Sixteen Volts

I photocopied the material to be distributed in tonight's class. In the photocopier somebody else had forgotten his originals, apparently some kind of Psychology 101 course or something like that. By quickly browsing through these overhead transparencies I learned that success tends to increase a person's self esteem, whereas failure tends to decrease it. Try to learn something useful every day, as I always say, like a true renaissance man.

As an atheist in a world where the vast majority of people profess some kind of faith or spirituality, I know that I am part of a small, almost insignificant minority. Within that minority, I seem to be in an even tinier minority in the sense that when I say that I oppose religion, I really mean "religion" instead of just "Christianity". Now, for practical purposes, overt mocking of religion needs to be carefully aimed, since I am willing to accept that to maintain a stable and peaceful society, the bottom 95% of people should perhaps profess some moderate mainstream faith to keep them in check. However, I am always disappointed by my fellow atheists, who normally endlessly criticize and mock Christianity, but whenever some other religion is much worse in almost every objective measure, they have nothing but silence, understanding and utmost respect for this religion, and could not even dream of pointing out and laughing at its silliest doctrines and rituals. This is why I was so happy to read the article "Head-in-the-Sand Liberals", in which Sam "The End of Faith" Harris warns about the threat that Islam poses to the Western liberal society while the liberals are mired in their denials to blame anybody but Muslims. This article was suggested to me by GMR of "GMR Musings" in a comment for my earlier post, and also by another reader in an email.

Meanwhile in these forms of dust that we temporarily inhabit, not everybody's life turns out equally well. The post "The Good Samaritan" at "Waiter Rant" tells us about the spiritual evolution of one good Catholic boy.

In the future, the most important political division and line of battle will not be between liberals and conservatives, but between primitivists and futurists, both of whom can today be found on both sides of the left-right spectrum. The article "A Conservative Case for Immortality" probably will not win the author many friends in the conservative Christian circles. Of course, Leon Kass is the most well-known and comical opponent of this view, but on the left we also have great thinkers such as Bill McKibben, whose ideas I examined in my old post "But that's just what you say".

When I want to link to a page about something, I prefer linking to the Wikipedia page, since openness is the key. The post "The rise of Wikipedia" at "Otaku, Cedric's Weblog" gives us another reason why the Wikipedia URI:s are so popular: they are so simple and persistent.

So the Toronto International Film Festival then ended a few days ago, for those of us who would wait for hours in line to see some movie that they wouldn't a month later watch for free if it was playing on TV. For the best comedy in this festival, I bet that the news "Penn's smoking to cost swanky hotel $600 in fines" made some people giggle. But so it must be: if something is illegal, you can't start making willy nilly exceptions and look the other way for famous people, attractive people etc. I think the funniest part of this story is that Mr. Penn will be receiving a formal letter from the health officials of Toronto that chastises him for smoking.

"From the Archives" has an interesting discussion "Justin asks" about whether husband and wife should have separate bank accounts. We don't, but have a joint account, since our spending habits are so modest and compatible. But I can easily see how the idea of both spouses keeping 1/3 of what they earn for themselves and putting 2/3 in a joint account would be a good solution for many couples, until debt us apart.

First there was The Long Tail, and now there is "Small is the new Big" by Seth Godin. The post "Private spam regulation?" at Marginal Revolution quotes one interesting idea taken from this book.

In his latest column, Panu examines the music of Abba, now relevant again in Finland with the musical "Mamma mia". I laughed most heartily at the following paragraph:

What about punk that was sold for us early 80's teenagers as an authentic form of protest? Today we know that Sex Pistols was, from the safety pins to their total inability to carry a tune, just as coldly calculated concept as any airhead model who sings with her voice spanning only one octave accompanied by studio musicians. In fact, these both are the exact same thing: take an "artist" who can't really do anything, build an image around it and then sell it as "rebellion" or "anarchism" or whatever to dumb kids who, despite their herd mentality, all imagine themselves to be great revolutionary individualists.

Punk was just as much fascistically uniform phenomenon as any other youth fashion. It brainwashed the youth to believe that everyone should play in a band, that the only legitimate and acceptable way of being young is to play in a band. Anything else is being a nerd, being a wuss, not getting a life or some other way something that should be looked down upon and punished with social shunning.

I was browsing my archives earlier today, and came upon a prediction that I made in early June. You see, something major happened back then that was supposed to be the turning point of the War in Iraq. Out of curiosity, how many of my readers can still, without consulting any references, remember offhand what this major event was? I certainly wouldn't have remembered it, had somebody asked me it. I doubt that I could usually even remember the news from last week or last month, let alone a year ago. There was this guy who did... something... whatever it was...

Were I an economics teacher, I am sure that letters to the editor in the local newspaper would be a constant source of merriment and potential exam questions. In the post "Price Theory: What Explains Gas Station Prices?", Eric Rasmusen reprints one such letter from some economic ignoramus who believes that prices of goods are set by some central planner according to what is "fair". Of if they are not, at least they should be.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Monday, September 18, 2006 at 3:22 PM