Fish in Space

What I'm about to discuss here is not ground-breaking. Many people will already be aware of the topic but I feel it worth exploring. Working in IT I have necessarily learned a little bit about automation. Learning to write computer scripts to automate common tasks has been a significant boon to my life in computer support like when someone is constantly losing their network mappings or there's a folder that constantly fills up with old, unused temp files but never gets cleaned up and ultimately slows down the operating system. Yes, I'm looking at you Microsoft. The point being is that scripts are labor-saving devices, tools we can launch to automate a process that would take more time and energy to do by hand. What's interesting is how we do this in our daily lives in ways that have nothing to do with computers. Did you ever drive somewhere familiar to you but with the mental note that you need to make an extra stop, then miss it? You were driving on autopilot. Did you ...

First, because so many of us seem to have forgotten it, a reminder of what America used to be. For those who have forgotten or never knew, this is what's inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, the gift we put on display to represent what America is supposed to stand for. We were never a nation of nobility ruling over serfs. We were never a nation of priests passing judgment over the laity. This was never supposed to be a club where you had to pay to get in. It was supposed to be a land of refuge where no one could tell you which god to worship or which master to serve. Whether you were poor or rich, brown or white, godly or heathen this was supposed to be a place where you could come to find your own way and not have to conform to anyone else's demands about who you are. Now we've entered an era where all of that has changed. Now we're afraid of newcomers, suspicious of strangers if their skin is brown or they pray to strange gods. If they eat the wrong foods or say the wr...

I've argued this before but the topic is still hot so I'm going to approach it from a different perspective. Believe it or not, Muslims are not inherently bad or evil. It's one thing to challenge their claims and criticize their actions when they behave badly, but that's not what a lot of the criticism is doing. I don't like vilifying Muslims as a group for a number of reasons. One is because they're not a majority in my society the way Christians are, so it's not as easy to punch up. Were I living in Iran or Saudi Arabia that would be a different story, but that would carry its own set of problems worthy of criticism in their own right. Vilifying Muslims in a Christian-dominated society doesn't promote secularism or anti-theism so much as give shade to Christian agendas. Even if you're not intending to promote Christian supremacy, unintended consequences are still a thing. If we want a post-religious society then I strongly believe that secular...

I voted today, and I'm glad I did. I couldn't find the ballot they sent to me until my wife kindly informed me it was probably buried in the pile of mail I hadn't noticed. But I dropped it off the completed form this morning on my way to work and all is well with the world. I hope. Something in particular caught my attention, though. Now that the election is finally almost over and we're just about done with the Wikileaks' dump of hacked emails attacking Hillary Clinton they've gone and made a curious claim that they weren't trying to harm anyone in particular, they just wanted to provide a service by informing the general public. Nobody's buying it, and no one should. Here's why: They had this information back in March, long before the nomination was decided, before but carefully timed the releases in such a way to do maximum damage not to a specific candidate but to a specific party. They did not visibly work toward exposing corruption in both ...

The public option for health care keeps coming back to haunt us and we have private health insurance to thank for it. Back in 2009 when the Affordable Care Act was passed without a public option it was assumed that the issue was dead for another generation, but naturally we underestimated the obstinence of Republican opposition to any government program that might stand a chance to help people. "Obamacare" works...but only where it's allowed to work. So here we are seven years later right back where we started. Naturally, the right-wing media is freaking out. They're trotting out all the old favorites, accusations of "government overreach" and "socialism" and the like which prompts a discussion about capitalism and government ownership of industry. Sadly, the Soviet Union demonstrated that it is possible to have too much control, but we've seen over and over again here in the US what happens when you don't have enough. Clearly we need t...

Plato's Cave is a famous philosophical construct wherein hypothetical prisoners are tied down facing one wall of a cave so they can't move their heads and look around. Behind them is a fire providing light for the cave, and between the fire and the prisoners are puppeteers moving back and forth holding various objects that cast shadows on the wall for the prisoners to observe. It's a hideously contrived scenario, but Plato used it to demonstrate the difficulty of expressing concepts through language when we don't have a concrete experience with those concepts. A prisoner might say "I see a book" based on a projection, but there's no book on the wall only shadow. It's only when they're released and can look around that they can see the real objects casting shadows. True understanding, Plato argues, isn't possible until then. What I find curious is how many Christians love to inject Jesus into Plato's Cave. Plato wrote passionately about mi...