Saturday, October 29, 2005

Comment spam update

A while back, I had to got to moderated comments (well, actually, I went more serious than that originally, but have since backed off to moderating comments) in order to stop comment spam.  I’m happy to say that it has worked like a charm.  In the last week, I’ve received four attempts to attach comment spam to old blogs of mine (for an online casino) that I was able to delete before they cluttered my website.  With my software, I get an email every time a comment comes in and it has a handy-dandy “delete this comment” link to my website’s administration pages.  Click the link, log in, and ta-da! no more comment spam.

I realize that moderation can be annoying, and I’ve been hoping that by moderating comments, I stop comment spam while not annoying the people who really want to comment on my site.  Since I have such a low readership most of the time, it’s hard to know if this is the case.  But since it is definitely working at stopping comment spam, I’ll leave comments moderated for the foreseeable future.

Now, if only the comment spam were real comments instead… Ahh, the readership that would imply.

Friday, October 28, 2005

The Micro-Pundit:  New Iraqi Constitution

Last Saturday, the Iraqi’s voted to approve a blatently and, arguably, fatally flawed constitution.  Since then, however, there have been a couple of good signs for the future as well as at least one bad sign.

The good signs?  First, the voter turnout in the Sunni regions was amazing and in opposition to attempts to intimidate voters via violence.  And second, since the referendum, Sunni leaders have started urging their fellow Sunnis to vote again in December so that the next Parliament more accurately represents the population of Iraq and so the “Sunni voice” will be heard.  I hope this happens, as a nation of three ethnic/sectarian groups cannot be fairly ruled by representatives of only two of those groups.

Unfortunately, the bad sign is that Kurdish and Shi’a political groups are largely organizing along sectarian/ethnic lines instead of trying to reach across the ethnic and religious divides to create broad-based coalitions.  The only one that’s even trying is the former and interim prime minister Ayadd Alawi, and his coalition is one of largely secular Sunnis and Shi’a.  In a region so steeped in Islam, I have doubts that any secular coalition will succeed, at least not at this stage in the democratic experiment that is Iraq.

I wish Iraq well.  There are still far, far more ways that this could turn out badly than there are ways it could go well.  Nevertheless, I remain cautiously optimistic.

Monday, October 24, 2005

The Micro-Pundit:  “Irreducible Complexity”

In the ongoing intelligent design (ID) debate started by the Dover, PA federal trial, we’ve started hearing about “irreducible complexity,” or IC for short.  This is the idea proposed by Lehigh University biochemistry professor (and recent witness for the defense in the Dover trial) Michael Behe that boils down to the following idea:  some aspects of biology simply could not have come about without divine help because they are too complex to occur naturally or appear to fall under the “chicken and egg” paradox.

This idea has always bugged me, and after giving it some thought, I’ve figured out why.  The first reason is that IC is ultimately defeatist.  The entire idea assumes that, because we don’t understand something today, we’ll never understand it.  Someone who supports the entire concept of IC must assume that we’ve reached the pinnacle of scientific understanding, and that there is nowhere to go but down from here.  This is no better than a caveman saying “I don’t understand how fire works, so I guess I’ll never try to understand it – it’s irreducibly complex.” As an engineer working for a company that makes a lot of money off of satellites designed to help answer the big questions, this is offensive.  There are so many questions still unanswered that I literally cannot conceive of the scientific pessimism that IC requires. 

Second, and in my not-so-humble opinion much worse, the idea of IC is supremely arrogant.  After all, since we’ll never understand anything new in the future because we’re at the pinnacle of science, then we’re (I’m) the most brilliant scientists there have been and ever will be.  No one will ever be smarter than us (me).  Bullshit.  For an example of a scientific argument against IC and ID, check out the Missing Links article in the Boston Globe.

Every day, in every way, we’re learning new things about how the world works.  And every new answer generates at least as many new questions as it answers.  And I don’t see that changing in my lifetime.  When this stops happening, then I’ll start to worry.  Until then, I suggest everyone take anything that’s explained using the phrase “irreducibly complex” take the statement with a large grain of salt.

80-100 tons might be big enough.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

The Daily Mantra:  Painting

Painting a room after work causes extensive sleep deprivation.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

The Daily Mantra:  Plating Factories

Never, ever, under any circumstances breath deeply over a vat of any chemical in a metal plating factory.  Plating uses nasty chemicals.  Like boiling potassium cyanide.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

The Micro-Pundit:  Printer Tracking Codes

Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced that they’d broken the code of tracking dots that some color laser printers print on every printed page. See other articles about it at the Seattle Post Intelligencer and at BusinessWeek.

I’m not surprised that something like this exists.  After all, decent scanners and color printers have had the resolution to print authentic looking (if not feeling) money for years now, and this technology would permit the Secret Service and banks to more easily track counterfeit cash back to the source.  Unfortunately, this also means that anyone who uses one of these printers (or the best professional photo editing program on the planet, Adobe Photoshop, according to the BusinessWeek article) to generate a color pamphlet is at risk.

Even if I trust the U.S. government enough to give them the ability to track down a color political pamphlet I generate to my personal printer (and I’m not sure that I do), what about a color laser printer used in Iraq, Iran, China, or North Korea for unpopular political purposes?  If the EFF can reverse-engineer this information, there’s absolutely no reason another government wouldn’t be able to do the same.  This has the potential to give repressive governments or societies yet another tool by which to track down and squelch dissent(ers).

This is a big deal, and it’s a step toward Big Brother that I’m glad someone finally outed.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

The Daily Mantra:  Fevers

A 105.4 fever is natures way of telling you to go to the doctor.

(Note:  It’s gone WAY down since this one was written.)

Saturday, October 15, 2005

The Daily Mantra:  Roasted Chilies

Be sure to wear latex gloves when cleaning a bushel of roasted chilies.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

The Micro-Pundit:  Iraqi Constitution Deal

According to this Washington Post article, the Kurds and the Shi’a involved in the drafting of the Constitution have agreed to a change proposed by the leading Sunni political party and have adopted that change without any alterations to the wording.  The change allows the creation of a panel in the next Parliament to propose amendments to the new constitution instead of disallowing any amendments for eight years.

This is a significant improvement, since it gives the Sunnis a chance at a voice next time around.  Unfortunately, since 2/3 of the Parliament and a national referendum would be reqired to pass the changes, and since the Sunni minority is only about 20% of the country, the Sunni representatives would hardly be guaranteed any real changes to the constitution in their favor.

This makes my resistance to the proposed Iraqi constitution a little less firm, but I still think that the people of Iraq will be better served rejecting this one completely and starting from scratch in January. 

Monday, October 10, 2005

On Fundamentalism, Part 2

Examples of Fundamentalism

Protestant fundamentalism is based in the Bible and in the personal faith of its adherents.  General fundamentalism, however, is not simply a religious phenomenon.  Generalized fundamentalism is not limited to religious life, but may be applied to environmentalism, economics, science, interpretations of the law, and even such mundane topics as breast feeding or drug-free vaginal birth.  Since the definition and the characteristics of fundamentalism are general enough to incorporate a wide variety of thought and behavior, fundamentalism itself should be considered not as an ideology, but rather as a psychology.  Fundamentalism is a way for a person to relate to the world around them and to make the world livable.  Basically, fundamentalism is a state of mind.

The following examples illustrate the psychology of fundamentalism in a variety of ideological contexts.

Religious fundamentalism is perhaps the most common type of fundamentalism.  Protestant fundamentalism, arguably a subset of the evangelical Christian movement in the United States, qualifies definitionally.  However, there are fundamentalists in all the major religions, and likely in all the minor religions too (I know people who have known fundamentalist pagans, for example).

Radical Orthodox Jews refused to leave their homes in settlements in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank because they believe, as the chosen of God, that all of Palestine has been given to the Jews by God Himself.  These Orthodox Jews believe that any rabbi that says something in opposition to their specific interpretation of the Torah is wrong, and they are unwilling to seriously entertain the arguments of less radical rabbis (in some cases even the arguments of Orthodox rabbis whose teachings they don’t accept).  These radical Orthodox Jews believe in a strict interpretation of the Torah, at least with regard to Palestine, are close-minded regarding alternative rabbinical authorities, and aren’t willing to permit anyone else to believe differently than they do themselves.  This subset of Orthodox Jews meet the definition of fundamentalists.

The Wahhabi sect of Islam is another example of religious fundamentalism.  The Wahhabis believe in the strict and literal adherence of all Muslims to the Koran and the Sunna.  The sect members believe that all who don’t follow the Koran strictly are acting immorally and should be punished and converted to their “pure” Islamist faith.  And the sect considers even other Sunni sects to be deficient in their understanding of the Koran, and as such will not seriously consider any alternatives to their own conservative views.

Faith in a divine being inherently divides people into camps of “believers” and “unbelievers.” As such, religions tend to create fundamentalisms more easily than other beliefs or ideologies.  Nonetheless, there are fundamentalists in other aspects of society as well.

Earth First! is an environmental movement that believes that protecting the earth is more important than protecting people, local or national economic welfare, etc.  In fact, EF!ers go so far as to say “no compromise in the defense of Mother Earth” and have been known to drive spikes into trees to prevent their cutting (spikes will grab and break a chainsaw blade, possibly killing the logger in the process).  They adhere strictly and literally to the idea that the Earth must be protected from human interference.  EF!ers also view even fellow environmentalists as traitors to the cause and place them into the “them” category of “us vs. them.” Finally, EF!ers are steadfastly unwilling to compromise with regard to environmental protections and their pro-environment and often anti-human agenda.  As such, Earth First! qualifies as a fundamentalist movement.

Many members of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals also qualify as fundamentalists.  PETA opposes the wearing and eating of animals, the use of animals as test subjects in labs, and the treatment of animals in the entertainment industry (such as the animals used in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus).  The fundamentalist psychology applies most obviously to those PETA members who oppose animal testing under any and all circumstances.  Those PETA members tend to view people who support even limited animal testing as murderers.  Even using animals to test the effects of disease and to test disease treatments on mice and rats is frowned upon by these members of PETA.  The implication is that is preferable to test new drugs on people first, instead of acquiring some level of comfort that you won’t kill your human volunteers with a toxic drug.  PETA members who rigidly oppose animal testing, are unwilling to consider that there may exist extenuating circumstances that justify animal testing, and who consider all who oppose them to be “murderers” or accessories to murder also qualify as fundamentalists.

The National Rifle Association recently launched a boycott of ConocoPhillips because the oil company has a policy of not allowing people to have firearms in their cars when they’re parked in company parking.  The rationale of ConocoPhillips is that they are legally liable for any violence that occurs on their property, and having a firearm stored in a vehicle on company property is viewed as an unacceptable risk.  However, the NRA as an organization (not necessarily the individual members) believes that the right to bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment is more important than the public safety and liabilityconcerns of ConocoPhillips.  The NRA views all actions that restrict gun rights as unconstitutional and is unwilling to concede that there might be a public policy need to occasionally restrict firearms.  The NRA is also not above political attacks on those corporations and individuals who do support gun restrictions.  The NRA, at least with respect to gun rights, takes an approach that is very much “you’re either a gun rights patriot, or you’re a traitor.” When combined with the NRA’s attempts at literal adherence to the 2nd Amendment (which is sufficiently vague that it is difficult to know what to literally adhere to) and with their unwillingness to entertain alternatives to their opinions, the NRA qualifies as a fundamentalist organization.

Supporters of intelligent design as a scientific theory (such as the Discovery Institute) believe that the guidance of an intelligent creator (the nature of which may be left unspecified) is required to explain the evolution of complex entities like people.  The recent development of chaos and complexity theories and their applications to complex systems like the stock market (see the Santa Fe Institute) propose a mechanism by which a creator is unnecessary to create the tremendous complexity of the biosphere around us, yet this idea is regularly ignored.  Scientific arguments presented by biologists with a deep understanding of evolution and the scientific method are often answered with logical or rhetorical responses rather than with opposing scientific data.  And nothing that opponents of intelligent design can do will change the mind of most proponents.  This too is a form of fundamentalism.

There are also individuals who view the U.S. flag from a fundamentalist perspective.  They latch onto the U.S. flag code and interpret it literally and strictly, for example claiming that “if it represents a flag, it should be treated as one” means that even red, white, and blue clothing should not exist (because it represents the flag, and according to the flag code, flags should not be worn or made into clothing).  These individuals claim that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is wrong and either not a patriot or woefully ignorant of the law.  These individuals also believe that others must be “educated” about the laws and, in so doing, convert others to their own literalist beliefs.  They are also remarkably immune to criticism, often dismissing said criticism with careful rhetoric and resorting to the logical fallacy of an “appeal to authority,” in this case the U.S. flag code, instead of approaching the criticism in a constructive manner.

One last example is the “Constitutionalist” or “strict Constitutional constructionist” school of thought with regard to the U.S. Constitution.  This school of though holds that the Constitution, as the governing document of the United States, should be interpreted strictly and literally, and they tend to look down upon those individuals who disagree with them (for example, Justice Scalia takes a very dim view of his fellow Supreme Court justices who believe in a “living” Constitution that evolves as the culture interpreting it does).  Freedom of speech should never be impinged upon, even to punish crimes such as libel (and in fact, these individuals tend to believe that libel shouldn’t even be a crime), and the Congress has ONLY the powers spelled out in Article I, Section 8 and so Social Security and MediCare/MedicAid are unconstitutional.  However, if you point out that the first line of Section 8 permits Congress to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States,” they claim that this section is only a preamble and shouldn’t be included as a power of Congress.  In addition, Constitutionalists tend to believe that the Constitution is a static document, and that changes in culture should not affect the interpretations of the Constitution.  In essence, Constitutionalists try to adhere strictly and literally to the Constitution, are often highly resistant to having inconsistencies in their views pointed out to them, and believe that their approach to the document is the only correct way and that everyone else is wrong.  As such, strict Constitutional constructionists also qualify as fundamentalists.

These examples illustrate a very important observation.  Fundamentalism is not restricted to religion, or even to “conservative” or “liberal” ideologies.  Fundamentalism as a psychology exists in every collection of principles, however small, in which someone believes strongly.  Fundamentalism exists in economics, science, politics, religion, even in interpretations of the law.

[Crossposted to the 5th Estate]