Your New Emoticon

:| is your new emoticon.

Some Activities Forbidden On the Sabbath

Making two loops
Tearing
Erasing two or more letters
Putting the finishing touch on an object
Tying
Selecting

In Islam, Ramadan days end when it is impossible to tell the difference between a white thread and a black thread held at arm's length in the natural light. In Judaism, Sabbath ends when you can see at least three stars. I would like to hear a debate on the merits of each method. That is the main reason I am hoping for Mideast Peace: Theological dialogues.

Three Player Games

I'm not willing to take my oath, but I would bet that three is the third most likely number of people you will find yourself in the company of. Why are the entertainment options for three people so limited? Let's do a survey:

1. You can do anything you like alone. You can play solitaire or just about any computer game, you can read a book or draw or write. You can entertain yourself super-easy when you're alone.
2. A lot of games are designed for two players. War is a classic two player card game. Chess, checkers, go, backgammon, mancala, twenty questions, Scrabble, arm wrestling, indian wrestling, normal wrestling. Tennis, badminton, squash, handball, jai alai and raquetball.There is no shortage of two player games
3. We'll come back to three.
4. There are quite a few four player games. There's bridge, of course. And its subsidiaries, hearts, setback, pinochle, and spades. Four is basically the minimum number to play Pit. There's Settlers of Catan which is a damn good board game and I don't care what they say. I think Risk can be played pretty well with four players right? If your taste inclines in that direction. Ditto Monopoly. You can play doubles tennis or -- really any of the two player games in doubles format.
   
5. Five is kind of a hard number to organize games for, I admit. If one of the five is a weak sister you can probably fit her into the doubles-game format. You can always play Risk or Trivial Pursuit or Monopoly or one of those telescoping games although I am not sure I would recommend it. What is it with board games that take a varying number of players? They're all so bad. Someone should get on it. You can play Pit of course which is really a lot of fun with five or more players. More importantly though, five is about the limit for game playing in crowds. With more than five people (or five, if they are stubborn people) it is really hard to convince everyone to do the same thing. They typically break off into little less-than-five groups of their own and commence animated conversations or drinking games or something I don't know. The point is, it is not important to find a game that five people can play.
6. Has anyone ever successfully played a whole game of Chinese checkers? I feel like by the time you can round up six (necessarily spineless) people, you have lost at least one of the marbles. It's too bad. Chinese checkers is the most aesthetically pleasing game, even if the strategy involved is nil when you get up to six players. It's a very random game.
7. I used to try to get people to play Diplomacy until I realized the point I mentioned in (5). It is not possible to get 7 people to play a board game that takes at least 5 hours, not unless you are blackmailing them somehow. I think the impossibility of playing Diplomacy suggests that it is not necessary to think of a game for seven or more people to play. If Diplomacy isn't good enough for people, what could be? You can always play pickup soccer or poker anyway if you are that kind of person.

Now then. Three. What good three player games are there? You can, of course, scale down Monopoly or Risk or Trivial Pursuit to three players, but these are dreary enough with four. You can scale Scrabble up to three players, but it is really ideal with two. You can play three player Chinese checkers, but there is remarkably little competition in that variant (nobody is moving to anybody's home spaces. All the players get the best results by ignoring one another).

I am told you can play three player setback. I'm not sure it would be much fun. Setback isn't much fun with four players, and it wouldn't be much better with three. You can play a depressing game of tag. I guess you could play golf, but that is not exactly a game you play against people. You just all play a game of golf, individually, and compare scores at the end. I think you can play some card games. Most of these are pretty poor fun though, not least because 3 does not divide 52. Three player poker is pretty boring, as is crazy eights.

I think part of the problem with three player games is that your (person A) actions are typically harmful most to person B. Person B, being harmed, is less able to harm person C. Person C is thus relatively strengthened, and is better able to harm you. Hence, the more "effective" your actions are, the worse you do. This perverse dynamic makes 3-player games unrewarding to play. Therefore, my suggestion to you game designers is to make games in which the order of play does not go in a circle. It could be free-for-all style play, or it could be A-B-C-B-A-C turn ordering. Or maybe the main problem with three player games is something that I haven't thought of. Do you know why there are so few three player games?

It Is a Matter of Vague Displeasure

It upsets me a little to see that Amazon.com now sells vegetables over the internet. Not that I have any objection to e-commerce or the world of tomorrow, but didn't we fight a war in 2000 and 2001 against internet companies with prospectuses no more dumb than this? After you have bought some vegetables, maybe you would like a clarinet?

My New Favorite Internet Person

I am not just telling you to go read his website because he told me to even though he did. His blog is a lot better than his comic even though I guess the comic is why he's popular.

I'm not surprised. Why would you draw a comic when you can't draw? There are a lot of people who do that, aren't there? In any case, he is a lot funnier in prose form. I hope you like it, because if you do it will reflect well on me. Also: He lives in Ohio which is the best-shaped state in the country so that's pretty good, right?

What Is It With...

Christians and web design?

Here's one by the man who calls himself COL BO GRITZ which is not a nice name.

Here's one by the author of a booklet called "Death Penalty for Homosexuals is Prescribed in the Bible". I like that title. Nobody is going to read that and be left wondering what the Bible prescribes for homosexuals. No way.

Here's another one. Get a load of the certificate on that page. I like how the prize money for finding the scripture is 1,300 dollars. It looks like William N. Hollis isn't absolutely certain that the Jews aren't God's chosen people, and he doesn't think he can afford to lose more than that. ALSO: The first sentence of the certificate is a fragment.

The Aryan Nations people are clearly trying harder than the Dominionists, but they have their own style of bad web design -- pictures of just anything everywhere. Not that I endorse these things (you thought I did) but I can't help thinking they'd win more converts if they cleaned up their websites. Especially with the neo-Nazis. I bet most of their outreach is done over the internet, and you'd think they'd put more effort into looking good.

Crackpots!

A whole hive of them.

Here's one representative crackpot:

http://www.16pi2.com/blog/2006/05/philosophical-views-of-aether.html
http://www.16pi2.com/blog/2004/12/understanding-how-mind-and-aether-are.html

Far be it from me to infer things about a man from his physical apperance, but this man looks like Stephen Harper might if he decided to take the sins of the world on to his own shoulders. There is a strong link between Aether and the property of emotions.

Not really on-topic (which is probably just as well) I really like this post of his:

http://www.16pi2.com/blog/2004/12/doctor-visit.html. The commenter puts the perfect edge on this man's bone theories.

Linnaeus Wept

Carolus Linnaeus had a nice idea. His idea was to classify the animals and plants of the world into kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families, genera, and species. Wasn't that a nice idea? Let's leave aside the fact that "phylum", "class", "family" and "genus" all mean basically the same thing. Let's leave aside the fact that his ordering of the terms was purely arbitrary and agree that he had a neat little system.

Over the years though, man have we gummed up his system. We have, by my count, subkingdoms, superphyla, divisions, subphyla, subdivisions, subclasses, suborders, subfamilies, tribes, subtribes, subregna, subspecies, varieties and cultivars. I am certain that I am missing some of these.

This is disgusting. It lowers us all to have to refer to creatures this way. If we can't coin all new terms, let's at least do away with the whole system. Use numbers, or hand signals or something. I don't think I can stand any more superclasses.

Animals: Sweet Smelling or Not?

Chickens: Chickens are my personal favorite smelling animals. I am of course referring to the chickens themselves, and not anything that might come out of them. Have you ever picked up a great big chicken and just stuck your nose into it and inhaled? You will not regret it, I guarantee you. Other birds smell pretty good too, but probably not so much.

Cats: Cats usually smell like nothing at all. Today my cat was smelling like a chicken. That was kind of a treat.

Cows: Cows are more fun to touch than to smell, but they do give of a pleasant hot leather smell when they are alive. When they are dead they sometimes smell like cold leather but this is only if they have been made into leather and are cold.

Pigs: Does anybody know how pigs really smell? They're not often clean. I bet they have that same hot flesh smell that cows do, on the occasions that they are clean. Since they're swampy animals in general though, I think it would be fair to classify them as bad smelling. They chose to wallow and they will have to live with that choice.

Insects: There are no good smelling insects with the exception of formica ants. They add a zest to life don't you think?

Chinchillas: They smell like the dust they are continuously rolling in. I guess if you like the smell of chinchillas depends on whether you like the smell of dust. I could go either way.

Dogs: I feel sorry for dogs. If only there was some way to make your skin waterproof without stinking. It doesn't come up very often. How do tigers smell? Or ducks? Or what other terrestrial animals go in the water. Not as many as you would think.

Amphibians and Reptiles: I think every member of these classes wets on you when you pick them up. Not only is that antisocial, it is bad-smelling.

Sheep and Goats: Well gosh these animals smell like lanolin. Surely you are not surprised? What is really surprising, when you get down to it, is that mutton and goat cheese taste like lanolin. That is both surprising and disgusting, for my money. Fun fact!! Lanolin contains so-called "sheep alcohol". My mind is racing.

It Just Came to Me

The way to tell if you are in a world war is submarines. If they bring out the submarines, you know you've arrived. Think about it. I don't think they used one submarine through the whole Cold War. Take that Mr. Gingrich.

I Have a Tangential and Petty Point to Make

While we are on the subject of strange name spellings, or at least before we stray too far from it, let's talk about "Carolyn". Lots of important people have been named Caroline. There was Caroline of Ansbach and Caroline of Brunswick. That actually exhausts my memory of important people who have been named Caroline, but I am sure you can think of hundreds more. Of course, nobody before this century was ever named Carolyn.

The point is, nobody at all is named Caroline these days. Well, I can't think of any. Carolyn is an ugly name that I am not sure how to pronounce. It also makes me think that people were trying to spell "Carol-Lynn" but got confused. Which is just as well when you think what an awful name that would be. Honestly, "Y"s are responsible for most of our pronunciation trouble. Why people would want to insert them where they do not belong is past me.

Your Wikipedia Sentence For Today

"In the 21st century the jester is a character beloved of all with a passion for historical drama."

Gone With the Wind

Hello I am happy to see you today I just read Gone With the Wind and here are my thoughts on the most popular novel ever. I am kind of tired of linking text and we will be doing this bullet point style so hang on!

• There was too much character development (I mean that in the other sense). This is something that has always bothered me about novels. Do people read them to see characters develop? I think that is about the hundredth best reason to read a book. In real life, characters don't develop. No not at all. They just keep doing the same things they had been doing and if they don't work out they do them anyway. You might find it uplifting to see characters changing their whole persona entirely in a thousand pages but I don't believe it.

• It is really refreshing to read a book that takes the side of the priveleged class so completely. Scarlett is treated less sympathetically the more she flouts convention. The villains are mostly Yankees or poor whites. Women working out of the home bring disgrace on everyone, and blacks know their place. I challenge you to name one other novel that condemns iconoclasm so thoroughly.

• I learned that people in the South say "like a duck on a june bug" all the time. And in 1866 people in the South did not know what a sawmill is.

• Margaret Mitchell is very skilled at writing stupid characters. I was reading reviews of the book and people were saying that Scarlett was very intelligent. I really think people are desperate to make this book subversive somehow. Women are stupid, in the world of Gone With the Wind.

• I dare you to read The Wind Done Gone. I just dare you and I bet you can't because you're too scared.

Thank you for your time my friend.

World War Standards

My good friend Newt Gingrich, who looked so Southern that they made him move to the South (Question: Why do Pennsylvanians look so Southern? There's Tom Ridge and Rick Santorum too.) says we are in the middle of World War Three. How fun! Of course, that's if he's right. Really, he raises a lot of good questions.

First, how do you know you're in a world war? Literally speaking I guess you would have to have the whole world involved. The closest we ever got to that was World War Two of course which had all but like ten countries involved, and most of those were non-countries, Afghanistan or so. The First World War never really was one. Why I don't even think there were any Spanish speakers involved. If we're going to count that, then let's just throw the door open why don't we. I always thought the Seven Years War should count. And definitely the Napoleonic Wars.

There are people who like to count the Cold War as World War Three. These people are very annoying and they say that while the US and the USSR never went to war directly, they tried to exhaust one another with proxy wars and so on. I think these are usually also the people who like to say that we are in World War Four now, which makes Mr. Gingrich's article all the more puzzling. I am not going to try to engage these people because their mothers know who they are and that is enough for me.

One thing I wonder now is when World War Two got named. Some time, probably in 1940, someone said okay that war will be called World War One from now on, and this one gets to be World War Two. That must have been easily five times harder than any other naming job. Not only did you have to name this new war WWII and make it stick, but you had to get people to call the Great War something else entirely. Why did people decide to change the name of the Great War? People don't usually just up and call a historical event something different.

And then, what if you had gotten everyone to believe your name change, and Hitler dropped dead of a heart attack and the war was cancelled? I wouldn't want to try naming a war what amounts to This Is the Really Big One, not while it was ongoing. Newt Gingrich apparently does want to. I guess that kind of thing is how he got where he was.

I have a hard time seeing how this Israel-Lebanon thing is going to blow up into World War Three. Is Thailand going to make its entrance at some point? Will it enter on the side of Israel or Lebanon? Spain will stay uninvolved as always, but what about Portugal? Maybe it would be better to call this war Regional War A Million.

Or maybe Newt Gingrich thinks this war is like the Cold War AKA World War Three One. Shame on you Mr. Gingrich. Your mother knows who you are.

Catherine

I know how popular it is these days to come up with creative spellings for old names. I blame small-mindedness, the influence of black culture, and the hopeless search for individuality in a country of three hundred million people. I don't like the fact that people spell names with "y"s where the schwas go in all possible permutations, but I am definitely used to it and you can't shock me anymore just try.

What I wonder about is the Ur name-misspelling, Katherine. Henry the Eighth had three wives named C/Katherine. The first one was Catherine of Aragon, and the second two called themselves Katherine. Now what could be the reason for this? Could it be that Catalonians spell it Catherine and real English people spell it Katherine? That wouldn't explain why we always translate those Russian empresses names as Catherine. Likewise, if the Catherine/Katherine divide is a matter of Catholic versus Protestant, how do you explain the very non-Catholic empress Catherine the Great?

Perhaps it is attributable to the fact that they didn't have dictionaries in the 16th century, and they spelled the names any which way they felt like. I'm sure they did, but I think Katherine is the only variant name that dates back to the 1500s. Everyone in England it seems like was named Matilda in the eleventh century, but there's still only one way to spell Matilda.

Unlike the Matildas and Ethelberts, though, this is still an issue today. How do you spell Catherine? It should be pretty clear to you if you've gotten this far that I favor "Catherine". I still have a hard time believing that Katherine Hepburn is not some meth-addicted single mother in Oklahoma.

Fun fact: The city in Ontario is called "St. Catharines". That is absolutely the first time I have ever seen that spelling. I kind of like it. It reminds me of Cathars who were definitely not saints. Did you know! Their staple food was chestnuts.

Food Apocalypse

Do you ever get the feeling that fine art is going to wind up in your lifetime? Of course you do. You realize that there is nowhere to go after postmodernism. But I'm not complaining. What I do find interesting is cuisine these days. I was hearing about a dish made from watermelon, mint, and feta cheese. They said it was good. My question to you is, have we reached a point where any ingredients at all can make a dish that cutting-edge foodies will love?

You wouldn't think so. I mean, taste is a much more intense sense than sight for instance. You can always put a mess on canvas, and somebodies will love it, because the price to looking at something very very ugly is low. But you would think that people would be more discriminating when it came to food. Eating something that tastes really bad is a really bad experience.

Still, I can't think of any assemblage of ingredients (good quality ingredients of course) that is intuitively so bad that even eat-anything toffs would hate it. Can you?

You understand what that means now. Cuisine is over. You can all go back to eating Spaghetti-Os.

Everyone In the Year 2020 Knows About Nanobots!

My friends, all I can do is recommend this to you. If you don't like it I'm sorry but I did all I could. --> http://adamcadre.ac/06lyttle.html

No Saint Too Obscure

If you have ever looked at a map of Quebec you will have been struck by their town names. They are all named after saints you have never heard of. I have a theory that somewhere in the wilderness of Quebec there is a black pope on a throne of skulls, creating his minions saints, and setting them up as lieutenants over their eponymous villages. How else can you explain:

St. Polycarpe
St. Zotique
St. Colomban
St. Athanase
St. Amable
St. Chrysostome
St. Redempteur
St. Telesphore
St. Calixte
and my favorite, St. Hyacinthe.

Addiction Is a Meaningless Concept

It's a medical term that has been batting around our culture for a while. But what do we really know about addiction?

1) It's bad. "Addiction" is almost never used in a positive context. It is never considered to be good to be addicted to something.

2) It involves repetitive behavior. Well yes, but so do a lot of things.

3) It typically involves drugs but lately it has bled over into non-drug behavior. I am still not sure how standard that usage is.

As far as I can tell, that is all that addiction necessarily entails. Pretty thin definition, no? You might be saying but wait Alex, there's way more to addiction than that. What about tolerance, you say, what about withdrawal? What about pleasurable stimulus, and the resulting habit formation also known as "psychological addiction?" As a matter of fact, those are completely inessential to our understanding of the concept. Some "addictive" drugs exhibit all three of these properties. Some exhibit none. None of them is essential. Observe:

Pleasure, tolerance, withdrawal: Heroin
Pleasure, tolerance, no withdrawal: MDMA
Pleasure, no tolerance, withdrawal: Marijuana
Pleasure, no tolerance, no withdrawal: LSD
No pleasure, tolerance, withdrawal: Sleeping pills
No pleasure, tolerance, no withdrawal: Arsenic-eating*
No pleasure, no tolerance, withdrawal: SSRIs
No pleasure, no tolerance, no withdrawal: Dr. Phil sez, "I think tattooing is the new addiction."

You see, all the combinations are filled with a drug that some people, especially if they are dumb like Dr. Phil, consider addictive. So unless our definition of "addiction" is additive -- addiction is habitual bad use of a drug with tolerance, or habitual bad use of a drug for pleasure or habitual bad use of a drug to stave off withdrawl -- addiction has no meaning.

* I know arsenic-eating isn't considered addictive. That's because nobody does it. Wikipedia doesn't seem to have heard of it. But does anybody doubt that if arsenic eating were widespread today, Dr. Phil would have a primetime special on mothers who eat arsenic (and their families who don't know about it)? If you would prefer, you can leave that field blank. It doesn't make any difference to my point.

Oh.

I feel unhappy so no more posts until I feel good. It could be days, it could be months. Until then please talk among yourselves. That's right, this is an

Open Thread

Okay I feel better now. Hooray for opponent processes. I forgot about those.

State Shapes -- Good or Bad?

For years, scholars have been trying to determine which American state has the best shape. At last the mystery has been solved. Behold the answers.

Good:

Ohio: Ohio is probably the best-shaped state. I like how the curve of Lake Erie to the north mirrors the curve of the Ohio River to the south, while the east and west borders are parallel, and it does this while remaining almost square.

South Carolina: South Carolina is an all-around good shape. I think it comes closest of all US states to having no straight borders.

Kentucky: Kentucky is a nice shape by itself -- its huge northern border is just one long river, but the beautiful part is Kentucky Island. It's the best place to live since the Northwest Angle.

Minnesota: Northwest Angle rules.

Vermont
New Hampshire: Vermont and New Hampshire complement each other well. It's hard to say which is better; New Hampshire has that nice northern part that gets so narrow, but Vermont has parallel northern and southern borders. I think maybe Vermont is better because New Hampshire's eastern border jogs to the east which is ugly.

North Dakota
Nebraska: These are pretty good states because they are almost square, but have rivers as their eastern borders. I like the way the Missouri river curves along Nebraska's border. It makes it look like a bread box.

Montana: Continental Divide for a border? Yes indeed. Idaho has the same border but come on. That state is a ridiculous shape.

Georgia
Tennessee

Iowa
North Carolina: I call these the Nose States. They look like they have funny noses!

Wisconsin

Bad:

Missouri
Arkansas: These states have that little toothy part on their border on the Mississippi river. Maybe it's so they'll interlock. I say it looks dumb.

Louisiana: Would have looked better if it followed the Mississippi River all the way down. Of course, so would...

Mississippi
Alabama: These are some bad looking states. I keep thinking they're going to topple over. They can't stand up on legs that narrow!

New Mexico: Stairstep border not appreciated.

Utah: It was clearly what was left over after they carved out every other state. That's why it looks so retarded.

Alaska
Hawaii: I feel bad ragging on these states. For the most part, they couldn't help it. But at the same time archipelagos are ugly.

Arizona

Rhode Island

South Dakota
Kansas: These are the bad plains states. They have eastern borders that are half river and half line. That just looks bad.

New York: There is no way Long Island and New York City should be in the same state that Buffalo and Rochester are in. How did New York manage to curve it's way around Pennsylvania and New Jersey like that?

Delaware: I am almost tempted to call this good because it's northern border is an arc. But still, it takes up most of the Delmarva peninsula, but not all. That's not good.

Nevada
Arizona

Maryland
West Virginia: These two states illustrate what happens when you assign state borders without having explored the area first. The MD-WV border runs so close to the Mason-Dixon line that it almost makes you think they planned it that way. And I realize that West Virginia's shape was determined by some kind of secessionist referendum, but it is undeniably an ugly state. It has two panhandles, for God's sake. It wins the prize of ugliest state.

A Technology We Should Be Investing More In

Inflatable furniture isn't just for losers. Or at least it shouldn't be. Inflatable furniture is scientifically determined to be the most comfortable furniture available to the civilian public. Have you ever sat on an inflatable couch? You'd never want to go back to springs if you had.

However, inflatable furniture is annoying. Yes you can buy an inflatable couch at the Five Dollar Store, but it shows. Those things leak. All of them, slowly and surely. If you wanted to have an inflatable chair as part of your daily furniture, you would have to blow it up every day. Who wants to bother with that?

Is it that hard to keep inflatable things inflated? Bicycle inner tubes keep their air for a long time despite enormous pressure. I am sure that science could come up with a way to make couches that don't go flat over the weekend. Maybe just make the plastic that forms the shell of the couch extra thick. It really can't be that hard. While they're at it, maybe they could make it not come in the worst colors imaginable.

Frankly, I think some of the effort that we currently put into wristwatch R&D should go into inflatable furniture. Wristwatches have gone as far as they're going to go, folks. Onward and upward.

Migration Patterns

Immigrants came to America in the strangest patterns. Italian immigrants and Jewish immigrants and Slavic immigrants came here and settled in the big cities, right? That's a sensible thing for new immigrants to do. Getting settled in a place is hard, and it's that much easier if you can rent a tenement, work in a foundry or something, and be right next to thousands of neighbors who have the same customs as you. The availability of ethnic gangs didn't hurt either.

How is it then that Swedish and Norwegian and German immigrants made up most of the population of places like North Dakota? It's not like they had that much more money than their Italian friends; Scandinavia was the poorest part of Europe in those days. How could they afford to get to America, and then get across the continent, live in terrible weather with terrible growing conditions, with terribly sparse population and buy the necessary plows and horses? Why not do like the Irish?

And if becoming a prairie farmer was that desirable, why didn't the Italians do it? It's mostly what the Italian immigrants did before coming to America; they had a lot of practice at it. Am I supposed to believe that farming conditions in Oklahoma scared off Italian peasants? That's pretty wimpy of them.

Rhubarb

Of all the stem-based foods, rhubarb is my favorite. Things I like about rhubarb:

• It is poisonous in large quantites. This is always a plus for food, including almonds, pufferfish and fava beans.
• I like the name. "Rh-" is one of the best ways to begin a word. Along with "rhotive" and "rhesus", it's a good start.
• I like that it comes from Siberia. This is right up there with carrots being from Afghanistan.
• I just realized that I have never ever seen rhubarb for sale. You might think this was because A) it grows everywhere with no care, and B) there isn't much demand for it, so C) it's not profitable to sell, but you could say the same thing about zucchinis. They're everywhere.
• It is impossibly sour. Food that is too strongly flavored to eat plain? Thumbs up.
• What ever happened to junk wine? Why do people no longer make wine out of strawberries or dandelions or rhubarb? Is it always less good than grape wine? People drink apple wine. Am I seriously to believe that those are the only two wine-quality fruits? I don't believe it.

Pet Monkey

Why don't people have pet monkeys any more? They do in Venezuala and Cameroon and places like that. It looks like a lot of fun. Ten times as much fun at least as having a dog or cat (a hundred times as much fun as a pet rabbit.) Frankly, the ready availability of pet monkeys is just about the only thing people in that part of the world have going for them.

Why no pet monkeys in the US? I know what you're going to say. Alex, you say, it's too cold here. The monkeys would all freeze up. I don't buy it. Sure monkeys prefer a tropical climate. But don't forget, monkeys live in Japan and China. Surely a monkey wouldn't be too ill-at-ease in Florida or Arizona. Besides, we keep chimpanzees and other primates on site at Hollywood year round, the better to make hilarious monkey themed comedies. Not to mention all the test monkeys and blind people monkeys.

And besides, there was an episode of Leave it to Beaver where the Beaver got a pet monkey. I'm pretty sure he had to give it away, but if a pet monkey is good enough for Leave it to Beaver, it's good enough for mainstream America. I thought that was the whole idea of that show.

I'm not saying that just anybody can have a monkey. Sure, they would be more expensive to take care of than a pet mouse, and I bet the medical bills get enormous sometimes. But then again, this isn't in a class with having a pet tiger. Provided you keep them warm and fed and healthy, monkeys practically take care of themselves. That's how they got to Japan in the first place. They're so adaptable.

I want a pet monkey.

Additional Argument for My Philosophical Idea

As you remember, my philosophical idea is that one's sensation of X is merely belief that one is undergoing sensation of X. I did however leave out my best argument:

Imagine Fred, who believes he is seeing an oak tree. Suppose Fred is not really seeing an oak tree. That is, suppose Fred is not having the sensation of seeing an oak tree, that the sensation is completely absent in him and his phenomenological realm is devoid of oak tree experience.

But Fred still believes he is seeing an oak tree. Now the question: Is there any way we can convince Fred, or ourselves, that he is not seeing an oak tree? He believes he is. It is trivial that given Fred believes he is seeing an oak tree, it is impossible for Fred to conclude that he is not seeing an oak tree. He will never have any idea that he's not seeing an oak tree.

Therefore, if phenomenal experience were detachable from belief, there would be no way to tell that other people -- or even we -- were having phenomenal experiences. This is of course impossible; the whole idea of phenomenal experiences is that they're instantly knowable. Therefore phenomenal experience of X is belief that one has phenomenal experience of X.

I Love America

Well lots of people love America, and if I ever want to enter politics I had better love America too. I have no political-type objection to loving America, unlike so many others. The trouble is, I don't know what it is to love America. I know how to love people, and activities, and things-that-I-can-appreciate-all-at-once and stuff like that. But what is it to love America? Some possibilities:

• Loving the American government. That is, loving the individual politicians, policemen, soldiers and bureaucrats who make it up.
• Loving the actions of the American government (rather than just the members of the government themselves).
• Loving the American Constitution. I guess this would mean favoring the Bill of Rights, thinking that our tricameral system of government is a good idea, and enjoying the political process.
• Loving American principles. Here again, what is it to love a principle? I guess it comes down to preferring to be free (rather than the alternative), preferring a fair system of justice, liking economic opportunity (rather than strict castes), and other values traditionally associated with America.
• Loving symbols of Americana. Is loving America just loving Mom and apple pie and fireworks and baseball and Abraham Lincoln and the Statue of Liberty?
• Loving every square inch of American territory, the shape of America, and American geographical features.
• Nothing. It's just empty language that we have agreed not to call one another on.

So which is it, kids? The sooner you tell me, the sooner I can make my triumphant entry into politics. I have some big ideas for this country.

I Have a Philosophical Idea

Here is my philosophical idea it's mine and I don't care if some ivory tower jerk thought of it first it's mine and wholly original: Somatic sensations are merely beliefs.

See, when you have a normal somatic sensation like hunger, it doesn't feel like a belief to you. You may feel that your sensation of hunger is spawning beliefs (beliefs like "I am hungry" for instance), but that your sensation of hunger is its own thing, irreduceable ghostly etc. This is not so. You are merely assigning hunger a status above beliefs because of your intimate familiarity with it, and because it so often goes along with the same beliefs and sensations (fantasies about meals, stomach cramps) and thus forms a cohesive, easily recognizable package, more so than even the most obessive normal beliefs.

Here is a nice experiment you can perform to blur the line in your mind between somatic sensation and belief. Pretend you are hyperventilating, and put a plastic bag over your mouth and breathe in and out. (Fun fact: This is no longer recommended as a cure for hyperventilation. I think the suggested alternative is weak sauce.)

Once you have breathed into the bag long enough, you will experience a sensation (if you are like me and I hope you are) that is a belief-that-I-had-better-stop but undeniably a somatic sensation (because it is a sensation about what is going on inside of you). The only reason we are able to recognize this as a belief is through our unfamiliarity with it. I can easily imagine doing this every day and assigning it its own phenomenological character ex post facto.

I can think of a few other sensations that are experienced to some degree as beliefs or desires, including the knowledge that your veins are being pinched and your circulation is cut off, depth perception, and magnetoception. In short, any sensation that you don't feel too often, or consider too deeply, begins to feel a lot like belief.

Question for discussion: Is it just the case that all sensations, sensory and otherwise, are just beliefs? In other words, when P experiences X, is it just that P believes that he is experiencing X for all X? I hope.

Newsflash!

You know those people who write XOXOXO? It has long been an established fact that it stands for hugs and kisses how sweet. But! Your correspondent just learned something shocking.

For years and years I thought the exes were hugs and the ohs were kisses. After all, a puckered mouth is shaped like an O, right? And a man standing with his legs splayed and arms out is in the classic "Hug me" pose. Right? And when you hug someone your arms are crossed behind his back in a classic X format.

This is obviously what you thought too but no! Apparently the ohs are hugs and the exes are kisses. I can kind of understand the ohs. Seen from above the arms of two hugging people look like an O. But exes as kisses? That's just wrong. If your kisses look like an X you are doing something wrong. I'm sorry.

The Iraqi Insurgency Is Up to Something...

"One international official told me of reports among his staff that a 15-year-old girl had been beheaded and a dog's head sewn on her body in its place; and of a young child who had had his hands drilled and bolted together before being killed."

This is exactly the kind of medical experiment I would expect Josef Mengele to come up with it he had had an anti-modern ideology. I'm a little worried what they're trying to accomplish though. Maybe a recreation of the feared "Dogs Playing Poker" paintings of the First World War.

Things to Do Next Time Italy Wins the World Cup

• Go to Little Italy and tell them "Little Italy, did you hear? Big Italy just won the World Cup!"
• Walk around town shouting "World Cup! World Cup! etc. This one is actually more surreal on the day before.
• Go up to a car that is stopped in traffic, honking its horn non-stop, shouting and waving flags, and ask them who won.
• Stay inside all day because of the honking and then have dreams that evening that you can still hear the people's cheers (recommended)
  

Maxis

Remember Maxis? They were the computer game company of my formative years. Also: Remember Will Wright? I am certain he used to be famous. Famous for making computer games for Maxis. Let's take a look at some early Maxis games, as last played by me about ten years ago. (Imagine the titles are written in severe sans-serif font.)

Sim Life: This game is typical of Maxis efforts. After you have played this, you sit back and say to yourself, "did I just play a game?" The game I guess is about designing lifeforms and trying to populate the world with them. You can't win. I didn't like it because whenever you design a lifeform, you have to design a 16x16 pixel icon for it, using only 16 colors and all of them ugly. I can't draw. Everything ends up dying out in the end anyway, except for cottonwood trees.

Sim Earth: I think this must have been a reworking of Sim Life, or the other way around. It's the same concept, isn't it? But this one has trichordates, built in. You can't ask any better than that. Except graphics that aren't ugly. But really, nobody makes games like this with proper graphics. What would be the point?

Sim Ant: "It is about time someone ought to make an ant colony simulator." That's what they said and Lo someone did. I like the caterpillars.

Sim Tower: Yes, in this game you simulate a skyscraper. In the real world, are there really such things as sky lobbies? How come I've never seen one? Sim Tower is actually very boring. I like the easter eggs in this game. That is a lost art, don't you think.

Sim City 2000: This is the only Sim City game I ever played much. Sim City 1 was before my time I am sorry to say. I always thought it was very ugly, and that any game that classified a single city as a "megalopolis" must not be very good. I did like how you could import Sim City 1 files into Sim City 2000. Those cities always looked like North Korean cities to me. So severe.

Sim City 3000 (or is it 3?) was clunky and cartoonish. I hate it.

Sim City 2000 was just right. I especially like how you can leave it running overnight, and accumulate millions of Sim City dollars. Maxis knew what they were doing when they designed a game you could play in your sleep. With one bold stroke they doubled your leisure time. Who needs the AFL-CIO when you have Will Wright?

A-Train: One of the most surreal things in the world. It's a railroad simulator, right? But all the colors are weird beige and bright green and pale blue and pink. And your trains move around commodities which are represented by gray cubes. And roads are one of the rarest things in the game, but when they do happen, land values skyrocket. And there's a stock market, and oh all the companies have such bizarre names. And the manual must have been over a hundred pages. I seem to recall it had a lot of useless information about the bullet train.

Sim Health: I just learned about this one yesterday. Did you know that Maxis made this in response to the popularity of the Clinton health plan? For that reason alone, I definitely recommend this game. "An incredibly complex simulation, it was generally regarded as difficult and dry." Oh Maxis. These days I guess Maxis is focused on making The Sims or something. Now that's boring.

Baby Nose-Blow

I LOVE YOU BABY NOSE-BLOW

Constitutional Law Fact!

There is nothing in the US Constitution, or the constitutions of many states, that prevents those states from issuing titles of nobility. Only the federal government may not. Why are we not yet doing this? I want to be knighted by the state of Ohio. You know, for all my long service to the people of that state.

Food Facts People Don't Want to Know

Certain people get mad when you tell them:

Paprika tastes like dust.
Classy expensive chocolate tastes like lawnmowers smell.
Brioche tastes like anchovies. Why is that?
Sugar tastes like pennies.
Coffee tastes exactly like chocolate. The only difference is that people put less sugar in coffee.

I Want to Have Oprah's Miracle Babies

Well pals I can't sleep, on account of my eye. It must be scratched. There is nothing worse than a scratched eye. It is like the Devil existed, and he were everyone I knew. That is how cranky it makes me.

So instead let's talk about Oprah. How soothing. Her episode today was about miracle babies. The transcript is a joy to read, for those of you who missed the original. Fun things about today's episode:

• Celine Dion looks like a cattle skull.

• Celine Dion was talking up her baby, René-Charles. "She says she and her husband, René, regularly take René-Charles to Chuck E. Cheese and on miniature golf outings. René and René-Charles especially like to golf together."

• Another lady was on, whose husband died of cancer. He died at home, and they spent his last day alive hugging in bed. An open plea: Do not make me spend my last day alive hugging. That's a terrible thing to do to a man who is barely concious.

• "Miracle babies"

• She had his miracle babies, which is to say in vitro fertilization with frozen sperm. I really like the way they describe this on the official Oprah website: "After the first attempt at in vitro, Sarah got the miraculous news that she was pregnant with twins, Braden Harper and Shae Curran." That kind of sounds like the local news team (weather on the half hour) bullied their way into her uterus. Those are their middle names, right? Who calls babies that way?

• Celine Dion cries like she might be sneezing.

If It Weren't So Horrifying I Would Like to Die of

SPS

I Have an Ophthamology Question

My contact lens was hurting today, like it had suddenly started being made out of eyelashes or eye surgery. This happens because I wear the same contact lenses, day and night for months at a time and well after a while they just turn into hurty eye things.

So I took out that lens the right one in case you were wondering, and now I have a question. If you are very myopic, do you have any depth perception with only one contact lens in? I can't tell for sure. It's disorienting enough to see fuzz out of one eye. Is there some easy test for binocular depth perception?

Conceptually I bet it could go either way. I can see objects with both eyes -- they impinge on my visual field -- but I can't tell that the more distant ones are discrete objects. And considering that the light from them is distorted in one eye, how could I use them as a reference for determining depth?

The Fourth of July

Bad choice for a national holiday. Some better days:

April 19: The date of the battle of Lexington.

July 2: The day the Continental Congress declared independence.

September 3: The day the Treaty of Paris was signed.

January 14: Ditto ratified.

September 17: Date of the drafting of the Constitution.

June 21: Ditto ratified.

March 4: Ditto takes effect.

All I can see that happened on the fourth of July is that a particular document was approved, explaining why America was declaring independence. America had already declared independence. America was already at war with Great Britain. All they did was decree a particular format for their whine. That's what the Declaration of Independence is you know. All the heavy lifting was done on the second of July.

I Have an Intuition

I hope that the US never has to have a female president. Why do I hope this you may be asking am I a bigot? No.

I hope that the US never has to have a female president, because if it does her husband will become known as the "First Husband". Nobody would be able to do anything about it; it would just happen. That would be the biggest presidential mistake since Grover Cleveland got to be known as two separate presidents (#22 & #24).

Checkers Strategy

Why do all the people I play checkers with on the internet make the same moves? They are all obsessed with getting men onto my side of the edges of the board. I have not yet been able to tell any benefit to these moves. Are all my checkers opponents cockroaches? Or is it just one opponent I keep getting over and over again (who happens to be a cockroach)?

Is there a way to learn to play board games well that doesn't involve numbers and letters? It seems like there should be a better way. It was just like this with the Rubik's Cube.

What I Hate Most About Policemen

I do not like the police. Anybody who goes into a profession whose chief business is telling people what to do and being completely humorless and awful about it is someone I hate. I recognize that on some level police are necessary of course, but at the same time I think most of the jobs they do could be done with booby traps or Sherlock Holmes.

Police also suffer from shady motivations. It is very clear what the pickpocket wants, or even Jack the Ripper (Answer: psychosexual gratification). It is not clear what policemen want. Money, praise from their superiors, praise from God, psychosexual gratification, nothing? It could be any of these.

But what I hate most about the police is their name for police dogs: K-9 units. That is a Dr. Who joke. Fascist organizations telling jokes makes me shiver. You know they're not doing it because it's funny. (A it's not and B big organizations don't think anything is funny) They are doing it to make the police seem nice and silly. These are the people who would lean you over the hood of your car and beat you up if they thought they could.

Pointing Guns at Each Other

Does this ever happen in real life? It sure happens a lot in the movies. Two characters point guns at each other. Sometimes each person's gun is closer to the other person than his own gun is. Neither one of them shoots at the other. Usually they have a long conversation.

Does this ever happen in real life? I guess the principle behind these standoffs is that if the first person shoots the second person, the second person will *somehow* shoot the first person in return. Does that sound right? What if the first person aims for the heart? Or the wrist? Or even just shoot the other gun. Will the second person still have time to react? I bet I wouldn't.

If these do happen in real life, what's the usual outcome? Do they tend to shoot each other? Or make friends and lower their guns warily? Or wait for backup. Someone should do a study.

Lightning Awareness Week

I can't believe I missed it. It was last week. I don't even think there were any thunderstorms last week. Maybe they were lying low.

There are two things that annoy me about lightning talk. The first is that "you are more likely to be struck by lightning" construction. I think this appeals to people's stupidity about what lighting actually is. As if it were like a meteor impact, and if you had stood a few steps to the left you wouldn't have gotten struck. It's not like that. Lightning looks for you. (How likely you actually are to be struck by lightning is not important to this construction. Like figures mean anything to people.)

The second thing is this: http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/resources/Ltg%20Safety-Facts.pdf.

Exclamation point.

Insects: Likes and Does Not Like

Likes:

• Cicadas: If insects were animals, cicadas would be dogs. They are big and loud and friendly. I love them.
• Butterflies: Ditto cats. Draw your own reasons.
• Millipedes: I think these would be robots. Friendly robots.
• Dragonflies
• Bumblebees
• Really big beetles
• Grasshoppers
• Water skimmers: Have you tried to sink water skimmers? It is a fun game or would be if they didn't always win. How do they stay afloat?

Does not like:

• Wasps
• Moths: It is like moths are actually evil aliens, who have almost perfected how to pass undetected among butterfly-kind. But I am not fooled.
• Ladybugs: They pee on me. ICK.
• Mosquitos
• All flies: Is there any good kind of fly? I know there are good kinds of wasps although I consider them honorary birds, but I don't think there are any good kinds of flies.
• Ants the smaller the worse: You can at least pretend that the big ants are nice doggies.
• Japanese beetles: They have sex way too often. And they let you catch them doing it.
• Centipedes: Centipedes are so evil that I am granting them honorary insecthood. Just so I can make it clear that I hate them.