Let the Weak Fall (Capitalistically Speaking)

"Because that's the way it is!" We've all heard these words from our parents at some point in our lives. We usually roll our eyes and ignore the advice only to find ourselves dispensing it in our roles as parents later on in life. Why do we seem to hold on to such a notion when time after time we try to talk ourselves into believing that it is no longer relevant? Fear. We are afraid of any type of real change that might affect the level of comfort in our day to day lives.

As innovative and entrepreneurial as we are as a country, we have some deep rooted issues as it relates to change and new paradigms in our lives. Every time there is a new technology most people are slow to embrace it, focusing on all the negatives without realizing how important and positive the change will be. When radio came along with its new form of entertainment, some folks thought of it as a tool of the devil. In actuality it brought the country together during World War II and helped steel the nation's resolve through President Roosevelt's famed fireside chats. When television came along it was thought that radio would be obsolete and television would be a negative influence, but yet we still listen to it almost every day. TV has transformed our lives in ways too numerous to list here but we can't imagine our lives without it. And don't even get me started about the internet, which many have still not yet embraced.

We should never just think that something needs to stay around just because it has existed for a long time. As we have seen throughout history, nothing is meant to last forever and we should not expect it to. The newspapers have been spiraling toward bankruptcy for many years now and will continue to do so unless major changes are made by the newspapers to gain more readers and more revenue. For a great discussion of how this can be done I refer you to Dallas Maverick's owner Mark Cuban's blog. In the event that this does not happen is there a real reason to keep the newspapers going? Maybe not.

President Obama entertained the idea of some sort of a bailout package to keep the Washington Post, New York Times and other papers running because it would be in the best interest of the country. I don't know anybody who reads these papers and we seem to get along fine in our lives. Why are these select sources of information placed above all others? I honestly don't know. We supposedly live in a capitalist society where you put out a good product and you reap the rewards. Put out a product people don't like and you'll find yourself out of business. Between TV and the internet very few people are getting much information from newspapers.

Circulation is down for newspapers for many reasons. The proliferation of the internet is certainly a reason but so is the editorial slants of the paper. Newspapers, whether leaning right or left, tend to only give one perspective on an issue and fail to give consumers the balance of information that they crave. The papers force readers to see the world as they see it rather than as it really is. Locally in Los Angeles, local radio hosts John and Ken held two rallies to protest all the proposed tax hikes in California. The LA Times was nowhere to be seen. 300 kids walk out of school to protest potential teacher layoffs and the LA Times covers the story from all angles. The reason is because the LA Times editorially wants more taxes to increase government spending so to cover the opposing side would hurt their cause. The LA Times would also love to keep every teacher employed even if it means higher taxes for local residents. The protest served the purpose of advancing the Times' agenda so they made sure every reader knew all about it and portrayed it in a positive light. I will have more on this whole story later but this editorial reporting on news stories is leading to the demise of the newspapers.

I don't want to have more money taken out of my paycheck to prop up a failing newspaper I don't read. It's simply not the American way and it is a shame that as soon as the economy starts to slide and things are looking the least bit bleak, we are willing to throw away the principles we have been operating under for decades. The government should not be in the business of spending our tax dollars on keeping failing businesses alive. We have operated for 250 years in this country on the premise that if you run a successful business you will succeed and if you don't, you won't. When the incentive not to fail is gone, all that will be left are failing businesses and less compelling competition as up and coming smart businesses are pushed out by the giants being subsidized by the federal government. Newspapers should be no exception to any other capitalistic enterprises. If they can't attract readers and make enough money to stay afloat, they should go. Just my editorial opinion.

OK. So torture is the new buzzword, especially amongst every internet wannabe with a voice like yours truly. Does this mean that I have to jump on the bandwagon and throw my two cents in? You know me so well. There are a couple points we have to consider when talking about torture. The first is to define what torture is. Second is to discuss whether it has a place in our society in the year 2009.

One definition of torture is that it is "the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty." What would fall under this category? Certainly pulling fingernails would qualify. Running electrical current through a prisoner's genitals probably would also qualify (except for a few weirdos out there; you know who you are). Waterboarding? Probably not. It is psychologically taxing on the individual being waterboarded but does not seem to actually cause excruciating pain.

Another definition is "extreme anguish of body or mind; agony." More acts would fall under this category. Certainly extreme sleep deprivation would anguish the body and mind. Would it cause agony? Maybe, maybe not. I think the better tact would be to stick with something that almost everyone would agree on. Focus on the common sense question of whether you would be afraid of an impending form of "torture". Would most everyone be terrified if they were told that they would have their fingernails pulled off one by one? Certainly. Would the same reaction be caused by the threat of sleep deprivation or waterboarding? Probably not. Therefore, in my humble opinion, various painful physical tortures would qualify as genuine torture while sleep deprivation and waterboarding would not.

Now that we've determined what is torture, do we have a place for it in our modern society? That depends on a few factors. Does torture work? Certainly it does sometimes. We have harshly interrogated prisoners and obtained important information that has led to the potential saving of many American lives. A recent and notable example is that the "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, gave crucial information that led to the thwarting of a plot against the city of Los Angeles. One of the techniques used was waterboarding. I shudder to think about how many people could have died had interrogators refused to use this method of getting information.

As Adam Carolla has recently said, torture must work to some degree because if it didn't, it would no longer be around. It has been used for thousands of years because it does work. Name something else that has been around for so long and doesn't work. It is true that sometimes it doesn't work, and unfortunately in such a situation it can inflict useless pain on the subject. Is this worth it in the name of protecting Americans? As they say in Washington, yes and no.

We are in a unique position in the world. We are capable of inflicting far more pain than we would absorb. This is an argument in favor of torture. We will be able to torture more than we will be tortured and the information we gain much of the time will be valuable. On the other hand, our powerful position puts us in a position of having to set a good example for the world. The negative feelings toward the U.S. will only increase if we are acting as the bad guy. We need to be very selective in what we do and how often we do it. A little isolationism can be healthy but the world is small and we do need to at least have other countries willing to work with us a little from time to time.

So here is how I see it. Sleep deprivation and waterboarding cause no long-term physical damage and can garner helpful information for interrogators. War is hell. Sometimes you need to pull out all the stops in order to get crucial information that could save lives and shorten conflicts. Last I checked my last name isn't Machiavelli, but sometimes the ends really do justify the means. I don't think a person being honest with himself would argue that it would be better to have let countless people die in Los Angeles rather than waterboard a scumbag on principle. We do need to be harsh sometimes to get what we need. Peeling off fingernails is a big no-no but waterboarding and sleep deprivation are winners. That's where I would draw the line. Sometimes you just need to be the bad guy. Call me shallow, but I care about the lives of innocent Americans just a little more than scumbag terrorists. I'll take my chances in the court of world opinion.

Now What?

Our world is based on ideas. If someone has a great new idea to improve the human existence it is accepted in time and put into motion. You can have a good life just implementing the ideas of others, but to have a truly revolutionary idea, you will become rich and leave a legacy that will outlast your physical form. We are always in need of an influx of new ideas. Some of them are good and some of them are, well, not so good. One question: since when did it become acceptable to do nothing except shoot down ideas without offering any new ones?

In the realm of politics there is no greater currency than good ideas. Unfortunately, due to many reasons which I will not get into here, good ideas are on short supply. We should be very happy to receive new ideas and should be looking for reasons to accept them and implement them. Instead, we are constantly looking for reasons to deny them without offering a new theory. When it comes to cutting government, universal health care, national defense, things clearly need a newly defined direction. Which direction I will leave up to you, but nonetheless, we need new ideas. The problem is everyone is so afraid of getting behind something that could end up failing that as soon as one problem is found with an idea the whole thing is scrapped without the dissenting voice presenting a new idea. Nobody is there to step in and come up with the "better" solution to take the place of the "potentially ineffective" solution.

Can we all wrap our heads around the idea that there is pretty much nothing that is totally right or totally wrong. There is a lot of gray area in this world and most great ideas involve some of said area. Microsoft has had many problems with Windows but yet it has helped advance human civilization to areas one couldn't imagine 30 years ago. If someone had said to Bill Gates that since there were problems with his software he should just ignore it and focus on something else we would be in a far different world. Why must we simply ignore an idea once it has been brought forth? Isn't there room to modify an idea, and reintroduce it as better? Maybe even do that a few times until the idea is fully ready to be implemented? Nature has done this with evolution. Why not with ideas?

If we are ever going to get anywhere in making this world more livable for ourselves we need to recognize that there is plenty of room to improve things, sometimes even after the fact. An idea need not be a perfect one without faults to be effective. Progress in small increments is still progress, and we should embrace any opportunity to move forward. How about we demand that politicians grow a pair and do something for us instead of worrying about their reelection? Wait, there might be some politicians who disagree with that so forget it; not a good idea.

Lost Again

And now a few words about the TV show LOST:

First, since Faraday died in his present but his mom's past, does that mean that in her present she instantly has the memory of killing Daniel as a young woman as well as memories of raising him? Desmond had a memory of Faraday talking to him at the hatch from his past that suddenly came to him when Faraday was time skipping. Desmond had this new memory at the exact time in his present as Faraday's present frame of reference as though they were both running concurrently. This is my precedent for believing this. Either way, kinda weird.

Second, supposing the O6 are able to stop things from happening the way they originally did, what effect would that have exactly? I figure it this way. Supposing they were able to travel back to a time shortly before flight 815 they would still have memories of all that happened right, since it is happening to them all in their present time? They just would be able to live their lives after getting off in Los Angeles like they would have had 815 not crashed.

I'm also wondering about Charlotte. Supposing she leaves the island and it turns out that 815 doesn't crash, she would have no reason to visit the island post crash and thus would not be caught up in the time skipping. But she did die in her present, so would that mean that in late 2004, wherever she is in the world, she would die at that same time since she couldn't live after a point in which she would have died? Or do the rules change because she was time skipping? And would this apply to everyone who has died on the island after the crash of 815?

My head is swimming a bit so I'm hoping I can make sense of it. If you're into LOST I recommend Lostpedia.com or The Lost Diary for great info and ideas about where LOST is heading. If you're not into LOST you've saved yourself 15 hours per week of viewing, reading, thinking, dreaming and otherwise pondering. Congratulations either way!

A Brief History of My Warped Mind

Sorry it has been a while since I've posted. Hope you all are still with me. I haven't had much to think about since I've been immersed in sports this last week with my Lakers and Ducks advancing in their playoffs. I did have a dream last night that got me thinking. I dreamed that I was trying to come up with something to write and got to thinking about time travel. I was trying to come up with the merits of time traveling forward or time traveling backward and which was easier and more likely. Here is my unedited version of what I came up with. Keep in mind this was all in my subconscious so this will either be genius or completely ridiculous.

I reasoned that if one were trying to time travel forward this could theoretically be done. As one travels close to the speed of light or accelerates near a large source of gravitational energy the effect on time is as follows. From the perspective of an outsider looking at the traveler, the traveler's time seems to slow down. From the perspective of the traveler, everything around him seems to speed up. Theoretically, if one could accelerate to such a speed and take a trip away from Earth and return to the same point later on, much more time would have passed for those on Earth than the traveler. Thus, the traveler would have effectively traveled forward in time. It would be difficult to do this for many reasons. First, no ship could carry enough fuel to reach these kinds of speeds. Second, hitting one microscopic particle at such speeds would completely obliterate the ship. Much more plausible would be unleashing a currently unknown force which would warp space causing a craft to pass through at high speeds (a la Star Trek).

Traveling back in time would be much more difficult though. To reach a particular place in time in the past would require warping space in such a way that it opens a wormhole to a specific point in space time (a theoretical four dimensions with three dimensions being space as we know it and the fourth time). This would prove much more difficult and thus is not likely to be done before we can travel forward in time. Unfortunately, traveling forward in time poses no paradoxical situations but is also less useful, as one can only see what he will miss were he to live his life as normal and would likely not be able to travel back to the point in which he came from.

I did dream all of that and will look forward to doing research on whether this actually makes sense or whether it was complete gibberish that Stephen Hawking would synthetically laugh at. It was one of the more interesting dreams I have had lately though. Sometimes I do wish I would dream more about sports more. My brain gets too tired to work too hard at night.

Blacked Out

Just a frustration tonight. I was going to watch the Ducks play on VS. network in HD. One problem. Due to FCC and NHL league rules that are longer than War and Peace, if a game is on a local station, it is blacked out on the national station. OK, not a huge deal right? Wrong. The local station, Fox Sports Prime Ticket is broadcasting the game in standard definition. So I spent good money on an HDTV only to have to watch a game in standard definition when a broadcast in HD is available? What a disservice to Ducks fans. Fox Sports is allowed to be cheap and lower quality and we cannot vote with our remotes. Disgraceful! That being said, go Ducks!

Take Me To Your Leader

Recently I saw a documentary about possible alien contact with humans throughout the history of civilization ranging from indigenous South American peoples to Egyptians, to Mayans and others. The supposition was that the pyramids, buildings and technologies that these cultures used derived not from the human mind but from the minds of aliens visiting these early civilizations based on the idea that no human of that time could have conceived of such wondrous and revolutionary ideas. It was interesting to say the least and while I'm not a firm believer it did get me thinking about a few things.

First of all, who is to say that humans couldn't have come up with such wonders as the great pyramids, Stonehenge and the Mayan calendar on their own. Certainly Albert Einstein was a genius of the highest order but certainly he is not the smartest human being to live is he? Some would argue that Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th century and Leonardo da Vinci of the 16th Century were just as smart, if not smarter than Einstein. It stands to reason that history is littered with individuals whose genius far surpassed those of their peers. Certainly there were such geniuses in the Roman Empire, Egyptian and Mayan civilizations. Why would it be unreasonable to think that a group of smart Egyptians, whose only job was to engineer a lasting monument to the great Pharoah Kufu, would be able to conceive the idea for the pyramids within a decade's time?

When comparing the intelligence levels of humans now versus 100,000 years ago it is certainly easy to make the claim that the overall potential of intelligent thought is much higher now that it was then. But 4,000 years ago? Certainly as a species we haven't yet evolved so far, or previous peoples were so far devolved, that the great wonders and structures of the past could only be built with the help of an advanced civilization from another planet or corner of the universe. Preposterous.

Does this mean I belive that aliens haven't visited Earth? Indeed it does. If they had visited for such long periods of time and made contact with so many people wouldn't we have 100% definitive proof that they had visited us? Certainly a civilization advanced enough to send spacecraft from past our solar system to visit us might be clever enough to escape our detection a few times, but thousands of times each time they abduct a hick from Kentucky and give him or her a probing? Not likely. Also, who is to say that such an advanced species and civilization would harmlessly observe us like we were an interesting animal species (which we are)? If their nature is anything like ours they cannot simply observe said creature but would find a way to exploit or kill it. Certainly if we were to make contact with an alien race it is likely they would not be entirely friendly to us and would likely posess greater powers than we would have. Does that sound like a wasp's nest we want to be poking at?

Naturally, you may be wondering if I believe that aliens exist. Well, I do. Here is my reasoning. Life on Earth sprang up almost as soon as it could have given the conditions of the early periods of the planet. As soon as temperatures were, well, temperate enough to support life, the first twitches of living matter began to burst forth into creation. If one were content to believe we are the only life in the universe it could be easy enough to explain away by saying God planned it that way. But then why would God also create bacteria on Mars? To jerk us around? Certainly the bacteria must have been created during a period when the atmosphere and conditions on Mars were more conducive to life. If this happened on a planet close to us certainly it might happen on other planets with conditions similar to ours.

What are the odds this would be the case? Glad you asked. This is all merely speculative of course because nobody can be sure what the state of planets is on a universal scale, especially considering we are only now discovering planets that are 500 light years from us and that the universe extends in all directions around us for more than 10 billion light years. But here it goes. There are estimated to be 100 billion galaxies each having approximately 100 billion stars. This multiplies out to 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe. Let us now suppose that only 1 out of 100 have a planet orbiting with them. Out of those stars that have a planet orbiting around it, only 1 out of 1000 have a planet with a solid surface. Of those with a solid surface only 1 out of 1000 have the elements that we know necessary for life. Of those planets, only 1 out of 100 are the correct distance from its star to keep temperatures moderate. And of these planets with all the right conditions only 1 of 100 will develop life with only 1 of 100 of those evolving to intelligent life.

Doing the calculations that would leave 100 million planets in the universe which would give rise to intelligent life. This is being extremely conservative as it is likely the ratios are much lower and thus the number of planents fostering intelligent beings is likely much much higher, perhaps by a factor of 10,000. That would leave as many as 1 trillion planets in our universe with intelligent life developing on it. So it would seem the universe would be teeming with sentient beings. But seeing as how there are 100 billion galaxies, that would leave only 10 planets in each galaxy harboring intelligent life. So as we see, beings who know they are special are still few and far between. Yet another reason I believe we haven't been visited yet.

Let's not be so naive as to think that we are the only ones alive in the universe able to take a step back and examine our place in it. Let us also not be so quick to believe that we are smarter and better than those who came before us simply because when we look at a calendar it reads 2009. Human beings have always been special and are as special now as they ever have been, though maybe not as special as we think.