I’ll keep this brief. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about SETI. What happens when we do, at some point in our existence, come into contact with another “intelligent” life form? Ideally we’d communicate with it. I think this part is a bit overlooked. How do we communicate with other life forms?

I think the best way to start is to learn to communicate with the life forms that are right here on Earth. If we can’t communicate fluently with mammals, birds, reptiles, etc then how can we expect ourselves to communicate with life forms that have (in all likeliness) evolved under completely different circumstances than us?

I think the main problem is humanity’s bar for “intelligence.” Humans, I believe, are not intelligent. We know stuff and we can do stuff and over our short existence we’ve managed to dramatically alter our evolutionary path, but I believe about %0.01 of what we’ve done is intelligent. The rest is driven by fear and greed. We’re very quick to shout our intelligence from the mountaintops whilst viewing other beings that we share this planet with as simpler or lesser.

Perhaps all the beings of this planet aren’t lesser. Perhaps they all have their own languages. Perhaps we could have talked to them at one point in our existence but now we are so incredibly intelligent that we can’t understand them anymore.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence needs to start here. We need to forget about what we know about ourselves and the rest of our world. We need to learn the language of our world and its inhabitants before we go searching for languages of other worlds.

We need to learn to listen before we talk.

Let me preface this by saying I know neither of the two people involved in this situation nor have any connection to them other than the fact that I use both Google and Twitter.

A Google tech writer recently accused Twitter engineer of sexual assault on her blog, and given the responses shot at both sides (Noirin Shirley, accuser, and Florian Leibert, accused) I thought I’d inject my personal thoughts on both the actual report given by Noirin and the responses to the incident.

First off, it’s a big deal to make an accusation like this. Careers hang in the balance, and blah blah blah, we’ve all heard this already. That said, a lot of women are sexually assaulted and never mention it. A lot tell a few people and it never goes anywhere. A lot try to get help but it never comes.

I think it’s not only amazing, but brave that Noirin had the guts to stand up to her assaulter and accuse him in public. It takes brass balls to do this. It also takes brass balls to do this knowing full well the responses you’re going to get because of it. I’m not one to not take stands on things, so I will say I think she’s awesome. I’m sick of women getting pushed around and there being no consequences for the men doing it.

I also do know that women make false accusations, but in my experience the ones who do so have a history of doing so and don’t start off doing it later on in life.

Now, at least one publication is saying that although it’s great to be public about this matter, it’s not ok to be public about the assailant’s name. I have to disagree. So many assaults go unresolved because it’s hard to prove unless you have a police officer right there watching, or at least 10 witnesses. Something like this wouldn’t hold up in court. It’s important that the person who did it be publicly recognized for his actions, because otherwise there very well may be no consequences, ever.

A lot of people are saying that she should say absolutely nothing until the police investigate and the courts make a decision. I have to wonder if they are batshit insane. First off, the police generally have “more important” things to worry about than “hey sum guy jus touched my privatz,” unfortunately. And without any material evidence, it will never hold up in court. What I’m getting at is that even though I love our justice system here in good old USA, there are many things that will fall through the cracks. Does Noirin really need the police or court system to validate what she experienced that night? That’s fucking insane! She knows what happened better than the police or courts, and has every right to talk about it. Plus, she’s opening herself up to a world of legal trouble by doing this, which is just one more reason she’s brave for doing it (and one more incentive to NOT do it falsely).

Let me put it this way: If somebody assaults you, you have the right to fucking let the world know who did it and what happened! Just because it won’t hold up in court (and believe me, it won’t) doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, and doesn’t mean the assailant shouldn’t suffer the social consequences. If a rape happens in the woods and nobody is there to witness it, did it happen? The courts, rightfully so, say “No.” But it still happened, and the aggressor needs to pay for it in some way.

If she lied about it, then that’s another issue entirely. If it did happen, as she said it did, then good for her for letting the world know and making the world that much safer for women.

Either way, there are some very good counter-arguments and discussion on the reddit comments page for the post, which I spent a good amount of time reading before making this post.

After reading an article about how the number of phone calls made is decreasing, I feel I have to interject something. This obviously shouldn’t be news to most people, because most of us are right in the middle of it (in North America, anyway). The fact is that people are talking less and less in favor of texting each other. While this is an interesting shift in our culture, I’m starting to think things are going a bit too far.

It seems that since widespread adoption of the internet, although more and more people have become seemingly connected through social networking and other mediums, people are drifting further and further apart. A friend is no longer a friend. A real friend is now what a friend was, and a friend is someone you say “damn we haven’t talked in years, how r u?” to. Communities are popping up everywhere online that replace the communities around us physically.

This in itself I don’t feel is bad. A lot of people who never would have met are meeting and sharing new ideas. Information spreads more rapidly. Cultural consciousness is more global, which in most cases is a very good thing.

I think things start to go wrong when people get addicted to this information overload though. They use it as a fuel for everyday distraction, a replacement for the communities they live in, and a tool to deliver opinions and beliefs to them when they would have otherwise had to think (although this last item is true of most media).

Also, it’s one thing to not be in front of someone when you talk to them. A voice conversation can have emotion and depth, but it can also be quick and effortless. The fact that it’s being replaced by one-off messages that are 100% ignorable and have no real content to them is kind of sickening. I’ve heard arguments that “I text someone when it doesn’t make sense to have a whole conversation,” but I’ll see the same person texting back and forth with someone for 10 minutes straight. Or a text is delivered and the person who sent it squirms in anticipation for the reply, which may never come.

What’s wrong with a phone call? Granted, if you’re in a bar and it’s very loud, texting would be appropriate. If you call someone and they don’t pick up, either they don’t want to talk or, god forbid, they aren’t right next to their phone all times of the day. If you want to talk to someone, just call them. I don’t believe texting is a viable replacement for what was the last string of human contact we had.

That all said, I know it’s a giant ball and it rolls where it rolls and there’s no stopping it. There’s no problem with being aware of things that are going on around us though. I feel like each time a real connection between two real people is replaced with something artificial, our culture as a whole goes just a little bit more insane. I’m interested to see how this all pans out, mainly because I don’t have a whole lot of attachment to what our culture is now.

Being a heavy and casual marijuana user for almost 10 years, and knowing many others who also are/were, I think I have a pretty good understanding of its effects, both positive and negative. I’d like to dispel some myths.

First off, you always hear that marijuana is a gateway drug. I respond: being a teenager is a gateway drug. The emotions, the hormones, the internal and external influences pulling you in a thousand directions every second of your life…it’s a wonder most of us make it through. That alone is enough to make most people want to try just about every drug out there. Also, another reason marijuana is a gateway drug is because kids are always taught how terrible it is and how addictive it is. So what’s the next thing they do? They try it. After finding that they were lied to and mislead, they learn to mistrust those telling them that “all drugs are bad.” So now heroin or cocaine doesn’t seem so bad either, even though they have much more far-reaching effects than marijuana. The point is, the only real cause of marijuana being a “gateway drug” is the fact that kids are constantly being told lies about it. The fix? Honesty.

Secondly, marijuana in moderation has no permanent effects. You can smoke till yer stupid for a few months, but take a week off and you bounce back completely. Its tar is more harmful than that of tobacco, but who aside from the most extreme users smokes a cigarette-pack’s worth of joints every day? The only way to get cancer from marijuana is to pump the smoke into a ventilator and breath it in 24/7. With cutting-edge advances in technology, there are now vaporizers, which remove the tar from smoking. It’s safer than ever.

Thirdly, smoking marijuana is a personal choice. Here we are, in the “land of the free,” restricted from doing things that even if they do have some negative effect, only affect us personally. It’s not illegal to saw off my arm. It’s not illegal to use a pogo stick next to the grand canyon. Why can’t I take a puff on a joint? Who am I harming?

Now to my main point. We’re in an economic crisis. We’re spending a lot of money on battling imports of drugs (including marijuana), and also spending a lot of money keeping potheads in prison (thanks, prison lobby). That’s two very large drains on our economy to

1. Fund a losing battle. I can go anywhere in almost any town in the US and within an hour, even not knowing anyone, get an eighth of weed. Good job drug war, money well spent. It’s good to know that the taxes I just filed will go to “stopping” me from buying marijuana.
2. Keep pot offenders in prison. Yeah, these people are really dangerous. They are on the edge of the law…sitting on the couch eating chips and giggling. The more money I can spend to keep them locked up, the better. Oh sure, most of them are dealers, but our culture is founded on the principals of capitalism: if a market exists, fill the void and capitalize. Makes sense to me. Nobody would sell pot if nobody wanted to smoke it. Yes it’s illegal, but once again let’s ask ourselves why instead of pointing to a law.

Now imagine a world where the government grew, cultivated, sold & taxed pot. That’s a lot of money we’d make back. Hell even if they raised the price on it, it’d be worth it to just be able to walk into a store and buy it. They could use the revenue from pot to plug the holes caused by battling all the other drugs.

Maybe it’s time to really start thinking about this. If you are against legalization of marijuana, ask yourself why. Anyone who wants to smoke it already does. Show me a person who wants to smoke pot but doesn’t because it’s illegal, and I’ll show you the portal that takes you out of Neverland and back to reality.

Conservative America: you want a smaller government with less services and less control on the population in general. Why not start with drug reform?

In case you haven’t heard, a man, Joe Stack, angry at the IRS crashed a plane into his local IRS chapter. I don’t have much to say about the issue itself. Obviously, I disagree with crashing airplanes, or other means of transportation, into buildings. I also disagree with violence in general. The man left behind a suicide note on his site (which the FBI promptly removed) that detailed his hardships with the government during his life and why he did what he did. I don’t agree with what he did, but, save the last page, I do agree with most of what he said.

I’m posting what’s left of the suicide note on here in the form of images (all that was left of it).

The part that struck me the most:

The communist creed:
  From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
The capitalist creed:
  From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

I’m posting this because I agree with what was said. I believe that America is a wasteland of deceit where gains are privatized, and losses are socialized.

Like I’ve said and believe firmly, violence never solves anything… it continues cyclically and endlessly. It’s important, though, to see why violence happens and not just pass it off as “terrorism.” Yes, terrorism exists, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason behind it, no matter how misguided.

My heart and thoughts go out to those who lost their lives as a result of this incident. Yes, they were part of this unjust, corrupt system, but isn’t everyone? They were obvious targets but we’re all in this together, and it’s not fair they should pay when everyone involved (everyone) is just as guilty as the politicians and corporations.

UPDATE – found the original text, linked on what used to be Joe Stack’s website.

As much as I love science and the idea of a using science to create a cloud of swarming insects that replaces the sky with eternal darkness, I have to protest. I was browsing through the articles on one of my favorite sites hackaday.com when I happened across a post on controlling beetle flight remotely. Well, that’s cool. Someone built a robot beetle that can fly, like in the movies when you see a spy fly that buzzes deep into enemy territory and sniffs out where the terrorist nukes are.

But no, these ain’t no robots. An group of engineers from UC Berkeley “restrained” a beetle, implanted electrodes into its brain, and used a remote to force the creature into controlled flight. I have to say this is a pretty disgusting act. As humans, we’ve now taken another life form, a being with its own free will and consciousness, and stripped it of just about all that makes it alive, and made it dance a jig for us. It still breathes and exists (for how long I wonder) but its very actions are now controlled by some group of people who did it just to see if they could. Congratulations on making the human race as a whole a just bit more repulsive than it was before.

Also, I don’t buy the “relax, it’s just a beetle” bullshit. Torture is torture, it doesn’t matter who it’s happening to. None of us can imagine what it’s like to have electrodes implanted in our brain administering continuous electrical shocks…and to justify a wrong by saying it happened to something small in size, or happened to something with an exoskeleton is no excuse. What makes it so separate from us? It’s a living, breathing, procreating biological machine that feels and responds to its world…just like us. The only real difference between a beetle and a human is that the human falsely thinks there is a difference between the two.

First article from Feb – insect control
Article on flight control – flight control

It is my firm belief that everyone who participated should be subject to remote control neural implants for a day, with a retarded 6 year old behind the controls.

We’ve all heard of proposition 8 in California…the ban on gay marriage. It was a dark, bloody political battle that ended in tears, anger, but also joy and a feeling of sanctity for those that won. Let me say that I do not support prop 8. Not because of the rule itself so much as it being a constitutional amendment, not a law. The very document that lists the rights of the residents of the state of California was amended to tell a specific subset of people that they cannot partake in a religious ceremony that binds them for life.

I don’t support state-sanctioned gay marriage. Not in any way shape or form. I don’t think the state (political state, not geographic state) has the right to marry two men or two women. Neither does it have the right to marry a straight couple though. Marriage, although deeply ingrained in our society, is a religious ceremony. It’s a dance two people do to signify their unending commitment.

The state has absolutely no business supporting this ritual. I believe separation of church and state has been defiled by the state taking it upon itself to say who can marry and who cannot. Is that not up to the specific religion the couple in question are marrying under? What moral right does the state have to support a religious ritual and then only for a specific set of people?

I believe the state has overstepped its bounds. I believe the state, as it already does, should allow civil unions between partners, giving them the applicable tax breaks they would receive as a married couple, but not marry people. Marriage is a religious institution and as such should be completely unrecognized by the state.

Note that this would solve all conflicts surrounding marriage. Two gay men can get married at the devil-worshiping, blood-drinking, child-molesting church down the street, and Mr. Conservative who goes to the bread-eating, jesus-praising, child-molesting church up the street doesn’t have to recognize the two gay men’s marriage. It didn’t happen at his church or under his rules, so in his mind, the marriage can be null and void… but the state gives the two gay men their civil union, and then politely bows out of the conflict, letting the upstanding Christian and the society-destroying gays fight it out between themselves.

Everyone wins, and the state can wash its hands clean of all moral conflict surrounding a religous institution.