Monthly Archives: December 2013

Stupid Remarks Continue to Offend and Entertain

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We who make, report, attack or defend stupid remarks have helped make the Internet what it is today, whatever that is. As my 160 (!) followers would attest, I’ve made my own tiny contribution to this ongoing effort. That is, they would attest if any of them actually read the stuff I painstakingly write here at WOCS. (Unfortunately, Internet statistics don’t lie.)

Furthermore, I promise to keep contributing as long as Republicans keep talking.

Keeping with this practice, although in a relatively non-political vein, I’m now going to discuss a few stupid remarks that have recently been reported, criticized and even defended.

First, it’s hardly worth noting that someone on FOX TV said that Santa Claus is white and Jesus was too. As a friend recently pointed out, saying things like that is what people on FOX do for a living. What was more remarkable was the story about a New Mexico high school teacher who criticized a black student’s decision to dress up as Santa Claus, implying that it would have been better if he had dressed up as an elf, reindeer or candy cane. 

According to the school district, the teacher apologized and was placed on “administrative leave”, so there is some truth to this story. Even though the student was deeply embarrassed, I hope the teacher was making a joke (the kind of jocular remark colloquially known in some quarters as “breaking balls”, as in “Hey, Ralph, don’t you know Santa Claus was white!” “No, I thought he was Italian.” “Boom!”). If the teacher wasn’t trying to be funny, we’d have to conclude that yet another education professional has lost his or her mind.

Another recent controversy involves a person with a very long beard who is part of a TV show called “Duck Dynasty”. He got into trouble when he said that it’s more logical for a man to want to put his penis in a vagina than in another man’s butt, suggesting that vaginal intercourse should be more pleasurable for a man than gay anal intercourse. He added, in an apparent attempt at explanation, that sin (in this case, gay sex) isn’t logical. It seems clear from the context that he wasn’t joking.

Now, it isn’t surprising that this person believes gay sex is sinful. Lots of misguided people believe that and say it all the time, even people who aren’t on FOX or in Congress. Nor is it interesting that he thinks sin is illogical. After all, if there are such things as sins, you could wind up in Hell by committing one (that, as Randy Newman once sang, would put you in a terrible position).

What I thought was interesting about this particular stupid remark was that the speaker may misunderstand evolution (even though he apparently spends a lot of time outdoors). It does make sense that vaginal intercourse is pleasurable for both men and women, because men and women who enjoy it tend to have children who will enjoy it too (and so on, and so on, until the nth generation). But that’s no reason to think that a person with a penis might not get a lot of pleasure, and even more pleasure, from putting it somewhere else or doing something else with it. Behavior evolves because it contributes to the survival of one’s offspring, not because it’s more pleasurable than other behavior. People on TV should grasp standard biological principles like this.

A third stupid remark hasn’t received much attention, so far as I know. But it’s also interesting in a way. A woman who works for a “leading internet and media company” sent this out on Twitter yesterday: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” In this case, the speaker claimed to be making a joke.

When I read about this, I had the impression I’d heard the joke before. Then I remembered watching a video of Sarah Silverman telling a similar joke at a benefit concert:  “Last month I did two benefits. One was for AIDS… It was great, but tonight’s benefit is going to be better. I won’t have to worry about who I hook up with. (pause) That’s terrible! (pause) WHOM I hook up with!”. She got a very big laugh.

What would the reaction have been if it was funny Sarah Silverman who tweeted the Africa AIDS remark? People on Twitter might have thought it wasn’t up to her usual comedic standards instead of calling her a stupid racist. I wonder if Justine Sacco’s co-workers in the London office of IAC thought her tweet was yet another example of Justine being her wild and crazy self (as when, earlier this year, she tweeted “I can’t be fired for things I say while intoxicated right?”).

It’s doubtful, but perhaps Justine Sacco goes to Africa on her vacation every year to work with AIDS patients. But, so far as most of us are concerned, she might as well be a talking, albeit insensitive, dog (ok, I’ve finished writing this post, will someone take me for a walk now?).

Breaking news update!!! Steve Martin has apologized for tweeting a lame joke about the African-American spelling of “lasagna” yesterday. Communication continues to be a dangerous thing, even for talented communicators. (The TMZ site, by the way, actually labeled this story BREAKING NEWS.)

Woof, woof!

nYdog

Friday Night “Soul Music” Potpourri

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There is an ongoing discussion at Brian Wilson’s website called “The Battle of the Bands”. Every week someone selects four songs from YouTube that have something in common (say, songs about food or songs with great bass lines). At least one of the songs has to be related to Brian Wilson or the Beach Boys. Then the 20 or so regular participants rank the four songs (gold, silver, bronze and tin).

Opinions are offered, other videos are posted, stories are told and at the end of the week, the votes are tabulated. It’s an enjoyable pastime, since the participants are into music and extremely well-mannered (although they tend to be a little long in the tooth, like a certain blogger).

This week’s theme is Soul Music. The artists represented are Etta James, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke (singing the Beach Boys song “Sail On, Sailor”),  and Barbara Mason (doing her big hit “Yes, I’m Ready”).

I voted a couple days ago, giving gold to Otis Redding. This afternoon, one thing led to another (I believe that’s the definition of “the Internet”) and I ended up listening to and sharing several YouTube videos more or less associated with “soul music”. You might find some of them of interest. 

First, some related philosophical observations:

“There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.” – L. Armstrong 

“You blows who you is.” – L. Armstrong

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” – F. Nietzsche

Whether it’s gospel-influenced, doo wop, R&B, soul or whatever, this one is pretty damn amazing. The Chantels, featuring lead singer Arlene Smith, from 1957/58:

James Brown sings it’s “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” in Paris. He launches into a bit of a medley around 6:40 or so:

Which doesn’t really lead to Bill Medley talking about Brian Wilson, Phil Spector, Carole King or Eric Burdon, or “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” or some famous songs he had the chance to record but didn’t:

The #1 “blue-eyed soul” record that he and Bobby Hatfield did right after they split from Phil Spector:

Which leads in a way (“she’s been my inspiration”) to an extended version of Stevie Wonder’s “I Was Made To Love Her”, including instrumental intro and outro:

I really disliked that song when it was on the radio in 1967, and was very surprised when the Beach Boys put it on their terrific “Wild Honey” album later that year. But sometimes we progress. This is the late Carl Wilson doing the lead vocal:

The Beach Boys covered Stevie Wonder, and in 1980 the Los Angeles punk rock band X covered the Doors (whose “Soul Kitchen” referred to a soul food restaurant in Venice, California):

Which doesn’t lead at all to Jimmy Cliff, but this is real good and clearly soulful (although rhyming “over” and “White Cliffs of Dover” is geographically suspicious in a song called “Many Rivers to Cross”. Those cliffs aren’t known for their waterfalls.):

Too bad there’s no money in propagating this Internet stuff.

A Guide to Reality, Part 6

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In the rest of chapter 2 of The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, Alex Rosenberg explains the second law of thermodynamics and briefly addresses some of humanity’s “persistent questions” (such as “does the universe have a purpose?”). His account of the second law is much less controversial than his answers to those big, long-standing questions.

The second law of thermodynamics is usually summed up, somewhat inaccurately, as “entropy or disorder always increases”. Rosenberg, however, begins with this description:

The second law tells us that in any region of space left to itself, differences in the amount of energy will very, very, very probably even out until the whole region is uniform in energy, in temperature, in disorder…. In our universe, the arrangement of everything goes from more improbable distributions (with more useful energy) to less improbable ones (with less useful energy). And the same goes for any self-contained part of the universe (28-31).

In other words, everything that somehow became organized will eventually fall apart (which is one reason why long-abandoned houses invariably look worse than occupied ones). An organized system is unlikely. Energy must be applied to create it and, without further energy being added to the system, it will sooner or later revert to the much more likely state of being disorganized.

Consider, for example, the atoms and molecules that make up the Eiffel Tower. It’s much less likely that they ended up being arranged in that shape than if they were randomly spread around here and there:

The most probable distribution of energy and disorder in the universe is the completely even distribution of everything….[That] is the state toward which, according to the second law, everything is moving, some places slower, some places faster, but almost inexorably. This evening-out of things – from molecules to galaxies – from less probable to more probable distributions is the rule of the universe (31).

Increasing disorder isn’t completely guaranteed, however, which is why Rosenberg says “almost inexorably”. As he explains, the second law merely means that the tendency toward disorder is extremely, extremely probable. For example, when you pour cream in your coffee, the two liquids quickly mix together. But there is nothing in the laws of physics that prohibits the cream from spelling “Good Morning” when you drop it in.

So why are there so many unlikely, highly-organized clumps of matter around (like us)? Despite what some evolution-deniers think, these clumps aren’t counterexamples to the second law. Nor are they bizarre but permissible, random bits of organization:

These are regions of the universe in which the maintenance of order is being paid for by using much more energy to produce [and maintain] the orderly things than the amount of order they produce or store. Each region of local order is part of a bigger region in which there is almost always a net increase in entropy…. Most biological order is preserved for long periods, but at the cost of vast increases in disorder elsewhere (32).

Physicists believe that the universe began in a state of incredibly extreme heat and density. Rosenberg says that this primordial state was both highly unlikely and highly organized, although “organized” might not be the best word.

If everything in the pre-Big Bang universe was evenly distributed (unlike all the molecules in the neighborhood of, for example, the Eiffel Tower), it seems odd to say that it was organized at all. It’s not as if there was some cold, thinly-populated, disorganized space different from the hot, dense stuff, waiting to be filled up. The dense stuff that existed at that point was All There Was. Unless it had some internal structure, we might as well say it wasn’t organized at all. At any rate, the universe as a whole has been falling apart (moving toward perfect equilibrium) ever since the Big Bang, despite the fact that here and there stars and galaxies eventually came to be.

Somewhat controversially, Rosenberg suggests that the second law also explains why time appears to have a “direction”:

Hard to believe, but the second law is where the direction of time, its asymmetry, comes from. It cannot come from anywhere else in physics. By process of elimination, the time order of events from earlier to later is a consequence of the second law…. None of the basic laws of physics [allow us to tell which way is past and which way is future] except for one: the second law of thermodynamics. It makes a difference between earlier times and later times: the later it gets, the more disorder, or entropy, there is (33-35).

On the other hand, another philosopher, Adrian Bardon, argues in A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time that the second law can’t explain the apparent direction of time. The second law is merely probabilistic, as Rosenberg admits. Increasing entropy is extremely, extremely likely, but not absolutely guaranteed, even for the universe as a whole. But the direction of time, if it’s real, is supposed to be unchanging, not probabilistic. Bardon concludes that the direction of time can’t be the same as the one-way, thermodynamic “direction” suggested by the second law. He thinks the fact that these two “directions” appear to go the same way is just a striking coincidence.

This brings us to Rosenberg’s brief answers to a few of those big, persistent questions. This post being so long already, however, I’ll end for now with a brief summary of his conclusions:

Where did the Big Bang come from? We don’t know, but the best current theory is that it randomly emerged from the “multiverse”. Our universe is just one of many.

Well, why is there a “multiverse” then? There’s no reason for it to exist. It just does. Get over it already!

But isn’t there some purpose to the universe? No, there isn’t any purpose to it at all.

But why then does the universe have the physical laws and parameters that allow intelligent life to exist? Given the vast number of universes popping into existence, it shouldn’t be a surprise that some of them end up being like this one. Somebody had to get a winning ticket in the cosmic lottery. It happened to be us.

In our next installment: Oh, really?

O brave new world, That has such people in’t!

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While struggling a bit with the second law of thermodynamics and “A Guide to Reality, Part 6”, I stumbled upon the video below. It’s reminiscent of the performance by Susan Boyle, the unknown Scottish woman who so surprised the vast majority of us when we heard her sing for the first time. To say that this performance by Amira Willighagen, a 9-year old Dutch girl, is more surprising than Susan Boyle’s is an understatement. 

She tells the judges that she learned to sing by listening to videos on YouTube. Amazing.

PS – It would be a terrible shame if this turned out to be a hoax. The world should have such people in it.

No Wonder The Foreign Bastards Hate Us

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Some foreigners may hate us for “our freedoms”, as Bush the Younger once said. But many surely hate us, justifiably, for our willingness to kill recklessly and with minimal regret.

It hardly made the news here, but a few days ago our government attacked a “wedding convoy” in Yemen, murdering 14 people and maiming 22. At least three more have since died. Meanwhile, our government (including the Democrat in the White House) hasn’t commented.

At the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf asks how we would react if something similar happened here:

Can you imagine the wall-to-wall press coverage, the outrage, and the empathy for the victims that would follow if an American wedding were attacked in this fashion? Or how you’d feel about a foreign power that attacked your wedding in this fashion? …  and all for the sake of five people suspected of ties to al-Qaeda.

We might as well be broadcasting a message worldwide on Voice of America: “We don’t give a shit about you foreign bastards”.

The whole article, which is brief, is worth reading, especially if you’re still proud to be an American.Â