To my friend

When I was a kid, I had this mental image of the woman I believed would eventually be my wife. She was blonde, about 5'4", loved hunting, was a genius, and did lots of outdoorsy stuff. She also was great genetics for my five blonde sons who were essentially "Little Alex" X 5.
When I got to college, this woman evolved a little, to having red hair and freckles. However, a penchant for the outdoors and a sharp mind were still just as essential. I had in my head this hilariously (in retrospect) improbable image where I'd be in my pickup driving to some outdoorsy location to do something outdoorsy with my dog and she'd pull up in her Jeep, headed to the same place, with her dog. We'd get there and fall in love and do outdoorsy things. She'd turn out to be a biochemistry major, accepted to med school.

Later on, when I was a little older and a lot less stupid, I realized that what I thought would make me happy was in fact a woman that was no more than just "me with a vagina." I didn't want a partner, someone who would be different than me and challenge me to do new and different things, and to see the world in a different way. What I thought I wanted was a clone of myself because hey, I'm pretty cool, wouldn't be fun if I could hang out with myself? I was so content with my lifestyle, so clear about what I enjoyed doing, that I just wanted a female facsimile of myself to do the stuff I already enjoyed doing with me. Or so I thought.

Then I met my future wife. She was just the opposite of me. She liked 70's music, I hate it. She liked the beach, I hate it. She liked art, I never cared for it. She hates ticks so strongly that she'll avoid going outdoors if they are a factor, I consider them inconsequential. I love football, she thinks it is boring. And yet, her sharp mind and hilarious wit kept me around. And with blondes and redheads in my sights, she was (of course) a brunette.
And so its funny that she is perfect for me. She stretches me. She forces me to exit my comfort zone. She teaches me to be patient with others, to not be afraid to dress funny.

In any case, my friend, I know that you are out there, looking for a wife. I know that you think that you will find a woman that will share some of your interests, and if she does that is great. But just don't expect a female you to come along and be perfect for you. Imagine what you want in a wife, and then check off any of those things that sound more like something you'd find in a dude than in a dudette. Replace them with the exact opposite of what you had written.

I'm not saying I'm perfect, or that my wife is, or that our marriage is perfect. We fight. Her penchant for watching episodes of Supernatural when I want "adult time" drives me nuts. My dislike for cuddling, ever, frustrates her to no end.

But she makes me happier than a female TAE ever would.


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Friday Poetry Burst

The Early Purges, by Seamus Heaney

I was six when I first saw kittens drown.
Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits',
Into a bucket; a frail metal sound,

Soft paws scraping like mad. But their tiny din
Was soon soused. They were slung on the snout
Of the pump and the water pumped in.

'Sure, isn't it better for them now?' Dan said.
Like wet gloves they bobbed and shone till he sluiced
Them out on the dunghill, glossy and dead.

Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung
Round the yard, watching the three sogged remains
Turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung

Until I forgot them. But the fear came back
When Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot crows
Or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens' necks.

Still, living displaces false sentiments
And now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown
I just shrug, 'Bloody pups'. It makes sense:

'Prevention of cruelty' talk cuts ice in town
Where they consider death unnatural
But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.


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Cars that Drive Themselves, Ctd - Video Edition

I think the need for driverless cars can be completely justified by this guy:


The double irony being that the guy recording this video and the driver are also not paying very good attention to the road.


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Electrocuting Yourself To Get Smarter

Remember, dear regular readers, back in April when I reported that scientists had induced a mild current in someone's head while they tried to do complicated tasks? It turned out that their memory but more importantly people showed faster rates of learning.

Now those results have been repeated by a group in England. They isolated a section of the brain that contributed to math skills and applied a mild current while the volunteers practiced math. Turns out the volunteers had enhanced memory. Turns out that enhanced memory lasted for months:

"This isn't going to turn you into a genius," says Cohen Kadosh, "but it could be turned into a device to help children with poor numeracy skills improve their mathematical abilities".

How long until this is a consumer device? How long until poor parents complain that rich kids are benefitting from this technology and their children aren't?


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Staying abreast of technology

TAE thinks that it is a good idea to embrace every new technology that emerges, be it Twitter, Facebook, mp3s, tablet PCs, and now the new Microsoft Kinect. Occasionally I will look foolish, like when I was using "livejournal." But by embracing new tech, and staying comfortable with it, I will avoid the following situation when I am 65:

TAE to his grandson: Will you please fix this quantum-shift voice-coil replicator?
Grandson: **EYE ROLL** Grandpa, this is a boson-phase-shift replicator. No one has used quantum shift replicators in at least 5 years. (Grandson pushes some buttons on the display) Looks like it is toast. You're gonna need a new one. You might as well upgrade to the new ArcTech.
TAE: ArcTech?
Grandson **EYE ROLL**


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In Defense of Not Voting - UPDATED

When I was a senior in high school, some years ago, I took a trip with Brian Knapp to Washington D.C. to learn all about the government process. The trip was part of the "Close Up: Washington, DC" program for kids, and involved round table discussions, lectures, and trips to important monuments. It was January and man was it cold.
Anyways, Brian and I got into this entertaining routine of choosing the minority opinion whenever we, as a group, were discussing an issue. Didn't matter the issue, we just looked for which side was the minority opinion and ardently and vocally supported that side.
One issue that came up was whether or not it was okay to not vote. Basically, the moderator had anyone who felt that skipping the vote was okay go to one side of the room. Everyone who thought not voting was wrong was to go to the other side of the room. Unsurprisingly, Brian Knapp and I found ourselves alone on one side of the room. The 'vote skippers' side. This was probably unsurprising to the other students there because we'd both been making waves with our "controversial" opinions all week. I had argued that the United States had done a lot to reduce nuclear arms (which was clearly spelled START in our reading assignment, dummies) while everyone else there seemed to think America was committed to a massive and unchanged nuclear arsenal.
Anyway, the moderator asked us why we thought it was okay to not vote. Brian responded: "why should I vote for the candidate I dislike the least?" I expanded his response: "if, in the election, there is literally no candidate I feel is qualified or even close to competent enough to hold their potential office...if there is no proposition that I feel is important, no amendment, no tax, and no issue that really compels me left or right, why should I waste my time voting?" Then Brian: "Non-voting is basically a vote for no one. You are actively voting, just, you aren't voting for anyone." Then me: "Honestly, what percentage of people vote? At best, it's like 30-35%. Doesn't the 65% of people so apathetic or jaded or stubborn that they don't vote tell the elected officials something?"

Then Brian: "voting is a right, not a duty. Calling it a civic duty is unfair to people who simply cannot endorse one candidate over the other."

Sure, we were 18. But the truth of it is, even now, by the time November rolls around, I usually am saying "I don't want to vote for any of these assholes." So why should I? Even if I disliked one candidate more than I disliked the other, I don't want my vote to be misconstrued as a vote of support for one of them. Maybe I should still go to the polls, and write in a candidate. But how is that any different than not voting at all? Not voting for either candidate has the exact same effect as writing in a candidate.

Now, I am certainly not saying we all shouldn't vote. I brazenly voted for Mr. Obama in 2008. I actually like(d) Mr. Obama, and I definitely was voting for him, not against Mr. McCain. But in the 6 elections I have been old enough to participate in, I really have only been compelled a couple of times to vote for people. And I think I'm not alone.

So no, I didn't vote yesterday. I didn't have any reason to.

Update: Jason Brennan agrees:

I argue that while citizens have no duty to vote, if they do vote, they must vote well—on the basis of sound moral and empirical beliefs in order to promote the common good—or otherwise they are morally obligated to abstain. Though individual votes make no significant difference to political outcomes, bad voting violates either a duty not to participate in collectively harmful activities or a duty not to participate in collective activities that impose undue risk upon innocent people.

 Will Wilkinson also agrees:

The idea that we should vote well if we vote at all sounds innocuous enough. However, Mr Brennan's corollary argument that if we are not in a position to vote well, then it is wrong to vote runs counter to the civic religion of unconditional democratic participation. This argument will also surely make members of the political party most likely to benefit from high voter turnout hotly indignant. But when one considers that bad policy can be immensely harmful to the general welfare, and that the participation of poorly-informed voters makes the adoption of bad policy more likely, the duty of the ignorant to refrain from exercising the franchise does not seem so easy to rebut.

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Modifying SETI for Earth Hunting

Let's assume the number of exoplanets being found continues, as expected, to increase. Let's then assume that increased technology also allows, as expected, finer details about those exoplanets to be discovered. It's fairly safe, based on this and simple statistics, that the chances of finding a rocky planet in the habitable orbit zone around its star asymptotically approaches one very rapidly.

Give this data, should we not release probes out of our own orbit to observe our planet from afar, to determine what, if any, characteristics of a "planet inhabited by intelligent life" can be observed? Rather than speculate on what, if any, way we'll know if a planet is inhabitable, or inhabited...why not gather empirical evidence of what an inhabited planet looks like by launching a very fast, rear-facing probe deep into space?


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