The recent terror "attack" got me thinking about why that type of crap happens and what can be done to solve it.

The root problem of "terrorism" is poverty. It's not that these incompetent nimrods are Muslim, or come from a different culture (well, it's partly the culture thing); no it's poverty. It's the stinking heaps of crap as landscape type of poverty or the so-hungry-your-stomach-is-eating-itself type of poverty, or worse, a poverty of the mind, where imagination and life and love have been so ground down you can't be anything but angry and selfish, these feed "terror". If a person gets whittled down so far as to have any of those forms of poverty, but especially the last one, that person is ripe for feeling that the universe somehow owes him one. And he is ripe to be used by others, by those with a sharp axe to grind and who aren't willing to go grind it themselves. Life becomes cheap and disposable, and these nimrods are the ultimate nihilists.

So poverty is the problem, then ending poverty is the solution, right? Whoa there cowboy, not so fast. There is no panacea for "ending" poverty, no silver bullet, no magic elixir (but oh, wouldn't that be nice). Ending the poverty of hunger requires ending the poverty of environment, which requires ending the poverty of the mind, which requires ending the poverty of hunger...you get the idea. Maybe we're fucked. Maybe not.

Increments. We attack the problem on all fronts at once. This would of course waste a lot of resources, and a lot of people would whine that these resources would be better spent solving the less urgent problems of the industrialized world. This is a strategy where we'd lose a lot of battles but could eventually win the war (or maybe not, but I think it's worth a try).

Now about war: yes we know that Vietnam failed, at least for us, because the Vietnamese were scrappy and had more to lose than we did, that Napoleon couldn't conquer Russia because the Russians just *really* did not want him there and had the time and vastness to let all his bluster fizzle, that we won our own revolution because we really wanted it and the British soldiers weren't personally invested and probably just wanted to go home anyway -- all these wars are the same war, and it's the war we might currently be on the losing side of. We just don't give a crap about what happens in the hellhole armpit countries that breed "terrorists" until those brief weeks after we are newly inconvenienced at the airport.

We should give a crap. We should care about humans wherever they live, no matter how badly they treat us or think about us, or rather we should care about the generations to come, and the misery they might face if we don't act, wherever those generations exist.

I disagree with the President on Afghanistan. I think he was cornered by the military and hamstrung by a necessary focus on domestic issues. Don't get me wrong, I support the troops and all that, I even support continuing operations in the area, but what I don't agree with is that he put little attention to rebuilding (or building, as the case may be) Afghanistan and other countries. Schools, hospitals, streets. Infrastructure peeps. Sure, even if we build roads there will be IED's and some of those roads will be destroyed by the people they're meant to help, just like a rabid animal shitting where is sleeps, and sure, there will still be schools blown up and girls harassed for wanting to learn how to read, and sure the hospitals will be understaffed and undersupplied, and sure, we'll get tired of building and rebuilding and rebuilding, but overall, over time, over decades perhaps, the infrastructure will take root and stabilize. There will be less poverty.

Build.

This is a value. This is one of my personal values. I like to make things, both tangible and intangible. It brings me more joy that just about anything else. I think it applies to the vast majority of people, but I could be wrong. Making something, building something, shaping something, is far more fulfilling than buying something, using something, discarding something. I think it's a value we need to involve more in our foreign policy, and frankly as individuals. We need to stop seeing status as how much money we have, what our job titles are, where we live, or what we drive (I drive a monthy buspass btw. Just saying).

We also need to spread this value globally, as it's something sorely lacking (or vulgarly twisted) in those armpit countries. The same for these next two values.

Learn.

This should be self-evident as something that is extremely useful, but most people don't act like it. Learning doesn't stop when you drop out of highschool or graduate college. Learning is something the brain does naturally it's entire life (unless it get's clogged up with alkaloids, but that's another blog post). We need to embrace this trait. We need to nuture it, and keep the fire, as Cormac McCarthy said (or at least that's what I took that to mean). Learning can be hard, but it can be fun, and if you reach the goals you set yourself, the euphoria is pretty unparallel...well at least for me. Learning is a good and useful tonic for poverty, and not just poverty of the mind. If we each learn to be aware of our environment we can figure out fixes there, and with alleviating hunger too.

One thing that struck me early on in the "war on terror" were some PBS documentaries showing the so-called schools in places like Pakistan and Yemen. These schools were for boys only and they only learned to read the Koran. Over and over, for years. One book. A book that was meant mainly as a work of religious philosophy, a subject that at best, could inform you in how to deal with maybe 10% of your waking life. The Koran, the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, whatever, won't tell you how to plant a garden. They won't tell you how to irrigate a field, they won't tell you how to build a house, or heck, even to build a fire. They won't tell you how to play sublime music or care for an infant. They won't tell you how to treat the flu or prevent rickets. They won't tell you anything about the vast expanse of stuff on the other side of our atmosphere (and personally, ironically, they won't tell us much about the sheer beauty of the natural world, what most religious people I know say they think is 'God'). At best, these tomes are 90% useless for dealing with the everyday issues everyday humans encounter in a lifetime. It was clear that these boys were going to grow up into a poverty so twisted and endemic that they would be lucky if they didn't end up blowing themselves to goop in the middle of a bazaar somewhere.

Learning is not just good for the brain, it also helps keep society together. At a basic level we all have to learn language of some sort, and this is a natural almost unstoppable process, and language binds us together and allows us to form relationships, families, groups, tribes, homeowners associations, city councils, states, nations, and a functioning habitable planet. And there are other skills and constructs that we learn and layer on top, for more efficiency, more justice, increased safety, more happiness and even better toothbrushes. The more we learn, the more we can build.

Teach.

This goes hand-in-hand with learning, but there's more to it. We should all teach. Sure, some of us would end up teaching utter shit (like anything excreted by Kevin Trudeau for example), but overall, by evolutionary constraints, the good information will persist over time and the bad information will slouch slowly out of the human cannon.

Teaching isn't just the complement of learning, it is also an advanced form. Teaching includes things like argument and peer-review; it's a give and take, and maybe the odd compromise. It is enriched learning. We should value it more.

As for how teaching relates to foreign policy, I'm not suggesting we go build schools in armpit countries and then dictate the curriculum. If we are the enemy, what reason do those students have to trust us? And can we really be sure we're not just putting a our own superficial stamp on them? We can teach some subjects that are relatively free of politics, like agriculture, medicine, and accounting, but we should steer clear of literature, language, religion, politics, and even perhaps more fundamental sciences, which could be perceived as western indoctrination. Once a basic school structure is established, the learners can become the teachers, and we can gamble to leave them to their own devices about what they want to learn and teach beyond that. The only thing that we ought to indoctrinate in all who we encounter, is build, learn, teach.

I think this is my first letter to the editor of a magazine (when I'm elderly, I'll probably be one of those people cranking out persnickety letters all day). I get angry when large media outlets unnecessarily play up doom and gloom just to be sensational. Time magazine just published a decade in review editorial titled "The 00's: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade from Hell".

There was at least one factual error that I didn't correct in my letter. In the article, the writer said that Katrina was the worst natural disaster in history with a death toll of about 1,500. Oh really? The San Fransisco earthquake/fire resulted in at least 3000 deaths, and similar economic destruction as in Katrina. The Gavelston Hurricane killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people in 1900. The Johnston flood in 1889 killed over 2000 people in Pennsylvania when a dam burst. The Cheniere Chaminade hurricane of 1893 killed around 2,000 people in Lousiana. I would have expected Time to fact check (they are not OK! magazine afterall).

Anyway, here was my response:

Dear editor,

the Decade from Hell? Not quite. There were a lot of bright spots in the '00s. How about the advances made for gay rights and equality? The increased number of women entering politics and leading businesses? What about the continuing strides in science like the incredibly successful rovers on Mars? The discovery of massive amounts of water on the moon? All the exoplanets we've begun to find? What about new therapies and insights into curing so many forms of cancer? What about the rise of disciplines like genomics and proteomics that will no doubt play an important role in future medicine? And in technology, what about the rise of cloud computing, where the cost of storage space has become insignificant just when our appetite for data has reached the stratosphere? What about Web 2.0, the explosion of open source, and the Long Tail?

All of these things may be part of a slow and steady progress, but they continue to build a strong foundation for the future. When our descendants look back at this decade 90 years from now, they will see that our imagination, hard work, and perseverance ultimately trumped our greed, self-interest, and lassitude.

I'm also surprised that in an article full of doom and gloom that there was no mention of climate change. That we found out this decade that it was happening faster than originally thought, and that we worked out how it could progress if we do nothing, it was the worst news of the decade by far. At best though, our dying planet is a rallying cry for everyone in the world to work together. It may be the very thing we need to have long and lasting peace.

Anyone who knows me in person probably knows that I absolutely LOATHE the movie "The Notebook". I remember being in the theater snickering at it's over-the-top attempt at "romance", and then being flabbergasted when the lights went up to find that I was surrounded by knots of weeping women of all different ages. The only reason I didn't walk out was because Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams were tolerably watchable good actors thrown in awful roles. I felt like an alien from another planet (well, that happens a lot really, but this time the effect was especially highlighted). Had all good taste left these women?

"The Notebook" went on to become a cult favorite (of some sort), and I'm still wondering why people like the movie so much (and why Nicholas Sparks' books keep getting made into equally crappy movies--and for that matter, why he isn't shelved in the romance section where he belongs -- horrid sexism at work). I'm not against romance per se. Most of the genre is derivative, and on the book side, most volumes amount to what is essentially non-pictographic porn for women (when I was working at the book store, the odd man would buy romance for himself, I sure, finally realizing just how pornographic most of the modern novels tend to be). What they derive from, the macdaddy of all romance stories, is Austen's Pride and Prejudice (or P&P for those in the know), and I am a Jane fan, but that's only because it's one of the best novels ever written. The characters are fully-formed, independent, memorable people. The actual romance takes a back seat to the intensely interesting gender and social political machinations of the time. It's like a tangled ball of yarn for the brain--a lot of entertainment can be unraveled through subsequent reads, and really, that's the locus of any good story, isn't it?

For any of you out there that thought "The Notebook" was somehow good, please, please, please go see "Bright Star" out now in theaters. It's struggling along with a just a few million in receipts after a few weeks in release and it deserves much better. It tells the true story (though probably embellished) of the relationship between poet John Keats and his fiancée Fanny Brawne. I don't want to give away the ending (well, if you know anything about Keats you'll know it already), but let's just say it's satisfyingly fantastic. It's directed with finesse by Jane Campion ("The Piano" another romantic movie worth seeing). The cinematography is so good you could watch the film with no sound and be totally moved. All the characters are interesting and all the actors give excellent performances. It's unfortunate that there aren't any big names, but I have a feeling people will come back to this movie when the actors have become more famous. It's a romantic movie that moves between the realms what is real (in all it's dreariness, grit, minutiae and awkwardness) and what is the real fantasy one can find oneself in when in love. The film succeeds at transferring some of that dreamlike ecstasy to the audience. The last film I saw that captured that mood so well, the internal fantasy of being in love, was "The Piano", and that leads me to believe that Campion can play that note like no other storyteller. Take that Sparks.

First off, we should stop thinking about wars as win or lose. It's all lose really. Even in WWII, everybody lost something. The axis (axes?) were hideous, but the allies ended up doing some pretty awful things as well (Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki). Wars will never stop but we've got to take any hint of romance out of it. Any 'win' is false.

For Afghanistan, I do think we should increase troop levels significantly. This is hugely unpopular, and it won't do anything to 'win' the war. We will still lose. What it does do is increase the safety of the troops there, and it will allow us the time to build much needed infrastructure for the Afghan people. They need roads first and foremost, but also a unified military and/or police (good luck there, but worth a try), schools, safe farmlands, airports, government buildings, water, and electricity. The more we can build (or help them build), the more chance that they will survive as a semi-stable country.

Why do they deserve our help? Ironically, this last war is not the reason. The country was already pretty much rubble. The point of going in was destroying the Taliban and rooting out terrorist elements. The reason why these peeps took a foothold in the first place is because the country was tossed around as a spoil between us and the Soviets during the cold war. Little thought was given to the people in the middle because the big picture of avoiding a nuclear holocaust was so much more important to deal with. It didn't help that the country is filled with warring tribes that have a lot of ambition.

If we can rectify the wrongs of the cold war, at least to some degree, then the region *may* become safer and more stable. Even if we make a lot of progress fixing infrastructure, there is no guarantee the area won't destabilize again. And fixing infrastructure won't get rid of the terrorist element (who I'm sure, consider themselves to be freedom fighters), since they reside in a no man's land on the border with Pakistan (which is a whole other kettle of anxious instability, but this time with nuclear weapons). Fixing infrastructure may help us win good will, both from the everyday Afghan, as well as other nations around the world that are more interested in peace building rather than strafing anything that moves and has a heat signature (granted, a simplification, since war is still primarily fought at the gritty level of the infantryman).

In the long term, we must not think that wars can be 'won' in a short period of time with overwhelmingly superior technology. All wars are essentially psychological. We get into them for psychological reasons ("Faction X wronged us! We must fight back!" or "Faction Y has resources we want/need! They don't deserve them as much as we do! Let's get them!" or even worse "Faction W is made up of complete ignoramuses! Let's attack them and teach them the right way to live/exterminate them!"), but to resolve them we need to untangle and address the underlying psychological issues.

In the case of the Muslim extremists (and most Muslims are *not* extremists), they want to bring about a global Caliphate, converting all people to Islam, and exterminating those that get in the way or don't want to be Muslim. This plan has a lot of obvious flaws, but they're not obvious to the planners. Primarily, militant, extreme Islam is incompatible with most other cultures in the world. The "pure" form would go down like ipecac. Where Islam has mixed with incompatible cultures in the past, a sort of impure hybrid has emerged (which is typical what happens when competing cultures mix -- people take what they like from either and make something new). This can be since at the fringes of where Islam has reached. In Africa, many people practice both Islam and aspects of Animism. In Indonesia, Islam historically found it's most liberal outlet (give Krakatoa a read).

It's unreasonable to think that any one religion or culture could blitzkrieg across the planet at the direction of a handful of people. I'm not saying it couldn't happen under the right conditions, but it's highly, *highly* improbable. Even those in the world who lament that American consumerist culture is taking over it 1) has been influencing the world over the course of generations, 2) people still pick and choose what they like out of it and put their own cultural spin on it, and 3) nobody is spreading American culture to purposefully convert the rest of the world. If anything, the spread is an unintentional by-product of trying to squeeze more money out of more people.

That doesn't mean that people won't keep trying to take over the world like Brain from the Animaniacs (I think I'm showing my age). At some level, we all want everyone else to think and act like us. On a small, prehistoric, tribal level this works to make everyone feel included and unified against other tribes competing for resources (but even then I'm sure, individuals who had a varying mindset still got screwed most of the time). Now that we are a global society (and have been for a couple of hundred years), trying to force other people to think and act like us (whoever the 'us' may be), is a losing proposition because there are just so many other people. We are all minorities. At some point, hopefully soon, we'll figure out that it's actually okay to be a minority. A balance can be obtained with there is a myriad plurality of opinions. I'm okay, you're okay.

Unfortunately, tolerance is not something that is hardwired into certain cultures (especially the extremes of pretty much anything). However negotiation and compromise are skills that commonly emerge from the human mind when that human is in a minority position and no one else is in an overwhelmingly dominate majority position. If we are in a minority position facing others in a majority position, most of us won't bother trying to change anyone's minds about anything (though there are brave souls that do make the effort despite the odds). If we are in a majority position facing others in a minority position, we expect and often enforce conformity with our opinion. But if facing positions are near equal in dominance, and especially if there are more than two groups involved, there is an increased likelihood that debate, negotiation, and compromise will take place.

We see this often playing out in government, and we often get frustrated by how long the process takes, but the frustration is sort of silly. It's a fantastically good thing that this process is taking place at all. And that's the lesson for the world. There is no good reason to pull the trigger on a war if there are processes of debate and negotiation taking place. It may seem silly to let people like Castro or Gaddafi or Ahmadinejad rant at the U.N. but the fact that they even want to shows that feel they are in a minority position (of course they won't admit it). If they felt they were in a majority position (delusional or not), they would probably starting bombing and blitzkrieging. But they're not. They are just barking, and as long as they are doing so, engagement, debate, negotiation, and even compromise are still viable ways to resolve conflict.

Sometimes I think I live in a different world than most people. I tend to be very future-minded, and navel-gaze frequently about what should be, rather than what is, and I often find the views of others quite shocking.

The view that I find most virulently destructive in society, and a view that is broadly held, is that nation states are the best and most efficient way to run the world. The reason this is such a widely held view seems to be that nation states are considered to be "just the way it's always been". Of course, this isn't true. The modern nation state has only been around for maybe 300 years, and were preceded by city states, and a few thousand years ago, the Roman and Greek empires. For the rest of the time since humans have been walking upright, borders have been very fuzzy.

Even in recent times, the concept this land is owned by people X and that land is owned by people Y is an alien concept for many cultures, and it's introduction has caused permanent cultural damage to countless communities. That fact is very evident and saddening here in the Pacific, but most people on the mainland will be familiar with it if they think back to what they learned in school about the "conquest" of North America.

In Australia, aboriginal culture does not view land as "ownable", and that the only thing a person truly owns is their path through space and time (think about your own travels, the things you've done, and the people you've interacted with, and it becomes a less new age-y, more practical idea). You own your own history and your own future, and no one, no event, can take them away from you. This is an important idea, and I'll come back to it.

Since the nation state is a recent, and arguably unnatural boundary for people, what other alternatives are there? In a world chock full of 7 billion people and counting, all of whom have different languages, values, and governance, what could possibly work better?

Let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of the nation state:

Advantages

• protection for a group of culturally common people against opposing or conflicting groups
• protected use of resources within the boundary of the nation
• communal militaries to protect the boundaries
• reinforcement of shared values
• strong central governance, and (generally) uniform legal systems
  

Disadvantages

• minority culture groups are often significantly marginalized, even with government protection, and this may be a constant source of internal friction (think Basque)
  
• imposition of majority values on minority groups
• extreme difficulty migrating into or out of the geographic boundaries
• geographic boundaries may intensify conflicts with opposing groups (think Kashmir)

Nation states do provide the potential to be very nurturing to various groups, especially if the groups are fairly uniform and well-established. Think Sweden, Iceland, or Denmark (I'm not intentionally going Norse, these are just the most stable, ancient, relatively uniform countries that came to mind). It can also go horribly awry, say with Nazi Germany or modern day North Korea (which if you read up on it, is shockingly similar to the state portrayed in '1984').

The other important factor to keep in mind is that through globalism, all cultures are changing. In the industrialized and industrializing countries, the internet provides unprecedented contact between various geographic and cultural groups. More and more, people are defining themselves less by ethnicity or language and more by their own individual interests and pursuits. For instance, I identify myself primarily as a geek, secondarily as an atheist (I was raised Catholic), thirdly as a feminist, and almost not at all as an English speaker of mixed European/American descent. Where my parents lived as children, and where their parents lived is totally irrelevant to who I view myself, so I often wonder why other people make such a big fuss over the physical location of their ancestors (usually these are the people who still live near the place they were born).

Globalism is often vilified, and rightly so, since it has blindly blitzkrieged over countless unique cultures, killed millions of people with diseases they had no defense against, and destroyed thousands of unique languages that will never be heard or spoken again. Collectively, we've lost a lot. However, since we are no more connected, and more aware of the entirety of the planet we live on, we are now both at the risk of destroying our home planet (as a geek, I do hope we branch out some day) and have the tools to manage it for thousands, if not millions of years to come (considering homo sapiens is 2 million years old already, and many other species have been around for 100 million years or so, saying that the human race could be around for a few more million years is not out of the ballpark, unless we self-evolve, which we also are beginning to have the power to do, but that's a different blog post).

To be able to effectively manage an entire planet, all, or at least a majority of cultures must work in a largely cooperative fashion. So far this has lead to pan-national bodies like the League of Nations and the United Nations (and to a lesser extend, NGOs like the Red Cross). For people like me (raised perhaps on too much Star Trek with it's Federation of Planets), I never really saw anything overtly negative about the UN. Even as a child I would question it's efficacy, but I never saw anything "evil" about it. It just seemed a well-intentioned step towards a mindfully managed planet (when I was four, before I realized Star Trek was fiction, my greatest ambition was to become a Starfleet Commodore. After four, every career option open to me seemed like a total letdown).

Other people, I would come to realize, felt that the UN was a harbinger of the end of the world, the end of individuality, and the end of freedom. I think the first part of that definitely has roots in religious dogma (specifically the Book of Revelations, apparently written from a trance or dream state -- so I'd think the reliability of the content is about nil), but it also springs from a very real fear that concentrating too much power in the hands of too few is a fool's gambit (and our past history suggests it's a very bad idea). How can a planet with one government possibly manage the cacophony of the cultures it rules?

Well, maybe one government is a dumb idea -- though I doubt it would even come to that. Even if the UN (or some similar body) took on a greater and more powerful administrative role, I highly doubt that local governance would go away. The minutiae of zoning, planning, taxing, and making specific legal judgments over a wide range of geographies might be too much of a burden for a planetarily centralized government. Homogenizing every culture into one culture is next to impossible (people have tried and frequently failed, even if on the outside it looks like people conform), and new cultures with modified values keep popping up anyway.

What then, may the future be?

Perhaps it is a stateless society. This is not anarchy, but the cacophony of cultures left alone to jostle and bump and find their own grooves. In a way, we have this now. Those of us who live a significant portion of our lives through and via the Internet know the comfort of connecting to our own kind, even if we never physically meet the other individuals who comprise "our kind". In our virtual communities, free speech is endemic (you really can't get away from it, for better or worse), and taboos, customs, and rules natural emerge and evolve with the needs of the community (often with plenty of debate, but sometimes new rules just start showing up and spread among members simply because the logic of the rule is totally obvious to everyone).

Another important characteristic is that no one is ever forced to be part of a virtual community, and you can always leave at will. This characteristic may be what ultimately causes the demise of the nation state. With so much freedom to transit between communities at will, without anyone's permission, and the freedom to belong to any number of virtual communities, why would anyone used to these freedoms be tolerant of the lack of the same freedoms in the nation state system? Why be bound by geography or culture tied to geography when it's irrelevant to you, especially when something more amenable to your individual values is just over the horizon?

In a stateless society, many self-governing communities overlap, and geographic boundaries are mostly irrelevant (land and water usage still needs the protection of geographically localized law, but people really don't need to be tied to it).Think again of the NGOs like the Red Cross. It's a self-governing non-geographical community with a specific, limited purpose, and it's viewed favorably by most people in the world. Or think of Kiva, a self-governing bank with a tiny infrastructure that stretches the globe, connecting wealthy individuals who lend money to poor individuals, regardless of where anyone is.

What is common is that these self-governing bodies have a focused, limited scope. They plan on doing one thing, then they do it well. Of course, this can also be used for ill, as with various terrorist groups, but as I'm an optimist, I think that the people who want to create far outnumber the people who want to destroy (the will to destruction can often be seen in historical context as revenge for some previous act of destruction -- this will only stop when everybody realizes this is an ouroboros, which isn't going to happen anytime soon no matter our system of governance).

By limiting scope in a self-governing community, many views can be accommodated in many communities without conflict, allowing naturally for emergent behavior and evolution of thought and values, and that seems to me, a logical way to progress in a globally-bound community.

Last night I tweeted that I thought Bob Parsons, founder of GoDaddy.com, the ubiquitous domain name registrar, was a sexist pig. It might be harsh (and will do nothing to dispel the popularly held belief that I'm a hard-line feminazi), but I stand by it.

These were my tweets:

I'm a little creeped out by Bob Parsons of GoDaddy (clearly a sexist pig), but they've better service than most registrars out there.

and:

...why does the GoDaddy site have to be spattered with sexist homilies from it's CEO's personal blog? What on Earth is the relevance?

This was Bob Parsons' response:

@hawaiikaos2 A sexist pig? Wow Katharine! I'm really not such a bad guy. I do appreciate your kind words about our service. We do try.

And below are some of the things the annoy the shit out of me and prompt to the conclusion that Mr. Parsons is sexist:

Using the word "chick" to describe a woman, while a slightly affectionate sort of pejorative, is still a pejorative. At best, it means that Mr. Parsons is stuck living in the 80's when it was still somewhat socially acceptable and in common parlance, and at worst, it means he objectifies women. The addition of "HOT" leads me to believe that he is trending towards the objectification side of that narrow spectrum.

To his credit (or perhaps to some underling's credit who has better sense), there is also the "viewer discretion advised" stamp on the ad. But it begs the question, why is the ad there in the first place? The obvious answer of course is to drive some traffic to Mr. Parsons' blog. This doesn't seem like a wholly unreasonable idea until you consider how unconventional it is when you view GoDaddy in relationship to other companies that dominate a particular industry. In fact the only company I can think of that bleats about it's CEO unremittanty is in fact GoDaddy.

As a customer, I really don't give a crap about what the CEO is up to (unless it's Microsoft, which I ty my best to avoid anyway). I want to go in, get something specific accomplished, and leave. I don't want to linger and be subjected to someone's personal life philosphy, no matter how obliquely it is presented (and GoDaddy presents Bob Parsons rather acutely rather than obliquely). I do in fact support Mr. Parsons' right to free speech. On his blog I think he should be free to write and post whatever he wants. But should this carry over to a corporate website that has a diverse audience? I mean this is marketing 101: know your audience. Yet GoDaddy comes off as marketing itself solely to fratboy NASCAR fans.

I think the tone of the site is meant to be cheeky and unconventional, which is fine, whatever. But can't this be accomplished without demeaning and objectifying women (who are also customers)?

Here's some more evidence. In the legal matter on the website is listed:

Go Daddy is renowned for its controversial Super Bowl® commercials, the comely and accomplished Go Daddy Girls™...

Ah yes, the Super Bowl commercials. I've personally never seen them, mainly because I wouldn't be caught dead watching a Super Bowl (football is less interesting to me than watching grass grow). But every year there is some news generated by the controversy, and perhaps it is indeed a clever way to make the site more notorious than it already is. But again, does this alienate potential and current customers (who like me, will happily jump ship when some other solution comes along that is equally reliable)? Is this becoming conduct of a company that leads its field?

Finally, we come to the issue of the Go Daddy Girls™. First, I take issue with the use of the word "girls". Using the juvenile word to describe women is offensive and demeaning. We are still less than 100 years removed from a society that equated women the same status as children. True, men are increasingly called "boys" affectionately, but really do we need more of either in society? This is all also closely related to the issue of "sissy" and "buddy". The first meanings of these words are equal as "sister" and "brother", but the second meanings are "coward" and "friend" respectively (you could also compare "bitch" and "bastard" which are roughly equal in first meaning, but carry a negative connotation in second meaning for the former, and a postive connotation in second meaning for the latter). Female pejoratives almost always are more negative than male pejoratives.

Second, why bother with what are essentially cheerleaders for a website? How does this help anyone register a domain name? Maybe solely having say Danica Patrick (who has definitely made inroads for gender equality) as the spokesperson of the company makes sense, but why is every, for lack of a better term, mascot for the site have to be some physically attractive woman? Where are the spokesmen? Why are they excluded (and I'm a humanist, not just a feminist)? Of course I already know the answer. Men tend to respond positively to attractive women (the whole sex sell thing), while women tend to be ambivalent. There have been studies on this, and it's supposedly hardwired into our brains (though apparently, not mine). But this is still a question of relevance. Does there need to be that much sex on an a well-trafficked site having nothing to do with sex, and which has a broad, diverse, and global audience?

A couple of days ago when my good friend Oli had to go back to Britain, unwillingly, I got angry enough to post my idea of an immigration policy, which I've thought a lot about, on Twitter, in a handful of posts. That's right peeps. Immigration policy does not need to be complicated. In fact, most government operations do not need to be complicated.

The main problem with US immigration policy is that it tries to be all things to all people, and fails miserably. Laws have been added on over the years without trimming old ones. Lawmakers have focused on individual issues, without looking at the big picture, or they've looked at the big picture without looking at the individual issues.

The American public (including many lawmakers) views immigration as an affront to "sacrosanct" American values (when the irony is that we are *all* immigrants or descendants thereof, essentially). Worse, there is an overwhelming stench of racism in the immigration debate that disses anyone with a hint of brown skin. *Gaegh*. Brown's just as good as white is peeps. Get over it.

So, taking in consideration that the Constitution posits that all people are inherently equal, we ought to have an immigration policy that treats immigrants like people, as nascent Americans who are contributors, not as potential criminals that will bleed the system dry of resources. Our policy should also not make distinction for country of origin (the horrid lottery system needs to be abolished, as well as decades-long waiting lists for people from certain countries).

Here's the policy:

1. Put foreign students who graduate automatically on a citizenship path. It doesn't make sense to invest tax money in developing students who won't stay in the country. Keep bright minds.
   
2. For everyone who is not a tourist, conduct a background check. Don't allow criminals in unless they have been pardoned in their home country, have not committed a crime in 10 years, or their crime would not be considered a crime in the US (i.e. former political prisoners).
   
3. Immigrant candidates must prove they can support themselves financially for 6 months. This includes family support, an offer of employment, scholarship, or grant. This would be reduced or waived for qualified refugees. All imigrants have the same visa regardless of the reason they've come to America -- no more arcane visa categories.
   
4. Give each immigrant a social security number on entrance. This allows the immigrant to establish bank accounts, get local identification, pay taxes and become employed. For employment, make everything the same as for a normal worker to reduce redtape and complexity (ergo cost) for the employer. Employer must however consider qualified citizens first.
   
5. After three years clean record (go back to zero if immigrant commits a crime), achieving English proficiency (if not already), and acquiring knowledge of citizen responsibilities, start on the citizenship path.
6. To acquire citizenship, the immigrant gets 10 citizens to vouch for his/her character and commitment. Present to judge. Take oath, and done.

Remember that the benefits of citizenship are voting, participation in government, serving on juries (not necessarily a benefit depending on your view...), and social programs. These would be reserved for citizens. Employment, residency, and equal treatment by the law should not be exclusive to citizens. A person does not have *any* control over where he or she is born, and should not be punished by legal systems (in this country and others) for their geographical coordinates of birth. People do have control over what skills they learn, who they decide to be morally, and what culture they identify with. Migration ought to be a basic human right, and while immigration should not be trivial, it should not be overly expensive, require legal representation, or be bureaucratically impossible to achieve.

As for the issue of "illegal" immigrants currently residing in the US, decriminalize and normalize. Breaking immigration laws as a consequence of bureaucratic inefficiency is not the same as grand theft auto (I have a friend with a PhD from a US university who is relatively wealthy who has struggled for well over a decade to obtain citizenship and spent over $10K in the process. I have another friend who got her greencard for a reasonable few thousand dollars from the Russian mafia (while married to an American). If they have trouble coloring in the lines, how is a low-income immigrant supposed to do it?) It's a farce to consider illegal immigration illegal. As for the normalization part of it, put anyone in the US onto step 4 above. Rinse. Repeat.

What do you think? Bad idea, good idea? Awesome or horridly flawed?

test

Regarding yesterday's post, I received a response:

It has been proven correct by scientists that work for me, and these are people who can make mince meat out of the scientists at NASA so don't even think about "they may be wrong" the conclusive proof will be released later this year. However it is always interesting to see how people react, its like watching someone try to convince Columbus that the earth is flat after he has already been over the horizon. The purpose is a study in human emotional thinking, to understand why humans continue to make the same mistakes and why they are unable to "get" the blatantly obvious.

I have provided a basic theory that any intelligent person could accept and expand upon and anyone with any scientific knowledge could validate themsevles without me needing to spoon feed them with "equations"; any idiot can accept the truth if you hand it to them on a silver platter and any fool can go to college and memorize other peoples work and make out they are a genius by babbling in jargon and technobabble but it takes intelligence to take a basic idea and make something out of it.

All ideas start out as very basic ideas "an apple falls, maybe its some sort of invisible force". Some people will accept that idea, some will reject it.Some scientists chose to believe that bacteria could be responsible for stomach ulcers and that the fact that they were killed by stomach acid was not the be all and end all, while others chose not to and chose to believe that they had the final proof. They all had access to the exact same information but chose different directions. When proof of this theory is provided, scientists will come out of the woodwork going "wow (not woo) thats amazing", it will be seen as one of the most significant scientific discoveries of all time and what I have written will make perfect sense. So of course when any scientist is asked whether they would have accepted that theory when it was first shown to them they will of course say yes.

By providing the basic raw idea I have the proof that many of those scientists are fooling themselves; its like shooting fish in a barrel. So I am not trying to prove my theory is correct, I shouldnt need to, anyone with any degree of intelligence or expertise in physics should be able to do that for themselves. I am trying to prove that many scientists are unable to "get it" because they are controlled by their emotions, as logical as they like to believe they are. Before releasing the "proof" I shall be making this theory available worldwide through the media where I shall attract attention from scientists eager to prove how wrong I am. When I am finished toying with them, I shall let my scientists at them to finish them off and wipe the floor with them.

There will however be some scientists that will "get it" and it is those scientists that I am interested in as they are the ones that we need running the world of science, not egomaniacs. It will be an opportunity for corporations to see who is working for them and whether they can be trusted to make logical decisions.It is one thing to make an error when you have the wrong information or to come to different conclusions when you have different information but when you have the same education and the same information but choose different directions, then it shows that your thinking is being influenced by something other than facts and that is the difference between emotional thinking and logical thinking.

4. you state that light travelling at the speed of light violates a law of physics (it does not, and you do not state which law of physics it supposedly violates. And in fact light can and does travel slower than the speed of light when not in a perfect vacuum)

I did not state that the speed of light travelling at the speed of light violates the laws of physics, I said that the speed of light being constant violates the laws of physics, something that is quite well known. The speed of light being constant means that if you are in motion and turn on a torch in the direction you are headed, the speed of light should equal the speed of light plus your speed but it does not, therefore it is said to be "constant", its speed is not affected by additional velocity, thus violating the laws of physics. http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module3_weird_logic.htm

Even though I did not specifically state this aspect of the speed of light being constant, it is the only aspect of that concept that actually violates the laws of physics and is the only aspect that is widely known to violate the laws of physics, therefore assuming that it does not require explanation.

"It appears you have little or no understanding of quantum physics (in particular, you don't seem to understand wave/particle duality. In all fairness, most people don't get it, but you are basing your theory on a redescription of light's fundamental properties while completely ignoring tested behavior). Your description of nuclei as being vortexes of magnetic energy also shows that you have little or no knowledge of particle physics (do you even know what the strong and weak forces are? What about quarks?)"

Virtually any observations of light made so far will still stand with this theory, it doesnt discredit them, it just enables them to be explained better, so wave particle duality is irrelevant as are quarks. I did not say that nuclei were vortexes, I merely gave that as a means to illustrate the principle of a stationary space of changing energy. It seems you are using the "I am correct, therefore you must be wrong" method which history has shown is prone to failure.

I dont have time to go through all your "advice" but I may include it as a case study in my book and go through it in detail, one of the reasons why I do these little "experiments".

The mistake you have made is the same mistake most people make and that is you preocuppy yourself with searching what you perceive to be flaws because you subconsciously want to believe that I am wrong. When you are looking for flaws, you dont read properly but instead "scan" the words which is a process by which you dont attempt to comprehend what it written but merely "read" the words in order to remove them from the page in order to locate the "flaws". The result is that you make errors that are often easily detectable.

Its one of the tragedies of the human race that whenever a new idea comes along, most peoples instinct is to try to prove it wrong and to want it to be wrong which is like going to a job interview and trying to convince the employer that you are not suitable.

Some people believe that man has not been to the moon, they will point to "evidence" such as there being no stars in the photographs. If you look at the moon you will see stars behind it so naturally you think that if you are on the moon taking a photo that there will be stars in the background and since there are none, they cant have been taken on the moon. People will find that evidence and once they have found it, they stop looking as they have found what they are looking for; flaws. If they find enough flaws it allows them to believe that the other person could be wrong. Its a means of denial, at the basis of a concept will be an idea that is obviously correct but you dont want to believe that it is correct and so you look for flaws. If you find a few "flaws" it enables you to think "if there is one flaw, there must be more therefore it could be wrong".

They could if they choose, find an explanation for why there are no stars but they don't want to do that, they want it to be wrong and so they don't try, they have found what they are looking for and so there is no reason to look in that direction any further. They make no attempt to validate their finding, instead they just look for more flaws. They could easily find out that the reason why there are no stars is because the film is not exposed long enough to capture them since the surface of the moon is quite bright. You cant see stars in the daytime on earth but they are still there, you cant see them because your eyes are adjusted for the bright daylight.

Finding flaws is a trap people fall into because everything contains flaws and finding them is easy. No stars in the moon photographs is a "flaw", and anomaly that doesn't make immediate sense but its not a real flaw is it, its just something that can create a question.

If you really want to get people to think, try starting with the person in the mirror; if you are unable to find and fix your own mistakes, how in the hell can you expect to fix anyone elses? Its one of the things that amazes me about humans, they can be so convinced that the other person is wrong and too blind to see it but it never occurs to them that if its possible for the other person to be "too blind to see it" then it must also be possible that they may suffer that affliction.

The other thing that amazes me is how someone can spend years working on something and someone will come along and expect that they can just "know" exactly where that person went wrong with the first idea that pops into their head without needing to do any thinking whatsoever.

If I go to the zoo and explain the theory of relativety to a chimpanzee and they dont "get it", then whose fault is it, the chimpanzees or Einstein's? If other people "got" this theory, then why didnt you? I shall leave it up to you to work out which side of the bars you want to be on.

It makes perfect sense to me but it doesnt make sense to you, one of us must be wrong and since I am the one with the 100m plus contract and you have sold how many books, who do you think that is more likely to be? Which one of us is.................. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV6Is6PS-98

But thanks for the "advice".

To which I responded:

Wow chill dude. You are not attracting anyone to prove you wrong. I doubt anyone is working for you and you seem totally delusional about science and scientists. No scientist worth his salt would ever write something like this before submitting a proper paper to a respected journal. If the paper is rejected then you ask other valid scientists for their opinion. You try to get experimental results duplicated in other labs. You attempt to build up a burden of proof that is unignorable by the journals. It is never appropriate to "contact the popular media" to try to get attention. Contacting the general population is even more irresponsible, because if this is genuine woo (and I believe it is) then you risk amassing misguided followers (the zero point energy movement is guilty of this, and they have a more solid foundation than you do) and causing harm to science education. The process of science is strict and anal about what it accepts and how, and while that might be frustrating to you, and it might retard the progress of radical ideas, it's a damn good thing, because it's a very good sieve that separates truth from fiction.

You state:
"When I am finished toying with them, I shall let my scientists at them to finish them off and wipe the floor with them. "

This really scares me. You show profound arrogance, and worse, disrespect for other humans. You are possibly a sociopath -- I don't know for sure, I am not your therapist. It seems at the very least, you have a really big bone to pick with someone. You also state that you have a 100 million dollar contract (probably delusional, or from the government, since lawmakers are often profoundly ignorant about science) while I've sold a questionable number of books -- what an egomaniacal jab. So what's wrong, couldn't find anyone higher up on the science food chain to harass with insults? Did they not even respond (I think that's the likely scenario)?

I don't think you idea has even an iota of merit. I don't have a closed mind, it's rather quite open. Your idea does not have merit because:

1) you are appealing to the everyman before the scientist (somehow you think your idea is too radical to provide a proper scientific proof to the science community, and that it will eventually be accepted by science through popular demand -- when has that ever happened?) That is my definition of a crank.

2) you have not provided a proper proof

3) you have not provided experimental data

4) you have not provided experimental circumstances to test your hypothesis

5) you have completely dismissed quantum theory and relativity. To have any merit, you need to explain EXACTLY how your theory negates both of these, and how it describes the experimental results of all proofs associated with these theories (which is a very heavy burden). So for instance, how would you explain neutron decay? How would you explain isotopes? How do you explain time dilation when an object travels at a fraction of the speed of light? How do you explain the universe's background radiation? How do you explain quantum tunneling? How do you explain the Casimir effect? How do you explain solar fusion? How do you explain how gamma ray bursters work? How do you explain the rainbowing on a bubble that's about to pop? You as the provider of the theory, have a huge burden of proof -- you cannot dismiss quantum mechanics and relativity out of hand (not to mention string theory and M theory by implication) with a simplistic appeal to the everyman.

Furthermore, you seem to have found great delight in ripping me apart for finding flaws. Yes of course I'm looking for flaws. That's the analytic science brain at work. That's why the vast majority of scientists also happen to be atheists. We don't believe in random shit just because someone tells us we should. We want to know the whys and hows of things to our own satisfaction. We need to know that an idea fits with other related ideas harmoniously.

No one is going to take you seriously, especially since you have such evident and angry disdain for the science community. I don't what they ever did to you, but if you ever want your idea to be looked at, be humble. Be really fucking humble.

good luck,
Katharine

The dude is actually getting a little scary. I hope he goes away (if this were a comic book, he'd be a supervillain).

As a former science writer, I occasionally get sent various theories from non-scientists, I guess with the intention that I'll somehow recognize true genius and publicize the radical newfound knowledge. This sadly is not the case. I think I am one of the last resort when the theory has been sent to a bunch of scientists (and higher profile science writers) and either ignored completely, ripped apart, or simply laughed at.

Here is the latest theory sent my way.

Here was my response:

wow dude. I hope you are not sending this to actual scientists (I'm just a writer), you won't be taken seriously. And I feel bad for you because you seem to be quite in earnest. Here is why I believe it's just woo (and scientists will think so as well):

1. most of what you have written is preamble for why past scientific theories were wrong and new theories were ridiculed. Scientists aren't the least bit interested in that (they are already aware of it), and it does nothing to prop up your argument. It's just an extended, irritating jab that says "I'm smarter than you", without anything substantial backing it up

2. there are a ton of metaphors employed to support your argument. This is fine if you are explaining a proven scientific theory to lay people, but if you want to be taken seriously by actual scientists, nix the metaphors and stick to math to support your argument

3. you claim that light is held together by a magnetic aether (photons are the electromagnetic carrier particle so you are saying light is held together by light)

4. you state that light traveling at the speed of light violates a law of physics (it does not, and you do not state which law of physics it supposedly violates. And in fact light can and does travel slower than the speed of light when not in a perfect vacuum)

5. you provide no testable hypotheses

6. you provide no equation(s) to back up your theory

7. your offhand, one-sentence refutation of the big bang further discredits your idea (and doesn't seem to have any connection with your theory)

It appears you have little or no understanding of quantum physics (in particular, you don't seem to understand wave/particle duality. In all fairness, most people don't get it, but you are basing your theory on a redescription of light's fundamental properties while completely ignoring tested behavior). Your description of nuclei as being vortexes of magnetic energy also shows that you have little or no knowledge of particle physics (do you even know what the strong and weak forces are? What about quarks?)

If you are going to be spreading your hypothesis around, and before you refute anything and everything that thousands of scientists have proven, please try first to learn about light (photons) and quantum mechanics. This means you have to go beyond lay books, and probably take some physics courses at a university (second year physics usually takes on rudimentary particle physics, which is what you don't currently have a grasp on). If you want to stick to lay books, I highly suggest Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" and "The Fabric of the Cosmos" with which to start. You should also build some working affinity for at least calculus. Math is your friend in science. Equations are used because they provide precises descriptions and aid in testing and proving a hypothesis (they are essential in other words).

Too harsh? Maybe I just shouldn't respond to these. The thing is, science isn't accessible to most people without a lot of hard work. While I think people should be encouraged to think about science, they should also be aware of the high standards set for new theories. It is difficult to prove a new theory simply because that's the best way to shake it down so to speak.

This is in response to this article: Why first-past-the-post voting is fundamentally flawed.

In the above article, range voting (please read it) is thrown out of consideration for publication review by other economists on the grounds that the values assigned to candidates are arbitrary and therefore meaningless:

Arrow, now 86 and professor emeritus at Stanford University, maintains that voting systems based on scores rather than rankings don't measure up. "I don't think [range voting] is a true voting system," he says. Before publishing his theorem, Arrow and his colleagues considered value-based systems but dismissed them. "We felt there was no meaning to compare values between people," says Arrow.

I argue that this premise is untrue. There is meaning available when comparing two or more candidates along a range, and the values are not arbitrary for the individual voter. What these economists are really describing is that the range of values is not fixed (defined in the same way) for all voters. There is not an absolute range.

To the economists I say: Get out of your left brain!

Selecting a candidate for an important decision is as much a gut feeling (right brain) as it is a logical decision. Since there are so many factors that go into determining who is "better" (a pretty meaningless word in and of itself), the process of logical deduction often breaks down and we must also rely on instinct. This is totally evident in how campaigns play out. We like to think we choose people based on their stated positions on particular issues, but it often boils down to the behavior of the candidate before and during the campaign and our feelings about it. "Better" is a muddy little melting pot of conflicted feelings and specific values. How can we possibly say X should be voted over Y when there is no clear absolute value of what "better" is?

Since each voter can determine what the voting range means for them (i.e. they get to pick what "better" means to them), they are guaranteed to feel more satisfaction. A major benefit of range voting is that you are not forced to pick on candidate over the other, and you can also show disdain for all candidates (I've long argued that there should be a "none of the above" box on the ballot). This eliminates having to pick "the lesser evil". If there is one or two voters the system fails, but in larger voting pools, the wisdom (or stupidity) of the crowd takes over.

Another possible benefit is increased voter turnout. If a potential voter feels they can accurately describe their view on all the candidates and not be forced to pick one, apathy evaporates and they may be more likely to vote (hypothesizing here, but I think it would encourage a lot of people).

A lot of things can get my goat, but other people's behavior on AIM I often find very rude (you know who you are). So instead of ranting, I offer a helpful IM etiquette list:

• an IM conversation is much like an in-person conversation. Treat the person with whom you are conversing with the same respect and courtesy you would use if you were talking face-to-face
  
• if you are busy or away from your keyboard (AFK) be sure to set your status to away. If you use a client where you can't set your status to away, go offline
• if you are busy but need to be available for some things and someone initiates a conversation, politely tell the person you are busy and to send an email instead. Inform them you will respond when you can
• if you forget to set your status to away, and someone has initiated a conversation in the meantime, APOLOGIZE on your return, and either ask them to send an email (if you are busy) or take up the conversation
• if you are receiving an obnoxious number of IMs or are bothered by a conversation that is distracting, politely inform the other person that you need to end the conversation. The other person may not be aware that you are bothered
• if you are perpetually bothered by an individual, block that person either permanently or temporarily (depending on how important that person is to you)

Really this is all quite commonsense. Still, it does seem to elude quite a few people.

I know this is lame, but I haven't blogged anything yet in April, and I've never missed a month since I started the blog in 2005. Truth be told, my twitter account has taken over the basic functionality that used to be covered in blogging. It's just so much easier and faster and addicting.

Anywho. I went to the mailbox this evening, and what should I find, but a package from Canal Street Distribution in Henderson Nevada. What does this mean you say? Why I'll tell you: the new Michel Gondry DVD arrived:



I was hoping the portrait I ordered was going to be tucked in with it, and for a moment before I opened the envelope my heart skipped a beat. Alas no, it has yet to arrive. Yes, I paid $20 to have Michel Gondry draw my portrait from a photo, a new "service" he's been offering since his website opened up shop earlier in the month. I'm still wonder if it is a scam, but the arrival of the video is a good sign it's not (I was order number 13 by the way). I have yet to view the DVD -- I might savor it over the weekend, although I've seen most of the videos already from YouTube.

Most people who know me well know that I HATE facebook. Whenever I log on, I'm tempted to remove my profile. There are two reasons for this.

Since I can compare how many friends I have to other people, It makes me feel like, comparatively, I'm a friendless loser. I'm not really -- the close friends I do make are loyal to me, and I to them. I just have an inability to tolerate needless acquaintances (I despise, and am bad at chitchat), and a high bar for what makes a worthy friend (at least that is what I am telling myself).

The other part of it is the signal to noise ratio on FB. I'm annoyed by most of the content that shows up in the feed (and the general clutter of the design is also highly irritating -- it seems to be optimized for sugared-up twelve-year-olds).

I do not want to see people's party pictures, especially if those depicted in them have huge grins, are holding plastic cups, are wearing something florescent around their necks, and have serious red-eye. Nobody cares, especially me. You don't need to remind me that you are having a good time, and I am not.

I do not want to see endless "Cool!", "Awesome!", "Dude!" comments, or any variation of a singlet smiley. If you can't string two actual words together, paste in some random lorem ipsum. It would have more meaning. I recommend Cicero.

I don't want to see 30 second video clips from anyone who has not at least directed a commercial or music video. The exception to this is anything involving a cute dog.

I don't mind status updates so much, unless it's bragging. "Oh, Brad and I went to Acapulco and swam with 12 dozen bottlenose doplphins! It was such a spiritual moment. We wish you could have been there!" No you don't. I could heave.

Discovered oDesk -- looks like a good place to pick up freelance work, though it is globally competitive. They have tests which is a nice way of proving proficiency without the hassle of describing your skills and jobs in detail. I immediately took the English exam: