Give Up on Entropy - It's Gone Cold

Many years ago, when I began going back to church as an impressionable college freshman, I was subjected to the attempts of some Christians to use some nifty jiu-jitsu against science and as an argument for the existence of God. I'm sure you've heard it...it's an old one, but it's still used. It goes like this: Since the second law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy increases (entropy being another way of saying chaos or disorder), the fact that life on the earth has become more ordered, or complex, over time, must suggest that complex forms of life, in fact life itself, could not have come about through natural means. Here is a quote from ChristianAnswers.net:

Naturalistic Evolutionism requires that physical laws and atoms organize themselves into increasingly complex and beneficial, ordered arrangements. Thus, over eons of time, billions of things are supposed to have developed upward, becoming more orderly and complex.

However, this basic law of science (2nd Law of Thermodynamics) reveals the exact opposite. In the long run, complex, ordered arrangements actually tend to become simpler and more disorderly with time. There is an irreversible downward trend ultimately at work throughout the universe. Evolution, with its ever increasing order and complexity, appears impossible in the natural world.

For a large percentage of my life I believed this argument and used it in my preaching. I did not ever question it. If you, like me, have heard, and perhaps found solace in this argument, I am sorry to be the one to show you that it is false.

Evolution in fact does not go against the 2nd law of thermodynamics, simply because "The order of life takes place amid great chaos, and the existence of life-forms does not appreciably alter the measure of entropy in the larger system in which life has evolved...In other words, the order represented by the existence of life-forms is insignificant in terms of measuring overall entropy...Evolution is a process, but it is not a closed system. It is subject to outside influence, and indeed draws upon the chaos in which it is embedded. So the Law of Increasing Entropy does not rule out the emergence of life and intelligence" (Kurzwell, Ray, 1999, The Age of Spiritual Machines, 12-13).

And so the argument for God's existence from the 2nd law of thermodynamics has gone cold. No doubt it will continue to be utilized by those who wish to prove his existence, but now you know better. At least I do.

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Take This Job and Love It

A new survey conducted by The Conference Board tells us that Americans hate their jobs more than ever. Is this because jobs are becoming more detestable by the day? I think not. Could it be because more Americans than ever have higher expectations than ever? Probably.

Consider if you will the men and women of yesteryear. No need to go back centuries, only a few decades. What if we surveyed the American population coming out of the Depression? "Sir, are you satisfied with your job here in this noisy factory, fitting doohickies to the same whatzises 500 times a day?" Are you crazy? I get to feed my family. Who gives a damn about satisfaction?

Let's ask that post-WWII lady over there in that huge corporate tower, typing up her bosses memos. "Ma'am. Are you satisfied with your job?" Are you kidding? With the extra money I'm making here I can afford to get my kids some decent clothes. I love this job!

OK, I'm speculating on hypothetical people's hypothetical responses to hypothetical questions. However, the statistics do show that people in the recent past liked their jobs more than people today do, and the trend is most pronounced among the youngest category of workers. No one can doubt that jobs have gotten better, so it must be something about the people that's making the difference, and I contend that it has to do primarily with the unrealistic expectations foisted upon us by the media.

Jobs are no longer about feeding and clothing our families. They are about having the money to buy a $50,000 Lexus, a 70-inch plasma HD TV, and the latest video game console. They are about being pampered at work, having the flexibility to come and go as we please, and the opportunity to work at something that gives us a sense of complete fulfillment.

Among workers under the age of 25, only 39 percent say they are satisfied with their jobs. They have grown up in a time of plenty, when you can get a job if you want a job and the basic necessities are guaranteed, job or no job. Consider that these halcyon days may not be continuous. We may again be forced to endure periods of less than idyllic circumstances. Perhaps the day will come when we will have to take this job and love it.

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Wear Them for Weeks - Washing Not Necessary

Yes, you read that right! Men, lend me your ears (or eyes) and I will give you a glimpse of a brighter, cleaner tomorrow.

Browsing LiveScience.com, I discovered this wonderful news. We already know that men don't like to do laundry, correct? That is why men tend to look for women who will do this job for them. These women are called "wives." If a man is without a "wife," he is apt to wear his underwear days past their expiration date. Unless he is going on a date with a prospective "wife," in which case he will purchase a new 3-pack of underwear. Well, very soon, this type of disgusting behavior will no longer be necessary.

It seems that the military (and thank God for the military, amen?) has spent more than $20 million to develop a fabric that was initially intended to "protect soldiers from biological weapons." The leap of imagination was not very large, then, for what more deadly biological weapon could there be than a man's 2-weeks-worn-yet-never-washed underwear?

Nanoparticles (that word is going to become so ubiquitous that you will vomit copiously whenever you hear it) are attached to the fabric, then special stink-fighting chemicals are attached to the nanoparticles. These chemicals repel water, oil and bacteria, the very ingredients that eventually force men to discard their repellent undergarments.

So, how long will these things be wearable? According to LiveScience, they will be wearable for weeks, hygienically, without washing. Praise the Lord! Where can I get some? This article in the Telegraph informs us that they should be in sporting goods stores within a year. Keep your eyes peeled.

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A Few Things You Must Know to Survive Alongside the Other Gender

This won't be a Mars and Venus kind of thing. We don't care about the reasons why we are the way we are. We only care about the way we are. That's because this is being written by a man. We care about surviving the opposite sex. If you think you can do better than that, you are wrong. When all is said and done, making it through is all you can hope to do. That's because men and women are like cats and dogs. (Except that we can get together and make babies; cats and dogs can't do that.) Cats and dogs can learn to get along. In my home we have a cat and a dog. The dog was always cool about the cat, but the cat initially hated the dog, and probably still does, but has learned to hide his hatred and may even be neutral by now.

Let's go over some of the most important differences you must understand in order to survive the opposite sex.

Talking

Men do not like to talk. Period. Do not attempt to psychoanalyze this. It doesn't matter why, because there is nothing you, or anyone else, can do to change it. Men do not like to talk, ever. Not on the phone, not in the morning, not in the car, and not because it's boring. Men find it almost painful to have to talk. Yes, they will talk when it is absolutely necessary, but they will never like doing it. For men, all communication should be short and sweet. They want to get the job done and get on with whatever else they need to do.

Women, live to talk. I didn't say "love to," I said "live to." There's a subtle yet profound difference. It's almost impossible to find a woman who is not talking. Women have even been known to talk during sex, and not the dirty talk that men dream of, but the most prosaic, practical kind of talk you can imagine. A speechless woman was not so rare before cell phones, but now they can talk no matter where they are or what they are doing. Next time you are out on the road, see if you can find a woman who is not on the phone. They will be in the minority, I can promise you. This is not necessarily a problem. It only becomes a problem when women want men to talk, too.

Sex

For men, sex is primarily a biological necessity. Pressure must find release. That about sums it up. However that can be done, it does need to be done on a semi-regular basis. This is not to say that men don't enjoy it. They most certainly do. They enjoy it a lot. And they would like it if women enjoyed it too. (Sadly, this is often not the case, but more about that later.) Men are aroused by visual cues, just as Pavlov's dog salivated at the ringing of a bell, except that men don't need to be conditioned; they come this way fresh out of the box.

Women need love, closeness, emotional connection. If all that is happening, then sex may result, but it is not a requirement and may not even be missed. Since men do not know what those words even mean, they can only obtain sex by feigning these qualities with a modicum of accuracy. Women are aroused, to the degree that that is even possible, by feelings of being worshiped by men. They need to feel that they are the most special thing in the world to a man. Men are able to achieve this state of mind only at certain times, like when they want to have sex, or when they have a near-death experience. For women, this limited capacity is troubling.

Self-Esteem

Men think they are great, while women know that men are jackasses. In their heart of hearts, men fear that women are right about this.

Women have learned to appear confident, but they are supremely lacking in self-esteem. This may be why they need men to worship them. The fact that men have demeaned women for millennia may also have something to do with it.

Appearance

Women care very much about their appearance. They especially love shoes, though the reasons for this are not clear. A new outfit for a woman will make her feel like a princess. Makeup is also very important to women. In fact, many men have been frightened by seeing a woman without her makeup for the very first time.

Men do not care about their appearance at all. Men only care about being comfortable. Men care about their appearance only inasmuch as it might persuade women to have sex with them.

Conclusions

So what can you do about these immutable differences between the genders (I almost said species...oops)? Compromise. Men, give it some effort. Women, don't expect so much. OK?

Disclaimer: This entire essay is satirical and should in no way be construed to say anything whatsoever about my relationship with my wife, whom I love very, very, very much.

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Everything You Thought You Knew About Time Travel is Wrong!

It's Saturday afternoon. You are perhaps, at this moment, engaged in some outdoor frivolity, while I sit before my computer screen straining to force some cogent ideas out of my head, through my hands and into digital life. Although I am envious and resentful, I will, in fact, write something. However, it will be quite fanciful and silly, I am certain, so be prepared. Yes, everything you always thought you knew about time travel is wrong. A bold statement, no? I'm prepared to defend it.

In particular, I'm referring to travel into the future. If you've seen the original movie, "The Time Machine," or any of scores of scifi flicks featuring this trick, the mental image you have is probably of a scientist climbing into some sort of machine. After he (or she) gets comfortable, he takes a final, emotional look at his laboratory, not knowing if he'll be able to return to this time. Then, he gingerly moves a control stick forward, and the machine begins to throb and pulsate with power. As we look on from the point of view of someone standing in the lab, the machine, with our intrepid scientist strapped in, suddenly vanishes. If we shift our perspective to that of the scientist, we see things around us moving faster and faster as time is accelerated.

Well, I don't think that's how it would happen at all. Here's how I see it.

In fact, the scientist and his time machine would not disappear. As he accelerates through time, he would seem to us to have become a statue, frozen and moveless. He would remain in that seeming stasis until his machine's mad dash through time decelerated to its normal rate. If you are very patient, however, and willing to peer closely at the frozen scientist for long, boring days, you will see him move, ever so slowly. He blinks his eyes, but that takes a week to accomplish. Amazing!

Out of a sense of loyalty, you and your friends do your best to protect the scientist from any changes to his physical circumstances. His mortgage must be paid. His home must be maintained. For there he sits, as seemingly unchanging as a sphinx.

Why must it be this way? Simple. Our scientist had simply found a way to slow down the passage of time in his immediate vicinity, relative to the rest of the world. The result is that the world around him moves through time much more quickly than he. Thus, he appears (to you) to stand still, while you appear (to him) to fly about almost too quickly to be visible at all. Until his journey ends. His timepiece tells him that only an hour has passed, and yet, the clock on the table tells him that years have gone by. He has arrived in the future!

In a way, when you go to sleep tonight, and your consciousness closes its eyes, you will regain consciousness in the future. (This isn't usually the way it feels because we are somehow aware of the passage of time even when we sleep.) But if you were to be knocked out, or if you fall into a particularly deep sleep, when morning comes it will seem to you as if you went to sleep just a moment ago, and here it is, time to get up.

Think about it. If you disagree, leave a comment. I hope you enjoyed your Saturday!

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Can Karnak the Magnificent Find Osama?

In may continuing quest to root out myth and replace it with truth, I now come to the question of psychic ability. Is it real? Can anyone really find lost things using some mysterious mental ability? Can people bend spoons and see the future? And find Osama?

This article in the Daily Mail caught my eye. The title: Psychics 'hired to find Bin Laden.' Britain's Ministry of Defence (yes, they spell it with a "c") "conducted an experiment to see if volunteers could 'see' objects hidden inside and envelope," hoping that positive results would allow them to find the terrorist mastermind and perhaps even elusive WMD. Sadly the experiment proved futile, but did cost the British taxpayers £18,000.

First, let's get a better definition of what we're talking about. According to the Skeptic's Dictionary:

Extrasensory perception (ESP), is "perception occurring independently of sight, hearing, or other sensory processes. People who have extrasensory perception are said to be psychic. It is commonly called ESP, a term popularized by J. B. Rhine, who began investigating the phenomenon at Duke University in 1927. ESP refers to telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and in recent years, remote viewing and clairaudience. The existence of ESP and other paranormal powers such as telekinesis, are disputed, though systematic experimental research on these subjects, known collectively as psi, has been ongoing for over a century in parapsychology."

In an article I wrote earlier titled "Human Gullibility – How Healthy is Your Skeptic?" I spoke of the need to guard the entrance to the pool of ideas you believe. Should this one be in your pool? I think not, and here's how I arrive at that conclusion.

I will only allow an idea into the pool of my beliefs when I am convinced by empirical evidence that it is demonstrably true. It seems to me that to do otherwise, that is, to believe things that are unsupported by evidence is a manifestly debilitating practice. How can I navigate the world successfully if my vision is obscured by ideas that are either untrue or unproven? To live my life I must continually be making decisions and choices. To make the best possible decisions and choices, doesn't it stand to reason that I need the best possible information at hand? And so I choose to stake my life choices upon ideas that I have the strongest reasons to believe are in fact true.

Someone may reply to the above statement by saying, "What's the harm in believing something that makes you happy? Didn't you tell your kids that Santa was the one bringing them presents at Christmas time?" A fair question. Certainly, I have no problem with believing something that is false when there is in fact no harm that can come from it. When children believe in Santa, that's fine. But if one of my kids was about to send a letter containing a $20 bill to the North Pole because Santa needed the money, I would have a problem. My child would be making a relatively consequential choice that was based on a falsehood. Do you see the difference?

When I used to spend 10% of my income, many hours of my time, and quite a few calories of my available energy on church and church-related activities, I was making a very significant investment. If the supernatural claims of the Bible are true, the investment would be a good one. If they are false, then it would not.

But what kinds of evidence should I base my decisions on? There are those who would fault me for using empirical evidence as my standard. But what other standard should I use? The scientific method of verifying the veracity of an idea or theory based on observation and experiment is the only way I know of to have any confidence about that idea's truth or falsehood.

Back to ESP. As far as I have been able to discover, no one has ever demonstrated, by observation and repeatable experiment, the validity of ESP. While there apparently have been tests that showed, for example, that "humans could alter the behavior of random number producing machines very slightly, changing about 2 or 3 flips out of 10,000" (Wikipedia), it is also true that "the most compelling and repeatable results are all small to moderate statistical results" (ibid).

All this leads me to the conclusion that there may be some minute effects that are repeatable, but anything significant is most likely non-existent. You can't find Bil Laden by using ESP. If you could, he would have been found by now.

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Come On. Get Happy. Now!

Everyone suffers from the blues now and then. (Hey, I think Neil Diamond had a song about that.) I'm not talking about serious depression, because my suggestions aren't meant to help with that, at least not in the long term. (For that you should see your doctor.) But when it comes to a touch of the blahs, you can do something about that. Some suggestions:

1. Get a bit of light exercise. Nothing too strenuous, just a half hour of some activity that gets you moving. It could be a leisurely walk. Or some gardening. A bike ride. Anything that gets your muscles working for 30 minutes can put some endorphins into your bloodstream, and endorphins make you feel good. Or, the exercise could kill you, and then you wouldn't feel sad anymore.
   
2. Give a friend a call on the phone, just to say hi and to find out how they're doing. Think about how you can make their day just a bit sunnier. As often happens when we set out to encourage someone else, we end up feeling better ourselves. Alternatively, you could tell them how much you dislike them, making them miserable, in which case you might feel better by comparison.
   
3. Find a simple way to help someone. Do you know someone who's been going through a tough time? Get them a nice card, or bring them a casserole (if you can't cook, pick something up at the store, heat it up and deliver it). Again, helping others is good for the soul. Or, go and ask them to loan you some money. I always feel better when I have money.
   
4. Read a good book. You might want to read something light and distracting. Or you might enjoy learning something new. Learning interesting things you never knew can provide a mental boost. You do know how to read, don't you?
   
5. Complete an unpleasant task that you've been putting off. Getting that nagging issue resolved can relieve stress and take a load off your mind, plus you will feel better for having accomplished something. Finally.
   

These 5 things aren't anything profound, but sometimes we need to be reminded how simple it can be to beat the blahs. And if none of that works, move to Florida. So get happy. Now!

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Mental Imaging – The Power to “Make it So”

...like a bevy of pretty Chinese girls

It all began with a mental image. For no reason at all, I began to think about a certain kind of sweet I hadn’t had since childhood. Where I spent the first 15 years of my life, in Kingston Jamaica, there is a significant Chinese population, of course they are Chinese Jamaican. (I happen to be English-Lebanese Jamaican.) We called these particular sweets “Chinese sweeties.” That sounds like a bevy of pretty Chinese girls, but no, they were 2 varieties of candy made in China, one sweet and one sour. It must have been at least 32 years since I’d had any. And now, here I was in Orlando Florida, with Chinese sweeties on the brain.

"Yes. We have."

I didn’t just think about them, however. I craved them. I had to have some Chinese sweeties! But where could I get them? Certainly not from Publix. On to Windows Live Search, type in “Chinese grocery” and my zip code and Presto! Just a short drive down I-4 and over to 17-92. I go inside and ask for them by their Chinese name, or as best as I can remember the pronunciation. “Excuse me, do you have any chan pui mui?” The proprietress of the store, to my delight, says, “Yes, we have.” I spring for $15 worth and, a short half hour later, I’m contentedly sucking away at my Chinese sweetie, just as I had imagined it.

the power to transform

As many things do, this experience got me to thinking. What had I done? I imagined a desirable outcome, catalogued the steps necessary to achieve it, carried out those steps, and thus made my idea a reality. What’s the big deal? you say. This is the kind of thing we do every day. So it is. But I don’t think many of us understand how profound and powerful this capacity of ours actually is. Within the realm of the possible, we all have the power to transform a mental image, whatever we can imagine, into a real thing.

...one year from today

This is not a new idea, of course. People have always known that envisioning themselves doing a thing increases the probability that they will do that thing in reality. A golfer imagines a perfect chip shot putting the ball inches from the pin. A tennis player imagines serving the ball so accurately that her opponent cannot put a racket to it. A businessman imagines himself walking out of an upcoming meeting with signed contract in hand. What about you? Do you make use of this power? I’ll tell you what I imagine. I imagine myself blogging so successfully that I make at least $3,000 in one month from it, and I see that happening within one year from today.

...original thought

Well hey, if it were that simple, we’d all have everything in life that we desire, right? Not quite. We all imagine things we want to have, but most of us don’t get those things, at least not the difficult ones. Remember the 2 steps in the middle, between imagining and having? Catalogue the actions necessary to achieve it, and then carry out those actions. That’s where the process often breaks down. Why? First of all, because the actions necessary to achieve what you desire must be the right ones. Figuring out what those actions are, and the proper sequence within which they must fit, takes time and effort, and often trial and error. The most desirable things tend to be things that aren’t spelled out for you. Someone once said that the most painful thing in the world is giving birth to an original thought. The second reason why the process breaks down is because carrying out the necessary actions necessitates a high degree of commitment. Searching for the nearest Chinese grocery and driving there was easy. Writing things that people want to read and doing so every day is not so easy. And that’s only one part of what I must do to make my imagination become real. But I am committed to it. You can help me by telling your friends and enemies about my blogs. What can I do to help you?

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Human Gullibility – How Healthy is Your Skeptic?

Here’s this off-beat-news article about the creator of a fake drug and a fake illness made into a media campaign that people accept as genuine, even though the name of the supposed illness is obviously satirical: Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD). The tag line? “When More is not Enough.” The fact that so many people believed the drug and the illness to be genuine got me cogitating on the remarkable gullibility of homo sapiens.

To understand the nature of gullibility it is useful to consider its opposite: skepticism. While a gullible person is quick to believe in falsehoods, a skeptical person is difficult to convince. What makes the difference?

Here’s a helpful definition: “Gullibility is a widespread product of people’s failure to properly apply reason, logic, and skepticism to a claim or idea” (Cline, 2007). We can picture our pool of things we believe as a literal pool, filled with all the odds and ends of ideas we accept as true. As we navigate through the complexities of life, our pool of beliefs is continually assaulted by new ideas. What, if anything, stands guard at our pool’s edge, sorting out the true from the false, allowing only the true to enter our pool? A healthy skepticism. Now, to extend our analogy a bit, we may consider our guard, the skeptic, to be either an ineffectual weakling, allowing almost anything to pass, or so completely enamored of his authority to the point of rejecting anything new, regardless of its worth, or somewhere in between. To add even more this already overburdened analogy, let’s add emotion. Emotion tries either to help an idea get past the skeptic or to prevent it getting by.

Let us take a relatively common idea and see how my analogy holds up. Let’s say a Nigerian official contacts you via email, explaining that he needs your assistance to move several million dollars into a U.S. bank account. If you help him in this endeavor, he will give you a full 30% of the take. You are stunned and excited at the same time! “I could be rich! I could afford all my medications!” What’s happening here? First, as you’ve no doubt deduced, our skeptic is either asleep, uninformed, or simply very weak, so he hardly puts up a fight. Second, emotion is enthusiastically guiding this bogus claim straight into the pool. And so the Nigerian scam is, once again, successful.

Fortunately for us, it is possible to expel from our pool false ideas that have found a way past our skeptic. We can take a fresh look at the things we have accepted as true, and we can remove them from our pool if they lack the proper credentials for pool access. The process is sometimes painful and raucous. Emotion may complain bitterly. But in the end, a healthy and informed skepticism can prevail.

Someone will surely ask, “What’s the harm of letting some false ideas into my pool? They don’t really do any damage, and they make my emotions feel better.” If the skeptic in you, for sentimental reasons (i.e. to make emotion happy), chooses to give a few benign ideas permission to swim in your pool, even though he is healthy and informed enough to know that they probably don’t belong, there may be no harm in that, I suppose. On the other hand, I would worry that some of these interlopers may not be as benign as they appear to be. I would also be concerned that a skeptic who allows falsehoods to pass simply to make emotion happy may not be able to discern which false ideas may be benign and which may be malignant.

In order to determine if false beliefs are in fact benign, you might ask yourself the following questions:

• Am I harmed in any way by holding on to this belief?
• What price might I be paying in terms of money, time or energy because I believe this?
• If this belief is costing me, is keeping it worth the price?
• Who might be benefiting illegitimately from my belief?
• Am I missing out on something valuable because of this belief?

When someone fails to “properly apply reason,” they run the risk of encouraging “the development of false, irrational, and even dangerous beliefs. Cases such as the Heaven’s Gate suicides and Internet scams are clear examples of dangerous beliefs that cost us wads of cash and even our lives. My advice, for what it’s worth, is this: Ask yourself, “How gullible am I? How healthy is my skeptic?”

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Mothers (and Fathers) Are Good at Making Things Grow

It is way too early for a Mother's Day post, isn't it? Well, I don't care, because it wasn't Mother's Day that got me thinking about this anyway. What was it, then? It was photos of my mom's flowers.

I was speaking with her on the phone a few days ago; my parents and I usually speak every few days. We live in different cities, although in the same state. She mentioned to me that her hibiscus plants were blooming. She was quite proud of them. She said that my sister had taken some pictures of them with a digital camera, so I asked if I could get some of the photos by email. Of course my mom, not being computer-savvy, wouldn't be sending any pictures by email; that would be my sister, or perhaps my brother-in-law. In any event, they came, and the hibiscus flowers were, in fact, gorgeous, which did not surprise me one bit, because my mother has always been good at making things grow.

Now let me widen my net to include my dad. He is also good at making things grow. He doesn't grow anything as impractical or inedible as hibiscus plants, however. He grows things that you can eat. Like mangoes, and hot peppers. Yum. He was very concerned a few days ago about possibly freezing temperatures coming to South Florida. What would happen to his mango trees? (I think they made it though safely.)

Now, I told you all that in order to use it as a metaphor for my parents' extraordinary ability to make their children, and grandchildren, grow. In a world filled with horrific stories about parental neglect and abuse, I guess I and my brother and sister are among those immeasurably fortunate enough to have two devoted, selfless, nurturing, and encouraging parents to call Mom and Dad.

It is a blessed thing to be able to take for granted that your parents love you, and it is that kind of love that makes things grow, that made me grow, and continues to make me grow even today at 47, with 4 kids of my own.

Mom and Dad, I love you with all my heart. And save a mango for me, would you?

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The Absurdity of Belief and What the Heck is Going On with Celebrities?

First, a couple of witticisms:

"Everybody should believe in something; I believe I'll have another drink."

"The invisible and the nonexistent look very much alike."

I don't know who first spoke either one of these, but that's not what's important. What is important is the essence of what they both communicate: That people will believe anything, no matter how lacking in evidentiary support or abounding in absurdity. Case in point: Consider the newest up-and-comer, Scientology. A brief list of celebrity Scientologists includes such worthies as Tom Cruise (their new Messiah), Kirstie Alley, Anne Archer, Beck, Plácido Domingo, Chaka Kahn, Lisa Marie Presley, Leah Remini, and John Travolta. To name only a few. Now, consider what Scientologists believe. From the source of all knowledge, Wikipedia:

In Scientology doctrine, Xenu (also Xemu) was the alien dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of aliens to Earth in DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together and stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to wreak chaos and havoc today.

These events are known to Scientologists as "Incident II", and the traumatic memories associated with them as The Wall of Fire or the R6 implant. The story of Xenu is part of a much wider range of Scientology beliefs in extraterrestrial civilizations and alien interventions in Earthly events, collectively described as space opera by L. Ron Hubbard, science fiction writer and founder of Scientology.

Hubbard detailed the story in Operating Thetan level III (OT III) in 1967, famously warning that R6 was "calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it." The Xenu story was the start of the use of the volcano as a common symbol of Scientology and Dianetics from 1968 to the present day.

The story of Xenu is covered in OT III, part of Scientology's secret "Advanced Technology" doctrines taught only to advanced members. It is described in more detail in the accompanying confidential "Assists" lecture of 3 October 1968 and is dramatized in Revolt in the Stars (an unpublished screenplay written by L Ron Hubbard during the late 1970s). Direct quotations in this section are from these sources. (See also Scientology beliefs and practices)

Seventy-five million years ago, Xenu was the ruler of a Galactic Confederacy which consisted of 26 stars and 76 planets including Earth, which was then known as Teegeeack. The planets were overpopulated, each having on average 178 billion people. The Galactic Confederacy's civilization was comparable to our own, with people "walking around in clothes which looked very remarkably like the clothes they wear this very minute" and using cars, trains and boats looking exactly the same as those "circa 1950, 1960" on Earth.

Xenu was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. With the assistance of "renegades", he defeated the populace and the "Loyal Officers", a force for good that was opposed to Xenu. Then, with the assistance of psychiatrists, he summoned billions of people to paralyze them with injections of alcohol and glycol, under the pretense that they were being called for "income tax inspections". The kidnapped populace was loaded into space planes for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). The space planes were exact copies of Douglas DC-8s, "except the DC-8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn't." DC-8s have jet engines, not propellers, although Hubbard may have meant the turbine fans.

When the space planes had reached Teegeeack/Earth, the paralyzed people were unloaded and stacked around the bases of volcanoes across the planet. Hydrogen bombs were lowered into the volcanoes, and all were detonated simultaneously. Only a few people's physical bodies survived. Hubbard described the scene in his abortive film script, Revolt in the Stars.

The now-disembodied victims' souls, which Hubbard called thetans, were blown into the air by the blast. They were captured by Xenu's forces using an "electronic ribbon" ("which also was a type of standing wave") and sucked into "vacuum zones" around the world. The hundreds of billions of captured thetans were taken to a type of cinema, where they were forced to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. This implanted what Hubbard termed "various misleading data" (collectively termed the R6 implant) into the memories of the hapless thetans, "which has to do with God, the Devil, space opera, et cetera". This included all world religions, with Hubbard specifically attributing Roman Catholicism and the image of the Crucifixion to the influence of Xenu. The interior decoration of "all modern theaters" is also said by Hubbard to be due to an unconscious recollection of Xenu's implants. The two "implant stations" cited by Hubbard were said to have been located on Hawaii and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

In addition to implanting new beliefs in the thetans, the images deprived them of their sense of personal identity. When the thetans left the projection areas, they started to cluster together in groups of a few thousand, having lost the ability to differentiate between each other. Each cluster of thetans gathered into one of the few remaining bodies that survived the explosion. These became what are known as body thetans, which are said to be still clinging to and adversely affecting everyone except those Scientologists who have performed the necessary steps to remove them.

The Loyal Officers finally overthrew Xenu and locked him away in a mountain, where he was imprisoned forever by a force field powered by an eternal battery. (Some have suggested that Xenu is imprisoned on Earth in the Pyrenees, but Hubbard merely refers to "one of these planets" [of the Galactic Confederacy]; he does, however, refer to the Pyrenees as being the site of the last operating "Martian report station", which is probably the source of this particular confusion.[3]) Teegeeack/Earth was subsequently abandoned by the Galactic Confederacy and remains a pariah "prison planet" to this day, although it has suffered repeatedly from incursions by alien "Invader Forces" since that time.

Now you might be thinking (unless you are a Scientologist or Scientologist-sympathizer), "What the heck? How could any sane person buy into this crap?" But in having these kinds of thoughts, are you not expressing your own religious biases? I would be willing to predict that, in less than 100 years, Scientology's systems of belief will become respectable. All that's required is time and some influential proponents.

If you were to consider the religious beliefs of more established groups (e.g. Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Islam, Catholics, Protestants, etc.) with an unbiased mind, you would see that Scientologists' belief in a 75 million-year-old event like Xenu's transporting billions of aliens to earth is no more far-fetched than any other religion's supernatural assertions. A magical steed that flew Mohamed around? An angel named Moroni? A burning bush that never burns up? Bread turning into the body of the Lord? Why should we single out poor Xenu?

Here's what it comes down to: People will believe what they choose to believe, and it will be true to them in some internal way that outsiders cannot disprove with appeals to reason. And who knows, maybe they're all right.

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I Love Animals. They’re Delicious!

Eating Meat is Natural

Some folks choose not to eat meat for health reasons. I have no problem understanding or even respecting this life-choice. More power to you. Something else I respect is the idea that cruelty to animals is bad. Causing pain to any creature simply because one enjoys inflicting suffering is pathological. No wonder doing so happens to be a great predictor of psychopathology in recreational murderers. So far so good.

On the other hand, the idea that killing an animal for food is wrong is boneheaded, empathy run amok. Why do I say that? The answer is simple: Because the entire ecosystem in which we live is predicated on things killing other things for food. Predatory behavior is natural. If predatory behavior were somehow to be prevented, most of our planet’s life-forms would die off and vanish. Even many species of plants kill things to survive. Unless I am mistaken, homo sapiens is also a part of this natural order.

Why is it that a pack of hyenas chasing, biting, bringing down and ultimately devouring alive a beautiful young zebra is something to be applauded as natural and wonderful, but a human being who humanely kills a cow for its meat is seen by animal-rights activists as a contemptible piece of excrement? What’s the hyena’s excuse? Oh, the poor animals are less evolved and don’t know any better? Sorry, that logic doesn’t work for me.

When things really get interesting is when an animal preys on a human. What do the humans say? You can’t fault the animal for doing what is natural. It’s the human’s fault for going where they don’t belong. You see? We are to blame whether we are the eater or the eaten.

It seems to me that the animal rights activists’ arguments are in truth all about their emotions. The thought of an animal being killed is emotionally painful to them (remember: empathy run amok), so they attempt to construct logical arguments against eating meat. They fail.

Here are a few choice quotations from people against the eating of meat, and my answers:

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. We feel better about ourselves and better about the animals, knowing we're not contributing to their pain.
--Paul (1942- ) and Linda McCartney
(My Reply: But they don’t, so I’m not.)

Suppose that tomorrow a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth, beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals. Would they have the right to treat you as you treat the animals you breed, keep and kill for food?
--John Harris (1946- )
(Yes, unfortunately they would. And I don’t think they’d much care what I thought anyway.)

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body.
--Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948)
(So you would outlaw the taking of the life of a lamb by a wolf?)

I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed. I saw and felt their pain. They felt the approaching death. I could not bear it. I cried like a child. I ran up a hill and could not breathe. I felt that I was choking. I felt the death of the lamb.
--Vaslav Nijinsky (dancer and choreographer)
(Once again, empathy run amok.)

Let us know your thoughts.

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Are Your Emergency Funds Up to Snuff? Free Excel Calculator!

We all know that we should set aside money for a rainy day. Whether the rainy day comes as a result of illness, a layoff, or even a decision to change careers, it pays to have enough money in the rainy day jar. If you have a good idea how much you need to have salted away, you can start putting aside a set amount that will hopefully make a pile big enough to see you through if and when the emergency arrives. First, this fund should be as liquid as possible so you can get at it if you ever need it. We're talking about an interest bearing savings account or some similar product. Second, you need to figure out how much to set aside. That's where my free Excel emergency fund calculator comes in. Click here to download it gratis. If you like it, tell your friends to come here and get a copy for themselves.

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RSS Feeds: What they Are and How they Work

You've probably seen this orange button before. I've got one prominently displayed in the sidebar of my blog. But what is it? Clicking on the button on my sidebar will take you to a page where you choose which RSS Feed Reader you prefer to use. There are many different readers to choose from. Let's say you choose Google. Click on the Google button and you'll be taken to the Google Reader page. From now on, the Google Reader page will have a link in the sidebar to the most recent posts on my blog.

A simpler way to subscribe is to click on the "Click here to Subscribe by Email" text at the top right of my blog. You'll enter your email address, and every morning you'll get an email with my most recent post.

Who should subscribe? Everybody! Seriously, if you enjoyed your first visit to my blog, you should subscribe so you won't miss any of my fantastic content. Many people misunderstand, when they read the word "Subscribe," they think of something that you have to pay for. In this case, the word has no such meaning. Subscribing to my blog keeps you informed and costs you nothing.

So now you know. A final word...subscriptions mean regular readers, so obviously I want as many people to subscribe as I can get. So go ahead and click that orange button on my sidebar. You'll be glad you did!

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How Does Your Brain Know Where You Are?

Although some of us are certainly directionally challenged, a claim my wife makes about me that I staunchly deny, we can easily navigate spaces with which we are familiar. When, late at night, you wake up needing a drink of water (or an illicit sandwich), you can make your way to your kitchen without having to turn on a single light. You can also form a mental picture of the streets you normally take to get to your office, having driven the route more times than you’d like to remember. How is this possible? How does your brain know where you are?

Older theories about the answer to this question essentially came in two different flavors. One theory held that the cognitive map in our brains was egocentric, that is, centered on the self. This mental map would have your brain at its center at all times, therefore continually changing as you move in the real world. The second theory had an allocentric cognitive map, a map based on an external frame of reference completely independent of the observer, in which the self moves as if it were a token moving across a game board.

Researchers believed that both theories could be tested because each cognitive map would show up in the neurons that were responsible for creating it. Years of research did not live up to these optimistic expectations, however, and researchers are still searching for a definitive answer. How are we able to form our mental images, or maps, of familiar places and routes? As I sit here tying this article, I can close my eyes and go back to my childhood home, moving through each room and hallway as if it were just yesterday that I lived there, when in fact my family moved away from that home when I was only 15. I can move not only through the house, but also outside the house, up and down our street, into our backyard, just about anywhere that I navigated in reality. What’s really interesting is that I can picture where I am now, in Central Florida, in relation to that childhood home, though it is quite far away. (I may owe that ability more to Google Earth than anything else, however.)

The human brain has been described as the most complex thing in the universe. Some have speculated that we will never be able to fully understand it because the brain would be attempting to understand itself. According to one scientist, “If the human brain were simple enough for us to understand, we would be too simple to understand it.” The most difficult obstacle we now face in our efforts has to do with the fact that we cannot ethically penetrate a living person’s skull for the purpose of study and experiment. This means that we are limited to the use of sensory equipment to measure brain activity from the outside, which is obviously extremely imprecise.

A new development may be in the works, however, that would allow researchers to survey, down to the level of individual neurons, exactly what is going on in the human brain. Dr. Rodolfo Llinas, in an interview for the PBS show 22^nd Century, describes his research with nanowires, and his belief that such wires can eventually be implanted in the brain down to the neuronal level. Here’s a brief part of that interview:

“The possibility occurred to me that it would be very intriguing to use the holes that are already present in the brain… without actually having to go through the skull. And the, the holes that I’m talking about are the holes produced by the fact that the brain has vessels and the vessels, which basically bring oxygen to the brain, may be used as pathways into the brain.

“Clearly you cannot direct one nano wire anywhere. If you, on the other hand, have bundles of nano wires… you can do a very good job of directing bundles into certain areas of the brain by going to well known points in the vascular system. So what does this mean? Can one go up the vessel in, in the brain and get to a particular point? The answer is yes. It is done every day. Interventional neurologists do that when there are problems with the vessels.

“So the technology is there. Now the question would be, can you actually put nano wires exactly at the place you want? The answer is no, you can’t. But nano wires are very small. So what you do is you actually send a certain number of them… So the idea would be to have a bundle and then the bundle would be allowed to, to float into the bloodstream until it can go no further. That is, they would be tethered. So some of them are short, some of them would be long.

“You will end up then, seeding or wiring a particular part of the brain. Let’s say you want to go to the anterior part of the brain, so you take the anterior cerebral artery and you go to the right side or the left side and so on. Because the wires are so small, you can put a very a large number of them.”

If Dr. Llinas’ nanowires, or some other new technology, work, we may know a great deal more about our minds than we do today. Hopefully that will be a positive development.

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Why Your Friends are Such Losers

Character: the inherent complex of attributes that determine a person’s moral and ethical actions and reactions.

Listen up. I’m going to ask you a very important question: Of all the attributes you value in other human beings, where does character fall in the list? This question, or rather your answer to it, will determine the quality of your entire life. Don’t believe it? Read on and I shall convince you that my bold assertion is in fact true. But first, consider how small a value our culture places on a person’s character. Let us consider some of the circumstances where character should, but does not, place high on a list of considerations. The choice of a friend. The choice of a mate. The choice of a political leader. What would you say the primary criteria might be in the average person’s list of important factors? For a friend, perhaps similar likes and dislikes. For a mate, physical attractiveness. For a political leader, charisma, or maybe attractive political positions. I doubt that many would disagree with this assessment. In fact, many would say, So what?

So this: None of those factors makes for a good friend, mate, or political leader. Without character, they will all turn out to be bad choices. This is not to imply that those criteria are without value, not at all. But they should all come after character.

Let’s talk about your friends. One of the lessons I have tried, with some degree of success I hope, to impart to my four children, has to do with their choice of friends. Did you know that friends are chosen? Many people assume that friendships just happen or don’t happen. If you were to ask 100 people why certain people are their friends and others not, most would probably cite some sort of compatibility/incompatibility, or like/dislike as the reason. I like this person. I can’t stand that person. Very few people would say that they choose their friends according to people’s character. This is unfortunate. An ancient proverb makes this claim: “He who walks with wise men will be wise, But the companion of fools will suffer harm.” The context of this quote makes it clear that the author is not referring to native intelligence, but rather the possession of lack of moral character. Life itself proves this proverb correct.

Now, you might be saying, I don’t want to be judgmental. Of course not. But you should be discerning. There is a difference. To be judgmental is to tend to continual criticism of others. This is usually a sign of a person’s poor self-image. To be discerning, however, is to use important criteria in making your selections.

Consider the case of marrying someone who had an intimate relationship with you while married to someone else. They cheated on their spouse to be with you. You are flattered. But do you think they wouldn’t do the same thing to you? If they would cheat to be with you, why wouldn’t they cheat again to be with someone else? Consider the case of someone with good credit putting a poor-credit friend on their cell phone account. Is there any consideration given to the fact that their poor credit means that they tend not to pay their bills? Usually not. When they don’t pay the cell phone bill either, the good friend is surprised. They shouldn’t be. Consider the case of the politician who wants to take money from a certain group of people in order to give money to you. Why would you then be shocked when they decide that you are the one who has too much?

Character counts.

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Good News! Video Games are now Good For Your Kids!

That's an exaggeration, I grant you, of what the data show in a new study soon to be published in the journal Psychological Science. But it is kind of funny how things that are literally reviled and condemned by the safety and health police eventually turn out to have some healthful properties. Let's consider a few of these horrible-to-helpful products, shall we? Red wine, or any wine, once possessing absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever, now helps prevent heart disease (only the red variety, apparently). Coffee, the poison taken gladly every day by billions, now helps prevent prostate cancer. Eggs? Kill you in a heartbeat! Now, not so much. Now we can add video games to the list. We've heard from the experts that they will turn your kids into killers and zombies, not to mention infuse them with a predilection for grand theft auto on a massive scale. Well, apparently they will still do those things, but, in addition, they will give your kids better eyesight! So they can shoot people from farther away. So, in the end, it's all good.

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Who Invented Valentine's Day?

Many of us might suspect the greeting card industry of this one. They certainly profit from it, but they didn't invent it. Like many traditions of old, the origins of Valentine's Day are hazy at best. Several ancient saints vie for the honor of being the honoree of the day of love, but the one who is most likely the winner is Saint Valentinius (c. 100 - c. 150) of Alexandria. It seems that Valentinius became associated with romantic love due to his emphasis on the marriage bed as possessing a central place in Christian love.

Valentine's Day makes its next appearance in the Middle Ages, particularly during the period when courtly love was in vogue. In Paris, on February 14, 1400, a High Court of Love was established to deal with contractual disputes about love, betrayals and the abuse of women. It is said that judges were selected by women on the basis of poetry readings.

We have Esther Howland (1828-1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts to thank for the first mass produced Valentine's Day cards in North America. Contratulations and a big thank you to Esther! Various marketing efforts since then have made V Day a very big day for greeting cards, flowers and chocolates. You may be interested to know that in Japan, women are expected to give men candy, chocolates or flowers, and not just men they like, either. In many Japanese offices, women feel obligated to buy gifts for all the men who work there. Wow!

I hope you've learned something. Now, if you still haven't got flowers or chocolate for that special person, head on over to Barry's Best, where you'll find some helpful links. Hurry!

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Don't Even THINK About It!

You may want to heed this advice in the near future, because a time is coming when machines will be able to read your intentions with amazing accuracy. As brain scans become more and more sophisticated, researchers are devising ways of reading them in order to figure out what you're planning to do. Sound a bit Minority Report? Exactly. NewScientist.com reports:

Brain scans that can read a person’s secret intentions even before they act have been demonstrated by researchers.

In a recent study, the technology was 70% accurate at predicting whether participants planned to add or subtract a pair of numbers. Paralysed people may one day be able to use devices based on the technique to carry out complex actions, the researchers say. However, ethical concerns have been raised about its possible use in interrogation.

So the old warning will someday soon hold true. Don't even think about it.

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Is Quantum Computing Already Here?

Quantum computing, instead of using the language of ones and zeros like conventional computers, uses the various possible "states" in which subatomic particles can exist. According to Wikipedia:

A classical computer has a memory made up of bits, where each bit holds either a one or a zero. The device computes by manipulating those bits, i.e. by transporting these bits from memory to (possibly a suite of) logic gates and back. A quantum computer maintains a vector of qubits. A qubit can hold a one, or a zero, or a superposition of these. A quantum computer operates by manipulating those qubits, i.e. by transporting these bits from memory to (possibly a suite of) quantum logic gates and back.

Conventional wisdom holds that transforming theory into an actual working computer is many years away, but Guardian Unlimited reports that the future of quantum computing is much closer that that:

A Canadian company with substantial venture capital backing claims to have built a "quantum computer" that will ultimately solve problems beyond the power of conventional systems - and will demonstrate it over a live link next week.

While most scientists believe a useful system is at least 20 years away, D-Wave (dwavesys.com), based in Burnaby, British Columbia, says it has a breakthrough in a field that already promises revolution. The company says it expects to sell quantum computers next year that can solve knotty problems from protein structure to financial optimisation.

My prediction? Look for the letter "Q" to become a bit more popular very soon. Instead of iTunes, we'll be seeing QTunes. Remember, you heard it first here.

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Using Excel's Form Controls

Microsoft Excel is my favorite application in the pantheon of all applications. What does that fact say about my personality? I take comfort in the fact that I am not alone in my strangeness. One of the most useful features available in Excel is the spinner form control. Spinners look like this:


What they do is allow you to change the value of a cell by the increments you specify in the control's properties. For example, say you're starting a business, and you have a certain amount of money in the business account. You know your monthly revenue goals, and you have a good idea of your monthly costs. What you want to know is, when will you start having a net positive inflow? And how does that time-frame change for different cost estimates? When will you run out of money? How much do you have to cut your costs to make sure you don't run out of money?

To solve this problem and answer these questions, you need to create a spinner that will allow you to change your costs and see how each change affects your cashflow. Each time you click the spinner either up or down, the figures that depend on that number change automatically, and a chart that flows from those numbers will adjust to account for the changes. It's really quite nifty.

To learn more about form controls, click here.

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What's the Freaking Point?

Although we can’t know this for certain, it seems likely that we are alone in the animal kingdom in this respect: We search for meaning. We want to know why. Perhaps my fish, as they swim up and down their tank, are thinking, “Why am I stuck here in this godforsaken place?” Unlikely, but possible I suppose. More probably it is only we who ask: Why did my puppy die? Why do good things happen to bad people? Why did I lose my job? Why am I here? What is the purpose of my existence? (OK, that was a “what” question, but you get the point.) What is it about human beings that leads to this distinction? Many people would say that it is that we were created by God with this in-built need to find meaning, to find Him. Others, like myself, say that our quest is a function of our consciousness, which arises from the complexity of our brains. Whichever is correct, the search for meaning seems to set us apart.

At the root of our search for meaning may be our innate gift and propensity for pattern-recognition. In my bathroom there is a shower curtain with an abstract conglomeration of various shades and shapes of black and gold. If I make my eyes go out of focus as I look at the shower curtain, I sometimes see the faces of outlandish animals and strange-looking people. When I look more closely, of course, there is nothing there. My visual system has created a pattern out of chaos. Apparently it likes to do that, which is very helpful to me, since it enables me to recognize and differentiate between people very easily, a feat which computers are still unable to do very well without a massive amount of processing power.

This search for patterns in visual terms may extend to the circumstances of our lives. We can easily see the value of this pattern-seeking behavior in evolutionary terms. Jim was eaten by a crocodile yesterday. Why? He went down to the river’s edge to collect water and was suddenly snatched by the unseen predator. Perhaps we need to make certain there aren’t any crocodiles near the shore before we go down there for water. Trying to find a pattern in events enables us to avoid harm and repeat successes.

But sometimes we make up patterns that are not really there, just to make ourselves feel better. Just a few days ago 20 or so people were killed in a severe storm here in Central Florida where I live. The inevitable reporters descended and pointed their cameras and microphones at the survivors. And we heard people claiming that they were spared “for a reason.” One man said that his guardian angel was there that night. We might logically suppose that his dead neighbor’s angel was off duty, or perhaps incompetent. Another women said that God was looking out for her. Again, was God either unconcerned, or angry with her neighbor who was swept away? The meaning or pattern may be illogical when carried through to its logical conclusions, but we cling to them nonetheless, because they calm our fears about the whims of nature. If we offer our sacrifice, perhaps the corn will grow plentiful this year.

Our search for meaning, however, goes beyond this type of practical application. Our bellies can be full and our kin safe, and yet we worry about the meaning or our lives. We want to know the point of everything. Somehow, having a certainty of meaning and purpose gives us an emotional satiation. Not everyone concerns himself or herself with such existential matters, of course. Many people are completely satisfied by their daily struggle to find food, clothing, shelter, sex, status and diversion. But many of us seem to need more.

When I was 17 and just starting out in college, I remember attending a dance in the basement of my dorm. I was standing there alone, not knowing anyone, and feeling a diffuse sense of emptiness. I don’t remember ever forming a clear thought like, “There must be more to life than this,” but the feeling was there. Looking back on it now, I want to say to my earlier self, “Yes, there is more. You just need a bit of patience to find it. One day you’ll have lots of friends here. One day you’ll have a career. One day you’ll have a community to serve. One day you’ll have a family, a wife, kids, maybe even grandkids. You’ll love them and provide for them, and they will love you back. That’ll be enough.” For me, it is enough.

(This article is featured on the Carnival of Improvement!)

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So Convenient it Means (Virtually) Nothing!

Can something be made so convenient to do that it loses all meaning? Technology has brought us a long way, but along the way, have we lost some human connection? Are you old enough to remember when receiving a long-distance telephone call was a big deal? I am. The whole family would gather by the phone (which was tied by a wire to one particular spot in the house) to get a chance to say hello to Aunt Mildred. (Do you remember when women had names like "Mildred"?) Today, getting a call from a different city, state, or even country is a ho-hum experience. If you're like me, you're secretly thinking, "Why couldn't they just send me an email like everyone else?" Pretty soon you'll be saying, "A call from Io? It's probably a marketing call. I don't want to talk to anyone from Io. Take a message."

What got me to thinking along these lines was a web site offering the most convenient way to send flowers that's ever been available...send virtual flowers! You have to see it to believe it. It sounds like a great idea to me, but I don't know if my wife, or my mother, would be overly impressed by a bouquet of these beauties. Too bad, really.

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Detoxing From Church

*This is not an anti-church, anti-Christian article as the title might suggest.

Here is a very interesting take on the McDonaldization of the American evangelical church, turning it into a conveniently prepackaged consumer product. Thanks to Jason Zahariades and The Off Ramp.

In the Americanized church, the organization is designed to turn life and faith into a simple prepackaged consumer product. This is what John Drane calls the “McDonaldization of the Church.”

• I need to worship. So I go to my local church, which, if it’s cutting-edge, has a worship pastor on staff that prepares an inspiring "worship experience" for me on a weekly basis. One local church I know advertises its worship services on its marquee, "We worship five times, three ways, one God." (Hello! Is it me or does that just sound wrong?)
• I also need to fellowship with my fellow Christians. So I go to my local church to attend a programmed version of community that provides a surface-level contact with people around some form of activity at my convenience. If I need more fellowship, I go to a small group, usually focused on the dynamic personality of the small group leader or on the subject matter I feel I need to better my life. But again, this is at my convenience and fairly optional if my schedule becomes too demanding.
• I need discipleship and Christian growth. So I go to my local church to attend Sunday services, Bible studies and small groups where someone opens the Bible and tells me what it says and how it should apply to my life. I also have the option of learning "practical" topics such as how to be a good spouse, parent, employee, leader, steward, etc.
• I need to serve. So I go to my local church and participate in a program where I use my time and skills in a fairly convenient manner to help others. For the most part, it’s fairly safe. And if I'm a volunteer, my participation is completely based on my schedule.
• I need to be engaged in mission. So I go to my local church to connect to their evangelistic ministry and their missions program. Every so often I might volunteer to hand out sodas or serve coffee in a convenient and semi-relational form of "reaching people" for Christ. I might also give money to local missionaries the church supports and maybe participate in a weekend mission trip.
• I need a children's program to educate my kids. So I go to my local church to place my children in the care of Sunday school teachers and youth pastors who will provide the spiritual and moral foundation for their Christian growth via an age-relevant program.
• I need purpose for my life. So I go to my local church, hoping to find a leader with a vision big enough to inspire me. Then I sacrifice my time, energy, and money to become involved in the leader’s vision so I can build something big for God with him. New programs. New buildings. New projects. New groups. New services. New converts. New church plants. New missions. More and more and more vision to give my life a reason to exist.

To make matters worse, as a pastor on staff, all of my relationships and ministries are mediated through my title and position in the organization. An unhealthy symbiotic relationship occurs between myself and the organization as my life and faith becomes synonymous with the success of the organization. If we, as leaders, can design an organization that satisfies the consumer needs of a couple hundred people... well, then we must be doing something right in God's kingdom. And the more people we reach, then the better we are. So I preach, lead worship, administrate, counsel, teach, organize, recruit, train, write, and do practically everything as a “pastor” of an organization. Eventually my identity becomes distorted by what I do for the church. What’s worse, my role and effectiveness as a staff pastor are intimately connected to my own formation and personal development. This continues to blur the line between my personal life and faith and my abilities as a leader of an organization.

Click here for the entire article.

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Ten Self-Help Buzzwords and Buzz-phrases that I Despise

Wouldn’t you know it, I began thinking about today’s post with the intention of writing an article that would be helpful to my readers, and instead I have ended up with a list of things I despise about the self-improvement “industry.” I will tell you up front that I have a strong antipathy towards people who make a living by selling their so-called “secrets” to other people, which is what much of the self-help industry is about. For example, when I decided to try the life of a Realtor on for size, the remoras came slithering out from inside their dark little holes to try to latch onto me. What did they want? They wanted me to give them money so that they could help me make money. I know I’m a cynical person, but come on. The come-ons started coming in, from the self-appointed experts in the field. They would give me their money-making “secrets” if I would fork over my money. Hey, guess what. That’s their money-making secret…taking money from saps like me! If they really had such powerful secrets, why would they need money from me? And why would they tell anyone else what they were? I have no problem with people who offer a genuine service at a reasonable price. It’s the people with the secrets for sale that would give me heartburn if I let them get to me. So, how am I different? In three ways, which I shall now share with you.

First, I don’t have any secrets to sell to you. The people who have the real secrets aren’t telling or selling.

Second, if I pass on helpful tips, I’m not charging you anything for them. You can make a donation if you choose to do so, and you can click on my ads if you see one you are interested in. But visiting this site and making use of anything I offer is free of charge.

Third, I will always try like the dickens to give you solid content rather than insipid, meaningless jargon. Which leads me to my list of…

Ten Self-Help Buzzwords and Buzz-phrases that I Despise

1. Nurture
2. Positive
3. Goals
4. Self-Esteem
5. Journaling
6. Journey
7. Personal Mission Statement
8. Win-Win
9. 7 Habits (of anybody)
10. The Purpose Driven (anything)

If you have some others to share, feel free to leave a comment.

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Apocalypse Scale

Why do I find this kind of thing interesting? Do I have a morbid fascination with the end of civilization? I don't think so. Perhaps it's just that people have taken the time to actually think this through that grabs my attention. In any case, just as in the Fujita and the Saffir-Simpson scales for tornadoes and hurricanes respectively, Jamais Cascio has developed a scale to measure the degrees of destruction caused by various apocalyptic events. See the chart below.

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My Name is Barry, and I am a Technophile

What is it about technology, specifically computer technology, that so bewitches me? My first experience with a computer was incredibly frustrating (it was an IBM running DOS), since I hadn't the slightest idea how to do anything with it, but it was also, somewhat mysteriously, enchanting. (You may be wondering what could possibly have gotten me started down this idiotic road of reminiscence. I happen to be waiting, at this very moment, for the installation of the final shipping version of Office 2007 Ultimate to finish, almost like a soon-to-be father waiting for the birth of his first child. It's sick! The progress bar is moving so slowly that I'm not sure if it is moving at all. So I started thinking about my pathological doe-eyed enthrallment with computers. So now you know.)

Anyway, without meaning to be sexist in any way, I have observed that men are generally more in love with computers than are women. Do you find it so? Not all men, certainly, but men seem to enjoy the company of a computer more than that of other humans, whereas women treat computers as if they were an annoying chore and a completely intolerable waste of valuable human-to-human time.

If these observations are indicative of a real phenomenon, and not just a stupid generalization on my part, then the question is begged: Why? What is it in our circuitry that makes us prey to the siren call of other circuitry?

If you have an answer, please share it! I'd really like to know. I'm sorry that I have to go now, but my installation/baby needs my attention.

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How Unlikely is a Doomsday Catastrophe?

In case you didn't realize it, there are serious people trying to derive reliable conclusions on this question. Al Gore aside (whom I consider to be a bloated buffoon who doesn't know or care what the heck he's talking about), there are a some possible scenarios that are worth our concern. The paper herein quoted analyzes, in fairly technical fashion, the likelihood of any of these possibilities occurring. Here are some portions of the paper. If they pique your interest, you can dowload the PDF.

As if we humans did not have enough to worry about, scientists have recently highlighted catastrophic scenarios that could destroy not only our civilization, but perhaps even our planet or our entire observable universe. For in-stance, fears that heavy ion collisions at the Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) might initiate such a catastrophic process triggered a detailed technical report on the subject, focusing on three risk categories:

• Initiation of a transition to a lower vacuum state, which would propagate outward from its source at the speed of light, possibly destroying the universe as we know it.
• Formation of a black hole or gravitational singularity that accretes ordinary matter, possibly destroying Earth.
• Formation of a stable "strangelet" that accretes ordinary matter and converts it to strange matter, possibly destroying Earth.

Other catastrophe scenarios range from uncontroversial to highly speculative:

• Massive asteroid impacts, nearby supernova explosions and/or gamma-ray bursts, potentially sterilizing Earth.
• Annihilation by a hostile space-colonizing robot race.

The paper continues...

One might think that since life here on Earth has survived for nearly 4 Gyr (Gigayears), such catastrophic events must be extremely rare. Unfortunately, such an argument is flawed, giving us a false sense of security. It fails to take into account the observation selection effect that precludes any observer from observing anything other than that their own species has survived up to the point where they make the observation. Even if the frequency of cosmic catastrophes were very high, we should still expect to find ourselves on a planet that had not yet been destroyed. The fact that we are still alive does not even seem to rule out the hypothesis that the average cosmic neighborhood is typically sterilized by vacuum decay, say, every 10000 years, and that our own planet has just been extremely lucky up until now. If this hypothesis were true, future prospects would be bleak.

Click here to get the PDF, if you dare.

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