A (not so) Troubling Correlation

This graph correlates the number of emergency room mentions of marijuana (where someone admits to smoking weed when hospitalized) with the potency of seized cannabis (the strength of the weed).

First, correlation is not causation. This does not prove that increases in potency result in more frequent medical emergencies. This graph demonstrates two facts.

One: From 1988 to 2003, the number of emergency room patients who admit to using marijuana has generally increased.
Two: From 1988 to 2003, the percentage of THC of samples of marijuana seized by drug enforcement officials has generally increased.

The obvious tactic of anti-legalization advocates is to link these phenomena in an attempt to justify their enforcement efforts. Their narrative is a relatively simple one, but its powerful in its stupidity...I mean simplicity. Basically, weed is getting stronger. At the same time, more people taken emergency room are using weed. Therefore, weed puts people in the hospital!

Some obvious criticism:

1. More people are admitting to using marijuana. This suggests that more of them are smoking, but does not prove, or even convincingly suggest, that the number of people adversely affected by marijuana has actually increased.
2. Although the trend is generally an upward one, there are numerous points where the correlation does not match up.
3. The potency trend shows that the samples police can get their hands on has increased. Once again, measurements of these samples cannot prove that rates have absolutely, across the board increased, it can only suggest it, weakly.
4. Finally, the potency trend is the only other measurement on the graph. The graph doesn't account for any other variable, or any other possible cause behind the spike in marijuana confessions.
   

It's time for drug enforcement officials, like Dr. David Murray, chief scientist of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, to stop touting these spurious correlations as causitive facts.

Marijuana, Our Largest Cash Crop

Here is a list of the United States' most valuable cash crops.

Rank. Crop. Average Production Value ($1000's)

1 Marijuana $35,803,591

2 Corn $23,299,601

3 Soybeans $17,312,200

4 Hay $12,236,638

5 Vegetables $11,080,733

6 Wheat $7,450,907

7 Cotton $5,314,870

8 Grapes $2,876,547

9 Apples $1,787,532

10 Rice $1,706,665

11 Oranges $1,583,009

12 Tobacco $1,466,633

13 Sugarbeets $1,158,078

14 Sugarcane $942,176

15 Sorghum $840,923

16 Cottonseed $821,655

17 Peanuts $819,617

18 Barley $653,095

19 Peaches $474,745

20 Beans $467,236

Based on a comparison with average production values of other crops from 2003 to 2005 marijuana is the top cash crop in 12 states, one of the top 3 cash crops in 30 states, and one of the top 5 cash crops in 39 states. Marijuana is the largest cash crop in Alaska, Alabama, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

Good News from the White House

The graph on top, courtesy of the DEA, shows trends in marijuana potency over the past 15 years.
See that line, the red one? See how it's going up?
That means the presence of THC, the active psychoactive agent in weed, is increasing!
The graph on the bottom, also courtesy of the DEA, presents a detailed breakdown of how specific potencies have flucuated over the same time span.

Visualizing Space

I recently read an essay here, about a geologist who enhanced his visual skills through hallucination. To analyze the underlying geological features on a planet or moon, planetary geologists rely on images taken from spacecrafts. Landforms in space cannot be understood unless they are perceived in three dimensions through stereo images - paired photographs taken from slightly different angles to mimic depth perception. Most people use mechanical devices to judge depth from stereo photos, but this geologist relies on his own visualization skills instead of these machines. And what enabled him to do this?

In his words, "one evening we smoked some especially potent marihuana, purely for pleasure. I
amused myself by looking at a pair of stereo photographs that had been left in the room. Suddenly the two pictures merged into a single three-dimensional view."

He retained this ability after his high ended, and it's an essential part of his career.

More Fucked up Shit in Saudi Arabia

Sep. 2003: UK man describes being sentenced to “partial decapitation” and “public crucifixion” based on a torture-induced confession.
Feb. 2004: Saudi tourism website says it denies travel visas to “Jewish people.”
Nov. 2006: Saudi court sentences gang-rape victim to 90 lashes for being alone in a car with a man who was not her husband. Her sentence was later increased to 200 lashes and 6 months in jail before the King “pardoned” her (the conviction stood). Her lawyer’s license was suspended for “inflaming the media.”
Dec. 2007: “Dean of the Saudi bloggers” Fouad al-Farhan, a 32-year-old father of two, is arrested and held in solitary confinement after criticizing influential Saudi religious leaders (he’s still in prison).
Feb. 2008: United Nations says Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow women to marry, work, travel, or be educated without a man’s permission.

I stole this information from http://deceiver.com/2008/03/26/saudi-king-is-a-royal-hypocrite-here-comes-the-fatwa/

An Actual Witchunt

I know what you're thinking about the title- "Obviously."

But let's take a look at this controversy in Saudi Arabia.

You can read about it here, but I'll explain.

A woman named Fawza Falih was arrested and condemned to death for, get this, Witchcraft. She was detained for 35 days by Saudi Arabia's religious police, and was beaten to the point of hospitalization throughout this time. How could Saudi Arabia have a law against Witchcraft of all things? Here's the kicker- it doesn't. Saudi Arabia does not have a written penal code, and Witchcraft is not a defined crime. Yet on these charges, a panel of three judges decided that this woman was guilty. In the process, they refused her access to a lawyer, banned a relative arguing on her behalf, refused to allow a cross-examination of the accusing witness, and forced her to sign a confession which she couldn't read BECAUSE SHE WAS ILLITERATE.

There has historically been a correlation between backwardness and religion, and here it is presently at work. Islamic law provides a nebulous justification for the men in power in Saudi Arabia. Islamic tradition is sufficiently powerful, when invoked, to legitimate even the most blatant violations of human rights. Yet the civil rights of this woman were not violated BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T HAVE THEM TO BEGIN WITH. When an appeals court overturned the decision to execute her, Saudi prosecutors persisted, arguing that it was in "the public interest" that she be put to death by the State.

This is an extreme example of why we should not allow Church and State to mix, even at their most minor points of intersection. When law is based in religion, it derives its legitimacy from something ethereal; literally the least objective thing in the world. The obvious couner point is that religion offers good morals. No. Religious morals, by definition, depend on something transcendent and undefinable. Good government grows from the ground up.

Divine Mistaks from Gud

Apparently there are some spelling mistakes in the bible.

http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/spell.htm

Thought Experiment: Russian Roulette

We have in our possession 2 people.

Person A possesses a gun, a quarter, and 6 bullets.
Person B possesses his own head and at least 1 trigger finger.

Person A is ordered to take the Gun, open the Cylinder, and flip a coin 6 times. For every flip of the coin that results in "heads," Person A will load a bullet into the Gun. According to the laws of Probability, 3 out of the 6 chambers should be loaded. Further, our beloved Person B, who is ordered to point the gun at his head and pull the trigger, boasts a 50% chance of dying.

For the purposes of this thought experiment, Chance and God are the same. They are different names for the thing that causes the coin to produce heads or tails, which will in turn produce death or continued existence. Despite the dramatic addition of death into this experiment, the fundamentals are straightforward; we do not know why or for what purpose the coin flips produce heads or tails. We can clearly see a pattern- half of time it will be heads, half tails, but we cannot know a deeper cause beyond it. Either people can say there is no deeper cause; there are simply the mathematical laws themselves that demonstrate probabilistic patterns. Or, people can say that these patterns are the work of God and are evidence of his control over the course of life on earth.

Now let's reconfigure the experiment.

We have in our possession 7 people.

Person A possesses a gun, a quarter, and 6 bullets.
Persons B,C,D,E,F, and G, all possess their own heads and at least 1 trigger finger apiece.

Person A goes through the same process of flipping and loading, bullet for heads, empty chamber for tails, and according to the laws of probability, produces a half loaded gun. Now here's the difference. Persons B through G are ordered to sit in a circle and pass the gun around, shooting themself in the head in turn. Probability says that 3 of these people will be dead, assuming, and probably so, that a bullet in the head will produce death. We know according to probability that these three should die, but what determined which chambers those bullets went in? They obviously resulted from, and form a pattern of, Chance, but probability didn't determine which of the chambers the bullets went in.

Chance is a descriptive phenomenon; it doesn't seek to explain events, only describe the patterns in which they unfold.

God is a causitive phenomenon; it emphasizes that these events happen according to patterns, although we do not have anything else to ascribe to besides a force which we cannot explain- God.


Thanks to Steven Carr for provoking these thoughts...

Microbiology, Chance, and God

Here are some interesting points that problematize the belief that God controls life on earth.

Microbiology is a problem. For me, it's a complicated topic that will probably drag down my GPA when I can no longer avoid taking a science class. But for the religious, microbiology poses a real problem. There are basically two poles of belief about God for adherents to the theory of evolution. At one end, there are atheists who belief life on earth evolved within the confines of the physical constraints of this planet, such as food, temperature, and gravity, with God left wholly out of the process. On the other end, there are believers in God who accept every tenet of evolution, but hold that God directs the process. In between these two poles exists a spectrum of beliefs where various scientific and religious ideas converge. There are myriad positions which draw upon somewhat opposing interpretations of science and religion. These positions are usually reconcilable, if a little contradictory. However, some of these "hybrid" positions fall apart in the face of microbiology.

Let's take the basic Christian belief, "Love thy Neighbor." Jesus said it; he issued God's command that we should treat everyone and everything equally despite our differences, genetic or otherwise. However, this all-powerful creator has deliberately designed a system that does not adhere to his command. After all, is anyone really going to tell AIDS to love its neighbors? My guess is no. In fact, the biological systems that God has created seem to imply just the opposite. God has designed a world in which humans with certain genes, which I assume are also his doing, are at the cruel mercy of their own genetic flaws. For those that subscribe to hybrid positions that simultaneously accept scientific facts as well as the belief that God has made these facts so, genetic disorders threaten to rip these conflictual views asunder.

Genetic disorders introduce the element of chance into the debate over evolution. If you believe that God directs and controls the course of life on this planet, you cannot believe that Chance occupies the same role. Chance here refers to the way that we as observers cannot account for the workings of certain events. It is an expression of our inability to predict events when no observable cause for them can be identified. However, how is that any different from the conception of God? When we observe certain events but cannot identify a cause or purpose behind them, we attribute their occurance to God. The reason why God and Chance cannot occupy the same role is because they are different expressions of the same fundamental thing. Essentially, either God, or Chance controls whether children develope genetic disorders from their parents. In other words, according to "hybrid" believers, if a doctor tells two parents that their child will have a 25% chance of inheriting a fatal hereditary disease, he is really telling them that God is giving their child a 25% chance of dying. The point is this: belief in God and belief in pure Chance cannot coexist. Humans have a need to make sense out of what appear to be random occurring events. One can ascribe this apparent randonmess to a supernatural cause, or a mathematical cause, but not both. Chance makes sense out of this apparent randonmess by chalking it up to probability; others attribute this randomness to the will of God.

Problematization status: majorly problematic.

Let's run through a theological laundry list.

If you:
1) believe that God exists and you
2) believe that God created life and you
3) believe that God directs the evolutionary then you
4) must believe that God controls the chance of one of your cells turning cancerous, so you
5) must believe that God generally controls chance, and if you don't then you must
6) read number six, which says if believe that God controls the Chance of one thing happening, then you must believe that God controls the chance of all things happening. If you don't, then I defy you to give me a schedule of the times and events for which God puts his Chance setting skills to use. If you believe that God controls the chance of your cells turning cancerous, why doesn't she control which side of a die lands facing up? Is it only medical events? How about biological ones? What if I'm going to roll a die to decide whether or not to inject someone with cancer causing agents? Would he turn on his skills at that moment? Since you could not present me with such a schedule, then you must believe that
7) God and Chance are expressions of the same inability to predict events.

The strange thing is, this randomness which we attribute to Chance isn't really that random at all. Mathematical rules govern the probabilities of events unfolding. Mathematics can determine the probability of heads landing up when I flip a coin, of rolling a die and getting a 6. The obvious problem for believers who straddle the position between God and Evolution is that the comparison between the two is inevitable. Evolution has shown that natural physical laws account for developments in life on earth. This is a basic fact. What evolution cannot account for, and indeed what science cannot always account for, are explained by the basic laws of probability. It is easy to see how God fits into the hole in Science's explanation. But doesn't the fact that God fits so neatly into this explanatory void just go to show what the belief in God really is? God is an explanation for what Science leaves out. However, that hole is shrinking by the day. In fact, that hole has been shrinking exponentially as Science has developed over the past 500 years.

We should thus reconfigure how we define God. If God was previously understood as the being or force which directs the course of life on this planet, he must now be considered the being or force that chooses which cell turns cancerous, which children develop genetic diseases, and which side of the coin lands upright.

Christian Ethics

I was doing some random research and I stumbled upon this fact:

At the time the U.S. dropped the second atomic bomb, Nagasaki had the largest concentration of Christians in all of Japan and the largest Catholic Church in Asia. Missionaries established a thriving Christian community in Nagasaki throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, and even after mass persecution at the hands of the Japanese Emperor, Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Japan to find thousands of baptized Christians practicing in secrecy. Nagasaki's Christian citizens, who were carbonized and vaporized by an all Christian bombing crew, who were accompanied and blessed by both a Catholic and a Lutheran chaplain. For anyone that claims the U.S. is a Christian nation guided by Christian principles, go ahead and buy yourself a ticket to the logical circus it must take to reconcile the fact that the U.S. strategically targeted and obliterated one of the largest groups of Christians in Asia.

This says it better than I can: "And so the persecuted, vibrant, faithful center of Japanese Christianity became ground zero, and what Japanese Imperialism couldn't do in 200 years of persecution, American Christians did in 9 seconds; the entire worshipping community of Nagasaki was wiped out."

A Must See for Smart Alcoholics

Awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V_DsL1x1uY&feature=related

Book Review: The Giver

I was bored and contemplative last Sunday, so i decided to re-read The Giver.

The Giver is a really awesome book. It covers a range of issues concerning human life, including memory, perception, and consciousness. In a lot of ways, the Giver is an introductory course in understanding what consciousness is and how it works. In my opinion, consciousness is the single most important topic in the discussion of human life. The Giver centers on the story of one boy named Jonas in his village. In describing the village and its society, Lois Lowry depicts a world reminiscent of 1984 without all of the brutal totalitarianism. In other words, the story takes place in a Utopian world where every single action and area of human life is regulated, directed, and controlled by the government. This government rules with the consent of the people. Lois Lowry picks 11 as Jonas' age so that we read it as a coming of age story, since this is typically the age at which people begin to consider the world and their place in it in a meaningful way. And indeed, when 11 year olds turn twelve in the story, their childhood is declared, "over," and they are assigned a profession by the government. Everything a child can do depends on his or her age; the specific type of clothing a child may wear, the activities they are allowed to do, and the equipment they are allowed to use all depend on his or her age. For example, when children turn 9, it is no longer illegal for them to ride bikes. This reveals an interesting strategy behind Lowry's writing; she takes prevailing social attitudes and assumptions about age and human development from the real world and makes them institutionalized, legalized, facts in the world of The Giver. This is essential to demonstrating the points she ultimately desires to make, the virtual themes of the book.

One such theme is the transition between childhood and adulthood. We typically make assumptions about the changes that occur in adolescence (the transition zone), such as maturity, responsibility, and an understanding of how the world functions. However, these changes do not occur instantly when an 11 year old turns twelve; they occur in a long, uneven, and nebulous process that hardly conforms the established parameters of age, gender, or any other type of distinction. By institutionalizing these variable things that relate to development, Lowry standardizes them and makes them much more comprehensible. Furthermore, by presenting them as institutional fact , she allows us reflect upon how we ourselves interpret how a young person develops in our own society and find his or her place in our world. Finally, by depicting the state as the all powerful decider behind all major decisions that occur in a person's life, Lowry depicts a world in which individuals have no control over the course of their own life.
This state apparatus also robs its citizens of their individuality, since the only differences the state allows people to possess are in their careers. However, Lowry shows that even in this area, the state assigns particular roles to individuals based on their skills and abilities in certain fields, over which an individual does not possess much personal control.

Lowry thus preys upon modern man's fear of losing his individuality to the industrialized state. She extrapolates this fear to the extreme, and makes it all the more glaring since everyone in the novel (with the exception of Jonas) are completely content with the world in which they live. Jonas acts up because he possesses a unique ability to, "see beyond." Lowry reveals that in the world of The Giver, color and emotion do not exist. However, Jonas can see color, which the state realizes and assigns him the role of "Receiver of Memory" because of it. The Giver (of memory) actually refers to the title of an old man in the story, who it turns out is the exclusive holder of every single memory in the world. The world of the novel, black and white, structured, and uniform, and all of its inhabitants, are completely ignorant of these memories. These memories contain strong, genuine emotions, beautiful and varied colors, and experiences beyond the comprehension of average citizens. Through Jonas' acquisition of these memories, Lowry introduces an important concept. There is a distinction between how you perceive the world, and the world itself. The Giver embodies this distinction; besides Jonas, he is the only one in the entire society who has a two-part consciousness. One part resembles the consciousness of everyone else in the society. Ironically, the consciousness that everyone besides the Giver possesses is objective, not subjective. This is due to the fact that people lack emotion, memory, and subjective perception of the suroundings. Every perception is regulated, institutionalized, and objectified by the state. Even the society's language, one of the most vital expressions of a person's subjectivity, is objectified by the state. Throughout the novel, authority figures in the world of the novel constantly stress the importance of "precision of langauge." This "precision" serves the purpose of communicating information for practicality's sake, serving no deeper, more personal, or least of all subjective, function. The Giver is thus the only member of his society with a second part to his consciousness, a subjectified part.

Lowry uses the Giver's two-part consciousness as a model for understanding our own. On the one hand, human's can see objects, hear sounds, taste flavors, smell scents, and touch just about whatever we want. On the other hand, the way in which we use our senses is uniquely our own. By uniformitizing everyone's senses, Lowry objectifies their consciousness. Then, she symbolically places all the world's subjectivity in the hands of one man, The Giver.

We thus have three models for consciousness: a purely objective one, a balanced subjective/objective one, and Jonas'. In Jonas,' we occupy the convenient position of observing an objective consciousness become subjectified as the Giver transfers his memories, the vehicles of subjectivity, to Jonas. Watching this process unfold causes us to reflect upon on own consciousness.

Are Dogs Smarter than Babies?

I post this question because I think there is some confusion over the intersection between knowledge, intelligence, and consciousness that makes someone or something, "smart."

Before someone makes the claim that I'm comparing apples and oranges, I will get some things out in the open. First of all, I'm not comparing apples to oranges, I'm comparing dogs to babies; maybe once I've finished that analysis, I'll compare dogs to apples and babies to oranges, or vice versa. The main problem I find with claiming that I'm comparing apples to oranges is that apples and oranges are actually much more similar than dogs and babies. Do the math.

I will assert this first: I've seen dogs behave intelligently, and I've seen babies behave dumb as rocks. Based on my completely unqualified estimate, dogs' intelligence involves a series of cause and effect relationships. Dogs are built to see the world as a collection of cause and effect relationships; if I (the dog) do this, then this will be the result. This is the dog's method for understanding how the world works, and is therefore what we can call its "worldview." If a dog's worldview consists of many simple cause-effect relationships, what does that suggest about its intelligence? Now we have to draw a distinction between knowledge and intelligence. The dog's knowledge probably consists of the individual pieces of information which it has gained over time. Intelligence refers to the dog's methods of acquiring, storing, and implementing this information in making decisions.

Acquiring information is where the process of intelligence begins. I think that a dogs and babies possess common instincts for gaining information. Babies most likely rely on the same methods of observation in order to discern relationships between causes and effects. As humans and dogs age, these relationships become more complex, more nuanced, and take into account ever more and increasing volumes of information. While adult humans obviously possess greater skill at observation than adult dogs, I believe that the observatory skills of adult dogs and human babies are comparable. Let's say a dog and a human are born at the same time. Within a shorter time span, the dog will possess greater skill at discerning information and putting that information to use. Ultimately, the human has a higher potential for developing this skill; but at some point in the simultaneous development of this dog and this human, the dog will surpass it in intelligence.

Dogs observe the world just like humans. A dog can perceive danger just like a human through the same fundamental methods. For example, when a dog sees a truck coming at it, it will run away. The same could not necessarily be said of a baby (provided it could run), which could gaze upon an oncoming truck with no perception of it at all. Thus, dogs possess an ability to observe and calculate a course of action that a baby might not. As a baby grows older, it will obviously understand the impending danger of an oncoming truck. However, that means the skill to perceive an object and understanding the force it will exert when it collides with another object (aka our bodies) is not always present in us, and in some cases can be less developed than that of a dog. On the other hand, adult dogs will quite readily understand that objects, especially large ones, threaten physical harm when they come in contact with them. This introduces another critical component of intelligence; the ability to utilize previously acquired pieces of knowledge.

Based on my aforementioned estimate, the process for dogs to gain, store, and use information is more intuitive than it is for humans. Since this intuition involves relatively straightforward cause and effect analysis, a dog never really develops a more advanced sense of how more complex dynamics and processes function. However, this development is exactly what enables human children to surpass dogs in intelligence; children develop a more advanced ability to implement their knowledge and makes inferences and predictions based upon it. Human intelligence can transcend simple cause and effect relationships; we can estimate, gauge, wonder, and reason at a level beyond canine intelligence. Moreover, improvement of observatory skills parallels this broader augmentation of our intelligence. As babies turn into children, they begin to account for more complex variables and combinations of factors that govern the ongoings of the world. Thus, a child's development is two-fold; they get better at discerning information, and they possess an enhanced ability to put this information into practice. A dog's intelligence hits its maximum potential at a much lower level; the instinctual observatory skills that feed into its reasoning and decision making abilities never undergo any dramatic changes.

The point I want to make is this: intelligence is a complex thing that develops alongside the being that possesses it. Moreover, while the intelligence of dogs and humans appear vastly different when they reach their respective potentials, they begin in much the same place. Babies and dogs rely on the same basic observatory skills. However, human skills gain new layers; we construct mental models based on the information gained in previous situations, and use them to incorporate new information in a practical, effective way. While these layers add an immeasurable quality to human intelligence, human intelligence never fundamentally changes.
New pieces are added in, on top of, and around our intelligence, but the core remains the same. If you ever wonder about your most basic instincts, look no further than your own, damn, dog.

A Liquid Contradiction

If weed is the devil, what does that make alcohol? They both consistently correlate to poor grades, crime, and health problems. American teenagers are using both in record number these days. Both are making big contributions to the concept of the "Shit Show." While weed and alcohol are so similar in substance, social attitudes concerning the two could not be more disparate. In case you've been living under a rock for the past 76 years, social attitudes toward weed are much more critical than toward alcohol. If weed is the devil, alcohol is his creepy older brother who we're convinced is a little slow in head and kind of dangerous, but we keep him around anyway because he's fun at parties. This unevenly critical attitude toward weed has permeated the debate over not only the issue of its legality, but also that of its medicinal use. However, when was the last time anyone considered the medicinal use of alcohol? If we're going to compare weed and alcohol in any context, there is none that reveals more about our attitudes toward these two substances than the context of medicinal use.

In order to regulate production, distribution, and consumption of drugs, the U.S. Government uses a system to classify drugs into different categories, or schedules. Currently, marijuana is listed as a Schedule I drug, which the Controlled Substance Act designated to include the most dangerous drugs with the least medical value. The criteria they use to differentiate drugs is:

(A) Potential for abuse
(B) Usefulness in medical treatment
(C) Safety using the drug under medical supervision


The government rates Marijuana as such:

(A) The drug has high potential for abuse.
(B) The drug has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
(C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug under medical supervision.

Compare this to how the U.S. government views alcohol:

Here is an excerpt detailing exceptions to the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which effectively set the drinking age to 21:

A Federal regulation that interprets the Act excludes from the definition of "public possession," possession "for an established religious purpose; when accompanied by a parent, spouse or legal guardian age 21 or older; for medical purposes when prescribed or administered by a licensed physician, pharmacist, dentist, nurse, hospital or medical institution; in private clubs or establishments; or to the sale, handling, transport, or service in dispensing of any alcoholic beverage pursuant to lawful employment of a person under the age of twenty-one years by a duly licensed manufacturer, wholesaler, or retailer of alcoholic beverages."

In other words, the U.S. government allows those under 21 to drink alcohol if it is prescribed by a doctor or medical health professional. I wonder how alcohol would stand up to the U.S. Government's scheduling criteria?

False Advertising and You Don't Even Know It.

I was watching TV today and I had a thought- is advertising designed to manipulate us emotionally? Then I had another thought: Alex, that is literally the most obvious fact in the known (and probably unknown) universe. Spotting stereotypes, racial and otherwise, is a little more difficult. 

So I was watching the Sucker Free Countdown on MTV2, and right after this video from B.O.B. entitled, "Haterz Everwhere" ended, this commercial came on that made me go like WTF. So it opens with this really muscular black guy standing on a diving board 30 feet above a pool, and as he's stretching, this voice-over comes on, he describes how for his entire life, he has never been able to swim, and the fear of water has plagued him. Suddenly, he jumps off the diving board! He tenses up and looks kind of panic-stricken, but he manages to overcome this fear with firm resolve! As he approaches the surface after diving, we see where he got this firm resolve to overcome his natural fear of water, since he comes out of the water as a U.S. Marine! He pops up wearing a camouflage jumpsuit and carrying an M4A1 assault rifle, in the middle of an ocean, only to be scooped out of the water by a boat filled with his equally well armed, yet significantly whiter, comrades. Now come on non-existent readers of this blog, are we seriously going to let the marines get away with this? I mean, sure, all advertising is designed to manipulate us emotionally, but are we really going to tolerate the marines basing an entire commercial on the stereotype that black people don't know how to swim? Maybe I'm just overanalyzing. At least the marines are willing to help black people with this problem of theirs. Just watch the commercial! The marines give him a gun, and some nice white friends, and the newfound confidence he needs to beat that fear down. Or shoot it down. The possibilities are endless. 

Before you, non-existent readers, start calling me politically correct, or some extremely offensive insult like that, you should know that I don't find anything wrong with stereotypes. Stereotypes are a natural way of labeling people, plants, and things. They are the logical product of the way we perceive a complicated, diverse world around us. Stereotypes are wrong when we freight them with some kind of actual meaning. For example, when your belief in a stereotype is stronger than the weight of your own experiences, that's fucked up. But please, judgmental as well as non-existent readers, put stereotypes in their place: they should inform you only when you have no other information to go by. They are also extremely funny when presented in the right light. In this case, I guess the commercial just portrayed it a little too darkly. The advertising branch of the marines has committed some heinous crimes against man and logic. First of all, the Marines used the stereotype in dispute in an inappropriate way.  The purpose was to design a commercial that would cause the African Americans to whom it was targeted to associate Marine with power and confidence. The real crime here was thinking that this method of advertising would actually work. 

Nice try Marines! What's next? I have a few ideas....

An Asian guy is trying to parallel park in the middle of his road test. Pan out to the tester, who is clutching a clip board and scrunching her white, middle aged face in a very prejudiced way. A look of fear washes over his face, but he is going to park this car, dammit. As that fear blazes into confidence, he flips on his blinker, swings his silver Jetta around in a perfect arc, and plants neatly into the spot. As the camera zooms out from the beaming face of this 18-24 Asian dude, the car becomes a tank, suburban parking zone turns into an Iraqi war zone, and that oh so prejudiced tester has become a mustached commander in an army helmet, whose pride in the tank's stereotype defying driver is so obvious, you can taste it, through the TV set. 

Even when a commercial shows a minority consciously defying a racist stereotype, that stereotype still serves as the framework for understanding that group. Whether or not that's wrong, it's true, its false advertising, and be aware. 

Why Nature and Death are Closer than You Think

Two concepts that fascinate us are Nature, and Death. Although you might think otherwise, it doesn't not take a logical circus to meaningfully relate these two ideas.

Consider nature not yet in terms of death itself, but in terms of the feelings which it elicits. Tangentially, death is not our context for understanding nature; it is simply an analytical model through which we can examine nature in the broader context of our own psyches. Nature represents something to us; there is a discourse surrounding it that pre-configures the way we perceive it before we even step out into the woods. Our friends and family share with us ideas about nature, TV and movies portray nature in a certain light, and most importantly, each of us comes pre-assembled with the history of our own experiences with nature. All of these things merge into the framework for our thoughts about and observations of the natural world. For now, my analysis of nature is going to be in purely conceptual terms, as free as possible from socio-cultural discourse and our warped consciousness of nature. Our understanding of nature has a few distinct but related components to it: a uniquely personal discourse, a social discourse, and a composition of the two. The social discourse is largely the aggregate of everyone's personal discourses, and the third component is the product of the social discourse in turn shaping an individual's personal discourse. Since everything depends on singular personal discourses, that component is the logical place to begin. By personal discourse, I mean your own specific perspective on nature. By nature, I mean any kind of natural scene where you feel like you're removed from human development; trees, mooses, and mountains optional.


Nature evokes some deep feelings from us on its own, aside from the underlying feature of death. Most superficially, nature has a stunning visual appeal. Beautiful colors, interesting shapes, and often times, incredibly sized objects. Going a little deeper, all of these colors, shapes, and sizes, are by definition the work of something other than man! Ecosystems are like naturally emerging cities; complex structures of imposing size house communities of plants and animals. All of these organisms are connected; their actions impact each other and the ecosystem as a whole. This system is in a constant state of flux and balance, and it is our frame of reference for understanding nature. Here's where death comes in. When something dies in this system of nature, what happens? The body decomposes. It might become the fertilizer for other plants to grow, it might be eaten by scavenging animals, but it will definitely be broken down and reabsorbed by the system somehow. This is why I think nature fascinates us so much: it presents us with a model of life in which death is not mourned, or celebrated; it's merely one development in the course of the systemic life. This of course, is anathema to the human conception of life, or what life should be. To see an animal die in nature and then watch the system in which this animal lived thrive in spite of death, and even benefit from the resources that this animal's death has dispensed back into the system, is to see that in nature, an individual organism's mortality means nothing. It simultaneously reminds us of our own mortality and puts us in touch with the deep feelings which accompany this realization.

How International Relations Theory is like Getting Chicks at a party

There are two things that will interest and confuse freshmen above all others: Getting girls at a party, and International Relations theory. Unrelated right? Two separate concepts huh? Why are you writing this blog when you should be working, Alex? Well, I'll address each of those questions, with the obvious exception of the last one, in due time. To begin, I'm sure you know what a "parable" is. If you don't, then pickup a god damn book. It's where you use a familiar concept or idea as a model for teaching a new one. See where I'm going with this? I'm going to make you understand international relations theory through your existing understanding of macking bitches! Now, now, I see your point, there is an inherent problem with this approach- it requires an established knowledge of how to mack bitches, which no freshman actually possesses; but let's overlook this, at least for now. So let's map out the key aspects of IR theory we want to understand. Here are the main theoretical perspectives: structuralism, liberalism, and contructivism. All IR theories attempt to explain outcomes in international affairs, but differ in the specific areas and factors that they focus on to formulate these explanations. Basically, theory is a way of compiling information and understanding cause-effect relationships. Consequently, individual theories are less interested in arguing specific points than they are in providing a perspective, or a general way of viewing these points. If this sounds obscure, it's about to get a lot more tangible. So you're at a party, and you're "on the prowl" for some fabulous booty. So what determines your success tonight? In other words, which factors of the party, be they structural, personal, or ideological, affect your chances of getting laid? Let's start with the most basic, the structural factors! These are the material aspects of the party, including house size, furniture arrangement, presence of tools such as alcohol or drugs, male-to-female ratio, etc. Think about it; the psychical landscape and layout of the party will have a huge affect on the course of your hookup! Are they plenty of couches to "relax" on? Is there a porch for a convenient excuse to escape with this hussie outside? Are there closets to escape with this hussie inside? Male-to-female ration should be pretty obvious, even to the dumbest of you. These psychical attributes form one area of focus, and are exactly the type of factors that Structuralism emphasizes. Structuralism is the theory that focuses solely on these material factors, although we can replace the "furniture arrangement" of the party with the geographic factors of the international system. A country's geography has a parallel affect on its hookup, I mean it's chances of winning a war, against another country. Another factor that structural theories focus on is technology. Technology occupies an important role in the development the international system; weapons technology is a great example in understanding how countries fight wars, and explaining which countries win wars. See another parallel? No? Well open your god damn eyes! Technology in the international system is a lot like technology at the party. Alcohol is the technological lubricant of social (and actual) intercourse. As most seasoned party-goers, and all serial date-rapists, are well aware, drinking technology is an essential part of explaining how people get so drunk, and thus how people have fun at a party. Beer pong tables, flip cup surfaces, beer bongs, shot glasses, chasers, cards, ping pong balls, dice- the sheer quantity and usage of these technological agents will consequently determine your chances of getting laid. Think you've got a good handle on the comparison? Well here's one final one for you- alliance structures in the international system. WWI unfolded because of entangled alliances between countries, and alliances are just as important to getting girls at a party. One word: Wingman. A stable alliance, with stipulations not to cock block and to please escort that ugly friend away right now thanks, with another party-goer, is a critical part of accomplishing your seductive goal. Structural theories place a similar amount of influence, albeit with more stipulations about ugly friends, like Nazi's, on alliance structures in order to explain how and why things happen in international affairs.

Now for the next theory: liberalism. While structuralism focuses on the international (party) system as a whole, liberalism focuses on the characteristics of the specific nation involved. It's time to shift our focus away from the party, and onto the party-ers. What personal characteristics affect your chance of a hookup? Probably your looks, charm, degree of obesity, things of that nature, right? Well yeah, no shit. In the same way, the internal economic, political, and social characteristics of a nation determine its foreign policy toward other nations, as well as other nations' policies towards it. Now here's an important point- which theory is right? Structuralism identified some key factors behind your shot at gettin' some, but so did liberalism. After all, you could make a good case that no matter how much alcohol and how many closets are at the party, a girl is never going to hookup with your ugly ass. Then again, you could have a face chiseled by Zeus (he sculpted right?) and it wouldn't mean jack if the party's so crowded that the girl doesn't feel comfortable. So there you have it, the theories are competing, not opposing. They don't seek to disprove eachother, just to provide the best and most accurate explanation of the available facts.

Now comes the theory that people have the most trouble with- contructivism. Constructivism focuses on ideas rather than material factors, which is exactly why people have a hard time grasping it. To shed some light, let's construct an ideal party and ideal party go-er based on the factors we discussed before. The party is at a giant mansion in an accessible, yet unbustable location, it is split 50/50 between guys and girls*, fully stocked with beer and liquor, and the furniture layout is so perfect it's giving off oddly sexual feng-shui vibes. You are a very good looking, poet-athelete who has more than one thing in common with a horse. You go to hit on one of the girls, and you see she's wearing a cross around her neck. No big deal, you think, a lot of people are christian these days, nothin' to worry about. Then, about 5 minutes into the conversation, she had already listed worshipping the lord and saving herself for marriage as her two main hobbies, and you have hit a major road block. Everything else was perfect, but you forgot to account for the role of ideas. No judgement against religion, but there's a relatively strong correlation between loving jesus and not wanting to get nasty. In the same way, the socio-cultural beliefs and ideas of a nation's citizens and leaders shape the characterists of the state, and thus determine its foreign policies and international goals. That girl's opposition to pre-marital sex is just as potent as Sweden's opposition to war. While material factors constrain or enable a nation's choices of how to act, the root cause of that nation's actions will be the cultural standards that determine what kind of actions are appropriate to take and which types of policies are acceptable to pursue.

Hope this helps horny disciples of International Relations.






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