accept the post's claims, the simple fact that Pat screw up his delivery EVERY show warrants a serious look at his work record by his supervisors. His record is made all the worse by the fact that he only has about ten people to deliver to. Yet still he finds ways to lose or mix up their packages--everything from Teddy bears to reels of film. He even lost a cow once. There is no doubt that the people of his district would be better served with a new postman.

DRM: Help! Amazon is robbing my home!

Well, not my home, but, effectively, that of certain people. Let me explain.

If you're at all into the e-reader scene you would have to hiding under a rock not to know about Amazon's Kindle. Originally hailed as a wondrous device and essentially the herald of the true future e-reader, opinions of the new version have done somewhat of a 180. With the company's remote access to the new Kindle, opinions are now more of the mind that the Kindle is the harbinger of true corporate invasiveness. On the chance that you've not heard, while the Kindle allows very convenient access to Amazon's online store from anywhere in the region (U.S. atm), it also allows the company to access your Kindle. And disable it, should they feel the desire. And, apparently, that desire can grow from something as relatively innocuous as returning too many items. Once disabled, you lose access to everything stored on the kindle.

Now, music and movie companies have, for almost a decade now, been trying to convince us that copying a DVD or CD or recording a movie is like stealing it from the store. And the courts agree, which is why movie and music 'piracy' is now illegal in most of the developed world. However, Big Business is trying to eat their cake and sell it too. Somehow, they believe that by selling a product they gain the complete rights over how and when it is used. WRONG. Once we buy the product, it's OURS to do with (legally) as we'd like. If we want to take it apart, that's fine. If we want to sit it on the shelf and admire it, that's fine. If we want to use it constantly, while returning other items that we don't deem to be to our standards, they may not like it, but tough, that's still fine. In parallel with the DVD/CD copying analogy, we have the idea that e-books are still books and still subject to the same rules--be that copyright or ownership. If I buy a book in a store and take it home and put in on my shelf, I don't expect the bookstore to come by a few days later and remove it from my shelf. If they do, I'll call the police. Likewise, if Amazon feels the need to inactivate a legally purchased Kindle, thus preventing access to legally purchased e-books, they have essentially come into the book owner's house and robbed them. And Amazon should be taken to court for every time it happens.

It's time to make big business realize that the street runs both directions.

Aren't hospitals insane?

Does anyone else think the idea of hospitals is criminally insane?

I mean, you bring all the sick people from the surrounding area, all those carrying the worst contagious diseases, and you concentrate them in the same building. You ensure the building is cleaned well to kill all competing microbes so that only the strong pathogens are present. Then you have healthy staff and family visit so they can catch the illnesses and transmit them to the healthy population. It's no wonder we have superbugs evolving in such an environment.

How has such a psychotic system managed to survive until now?

Job Security

I've just realized that, with the world financial crisis and increasing redundancy to machines (let's face it, most jobs could be done faster, cheaper and more reliably by machines) the only place with job security for the average person is as a civil servant (until they take over completely, machines will never encroach on government). Here in England, even as jobs in other sectors are either getting slashed, or getting their pay slashed, the government keeps expanding. The newest fear-created department: National Health Service Department of Flu Resilience. Yeah, whatever.

Disease double standard?

I'm just curious why, when the bird flu arose in China the world was on high alert and we were warned against travel and to be careful, and the media watched it's progress like a hawk--even though it took months to move from China to the rest of the world. Instead, Swine flu arises, quickly kills 50 people in Mexico, within days it's across the Atlantic...and yet the media tells us that we shouldn't worry this time. Am I the only one confused? I can't help but see a strong double standard or the hand of propaganda at work through the WHO. A disease comes from the west and it's 'let's wait and see, it's probably not that bad' but a disease comes from the east and it's 'we're all probably going to die if we're not super careful and cut all ties to the country of origin'. Come on! These are peoples lives! More common sense and less politics please.

Tenuous Freedoms

The G20 summit in London has been over for a while now but questions into the actions of the police are still arising. It seems this is becoming common after such meetings (as, of course, are the protests). One comment made was that the police must remember they are servants of the public, not masters. Incidentally, the same should be true of politicians. It seems to me that comment precisely encapsulates the problem. More and more, especially since 9/11, the authorities seem to feel they are our masters and we, the helpless, ignorant children. Furthermore, it has surely become obvious over the last 8 years is that, despite all the protections built into our constitutions and political systems, any freedoms we possess are still at the whim of the powerful and we could lose them at any time. This should be a wake-up call to all but the most willfully ignorant.

Early Fandom

It occurred to me recently that religion is the first example of fandom. Many people are religious and/or defend their religion on the basis of the great story it tells. Many children are introduced to religion through the stories: 'baby Jesus' at Christmas comes readily to mind. To me, this is nothing other than an example of fandom. It's literally no different than believing Atlantis is real because Plato wrote about it thousands of years ago. Or that Middle Earth is real because of the richly detailed background of the story. I'm convinced that if Lord of the Rings had been written two thousand years ago it would now be the basis of a religion.

Israel-Palestine Conflict: a fractal pattern

I has recently occurred to me that the Israel-Palestine conflict seems to be a fractal pattern of conflict. By this I mean that the conflict is present, and essentially similar in concept, at all levels from global to personal. This is typically unlike most conflicts, which will often vary greatly when viewed at the international level as compared to the interpersonal level.

As an example, the Iraq war (or Vietnam, or many other recent wars). Internationally, the US government went to war against Iraq and thus the two countries were in conflict. Yet if this was extended down to the level of states or further to individual people, say an American and an Iraqi meeting in the street in New York, or Kansas, or L.A. there would likely be no conflict or even thought of conflict.

Yet in the situation of Israel and Palestine, essentially the same conflict can be found to exist at all levels. First, internationally: Israel is surrounded by Arabic nations who generally desire Israel's demise (one might also extend this one level outward and suggest that the Arabic nations are, in some way, surrounded by Christians--the allies of the Jewish in this conflict) just as Israel surrounds the Palestinian territories and in many cases, let's be honest here, longs for the demise of Palestine. So the international situation mimics the national situation. Furthermore, on a personal level there is often great distrust between Israeli and Palestinian (is there any surprise why?) even when the most liberal of each side are involved. When those less liberal in their thinking are involved there is obviously open conflict.

So we see the fractal pattern of conflict: the large scale (international), the mid-scale (national) and the small scale (personal) all mimicking each other. This is undoubtedly reminiscent, in some ways, of certain other wars such as WWII, where the animosity existed at all levels (although the proximity component was often missing).

Perhaps this fractal analysis of conflict is a new method of thinking about the 'power' of the conflict, and the degree of effort that will be needed to resolve it. Were I an historian, I might go about applying the principles to other conflicts to see if there might truly be a general utility. In the meantime, however, I think it seems valid for use here. WWII , for example, essentially required the complete elimination of the opposing forces and the total destruction of several cities (both by conventional and nuclear forces). In analogy, I'm suggesting that the view of the Israel-Palestine conflict taken by the West is overly simplistic in its scope and therefore we can't help but attempt to enforce overly simplistic 'solutions'. We are mislead by apparent scale: 'two tiny states far away fighting it out'. One can't help but realize, however, that this is a conflict that has shaped much of modern history (and, in many ways, ancient history also). The Fractal analysis also supports what should be obvious to anyone who has truly looked at the conflict: that it is very deep seeded. There is no way that such a conflict will be resolved with band-aid measures. However it is finally resolved, via bloodbath or miraculous peaceful discourse (and that would make it the first conflict of such seriousness ever to be solved by talking) it will require an immense effort not just on the part of Israel and Palestine, but also by the West.