By no monism I mean I don't believe that all matter and energy are actually underneath made out of the same stuff; god-stuff. I am not a dualist, I don't believe in god-stuff or soul or spirit in any form. Only matter and energy and reality.

Why I did not mention it (whether I was Jewish or not)? You never asked.

I must admit, you set me up several times with your references to gay rabbis, etc. If you had asked directly, I probably would have told you what I told you in the first paragraph of my last response. Other than the bacon on Yom Kippur incident, I was also greatly influenced by my father's best friend (the "bigot" he refers to). He showed me that my ethnic group was no better than any other ethnic group when it comes to putting down outsiders. Yes, our ethnic group has certain traits that should make us proud. I have read (in anti-Semitic web sites by-the-way) where the average Jewish IQ is 116 compared to the norm of 100. (As a side note, why are we (Jews) so good at theoretical physics {Another side note, is this a fact, or just anecdotal?} My hypothesis involves the tendency to accept the abstract notion of an invisible God.) I love pastrami-on-rye with sour pickles. (I was very pleased when I found these sour pickles in the grocery store in Lithuania. They were impossible to find in our part of Pennsylvania. They apparently are part of the traditional Christmas Eve dinner here.) However, I have no fondness for bagels.

I never went so far as to deny my heritage, but I would not stress it. If someone would ask me where my people came from, I would say Russia, Austria, and Poland. As a religion, it is no better than any others.

As a xenophobic ethnic group, it is no better than any others. My genetic heritage is definitely Jewish. My memetic heritage is much more complicated. I am an American who wants to melt into the melting pot. I never went out of my way to socialize with Jews and did so as much as an average American would. I married outside the faith (Thus thinning out my blood as my father's friend warned). Was I afraid of anything? I guess I didn't want anybody to prejudge me because of my heritage. I didn't want people to go out of their way to react to me as they would imagine a Jew should be reacted to. However, twice, people whom I had known for a year or two, told me when they found out I was Jewish that "That explains a few things". Therefore, any prejudice would have been justified? (By the way, why were you not shocked. Why did you suspect it--the name? I haven't gone so far as to change my very obviously Jewish name. This was out of respect for my immediate family though, not my heritage.) On the other hand, another acquaintance told me of the time he went out of his way to find a temple for a partner to worship in during an extended business trip abroad and was annoyed when the Jew didn't even go to the temple. If I had been that Jew, I would have been annoyed that he (the acquaintance) was annoyed.

Holocaust

I don't have a problem with the "never forget" attitude that Jews have towards "The Holocaust". My problem is that because of this disproportionate stress, we tend to forget fact that there were and are other holocausts that deserve equal concern.

Politically Correct?

Yes, I notice he is black, but I try to not use that fact alone to decide how to react to him. Is this naive? Sometimes. Many blacks are proud of their heritage and would want me to react to them as a proud black person. Others would want to melt in to their adopted (foster?) land and would want me to react to them in a neutral manner. I use the Golden Rule and treat them as I would like to be treated--as a person who likes pastrami-on-rye with sour pickles.

I wish we could find the way to encourage the positive things about ethnicity--the diversity--without the xenophobic baggage. (Sounds like a Miss America speech.)

Shooting the Nuns

First Yes it is a very provocative title. A 2000 (don't forget to update your copyright date)version of Abby Hoffman's Steal This Book. However, stealing is a non-violent crime. Shooting crosses the line. I wonder if the amount attracted by the provocative title will be offset by the amount who dismiss you as a violent loony and ignore you. It's a fine line. I, for one, would not feel comfortable wearing such a t-shirt (but I might visit the web site).

Why do you say you fear censure from Jews doing well out of talking about their persecution but have no fear of being censured by the church for shooting nuns. Did I miss a subtle tongue-in-cheek point that the Jews' talk about their persecution implies that they will censure you and this is part of their survival technique?

Synthetic Diesel

I haven't heard of any specific work on producing clean diesel fuel from methane. Longer chain hydrocarbons can be synthesized from shorter chains (methane is the shortest with only one carbon atom). Diesel fuel is a mixture of thousands of different variations of hydrocarbons. Research has shown that certain diesel fuels produce fewer emissions when used as fuel in diesel engines. This implies that different hydrocarbons will burn cleaner. For example sulfur contamination and highly aromatic (related to benzene) fuels burn dirtier. If one knows the specific hydrocarbon that produces the fewest emissions, one can then theoretically synthesize this specific chemical, using methane as the building block.

The Skin Zone

Thanks. Now I know what a skin is. I can see how it will work. Unfortunately, you will have to be the webmaster with me emailing you stuff to put up. That seems to have worked okay so far. As a start, we will need a dummy site for me to see how things look before they get posted. I'm still not sure how many I will give the URL out to. Perhaps I will do like you and include it as a sig when I do my minimal postings to newsgroups.

What next? Keep up the trolling. I nominate you. I like the Angel's

thread.

Happy 2001, (Eventually to be known as 32 ;-) I was born 12 BMoM)

Mark

I read that very clearly and waited for inadvertant insults. I am sort of a Jewish Plumber, but that didn't bother me. My aunt is vegetarian, but neither gay nor a rabbi. Anyway, I did give you a full detailed response to your question about my faith and beliefs. There was no question about heritage.

Come on, there is no such thing. On a British comedy show, Birds of a Feather (written by two Jews) there is a wonderful over-the-top Jewish character. She was asked to find a Jewish plumber, that will be difficult this side of Golders Green (Jewish area in London). She retorted that it would be difficult this side of Tel Aviv.

As I said before I use stereotypes at times (cautiously) but I don't have any particularly negative ones about Jews. I think that is true of most English people, we recognize differences and respect them.

I said "sort of" a Jewish Plumber. Chemical Engineers deal with piping systems...

Neo-Facist

What are the characteristics of a neo-facist other than being a racist? I apparently have a steroetype of a neo-facist that needs to be clarified.

I guess I never got over the teasing of my neo-nazi 5th grade classmate who gave me a hard time about being a "cheap Jew". I better get some therapy.

Ruebens

Excuse me, but as a purist, I must inform you that a "Rueben" is corned beef on rye with sour kraut (what do Germans call sour kraut, what do Canadians call canadian bacon, and what do French call French fries?) and melted swiss cheese with Thousand Island dressing. Any variations will cause it to not be a Rueben. A pickel on the side is okay, but it must be on the side. The most popular mutation is to serve the Thousand Island on the side. This is also okay as long as it is then put on the sandwich. (Call this doing my part to defend the fidelity of the Rueben meme.)

South Park

I guess I should have been more careful with my "Kenny" reference. Michael was sledding last week (on Phil Collins hill?) when the ground fell away from beneath him. He got the wind knocked out of him and hurt his back. The adult on the scene (not one of his parents) called out the ambulance and Michael spent the night in the hospital. He now wears a back brace and cannot sit for 10 days. We got to experience the Lithuanian medical system first hand. For one, they didn't use any special precautions for handling a back injury (such as a backboard). They did do a cat scan, which told us that no serious damage was done--only a bruise.

I like the show because it pushes the taste envelope on the topics it covers. I also especially like the shows where they slam religion (even judaism--they get on Moses pretty good in one). I don't think it is overrated. Sure, I have now high expectations for all episodes and am occasionally disappointed, but they do hit the mark more often than not. I admit that I like pop and will (usually) not prejudically not like a show (or music) only because it is cool to like it. An exception is Andrew Lloyd Weber. He's pop and it is cool not to like him--so I don't.

It's also relative. Ever since Seinfeld (which you probably don't like either) left the air, there was a serious vacuum in TV comedy. SP filled the void. Unfortunately, for me, the void is back, because english language comedies are virtually non-existent in my adopted home.

You are also spoiled by the advanced (by light years) of British Comedy over American (probably that sarcasm/irony thing you mentioned--which is what was good about Seinfeld by the way). The League of Gentlemen started just before I left and it had promise. Is it because the British can more easily make fun of themselves or because they are easier to make fun of?

Rueben shmuben

Did I say it was authentic? What does a cheap diner in New Britain, Connecticut know about authenticity? All I can say is that it tasted good. Lots of interesting tastes and textures combined. It didn't look like a very Jewish area and none of the clientele looked Jewish. But it was cheap and close to the YMCA (!).

What do the French call French fries? Pommes Frites. But chips is chips, mate. But since my wife has had problems with her gall bladder and stopped me having proper chips I have missed them. Proper chips. Home made chips deep fried in the accumulated fat left over from bacon, sausages and Sunday roasts, the grease from six or seven different species of mammal and bird accumulated over the previous weeks or months. Cooked to a golden crisp, not the anaemic colour of chip shop chips. Proper chips. Food for real men. Unlike bloody oven chips, cooked in vegetable oil. Only 5% fat! Ha! How can that be real food? The next time the wife goes to stay at the mother-in-laws I am going to get the chip pan out again.

Comedy

The important thing about comedy is not to push envelopes or to break new ground or to challenge convention. The important thing is to be funny. A lot of new comedy tries too hard to be novel and so fails to be truly funny. The Simpsons miss the mark a lot of the time, but on the whole I can still enjoy it. South Park tries much too hard. A lot of the funniest comedy on television is British mass market sit-com, there are some geniuses out there. Comedy is natural for us English. Even when I talk to customers I try to introduce humour whenever I can. "Which dehumidifier would I recommend? Well, what do you think? Who knows more about damp, Italians or the British..?" I would say that the majority of my spoken words at work have some degree of sarcasm, irony or punning in them.

Neo Fascists

I liked wearing black and leather and suggesting tough solutions to complex problems. It really was just camp machismo and striking a pose, more David Bowie than Hitler. It was just a phase. Too silly to be ashamed of. Cab driver politics and a Jack boot fetish. Infantile, behind me.

Just in case you wondered, we don't have English muffins much, except at McDonalds.

Martin

How barbaric you Europeans are!! We weenie Americans frown heavily on frying stuff in rendered animal fat--especially fat saved from past meals. We are trying to figure out how to convert that stuff to diesel fuel. (I forget. Do you brits consider yourselves European?)

My poor wife has also been complaining lately about stomach aches soon after fatty meals (especially pork--see, Moses was right). She's probably on her way to gall bladderville too. She also gets annoyed when I "stink" up the kitchen cooking up potatoes MY way. I use lots of three kinds of "good" fat--butter, olive, and canola. Throw in lots of onions, cut potatoes (parboiled seems to work a little better than raw) and salt and pepper. Fry and stir (sauté?) on medium till just before things get black. Eat with too much ketchup and a hamburger.

The Whites of their Eyes

Someone recently pointed out to me (I don't think I read it in MM/STNF, but who knows?) that humans are the only species with prominent white in their eyes. The white offsets the pigmented iris and is made visible by the almond shaped opening. One obvious effect of this is that others can better tell where you are looking. This seems to have no direct benefit on me. It lets others in on my sneakiness (and cuts in on hang time for cleavage). Since it has survived as a human trait, it must have (or had) a benefit. One explanation has to do with trust. If I can see where you are looking and can tell a little about what you are thinking, I trust you and will share my resources with you. Learning how to use this tool to deceive or control you (with a wide eyed glare) adds another layer of complexity to our interactions.

Nothing too profound here. Just another interesting tidbit on this social species of ours.

(Does "hang time" make sense to you? I just realized that it derives from American Football. A good punter will kick the ball higher, not just longer. This gives the ball hang time--a good kick is more than 4 seconds--and allows the defenders to reach the receiver downfield as soon as the ball does.)

Eyes

I can't remember whether I have actually written about whites of the eye but I have certainly thought about it many times.

They do seem to be a uniquely human feature. Apes don't have them, apart from the ape played by John Cleese in George of The Jungle, an interesting departure from an otherwise accurate depiction. Their uses are as you say, for expressing emotions and feelings and plotting eye movements, I suppose accurate signalling is an advantage, it allows a person to communicate genuine and feigned emotions more easily. At this point my mind fills with a 1930's caricature "Negro" rolling his big eyes. It cannot be a coincidence that this uniquely human characteristic is the first and last addition made to cartoon animals (last as in the only thing to show up in the dark). However I predict that this will not remain as a unique human feature for long. Dog breeders are doing their level best to breed whites into the eyes of several breeds, especially big faced sad baby substitutes. Selective breeding for freaks like this is in my mind far more morally reprehensible than most programs of vivisection or commercial gene modification.

How much damage to our development is done by cartoons? I don't mean the waste of time or the obsession with unobtainable bodyshapes (that is another story) I mean the perversion of the laws of physics and the strange world of myth that they make more tangible. Tom and Jerry (and Itchy and Scratchy) hit each other over the head with heavy implements and no harm is done. I once heard a phone-in on the radio in which a bloke claimed that when he was in prison he met several men who were there for murder because they had hit a person over the head in a fight and, unexpectedly, they died. I wonder if Joseph Hannah and Burt Reynolds ever gave that a moment's thought when they show people being whacked over the head with chairs and the like? Also cartoons and other animated myths are very guilty of flagrant anthropomorphism. While Toy Story and Winnie The Pooh are easily seen as allegorical there may be a lot more confused thinking generated by things like A Bug's Life and especially those live action films starring animals. This hides from children the utterly alien nature of common animals. Ants have no desire to be individuals. Ants have six legs, not four and a brain so small it is a wonder that they move around let alone achieve any kind of social co-operation. Why not teach the children about that? The true story would be much more fascinating, wouldn't it?

Much harm to our children's rational education is done by the crude depictions of little devils and angels on shoulders and the winged soul flying up to heaven in cartoons. Is there any way that this tide of irrationality can be stemmed? Billions of people think it is perfectly obvious and not worth questioning that they have a soul, that spirit is a meaningful concept, that God is self-evidently real and that mind is not only fundamentally different to matter but also superior. What can be done?

I was almost physically sick watching television at Christmas. The saccharine sweetness of American cartoons was nauseating. Of course Santa Claus was real. Men dressed up as Santa but there was a real one too, you just had to have faith. Do we rationalists have to put up with this for ever? Bullshit can be fed to children in infinite amounts and to say a word against it is to be evil? So telling the truth is synonymous with child abuse. Is it me or isn't that arse about face? Systematically lying to children is good, telling the truth is evil; I have said it before, the sooner we get conquered by an intelligent race the better.

Chips

Real chips cooked in dripping. The best food on earth. Vegetable oil is for wimps. Why not try it yourself? Get a bowl and keep it in the fridge. Whenever you grill anything collect the fat. Bacon and sausages are good but steak and chops are fine too. Be careful with lamb, too much lamb fat can spoil the taste. Mostly pork and bacon fat (especially if a little is smoked bacon) and a bit of beef fat too, perhaps a trace of lamb, duck and chicken, but don't overdo it. Keep it well filtered, free of solid particles and any non-fat liquids. Keep chilled when not being used to deep fry. It keeps for months and can be self perpetuating if the ratio of excess fat in your grilling balances out the fat absorbed in the chips. Eventually it gets too contaminated with too much burned material and needs to be thrown out, but before it does it imparts its special flavour to the chips, much better than any alternative. I am quite serious, this is the best way to eat potatoes. Throwing it out is a criminal waste of fine flavour. My mother is always going on about how she lived on little but fatty bacon and bread during the war years.

Hang time for cleavage.

Instantly understandable. I know a little about American football. My brother-in-law is a big fan of all games played by men with odd shaped balls, he has tried to interest me in rugby (both varieties) and gridiron football. My interest is very modest. I remember going to a game with the Northamptonshire Storm, the crowd was so modest that everybody noticed that I was tall and heavily built, not over 50 and not in a wheelchair, all the characteristics required to be offered a trial. But no, the rules are incomprehensible and it looks a bit rough.

Gut the Feedback Zone? Am I going to end up on the cutting room floor?

Looks like you're keeping busy upgrading the site. It was interesting watching the 360 on whether or not to advertise. I think you're doing the right thing although I'm not clear about the reference to your marriage (which appears to have been cut). You weren't gonna quit your day job were you?

A while back I wrote about the evolution of our appreciation of music and mentioned that "into this medium (our brain that distinguishes different sounds) enters a sound that resonates". I was driving home last night and was listening to the seventies classical-rock fusion band "Renaissance". The music had many "magical melodies"--most notably in "Running Hard" and "A Trip to the Fair". These are not only catchy, but give a special satisfaction when heard. I tried to think what was it about these melodies that made them "magical"?

It occurred to me that these melodies reminded me of the voice of someone telling me something that was worthwhile to remember. When someone tells me something very interesting or "neat", I want to remember it and tell it to someone else. For example a simple and elegant solution to some difficult problem such as how to pick a cheap combination lock--"You simply pull on the hasp until you feel a click. Then you turn the dial in the opposite direction and repeat until the lock opens." A better example might be when someone shows you a trick to more efficiently use a computer program you have been struggling with for months or years (for me this would be the Goal Seek command for excel spreadsheets--the reason I switched from Lotus). The teacher would speak in a confident and experienced tone. We would then experience the "Aha" emotion and feel that we were given some worthwhile information. In our early days we would hear someone explain how to safely use fire or manufacture a cutting tool from a lump of stone. The meme has been recognized as useful and worthy of copying and repetition. Assuming our brains co-evolved with memes and this co-evolution helped our survival, there must be a part of our brain that recognizes a particular meme's importance and rewards itself with a zap to the pleasure module. A successful meme is (by definition) repeated. A successful melody is repeated over and over (sometimes ad nauseum) in the brain.

Now--to test this hypothesis, the next time someone tells you something "neat" and useful, remember the tone of his/her voice. Transpose it to music and have it recorded. If you get rich, I was right.

Mark

Cut the best bits? No, not at all.

The feedback zone is a rich vein of treasure but it has been poorly sign-posted. So many people think it is just full of sycophantic comments and bible-basher's rants. It needs some attention to help people find the good stuff. I have not got a complete plan for it yet, I am just hoping that the inspiration will fill me as I sit down to do it. I will get rid of some poor material, there is no need for it, I have enough good stuff. There is a lot of duplication, which I will get rid of and I will reformat as much as I can in the colour coded pastel-background-for-each-message format like I used on Family Circus, it works very well to signify different voices without bogging things down with too much in the way of headers and footers for each message.

I will make your stuff much more accessible, links to each page, perhaps even a synopsis or two, something like the twenty word synopses used by Hollywood. I came up with a great idea today, well several really, but what about "The Meme Mechanics" to identify the special contributors such as yourself, Rob and Michal? It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Coming soon; WOMEN!

Yes, really, I have a couple of female contributors now.

Musical meme theory.

I think I need to roll this one around my brain for a bit, in various states, but it seems to have some promise. I'll mull it over.

Please let me know about the A to Z index, is it working? Can you follow it? There is still a lot more to do on it but I think it is a real asset to the site, it should help people to break out of the zones and find the good stuff that interests them, but they didn't know they were looking for. I would guess that when "finished" it will be about three times the current size.

I must warn you that another of my pet peeves is bad indexes. One of my favorites was the microwave cook book where my search for "baked potato" was finally found under "baked"--there were no entries under "potato". So far it looks good. Having key words in clear view will give the browser a good idea where to go.

How about "Martin and the Meme Mechanics"? Martin, Mark, Michal and Rob. Reminds me of my wife's gang back home. When we got together as couples, the men were, Mark, Mark, Mark, Mike, and ..... Lenny.

Gonna do the Austrian Alps next week. Since I'm a minimal skier, I hope to find a good book or two.

Gross Got!

Mark

Maybe the pendulum is swinging again--the right way:

(link to news feature on re-establishment of evolution as a school subject in Kansas)

I still don't really get what you were driving at with the musical memes bit. Perhaps because I am very unmusical. I almost get it, perhaps if you were here in person I could pick it up from the tone of your voice as you explained it.

Can you think in music? Or shape? Or smell? Or colour?

Interesting thoughts. I suspect dogs think in a very smelly way, monkeys think very visually, in colour and three dimensions; and bats and dolphins think in sound-shapes.

But that could just be prejudice. I think mostly in words, but sometimes there is something else going on as well. I suspect that I think in shapes and numbers less than most men, I have a more female kind of word based brain. I remember doing an aptitude test for computer programming, it was quite tough, lots of manipulating shapes in your mind, but after a few minutes I had answered a few questions, I glanced around and everybody else was three or four pages ahead of me. At that point I gave up on the idea of being a programmer, if that was the skill they were looking for they were likely to find it in other people. I am still wondering what my abilities suit me for. Being stupid has it's advantages, you never feel guilty about wasting talent, I feel guilty all the time. My boss tells me he thinks I am the smartest person in the shop by a long way. He's right. I may even be the smartest person who has ever been in the shop. But nowhere near the most successful.

If you round out that idea about music I'll publish it.

Stereotypes

I have been thinking about stereotypes. We are made to feel guilty for having stereotypes but I think this is absurd. They are essential. The problem with stereotypes comes when you put more faith in them than in your direct experience.

It is quite reasonable to assume that snakes are dangerous, nervous, and best avoided. That is sensible. It is also sensible to suspect that an urban black male of 18 could well be difficult, aggressive or even possibly criminal. The statistics back up that suspicion. The stereotype is a problem if you value it above the direct experience of the individual concerned. If you live next-door to a young black man for three years, watching him go to Church and holding down a job and yet still see him as a gun-toting crack head bent on raping your wife and daughter. That is the problem with stereotypes, when they blind you to reality. As a first guess they are both useful and inevitable, we all have them no matter how hard we try to deny it. The trick is to minimize your stereotypes to the broadest and vaguest extent, use them as the softest pencil outlines, to be wiped away when you get genuine information.

Martin

I am rediscovering music. It's not bad. Not bad at all.

I got The Best of The Doors for Christmas. I am playing it for only the second time. It is fantastic. Really dirty and cheesy sounding organs and stuff, real genius. It is giving me quite a lift. I love the way different sounds, effects and rhythms are blended in ways that would never have occurred to me and yet they sound just right, the music is constantly changing pitch and pace but still forming a coherent whole. Good stuff.

But that still doesn't make me change my mind about the money side of it. Music doesn't need to be so obscenely well rewarded at the top in order to tempt people to make it. In real life discussions (shock) with real life people (tremble) I have found that a touch of sarcasm helps get my point over on the whose money is it anyway argument. Boxing provides the best example. Nobody would be mad enough to get into a ring with those big guys if it wasn't for the money, would they? Err, ever heard of a bloke called Cassius Clay? How did he make it big? By winning an Olympic gold medal for boxing, and a certain Mr Lewis... I think that makes the point. People want to be good at what they do, they want to be the best, money isn't either necessary or sufficient. Greatness and genius can be it's own reward. Just think of Van Gogh, he didn't need a subsidy or a commission to make great art, he just had to do it, whether anybody appreciated it or not.

Oil Companies

Recently there has been uproar in the British media about the profit figures of BP Amoco. Never once have I heard anybody ever state how much money they have invested in plant, projects and the labourforce. The idea is spread that oil just leaps out of the ground by itself and these greedy bastards extort money from the public, and how dare they make a profit when the pump prices are going up. Rabid knee-jerk nonsense. You cannot judge whether profits are reasonable unless you contrast them with the capital return on other investments. Just saying that they made three zillion in profit is meaningless. Very few people understand numbers much over a thousand to any degree, we don't have brains designed to handle such concepts, that was brought home to me when I worked at an estate agents and I heard people considering prices and offers on their property, they casually made cuts in the asking price equivalent to six months income as easily as they decide whether or not to have fries with their Big Mac.

On the subject of Big Macs my son has become a man, we went to the cinema last week and afterwards he eat his first Big Mac. No more Happy Meals for him. What is your idea of a coming of manhood ceremony? I loved Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works, one line especially, in which he says the Potlatch ceremonies of the tribes of the Pacific Northwest were the greatest examples of conspicuous expenditure before the dawning of the twentieth century American Bar Mitzvah. Any comments? Have you read any of Pinker's work? He is now one of my top three favourite non-fiction authors, actually he has to be number two. I am reading number one at the moment. Unweaving the Rainbow is a wonderful book but it is so close to my own views I wonder who is copying who or are we just both thinking in the same way. I cannot always see the dividing line between his words I have read before and his words that are new but I could have written myself.

I am glad to hear that evolution is back in schools. I cannot see how anybody can learn much about the way the world really is without this analytical tool. It has changed the way I look at everything and improved my understanding by a whole order of magnitude. I find it very difficult now to try not to use the evolutionary perspective. It is totally natural to me now to analyse everything I see in the light of the evolution of memes and genes. Trying to think myself into the grubby two dimensional world of those people who believe in dualism and good and evil and the gospels is just too hard. My mind rebels against the bars of such ignorance.

BMoM

Sorry I have been a bit slow picking up on this one. I did understand it within about five seconds but just didn't respond. I was born in 6 BMoM and I remember D day of year zero very clearly, probably the first experience I had that was truly of that particular time, if you know what I mean, of that time rather than of the time I happened to be alive. Being terrified by the bass part in These Boots are Made for Walkin' doesn't really count.

My wife was born in year zero by your calendar.

Martin

If you recall, I recommended "How the Mind Works" to you in the second email I sent you back in 31 MoM. My discussions on music are expansions of thoughts he expresses in that book. Although I've read only HTMW, I would also rate Pinker in my top three along with Dawkins and Dennet. I didn't find "Unweaving" as enlightening as Dawkins' other books--maybe because I knew it all too.

I admit that my ramblings on "magical melodies" are rough. The key points (and assumptions) are:

1. Certain melodies give a special pleasure when heard.

2. In addition to the pleasure, we repeat the melody.

3. Our brains are wired to repeat certain things.

4. Brains that repeat important things are more likely to survive.

5. An important thing that is spoken in a clear and confident tone will be more likely to be remembered and repeated.

6. If we find something pleasurable, we consider that good and associate simultaneous sensations with that pleasure.

7. The human voice can be broken down to a series of sounds.

8. A "clear and confident tone" has a particular sound to it.

9. This particular sound triggers a response in the brain along with the important information carried along with it.

10. The sound can trigger a response independent of any informational "baggage".

11. Magical melodies emulate this sound.

Next time you hear a melody you find particularly pleasurable, try to imagine a good teacher giving an enlightening lecture speaking with a voice that sounds like the melody. If it is easy to make this connection, I am on the right track. If not, then derail me.

Along these lines, while browsing the A to Z index (good work, by-the-way), I followed the link to your voice and I must say that you have a great voice! You should prepare a demo tape and send it to your BBC 5 minute pep talk buddies. When they hear your clear and confident tone, they just might give you a go (maybe at three in the morning, but what the hey!).

Oil Companies

When was the last time you heard a news report about the outrageous profits made by news companies? When was the last time you heard a news story about the terrible losses made by an oil company (it does happen--more often than you'd think).

If someone earns 25% in a year on his mutual fund, he'll pocket $5 or 10 thousand. If an oil company earns 25% profit, your talking $5 or 10 billion. This money then has to be used to explore for more crude and to build equipment to refine more environmentally cleaner products and to refine them without polluting.

We definitely have to shift gears when talking finance. I will hem and haw over whether to pay an extra 20 cents for a box of toothpicks, and will then use them on my teeth after a $60 meal at a restaurant I could have prepared at home for $5.

Potlatch

I came of age during the golden age of bar-mitzvahs. My parents put on the biggest party they could afford after borrowing lots of money from grandma. Cost effectiveness was a consideration when coming up with the guest list. Very few kids were invited, because they typically didn't give good enough gifts. More discouragement.

After I got married and experienced "shiksa" weddings (I was invited to very few as a kid) and celebrations, I was amazed and delighted to see all the kids running around having a good time. Usually it was a simple buffet or the guests brought a dish to pass. It made for a much more enjoyable experience.

Homosexuals

I read a little of Michael Sanders. Do you remember what Sue Blackmore said about the subject? I posted it a few weeks ago (before deja died):

In the "Meme Machine", Susan Blackmore has an interesting take on the subject.

Suppose there is a gene for homosexual tendencies. Because of moral taboos, homosexuals historically suppressed their desires and engaged in heterosexual relationships and thus propagated this gene. Therefore, if society lifts the taboos, homosexuals will tend to seek there own kind and *not* reproduce. If this is correct, then the best thing for a Christian to do to eliminate homosexuality is to encourage it.

Mark

IF

A new skin for the computer chameleon? Is this the end of Nuns? With deja down, I have not been browsing the newsgroups, so I must have missed the heralding posts. Nice new look. The blues and grays are definitely "in". I must consider redesigning my apartment in that style

Car Pool to Vilnius

Will have to wait for another day.

Mark

I have just finished reading Unweaving The Rainbow, and I am just a little disappointed. I suppose there comes a time when you know most of what your teacher has to tell and the exciting roller coaster journey starts to seem like just another ride. It is terrifically good and it covers most of the material I want covering but it has lost the sparkle of the newly discovered country. I suppose it is a similar feeling that heroin addicts face, only the biggest dose of the best stuff will give you a thrill, and nothing will ever quite recapture the feeling that you captured in the early days. My mind goes back to my first fix of Dawkins. I just picked up the book and read every single word without a single break of concentration, it captivated me totally and changed my life.

What I like most about it is the way he does not mince his words or pull any punches. My current reading material is Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World, a tremendous description of the power and glory of the scientific rational approach but I hate its non confrontational approach with Judeo-Christian religion. I find a similar anger welling up in me with Jared Diamond, you can tell that he is a thoroughly rational man but he just avoids saying anything that will upset the Christians. I sometimes get very angry after reading a passage when it is absolutely obvious that the rational approach of the author must extend to rejecting religions of all kinds but the author lacks the courage to say anything that will alienate a section of his audience. In my book if you are a rationalist, a believer in science, curiosity, wonder and scepticism you cannot entertain any religion that claims to know the truth, the two ways of thinking are totally alien to each other and no constructive synthesis is possible. That is why Pinker is excellent, and Dawkins is even better.

Homosexual genes

This may have to be changed. We only have six genes don't you know? Well something like that. The scientific illiterates in the media have not done a good job of communicating the facts but the human genome project has apparently found significantly fewer genes than we expected and the suggestion is made that many things which we have speculated are under genetic control now might have to be attributed to other causes because there simply not enough genes to cover all the things they are supposed to encode. I remain very sceptical of that idea, how many did "scientists" expect? How many fewer are there? Did the scientists expect each gene to have only a single effect?

I think homosexuals have often bred in the past, many of the famous homosexuals of the past have married and have managed to have children. Oscar Wilde is an obvious example. It doesn't take much heterosexuality to produce offspring. Even just half a dozen times in a lifetime may be enough to breed as successfully as a very active heterosexual. This is because women are beautifully engineered to conceive, as long as their selves don't get too involved in the process. I can see the processes myself in my own sex life, the way that timing of intercourse and orgasm seems to be entirely under conscious control and yet at the same time is also precisely engineered to achieve the strategy of our bodies is at once beautiful, wonderful and a little frightening. Even when I know the strategy and the reasons for it I still go along with it. Amazingly our feelings of being too tired or not conspire in most occasions to ensure a regular interval being sex but with the odd burst of activity that seems to match periods of fertility and security. The time we set our "personal bests" coincided with a mid cycle at a time in which I had been particularly successful at work. Our relationship was as secure as at any time since, well, since the conceptions of our children...

Is homosexuality heritable? I don't know. Is it under genetic control? I don't know. I have heard of cases of identical twins in which one was and one was not. The infamous Kray twins are a case in point, same environment, same genes, same upbringing, both turn into psychotic gangsters but only one goes insane and turns homosexual. I don't know which one and whether insanity, imprisonment or homosexuality came first, I am not interested in the lives of gangsters. I think homosexuality is as diverse a pattern of behaviours with as many explanations as shivering or fever. It is not a disease or a condition, it is a symptom. It may have three or four different causes, and some cases may have more than one cause.

To me it is obvious that there is a huge difference between the type of homosexuality that has boys of six playing with dolls and skipping and growing up watching weightlifters on the television and actively attracted to men and the kind of man who marries, has a normal life but sometimes gets the urge to stop off at a particular public lavatory on his way home from work. Activity is one thing, attraction is another, sometimes they coincide, sometimes they don't.

Music memes

I don't get it, but I am not surprised, I don't have a lot of musical ability. Perhaps if you talk to somebody with better knowledge of music you will get a better response. My knowledge of music is very rudimentary, I am not a natural thinker in music. I am sure that many people can think much more musically and I am sure they would be able to confirm or squash your theories. I suggest you find a skilled conductor, apparently they have the finest ears for music, better than most players or composers. Until recently I thought they were just good at waving a stick about.

Nuns

Shoot the Nuns is dead, it is still in place but I will not be publicizing it at all. It is just a link back to the main site.

English Skies

I have decided to call the new look English Skies. Blues and greys are very soft on the eye.

I've been reading (Galileo's Daughter--good if you want to remain fed up with religion, The Trouble with Testosterone--has a good article that suggests that the some professional religious may have half the genetic tendency for schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorder), lurking, and doing crossword puzzles (I've become quite the addict--sorry to say). In other words, more input than output.

Items on the back burner:

From discussions with former soviet unionists:

• Hindsight has made me wonder how soviet style communism lasted as long as it did. Will people say the same thing about capitalism in a few years?

• Communism tended to make the best people corrupt, because it didn't give them "just" rewards. Capitalism "honestly" rewards the best people very well. In the end, both got the same amount. What's the difference?

Also

• If a computer reaches the point where it passes the Turing test will it in fact think and have feelings and emotions? (I think I read about this in one of your pages.)

• Did your ancestor who first arrived on the island think of himself as a Viking, Norman, (or whatever) or as a Briton? In other words, when does a Jew stop being a Jew?

I have frequent fantasies of confronting a fundamentalist coworker about his faith. I haven't because I don't think it would be appropriate for our relationship (no--he's not my boss). Anyway, while having this fantasy discussion with myself (I may be halfway schizo myself) I found myself saying "Correct me if I'm wrong". Not as catchy as Shoot the Nuns, but it sums things up very elegantly.

Deja is done for as a posting medium and Google isn't on yet. I signed up with mailandnews to make a post (to alt.jokes). I used http://www.mememachine.cwc.net/mark/ in the sig. Mailandnews screwed up and it posted four times--quite embarrassing. So far no emails.

Just checked deja and found you were the only one. Thinks are okay with me. The mini book reviews above were written before I read your request. The wife's in the states taking care of her ailing mom. She (mom) just had a stent inserted. I had never heard of them until she got one. The next day I read about them in Science News. The next week our new VP got one replaced. Isn't coincidence wonderful?

My literary gurus have been (in chronological order)

Isaac Asimov

Kurt Vonnegut

Carl Sagan

Richard Dawkins

I have read only one book each by Dennett (Darwin's Dangerous Idea) and Pinker (How the Mind Works), and of course Blackmore, so I can't consider them gurus. Gödel Escher Bach was quite influential. I was pushing my comprehension envelope with some of Dennett.

I've been trying to keep up with MM developments (see lurking above). You're moving fast and things are looking good.

Mark

(Not bad output after all)

Inequality

Communism was corrupt and inefficient. It was corrupt to its core because it consistently lied about itself. There has to be some inequality in any system to allow for rewards. Communism denied that and as a result there was widespread abuses. Capitalism takes it to absurd lengths. There has to be a better more moderate way with generally, democratically, approved limits to inequality. Inequality in the Soviet Union, officially, was very modest, the reality was wider inequality. My solutions to this conundrum are democracy and openness alongside applied socialist principles. Limit inequality by establishing a minimum guaranteed income and a confiscatory tax band of 100% income tax at an approved level, I would guess a couple of hundred times higher than the minimum to start, aiming to close it down to nearer ten times within a century.

The National minimum wage in the UK is going to go up to £4 an hour, or a little more, soon. I cannot imagine anybody making a realistic case for anybody needing to earn more than £600 per hour from a regular full time job. On the other hand the Soviet Union got it badly wrong by paying factory workers more than doctors and nuclear physicists the same or less than cleaners. The lowest paid work should be the clean, safe and unchallenging stuff. Pay should go up for dirty or dangerous work, work that requires skill or judgement and work that involves taking responsibility for your own actions. As a salesman in a shop I should be paid more than an unskilled factory worker because I use more skill and judgement and I am responsible for my own performance, that is fairly well represented by my current pay scheme, an hourly rate very close to the minimum wage plus commission and time and a half for overtime. I want teachers, nurses and police officers to earn more than that, they deserve it. I want sewage workers to earn more than the minimum too because they deserve it. I want people who control oil refineries to earn more than that too. And I want David Beckham, the Supreme Court Judges and Elton John to earn the same, the top money, whatever the parliamentary process has seen fit to determine as the fair limit to rewards consistent with not stifling enterprise.

Thinking Computers

A computer that thinks is a computer that thinks. Without being one how can we tell if it "really" thinks? Most people (with the exception of whackos like Shirley Maclaine) think that the other people around them are just as real as they are themselves, and so use the working hypothesis that all people think. It does not follow from first principles, it just seems to be a good working hypothesis, it is one I have been working with for years, not a fundamental belief, just an assumption that serves me well.

If I cannot prove conclusively that other people think what chance have I got with an alien intelligence? The Turing Test seems a reasonable benchmark but I don't think a failure of the Turing Test means that an artificial intelligence is not actually thinking or believing. Consistent success in the Turing Test would require a true thinking machine and I would be quite happy to grant such a machine the vote and respect its right to live as long as it worked for its keep. I maybe would draw the line at letting my daughter marry it though.

In a way I suppose a lot of people in the nineteenth century applied the Turing Test to Negroes and found that they passed. Once you wake up to such a concept your universe changes, you can never flip the image back the other way and see them as sub-human again.

I expect there will be machines that pass the Turing Test. I don't know when, but my guess would be within the space of next human generation, I don't think my daughter will be bringing one home, but I am fairly confident that my (or your) son could have an affair with a non-carbon based life form, males are less choosy.

Ancestral Memories

I have stopped my futile quest for the English Americans. It was wrong-headed. People can only feel they belong to a group if they have continuing contact. The English migrants to America went before a reliable postal service, except for the aristocracy. When they left for the other side they might as well have been dead, they were mourned as the dead.

All migrations before the 1850s were pretty much of this type, farewell my homeland, here's to a new beginning in a new land. The migrants would assimilate within a generation and would be identifying themselves with their new homeland completely. The only exceptions were the aristocracy who were rich enough to return and keep up contact through messengers. The colonial rulers of America were aristocrats, and so remained British, while their maids and farmhands became, by necessity, American.

So too with the Vikings and Saxons. If they were aristocrats they stayed loyal to their ancestral lands. As did George III, a third generation Englishman who was still, at heart, German. The Royal House of Plantagenate took a long time to learn that it could not stay as French as its ancestors, no matter how much it fought. That struggle over ethnic identity cost many English and French lives in the Hundred Years War.

In the Twentieth Century things changed. The Italian-American is probably the best example. Now migration was no longer final even for the poor. Letters could be sent, photographs exchanged, family ties could stretch across oceans. Ethnic identity could be maintained, although the pressure to assimilate was still there.

The experience of the Pakistani community in England is a classic example of this growing trend. Now not only are photographs exchanged but money is sent across continents and brides are also exchanged. I regularly see a 747 of Pakistan Airlines fly over. (I hope it stays up, it is obviously an early 1970s vintage machine). Now there is no reason for a Pakistani living in England to be anything other than that, assimilation is not necessary, it is optional. Pakistanis in England live in what you might call Pakispace, a world that consists of islands of Pakistani communities spread across England, Pakistan, Australia and Canada and where ever else they go. Three stops north on the train and I could be in Pakispace, Levenshulme, a dingy Manchester suburb that is full of Asian shops, Asian people and their businesses. The place is covered in advertisements for cheap International travel and telephone services. You can buy Asian style clothes and food there. I am sure if you went there it would trigger memories of life in Jewish parts of New York. The community is very strong, very self contained. Some of the white people (in England Pakistanis are universally classed as non-white) in the area are resentful, some feel threatened but I am happy to say that most are at least tolerant.

We can all now live in an alternative space and an alternative culture without obvious geographical boundaries. We share some common virtual-space. There are others, such as gay-space, science-space, new-age-space, drug-space, family-space, anarchist-space and Catholic-space, the list is enormous. The need to define yourself by a simple national label has gone away, for good, in every sense.

How does that play in ex-pat-Yankee-Jew-rationalist-cyber-oilman-space?

Thank you for your input, it helped me crystallize this theory.

I am glad you like the changes. I hope it is not too conceited to think that I am really getting quite good at this stuff. I think my writing skills are improving with use and my analytical skills are keeping honed as well. Objectivity about yourself is almost impossible. So many rich and successful people are surrounded by sycophants that tell them they are geniuses all the time, it is hardly any wonder that some talented people come out with unmitigated shite every now and again. If only somebody had the courage to say things like

"Well John, mate, Revolution #9 might have been therapeutic to make, but so are most of my turds, and this has similar merit, I am not saying it won't sell, I'm saying you shouldn't try, at least don't put my name to it as well."

or

"Michael, the chimp, I don't think that is a good idea..."

or

"Elton, words fail me ducky, don't do it, just trust on this one, OK?"

or

"Slim, I think you've said enough."

The last two should be regular occurrences.

Was it true that the Roman Emperors had a servant whose sole job was to whisper in their ears "Caesar, remember you are mortal..."? Or is that just another one of those memes that are too good not to spread?

Thanks for the stuff on the books. That page is nearly ready, it might demand to be written at any time.

Martin

Christ save us from the unmitigated Shiites...

Is this a reference to the vandalism in Afghanistan? Upon hearing this news I felt the same emotion (somewhere between frustration and disgust) as I did when I heard about the Kansas evolution ruling in 1999. Fortunately for the Kansans, that decision was reversible. The Afghans aren't as fortunate. We can only hope (and work?) for a future where these behaviors will become fewer and further between. Another good one is the practice of female circumcision in Africa. I find I have a similar but not as strong emotion when I see my president bow his head and pray. Maybe because I sense that he is doing it not out of sincerity, but to suck up to those bastards in Kansas.

I have been moved by prayer in the positive sense. It happened at my cousin's apartment in late December 1968, when I heard the Apollo astronauts read from Genesis as they circled the moon. I get a lump in my throat every time I hear it replayed as I did last night on the Discovery Channel. I have a lump in my throat as I write this (and again as I re-read it).

Getting back to disgust, I read this morning (appropriately on the potty) in Science News about a stroke patient who lost his sense of disgust. Another argument that emotions are wired in us and therefore can be wired into a computer. I suppose it is possible for me to get a stroke and never again get a lump in my throat when I hear lunar Genesis.

Disgust is rather primitive as far as emotions go. It has obvious evolutionary benefits. For example it does a good job dissuading me from eating the diseased liver from a rotting corpse. I'll have to think about the lumpy throat business. It's probably closer to the "magical melody" emotion and just as difficult to explain.

Mark

Space Cadet

Unmitigated shiites was simple spellchecker humour. I always try to write each message in one act of creativity, let it flow, then spellcheck it just before I send it. I fill in the subject when I get the urge to, no pattern is involved. The spellchecker flagged up shite and suggested Shiite instead, I just copied it out as the PS. No symbolism.

As far as the vandalism in Afghanistan goes I have mixed emotions about it. I some ways I would like to see all religious statuary go the same way, but out of different motives, but at the same time I don't want to see great works of art destroyed. It is a tricky problem.

Disgust

Female circumcision, now that is a terrible practice and a terrible euphemism. I can assume you are glad that your own circumcision didn't follow that pattern. I get that disgust and anger when I consider it, and the Kansas ruling you mentioned and similar events. I differ from you about Apollo Genesis, for me that too engenders disgust and anger, to the point of having to switch channels for a minute whenever I hear it on TV. Apollo got into space by science, engineering and the application of political will through democracy and taxation. God was nothing to do with it. I get really angry when God gets the credit for things that are achieved by man and yet does not get the blame for disasters which are even called acts of God. It is always heads God wins, tails sinful man loses. Every work of art, science or nature is seen as a prayer, everything that is bad is just one of those things. Orgasms are the blessings of God, lust is the sin of man.

Disgust wired in?

That makes me think. I have heard of laboratory animals having electrodes attached to their pleasure centres who press the button to stimulate the centres as fast as they can until they collapse with exhaustion. What fiendish things could be done with a direct stimulation of the disgust centre? Obviously aversion therapy leaps to mind, wire up all the child molesters and give them shocks whenever they see children, so much more scientific than just toasting their bollocks. The dangers in such a technology are also apparent, allowing prejudices to be either encouraged or perhaps even created from scratch. As we have both read How the Mind Works I think we can see the value of disgust quite easily.

Martin

I'm getting old.

I have decided. Here is the evidence:-

I have bought a classical music CD (Beethoven and Schubert) ostensibly to block out extraneous sound when played through headphones so I can concentrate on my writing (typing? text inputting?) while my computer is in a communal area of the house. My new office will not be ready for a while. My father has given me a present of a new bathroom and downstairs shower-room which has required the demolition of my office. The replacement office, similar in size but windowless, will not be ready for quite a while. In the intervening time I have to put up with more distractions, hence the headphones and new music, any form of vocal music distracts me too much, I need something purely instrumental, noise blocks out the other voices allowing the word handling parts of brain to concentrate on the task in hand.

I have bought old man shoes. I saw these shoes and decided they were perfect for me, trainers to match my website! (I think you Yankee colonists* call trainers sneakers). They are grey suede, blue-grey nylon and another shade of grey vinyl. Really smart, just like my new colour scheme, they also have no brand names or logos of any kind, not even on the inside. But the more I look at them the more I think they are just the sort of things retired bank managers would wear with their blue zip-up fleece as they walked their dog. Oh no. I have the fleece as well.

I forgot how old I was. I lost track and thought I was 39 next birthday, instead of 38. Frightening, not being 39 or not, but losing track.

I bought some grapefruit cordial. OK, it is pink grapefruit cordial not grapefruit juice or the whole fruit, but it is still something bitter. Have my tastes changed so much? Or is it mostly due to selective cultivation of sweeter fruit? I even tried broccoli a couple of months ago. What next? Boiled mutton fat, green cabbage and sweet sherry?

But then I thought, what the hell. I can forget all that being cool nonsense and keeping up with the latest silly fads and just get on with the important stuff. After all, I am a parent, how much less cool is it possible to be?

Do you enjoy winding your children up sometimes by dancing? Or are they old enough that you can go further, by embarrassing them with mentions of your sex life?

Well that about wraps it up for God

Another convincing reason why there cannot be a God. Toothache. If there was a God a toothache would tell you "upper right premolar, some signs of loss of enamel" or whatever, while actually it just says

Fuck!

That hurts like you would not believe!

and you are left trying to work out where the message came from and what it means.

Martin

* You do know that I am being ironic, don't you? Nobody calls American's colonials without heavy irony.