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Matrix Mary Sue   
03:01pm 16/10/2008
  OMG, I just realized that Neo is the worst Mary Sue ever.

In an actually published work I can think of, anyway.		  
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snoring   
04:36am 16/10/2008
  anyone know how to get someone to stop snoring? Other than poking them repeatedly or squeezing toothpaste up their nostrils?  
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Song of the South   
02:53am 15/10/2008
  Since at least one of you actually remembers the original Bre'er Rabbit post which is this post's predecessor, I figured I should actually get around to writing this post.

Song of the South was a combination live-action and animation Disney movie released in 1946, centered around Uncle Remus and the Bre'er Rabbit tales. SotS is not generally available in the US--though it is in other countries--due to concerns/allegations that the movie is racist. My interest in the movie ought to be obvious, given that I like the Bre'er Rabbit tales themselves. I wanted to see just how racist the movie was, and if there was any redeeming content. Perhaps the animated bits would be good, I thought.

Luckily for me, the movie has been more widely released in other countries, and through the magic of the internet, even Americans can now see what Disney is trying to hide from them.

Are there racially insensitive parts to the movie? Yes.
Would I describe the movie as a whole as racist? Absolutely not.

If I were a racist, Song of the South is one of the last movies I would let my kids watch. For a movie released in 1946, SotS is remarkably *non* racist. The movie's principle message is of racial and class harmony.

Let me explain by summarizing the movie. (Skip this part if you don't want spoilers.)

7 yr old Johnny and his mom move to his grandmother's plantation because his parents are splitting up. Johnny is distressed and decides to run away and find his dad. On his way, he meets Uncle Remus, who cleverly uses Bre'er Rabbit stories to convince him to go back home to his mom.

Johnny has several more adventures on the plantation, makes friends with a little black boy and a lower-class girl (much to his mother's displeasure,) and learns important life lessons from Uncle Remus's stories. Unfortunately, Johnny's mother misunderstands what's going on, and thinks Uncle Remus is actually responsible for situations he was helping Johnny get out of, and forbids Uncle Remus from talking to Johnny anymore. Uncle Remus decides to leave the plantation.

Johnny, meanwhile, has been trying to figure out what his favorite place in the world is. His little friend the girl says her favorite place is with her father, and Johnny realizes that his favorite place is with Uncle Remus, listening to his stories. But on his way to Uncle Remus's cabin, Johnny spots him leaving in the distance. Distraught at the thought of losing yet another father figure, Johnny recklessly cuts through the pasture with the big angry bull in it, and gets hideously injured.

All of the blacks on the plantation turn out for an all night vigil while Johnny lies sick and insensible in bed. Uncle Remus returns with Johnny's father in tow, thus setting the family situation to rights, and then revives Johnny, who has been asking for him in his sleep.

The film ends with Uncle Remus, Johnny, the poor girl, and the black boy walking off together, holding hands and singing.



One of the most critical accusations leveled against the film is that it glorifies or sanitizes slavery. Well, Uncle Remus was a freedman--the film is set *after* the Civil War. So that's factually untrue true.

However, I think it is accurate to say that the film romanticizes black/white relations in the post-Civil War period. The plantations workers are altogether way too chipper about being plantation workers. They sing and they dance and are so earnestly concerned when the little white boy is hurt. I guarantee that if the little black boy had been gored by the bull, all of the whites wouldn't have gathered around his shitty little hut to stand vigil. But in the movie's defense, it was aimed at children, and Disney may therefore have not thought it appropriate to include some of the nastier sides of life. Which leads to a question of whether it is possible to create a racially sensitive, non-offensive movie with a post-bellum plantation setting and still aim it at children.

Nonetheless, while it's no stellar movie, I still wouldn't call it a bad movie. The racism charges seem overblown (at least to a privileged white chick,) and the overall message of racial and class harmony seems like a far more important and overriding theme. It's the kind of movie which I think could open up opportunities for parents to discuss with their children the fact that life was not as idyllic as it was presented in the movie, that in fact there were many abuses which Walt didn't depict, but that things had still gotten a lot better for people since the war had ended slavery.

It's a bit sad that what's basically a positive message has been lost due to what amount, in my opinion, to imperfections.




Strange Aside: The DVD included a Warner Brothers animated short called "Coal Black an' de Seben Dwarfs." I have NO IDEA what it was doing there, given that WB and Disney are different companies, and that the movies are very different, unless someone said, "Hey, anyone watching SotS must be after old racist cartoons! Let's include some random racist crap!" I assume CBadSD is racist, anyway. It basically made no fucking sense to me at all.

To be slightly more articulate, the art--the way the characters were depicted--was highly racist, or at least in a racist style. The storyline basically followed the traditional Snow White tale. Which results in a cartoon which I simply cannot 'read'. I don't have the cultural context to understand it. And if the arguments I've read on the subject are anything to go by, neither do most people. Some claim the short is a masterpiece of animation, others that it's horribly racist. Perhaps it's both? Neither? I don't know.		  
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Recommend me a Book!   
02:18pm 14/10/2008
  I'll probably be getting some new books for my birthday, so I ask you, dear internet readers, to please recommend me some books.

You've probably gathered most of my interests by now, but I will specify that I prefer non-fiction.

Thank you!		  
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Live Journal   
09:06pm 13/10/2008
  I've been on LJ, what, about four years, now?

Read me!
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So I ask you, my internet friends, what would you like to know about me? What holes can I fill for you? What is confusing or strange or just seemingly missing from this account of my life and thoughts?		  
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Adorability   
02:59am 10/10/2008
  Link is working on his vocabulary.

He'll stand up and point to klarfax and say, "Baba!" or sometimes "Babababa" for good measure. (He's not very good with the D sound, yet.) Then he grins and looks very proud of himself. I think he's also been called me Baba, but hopefully he'll figure out that I'm Mama soon.

There's a shiny part of the tub where he can see a reflection of himself, and yesterday I was pointing at it and saying, "Look, there's a baby." Today he pointed at it and said, "Ba!" So I said, "Yes, that's a baby! Baby!" And he said, "Ba! Ba!" Once or twice he even got the eh sound right instead of making an ah sound. He repeated "Baby" a lot, pointing to his reflection.

This evening I was having some cottage cheese and Link wanted some, but then we ran out of cheese (due to me eating it,) so he started to cry. I ran downstairs and got the cream cheese, which satisfied him. He's been very picky about the eating ever since my mum got here (and totally disrupted our routine,) but he's been practicing more with the spoons. This evening he got his spoon and actually stuck the correct end of it into the cream cheese and managed to get some cheese onto the spoon and then into his mouth. (The rest I basically had to finger feed him, since he wouldn't give back the spoon.)

He got a little bored of the cheese and wandered off down the hallway, so I called out after him, "Link, come back," and he did! He toddled back to me and then turned around in a circle and toddled back to the stairs, until I called him back, and then he came right back, grinning and giggling. We must have played this game for half an hour. Sometimes he toddled out of sight, and then I used the peekaboo voice to call him back. Every time he left I said, "Bye bye," and he said, "Ba ba" or "babababa" back. (The babababa may have been him trying to repeat "bye-bye, baby.")

At one point he picked up the (closed) cream cheese container and took it with him into his playroom, but came back without it. "Where's the cream cheese?" I said. "Go get it. Bring it back." And you know what he did? HE WENT AND GOT IT AND BROUGHT IT BACK!


So okay, all of his words so far are just 'ba', but he is clearly trying to say actual words which are close to that sound, like Da and bye and bae. And he understood me when I told him to come back (and thought coming back and forth was hilarious,) and apparently understood me when I told him to go get the cream cheese. Hooray!

:)		  
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Pop quiz!   
02:21am 09/10/2008
  Q: What's the difference between A Clockwork Orange and The Shock Doctrine?

A: A Clockwork Orange is fiction.		  
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Happy Birthday Linkie!   
05:39am 05/10/2008
  At 5:03 PM Eastern time, baby Link will be one year old!

That's one year of hugs and kisses, one year of cuddles and coos, one year of nursing, co-sleeping, baby-wearing, and love.


I don't normally post the breastfeeding ribbons, but I figure one year is a pretty nice milestone:





  
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Tiny Babies!   
05:04am 05/10/2008
  I made an LJ community for tiny babies:
http://community.livejournal.com/tinybabies/profile

Those of you with tiny babies (or children) are welcome to join!		  
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Other Cancers?   
03:48am 29/09/2008
  I don't begrudge the Breast Cancer sufferers one penny of resources, but what about other cancers? When do we get ribbons for fighting prostate cancer or colon cancer or lung cancer?

I mean, there are a lot of cancers out there. Seems like our focus ought to be spread out a bit more?		  
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The Year of Living Biblically   
04:30pm 28/09/2008
  As promised, I just finished The Year of Living Biblically, by A. J. Jacobs.

This was a fun book. Jacobs (formerly semi-famous for reading the encyclopedia,) sets out to spend a year following the Biblical law as closely as possible. (It helps that Jacobs is ethnically Jewish.)

He enters the project an agnostic, and leaves the project an agnostic, but in the process becomes a more 'reverent' agnostic. It's not so much that he believes in a literal god who lead the Jews out of Israel as that he's very thankful for the good things in life and feels less need to complain about the bad. In a way, he's experienced 'spiritual growth'.

During his journey, Jacobs meets with and learns from various groups who claim to interpret the Bible literally--Orthodox Jews, Hasidim, Samaritans, Amish, Snake Handlers, Creationists, Jerry Falwell-followers, Jehovah's Witnesses, Red Letter Christians, Gay Fundamentalists, etc. And while Jacobs doesn't necessarily agree with them, either on politics or religion, he is surprised to find that most of them are, for the most part, relatively intelligent, nice people.

He also finds that following the Bible literally is impossible. (and not just because stoning adulterers is illegal.) Just looking at the plethora of different groups claiming to literally follow the Bible gives you some inclination to believe that obviously none of them are. Everyone is picking and choosing, no matter how much they try not to. From Jacob's point of view this isn't bad--in fact, it's impossible to avoid--but actually good.

I disagree, (obviously) with some of the more philosophical aspects of the book, but overall I liked it. (Right up until the end, when the author had his two poor defenseless baby sons mutilated in order to form a sacrificial blood covenant with a god whom he doesn't even believe in. Then I wanted to punch Jacobs repeatedly in the face. Upcoming post: Shitty justifications for mutilating your children.)

But anyway, aside from the end, it was good and funny and tasty. I think we humans have a lot to learn from each other if we'll only listen, and that's a lot of what Jacobs is doing--listening. When we listen, we realize that despite the funny hats, or the strange worship services, or the absurd beliefs about 6 days of creation, most of us actually value the same things deep down inside.

I think I like Jacob's approach to religion a little better than Harris's, even if Jacobs does end up tolerating (and committing) more bullshit.

Note: Klarfax thinks I'm being too harsh on Harris. It's not that I disagree with Harris's main thesis as that I think Harris's methodology is not optimal for accomplishing his goal.		  
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Ye Auld Reading Continues   
06:42pm 26/09/2008
  Yes, the self-improvement project continues. At least it gives me something to think about besides poopy diapers. Here are the latest books:

Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams
The End of Faith by Sam Harris
This is your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin
Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Sweetness and Power by Sidney Mintz

Last Chance to See
I've been hoping to find this book for years, and I finally did--in the environmental books section, not science fiction. FUNNY, that. Maybe one of these days I'll figure out where they shelve The Meaning of Liff, too.

Anyway, LCtS is a good, short, funny book about Douglas Adams' and friends' somewhat quixotic quest to see a few highly endangered species of animals from around the world before they vanish. They trek through the jungle in search of gorillas, seek flightless parrots, encounter Komodo dragons, etc. There's no real plot per se, but it is a nice book about the connections between man and nature and how we ought to do more for the planet and stop senselessly clubbing animals over the head just because we can. I liked it, and do recommend it.

Unfortunately, the book was published 18 years ago, so doubtless some of the species (such as the Yangtze River Dolphin) have gone extinct since then.


The End of Faith
You've probably heard of this book, especially if you run in atheist circles. We first bought it a couple of years ago, but never finished it, so I decided to restart it from the beginning--a worthwhile decisions.

Harris's writing style is ruthlessly intelligent, vivid, and an absolute joy to read, regardless of the subject matter or whether or not you happen to agree with him. The man could write about shit and it'd be good. I really enjoyed reading this one.

The book itself has some problems. The chief is structural--the book's title only gives away half the content. The other half, which I think Harris views as just as important or at least almost as important, gets lost in the hoopla.

You see, Harris isn't just railing against religion. He is railing, specifically, against faith--that is, belief in something you can't prove. "I have faith that my grandmother was a polar bear," is an idiotic statement unless you yourself are a polar bear. However, and this is an important caveat, Harris is just fine with--and even encourages--religious pursuits which are not built on faith. Harris believes that certain branches of Buddhism, for example, are based on empirical observation of mental states, and that mediation, reflection on the nature of consciousness, and general efforts to be more loving and compassionate (that is, to have the Buddha nature,) will make humanity better. What he really wants is to replace Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc., with Buddhism.

This is a point which tends to get lost, I think, in discussions about this book, and for good reason. The people to whom the first part appeals--the clarion call to do away with faith, to not tolerate even moderate religious beliefs as idiotic superstitions--will appeal chiefly to hardcore atheists. More agnostic and soft-core atheists are likely to disagree. However, Harris's advocacy of the benefits of Buddhism are likely to fall on deaf ears among the hard-core atheists, who tend not to like anything of that nature. His Buddhism beliefs are going to appeal more to agnostics and soft-core atheists. So the book has an intrinsic aiming problem. It's too halves are each alienating to half its audience.

The second problem has more to do with the book's inherent theory. Harris posits that the bad things people do which seem to be justified by their faiths are, in fact, inspired by their faiths. Fine, that's a reasonable premise. However, the good things people of faith do are somehow not inspired by their faiths. So Osama Bin Ladin is operating on faith, but Mother Theresa wasn't. This logical inconsistency makes Harris's message hard to swallow.

Third, even if I did agree with Harris, so what? America's not about to change, and neither is the Middle East. Even if mainstream, moderate religious folk are the problem, saying so isn't going to get them to convert--if anything, it's likely to drive them away from moderatism and turn them against atheism. If we want to 'win', if we think there's anything worth winning in the theological/rational debate between atheists and theists, then we have to make arguments which are going to convince theists--not atheists. They're already atheists.

(Incidentally, I think this habit of preaching to the choir goes for almost all major groups which start trying ostensibly to get converts--their preaching is really aimed at, or functions to, shore up internal support for the group, rather than actually converting anyone. But that's a subject for another time.

(I am currently reading The Year of Living Biblicaly, which makes an interesting counter-point to TEoF, but which I don't plan on discussing until I've finished it.)



This is your Brain on Music is a pretty straightforward book about the connections between neurology and music. I bought it because my overall knowledge of music is shit. I should take a picture of our music collection sometime. We've probably got about 200 CDs, 98% of which are goth, metal, industrial, alternative, or something close. No jazz. No classical. I can't even think of any 'classic rock'. A smattering of random stuff (some African music, some modern Indian, some Celtic,) makes up the other 2%. And I am thrilled just to have a decent grasp of this tiny selection of music we've got.

TiYBoM isn't the most thrilling book, but it's interesting and informative. It talks about how we process music in all different parts of the brain--some parts for beat and others for, uh, texture (I forget the exact word,) some parts for reading notes and others for performing. Nothing highly controversial, but if you like music theory or neurology, you might find it interesting.


Rich Dad, Poor Dad
You've probably heard of this book. I found it lying on the sidewalk, along with A Clockwork Orange and a science book I gave my brother for Xmas. RDPD is one of many, many books which could easily have been about 1/10 the length. Actually, the whole book could have been about 10 pages. But then, they probably wouldn't have sold many books.

0. Rich people and poor people think differently about money. Stop thinking like a poor. Start thinking rich.
1. Learn about finances. No really, go learn. There are books about it.
2. Gather assets, not liabilities. Assets are things that make money for you.
3. The best assets are things which are themselves stuff, like rental properties.
4. If you can't do that, a savings account and some bonds are better than nothing.
5. Poor people make incomes and pay income taxes. Rich people avoid taxes.
6. Start a corporation to shield your money.
7. Be smart, creative, and work hard. Make your money work for you to acquire assets and turn them into more money.

That's about it. Most of the rest of the book is fluff, but there are some helpful diagrams. The book is old enough that you can probably get it very cheap, in which case it's probably worth a read. It's a pretty short book, after all.


Sweetness and Power
This is the only book I really can't recommend, unless you have a serious hankering for anthropological history. The book's premise is interesting enough, it's just that the book is about three times longer than it ought to be and the author doesn't have a very engaging style.

(Sidenote: all academics should be forced to attend creative writing classes before being allowed to inflict their writings on students. The difference in quality between mainstream authors and academics is astounding. Not that Mintz has difficulties formulating sentences or hasn't mastered the English language--on a technical level, his English is perfect, much more reasonable than, say, my translation of Thucydides or Milton. But the writing is dull and unengaging. It lacks the vivid impact of Harris or the amusement of Adams. It's just bland.)

But the book does have some interesting points, which I will try to lay out for you here so that you may benefit from my effort :)

1. Sugar cane was first cultivated something like 8,000 years ago, in Indonesia or somewhere nearby. It spread to India and was carried by the Muslims to Spain and Sicily and North Africa.

2. Around 400 CE, people figured out how to process cane into sugar. Maybe earlier.

3. In the late 1400s, Europeans began farming sugar cane on Atlantic Islands. Soon, they discovered places like Jamaica and Cuba, and they really started farming.

4. Sugarcane plantations used slave labor and were sort of pre-industrial capitalist forms of proto-industrial capitalism. Sure, they were basically farms, but they were highly industrial farms.

5. Sugar originally reached England around 1,000 CE. It was regarded more as a medicine or a spice than as a food itself.

6. Over time, as more sugar was grown and processed, more and more sugar reached England. It went from being a rarity to a luxury to something everyone eats.

7. At first, the plantations had monopolistic protections, which made the owners very rich. Later, the free-trade advocates won out, which made sugar cheaper.

8. Today, the British eat about 105 lbs of sugar per year--or 2 lbs per weeks. DUDE. (So do we, btw, if we include corn sugars and such.)

9. The widespread adoption of sugar into the British diet was due to:
a. The British diet was bland and boring and sucked ass
b. Sugar is tasty and affords quick calories
c. Many working-class households had no one with time to cook, so they had to make due with pre-packaged jam and bread,
d. People were poor and sugar was a cheap way to flavor meals.

10. Sugar made the assimilation of other new goods like chocolate and tea easier, because it made them tasty.

11. Sugar is an extremely calorie-productive crop.

12. People have made some pretty nifty sculptures out of sugar. This was more common back when sugar was a luxury item, because people would use it to show off their wealth.

13. Sugar (and other foods) has radically altered the 'core-fringe' dichotomy of the English diet.

14. The core-fringe dichotomy refers to the idea of one particular food staple, such as corn or rice or bread being the core of the diet, and everything else being essentially condiments. For example, in Japanese, the word for 'rice' also means 'food'. Rice IS food. Everything else is just flavoring. Likewise, Medieval peasants ate, like, a pound of bread a day (and then died of malnutrition.) Today, the notion of core-fringe is dying away as we consume more and more things like cheese, milk, meat, vegetables, fruit, eggs, sugar, and so on.

15. Damn we eat a lot of sugar.		  
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Memeage   
06:42pm 26/09/2008
  It's that one where you put people's names next to the numbers and they have to email you to find out what the prompts were. Since I don't have time to respond to requests, I'm just putting the prompt under a cut and you can read it if you want.

I feel a little awkward filling this out, in part because it exposes my ignorance of so many of you. As a skim through my friends list, I'm like, "Now, who's that person again? What do they do?" So if I've left someone out, or not picked someone for an apparently obvious category, please forgive me. It's not intentional.

1. qcjeph
2. mr_magpie
3. No one
4. audesapere
5. me
6. lowellboyslash
7. talesinsdaughtr
8. chasethedragon
9. dr_whom, novalis, sulemankhalid
10. willgraham
11. 7toe?
12. chasethedragon, adarklake, mr_magpie
13. toddandpenguin
14. winzig / atomicsappertom
15. klarfax
16. rdhdsnippet
17. willowtigris
18. ophblekuwufu / khyros
19. atomicsappertom
20. daobear, thekinginyellow
21. Don't really know that much about you folks
22. Likewise
23. Link
24. chaotic_nipple
25. adarklake
26. denimskater
27. ophblekuwufu
28. denimskater
29. Klarfax
30. Your turn!

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Who Are You?   
06:26pm 26/09/2008
  Who are you?
Where did you come from?
Why am I on your friends list?

I ask simply because from time to time I get friended by apparently random people, and by this point there are a bunch of people on my flist whom I only vaguely recognize. You all seem like nice people, but I'm curious about who you are and why you friended me.

Obviously if I've known you for years like mr_magpie or novalis, I know who you are and you don't need to respond :P		  
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Linky Update   
03:39pm 24/09/2008
  My sweet little baby is a baby no more--he is a toddler! He is toddling all over the place.

On Saturday he said his first word, Blue Key (though it came out as more like 'loo ee'.) He was playing with these big plastic keys, and klarfax held up one of the keys and said, "See this? It's a blue key. Blue key." and Link said, "loo ee!" Then he took the keys and played with them for a moment and then held back up the blue key and said, "Loo ee!"

(He has since forgotten which one is the blue key.)

Link is cutting his third tooth, on the upper left front side of his gums.

He is eating lots of solids these days, but he still seems to prefer peas. He has a sippy cup which he is starting to sort of figure out.

Every day is a new adventure! Often a poopventure.

Lots o' pictures under the cut.
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03:17pm 24/09/2008
   
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Evolution part IV   
02:27pm 23/09/2008
  Now that that's all out of the way, let's move on to some actual evolutionary theorizing, as mentioned in passing three evolution posts earlier.

I'll begin with the obvious caveats, because otherwise people will bring them up and then I will have to say them anyway.

1. Evolution is not 'perfect'--that is, it does not create the same evolutionarily advantageous outcomes in every member of the species. Just because there is a general trend doesn't mean that everyone will follow it. Obviously reproduction is evolutionarily favored, and yet some people (and non-people animals) are born infertile, asexual, or gay. If evolution worked 'perfectly', then evolutionarily non-advantageous things would never happen--but then, we wouldn't have evolution at all. Variation, mutation, and sometimes even non-helpful mutations are just a part of the process.

2. Continuing from point one, evolution does not differentiate entirely between the sexes. Even if males and females have very different incentives, there will be some biological, genetic overlap. For example, men have nipples, even though they don't make milk. (Unfortunately, they can still get breast cancer.) Like wise, some apparently 'female' people will act in very 'male' ways--and vice versa.

3. Evolution takes a long, long time. It has therefore equipped us not to live in the modern world, with skyscrapers and zippers and epidurals, but in the conditions of the African savanna. So when I say something like, "birth hurts," I'm talking about birth for most people throughout most of history, not modern medicalized births with epidurals. The last few seconds of technological innovation have not had time to have an effect on evolution. (Though we may see a bit of evolution caused by, say, the Black Plague.)

4. Evolution is not destiny. Evolution may incline a population generally in a specific direction, but it has little to say about the everyday behaviors of specific people. Culture, economics, and personality all play a role sculpting people's eventual actions.

5. Evolution doesn't imply any conclusions about morals or what society should do/try to get people to do.

6. Everything explored herein, therefore, is only *generalizations* about broad human behaviors. It says nothing about what individuals do and why.


So what does evolution teach us to expect about human reproductive behaviors?

Let's start from the beginning. What do we know?

Cut for length:
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What is the Danger in Ignoring Evolution?   
06:50pm 22/09/2008
  A common argument I hear in response to the idea of applying evolutionary theory to examinations of human activities is that this is, in essence, dangerous. Even if we do our best to be good and not draw stupid conclusions, other people can--and will. For example, women and men seem to score differently on math tests. While men tend to score better, they also tend to score worse than women--that is, there is a greater range of math scores for men. Both more of the high-scorers and more of the low-scorers tend to be men, while women tend to be more clustered in the center. This result tends to get repeated in the media and popular conversation as, "Men are better at math than women." Bollocks.

Since evolutionary theory is risky, why not just ignore it altogether? Admit that we believe in evolution, and then quietly ignore it as far as human behavior is concerned? After all, it's not like we can do anything about evolution.


To me, this is a risky proposal. I think we have as much to lose by ignoring evolution as we have by over-using it.

For example, I think human infants have evolved to need a lot of cuddling. This has to do with the habit of our primate ancestors of holding their babies close while swinging through the treetops. Were we descended from alligators, our infants would not need cuddling.

I happen to think that cuddling is a biological need for infants, just slightly less important than food.

Many people, however, seem to think that cuddling is just something we teach our children, and a bad thing at that. These people disdain to hold their babies, keeping them in carseats and strollers and playpens and god knows what else and at all expenses making sure not to touch them.

A greater number of people, of course, are simply in the habit of not holding their babies--they've learned from those around them and the moralizers sternly warning that they must beware lest they 'spoil' their babies. They don't mean to neglect their babies, they're just ignorant.

If people were more conscious of the evolutionarily-based needs of babies (and there is good research to back up the notion that infants need to be held,) then the practice of not holding them would simply fall away. People would gladly cuddle their babies, happy to be providing an evolutionarily-necessary part of their baby's world.

Instead, millions of babies are harmed every day because people are ignorant of this simple evolutionary trait, and because babies don't know how to talk and tell us what they need.


Example 2:
In my comments on the previous post, I mentioned to locke the story of two of my cousins. They're identical twins. One of them was damaged at birth, rendering her mildly retarded. The other was not. The non-retarded twin has succeeded in life. She has held exciting, fun jobs. She enjoys a rich and intelligent mental life. The damaged sister lived with her parents well into her 30s. She cannot finish college. She cannot pursue high-paying jobs. Even the condo she now lives in her parents gave her, because she doesn't make enough to afford it.

One of the founding principles of liberal society is that "All [people] are created equal." But if all people are created equal, then society owes the damaged sister nothing. She should work hard and study just like her sister did, and become successful. If we are all created equal, then her failures in life are her own fault.

She was born with brain trauma. She was not born equal.

Sometimes you hear people say things like, "People on welfare are just stupid."* Well, after we account for many other factors, maybe some of them are. Some of us are born with more mental powers than others, and the not-lucky ones have trouble getting and keeping good jobs. Of course we need to look first at matters like discrimination and education, but it seems pretty obvious that people who are just born with less brainpower are going to have a harder time of things. The critical thing, though, is that this isn't their fault. We shouldn't blame people for the way they were born. They deserve nice lives just as much as anyone else, regardless of the brain they were born with.

*Note: the majority of people on welfare are white.


Example 3:
I have often heard people argue or claim things like, "Well, if my spouse were terribly injured and comatose/severely disabled/unable to fuck, I'd stay by the regardless, because I love them." For richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health. These people go on to criticize people like the husband of that lady in Florida who was in a coma for 15 years because he dared to meet someone new and go on with his life. Apparently so long as his wife is in a vegetative brain-dead state maintained solely through life support machines, he should be eunuch because of some vows they said years ago.

My own mother has suffered because of this assumption. She spent 13 years caring for my disabled (adopted) father and even now feels a great amount of guilt because she dared to fall in love with someone who could actually talk. There are many, many people who would tell her that she is a bad person, that she must not have truly loved my father, and that they would be much better, more moral people in her place.

FUCK THEM.

*ahem* sorry.

I am not arguing that people *should* leave their spouses just because they're disabled or they've hit a rough patch, but I do think that if people understood the evolutionary connections between sex and love (sex is why love exists,) they would be more accepting of the fact that sexless relationships generally don't work, and not because the people in them are somehow morally inferior. There are just biological components to love which we can't change, and all the devotion in the world won't make a comatose partner into a real partner. The poor people in these situations do not need to be denigrated and insulted and made to feel like shit just for wanting to be loved and have normal relationships. People need to accept that biology plays a role in love and help these people rather than hurt them.



Ultimately, our theories give us information on how the world works, and every theory therefore has useful applications (string theory perhaps excepted.) There are dangers to misusing evolutionary theory, but I think there are dangers also to ignoring it. In order to treat people fairly, we must first understand each other. Why we do what we do. If we assume that differences between people are merely cultural or personal when they actually aren't, then we can end up treating them just as unfairly as if we assumed biological differences when the differences were merely economic or social.

We must consider all of our theories carefully, but we cannot routinely deny ourselves access to information just because some people might misuse it.		  
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Evolution Redux   
01:17pm 22/09/2008
  My previous post on human evolution was not meant to focus on any particular behaviors or theories of humans evolving, merely on the notion that humans have evolved, and thus probably have evolved various behaviors. It stands to reason. I gave some examples simply to be examples of the sorts of conclusions one might draw from an evolutionary approach to human behaviors--examples which seem, to me, to be fairly benign and unremarkable.

I do not approve, of course, of neglecting any theory with as much world-explanatory power as evolution. The biggest obstacles to most folks admitting the usefulness of evolutionary theories is simply that they don't like the conclusions, or potential conclusions. To many Christians and other religious folk, for example, the idea that humans descended from apes, rather than being specially formed out of dirt by the hand of god, disproves their Bible stories. Further, if we descended from apes and there was no special creation, then how were we ever in the Garden of Eden and how did we ever Fall from Grace? To these people, Evilution seriously calls into question the whole notion of creation, sin, and thus, ultimately, Christ's redemption.

Of course, Pope John Paul II declared that if god wanted to use evolution as a tool to make the species on earth, god certainly could have done so, being omniscient and shit and the church not wanting to have another Galileo-style embarrassment on their hands. Whether or not evolution actually challenges your religious beliefs has to do with how intelligently you interpret the conclusions.

Liberals, on the other hand, tend to have slightly different problems with the results of evolutionary theory. It's fine to claim that when female mice take care of their young, this is an evolutionarily-acquired and reinforced trait, but suggest that human females might do the same thing for the same reason, and suddenly you're on the side of those who would try to compel women, either by law or social stigmatization, out of the paid workforce and into household duties. The idea that just because there is a broad, species-wide trend in a particular direction, we should therefore *force* people in that direction, is absurd, and has nothing to do with evolutionary theory.

Likewise, people fear that, for example, women will be shown to be "less adept" at math than men, or blacks will be shown to be worse at the SAT than whites, by some strange application of evolutionary theory, thus giving people excuses to not fight against discrimination and racism, but instead to increase it. These fears are valid, given that people have tried to pull such bullshit in the past.

However, if there are indeed any differences in populations of humans which have genetic causes, it will not benefit us to pretend that they do not exist. Our first order of business should be to see what exists because of social, economic, and other forms of pressure, but our second order should be to see what remains because of nature. If we should ever be so lucky as to perfect society (and I do not think we shall,) then what differences remain can only be attributable to either individual failings, or biology--and I do not think it is good to blame people for their biology.

In areas of human behavior where there is still quite a lot of cultural pressure--and in areas where there is a great amount of variation around the world--then there is little of use that evolution can say at this point. However, there are still a good number of behaviors which are found all around the world, and which can be evolutionarily analyzed. Love, faith, language, music, and altruism are all good examples.

In our application of the theory, we should endeavor to hold ourselves to 'facts'. Value judgments--Women are better than men because they do FOO; Black people are superior to whites because they do BAR--do not belong. If we find that a particular environment has caused one group of people to evolve a better sense of direction than others, or better oxygen absorption in their blood, or superior music skills, this says nothing about the morals or inherent worth of the people themselves. We should not allow our theories to be tainted by moralizing, nor to let the moralizing of others taint our theories (or discourage us from making them.)

We must always pursue the best theories, regardless of what others conclude from them. That is what science demands.		  
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Corporate Morality   
02:28am 18/09/2008
  This post was inspired by a post not too long ago in a friend's journal.

To what extent do we expect corporations to act in a moral manner? Do we expect them to do things which could impact their profits?

Let's suppose we have a hypothetical company. We'll call it Fambercrombie and Itch, or FI. FI is run by aliens who have no preferences whatsoever between humans. We're *all* kind of disgusting to them, what with our lack of tentacles and hair. But the aliens are determined to make as much money as possible by selling us clothes. How can they best go about this?

They could go the Walmart way, and try to sell cheap clothes to everyone. (Hey, it works for Walmart.)

Or they could target a specific part of the population and try to market clothes exclusively to them--say, rich people.

In crafting their product's image to try to appeal to rich (or at least snobbish) people, do they cross a moral boundary if they only portray attractive, slim, white people in their ads? Or if they actively discourage 'the wrong sorts of people' from buying their clothes? What if they simply don't make clothes in certain sizes so that they won't be seen on fat (and thus socially lower-status) people?

In hiring and distributing their sales force, our aliens may have heard that people considered 'attractive' have better luck selling things. (The evidence I've seen supports this.) So the aliens decide to only hire people whom the rich humans find attractive for their stores (it turns out that the humans generally flee in terror when confronted with the aliens themselves, given their slimey green skin and phallic tentacles.) Is this acceptable? Soon, though, the aliens realize that some people are only needed for stocking the merchandise, not interacting with customers, so they don't need to only hire 'attractive' people--they can hire all sorts of people, and simply put the more 'attractive' ones in front and the less 'attractive' ones in the back. This way, they maximize their sales without having to pay more for attractive people to do the stocking (attractive salespeople, since they can sell more product, are naturally in slightly higher demand and thus can command higher wages.) Should we consider that acceptable? What if the stock people are paid less than the sales folk? What if the sales folk are working on commission, and just happen to end up paid more?

And what if the owners of the company aren't aliens, but are humans? Does that change matters? Americans? Foreigners?

Where do the company's moral obligations begin and end? Does it have any? Should society dictate the company's hiring and marketing practices? What do you think?		  
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