Hyperscientific

Mac OS X, usually I like you, but I HATE drag-and-drop. I hate when I need to use drag-and-drop and there is no other option (e.g. importing a sound file into Garage Band, which should REALLY be a menu option that opens a browser window, but which is only possible by browsing in Finder and then dragging and dropping). I hate when I accidentally drag and drop something. I especially hate when I am trying to grab a window and move it across the screen, but I accidentally grab in the middle of the top of the window and so, instead of moving the window across the screen it moves the file that the window represents. I do this all the time in my text editor, especially when the name of the file is long. I wind up accidentally dragging and dropping things onto /Users/me/Desktop. Everything winds up on the Desktop, it is so stupid!

And on those rare occasions when I actually do want to drag and drop something, I often have to do this little dance with the mouse, with the button depressed, trying to get it to scroll up or down. Know what I mean? If I want to drag something farther up than the height of the window, so you have to hold the item right at the top of the window to coax it to scroll. This is particularly harrying when using the clickable multitouch trackpad, because I have to apply enough pressure to keep it depressed during the whole ordeal, or else the item will be “dropped” in the wrong place. And when you drop it in the wrong place, you might have to wait for it to finish copying before you can move it again.

Ah, that was cathartic. Much healthier than pulling my hair out.

I believe that religion is very comforting to a large number of people, but I also know that there is no god. Religion truly is the opiate for the masses - this statement is even more true than Karl Marx could have known when he wrote it in 1843. I believe that religion is comforting because of the placebo effect, and the placebo effect is probably in part mediated by the release of endogenous opioids within the brain.

I wish I could avail myself of that kick of natural heroin, but alas, the placebo effect only works if you really believe in the placebo. You must have faith. The proposition of god is so illogical and implausible that there are only two ways to effectively imbue someone with religious faith: You can be indoctrinated from a young age, or you can be highly motivated. Young children can be indoctrinated into a religion because they have not yet developed the full capacity for rational thought. Of course, when these children grow up they may “lose their faith”, or in terms of our scientific metaphor, they may become “unblinded”, realizing they are taking a placebo and their belief is just as useless as a sugar pill. The placebo loses its efficacy once it is identified as such. The second way to find faith is to be highly motivated, for instance by the loss of a loved one or a devastating addiction. These motivated individuals manage to suspend their disbelief and enjoy the benefits of faith.

Strong motivation alone is not enough to foster religious belief. You also need the correct brain layout and environment. Try as I might to become religious, to access that internal fountain of opiated bliss and comfort, I cannot. I cannot convince myself that there is some meaning to life beyond what meaning we humans create. How could there possibly be a meaning of life? Humans are the first and only creatures on Earth who even understand the concept of meaning. Other animals do use symbols with meanings (e.g. bared teeth means aggression), but humans are the only animals who would consider an object or a concept and ask “what is the meaning?”

I cannot convince myself that everything will be alright, and everything is unfolding according to some divine plan. Life is chaos, life is random. Life is not fair and it might not work out in the end.

I cannot convince myself that there is an afterlife. Once I die, I will no longer be able to fight against entropy. My brain will turn to mush and all that I am will be lost forever. This is a law of thermodynamics, it is an inescapable rule of nature. Without constant upkeep and input of energy, all ordered things decay into disorder.

I try to put these rational observations out of my mind, and embrace religious faith. Maybe I can even succeed for a time. But then the whole house of cards falls apart when the other religious people start talking about Jesus or the Bible. Even if I could suspend my disbelief long enough to believe in an afterlife, or a higher power, or a divine plan, there is no way that I can suspend disbelief enough to think that Jesus had some special connection to that higher power. Jesus is just some arbitrary guy who apparently said convincing things. The same goes for Muhammad and Moses and Joseph Smith and Charles Manson. Which of these prophets you choose to follow seems mostly random - it is usually determined by your parents, or which convincing preacher you happened to encounter at the right time in your life.

I have never seen any evidence for god whatsoever. How can I possibly know what god wants me to eat? Or how god wants me to slaughter a goat?

Tell me if this story sounds familiar: You hear some music, you like it. You ask, “who is this band?” You download an album (legally, of course), and the honeymoon continues - the music is still enjoyable. But then something happens that just ruins the band for you, something that interferes with your ability to fully and un-self-consciously enjoy the band’s music. It happens to me all the time. Here are a few ways that bands get ruined for me:

• They are Christian. Some Christian bands are really sneaky, and those are the ones that annoy me. I like the song “What if God was one of us”, it is clearly pro-God and conceals nothing. I have a problem with these bands that are Christian, but I had no idea from the lyrics. Here I thought I was listening to real rockers who shoot heroin and have loveless sex with groupies, and BAM, I hear they are devout Christians.
• I listened to the lyrics. A lot of music sounds pretty good in the background - it’s melodic, it’s harmonic. And then you listen to the lyrics, and they are whiny or just plain dumb.
• Terrible music video. I have found it is best to avoid music videos for bands and songs that I like.
• Saw faces, did not match imagination. This one really eats me up, because it is not the band’s fault. I form some imagination of what the band looks like, and then I see a real photograph and it just clashes. Something similar can happen if I watch a movie inspired by a book that I read.

Some singers must have extra large lungs, because they can sing a single unbroken note for a very long time. For example, I was just listening to the songs “Either Way” and “Happier” by Guster, both of which feature notes that seem have infinite sustain. In these cases, I think the singer is actually running out of breath and the note is being perpetuated by a keyboard playing the same note with a timbre that closely approximates human vocals. In this way, the singer’s voice dovetails seamlessly into the other non-human instrument.

However, there is a way to give a human’s voice infinite sustain. No, I am not talking about circular breathing, that would only work with a saxophone or didgeridoo or some other instrument which is downwind of the mouth. How can we create a continuous stream of air in the larynx, which is upstream of the mouth? The obvious answer is:

Elective Tracheotomy

If we cut a hole in the trachea below the larynx, then we can stick a hose into that hole and pump in fresh air. The air flows in the hole, up through the larynx, and out through the mouth. This would allow the singer to sustain a note indefinitely, without stopping for air.

But there is a problem: How does the singer get oxygen? If the singer is trying to produce a note of constant volume, then when they start to fill their lungs it will decrease the rate of airflow through the trachea, so the volume of the note they are singing will decrease. Likewise, when the singer wants to expel carbon dioxide and oxygen-depleted air, the air being forced out of their lungs will add to the air being pumped in through their tracheotomy, and the volume of their voice is likely to increase. I can think of three potential solutions:

1. Give the singer a pedal which controls the rate of air being pumped into their neck. With practice, the singer will learn to seamlessly increase the rate of air inflow while they fill their lungs and decrease the air inflow while they exhale. In this way, the rate of air flow through the larynx can be held constant.
2. Apneic oxygenation: Instead of pumping in regular air, you pump pure oxygen gas into the tracheotomy hole. If pure oxygen is available at the top of the trachea, then a human can get enough oxygen into their blood without cyclically inflating and deflating their lungs (i.e. without breathing). This actually works and has been used in surgical settings, but it has three big drawbacks: First, you need to buy or purify oxygen. Second, carbon dioxide builds up in the bloodstream, organs, and lungs, and that will make the singer feel like they need to breathe. Third, apneic oxygenation provides enough oxygen for patients who are unconscious on the operating table, but would it provide enough oxygen for a human who is awake and singing?
3. Use a heart-lung machine, a machine that pumps out the blood, adds oxygen and removes carbon dioxide, and then pumps the blood back into the singer. I am not sure what the difference is between a heart-lung machine and an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine. Both would work in this case.

This function will calculate the factorial of a given number:

def factorial(l0101):
	"""Compute the factorial of a non-negative integer."""
	class l010l(type):
		def __new__(l01O1, l01Ol, l0l01, l0l0l):
			l0l0l['l0lO1'] = (1 if object in l0l01 else l0l0l['l0lOl']*l0l01[0].l0lO1)
			return type.__new__(l01O1, l01Ol, l0l01, l0l0l)
	class lO101(object):
		__metaclass__ = l010l
	lO10l = lO101
	lO1O1 = [l0101, lO10l]
	def lO1Ol(lOl01):
		class lOl0l(lOl01[1]):
			l0lOl = lOl01[0]
		lOl01.__setitem__(1, lOl0l)
		lOl01.__setitem__(0, lOl01[0]-1)
	lOlO1 = lambda: lO1O1[0] and (lO1Ol(lO1O1),lOlO1())
	lOlO1()
	return lO1O1[1].l0lO1

I just found a marvelously insane and irrational website. It starts by listing at least two dozen foods which naturally contain toxins, and stating that cooking these foods destroys some or all of those toxins. I personally interpret this as evidence that cooking makes food more edible. Good work, humanity. The authors of the website take a decidedly different stance - they interpret this as evidence that humans should eat only raw foods. Why? Because cooking did not necessarily destroy all of the toxins. The authors reason that if a food needs cooking, that means it is toxic. But cooking is imperfect as a means of detoxification, so the food is still unsuitable. Any food suitable for human consumption should be edible in its raw state. Not only that, but it should not be cooked.

So I guess that the world of foods can be divided into two disjoint and all-encompassing groups: 1) toxic foods that are cooked but still remain too toxic to eat, and 2) magically pure foods which, even without cooking, are more digestible than cooked foods from group 1. Now, we have previously established that cooking reduces toxins, according to the authors of this website. So shouldn’t we cook the magically pure food to make it even better? The authors say no. The reason they give is that some foods are actually made more toxic by cooking (they give examples, extremely crazy, stupid, out-of-context-citation, abusively-paraphrased-quote examples). Because some foods are made more toxic by cooking, apparently cooking should be avoided for all foods. This doesn’t seem very logical to me, so I am going to help them out. Here are a few more logical reasons not to cook these pure Group 2 foods:

1. Group 2 foods are already completely toxin-free, so cooking cannot possibly help.
2. Group 2 foods embody God’s vision of culinary perfection on Earth. He gave us these foods with the intention that we eat them raw, so cooking these foods would be ungrateful and blasphemous.
3. Cooking is hard.
4. Cooking often requires fossil fuels, which cause greenhouse gas emissions, sap our irreplaceable natural resources, and increase our dependence on foreign oil.
5. Cooking Group 2 foods actually does reduce their toxin content and makes them even more pure then they were to begin with. However, cooking Group 2 foods is still bad for the following reasons:
   • People are ingesting even fewer toxins in their cooked Group 2 foods, so they become reckless and believe that they can add it some Group 1 foods without exceeding their ‘toxin allowance’.
   • People will have the experience and equipment to cook, so they will be tempted to use these techniques on Group 1 foods as well. If you don’t have a stove or microwave, you are safe because you will never be able to cook a potato (potatoes are Group 1, toxic until cooked). You will be forced to avoid Group 1 foods.

Reason 5 above has some particularly intriguing implications if we apply this same logic to other situations. For example:

• Wearing a seat belt genuinely makes you safer, but it causes a hyperinflated sense of security, and this causes you to take risks. Maybe you buy a Corvette instead of a Volvo, and maybe you drive more aggressively, thinking to yourself, “the seat belt will protect me”. Therefore, the solution is to never wear a seat belt, thus forcing you to buy a Volvo and drive defensively for fear of death.
• Everyone should take up smoking in order to increase their longevity. Smoking is a massive risk factor for a wide array of diseases, so once people smoke cigarettes they will be motivated to reduce all their other risk factors. They will start exercising and eating right. They will feel like they can’t afford any other vices or bad habits because they already smoke.

Pants are a very problematic piece of attire. First of all, it is well nigh impossible to find pants that look good on me, or even pants that fit. My aspect ratio is apparently not what the pants makers were expecting, at least not from a man. My best fitting pants have a 30 inch waistline and a 34 inch inseam - pant dimensions which I have never, ever seen available off the rack, not even in those suit pants which come extra-long and need to be hemmed. Women’s pants sometimes come in those dimensions, because I guess women are supposed to be tall and skinny and wear high heels.

To make matters worse, my pants seem subject to all kinds of damage and stains. The knees rip. The crotch gets worn and frayed. The pockets get holes. The hems get mud-stained and stepped on and torn, which seems paradoxical because the pants are not even long enough to reach the tops of my socks when I sit down.

Of course, shorts are even worse. Nobody wants to see my hairy legs, and I feel downright naked wearing shorts. So here I sit, in tattered and stained pants with a suggestively tented fly. My only recourse is to complain on a blog which no one will read.

P.S. In case you couldn’t tell, I am feeling very frustrated with pants in general right now, but I am also cripplingly depressed by the realization that my life is so petty and meaningless that I am worrying about pants instead of having adventures and experiencing all the truly wonderful and horrible things in this world which later become the most interesting stories. I have no good stories, I am sitting at home blogging about pants for Christ’s sake.

P.P.S. I bet that life’s greatest adventures tend to wreak havoc on one’s pants.

I have been introduced to the new field of HYPERSCIENCE, and my eyes are now open for the first time in my life. See here, the HYPERSCIENCE Welc’Home Page. I must admit that “Welc’Home Page” is rather clever, which stands in contrast to rest of the page.

For some reason, HYPERSCIENCE must always be written in all capital letters, as must the last name of the Father-Son team of hyperscientists who pioneered this new field, Léon Raoul HATEM and his son Frank HATEM. These guys are hard-core scientists: they do science, only more so. They do HYPERSCIENCE. It’s like “Extreme Science”. “Science TO THE MAX”. Now I understand why it must be capitalized.

This HYPERSCIENCE reminds me of The Time Cube, only I think the broken English of the HYPERSCIENCE Welc’Home page is due to a poor translation from the author’s native French, whereas the Time Cube guy seems to be a fluent and native speaker of English who is encumbered only be the psychotic disarray of his ideas.

These two hyperscientists, Léon Raoul and Frank HATEM, have done a great service for the world, they have discovered the long sought-after “INTEGRAL UNITARY THEORY” of physics (the capitalization of this term is theirs, not added by me). I would guess this is the same as the grand unified theory or maybe even the theory of everything. I would like to quote the section in which the HATEM’s compair their theory to quantum mechanics, as they understand it:

1 - OFFICIAL ATOM (Quantum Mechanics):

Particles are not particles. However, they are in attraction, due to their electric charges (the source of which is unexplained). Some are positive, some are negative, and for myterious reasons, they build “atoms”. In order to maintain equilibrium, they are bound to have the same size, the same power, and the same number (what a coincidence!).

Electrons have no reason to spin. However they apparently do. Nuclei are not supposed to spin. They contain “neutrons” in order to increase their masse without increasing their electric charges.

Electrons do not revolve around nuclei. They stand here or there when they are observed. However, they can quit an orbit and occupy another orbit, if a sufficient package of energy (quantum) is provided (the source of which is unexplained).

The “quantum” is the only stability factor in such an atom. Any disturbance exceeding a quantum of energy would destroy the atom forever. This prevents such an atom from being able to constitute matter, and deprives it of all the suppleness and adaptability it effectively needs in order to evolve in accordance with circumstances.

“Particles” are associated with a “wave”, which is explained by nothing. On the contrary, every magnetic particle (Hatem’s atom) is obliged to emit alternately a “North” and “South” field which is felt as a wave, and is responsible for our ability to perceive it.

Physics is obliged to invent ” anti-matter ” to maintain the coherence of their theories, in order to ensure the balance of the whole mass of the universe.

With the magnetic atom, there is no need to invent anything hypothetical to make theories consistent. ” Matter ” contains its own counterpart, since it constitutes,within itself, the opposition of two principles. ” Anti-matter ” is within ” matter ” itself.

The above was taken from http://www.hatem.com/atom.htm

I am reminded of a hilarious video: Homeopathy with Dr. Werner. Heck, let’s try embedding the video in my blog post:

In light of the above revelations, I would like to define a new word:

Hyperscient - adjective and noun - One who knows so much that he or she knows things which are not even true. Cf. prescient - adjective - Having knowledge of future events which have not yet taken place.

Synonyms of hyperscient:

• Delusional
• Schizophrenic
• Homeopath
• Priest

Two statisticians take a random walk into a bar. After drinking O(4) beers, Freddy the Frequentist says to Bayes the Bayesian Subjectivist, “Bayes, your mother is almost surely fat.”

Bayes growls ferociously and begins rolling up his sleeves.

Freddy backs away nervously, and he infers aloud, “Based on my prior observations of your behavior, I estimate there is a 60 +/- 20 percent chance you are about to punch me.”

Bayes replies, “You idiot, your philosophical concept of probability is flawed. Trust me: There is a 100 percent chance I am about to punch you.” Bayes draws back his fist, and then laughs, “Why are you guarding your neck, Freddy?”

“Because the expected target of your punch is my neck, with a variance of 1 belly².”

“Separate but equal” was a catchphrase used to justify racial segregation. Not only was segregation unequal in practice, but the phrase itself is racist and distasteful. It could be interpreted as, “Yes, I agree you are equal, but I don’t like you so please go stay over there.”

Thankfully segregation has been abolished in the United States, and sexist discrimination is also on the decline. But I fear that in some instances, the pendulum of public opinion is swinging too far in the other direction, we are overcompensating for the iniquities of the past, we are becoming equitable to a fault. I am not talking about affirmative action here, in fact I am not even talking about politics (at least, not the “governments and laws” type of politics). I am talking about certain social relationships - largely friendships and romantic couples.

People talk about marriage being an “equal partnership”, but I think some people should be reminded that “equal” does not mean “symmetrical”. I believe that an equal relationship is better, fairer, and more robust than an unequal relationship. But I also believe that an asymmetrical relationship can be equal, and in many cases asymmetry is actually better than symmetry.

Do you remember at your friend’s sixth birthday party, when the piñata contained an unprecedented mix of candy AND little toys, and a huge squabble ensued? You probably don’t, because that didn’t even happen to me, but it is a plausible example. Common piñata etiquette can be summarized as “every kid for him/herself” and “finders-keepers”, and a variety of other terse libertarian mottos. However, when a piñata contains such sought-after commodities as matchbox cars and miniature stuffed animals, feelings can get hurt and a more socialist arrangement may be imposed by the adults. To absolutely obviate the possibility of any dispute, the adults might require that the loot be split symmetrically. If every kid has one Kit-Kat, three Hershey’s Kisses, one Snickers, one Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, one matchbox car, and one stuffed animal, then they can’t argue that the division was unequal, right? (Well, of course they can. Tommy’s police car is way better than my sports car, and my Snickers bar is kind of squished.) Symmetry may be a simple heuristic to maximize equality, but it is not always the best way. What if I think Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are disgusting because the peanut butter has the consistency and taste of sawdust? Shouldn’t Betty get all the Reese’s cups because she likes them, so that I can have more Snickers? What if Ashley is diabetic, can she have extra toys in lieu of candy?

Symmetry per se is not desirable, and in real life situations it is often not even possible. Let’s consider a symmetrical marriage: I will gestate and give birth to the first child, but then my spouse will nurse the child, and we will switch off rolls like that every-other baby. But what if we want an odd number of children? Also, what if one of us doesn’t have a uterus? Even if we are a lesbian couple, the non-pregnant wife is unlikely to begin lactating out of a sense of fairness. Also, wife A had to take a sabbatical to get pregnant back in 2006 to have the first child, but then wife B got laid off just before she was supposed to get pregnant with the second child, so that doesn’t seem fair. Wife B should owe wife A some kind of recompense, right? Hell no, it’s not wife B’s fault that the economy just tanked! She didn’t predict this, she wasn’t trying to cheat wife A.

As you can see, symmetry is an impossible goal and valuing symmetry too highly can lead to more quarrels than it prevents. However, I believe that a certain kind of asymmetry is a beautiful and beneficial thing. That is the basis for my new catchphrase, “Asymmetric but equal”. In a good asymmetric relationship, each party feels that they are benefiting the most from this asymmetry. Each party feels very lucky and grateful. Nobody wants to argue, because what if the other party or parties realize how unfair the status quo is and the situation is corrected?

Examples:

• Alex and Bob are friends, and Alex needs a car to commute to work. Bob does not own a car, he takes the bus to work. Alex often gives Bob a ride, but Bob can never reciprocate in kind. Should Bob start refusing these rides that he appreciates so much? Should Bob buy himself a car, wasting money on insurance and parking and further damaging our environment? No, Bob can reciprocate in some different but equal way.
• For reasons that elude me, I do have a few friends. Most of my friends seem to actually enjoy my meandering, motor-mouthed verbosity, at least part of the time. It doesn’t make sense to me, I feel like they must only be talking to me out of pity, yet they come back for more. They claim that I say interesting things, and I distract them from their troubles. I feel like rambling pretentious crap is just a natural waste product of my body, which I excrete through my mouth along with carbon dioxide. I am grateful to my friends who are willing to listen to me, because without them I would just be muttering to myself like a lunatic, or even writing on a blog. But my friends actually seem to enjoy it (some of the time), and they are (allegedly) grateful to me for “entertaining them”.
• In many heterosexual couples, the woman is way hotter than the man. This asymmetry was fairly inevitable, because women are just so much more physically attractive than men. Women naturally have softer skin, are less hairy, and smell better (these traits are clearly biologically determined, but many women still feel the need to shave their legs and wear perfume to emphasize the dimorphism even more). These attributes of women seem like they should be universally appealing to the human senses, regardless of the perceiving human’s gender or sexual orientation. Women also have breasts and a particular silhouette that I personally find very enticing, although these sensory preferences are less universal among humans and less obviously understandable. I myself was rather suspicious that the obsession with women’s breasts and nudity was a huge in-joke, like Santa Claus had been, until I reached a certain age and I suddenly somehow understood. So how do we explain these romantic couples including a woman who is so clearly sexier than the man? Well, it turns out that this apparent inequality was just a result of asymmetry, an asymmetry of the sexual stimulus preferences of men and women. Many heterosexual men enjoy and appreciate certain traits that women tend to express, such as breasts. The men often appreciate these traits via the sensory modality of vision. Perhaps this helps explain why men seem to like visual pornography more than women, a distinction which is maintained even in gay men (who seem to be a much bigger demographic for pornographers than the relatively more abundant heterosexual women) and lesbians (I have known many lesbians, some of them flamboyantly sexual with an agenda to combat the sexual repression of women, but the proportion with girlie mags stashed under their mattresses is undeniably low). Likewise, the women seem to appreciate some stimuli that the men present, although these stimuli are less often visual. This may explain the abundance of romance novels targeted at women, and the relative rarity of female peeping toms.

Disclaimer: Don’t be sexist, don’t be greedy. “Asymmetric but equal” only works if the two parties genuinely do have different preferences. Don’t make your wife do all the cooking, cleaning, and child care just because you reciprocate by having a bigger salary, you have to ask her if she actually enjoys her role more than she would enjoy yours. Then you have to make sure she is answering honestly. Then you have to make sure that she was not pressured by society to think she wants one thing when in fact she could be even happier with something else. Then you have to make sure that she does not find her role as housewife easier than playing your role as breadwinner simply because potential employers are sexist, women are paid less, or maternity leave benefits are insufficient. “Asymmetric but equal” can be fair in some cases, but it must be either truly voluntary asymmetry (e.g. I don’t like peanut butter cups, I would prefer your Snickers bar, so I choose to trade without any form of extortion) or truly unavoidable asymmetry (e.g. I don’t have a uterus, can you gestate our baby).