Saturday, June 11, 2005
A rebuttal to skeptics
I finally saw "Before Sunset" today, and in it there was a mention of something Einstein had said about the importance of "magic and mystery"; this naturally intrigued me, so I did a search, and finally came up with what I think is the quote that was being referred to:
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man."
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh..... :-)
That quote is one of several translations of what he actually said, so we can't get too sucked into a word-by-word analysis, but think about what he's saying in general; that the mysterious (aka the unknown) is the basis of everything that we can discover or create, that if you can't perceive it you're not truly seeing, that our perception of the unknown is the basis for religion, and that his own religious feeling is based in it... this from the man who had arguably the greatest mind in human history.
This is where skeptics, and those in general that don't think anything exists beyond the matter and energies detectable by science, get stalled in their grasp of reality; they ignore the simple facts that we possess primitive senses that evolved to help us find food and mates and avoid predators and other dangers, NOT to perceive the fabric of existence or many of the things that make it up, and that our scientific instruments, far from showing that we now know everything that exists, prove that many things exist that we can't perceive with our senses, and that as time passes we're able to perceive more and more things that were always there, beyond our reach. These deluded folks point to science, and then ignore how wildly what science tells us is true has changed over the years and is continuing to change, and proclaim with arrogance and, let's face it, stupidity, that anything that hasn't already been discovered via science doesn't exist.
Even if I personally hadn't had many experiences with the unknown, I hope that I'm intellectually honest enough at my core to be certain that *I* wouldn't take that path, and would instead admit that we must be certain that we WILL keep finding ways to perceive things that we currently can't, that eventually other things will be shown to exist, just as radio waves and such have already been... that we do NOT know it all, and thus that when we sum up reality, we MUST include some element of the unknown to allow for future discoveries.
If you want to understand everything that is, as opposed to just chanting "no no no" about anything you can't see proof of rightthisminute, it's absolutely crucial to keep an open mind, because it's not likely that every aspect of existence will show up on your doorstep and reveal itself to you, or will be proven to exist by science in your lifetime; it may not be possible for us to grasp The Truth while bound by physical brains, but if you want to get as close as humanly possible you have to start by accepting that whatever you currently believe is an accurate analysis of the universe is almost certainly wrong, because you haven't seen it all yet... and then, you have to will yourself, FORCE yourself, to start seeing, and believe me that's not always easy (my "conversion" to accepting that animism exists is a good example; see my post of 3-16-04).
The thing that helped me let go of the idea that nothing other than "scientific reality" and those unknowns I'd personally experienced up to that point (ghosts and psychic phenomena) exist was a concept put forth in the movie "Contact"; the religious guy tells the scientist something along the lines of that she can't be the representative of the human race because 95% of people believe in something religious/spiritual, and she doesn't, and for her to think that nearly the entire human race is deluded and she's in the right meant that she was too arrogant to go on the mission... WOW!! This made me take a close look at what I believed, and made me realize that for any unknowns to exist there has to be a framework for them, they had to be made of something, guided by principles of some kind, tied into each other and physical reality in some way... in other words, there had to be a religious, spiritual or metaphysical backdrop for the things I knew to exist.
So here I am, forcing my mind open every day to see what drops in, blogging my way ever closer to... whatever it is I'm going to find out.
I challenge YOU to take your personal grasp of reality, of The Truth, as far as you can take it; be hardheaded, yes, be a doubter, don't believe everything you read, not even on this bog (you don't know me personally, so why should you believe anything just because *I* say it's true?), but if you or anyone you trust has had any experience beyond scientific explanation (if they haven't already revealed anything of this sort to you, ASK), and it's almost certain that one or more people you know HAVE had brushes with the unknown, take those things as a starting point for your own explanation of how the universe works. Try to describe reality in a way that includes all the unknowns provided for you as part of the whole, as they MUST of course be. See what you come up with... and don't forget to post it on your blog.
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man."
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh..... :-)
That quote is one of several translations of what he actually said, so we can't get too sucked into a word-by-word analysis, but think about what he's saying in general; that the mysterious (aka the unknown) is the basis of everything that we can discover or create, that if you can't perceive it you're not truly seeing, that our perception of the unknown is the basis for religion, and that his own religious feeling is based in it... this from the man who had arguably the greatest mind in human history.
This is where skeptics, and those in general that don't think anything exists beyond the matter and energies detectable by science, get stalled in their grasp of reality; they ignore the simple facts that we possess primitive senses that evolved to help us find food and mates and avoid predators and other dangers, NOT to perceive the fabric of existence or many of the things that make it up, and that our scientific instruments, far from showing that we now know everything that exists, prove that many things exist that we can't perceive with our senses, and that as time passes we're able to perceive more and more things that were always there, beyond our reach. These deluded folks point to science, and then ignore how wildly what science tells us is true has changed over the years and is continuing to change, and proclaim with arrogance and, let's face it, stupidity, that anything that hasn't already been discovered via science doesn't exist.
Even if I personally hadn't had many experiences with the unknown, I hope that I'm intellectually honest enough at my core to be certain that *I* wouldn't take that path, and would instead admit that we must be certain that we WILL keep finding ways to perceive things that we currently can't, that eventually other things will be shown to exist, just as radio waves and such have already been... that we do NOT know it all, and thus that when we sum up reality, we MUST include some element of the unknown to allow for future discoveries.
If you want to understand everything that is, as opposed to just chanting "no no no" about anything you can't see proof of rightthisminute, it's absolutely crucial to keep an open mind, because it's not likely that every aspect of existence will show up on your doorstep and reveal itself to you, or will be proven to exist by science in your lifetime; it may not be possible for us to grasp The Truth while bound by physical brains, but if you want to get as close as humanly possible you have to start by accepting that whatever you currently believe is an accurate analysis of the universe is almost certainly wrong, because you haven't seen it all yet... and then, you have to will yourself, FORCE yourself, to start seeing, and believe me that's not always easy (my "conversion" to accepting that animism exists is a good example; see my post of 3-16-04).
The thing that helped me let go of the idea that nothing other than "scientific reality" and those unknowns I'd personally experienced up to that point (ghosts and psychic phenomena) exist was a concept put forth in the movie "Contact"; the religious guy tells the scientist something along the lines of that she can't be the representative of the human race because 95% of people believe in something religious/spiritual, and she doesn't, and for her to think that nearly the entire human race is deluded and she's in the right meant that she was too arrogant to go on the mission... WOW!! This made me take a close look at what I believed, and made me realize that for any unknowns to exist there has to be a framework for them, they had to be made of something, guided by principles of some kind, tied into each other and physical reality in some way... in other words, there had to be a religious, spiritual or metaphysical backdrop for the things I knew to exist.
So here I am, forcing my mind open every day to see what drops in, blogging my way ever closer to... whatever it is I'm going to find out.
I challenge YOU to take your personal grasp of reality, of The Truth, as far as you can take it; be hardheaded, yes, be a doubter, don't believe everything you read, not even on this bog (you don't know me personally, so why should you believe anything just because *I* say it's true?), but if you or anyone you trust has had any experience beyond scientific explanation (if they haven't already revealed anything of this sort to you, ASK), and it's almost certain that one or more people you know HAVE had brushes with the unknown, take those things as a starting point for your own explanation of how the universe works. Try to describe reality in a way that includes all the unknowns provided for you as part of the whole, as they MUST of course be. See what you come up with... and don't forget to post it on your blog.
Friday, June 10, 2005
Lessons from "Everybody Loves Raymond"
One of the things that made this one of the funniest shows of all times is that the writers had a solid grasp of human nature, and are able to show us things that seem extra-funny because they really nail how people think, feel and act. Today, they showed some classic manipulator ploys:
The manipulator (Peter), showed up at the home of his sister (Amy) and her still-new husband (Robert), and... never left. Manipulators realize that regular folks find it almost impossible to say "Get out" or "Stop it," and thus that they can just show up wherever they want to be and do whatever they feel like doing, knowing that no one is willing to point out that they're making life unpleasant for others.
Peter cooks some food and washes some dishes... and gets Amy to give him not only Robert's shirt, but his underwear as well (much to Robert's dismay). Manipulators realize that if they do a couple of nice things, they can use that as currency to get all sorts of stuff that they want, including things that aren't reasonable for them to have.
Here's the big one; Robert and Amy have a movie date planned with Ray and Debra, and when the latter couple shows up, Peter acts as if it's a given that he's invited (which is itself a manipulator ploy), and, when Robert informs him otherwise, he turns to Ray and Debra and asks if THEY have a problem with him going... asks smugly and pointedly, KNOWING that there's not one person in a million who's able to say something like, "Yes, I have a problem with you coming along" to anyone's face, and thus that Ray and Debra would say they had no problem with him going even though of course they did. This allowed Peter to turn on Robert and announce, "It looks like it's just YOU that have a problem with me going," which makes Robert look like this mean person who isn't doing what the others want, with the added benefit of forcing him to protest in his own defense, which in turn makes people see him as defenSIVE, and thus somehow in the wrong, when in fact he's defendING, a totally different thing... a true manipulator's masterstroke.
In a recent episode, light was shed on a mysterious manipulator pattern; why verbal attackers will so often tell an intelligent person that they're stupid, or someone with a particular skill that they're bad at that thing, when those specific slights are glaringly untrue (see my post of 7-21-04) and so seem like they couldn't possibly have any impact on the intended victim. Robert pulled a trick on Ray and Debra that was part of his police training; he gave them alleged intelligence tests, and then told them, 1st that Debra had scored higher than Ray, which we of course expected as she's clearly the smarter one, and then later on that he did the scoring wrong, and Ray's score was the higher of the 2. This revelation caused Debra to go to pieces, which it turns out was the entire point of the trick, which teaches police officers that to break through a person's defenses you attack whatever it is that they base their sense of self most strongly on.. which shows why attackers use this ploy, and why it usually works.
A stunning example of this concept in action came on an ad I saw for the new season of "The Real Gilligan's Island." I'd seen a piece of the 1st episode, enough to grasp that some of the contestants don't like one of the Mary Anns, a woman who, as one might imagine, is beautiful with a dead-perfect body (on which she wears nearly nothing); in the ad, these folks are shown going on and on about a tiny mole she has between her eyebrows, and how it's driving them crazy, and they just can't stand it... in other words, they've zeroed in on the only element of what we know is the biggest deal about her, her looks, that can remotely be construed as a flaw, and that's what they've chosen to slam her on-the psychological equivalent of a bullet to the heart.
Manipulators suck, let's face it, AND they win most off the time, because even the stupidest of them have an instinct about how to push our buttons; if you can remember that you need to speak up when they're behaving inappropriately, and NOT get sucked in when they attack you where you're most vulnerable, though, you can beat them every time... thus striking a blow for us all.
The manipulator (Peter), showed up at the home of his sister (Amy) and her still-new husband (Robert), and... never left. Manipulators realize that regular folks find it almost impossible to say "Get out" or "Stop it," and thus that they can just show up wherever they want to be and do whatever they feel like doing, knowing that no one is willing to point out that they're making life unpleasant for others.
Peter cooks some food and washes some dishes... and gets Amy to give him not only Robert's shirt, but his underwear as well (much to Robert's dismay). Manipulators realize that if they do a couple of nice things, they can use that as currency to get all sorts of stuff that they want, including things that aren't reasonable for them to have.
Here's the big one; Robert and Amy have a movie date planned with Ray and Debra, and when the latter couple shows up, Peter acts as if it's a given that he's invited (which is itself a manipulator ploy), and, when Robert informs him otherwise, he turns to Ray and Debra and asks if THEY have a problem with him going... asks smugly and pointedly, KNOWING that there's not one person in a million who's able to say something like, "Yes, I have a problem with you coming along" to anyone's face, and thus that Ray and Debra would say they had no problem with him going even though of course they did. This allowed Peter to turn on Robert and announce, "It looks like it's just YOU that have a problem with me going," which makes Robert look like this mean person who isn't doing what the others want, with the added benefit of forcing him to protest in his own defense, which in turn makes people see him as defenSIVE, and thus somehow in the wrong, when in fact he's defendING, a totally different thing... a true manipulator's masterstroke.
In a recent episode, light was shed on a mysterious manipulator pattern; why verbal attackers will so often tell an intelligent person that they're stupid, or someone with a particular skill that they're bad at that thing, when those specific slights are glaringly untrue (see my post of 7-21-04) and so seem like they couldn't possibly have any impact on the intended victim. Robert pulled a trick on Ray and Debra that was part of his police training; he gave them alleged intelligence tests, and then told them, 1st that Debra had scored higher than Ray, which we of course expected as she's clearly the smarter one, and then later on that he did the scoring wrong, and Ray's score was the higher of the 2. This revelation caused Debra to go to pieces, which it turns out was the entire point of the trick, which teaches police officers that to break through a person's defenses you attack whatever it is that they base their sense of self most strongly on.. which shows why attackers use this ploy, and why it usually works.
A stunning example of this concept in action came on an ad I saw for the new season of "The Real Gilligan's Island." I'd seen a piece of the 1st episode, enough to grasp that some of the contestants don't like one of the Mary Anns, a woman who, as one might imagine, is beautiful with a dead-perfect body (on which she wears nearly nothing); in the ad, these folks are shown going on and on about a tiny mole she has between her eyebrows, and how it's driving them crazy, and they just can't stand it... in other words, they've zeroed in on the only element of what we know is the biggest deal about her, her looks, that can remotely be construed as a flaw, and that's what they've chosen to slam her on-the psychological equivalent of a bullet to the heart.
Manipulators suck, let's face it, AND they win most off the time, because even the stupidest of them have an instinct about how to push our buttons; if you can remember that you need to speak up when they're behaving inappropriately, and NOT get sucked in when they attack you where you're most vulnerable, though, you can beat them every time... thus striking a blow for us all.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Are rats psychic?
The area where I live is periodically plagued by rats; now, sadly, is one of those times. We have birdbaths for our beloved avian visitors placed by our patio, and this year the rats have decided to use them for their water supply; I'm literally seeing rats drinking from them about every 10 minutes or so all night long... and these rats are so huge and bold that no amount of yelling, brandishing blunt weapons, or banging around the landscaping deters them in the slightest. After many days of being badgered, my husband has belatedly put rat traps on the patio cover around the opening they climb down to the hanging birdbath from, on the bush they climb down to the pedestal birdbath from, and on the latter birdbath itself. There was no way they could get to the water without getting caught in a trap, or so we thought, so we prepared for a night of rodential slaughter.
Yeah, right.
Although you'd think that the only rats that could know anything about traps are those that died in them, they went from making almost non-stop trips down the chains to the hanging birdbath to not going near it; how did they KNOW? Yes, the traps have human scent on them, but so does everything out there; what would make them stop using their well-worn path to that water, the evil creatures? Are they PSYCHIC?!!
The only trap that went off last night was the one on the bush; it either fell off due to poor placement, or sprung off when it got set off by the bush shaking from being climbed on, and, with typical laziness, my husband refused to put it back, so the rats figured out how to jump past the trap on the birdbath (how did they KNOW not to jump onto the trap?) and drank their fill all night.
Rats: 1 Us: 0
Tonight, my husband somehow lost the ability to attach a trap to the bush, but laid extra traps along the lip of the birdbath; the only trap that closed tonight was when one especially thrill-seeking rat tried to leap past them to a clear spot and had a near miss... we had a few minutes of levity speculating that the rat had had to "go change its fur" because it had undoubtedly "pooped its pelt."
It was looking like we'd at least be able to block their access to the water, causing them to hopefully go hang out in someone else's back yard, when I heard a rustling, and looked out to see a rat stretched from the bush nearest to the hanging birdbath to the birdbath itself, and then scrambling onto it and drinking; as much as I loathe the filthy little beasts, I've gotta admit that I was pretty impressed. I thought I could make a sudden loud noise and scare it into scrambling up the chains and onto the traps, but even in its panic it remembered to jump across to the bush to make its escape.
Rats: 2 Us: 0
I sent my husband out with clippers, and he cut back the bush to the point where he thinks it won't be possible for the rats to cross to the birdbath; I'm not sure they won't show up with ropes, ladders or hang gliders, or at least have the courage to make a leap across, but we'll see. We'll also be putting out more traps tomorrow, assuming my husband can manage to remember to swing by Home Depot, and... if that doesn't work, what next, barbed wire? Land mines?
For any long-time readers who might be concerned about the safety of the squirrels, who also run around where the traps are being used, fear not; the traps don't go up until it's pitch black out, and come down before we go to bed. It's interesting, though, how one small rodent is loathed, and another is loved; as my husband said when one of our conversations went from how to kill the rats to what food to put out for the squirrels, "What a difference a fluffy tail makes"... to which I replied, "What a difference bad, destructive behavior makes." Not much he could reply to that one, given his own history of wrongdoing...
Yeah, right.
Although you'd think that the only rats that could know anything about traps are those that died in them, they went from making almost non-stop trips down the chains to the hanging birdbath to not going near it; how did they KNOW? Yes, the traps have human scent on them, but so does everything out there; what would make them stop using their well-worn path to that water, the evil creatures? Are they PSYCHIC?!!
The only trap that went off last night was the one on the bush; it either fell off due to poor placement, or sprung off when it got set off by the bush shaking from being climbed on, and, with typical laziness, my husband refused to put it back, so the rats figured out how to jump past the trap on the birdbath (how did they KNOW not to jump onto the trap?) and drank their fill all night.
Rats: 1 Us: 0
Tonight, my husband somehow lost the ability to attach a trap to the bush, but laid extra traps along the lip of the birdbath; the only trap that closed tonight was when one especially thrill-seeking rat tried to leap past them to a clear spot and had a near miss... we had a few minutes of levity speculating that the rat had had to "go change its fur" because it had undoubtedly "pooped its pelt."
It was looking like we'd at least be able to block their access to the water, causing them to hopefully go hang out in someone else's back yard, when I heard a rustling, and looked out to see a rat stretched from the bush nearest to the hanging birdbath to the birdbath itself, and then scrambling onto it and drinking; as much as I loathe the filthy little beasts, I've gotta admit that I was pretty impressed. I thought I could make a sudden loud noise and scare it into scrambling up the chains and onto the traps, but even in its panic it remembered to jump across to the bush to make its escape.
Rats: 2 Us: 0
I sent my husband out with clippers, and he cut back the bush to the point where he thinks it won't be possible for the rats to cross to the birdbath; I'm not sure they won't show up with ropes, ladders or hang gliders, or at least have the courage to make a leap across, but we'll see. We'll also be putting out more traps tomorrow, assuming my husband can manage to remember to swing by Home Depot, and... if that doesn't work, what next, barbed wire? Land mines?
For any long-time readers who might be concerned about the safety of the squirrels, who also run around where the traps are being used, fear not; the traps don't go up until it's pitch black out, and come down before we go to bed. It's interesting, though, how one small rodent is loathed, and another is loved; as my husband said when one of our conversations went from how to kill the rats to what food to put out for the squirrels, "What a difference a fluffy tail makes"... to which I replied, "What a difference bad, destructive behavior makes." Not much he could reply to that one, given his own history of wrongdoing...
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Husband = MORON
Until recently, my husband's greatest claim to moron fame was constantly leaving a small fortune in equipment clearly visible in the back seat of his car, and treating my warnings about theft with the arrogant condescension he uses for anyone who's so foolish as to consider issues of safety, culminating in, you guessed it, his car being broken into and cleaned out (I blogged about this on 9-1-04); originally, he tried to pass off the value of the missing items as "only" $1000, but, knowing his policy of lying to me to downplay the severity of his wrongdoings, I gradually changed my comments about the missing items to having them be worth over $1000, then $2000, and now OVER $2000, and he's never tried to correct me, so I know I still haven't reached the ACTUAL value of the missing items.
A few months after the theft, he set an even greater act of moronicism into motion; he had a piece of equipment that needed to be mailed to its company of origin to be repaired, and he put it in a (very large) box, sent it out... and we never saw it again, and it's been a year and a half. How did this happen? He lives his life around task avoidance, so he resists making necessary phone calls to check and follow up on things, even when it's wildly to his disbenefit to act that way; although he received NO contact from the company about the item (as one would normally expect to get, about what they wanted to do to it and how long it might take), he refused to contact THEM and see what was up, despite repeated and increasingly impassioned requests for him to do so, and ample opportunity for him to do so. Finally, as the weeks and then MONTHS passed, he claimed he was calling and leaving messages, or calling and getting promises of callbacks that never came; he refused to hammer them with more frequent calls, or, finally, to give ME the # and the technical info necessary to explain what I was trying to find out about... and he always gave me the impression that he was trying to find out what was happening with the item within the repair center, that they were dragging their feet getting it fixed and sent back.
Something snapped in my mind a couple of days ago, and I demanded that he tell me the name of the company and the product, went to that company's website, registered to use it, and sent them an email asking where our item was and when they were going to send it back. Today, I got an email from them, informing me that they'd NEVER GOTTEN IT. Horrified, I confronted my husband, and he admitted that he'd found out over a YEAR ago that they'd never gotten it, and, as he'd long since lost the tracking info, he had no way to find out where the post office had actually sent it, and knew it was gone forever; he'd been LYING to me all that time, trying to keep alive my belief that the stupid thing was sitting on a shelf at that company, unrepaired and waiting for someone to figure out how to fix it rather than having to replace it (we've had past experiences with it taking big chunks of months for other tech items to be fixed), or that they'd lost the identifying info for who owned it and it was just a matter of contacting the right person who'd figure out which orphaned item was ours... anything other than that the post office, which granted sucks big time, could permanently lose such a big box that had been sent registered and certified, and thus was trackable (unless the sender is STUPID enough to lose the tracking #), and that he'd deceived me about his never having had any indication from them that they'd received the item. I've had over a year of extra stress about this issue because my husband's priority was to put off for as long as possible my finding out that he'd LOST a piece of equipment worth $2200 due to stupidity, stubbornness, and laziness on his part.
You know what, I should change the title of this post, because I'M the one who's the moron in this scenario; I know, I KNOW that he's a pathological liar, that he can't be trusted with pretty much anything, that he's utterly incapable of handling any shred of responsibility or of doing anything right without endless supervision and assistance, and that the central tenet of his existence is to conceal his endless screwups... so I NEVER should have allowed this situation to even get past the 1st couple of weeks without results or the phone # to call, not where such an expensive piece of equipment was concerned. It's just that I'm always so busy, so stressed, so TIRED, and I have to handle all of my stuff, all the household stuff, all the couple stuff, AND monitor all of HIS stuff even though he gets nasty about it despite his extensive history of fouling up, and even though he's supposed to be an adult and thus capable of handling his own personal issues... and I never considered that there was a worst-case scenario beyond any that I'd ever imagined going on, and that he was covering it up and preventing me from taking action when there was still time to.
To my husband, who reads my blog, I send a 2-word message... no, not THAT one, because I don't put profanity on here, but this one: NEVER AGAIN. From this point on, I don't care HOW nasty you get when questioned about tasks and processes you haven't completed; *I* can be WAY nastier than you can, and if necessary I'll prove that as part of making sure that you don't get any more chances to throw thousands of dollars away because you can't be bothered to hold onto important documents, make a frigging phone call, act in a timely manner, or show an ounce of common sense... whatever it takes, there will NOT be a repeat of your recent performance.
Count on it.
A few months after the theft, he set an even greater act of moronicism into motion; he had a piece of equipment that needed to be mailed to its company of origin to be repaired, and he put it in a (very large) box, sent it out... and we never saw it again, and it's been a year and a half. How did this happen? He lives his life around task avoidance, so he resists making necessary phone calls to check and follow up on things, even when it's wildly to his disbenefit to act that way; although he received NO contact from the company about the item (as one would normally expect to get, about what they wanted to do to it and how long it might take), he refused to contact THEM and see what was up, despite repeated and increasingly impassioned requests for him to do so, and ample opportunity for him to do so. Finally, as the weeks and then MONTHS passed, he claimed he was calling and leaving messages, or calling and getting promises of callbacks that never came; he refused to hammer them with more frequent calls, or, finally, to give ME the # and the technical info necessary to explain what I was trying to find out about... and he always gave me the impression that he was trying to find out what was happening with the item within the repair center, that they were dragging their feet getting it fixed and sent back.
Something snapped in my mind a couple of days ago, and I demanded that he tell me the name of the company and the product, went to that company's website, registered to use it, and sent them an email asking where our item was and when they were going to send it back. Today, I got an email from them, informing me that they'd NEVER GOTTEN IT. Horrified, I confronted my husband, and he admitted that he'd found out over a YEAR ago that they'd never gotten it, and, as he'd long since lost the tracking info, he had no way to find out where the post office had actually sent it, and knew it was gone forever; he'd been LYING to me all that time, trying to keep alive my belief that the stupid thing was sitting on a shelf at that company, unrepaired and waiting for someone to figure out how to fix it rather than having to replace it (we've had past experiences with it taking big chunks of months for other tech items to be fixed), or that they'd lost the identifying info for who owned it and it was just a matter of contacting the right person who'd figure out which orphaned item was ours... anything other than that the post office, which granted sucks big time, could permanently lose such a big box that had been sent registered and certified, and thus was trackable (unless the sender is STUPID enough to lose the tracking #), and that he'd deceived me about his never having had any indication from them that they'd received the item. I've had over a year of extra stress about this issue because my husband's priority was to put off for as long as possible my finding out that he'd LOST a piece of equipment worth $2200 due to stupidity, stubbornness, and laziness on his part.
You know what, I should change the title of this post, because I'M the one who's the moron in this scenario; I know, I KNOW that he's a pathological liar, that he can't be trusted with pretty much anything, that he's utterly incapable of handling any shred of responsibility or of doing anything right without endless supervision and assistance, and that the central tenet of his existence is to conceal his endless screwups... so I NEVER should have allowed this situation to even get past the 1st couple of weeks without results or the phone # to call, not where such an expensive piece of equipment was concerned. It's just that I'm always so busy, so stressed, so TIRED, and I have to handle all of my stuff, all the household stuff, all the couple stuff, AND monitor all of HIS stuff even though he gets nasty about it despite his extensive history of fouling up, and even though he's supposed to be an adult and thus capable of handling his own personal issues... and I never considered that there was a worst-case scenario beyond any that I'd ever imagined going on, and that he was covering it up and preventing me from taking action when there was still time to.
To my husband, who reads my blog, I send a 2-word message... no, not THAT one, because I don't put profanity on here, but this one: NEVER AGAIN. From this point on, I don't care HOW nasty you get when questioned about tasks and processes you haven't completed; *I* can be WAY nastier than you can, and if necessary I'll prove that as part of making sure that you don't get any more chances to throw thousands of dollars away because you can't be bothered to hold onto important documents, make a frigging phone call, act in a timely manner, or show an ounce of common sense... whatever it takes, there will NOT be a repeat of your recent performance.
Count on it.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
The war on... sick people
If you're not sick, you will be once you've read this:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050607/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_medical_marijuana
which gives us the latest from the Supreme Court:
"In a 6-3 decision, the court on Monday said those who smoke marijuana because their doctors recommend it to ease pain can be prosecuted for violating federal drug laws, overriding medical marijuana statutes in 10 states."
There are disclaimers about how they're not going to be targeting sick people, but if that's so, why go to such lengths to be sure they CAN? I don't buy the idea of, "Don't worry about this new restriction on you/new power we have over you, because we're not gonna use it, honest"; if they weren't ever going to use it, they wouldn't be laying the groundwork.
Groundwork to deprive sick people of, and take legal action against them for, something they need to control their level of suffering.
The justification for this is:
"The Bush administration, like the Clinton White House before it, has taken a hard stand against state medical marijuana laws, arguing that such statutes could undermine the fight against illegal drugs."
Um, excuse me, aren't there already countless drugs that a doctor can prescribe that are illegal to procure withOUT a doctor's prescription, including many that are used "recreationally," like marijuana usually is? Just because marijuana's been illegal for a long time, well before its medical uses were discovered, why should that make a difference? When people are SUFFERING, isn't the more important issue the relief of that suffering, NOT whether something that would help them has been made illegal because people were smoking it and... eating lots of cookies?
The point is made in the article that
"John Walters, director of national drug control policy, defended the government's ban. 'Science and research have not determined that smoking marijuana is safe or effective,' he said."
This is of course true, but it's a valid argument against allowing marijuana use by the ill if and only if it's followed by a statement along the lines of, "... and therefore, we're going to invest lots of $ starting right now so that we CAN determine these things"; the lack of such a statement tells me that the concern that marijuana might not be helping, or could even be hurting, the sick people is FAKE, and is just being mouthed to make them sound better.
Know WHY there's no research backing up the medicinal value of marijuana? Because it's an illegal substance, even for medical researchers, and they'd have to get special permission to possess it in order to study it, AND get someone to pay for what would be controversial research, which would be made harder by the fact that they couldn't expect any gov't $... and they KNOW that. Pointing to the lack of a sort of research that's been made essentially impossible to conduct is grossly disingenuous... SHAME on them!!
Doctors need to be allowed to do their jobs as best as they can, and that means that they should be able to prescribe ANYTHING that will reduce human suffering; if they discover than HEROIN would help these desperate people control their agony, I think it should be given to them, and marijuana should be permitted without a moment's hesitation.
The Yahoo article fails to mention a more prevalent medical use for marijuana; the suppression of nausea, which can literally be a life or death issue for patients with things like AIDS and cancer, for whom the nausea can be so horrific that they can't eat. One of my own uncles owes his life to marijuana; his nausea was so bad that he couldn't keep ANYTHING down, not even water, so he'd smoke half a joint, take his medicines and vitamins, eat a meal, drink some fluids, and hope it'd all be far enough into his body to not come shooting back out when the nausea returned. Why are they no longer talking about the nausea-relief angle... is it the connection to AIDS? There's a grim thought for you...
The Yahoo article DOES make the final important point on this issue:
"Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML, which favors legalization of marijuana... said the decision points up a large difference between the administration and the public.
'The disconnect is so wide here,' St. Pierre said. 'In no circumstance where voters have the opportunity to weigh in have they said no to medical marijuana.'"
Damn straight. Wake up, Washington; the American people want all possible treatments to be made available to those who are sickest, and if you're smart you'll back down gracefully on this one before the media starts showcasing dreadfully ill people whose suffering you won't allow to be relieved... before the voters start contemplating the need for greater compassion in our elected officials.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050607/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_medical_marijuana
which gives us the latest from the Supreme Court:
"In a 6-3 decision, the court on Monday said those who smoke marijuana because their doctors recommend it to ease pain can be prosecuted for violating federal drug laws, overriding medical marijuana statutes in 10 states."
There are disclaimers about how they're not going to be targeting sick people, but if that's so, why go to such lengths to be sure they CAN? I don't buy the idea of, "Don't worry about this new restriction on you/new power we have over you, because we're not gonna use it, honest"; if they weren't ever going to use it, they wouldn't be laying the groundwork.
Groundwork to deprive sick people of, and take legal action against them for, something they need to control their level of suffering.
The justification for this is:
"The Bush administration, like the Clinton White House before it, has taken a hard stand against state medical marijuana laws, arguing that such statutes could undermine the fight against illegal drugs."
Um, excuse me, aren't there already countless drugs that a doctor can prescribe that are illegal to procure withOUT a doctor's prescription, including many that are used "recreationally," like marijuana usually is? Just because marijuana's been illegal for a long time, well before its medical uses were discovered, why should that make a difference? When people are SUFFERING, isn't the more important issue the relief of that suffering, NOT whether something that would help them has been made illegal because people were smoking it and... eating lots of cookies?
The point is made in the article that
"John Walters, director of national drug control policy, defended the government's ban. 'Science and research have not determined that smoking marijuana is safe or effective,' he said."
This is of course true, but it's a valid argument against allowing marijuana use by the ill if and only if it's followed by a statement along the lines of, "... and therefore, we're going to invest lots of $ starting right now so that we CAN determine these things"; the lack of such a statement tells me that the concern that marijuana might not be helping, or could even be hurting, the sick people is FAKE, and is just being mouthed to make them sound better.
Know WHY there's no research backing up the medicinal value of marijuana? Because it's an illegal substance, even for medical researchers, and they'd have to get special permission to possess it in order to study it, AND get someone to pay for what would be controversial research, which would be made harder by the fact that they couldn't expect any gov't $... and they KNOW that. Pointing to the lack of a sort of research that's been made essentially impossible to conduct is grossly disingenuous... SHAME on them!!
Doctors need to be allowed to do their jobs as best as they can, and that means that they should be able to prescribe ANYTHING that will reduce human suffering; if they discover than HEROIN would help these desperate people control their agony, I think it should be given to them, and marijuana should be permitted without a moment's hesitation.
The Yahoo article fails to mention a more prevalent medical use for marijuana; the suppression of nausea, which can literally be a life or death issue for patients with things like AIDS and cancer, for whom the nausea can be so horrific that they can't eat. One of my own uncles owes his life to marijuana; his nausea was so bad that he couldn't keep ANYTHING down, not even water, so he'd smoke half a joint, take his medicines and vitamins, eat a meal, drink some fluids, and hope it'd all be far enough into his body to not come shooting back out when the nausea returned. Why are they no longer talking about the nausea-relief angle... is it the connection to AIDS? There's a grim thought for you...
The Yahoo article DOES make the final important point on this issue:
"Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML, which favors legalization of marijuana... said the decision points up a large difference between the administration and the public.
'The disconnect is so wide here,' St. Pierre said. 'In no circumstance where voters have the opportunity to weigh in have they said no to medical marijuana.'"
Damn straight. Wake up, Washington; the American people want all possible treatments to be made available to those who are sickest, and if you're smart you'll back down gracefully on this one before the media starts showcasing dreadfully ill people whose suffering you won't allow to be relieved... before the voters start contemplating the need for greater compassion in our elected officials.
Monday, June 06, 2005
The shape of karma
Does karma fill the entire universe, or if, as seems very likely, there are multiple universes in a 10- or 11- dimensional omniverse, does karma fill it all? Without knowing that, it's hard to narrow the choices down as to karma's possible shapes; as of the last I heard, the universe is shaped like a saddle, it's stuck to a brane that's a ripply plane, and the branes are all in an omniverse that's a very long and thin cylinder... if you think karma fills all of one of these entities, that'd give you its shape. I think it's entirely possible that karma expands until it bumps into the edges of reality, but that doesn't intuitively feel like the right choice; it seems to me like karma, which is largely generated by our thoughts, feelings and souls, should be concentrated around our planet, and of course any other planets with intelligent beings (which statistically must be out there)... there's no proof of this, but that's my starting point for lack of a better one.
Does karma expand outward from Earth in a sphere, or in an uneven but vaguely spherical shape? There's no reason to assume that just because it's increasing with each bit of energy that gets produced that it's doing anything as prosaic as just spreading out, I suppose; it could grow outwards in rings, rays, spirals, ever-shifting blobs like in a lava lamp, or in an exotic geometric form... or in some shape beyond human imagination, of course (which goes double if it's growing in more than 3-4 dimensions).
Does karma pass into one of the parallel universes predicted by string theory and collect there? Does it coalesce like a cloud, or form bubbles, or just fill it up like water being poured into a glass?
Does karma permeate the omniverse? Does it drift through it in wisps like smoke, or line it like spiritual tissue paper, or make intricate lacings throughout it like a spiderweb?
Where do our souls, which are made of karma, go when we die? Is karma in 2 sections, the part affecting the living and the part consisting of souls? Do souls all hang out together, do they form a cube or pyramid or octahedron, or do they freckle the universe, or omniverse, with dots of karma?
How about the shape of karma at the local level? We know from string theory that everything is made of tiny strings of energy, and I think that either karma is made of those strings, or those strings are made out of karma, but what shape(s) does karma take collectively as it's generated en mass by our actions, thoughts and feelings? Does karma shoot away from us along a line, does it encase us in a shell, does it form a halo around our heads or a coil around our bodies?
As I was typing the above, I remembered a Scott Adams quote; "I suspect that the only way time can be infinite is if the past connects to the future like some huge Mobius strip-wormhole kind of deal." A Mobius strip is a one-sided surface, which you can read more about here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%F6bius_strip
So, I'm thinking about shapes of karma, and the one-sidedness concept joins in, and I know that karma has to be more "substantial" than just a strip... and then I thought, maybe it's a Klein bottle, which looks like an enclosed form but in fact has no inside or outside:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle
http://torus.math.uiuc.edu/jms/Images/klein.html
http://www.math.rochester.edu/misc/klein-bottle.html
A Klein bottle needs 4 dimensions to exist, but we've probably got 11 dimensions, so we could have something like that, or even something with only one "side" throughout all the dimensions, such that you could travel along it forever in any direction and never reach a boundary of any kind... ahhhhhhh, if that's not the real shape of karma, it oughta be!! :-)
Does karma expand outward from Earth in a sphere, or in an uneven but vaguely spherical shape? There's no reason to assume that just because it's increasing with each bit of energy that gets produced that it's doing anything as prosaic as just spreading out, I suppose; it could grow outwards in rings, rays, spirals, ever-shifting blobs like in a lava lamp, or in an exotic geometric form... or in some shape beyond human imagination, of course (which goes double if it's growing in more than 3-4 dimensions).
Does karma pass into one of the parallel universes predicted by string theory and collect there? Does it coalesce like a cloud, or form bubbles, or just fill it up like water being poured into a glass?
Does karma permeate the omniverse? Does it drift through it in wisps like smoke, or line it like spiritual tissue paper, or make intricate lacings throughout it like a spiderweb?
Where do our souls, which are made of karma, go when we die? Is karma in 2 sections, the part affecting the living and the part consisting of souls? Do souls all hang out together, do they form a cube or pyramid or octahedron, or do they freckle the universe, or omniverse, with dots of karma?
How about the shape of karma at the local level? We know from string theory that everything is made of tiny strings of energy, and I think that either karma is made of those strings, or those strings are made out of karma, but what shape(s) does karma take collectively as it's generated en mass by our actions, thoughts and feelings? Does karma shoot away from us along a line, does it encase us in a shell, does it form a halo around our heads or a coil around our bodies?
As I was typing the above, I remembered a Scott Adams quote; "I suspect that the only way time can be infinite is if the past connects to the future like some huge Mobius strip-wormhole kind of deal." A Mobius strip is a one-sided surface, which you can read more about here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%F6bius_strip
So, I'm thinking about shapes of karma, and the one-sidedness concept joins in, and I know that karma has to be more "substantial" than just a strip... and then I thought, maybe it's a Klein bottle, which looks like an enclosed form but in fact has no inside or outside:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle
http://torus.math.uiuc.edu/jms/Images/klein.html
http://www.math.rochester.edu/misc/klein-bottle.html
A Klein bottle needs 4 dimensions to exist, but we've probably got 11 dimensions, so we could have something like that, or even something with only one "side" throughout all the dimensions, such that you could travel along it forever in any direction and never reach a boundary of any kind... ahhhhhhh, if that's not the real shape of karma, it oughta be!! :-)
Sunday, June 05, 2005
A behavioral oddity
From the May 2005 issue of Discover (yes, I'm still shamefully far behind in my reading), in an article called "Think Tank," comes the following:
"The most important discovery in the last 25 years in systems neuroscience is the function of the dopamine neurons in the midbrain... the neurons fire brief bursts of spikes when a monkey is rewarded, but after a while the response to the reward goes away and instead the neurons respond to sensory stimuli that predict that a reward will be received in the near future."
HUH?!!
If the reward stops being exciting, that's one thing, but if the reward is still compelling enough that just the thought of getting it in the near future is stimulating, why would the response to the reward itself go away? Like so many other aspects of psychology, this is totally counterintuitive, but since it's been shown to exist in monkeys, and thus is almost certain to exist in humans, it's worth thinking about.
Sometimes people talk about feeling let down when they get some longed-for thing that they'd been all excited about receiving; that could be an example of this concept in action. The way that people who're wealthy enough to have everything tend to be miserable much of the time could certainly suggest that having gets old, that we have an intrinsic need to want things, to feel the desire for things we don't have. In the relationship arena, we've all seen people who were eagerly pursuing someone until they got them, after which they immediately lost interest. I think we could even make a case that those who talk about the journey or process being what's important, rather than the destination or result, are examples of this idea.
Clearly, then, this odd reaction scenario applies to humans, too... but WHY? What evolutionary advantage do we gain from it? I can see the benefit of being revved up by cues that a reward is on the way, as that would make us ready to grab it and more likely to actually get it, but why lose the rush from the reward itself... why not have responses to BOTH things to maximize our likelihood of going for the gold?
This one's got me stumped. It'll still be useful, though, both by providing a biological explanation for previously inexplicable emotional responses and by suggesting a useful tool for motivating other people; if a just handing over a reward isn't getting it done, switch to offering the idea that a reward might be forthcoming.
Does anyone besides me see this possibly tying into the equally counterintuitive concept of intermittent reinforcement, which refers to how we tend to pursue a thing more ardently if our efforts are only sporadically rewarded, even to the point of becoming obsessive about the pursuit (see my post of 9-10-04)? Hmmmmmmm.......
"The most important discovery in the last 25 years in systems neuroscience is the function of the dopamine neurons in the midbrain... the neurons fire brief bursts of spikes when a monkey is rewarded, but after a while the response to the reward goes away and instead the neurons respond to sensory stimuli that predict that a reward will be received in the near future."
HUH?!!
If the reward stops being exciting, that's one thing, but if the reward is still compelling enough that just the thought of getting it in the near future is stimulating, why would the response to the reward itself go away? Like so many other aspects of psychology, this is totally counterintuitive, but since it's been shown to exist in monkeys, and thus is almost certain to exist in humans, it's worth thinking about.
Sometimes people talk about feeling let down when they get some longed-for thing that they'd been all excited about receiving; that could be an example of this concept in action. The way that people who're wealthy enough to have everything tend to be miserable much of the time could certainly suggest that having gets old, that we have an intrinsic need to want things, to feel the desire for things we don't have. In the relationship arena, we've all seen people who were eagerly pursuing someone until they got them, after which they immediately lost interest. I think we could even make a case that those who talk about the journey or process being what's important, rather than the destination or result, are examples of this idea.
Clearly, then, this odd reaction scenario applies to humans, too... but WHY? What evolutionary advantage do we gain from it? I can see the benefit of being revved up by cues that a reward is on the way, as that would make us ready to grab it and more likely to actually get it, but why lose the rush from the reward itself... why not have responses to BOTH things to maximize our likelihood of going for the gold?
This one's got me stumped. It'll still be useful, though, both by providing a biological explanation for previously inexplicable emotional responses and by suggesting a useful tool for motivating other people; if a just handing over a reward isn't getting it done, switch to offering the idea that a reward might be forthcoming.
Does anyone besides me see this possibly tying into the equally counterintuitive concept of intermittent reinforcement, which refers to how we tend to pursue a thing more ardently if our efforts are only sporadically rewarded, even to the point of becoming obsessive about the pursuit (see my post of 9-10-04)? Hmmmmmmm.......
