This article on how thinking younger makes you act younger is old news to me, but it is still good. It describes how a researcher produced real and measurable improvements in physical and cognitive abilities in older men, by placing in an environment that simulated one from their youth.
There is a lot of good evidence that manipulation of people's mind, aka the placebo effect, can be very powerful and helpful.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Taliban and Air Strikes
Read this BBC article.
If I copied and quoted all of the important parts and quotes, I would end up copying the whole thing. You really need to read this. It is an amazing inside look at the senseless brutality and warped thinking of radical Islamic terrorists.
I would like to comment of several things. First, note that this is Pakistan, not Afghanistan. I missed that at first.
My main point of discussion is the air strike that killed the militants. Except for a chance of fate, the person being interviewed would have been killed as well. It seems that the attack was by helicopter gunship, which means that it was a Pakistani army operation and not an American drone strike. But this scenario has surely been repeated many times with an American finger on the trigger.
We have killed hundreds of innocent civilians, just like Meena, in our attacks on Taliban militants. This is an undisputed fact. The question we need to be asking is: "Is it worth the cost?" I think that it is, but I also think that we do not need to be the ones doing the shooting. Instead of launching the drones ourselves, we should be lending them to Pakistan and then giving the Pakistani government whatever intel we manage to collect. Then they can be the ones who make the choice about how many Meenas to kill in order to stop the suicide bombings.
In Pakistan an account of life with the Taliban has emerged from a 13-year-old girl called Meena, who says her own family tried to turn her into a suicide bomber.
If I copied and quoted all of the important parts and quotes, I would end up copying the whole thing. You really need to read this. It is an amazing inside look at the senseless brutality and warped thinking of radical Islamic terrorists.
I would like to comment of several things. First, note that this is Pakistan, not Afghanistan. I missed that at first.
My main point of discussion is the air strike that killed the militants. Except for a chance of fate, the person being interviewed would have been killed as well. It seems that the attack was by helicopter gunship, which means that it was a Pakistani army operation and not an American drone strike. But this scenario has surely been repeated many times with an American finger on the trigger.
We have killed hundreds of innocent civilians, just like Meena, in our attacks on Taliban militants. This is an undisputed fact. The question we need to be asking is: "Is it worth the cost?" I think that it is, but I also think that we do not need to be the ones doing the shooting. Instead of launching the drones ourselves, we should be lending them to Pakistan and then giving the Pakistani government whatever intel we manage to collect. Then they can be the ones who make the choice about how many Meenas to kill in order to stop the suicide bombings.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Mexican Dance
Last night a friend and I went to a performance of the 'Ballet Folklorico de Mexico' here on campus. I have no idea what kind of artistic merit the show had, or what effect it might have had on the feelings of an average person. I spent most of the time watching and analyzing the way that they moved and produced the show.
The dancers were obviously professionals. They were very good at what they were doing. It is actually quite rare nowadays to see an act that has been polished to such perfection. Most of the things we see live on stage are rehearsed for several weeks and then played for a few days, before the performers finish the act and start working on something else. But the group was dedicated to this one performance. It is all they do, and they had been doing it for decades. I spoke to a woman after the show who said that she had seen this in the 1950's in New York, and she remembered several most of the dances. The show had seen only minor changes in five decades. The dancers change, rotating in and out, but the show keeps going, perpetuating itself in roughly the same form.
During the show, I remained aware of the people behind the masks and costumes, and the way that the production flowed. I tried to keep track of individual performers, to time their disappearances and costume changes. I thought about the work that was going on backstage, and how everything must be coordinated. This lack of immersion was not their fault; it is incredibly difficult to make me 'spellbound' and only look at what is presented. I am the kind of person who always thinks about what is beneath the surface. It also helped that we had a front upper box seat, so we could see in to the wings of the stage where people were getting things ready.
We also had a better view of the dancers in the back, and the floor of the stage. Sitting 'front and center' might be the best place to see a play, but you really want to be sitting in an upper level when watching a dance performance. That way you have a good view of the whole stage, not just the dancers in the front.
I think that a lot of people forget that performers are human beings. What they do is so far removed from the life of an average person that it is easy to mentally classify them as 'other' and see them as a kind of entertainment robot. The best way to escape from that, and really appreciate their skill, is to imagine yourself up there and think of what would happen if you tried to do what they are doing.
It is very rare that I see people do something, outside of a high-level sports contest, that I would simply not be able to do. There are a lot of things people do that I cannot currently do, but that I would be able to do if I put enough time and effort into practicing and training for it. This dance did not quite hit the level of 'I would not be able to do this at all', but it came close.
All of the dancers had amazing stamina and dexterity. Aside from martial arts demonstrations, I had never seen anything like it in real life. But the things they did were not so alien to me that I could not really appreciate it. I recognized most of their movements and footwork; there are only a limited number of ways to make the human body go from Point A to Point B while maintaining poise, and a good martial artist is familiar with all of them.
The dancers really know how to move. Their speed and acceleration was amazing. It was sometimes hard to realize this, until I forced myself to think of how large the stage was. They would routinely float from one end of the stage to the other in seconds, then turn and be running in a completely different direction in the blink of an eye. The fact that I am capable of doing similar things made it more impressive, not less.
I would not want to get put in a boxing ring with any one of those people, even if he or she had no clue how to throw a punch. I would have serious trouble landing a hit on them. They could probably spend the whole match just running away from me, and by the end of it I would be too exhausted to do anything.
Some of the dances were done barefoot. I liked those the best, partly because they made less noise and partly because it was easier to analyze their steps and movement. But most of the dancing was done in shoes. They all slammed the stage with these shoes, making a lot of noise and making my feet wince in sympathetic pain. The stress on their feet and legs must be intense. At the end of the show, when people were clapping uproariously and the performers kept coming back for more and more bows, my thoughts were "Stop that clapping already so they can all get away from the hot stage lights, take off those costumes, and soak their feet in something soothing."
Most of the dances apparently had to be performed while smiling. Some of the people were good at this, others less so. A few of the women had forced and unnerving rictus grins the while time. I don't blame them for this; it is incredibly difficult to force yourself to keep smiling while doing an intense physical workout and they should not have been asked to try. The frightfulness of their faces was not helped by the stage makeup. I know that all stage makeup has to be thick and bold to counteract the effect of stage lighting, but these women still looked way too painted up.
Also, you would think that they could get costumes that did not have pieces falling off every so often. By the end of the show, the stage floor was festooned with feathers, bits of fabric, and even some rhinestones. Maintaining the costumes probably takes a lot of work. Perhaps this wearing out is unavoidable, given the way they were moving. I can't help thinking that if the dancing made the costumes were fall apart like that, it must be doing something similar to the bodies of the dancers. I really hope for their sakes that they only do this once a week at most.
The dancers were obviously professionals. They were very good at what they were doing. It is actually quite rare nowadays to see an act that has been polished to such perfection. Most of the things we see live on stage are rehearsed for several weeks and then played for a few days, before the performers finish the act and start working on something else. But the group was dedicated to this one performance. It is all they do, and they had been doing it for decades. I spoke to a woman after the show who said that she had seen this in the 1950's in New York, and she remembered several most of the dances. The show had seen only minor changes in five decades. The dancers change, rotating in and out, but the show keeps going, perpetuating itself in roughly the same form.
During the show, I remained aware of the people behind the masks and costumes, and the way that the production flowed. I tried to keep track of individual performers, to time their disappearances and costume changes. I thought about the work that was going on backstage, and how everything must be coordinated. This lack of immersion was not their fault; it is incredibly difficult to make me 'spellbound' and only look at what is presented. I am the kind of person who always thinks about what is beneath the surface. It also helped that we had a front upper box seat, so we could see in to the wings of the stage where people were getting things ready.
We also had a better view of the dancers in the back, and the floor of the stage. Sitting 'front and center' might be the best place to see a play, but you really want to be sitting in an upper level when watching a dance performance. That way you have a good view of the whole stage, not just the dancers in the front.
I think that a lot of people forget that performers are human beings. What they do is so far removed from the life of an average person that it is easy to mentally classify them as 'other' and see them as a kind of entertainment robot. The best way to escape from that, and really appreciate their skill, is to imagine yourself up there and think of what would happen if you tried to do what they are doing.
It is very rare that I see people do something, outside of a high-level sports contest, that I would simply not be able to do. There are a lot of things people do that I cannot currently do, but that I would be able to do if I put enough time and effort into practicing and training for it. This dance did not quite hit the level of 'I would not be able to do this at all', but it came close.
All of the dancers had amazing stamina and dexterity. Aside from martial arts demonstrations, I had never seen anything like it in real life. But the things they did were not so alien to me that I could not really appreciate it. I recognized most of their movements and footwork; there are only a limited number of ways to make the human body go from Point A to Point B while maintaining poise, and a good martial artist is familiar with all of them.
The dancers really know how to move. Their speed and acceleration was amazing. It was sometimes hard to realize this, until I forced myself to think of how large the stage was. They would routinely float from one end of the stage to the other in seconds, then turn and be running in a completely different direction in the blink of an eye. The fact that I am capable of doing similar things made it more impressive, not less.
I would not want to get put in a boxing ring with any one of those people, even if he or she had no clue how to throw a punch. I would have serious trouble landing a hit on them. They could probably spend the whole match just running away from me, and by the end of it I would be too exhausted to do anything.
Some of the dances were done barefoot. I liked those the best, partly because they made less noise and partly because it was easier to analyze their steps and movement. But most of the dancing was done in shoes. They all slammed the stage with these shoes, making a lot of noise and making my feet wince in sympathetic pain. The stress on their feet and legs must be intense. At the end of the show, when people were clapping uproariously and the performers kept coming back for more and more bows, my thoughts were "Stop that clapping already so they can all get away from the hot stage lights, take off those costumes, and soak their feet in something soothing."
Most of the dances apparently had to be performed while smiling. Some of the people were good at this, others less so. A few of the women had forced and unnerving rictus grins the while time. I don't blame them for this; it is incredibly difficult to force yourself to keep smiling while doing an intense physical workout and they should not have been asked to try. The frightfulness of their faces was not helped by the stage makeup. I know that all stage makeup has to be thick and bold to counteract the effect of stage lighting, but these women still looked way too painted up.
Also, you would think that they could get costumes that did not have pieces falling off every so often. By the end of the show, the stage floor was festooned with feathers, bits of fabric, and even some rhinestones. Maintaining the costumes probably takes a lot of work. Perhaps this wearing out is unavoidable, given the way they were moving. I can't help thinking that if the dancing made the costumes were fall apart like that, it must be doing something similar to the bodies of the dancers. I really hope for their sakes that they only do this once a week at most.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Petty Dictator
Spartanburg County, S.C. -- Spartanburg County deputies say a child at Fairforest Elementary School stuck several of her classmates with a syringe. A school resource officer says the student brought the syringe to school and throughout the day stuck several classmates with the needle end. The principal says she could not see any powder or liquid in the syringe. The student told the principal she had gotten the syringe from home. The child's mother told the principal that no one in the family used syringes but they lived in a trailer park with a lot of traffic. The supervisor for the School Resource Officers Division contacted the 7th Circuit Solicitor's Office about this case. They felt that due to the child's age and lack of any indication her actions were malicious the appropriate course of action would be to let the school handle the incident under their discipline guidelines.
From local news
This kind of chicken$#!7 is getting more and more common. What kind of idiot refers childhood misconduct to the DA?
I can actually answer that rhetorical question. It is the kind of idiot who thinks that the government has a right and a duty to make everyone's life safe and perfect. Thankfully our actual court system has more sense. Imagine how nasty the world would be if that school administrator had power unconstrained by legal process.
A Tale of Two Movies (and seven books)
In the past month I saw two Disney movies, The Sword in the Stone (1963) and Treasure Planet (2002). Treasure Planet has always been my favorite Disney movie. I had seen bits of The Sword in the Stone before, and probably saw it when very young, but I had never seen and remembered enough of it to form an opinion of it. I still prefer Treasure Planet but I realize that a lot of the reasons I like it are idiosyncratic. I like the setting and the language and the overall environment and feel of it. I also realize that Treasure Planet benefits from four decades of improvement in the technology of animation. So I will not talk about those things much. My main analysis here is philosophical, not artistic.
There are a lot of things we can learn from society by looking at the differences between these two movies. Both of them are coming of age movies, showing how a boy grows up and experiences life. But the things that happen, and the lessons learned, are very different.
The protagonist of The Sword in the Stone, Wart, is an amazingly passive character. He never actually does anything except blunder around, get into accidents, and try not to get eaten by predators. I had no sympathy for him; he was a non-entity.* Everything good that happens to him happens as a result of a mistake or the actions of others. He has greatness thrust onto him and is utterly incapable of dealing with it without help.
By contrast, the protagonist of Treasure Planet, Jim, makes things happen. He is a well-developed character, with a history and motivation for his actions. He masters the technology of his world, reacts intelligently to various crises and obstacles, and uses his skills to save the day at the end of the movie. And at the end, he does not get any unearned money or glory; he has simply restored what was lost and put himself on track for a better future.
Part of this is due to the age differences; Wart was 12 and Jim was 15. Treasure Planet is clearly intended for an older audience and is therefore more mature. But I also think that some of the differences are due to a change in what society expects of its young people.
Merlin is presented as the ideal tutor for Wart. Yet his training consists entirely of encouraging Wart to read books, teaching him songs with meaningless homilies, and turning him into various small prey animals and putting him in situations where his life is at risk. Merlin never teaches Wart any useful skills, and he never does anything that would teach Wart anything about responsibility or the wise use of power. Merlin does not know at the start that Wart will be a king, but he knows that he will be someone important. Yet all of the object lessons are experiences in powerlessness that match the reality of his daily life as an orphan and page. They teach him to use his wits to run away from problems, and then beg the wizard to help him out, which is not how you want a king to act.
The overall lesson in The Sword in the Stone is that you should simply do what you are told, keep your head down, and wait for something good to happen. It is a lesson in passivity and resignation, just like the Cinderella story. Good things just happen to the characters; they do nothing to alter their fate or take care of themselves. Someone else makes all the magic happen.
Jim, on the other hand, learns a lot of lessons about hard work, responsibility, and the complexity of life. He learns how to advance his natural ability to manipulate and master the technology that makes his world function. He learns about how to deal with people and how to advance his own goals in the face of determined opposition. Most importantly, he learns that he has to take the initiative if he wants good things to happen. He does get lucky in the sense that an opportunity is presented to him at random, but turning that opportunity into good things requires time, effort, determined activity, and ingenuity.
The overall lesson in Treasure Planet is that you are responsible for your own fate. Your actions have consequences, you have to take care of yourself, and you have to understand how the world works. You are the one who makes the magic happen.
Jim really is the magician in Treasure Planet. He is the master of the arcane technology, the one who pulls a miracle out of his mind to save the day. In The Sword in the Stone, there is never a hint that Wart can, will, or should learn how to work magic for himself.
This assumption is common to all old stuff, so pervasive and ingrained that you do not even question it. Merlin never teaches Arthur or any knights how to do magic. Gandalf never teaches the hobbits how to do magic. Aslan never teaches the children how to do magic, or even defend against it. Magic, the mastery of the fundamental forces of the world, is never something done by the protagonists. Magic is something that happens to you, not something that you do. Heroism and initiative are always portrayed as the ability to run around and beat other people with heavy things or poke them with sharp things.
This is a slight exaggeration, but most old fantasy basically follows the mindset of primitive savages who cannot hope to master the forces of their world. People are caught in the grip of incomprehensible forces that they cannot hope to master, and their only hope is to do what the shaman says while attacking the enemies of the tribe.
It was only recently that the protagonists of fantasy started to be the magicians. It started sometime in the 60s with a few random books, and then slowly spread along with the role-playing games and video games that put people in the shoes of magicians.
I think that the first mainstream entertainment that had magic-wielding protagonists was the Harry Potter series, and I think that this fact explains a lot of the popularity of the books. Here was a story about children mastering the forces that control the world, and slowly learning how to beat the adults at their own game. Magic became something you do, not just something that happens to you. And more importantly, you become something that happens to life, rather than life being something that happens to you. You may start off by taking advice and direction from a mentor, but by the end you are the equal or even the better of the mentor, just as qualified to direct things, and certainly more qualified to direct your own life.
I certainly applaud this trend. Jim, and Harry Potter and his friends, are far better role models for young adults than the heroes of previous generations of fantasy. We need to show children that they have the right and responsibility to be the magicians, the ones who understand and shape the world and its future.
* In fact, the only character in the movie that I felt any sympathy for was the young female squirrel. She risks her life to save him from a wolf and then he just walks off and abandons her.
There are a lot of things we can learn from society by looking at the differences between these two movies. Both of them are coming of age movies, showing how a boy grows up and experiences life. But the things that happen, and the lessons learned, are very different.
The protagonist of The Sword in the Stone, Wart, is an amazingly passive character. He never actually does anything except blunder around, get into accidents, and try not to get eaten by predators. I had no sympathy for him; he was a non-entity.* Everything good that happens to him happens as a result of a mistake or the actions of others. He has greatness thrust onto him and is utterly incapable of dealing with it without help.
By contrast, the protagonist of Treasure Planet, Jim, makes things happen. He is a well-developed character, with a history and motivation for his actions. He masters the technology of his world, reacts intelligently to various crises and obstacles, and uses his skills to save the day at the end of the movie. And at the end, he does not get any unearned money or glory; he has simply restored what was lost and put himself on track for a better future.
Part of this is due to the age differences; Wart was 12 and Jim was 15. Treasure Planet is clearly intended for an older audience and is therefore more mature. But I also think that some of the differences are due to a change in what society expects of its young people.
Merlin is presented as the ideal tutor for Wart. Yet his training consists entirely of encouraging Wart to read books, teaching him songs with meaningless homilies, and turning him into various small prey animals and putting him in situations where his life is at risk. Merlin never teaches Wart any useful skills, and he never does anything that would teach Wart anything about responsibility or the wise use of power. Merlin does not know at the start that Wart will be a king, but he knows that he will be someone important. Yet all of the object lessons are experiences in powerlessness that match the reality of his daily life as an orphan and page. They teach him to use his wits to run away from problems, and then beg the wizard to help him out, which is not how you want a king to act.
The overall lesson in The Sword in the Stone is that you should simply do what you are told, keep your head down, and wait for something good to happen. It is a lesson in passivity and resignation, just like the Cinderella story. Good things just happen to the characters; they do nothing to alter their fate or take care of themselves. Someone else makes all the magic happen.
Jim, on the other hand, learns a lot of lessons about hard work, responsibility, and the complexity of life. He learns how to advance his natural ability to manipulate and master the technology that makes his world function. He learns about how to deal with people and how to advance his own goals in the face of determined opposition. Most importantly, he learns that he has to take the initiative if he wants good things to happen. He does get lucky in the sense that an opportunity is presented to him at random, but turning that opportunity into good things requires time, effort, determined activity, and ingenuity.
The overall lesson in Treasure Planet is that you are responsible for your own fate. Your actions have consequences, you have to take care of yourself, and you have to understand how the world works. You are the one who makes the magic happen.
Jim really is the magician in Treasure Planet. He is the master of the arcane technology, the one who pulls a miracle out of his mind to save the day. In The Sword in the Stone, there is never a hint that Wart can, will, or should learn how to work magic for himself.
This assumption is common to all old stuff, so pervasive and ingrained that you do not even question it. Merlin never teaches Arthur or any knights how to do magic. Gandalf never teaches the hobbits how to do magic. Aslan never teaches the children how to do magic, or even defend against it. Magic, the mastery of the fundamental forces of the world, is never something done by the protagonists. Magic is something that happens to you, not something that you do. Heroism and initiative are always portrayed as the ability to run around and beat other people with heavy things or poke them with sharp things.
This is a slight exaggeration, but most old fantasy basically follows the mindset of primitive savages who cannot hope to master the forces of their world. People are caught in the grip of incomprehensible forces that they cannot hope to master, and their only hope is to do what the shaman says while attacking the enemies of the tribe.
It was only recently that the protagonists of fantasy started to be the magicians. It started sometime in the 60s with a few random books, and then slowly spread along with the role-playing games and video games that put people in the shoes of magicians.
I think that the first mainstream entertainment that had magic-wielding protagonists was the Harry Potter series, and I think that this fact explains a lot of the popularity of the books. Here was a story about children mastering the forces that control the world, and slowly learning how to beat the adults at their own game. Magic became something you do, not just something that happens to you. And more importantly, you become something that happens to life, rather than life being something that happens to you. You may start off by taking advice and direction from a mentor, but by the end you are the equal or even the better of the mentor, just as qualified to direct things, and certainly more qualified to direct your own life.
I certainly applaud this trend. Jim, and Harry Potter and his friends, are far better role models for young adults than the heroes of previous generations of fantasy. We need to show children that they have the right and responsibility to be the magicians, the ones who understand and shape the world and its future.
* In fact, the only character in the movie that I felt any sympathy for was the young female squirrel. She risks her life to save him from a wolf and then he just walks off and abandons her.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Homophobia
This is a good post on attitudes toward gays. The relevant quote:
I then said something like 'What's the big deal? Women deal with unwanted attention all the time.'
Then he said, repeatedly 'But I am not like that. I am not attracted to men.'
This was telling. I suspect that a big reason for homophobia is some subconscious voice saying "If he is attracted to you, that means he thinks you are gay. And if he thinks you are gay, then maybe other people also think you are gay. Hey, maybe you are gay."
And he couldn't deal with that. For some reason, a lot of guys are really afraid that people might think that they are gay. They just do not want to think about the issue at all.
I have actually been propositioned by gay men. It did not bother me or offend me or make me doubt anything about myself. I just said 'No, I am straight' and went on with my life.
There is one thing that I'd like to address, though. When I've seen people ... advocating for a return flat-out to a total ban on gay soldiers- they are almost always men, and they very frequently cite some variant on a common theme. Apparently, it would be just horrible if they had to think about other men being attracted to them, and worry about being ogled, and maybe even worry about being raped, because there's always the one creepy guy that's willing to cross that line, and we just can't do that to our soldiers. ...
To these men, I have the following reply: welcome to what every single human female on the ****ing planet deals with from puberty onward. You don't like the idea that some man you're not attracted to might be fantasizing about having sex with you, might be eyeing your fun bits, that there's even a remote but existing chance he might rape you? Harden. The ****. Up. Fifty percent of the population has to cope with this every day as a fact of life, and we're called paranoid deranged feminazi man-haters if we even bring it up outside a feminist consciousness-raising session. ...
Be glad you only have to cope with 5% of the male population instead of 95%, that you're much more likely to be able to fend off a real assault with your bare hands than we are, and STOP WHINING about the bad nasty men that might want sex with people that might not be interested. When "cry like a little girl" becomes an inappropriate expression because the little girls are handling it better than you are, you know you really do need to put on your big-boy britches.
I then said something like 'What's the big deal? Women deal with unwanted attention all the time.'
Then he said, repeatedly 'But I am not like that. I am not attracted to men.'
This was telling. I suspect that a big reason for homophobia is some subconscious voice saying "If he is attracted to you, that means he thinks you are gay. And if he thinks you are gay, then maybe other people also think you are gay. Hey, maybe you are gay."
And he couldn't deal with that. For some reason, a lot of guys are really afraid that people might think that they are gay. They just do not want to think about the issue at all.
I have actually been propositioned by gay men. It did not bother me or offend me or make me doubt anything about myself. I just said 'No, I am straight' and went on with my life.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Changing the World
The only way to change the world is to invent something that a lot of people like.
The item you invent can be anything from a paper clip to a philosophy, but it must fulfill this criterion.
In the past, it was possible to change the world by inheriting a crown and exercising its power. But today, the only way to obtain political power is to invent a persona and/or platform that a lot of people like.
If you think that you can change the world without inventing something, then you will probably end up becoming a disposable tool for an ideology or organization that someone else invented.
The item you invent can be anything from a paper clip to a philosophy, but it must fulfill this criterion.
In the past, it was possible to change the world by inheriting a crown and exercising its power. But today, the only way to obtain political power is to invent a persona and/or platform that a lot of people like.
If you think that you can change the world without inventing something, then you will probably end up becoming a disposable tool for an ideology or organization that someone else invented.
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