In Bob We Trust

Why I Won’t Shut Up

2011-12-19T20:15:00.000-08:00

Two thoughts. One recent and tragic. The other, something that’s been tumbling around in my mind for quite a while, and I only just realized I’ve never actually written a response to it on this page. Because it seems to tie in so well with the other thought, we’re going to handle them both at once.

Firstly, Christopher Hitchens, a personal hero of mine, whose talent for saying of religion exactly what I thought but in language by far surpassing anything I could come close to summoning on even my best of days, died a few days ago. I should have blogged then, but instead, I did what I suspect The Hitch would have wanted his readers to do--I drank, I smoked, I ranted. It’s what that great man was known for. And yet, even drunk, he was so much more--more eloquent, more educated, more well-read, more human--than any of the rest of us are sober. Many who knew him personally (which I did not), and most of his most devoted readers have suggested that the work by which he’d most like to be remembered is God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, his epic verbal broadside against the greatest tyrant of them all: the imaginary tyrant promoted by most of the world’s religions as a “loving father.”

He’s remembered fondly by outspoken atheists such as myself who appreciate having had someone of such credentials and such rare mental agility on our side, calling things not only as he saw them, but as they were (and are). Most others either immediately take offense or simply retreat behind the vacuous façade of “thou shalt not offend,” and read only his book’s title, without bothering to delve deeply enough into the contents to realize that it is not hyperbolically intended, but is in fact an accurate and meaningful description of what religion is: a poison--a toxin, a parasite, a cancer rapidly eating away at the insides of human civilization, a disease desperately in need of a cure.

For explanation of why we recognize religion to be a poison (I will NOT stoop to such noncommittal language as “why we believe religion is a poison,” as has been suggested to me in the past, by people who seem to value political correctness over accurately expressing the simple truth), I can only recommend three courses of action, as I won’t be going into great detail on that matter here. Firstly, by all means, each and every one of you should go and purchase a copy of The Hitch’s book, God is Not Great. It’s a wonderful read, reasonably inexpensive--in fact, during this holiday season, I’m sure it also makes for a wonderful gift (perhaps a stocking stuffer for that person in your life who keeps inviting you to their church even after you’ve said countless times that you have no interest…just saying)--and goes farther toward explaining the point behind its subtitle than I could ever hope to accomplish. (Parenthetically, I would suggest, in honor of Hitchens’ own thoughts on the matter, that if you go to Borders, you should steal a copy, but alas both Borders and Hichens are no more, so it seems hardly worth mentioning.) Secondly, read this article by Ray Garton, a friend of mine whose remarks upon Hitchens’ death echo my own thoughts in much better form than I could have hoped to accomplish. In the article, he explores Christians’ reactions to the death of the great man, and explains how the believers themselves prove Hitchens’ point better than anyone else could hope to. And finally, stick around this blog for a while, as I’m sure you’ll be seeing plenty of examples of exactly what we’re talking about.

Now, moving along from sad news to the infuriating. Go on the Internet for a while, and find any comments thread or message board in which people are arguing about religion, and you’re sure to hear something like this: “You militant atheists are just as bad as the evangelical Christians! Why can’t you just let people believe what they want to?” It’s phrased in various ways, but the argument, if one dares to call it that, remains the same. These people seem to think that by comparing the rhetorical volume of atheists to the evangelicals, or by analyzing how in some cases both varieties of commentary can have a certain sharpness of teeth, that they are creating an equivalence between what appear to be warring factions. And, the “logic” goes, if there’s an equivalence, isn’t this just a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

But they’re missing the point. As evidenced by the incredible volume (and I refer to volume both in the auditory sense and in the sense of measurement) of Christopher Hitchens’ work (and if you prefer, you could also look at Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, P.Z. Myers, or any number of other brilliant authors, orators, or commentators), the complaint we have against the evangelicals is not that they speak their mind, nor even that they do so loudly. The complaints we have against them are numerous and, I’m sure, somewhat varied from individual to individual, but it basically comes down to this: they’re WRONG! Not only are they mistaken, but they’re so willfully ignorant, corrupt, and downright stupid that one cannot take them seriously. And yet, as we so often, so loudly, and yes, sometimes even viciously complain, they are taken seriously. They rake in BILLIONS of dollars, on which they pay no taxes, and all they do in return is, as Hitchens so succinctly put it, “poison everything.”

I don’t care how loud you are. If you believe something, say so. Say it loudly and proudly. Shout it from the rooftops (literally, if you so desire, and even that won’t bother me). But if you’re wrong--if you’re stupid, if your statements are so misguided as to be laughable, if the implementation of your suggestions would cost humanity scientific progress, if you support an institution that systematically costs human lives, increases human suffering, or stands in the way of scientific progress--then I have no respect for you as an intellectual or as a human being. These people deserve ridicule, and for my part, that is what they shall receive, no matter how quietly they whisper their poison, nor how loudly I shout my response. Religion is dangerous humbug--THAT’S my complaint. And I’m going to keep making that complaint until this blight is removed from human civilization.

Try Occupying the Real World

2011-11-17T01:57:00.000-08:00

This humbug has gone on quite long enough. While many of my close friends and acquaintances have heard me rant about this matter in private, I have held my silence in public in the interest of preserving peace between myself and my various acquaintances who run the entire span of the political spectrum and, perhaps more importantly, in the interest of preserving what little amount of free time I have left in my increasingly busy schedule. However, there does come a time at which one may no longer in good conscience hold his silence, because the endless barrage of idiocy and misinformation threatens to drive him even more mad than he was at the beginning of the affair in question.

The matter of which I speak, of course, is the so-called “Occupy movement” that’s been spreading through America’s cities and university campuses like herpes through a whorehouse. Frankly, it is astounding to me that any political activity that attracts a massive presence from the undeniably childish and laughable pseudo-organization “Anonymous” (as have the Occupy demonstrations) would do anything other than wither and die the quick and mostly painless death of complete irrelevance. However, something strange has happened here, and I can’t rightly lay claim to knowledge of precisely what has allowed this mass growth on the face of humanity to continue growing. Still, they have grown, and they’ve grown so much that I now feel I must break my silence and waste a considerable portion of an already-too-busy evening responding to reports of recent events.

To begin with, I am not making any political statement here. I no more love the radical liberals on the Occupy side than I do the moronic religious right on the Tea Party side. I find some individual points within each camp to agree with and others to disagree with, and I make up my own mind on the issues. It cannot be denied that various events have transpired that would require us to rethink certain economic policies. Nor would I argue against the painfully obvious argument that there are plenty of legitimate grievances against various entities, both public and private, who share fault in the economic recession. I have my thoughts and opinions regarding what might be done to strengthen American economic policy to help rebuild the economy and to help prevent future failures on such a large scale. This is not the forum in which I intend to discuss these issues. I am, in fact, not going to discuss the issues the Occupy movement is attempting to bring attention to except where it is absolutely necessary to make some point. The reason for this decision is that one can analyze the Occupy movement not only in terms of what they claim to be about, but also in terms of what they actually are, and I think the latter is, at the present time, by far more important.

You will also have to forgive me for thinking somewhat locally on this matter. Many of my points will apply to the Occupy movement as a whole, but I will be using the Occupy Denver group as my model. I realize that each city’s group may have a very different character, but since this is the one with which I’m familiar, you’ll just have to consider my argument for what it’s worth if you try to apply it to the other groups.

With that preface out of the way, let’s look at some things about the Occupy movement and see what we can discover.

To begin with, let’s consider this meme that’s really taken root in the last couple of months: the “99% vs. the 1%” meme. You know the one. People write these cute little messages about how horrible their lives are and then say “I am the 99%.” The idea seems to be that one percent of the country holds all the wealth and power, and the other 99% are getting the shaft. Let us be abundantly clear about one thing. Yes, plenty of people have gotten a rotten deal. Yes, plenty of people have legitimate grievances. Yes, significant portions of the political and economic systems in this country (and, indeed, the world) are broken and need reform. But can this movement really claim to speak for 99% of the population? Certainly not.

For instance, let’s have a look at some information from a large collection of photos of people holding those silly little signs found at http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com. A sidebar on that webpage informs us: “We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we’re working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.”

Okay, point by point. The foreclosure rate in the United States is very high right now, and that’s one of the points that needs to be addressed. Yes, true. But the foreclosure rate isn’t more than about ten percent, and even at that, it cannot be blamed entirely upon external influences. Plenty of people are just too fucking stupid or lazy to pay their bills. The result? Foreclosure. Simple as that. Now, of course, there are many other people who have been the victims of foreclosure that truly was out of their control, and I feel for them. I really do. But they aren’t 99% of the population.

Similarly, there are people who choose between groceries and rent because of unfortunate circumstances, but there are also a lot of people who really bring that status upon themselves, either by not working hard enough, by wasting their money instead of applying it to the necessities, or my failing to use birth control and ending up with too many mouths to feed. Yes, some people are victims of circumstance, and have legitimate grievances. But not all of the poor are victims. Some are a blight on society, and if it makes me unpopular to state the obvious then so be it. And once again, no where near 99% of the population struggles to decide which bills to pay. Too many do, sure. But the overwhelming majority of the population are able to find some way to live within their means.

Health care is a complicated issue. Certainly 99% are not denied quality health care. Most people do have health care. But the system is broken, it’s too expensive, and too many quacks fall through the cracks and are somehow allowed to practice voodoo and call it medicine. That definitely is a system that needs reform…but are they really going to try to claim that the “other 1%” is somehow at fault? The healthcare problems we have are the product of governmental and corporate interests not being able to effectively keep up with the pace of society, not some conspiracy of rich folks to keep everyone else down.

Just to illustrate how silly they are, they gave me a truly precious gift in the next line: environmental pollution. That’s another complicated issue. A lot of environmentalist claims are exaggerated at best, but there is also no longer any reasonable doubt that there are some very serious and legitimate environmental concerns. Chiefly, of course, global warming. But here’s the thing…whatever environmental concerns there are have an impact on everybody. There is no environmental catastrophe, real or imagined, that only hurts the poorest 99% of a society and leaves the wealthiest 1% unharmed. It is a monument to the attitude of these people that they feel every single problem our society has to face is a part of some conspiracy among the wealthy to hurt the unwealthy. It simply isn’t so, and it is extremely unproductive to go around spewing such nonsense.

What about working long hours for little pay and no rights? Absolute nonsense. Clearly the Occupy people aren’t working very long hours, because they’re managing to find the time to sleep in parks in protest, apparently, of how little time they have because they work so hard for little pay. Here’s another one: The average net worth for the 99% percentile in 2007 (most recent figure I could easily find) was just over $19 million. That’s a lot of money, sure. But the average net worth of the next 9 percent? Almost $2.5 million. What this means, realistically speaking, is that there are a fuckload of people who are NOT in the wealthiest 1% of the country, but who ARE still millionaires. You don’t get to claim that 99% of the country works long hours for little pay, when some of that very same 99% are fucking millionaires! Yes, there is wealth disparity in the United States. That’s actually a good thing. Is it higher than it should be? Probably, but nevertheless, there is a spectrum of wealth, which is essential for a healthy economy, and just because some people are poor doesn’t mean fucking everyone is! And what about no rights? I’d like to hear an example of a worker who doesn’t have rights. Know who else would? The government. See, there are laws to prevent employers from abusing employees. That doesn’t mean you can just show up, do fuck all and still get paid, though. Employment is the voluntary and retractable sale of a portion of one’s rights (namely in the form of one’s available time and labor) for money. And if you don’t like the boss, you’re allowed to quit. Yes, yes, the economy is bad, unemployment is high, and you don’t really want to quit. I get it. But you know what? That’s life. You balance things out. You don’t like your boss but you like your paycheck, so you decide which is more important.

But let’s now look at this issue from another perspective. They’re claiming to speak for 99% of the population. In essence, they’re labeling people to set up “we” vs. “they.” Well, I’m not buying it. Sure, labels are sometimes useful, and we ought to embrace some of our labels. But I don’t want to be considered a part of the same group as 99% of the population. Know why? I’m not. Sure, I’m not in the wealthiest 1%. But every significant measure of a human being cannot be so easily summed up. I’m certainly not equal to 99% of the population in terms of intelligence, or taste. I object to anyone claiming to speak to me simply because I fall on the same side as they do of an arbitrary line in the sand they’ve drawn for no reason other than political gain. I object to being considered equal to 99% of the population when, quite frankly, I consider myself superior to most of them. And at least as passionately, I also object to people attempting to limit political discourse to something as trivial as short messages hand written on pieces of paper and held in front of a webcam. These issues are more complex, and if you’re going to take a firm stance on them, perhaps you should read a book first.

Now let us turn our attention to something I saw the people here in Denver doing. I first encountered this on the Auraria campus, where the Occupy Auraria people have been every single day for the better part of a month, and I am told that they’ve been doing this at the larger Occupy Denver gatherings as well, though I haven’t witnessed that myself. What they do is this: They sit in a semi-circle with some individual, apparently of some higher status within the group, though I fail to understand their hierarchy, sitting in the center. This individual reads a statement expressing some political philosophy or position on some economic matter, and the rest of the group repeats after him, verbatim. Yes indeed. They’re fucking reciting fucking creeds! I’m not talking about the chants you hear at protests all the time (“Two-four-six-eight, we just want to masturbate!”), but actual fucking creeds. If they weren’t sitting under a big-ass sign that says “Occupy Auraria” and if I couldn’t hear the words spewing forth from their mouths, I would assume it was some kind of religious service. In a way it is. The Occupy movement is rapidly becoming more cult-like both in its attitudes and in its behaviors. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for the rest of us, this is not the way one conducts oneself if one’s goal is to make one’s political opinions known. Find your way to have some intelligent discourse and I’ll listen to you, I’ll discuss things with you, debate what we disagree on, agree on what we agree on, and probably find some common ground. Recite creeds, though, and I know two things about you without giving it any more thought. 1) You have already made up your mind so thoroughly that any attempt to have a real discussion with you would be a wasted effort. 2) I want to have nothing to do with you, either in this or in any other matter.

We turn our attention next to another topic related to how they present themselves as more of a cult than an intellectual organization. A few weeks back, the Association of Corporate Counsel had a conference here in Denver at the Convention Center, not far from where the Occupy people have been doing…whatever it is they’ve been doing. Mind you, the ACC are the movers and shakers in the corporate world. These are the attorneys who tell the corporations they work for how to conduct their legal affairs. Though the organization itself has no real authority, one cannot doubt its power simply because its members advise and defend the decision makers in the corporate world. And aside from being a rather influential organization, one can safely assume that the ACC members have done their homework on precisely the sort of issues the Occupy people are trying to talk about. Agree or disagree, these guys know a thing or two.

While they were in town at the same time as the Occupy movement, something very telling happened. The ACC people invited the Occupy people into their conference to listen to one of their seminars and to have a dialog. One cannot doubt that this would be a significant victory for anyone seriously trying to enact some kind of social or economic change. The very people they’re protesting invited them in to have a discussion. That’s how changes get made--through diplomacy. However, the Occupy people said…no. Not only did they fail to make their case, they failed to even show up and try. They refused to speak to the people in a position to actually start doing something about their suggestions. Instead, they continued marching in the streets and camping in the parks.

I would like to think that perhaps this was an isolated incident and that perhaps they simply felt unprepared to make a presentation in front of such a body on such short notice. While I would certainly have taken the opportunity and simply done my best given such an opportunity, I cannot say for certain that it wasn’t simply a matter of feeling that they wouldn’t be putting their best foot forward were they to speak to the ACC. However, this hypothesis (which I never truly believed, just for the record), was conclusively disproved by another recent event here in Denver.

Because the Occupy movement has achieved so much notoriety in the press, the Mayor of Denver decided it would not be prudent to ignore them. He figured, hey, let’s have a dialog with these people. His only request was that Occupy Denver needed to elect a leadership to speak for the movement in front of City and State officials. A reasonable request. Certainly these officials don’t have time to speak to each protester individually, so the appropriate thing to do is to elect a small group of delegates who will speak for the group. They don’t need to be “leaders” in the sense of managing the group’s affairs--things can still be decided democratically if that’s what the group wants--but it is essential that some person or some small group of people should be empowered to go to meetings with officials and speak for the group.

Instead of realizing this simple fact, however and electing a spokesperson, Occupy Denver did something rather strange. So strange, in fact, that you won’t believe me if I tell you what they did, so I’ll let their press release speak for itself:

“We of Occupy Denver hereby elect and recognize Shelby the border collie dog as our leader until such time that Occupy Denver, rescind or replace said role. As such, under auspices including, but not limited to, the facts that she can bleed, breed, and show emotion, there by proving she is more of a ‘person’ than a corporation, here by demand that Shelby not only be legally recognized by both State and Federal government as the leader of Occupy Denver, but also as a person.

“To similar call, should Shelby be granted such recognition, it is to our expectation that all pressing legal matters regarding the occupation that require a ‘leader’ or representative to speak on the behalf of the Occupation, that unless representation other than the Occupation’s leader be found adequate and/or accepted through the governing body of Occupy Denver, that U.S. law be followed as it concerns providing an adequate interpreter to accurately and provably convey the meaning and substance of Occupation related legal matters both to Shelby and from Shelby to her legal counsel and/or legal bodies handling such cases. It is to be understood that it is not the responsibility of Occupy Denver, nor Shelby, to find or provide interpreters for such task.

“Should such demands of the Occupation not be met, we of Occupy Denver demand that any and all rights and privileges granted to corporations under the rights afforded them through corporate ‘personhood’ be made illegal through State constitutional amendment. Further, should such an amendment be superseded by Federal law, that the governing bodies and persons of the State of Colorado, through political, economic, and all legal means available, pursue without haste, in earnest transparency, and to their fullest possibly capacity, entry into any and all legal contest necessary to both uphold and enforce the revocation of corporate ‘personhood.’”

Yes, you read it correctly. Within this sloppily worded document, the Occupy Denver people have actually elected a dog as their official representation to the City of Denver and the State of Colorado. Even if one puts aside the extreme humor of the people of this “movement” (as at this point I feel, along with Frank Miller, that they should not be considered a “movement” unless the word is immediately preceded by the word “bowel”) issuing demands--not requests, suggestions, or arguments, but demands--to the duly elected representatives of the City of Denver and the State of Colorado…they elected a fucking dog! I’ll say it again: They elected a fucking dog! A dog, for Christ’s sake! A fucking dog! Dog, dog, dog! I cannot stress highly enough how asinine, myopic, ignorant, immature, vacuous, thoughtless, halfwitted, dimwitted, boneheaded, blockheaded, featherbrained, and downright fucking stupid this movement and all its constituents are. I admit I had a certain hesitation to lump all of them under the same banner, as there are some people with legitimate grievances really and honestly trying to achieve social change among their ranks, and I at first didn’t want to call them stupid along with all the rest of the human garbage, but then I remembered, THEY ELECTED A FUCKING DOG! Whatever your intentions, whatever your qualifications, if you do not immediately tender your resignation from the membership of any organization that does something so childish, I’m sorry, but you’re a fucking moron, and there’s no other way a rational human being can view the matter.

So that’s how they try to achieve their goals: by denying invitations from the people in a position to do something, and by electing a dog instead of a delegate to speak to other people in a position to do something. I get it, you don’t like the power structure. But the operative word of that phrase is “power.” Like them or not (and believe you me, no one is justified in hating the power structure as much as the Occupy people do, even though there are legitimate problems that need to be addressed), they’ve got the power, and you don’t. So, in order to get to that point of change you want, you really have three options. 1) You can go to school, study hard for several years until you’re able to earn yourself a position of power within the power structures you’re trying to change and thus conduct your change from within. 2) You can run for public office, try to convince the electorate that your ideas are worthy, and once in office, conduct your change from within different halls of power. 3) You can attempt to persuade those already in power that you are correct, and try to conduct your change (albeit indirectly) from within. Bottom line, morons camping in the park are not powerful. They’re pitiful, and they should thank their lucky stars when someone bothers to offer them an opportunity to step into the halls of power and plead their case.

Regarding this concept of “corporate personhood,” the Occupy people, as usual, recite gross oversimplifications of what is actually a very interesting legal question. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protections to all “persons” under the jurisdiction of the United States, and that’s really the crux of the issue here. It’s not really a matter of whether we’re recognizing them as “people,” in the biological sense. It’s a question of whether, as a matter of law, one should recognize a corporation as a self-sufficient entity afforded protections under the constitution. And when we say “corporation,” we’re not necessarily talking about the giant corporations that it’s currently trendy to hate…in fact, in law, we’re not really talking about “corporate personhood” at all. We’re talking about the doctrine of “legal personhood” or “artificial personhood.” It’s the same thing, but it’s misleading to use the word “corporate,” because other types of organizations also benefit.

Basically, without this doctrine or something very likely, business would come to a grinding halt. Why? I’m so glad you asked. Basically, creating a “legal person” out of a corporation is a convenient legal fiction. In essence, it is an extension of the rights of all those natural persons who make up the corporation into the collective whole. What this means, in practical effect, is that a corporation can sue or be sued. It can enter contracts as a single entity rather than as, in the case of large corporations, thousands of individual entities. It simplifies taxation and regulation. It protects the rights of the shareholders.

So what would happen if we completely scrap this idea? A lot, actually. Let us imagine some hypothetical situations. Let us say that Corporation X, a large corporation doing great business in the manufacture of Widgets, has done harm to Person Y by stealing his idea for a new Widget. Who does Person Y sue? The CEO? He’ll argue that one of his subordinates actually stole it and he never knew anything about the theft. The subordinates will pass the blame to the engineers, who’ll pass the blame back to the CEO, and nothing will ever be accomplished. Or, Person Y can simply sue Corporation X. As an artificial person, Corporation X is capable of being sued, and so a jury can simply make Corporation X write a big check with lots of zeros to compensate Person Y for the injustice. If this were impossible, Person Y would either have to file suit against all of the thousands of people who make up Corporation X individually and clog the court system with needlessly complicated determinations of who actually deserves the blame, or simply give up the fight and cut his losses.

What if the situation were flipped? Let us imagine that Person Z has just stolen some trade secrets from the innocent Corporation X and is trying to sell them to the highest bidder. What can Corporation X do to stop this or to receive compensation for the wrong that they have suffered? Well, as an artificial person, Corporation X simply sues Person Z. But if they were not afforded these rights, what would happen? Presumably, every individual shareholder, each member of the Board of Directors, the CEO, and whichever employees may have been harmed, will all have to sue individually. This one incident could end up producing literally hundreds or thousands of lawsuits.

This matter also raises interesting First Amendment issues. While not explicitly stated in the First Amendment, the Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Alabama that freedom of association IS protected by the First Amendment as an essential component of freedom of speech. Their reasoning is that in some cases one can engage in effective speech only by joining with others. It has been argued that affording the same rights to the collective that one would afford to the individuals in that collective is an essential part of freedom of association. And so, we should consider corporations to have the same rights as the people who make up that corporation.

Ironically, the Occupy people wish their movement, as a collective, to be considered a unit with such rights as free speech and free assembly. If one is to assume that this collective has such rights, why are they hypocritically denying the same consideration to another form of collective? Just because they don’t like the word “corporation?” Sorry, but that’s just not going to fly. Maybe they ought to read a book or two before they speak any further.

But neither is this a one-sided debate. There are legitimate concerns with legal personhood. For instance, if we’re giving a corporation all the rights that a person has, we’re also giving them the right to contribute to political campaigns, which some have argued significantly skews the American political process by concentrating much of the political power that comes from fundraising (and only a buffoon fails to realize that fundraising is a significant factor in determining the results of elections) into the hands of a comparative few whose interests may not be in line with the people’s. Not an invalid point, but more easily addressed than scrapping the concept of legal personhood. Campaign finance reform is also a contentious issue, and it represents the debate between the preservation of the First Amendment on the one side against concerns about corruption and monopolization of the political process on the other. Campaign finance is outside the scope of this paper so I won’t touch it beyond simply saying that campaign finance reform is a way to mitigate the imbalance created when corporations might finance campaigns without “throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” so to speak. I will, however, simply point out that even today, it’s not as simple as a corporation writing a check for millions of dollars. These are complex issues, and they need to be addressed through tedious study, long periods of open debate, and eventual compromise. I don’t know about you, but while I don’t doubt Shelby the dog’s character, I do severely question the judgment of anyone who suggests she is intellectually capable of solving these problems.

The other argument to do with legal personhood has to do with what happens when a corporation commits a criminal offense. Civil offenses are actually simplified by the doctrine of legal personhood, by significantly reducing the number of litigants. However, criminal cases may be complicated. Say a CEO orders an illegal act and the corporation’s employees carry out that act in the name of the corporation. If it’s something like murder, of course, we have no problem separating the corporation from the individuals within the corporation who are actually guilty, and we try them as individuals, leaving the corporation itself intact. But what if the corporation is thought guilty of a crime that cannot be pinned on a specific individual? How can one jail a corporation? Indeed, that is a difficult question, but I think an answer presents itself rather readily, and it comes in three parts.

1) The acts that are committed by individuals within the corporation, whether at the insistence of the corporation or not, are tried as individuals. If the act is sponsored by the corporation itself, the decision makers responsible for ordering that act can be tried as conspirators. The corporation itself cannot be guilty of acts committed by individuals within the corporation.

2) However, if the act is a corporate act. A crime related somehow to a hostile takeover, say, then the corporation itself should be tried in criminal courts, represented by its CEO or Board of Directors, just as it is when it conducts itself legally. Of course, one cannot jail a corporation, but it’s very easy to fine a corporation, which would probably be the appropriate response to such matters anyway.

3) Laws can be written in such a way that allow for legal personhood to continue, so that we may all continue to benefit from its conveniences and protections, but also in such a way that holds the decision makers responsible for corporate crimes. So if the CEO orders a crime to be committed by the corporation as a whole, in addition to fines levied against the corporation once it is found guilty, the CEO himself can be found guilty, perhaps as a conspirator.

I realize that was a bit of a long tangent, but I wanted to make the point not only that the Occupy people are probably wrong about legal personhood, but that they don’t bother to do their homework or to think things through very well. I’m certainly not an expert, but it’s not that hard to come up with some very basic research on these issues. It took me all of a couple minutes, for instance, to discover that the concept of a legal person is not unique to corporate America (which I knew), or even the western world (which I suspected), but is found in some variant or other, in almost every legal system in the world.

At this point, I want to take a moment to discuss the issue of police brutality, which has been raised in connection with the Occupy movement quite a lot recently, as they’ve been evicted from their tent cities in several locations in the past week or so. As with the rest of this paper, I’m using Occupy Denver, rightly or wrongly, as a partial representative of the whole, so bear in mind that situations may be different in other locations.

Shortly after electing a dog as their representative to the city and state officials, they received a notice from Denver police:

“It is illegal to place any encumbrance on the public right of way. An encumbrance is defined as ‘any article, vehical [sic] or thing whatsover’ which is on ‘any street, alley, sidewalk, parkway or other public way or place.’ D.R.M.C. 49-246 et. seq. The manager of Public works may order all encumbrances in the public right-of-way to be removed. The failure to remove items so ordered is a criminal offense; the maximum possible penalty for which is up to one year in the county jail and/or up to $999 fine.

“PLEASE REMOVE ALL PERSONAL ITEMS FROM THIS AREA.

“If personal items are not removed immediately, you may be subject to an order of removal at which time all items will be subject to removal by the Denver Police Department.”

Yeah, it came right after the dog thing…maybe the city was a little pissed off and wanted to get back at the people who had just issued a rather grievous insult. I wouldn’t be surprised. Fact is, though, the Occupy people were indeed breaking the law. They have a right to peaceably assemble, a right to free speech, but not a right to leave their shit all over the public parks and sidewalks. Despite Occupy supporters trying to make an equivalence between this and the First Amendment (a matter we’ll discuss in more detail later), it’s really not the same thing.

So anyway, back to point, the police issued the above warning, and the Occupy people--you guessed it--didn’t do a damn thing. They stayed in the park, didn’t lift a finger to move anything. And then, surprise, surprise, the police moved in on November 12 to forcibly remove the items in question. At this point, a few people left, but most of them just became confrontational with the police. While this was happening, someone from within the movement updated their website periodically. I’m going to provide some highlights from those updates, and then we’ll learn what actually happened.

“UPDATE 5:01pm It looks like this raid is imminent. This is the ‘largest police presence ever’ for one of the smallest gathering [sic] of protesters. It seems at minute [sic] they are going to bust in and take everything out.”

Oh, balls! Largest police presence ever? Come on! Since it’s in quotation marks, I’d like to know the source of that information. Got a link for me, Occupy people? The other thing they don’t say is that, though it’s true police were in riot gear as a precaution (one never knows what a mob of irrational protesters might do), the police were not conducting themselves in a traditional “raid” fashion. At about 4:30, they invited two of the protesters to speak with them at a command post. However, by 5:15, protesters had elected to block a major street, Broadway, instead of cooperating with police.

Furthermore, “bust in and take everything out” sounds excessively negative. In fact, they had been warned that police would remove property they did not voluntarily remove. However, police also tagged every item that looked like personal property rather than garbage so that it could be reclaimed at a later date.

“UPDATE 5:44pm Protesters are chanting at police. Police continue to move. Unsure if chemical weapons have been used yet.”

Overdramatic much? Whoever said anything about chemical weapons…if you’re “not sure” if they’ve been used, what that actually means is, there’s no evidence that they have, but that you just can’t help but to say something to make it sound like the police are being the villain here. Remember also that by this time, the protesters had already moved to block a major traffic artery, a fact they neglected to mention.

“UPDATE 6:27pm Police a [sic] chanting ‘MOOVE BACK’ [sic] while the protesters rebut with ‘PEACEFUL! PEACEFUL! PEACEFUL!’”

Perhaps true. However, the Denver Post, a more reliable source by any criteria, has a slightly different take. According to the Post, the protesters were chanting anti-police slogans including “You look stupid in your helmets and with your clubs….This is a peaceful assembly….”

“UPDATE 6:45pm Pepper bullets and tear gas launched into crowd.”

WRONG! LIES! No tear gas was used during the entire incident. I don’t know about other forms of nonlethal weapons, but Occupy is the only organization reporting anything even remotely like that, so considering the source, I suspect not. Several arrests were made--and justifiably so, as several crimes (including assaulting the police officers and blocking traffic) were committed that evening, and I’m not just talking about all the garbage in the park, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

From here, we can abandon Occupy’s version of events and just talk about some of the things they did, but before we do, I want to give one last quote, from the update at 9:42: “Considering their warning, they seem very interested in squashing Occupy once and for all.”

Well, actually, I wish they would. Then I wouldn’t have to walk past a group of annoying protesters who’ve forgotten the art of bathing every time I walk across campus or downtown, or see them on the news, or read about them on the Internet. But that doesn’t seem to be the point. The point is, they’d turned a public park into something one step away from being a landfill. Also from the Denver Post article: “’This isn’t safe and, it’s not sanitary,’ Jackson said as he pointed to a pile of blankets and boxes with a stream of stale food and sticky liquid running underneath it.” Remember that image, by the way, as we’ll be coming back to it in a moment.

I want to turn now to an account given by a good friend of mine who happened to be in Downtown Denver when this was all happening and witnessed a good deal of it with his own eyes. He posted these remarks in the comments field on the Occupy Denver website.

In response to claims by the Occupy people that this incident was a result of the fact that they’ve “scared” the government and an attempt to stop the movement, he writes:

“Last night, the only people I saw terrified were the innocent people trying to enjoy their Saturday nights while a group of screaming people walked down the street beating drums and pushing them aside.

“I saw people terrified to walk anywhere, because the protesters were leading a charge down 16^th Street Mall [Note for non-Denver readers: the 16^th Street Mall is a large pedestrian mall in the heart of downtown, full of retail, offices, as well as many popular night spots--the only non-pedestrian traffic allowed on the Mall are the city-provided free shuttles that run back and forth along the length of the Mall, and the carriages drawn by bicycle or horse, also to carry passengers along the Mall] yelling.

“I saw multiple cars almost hit innocent people because the protesters blocked so many roads that people were just trying to drive and couldn’t get around.”

In response to claims that it was police action, rather than protester action, that put the general public at risk, he writes:

“Again, no. The police were following the protesters, not the other way around. If the protesters chose to stay away from densely populated places such as the 16^th St. Mall and the Buell [a very large theatre, part of the Denver Performing Arts Complex], then the police wouldn’t have to put up those measures and block civilian traffic and put innocent people in harms way. Simply put, from what I observed and what happened, it was the PROTESTERS who put the general public in harms way, for no reason.”

Already we can see that it was the protesters who were at fault rather than the police, but there’s another matter worthy of our attention related to their behavior on that evening. At the time this was all happening, the Mayor of Denver was at the Starz Film Festival enjoying his Saturday night. Not on official business--this was his personal time, and he was just trying to enjoy himself, but the protesters got the bright idea to try to find him, since the festival was not far from their location. In fact, by their own admission, they made their way into the parking garage at the Performing Arts Complex, and one can only assume that their intent with such an action was either to break in to the festival to get to the Mayor or to block the Mayor’s exit.

To that, I respond: you people had your chance. The mayor was willing to talk to you. He just asked you to choose a spokesman. Instead, you elected a dog. Why in the world would you think he’d want to talk to you now?

Of course, as soon as this all happened, the conspiracy theorists immediately came out of the woodwork to claim that this is part of some nationally coordinated effort to suppress these protests in every major city. I can almost sympathize. I once went through a brief conspiracy theorist phase…when I was a child. To a child, perhaps, everything looks like a conspiracy, and I suppose that’s fitting, as the Occupy movement and all its supporters have been acting like children. But it’s time to grow up. Of course there’s no movement to suppress these protests. At their best, they’re a pitiful annoyance to the people they’re protesting. Occupy is a mosquito. When you see it biting you, you swat it, but no one gives a thought to organizing a massive effort to hunt down and kill that single mosquito. This is just their attempt to artificially inflate their own sense of importance in the world, when in reality, they’re about as insignificant as a pimple on someone’s ass.

I’m going to be honest with you. I hate doing this. I hate coming to the defense of the police. I don’t like police. And usually when something like this happens, I’m right there with the rest of them, decrying the evils of abuses of police authority. Because usually, truth seems to come down on whatever side is opposed to the police in a given issue. There are countless abuses, countless cases of police brutality, not to mention the fact that the laws the police are sworn to uphold are convoluted, outdated, corrupted, and generally shitty in almost every way. But in this case, arguing that police are at fault just does not hold water.

Still, people defend them. One of their defenders, a YouTube user whose work I generally enjoy but who falls into the category of “fucking stupid” whenever it comes to something that has to do with Occupy Wall Street and its various offshoots, had this to say:

“And how does the logic of the cops who cleared the protesters out of Zuccotti Park hold any water whatsoever? They said ‘We gotta kick you out because this environment is too trashed, you know you guys were too messy, and now we gotta kick you out and have some cleaning crews come in to clean up.’ How does that make sense? First of all, we’ve all seen footage of the protesters. I didn’t see any giant mountains of garbage, did you? And even if there were, let’s give ‘em that, let’s say there are, I just haven’t seen them and you just haven’t seen them, but they were there. So what? The protesters are not there to be housekeepers for fuckin’ Zuccotti Park. They’re there to protest. What’s the point of having First Amendment rights if you can always find some little bullshit reason to kick them out of wherever they’re protesting?”

And so on and so on, ad nauseam. I really don’t know how someone I regularly watch--and so you know it’s someone who usually has intelligent things to say, because I do not suffer fools--can be so fucking stupid.

First of all, if you haven’t seen the mountains of garbage, it’s probably just because your news about this matter is filtered by the supporters of the Occupy movement. You asked where were the piles of garbage. How about the one depicted in the photo accompanying this article from October 13? Or the one attached to this article , which also includes a quotation from a sanitation worker: “I pick up garbage [for a living], and these were some of the worst smells I’ve ever experienced.” Or if you don’t care for those, try this one, which contains several photos. And that’s just of New York. Going back to Denver, remember that comment about the “pile of blankets and boxes with a stream of stale food and sticky liquid running underneath it?” These protesters are not clean people. They’re nasty, disgusting people who’ve chosen to live in a park over economic ideals they’re too stupid to understand anyway.

And the second part of that defense, the “so what” part--are you kidding me? You so hate this world just because of a few economic problems that you’re actually okay with the public spaces becoming landfills? That’s not a “so what” moment, that’s a “why didn’t the police move in sooner” moment if there ever was one. In the debris left behind were stale food, liquids, broken bottles, used hypodermic needles, everything you can imagine the scum of the earth bringing to the surface when they’re allowed to linger uninterrupted for the better part of two months. The Occupy movement was no longer just a protest--it was a public health hazard. If you actually believe that nothing needed to be done to clean that up, you’re either delusional or evil.

What about the claim that they’re there to protest and not be housekeepers for the park? Of course! And the minute I hear of police telling them to clean up someone else’s trash, I’ll be right there with you. But they made that mess themselves. Littering is generally not considered much of a crime, illegal though it is…but on that scale, it could actually come to involuntary manslaughter if someone, say, accidentally steps on a used hypodermic needle while trying to walk through the park. Protesting is protected by the First Amendment. Trashing the public grounds, becoming a public menace, and allowing oneself to be a public health hazard in a very real sense is not. Anyone who can’t see the difference deserves no place at the grown-ups’ table. In fact, the stupidity of that comment is further revealed by the fact that they’re being allowed to continue their protests. Yeah, no one’s shutting them up…all they did was try to clean up a bit.

Now here’s the painful irony of the whole situation. One of the things the Occupy people are protesting is that the wealthy pay disproportionately low taxes, and so the costs of running the government have to be paid by the middle class and the poor. Okay, there’s actually some truth to that, and that’s something worth protesting, though we’ll talk about that a bit more later. They also claim to speak for “the 99%,” even though we’ve already debunked that stupid idea. Well, who do you think had to foot the bill to clean up all their shit? Taxpayers. Yeah, you and me. These assholes went out there, accomplished absolutely nothing with their protests because they don’t have two brain cells to rub together among the lot of them, completely trashed the public grounds wherever they went, and now they expect our sympathy and support even though we’ve been forced to pay to clean up after them. And people wonder why I’m pissed off!

These people have no real interest in doing anything positive. They’re hippies, anarchists, hobos, drug addicts, and assorted other lowlifes. If they really wanted to do something good, they could contribute to the economy instead of living in a park. They could participate in intellectual discourse instead of shouting gibberish while living in a park.

Oh, dear! I called them anarchists. Boo-fucking-hoo. And yet, that’s what so many latch on to whenever someone criticizes these morons. “They’re not anarchists, they want more regulation, that’s not anarchy.”

Well double balls and bollocks! While they may espouse a belief in more regulation on the rare occasion they actually talk about things instead of just being idiots crying “why me” all the fucking time, they certainly don’t live up to their own ideals (which we’ll discuss shortly). Destruction of public property is not in line with cries for more regulation. In fact, when the regulations we already have on the books were finally enforced, they all cried “police brutality,” so nevermind more regulations. Perhaps they actually do want more regulations--for everyone else, or for the people they don’t like. But they certainly behave like anarchists themselves. Regardless of what they may say, their actions indicate a belief that the rules are meant for everyone else, but they’re exempt, simply because they’re protesters (as if the word alone could give them special powers or credibility).

Want more evidence, rather than simply reasoning our way to that point of view? You got it. Check out Occupy Denver’s own post. Right up at the top, you’ll see a link, and if you read the label you might be a bit surprised: “via our comrades at Denver Anarchist Black Cross.” In this post, Occupy Denver, and the Denver Anarchist Black Cross. I think the word you’re looking for is “befuddlement,” because that’s certainly the appropriate emotion to feel when faced with the realization that this movement still enjoys truly massive popular support even in the face of their own candid admission of ties to an anarchist organization (which seems like an oxymoron, but I’ve almost become numb to all the stupidity and contradictions we find in these movements).

I did promise to talk a little bit about what they’re actually trying to do, so I’ll attempt to do so, but I find it extremely difficult, as they’ve completely divorced themselves from any sort of intellectual leadership, which might have actually been able to lay down some specific goals. Instead, they seem to be protesting a sort of fuzzy marriage of corporation and state that they can’t really explain, and they seem to offer no real solutions to anything except for some fuzzy idea of “more regulation for everyone except us.” There also seems to be some fuzzy idea that capitalism is a bad thing.

Since they refuse to actually make specific points, I don’t have any specific points to respond to. There is a very enlightening article here that can help us understand their perspective. Quoted in the article, one protester who goes by the name Ketchup (and some people still take them seriously) said, “If anyone is attempting to speak for OWS, that’s bullshit.” Right, because once someone speaking for the organization starts listing goals, it means some people might actually have to work to meet those goals, rather than live like hobos and beat drums all day.

They get even more candid later in the same article: “Demands cannot reflect inevitable success. Demands imply condition, and we will never stop. Demands cannot reflect the time scale that we are working with.” Translation: we’re pissed off about a few things, but we’re too stupid to actually solve any problems, so we’re going to engage in highly publicized mental masturbation and pretend we’re a legitimate political movement and see how long we can deceive the rest of the world--and perhaps ourselves--into thinking our shit is Shinola.

Also in the same article, we learn about a few more broad concepts many of them are talking about: “embracing open-source technology, ending all wars, eliminating ‘discrimination and prejudice,’ and reappropriating ‘our business structures and culture, putting people and our earth before profit.’”

So even though we don’t, in fact, have anything even remotely resembling a proposal, we do have at least some idea of the vague concepts they’re protesting about. Let’s discuss some of them, shall we? Bear in mind that I’m going to go very briefly through these issues. I’m not necessarily confident in my own ability to solve the problems, but at least I’m better than the Occupy people in that I’m trying to start a dialog about these issues so maybe some people more educated on the matter than I can help me expand my thinking.

Regarding the marriage between corporation and state, my thoughts are probably not too far from what the Occupy people think. Remember, I did say there are plenty of legitimate grievances, and I don’t necessarily disagree with them on the issues--I just disagree with them as human beings. I do think they probably overestimate the extent to which these two sectors influence one another or the impact it has on the rest of us, but maybe not by very much. There certainly is plenty of corruption both in business and in government, and that needs to end. Where I disagree with them is in where they’re directing their protest. They ought to be protesting in Washington, because it is the government that needs to address this issue, not the corporations. Hell, most corporations, even most big corporations, are relatively benign. It’s only a few that cause problems, and protesting them isn’t going to change their minds. It’s only when politicians fear for their reelection that something will happen, so the Occupy people may have the right idea, but they’re running with it in the wrong direction.

Some of them are probably capitalists, but there definitely seems to be an anti-capitalist bent amongst the group. Open-source technology, for instance, is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good thing--some of the time. But it is vital that capitalism be allowed to maintain itself, because if one cannot profit from one’s inventions, one simply stops inventing. If something is shared publicly, the creator gets stiffed. That’s true of software, music, books, movies, machines, you name it. Capitalism works! Sure, our form of capitalism has had plenty of bumps in the road, and there are elements of our capitalism right now that are corrupt. But that does not mean that capitalism is bad.

I recall a conversation with an Occupy buffoon who kept asking “if capitalism is so good, why is the third world so poor?” I had to repeatedly explain that it’s due to a number of factors. Climate, technology, politics, religion, but all in all, it comes down to an inability of the people to profit from their own labor, which is largely what actually does end up creating wealth. That’s capitalism, and to the extent that it’s lacking in the third world, that’s why they remain poor. But he just kept saying that “whenever the people try to improve their lot in life, the west pushes them back down.” Well, first of all, that’s a gross oversimplification, to the point that it’s basically a lie. Yes, that has happened; but, no, the United States isn’t deliberately trying to keep the impoverished from improving their lives--quite the opposite in fact. Second of all, even if that were completely true, it would not be an argument against capitalism. It would be an argument against the first world pushing the third world down.

What else…let’s see…ah, they want to end all wars. Finally, something we completely agree on. Let’s hear how they want to do it? Hmm? *crickets* Yeah, that’s what I thought. What I want to see are specific proposals to end specific wars, and proposals to begin improving international relations. And the best way to do that? It goes right back to capitalism. Countries are less likely to go to war against each other when they have a strong mutual trade between them. Will it end all wars? Fuck no! But it would at least be a start, and that’s a fuck of a lot more than the Occupy people ever came up with.

Similar arguments apply to the thought of getting rid of prejudice and discrimination. If you define exactly what you’re talking about, and come up with a proposal to address one small area at a time, or to gradually improve things, great. But otherwise, you’re just blowing a bunch of sunshine up our collective ass, and I don’t like it.

What’s this idea of putting people and earth before profit all about, really? Are we talking about not lying and cheating our way to the top? Then I agree. Are we talking about socialism? Then I don’t. Plus, people and profits are not mutually exclusive. In fact, in a healthy economy, either one benefits the other, and everyone’s life is improved through commerce. A profitable company can pay its employees more (and in a healthy economy is forced to by the competition), and employees who earn more can spend more, making the companies even more profitable, and so on. It’s a myth that no new wealth is created but that wealth is only transferred. New weath is created through labor and invention all the time, so in a healthy economy, it’s possible for everyone to profit. But for that to happen, people with sufficient drive must have the opportunity to do extraordinarily well at business. If there’s no motivation in the form of making more money than the neighbors, then why would anyone work harder than the neighbors and create new wealth through innovation?

And regarding the need for more regulation, that’s partial nonsense, too. What we need isn’t more regulation, what we need is smarter regulation. It’s something neither the liberals nor the conservatives have figured out yet. Basically, the liberals don’t get that the free market works. Left to its devices with only minimal regulations to prevent crimes such as fraud, the market actually does quite well without intervention, and in such times interventionism would only hurt the economy. What the conservatives don’t get is that sometimes, temporary intervention is necessary. The liberals correctly realize that every once in a while, you need to put the train back on the tracks, but they don’t know when to stop meddling. What we need are smarter regulations intended to prevent frauds, and to allow for very short term interventions when necessary, but that expire as soon as the market is once again healthy enough to manage itself.

The problem is that there has been no intellectual leadership to lay anything down for these people. They all just sort of showed up and started protesting without understanding what it was really all about.

Now, let’s turn to the actual structure of Occupy Denver. If nothing else, it’s worth a laugh or two.

At the top of the hierarchy of course is the dog, but Shelby doesn’t seem to do very much, so here’s now it works. They have absolutely no leadership. The people filling official roles at their General Assemblies are not elected or appointed--as far as I can tell they just sort of show up and fall into one role or another, none of which have any real power--they just conduct the meetings which are a sort of loose parody of parliamentary procedure constructed by someone who learned about parliamentary procedure from a bad television program. The actual voting body is…whoever feels like showing up.

Instead of communicating verbally, they use hand signals (isn’t that cute?). Here’s what their website has to say about the signals they use.

“Hand raised: if you have something to say

“Chopping hands: point of clarification/answer - not a new idea, short sentences only

“Triangle hands: point of order - stay on topic, issue from outside

“Rolling hands: you have made your point, respectfully move on

“Spirit fingers: I like this!

“Downward spirit fingers: I disagree or do not like this

“Peace fingers/vibes: respect each other, intense emotions casing [sic] problems”

I’ll admit, it’s been a little while since I’ve read Robert’s Rules of Order, but I don’t remember “spirit fingers” ever appearing anywhere in parliamentary procedure.

I would also remind the reader that while this movement has been mostly nonviolent for which I am grateful, occupation is a military concept. This group isn’t as peace-loving as they claim to be. Sure, they’re not using physical violence (at least not much, at least not yet), but they are modeled, even in name, upon military strategy, and by their own admission, they plan to be around for a very long time. That scares me, because these aren’t rational people. Instead of people having an intellectual discussion, I see a mass of unwashed hippies with dreadlocks. Even if one were to agree with them, and on occasion I do, they certainly don’t present a face that any sane person would consider respectable.

Finally, on November 16, they issued a press release. Near the end of their document, I found a passage that particularly spoke to me:

“We call upon you who have been silent: Speak and be heard.

“We call upon you who have not stood up for what you believe in: Stand and be seen.

“We call upon you who have yet to put your needs on paper. Write and be counted.”

Challenge accepted. Suck it, bitches!

Go on--give us a trick

2011-07-07T22:57:00.000-07:00

I've been a magician for a while now. Amongst my friends, I'm the token magician (with the exception of those friends who are also in the business, of course, but I'm not speaking to them because they already know all about this stuff). Personally, I like it. I like being the guy who can do things other people can't do. It's not an ego thing, really, though I'm sure that's part of it. Mostly, I just like sharing things that people are unlikely to see anywhere else. I like the look of surprise when, say, the barista at my coffee shop sees her cell phone appear inside a rubber balloon. But I don't like to perform for close friends, and I especially don't like to perform for family.

To a poor magician (read: that uncle who does a card trick at the family reunion) magic is 90% methodology and 10% presentation. To a good magician, it's exactly the opposite. Sure, there are some real knucklebusters out there, and magicians in your audience are guaranteed to be astounded when you pull one off. But they won't be surprised. All you've accomplished is an amazing feat of juggling--not magic. To a lay audience, methodology doesn't matter. All they're supposed to see is the effect. So, that begs the question: what is the effect? On the surface, one might think the effect is, say, "my card showed up in his wallet." And sure, that is the effect. But on another level (I would argue, the important level), that is only the skeleton of the effect. The real effect is the show the magician puts on when presenting this miracle. The effect could be "he predicted what card I would choose and put a copy in his wallet." The effect could be "he made the card invisibly travel from the deck to his wallet." It could be "he hypnotized me and made me think I chose a certain card." Upon the framework of a simple Card to Wallet, there are countless different "effects" the magician could choose to present. And that, I would argue, is where magic lives.

Eugene Burger, one of my heroes in magic, and certainly one of magic's greatest thinkers and philosophers, describes magic as it is generally presented as a stunt. But that's not magic. Magic, when it's presented properly, is a true art. It points beyond itself to something else. It hardly matters what that something else is, but there is something to it. And so magic, at least the way I want to do magic, is all about presentation. It is about showmanship. And that's why I hate performing for friends and family.

Friends and family know me better than any other audience, and so in their ears, no matter what presentation I hang on a magical effect, it will certainly ring false. My mother knows damn well I can't do the impossible. And on some level, so does any audience--they aren't stupid. But when you're on a stage or in front of strangers, there is a willingness to suspend disbelief that is simply not present when performing for close acquaintances. You can't step into another character, you can't put on a show, because if you do, they'll know that you're just acting.

When I watch a movie, I know damn well that the actors are just actors. But because I don't know them personally, it is very easy for me to suspend disbelief. Mentally, for a period of about two hours, the actor really does become the character. But if I knew the actor personally, all I would be thinking about is how different the character is from the personality I know. I would see the performance, and not the art. Magic is no different.

There are other reasons I don't like performing to friends and family.

To me, magic is a business. It's what I do, at least in part, for a living. Sure, friends do work for each other from time to time, but I loathe the sense of entitlement that seems to come with knowing a magician. Try asking a friend who is an attorney for free services over lunch sometime. If you're in genuine need, a good friend will gladly help. Otherwise, he'll resent the feeling that you expect him to work for free. Likewise, if you're a friend or a friend of a friend and you've never seen me work, I'll be glad to show you something sometime. No problem. But beyond that, I'll dish out the freebies on my own schedule. And it's not that I don't like giving a performance for friends, either...but it's uncomfortable enough that I only like to do it when I'm really mentally prepared to do it.

And then there's the element of what happens if something goes wrong. While on some level it's nice to have people to try things out on and give new material a test run before I go public, on another level, it's exactly the opposite of what I need in many cases. If I perform to strangers and it goes wrong, it feels like shit, but then I'll never see any of those people again. If I perform to a close friend and it all goes to shit...it's bound to be a bit awkward in the future.

There's also an element of proper etiquette. When I'm performing to a stranger, they're generally expected to follow certain social norms. They're not, unless they've been drinking, very likely to be aggressive or pushy. When receiving a performance from a stranger, people don't heckle, unless they're given damned good reason to. When I perform for people I know, I can't always exploit these social norms. For instance, if I perform for a stranger, I know exactly what I need to do to make someone look away from the deck of cards at the moment of truth. There are numerous techniques I can use to accomplish this, and the methodology is not important here (nor will I reveal it anyway). Yet, just the other day, I was performing for my mother, and she was burning my hands like nothing I've ever seen. I think she feels like she's being helpful when she watches so closely and always points out if she sees a move. But that's hardly the point. I have people I work with (fellow magicians) to watch for moves. I also tape myself and watch for moves. If I'm giving a performance, I'm not looking for someone to try to catch me. I'm looking for the response I would get if I were performing for an average Joe Blow on the street. With friends and family, I will never get that same reaction.

So if you've never seen me work, by all means ask me to do something some time. I'd love for all my friends to see something of mine at some point. If you introduce me to someone and want me to perform, that's cool too. Just give me notice so I can know what I'm going to do. Beyond that, try to respect that when I'm out with friends or family, I might want to just relax. Card tricks may seem easy, but they're hard work, and they're infinitely harder when I know the audience personally. So lay off a little bit, and I guarantee I'll have something to show you some day. After all, I am a showman--I always like to show off. I just like to do it on my own terms.

An open letter to Kool 105 radio

2011-05-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

I have been a long-time listener of Kool 105, and so it was with great disappointment that I logged onto Facebook this afternoon to find these two messages:

“Do you have a pet problem: Steve & Stephanie have a PET PSYCHIC on the show tomorrow, and if you’d like to talk with her---She needs a picture of your pet today! EMAIL A PICTURE OF YOUR PET-WITH THEIR NAME, YOUR NAME,PHONE NUMBER AND A SHORT DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM TO steve@kool105.com today! We’ll contact you later today to line you up for tomorrow morning to talk with the PET PSYCHIC.”

Followed shortly by:

“We have a few more spaces open to talk to our PET PSYCHIC tomorrow morning…I need you to email me a picture of your pet with, your contact info. And we’ll line you up with Patty the Pet Psychic….send photo of Dog, cat, snake, bird, spider to Steve@kool105.com right away.”

As a rational person, I find this reliance upon superstitious mythologies such as psychics (not to mention the silliness of pet psychics) horrifying. We live in a society whose very survival depends upon science. And yet, we have structured out society in such a way that scientists are not only generally misunderstood by the public at large, but people put their faith in anti-scientific nonsense like pet psychics.

I’ve been involved in the skeptical movement for many years. I am, of course, intimately familiar with the sorts of objections I am likely to receive to writing such a letter. First, I’ll be accused of being closed-minded. But this is certainly not the case. We must all of us remain open minded, but there seems to be a danger that if we open our minds too far, our brains will drop out. What I mean by this is that we must always be open to new and unusual ideas, but that we must demand a scientific high standard of evidence before we believe in any such claim. In the case of pet psychics, that burden of proof hasn’t come even close to being met.

And then of course, it is claimed that these things are just a bit of harmless fun. I cannot disagree more strongly. There is a truly marvelous website at www.whatstheharm.net dedicated to cataloging precisely what kinds of harm this superstitious flim-flammery can cause to innocent people. It is a very dangerous thing. It costs people their money, their health, their emotional security, their rational minds, and in many cases, their lives. So far, What’s the Harm has identified: 368,379 people killed, 306,096 injured, and over $2,815,931,000 in economic damages. And that’s just what their readers have reported to them. Surely there must be billions more people who suffer at the hands of charlatans.

Even in what would seem like a relatively benign incarnation of this belief system such as pet psychics, there is a very great and very real risk of emotional dependence upon charlatans, not to mention the thousands of dollars people can and will spend on such “services” after sadly becoming “addicted.” If nothing else, it is a risk being taken with no proven benefit. In fact, there’s not even a hint of a benefit. Nevermind benefit--there’s not even a hint of a way this could be possible without violating the known laws of physics.

These people are fakes, cheats, scoundrels, liars, and they need to be behind bars. Unfortunately, because the government seems all but completely unwilling to prosecute these cases of outright fraud, negligence, negligent homicide, practicing medicine without a license, and the list of potential charges goes on and on and on, we must rely upon the media to paint an accurate portrait of what’s really going on. And yes, that even includes entertainment shows such as yours. Instead of fulfilling your journalistic and decent human duty to protect people from fraud, you’ve invited a practitioner onto your program and solicited victims from the pool of your own listeners. This is a betrayal of your loyal fanbase, it is a betrayal of the scientific method, and it is a betrayal of common human morality.

Because, however, a radio show can be a great opportunity to provide a basic semi-scientific test of this psychic’s claims, I propose you do so. When the psychic is on your show, I suggest that she should be shown photographs of the pet (precisely the method she was going to take anyway), but instead of being told any information, she must first determine the pet’s name and what the problem its owner is having is. Surely the pet at least knows its name! It’s the single most common sound it hears! Why would she, a psychic for gods sakes, need to be told this simple piece of information? This is a great sort of informal test. It won’t make your psychic very happy, of course, because she’ll realize that you’ve discovered her to be a fraud. But it will help to protect your listeners.

Furthermore, and perhaps even easier for you to do on air, is the Million Dollar Psychic Challenge. James Randi and the James Randi Educational Foundation are currently offering no less than one MILLION dollars to any psychic who can demonstrate their abilities under scientific observing conditions which preclude the possibility of cheating. It’s a simple test, and the only protocols in place will not interfere in any legitimate phenomena--they will only prevent fraud. The claimants even help to design their own tests. If they succeed, they get a million bucks, and a public admission from Randi that he was wrong. Put this pet psychic on the spot: challenge her publicly, on your program, to take the test. Surely she could use a million dollars. If she says she doesn’t do it for the money, perhaps she could think of a charity. I’m sure sick children, or a veterinary clinic (perhaps more her cup of tea) would love such a donation. There is absolutely no excuse not to take Randi’s challenge. If she can really do what she says she can do, it’s easy money. The only reason she could refuse is if she knows she’s a fraud and doesn’t want to be caught.

Do the right thing. Defend science and reason on your show. Don’t promote dangerous superstition and fraud.

Sincerely,

Bob Lewis

Ethics for Magicians and Mentalists

2011-02-07T22:33:00.001-08:00

I'm a magician who dabbles from time to time in a bit of mental magic. There are others who specialize in one field or other. There are those who see the fields as one and the same, and others who see them as completely different. Personally, I see them as two branches of the same tree. They use similar methods, and both are related to performing the impossible. The difference isn't the substance, but the "flavor."

There are forums and clubs and groups of friends who gather, both online and in person, to discuss this art form. Generally, I steer clear of the topics related to pure mentalism, because that's not my specialty, and because I often find myself getting pissed off when I read about it (such as the time I saw Uri Geller on the cover of a magicians' trade journal). But this evening, I broke down and peeked at the mentalists board on a forum, and found a topic in which people were discussing Sylvia Browne (if you're unfamiliar with Sylvia Browne, I suggest you visit www.stopsylvia.com for more information--that site, maintained by Robert Lancaster, has an amazing wealth of information). Anyway, the point is, I was prompted to post a discussion of ethics for mentalists and magicians, because apparently, common human decency are in shorter supply in my profession than I had thought.

I'll begin by trying to explain the difference between magicians and mentalists. A magician uses trickery, sleight of hand, psychology, and various other means of deception to accomplish the apparently impossible. Mentalists do exactly the same thing, but they specialize in apparently "mental" or "psychic" feats. Basically, mentalists are magicians whose effects are apparently accomplished with mental powers.

Sylvia Browne and Uri Geller, were they legitimate entertainers, would fall into the category of mentalists. Their apparently psychic feats seem to happen by mental power alone. But of course, they aren't really doing these things--it's all trickery.

So, back to the forum topic. A guy mentioned Browne, and here are some samples of comments posted to the forums.

While Browne is just a normal medium who earns a living like everyone else, I've always felt that the extent she takes it goes just a little bit far. Even among mediums there is a level of decency and more importantly caution that Browne doesn't seem to exhibit.

Another responded:

This may be the case, but she's out there doing it and making a living at it! That puts her on the top rung of the ladder. Who is to say what is the level of decency when it comes to this area?

She is quite a PRO!

And the same person later commented:

You guys are just too funny. LOL

No one twist arms to make people listen to her. Since you guys are talking about taking the high road when it comes to dealing with people, would one of you mediums (here) tell me where to buy/find the rule book for mediums and where it talks about the levels of decency and caution. You know, where it states that mediums must exhibited these trates. Anyone?

So I guess the levels of decency and caution is really something that you guys thought up on your own. How nice of you to judge others with what you think is right.

I could care less what other mediums do or their methods, but really would like to read this rule book that you guys must be getting your infomation from. I want my copy.

To be fair, there were some level-headed responses as well, such as the gentleman who remarked:

Who is to say? Anyone who finds her pronouncements to parents of missing children reprehensible. Anyone who thinks the parents of Shawn Hornbeck did not deserve to be lied to like Sylvia lied to them. Anyone who thinks her comments regarding Opal Jo Jennings were vile and disgusting.

I am one of those people, and I have no qualms about saying Sylvia Browne is a predator who takes advantage of the grief of her victims to line her pockets and does not care what harm she brings to them.

I take issue with a lot of mediums, but I will be more circumspect with most. Browne, however, is at the far end of the spectrum and deserves no respect, no circumspection, and no kind words.

Eventually, the conversation devolved into people referring to the Bible as the aforementioned "rule book," and I stopped reading at that point, as I suspect you probably already know what my thought are on that kind of thing.

But here's the thing, Sylvia Browne doesn't just earn a living like anyone else. What she does is fraud, and it's the worst sort of fraud I can imagine. She tramples the loving memories of the bereaved for a quick undeserved dollar. As Penn Jillette said about these psychics, they are in a very real sense, motherfuckers. Nor is Browne just making a living like anyone else in the sense that she charges something like $600 for a 30-minute "psychic reading," during which time she spends most of those few short minutes reading off the names of your guardian angels, rather than providing the "service" she's supposed to be.

And then when she gets involved in missing persons cases or anything related to that, she sends investigators on a wild goose chase, diverting attention from the proper investigation which could actually save lives. Listening to people like Browne will at the very least rob you of your money, likely cause emotional distress, and quite possibly cost lives.

When we get into this debate, though, we see people talking about the other mediums, such as ones on that forum. The fact of the matter is, there is no such thing as an honest "medium." There are honest mentalists, sure. They're legitimate entertainers and don't claim to be real psychics anymore than Hal Holbrook claims to be the real Mark Twain.

Yes, magicians and mentalists, even the honest ones, use deception. It's part of the game. But there's a big difference between lying to people from a stage as part of a show, and lying to people and claiming it's all real. It's what separates legitimate magicians from those scumbags who need to be behind bars.

But, since people seem to want a rule-book, I thought I'd provide some thoughts on ethics for magicians. Whenever someone joins a magical society, the first thing he or she needs to do is swear an oath. Generally speaking, it's all about protecting secrets. "I swear on my honor I will not tell how it's done." That sort of thing. I think we need some additions to these oaths. Magicians need to start policing their own ranks, because there are a few motherfuckers out there who give us all a bad name.

First, and most importantly: Thou shalt not claim real powers. Sure, by all means pretend to have powers while you're on stage. But don't start opening up psychic hotlines, or giving psychic readings to the bereaved on television programs, or pretending to assist police in finding missing children. If you do that sort of thing, you need to be behind bars.

Secondly, in situations in which people are likely to think you might have real powers, I think it is only prudent to publicly disclaim said powers. It's not going to hurt your performance to begin a show by saying "I don't have real powers--it's all trickery--but I bet that we can still have a good time."

We don't expect a magician who does a watch stealing routine to actually go out and steal watches. It's all part of the act. By the same token, I don't expect an entertainer with a psychic routine to pretend to be a real psychic. Anyone who steals watches is a thief and needs to be behind bars, and the same is true of anyone who claims psychic powers.

It's not that difficult to tell the difference between legitimate entertainment and fraud. Magicians, mentalists--if you're claiming real powers, watch your backs. There are a lot of us who are sick of this shit, and we're not going to take it anymore. Everyone else, I urge you to not take it anymore either. If you're not mad as hell already, you better get there soon. Law enforcement--start putting the frauds behind bars. We need a purging of our industry, and it's time we start enforcing some very basic ethics. We need to stop tolerating the rampant fraud in this business. Anyone who even hints at having real powers should be immediately barred from magical societies, shunned by the community, and sent packing. Because the longer they're allowed to stay, the more people will begin to associate them with the rest of us, and that's the last thing anyone needs.

You Want To Bet?

2011-01-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

I was recently directed toward an article by a gentleman by the name of David Wong (author of the novel, "John Dies At the End," which has been sitting on my reading list for quite a while) entitled "10 Things Christians and Atheists Can (And Must) Agree On." Mr. Wong seems like an agreeable enough chap. His message basically boils down to "can't we all just get along," and that's a message worthy of hearing from time to time. But occasionally, no we can't, and there are some things I resent being told to agree with.

So you can follow along with what I'm on about this time, you can read the original article here.

In his introduction, Wong begins by arguing that if you celebrate someone's death, you're pretty much a prick, and makes the case that just about all of us can agree on that one. Well, okay...he then talks about atheists celebrating the death of Jerry Falwell. Well...okay...actually celebrating his demise may be a bit of a dick move, and if so then I'm guilty as charged. But the fact of the matter is, Falwell had nothing but venomous bile to spew, and the world is better off without his hateful message clogging the minds of his followers (some of whom, no doubt, could easily be moved to commit actual acts of violence against homosexuals, abortion providers, atheists, pagans, or anyone else who doesn't fit into the neat little Christian box Falwell and his ilk want to force us all into). I don't so much celebrate his death as I do his being silenced. And I'll be perfectly clear, because there are still people like him around (**cough**patrobertson**cough**), I don't advocate violence, and I certainly wouldn't celebrate his death, say, at his funeral. He did have a family who, despite their obvious faults in not disowning that goon years ago, should be respected in their grief. But for pete's sake, don't tell me I can't be glad he can't shout his message anymore.

Now, on to his ten points (the introduction was just a little freebie).

1. You can do terrible things in the name of either one.

Okay, this is the point at which he tips his hand. This man is not an atheist. He's revealed a complete lack of understanding of what atheism actually is already, and he's only just begun to make his first point. Atheism is not a belief system. It's a lack of one. You can't do terrible things in the name of a LACK of a belief.

The larger point he's trying to make, that both Christians and atheists can and have done terrible things is certainly valid. On the one hand you've got the Crusades, the troubles in Northern Ireland, Hitler, the 9/11 terrorists, those who would bomb abortion clinics, and their ilk. On the other side...well...Stalin. So yeah, both sides have some bad apples. We're agreed that both Christians and atheists are mostly good people and that there are murderous fucks in both camps. But the point is not quite that simple.

We realize that a murderer who happens to be a Christian or a murderer who happens to be an atheist does not reflect on the entire belief system or lack thereof. The only question is whether or not the belief system (or lack thereof) actually leads someone to commit these acts. In the case of, say, the Crusades or the 9/11 attacks, it was a religious belief that caused these people to act as they did. One cannot say that about atheism, because it's impossible to do anything in the name of nothing. Atheism isn't even a thing at all. It shouldn't even be an -ism. It's just a lack of a belief in a god. And while you can kill in the name of a god, you can't kill in the name of no god. Can't be done.

He also postulates that it's impossible to calculate whether the volume of violent events would go up or down if either side were to "win" (meaning one or the other side completely goes away). Of course, if we're talking about absolute certainty, he's correct. But we don't need absolute certainty. We can look at prison statistics and find that Christians overwhelmingly outnumber the atheists in the prison population (even accounting for their larger representation in the population at large). We can look at the history books. But most importantly, we can just sit down and use our heads. Let's imagine Christianity away for a minute. What changes? No more killing in the name of the Christian god. Now let's imagine atheism away. What changes? Well, we don't lose any potential motives for violence as we do in the previous case. Instead, we gain however many atheists there are as potential "murderers for Jesus." So yes, we do have a pretty damn good idea which way that turn of events would swing.

2. Both sides really do believe what they're saying.

Mostly, I'll give him this one. He seems to take the Christians to task at least as much as we atheists (for which I give him much credit), because they seem to think that we're all just lying about our lack of a belief out of some stubborn sense of rebellion. Nonsense, and he's right in calling it so. And I generally do assume that the Christians believe what they're saying to...up to a point.

I do think that many simply parrot arguments they hear from the pulpit without actually bothering to think for themselves about what they really believe. It doesn't mean they don't really believe it, but it does mean they haven't thought about it. Generally speaking, I think if you put much thought to it, the god thing just sort of collapses under the weight of its own stupidity.

3. In everyday life, you're not that different.

He had me 100% (or at least 95%) until he actually started trying to explain it. Then he goes into talking about morality and thinking we live as if there were some magical skydaddy lawmaker deciding what is or is not justice. Bullshit! Biblical morality is barbaric and obscene. It's true, Christians and atheists have mostly the same morality, but it ain't from the Bible, it ain't from a God, and it sure as hell ain't Christian. We're mostly the same in everyday life because we're a product of the same culture(s). We share evolutionary and cultural history, and our morality comes from that. Not from a god.

4. There are good people on both sides.

Agreed. Just one thing to say. Atheists don't claim our own good people as being good because they're atheists. They're good people because they're good people and they happen to not believe in a god. Christians would do well to do the same. Martin Luther King, Jr. (mentioned in the article) was a great man. One of the best. And though he painted his speeches with a Christian brush, he was good because he was good, not because he was a Christian. Religious beliefs or lack thereof are largely incidental to whether or not someone is good. They only seem to play a role when some religious people (and I hasten to add that it's and extreme minority) kill in the name of some god.

5. Your point of view is legitimately offensive to them.

Well, I'll give it to him. People shouldn't be so damned easy to offend, but it is the case. He's very careful not to let this point intrude on the area of which side is factually correct, so it's pretty agreeable. Christians and atheists do piss each other off. And in day to day life, I think we can all do a lot better to get along. But there is definitely a place for ranting debate. Like in our books and blogs. This is a debate we need to have before the bombs start falling in another holy war.

6. We tend to exaggerate about the other guy.

Absolutely true. I do think the Christians tend to exaggerate more than the atheists do, which makes sense, since all the science and data are on our side--all they're left with is exaggeration. But yes, we all do exaggerate. I do it, too, but I attempt to make it clear in my own writings when I'm exaggerating, and when I'm using the more extreme examples of Christianity in order to make my point. I do realize that most Christians aren't as stupid as the Jerry Falwell types, but I tend to write more about that type because a) I want to make a point, so I use the extreme examples to illustrate what I'm talking about and b) I fear those types more than the average Christian you meet in day to day life.

7. We tend to exaggerate about ourselves, too.

Again, I agree. I think he takes his examples too far (I would think this was intentional, to further make his point, but I don't think, based on some of his other examples, that he's doing so). And again, I think the Christians are more guilty than the atheists. But whoever does it more or less, we all do exaggerate about ourselves and the other guy.

8. Focusing on negative examples makes you stupid.

Bullshit! Granted, it is asinine to focus on negative examples as if they were representative of everyone on the other side. But we're having a debate here. We're going to call the other side on their shit. It's part of the game. So yes, I'm going to talk about Fred Phelps. No, I'm not going to say all Christians are like that (that really would be stupid), but I will talk about him as one possible negative outcome of Christianity. And that's a fair point. I'd welcome Christians to come up with a negative outcome of atheism if they can find one, but so far they've been unable to do so.

9. Both sides have brought good to the table.

It depends. PEOPLE from both sides certainly have. But Christianity itself has never really done anything for us except "bad" things. Atheism, being nothing more than a lack of a belief, hasn't done anything good or bad. But Christians and atheists have both done lots of good, and some have done bad. Talk about people, you've got me on your side. Talk about beliefs, you're going to lose me.

He does go on to lose me by talking about religion making humanity sacred and giving us morality and other nonsense. And it is nonsense. Religion hasn't done jack or shit for humanity. Just because religious people have, doesn't mean the religion gets the credit.

10. You'll never harass the other side out of existence.

I agree, as long as the point is phrased precisely this way. Being vile and harassing people isn't going to win the war. Yes, there's a place for it. Yes, it's important to point out how silly those Christians are from time to time. But the real place we need to have this war is in the debate halls. We need to have an open dialogue. When exposed to the light of reason and open debate, religion withers and dies. It can only fester under a cloud of ignorance.

Wong's point is to lead by example. I agree with that too. We should all strive to be good people, to be rational people, and to make the most of our lives. Lead by example, debate the points, and try to be respectful rather than harassing. I do think that's one point we really can all get behind.

On Censorship

2011-01-08T13:03:00.000-08:00

This week, the Internet's been all a-twitter about Huckleberry Finn. Under normal circumstances, I would be pleased to know that people are talking about a wonderful classic work of literature. This time...not so much. You see, what they're really screaming about isn't Huck Finn. It's censorship.

So, what's this really all about? It's pretty simple. Racial issues play a major role in Huck Finn. By no means is it a work of racist literature, or the work of a racist author. Quite the opposite, in fact. But it takes place during a time when racism was the norm, and hence, the word "nigger" appears repeatedly throughout the text. And, same as it ever was, people who are not content to be offended on their own have taken it upon themselves to be offended on behalf of the rest of us and file complaints against the book in the schools. More and more, school districts have been giving in to the whiny little bitches and pulling it from their required reading lists, relegating it to the optional reading lists, or banning it outright from their libraries.

Seeing this as an opportunity, publisher NewSouth Books plans to release an edited version of Huck Finn, in a single volume with Tom Sawyer, in which all instances of the word "nigger" are replaced with the word "slave." Sure, their intentions are honorable enough. They see that this word is causing schools to ban the book, so they've decided that it is better for students to have access to a censored version than no version at all. For myself, I see their point. It's definitely a valid one. But it is also one I very strongly disagree with.

The simple fact of the matter is, I would much rather if people would go to bat for the book, instead of caving in to the small-minded morons who would see it banned because of the presence of a single word. Yes, yes, it's an offensive word to many people. But why should it be so? I've never understood this fear of words. Words are sequences of letters or sequences of sounds and nothing more. Yes, there are words that express offensive ideas (to some, "cocksucker" or "motherfucker"--to me, "faith," or "god"). But is it not the idea which is offensive, not the sequence of sounds we arbitrarily use to describe it? You can say "freaking" all you want, but if you don't mean anything different that when you say "fucking," all you're really doing is cowardly giving in to the myopic thought police. I'm not saying there's no place for "freaking," but I am asking you to think about the way you use your language.

"Nigger" is an offensive word, because it reflects racism. Racism is a disgusting topic, but it is also a real topic, and Huck Finn deals with racial issues. The word only has power because people find it offensive, and the book is powerful because it makes use of that word, with all its baggage, to deliver its point to the reader. By replacing the "offensive" word with a "less offensive" one, we deprive the author of his intended meaning. Nevermind the point that "slave" is not only NOT less offensive, but also less accurate to the story.

Getting back to the question no one seems willing to answer, though: is it better to have the censored version than no version at all if they're going to be banned from school libraries otherwise? My kneejerk reaction would be to say that yes, it would be better. But honestly, upon a bit of thought, I'm not so sure. Putting aside the truly proper course of action (which may involve taking legal action (or at the very least, sparking community outrage) against schools who remove the book from their libraries), we're still leaving these students with a half-assed (at best) literary education if we teach them that it's better to accept a censored version of a classic work when parts of that work are deemed offensive than to accept the work as it is, and to learn to intellectually explore the work, good and bad, and form one's own opinions. Is the point of literature (or one of the points of literature, anyway) not to spark an internal dialogue in the reader? To explore new ideas? To rethink old ideas? If we censor any work of literature, we're sending a message to these students that some ideas cannot be explored. Well, news flash folks! Racism exists. It existed more in the time period in which Huck Finn takes place, and it still exists today. Sweeping it under the rug and pretending everything's okay won't make it go away. It will only make it fester.

Here's a little thought experiment. Let us imagine that some day, the word "raven" is deemed offensive to certain ornithological communities. What is a level-headed school board (or publisher) to do but to replace the word with the far less offensive "cuntpickle" in works of classic literature?

The Cuntpickle
by Edgar Allan Poe
(Edited by Bob Lewis)

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately cuntpickle of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the cuntpickle, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the cuntpickle, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the cuntpickle still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the cuntpickle, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the cuntpickle, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the cuntpickle, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the cuntpickle, `Nevermore.'

And the cuntpickle, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

I can already hear it coming--it's such a minor change, it doesn't really hurt the narrative. It's just much less offensive to some people. This is a good thing. It's better to have the edited version than no version at all. Well, I'm sorry, but unless you'd rather read The Cuntpickle than The Raven, leave Mark Twain the fuck alone! I'm sick of this censorship bullshit.

I've been quiet for a while now. But now it's 2011. I'm back, and I'm ready to kick some ass. Let no idiot go unpunished and no rant go unranted. And the first ones against the wall are the myopic ignoramuses who think censorship is EVER acceptable.

The Big Problem Science Has With Religion

2010-07-03T01:44:00.000-07:00

I've just been linked to a story I've seen before, entitled "the little problem science has with religion." Since it's been around the block a few times and its author is unknown, I'll take the liberty of posting it in its entirety here. I'll provide my thoughts and retorts throughout. Quoted text is taken exactly as it was presented, without any alterations to the text or format, except to break it up for my commentary.

Note: Forgive the formatting errors in the quotations. I'll try to fix it when I have the time, but I wanted to get this online quickly.

[quote]

"Let me explain the problem science has with religion." The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new
students to stand....[/quote]

This immediately identifies the story as a fiction. Professors simply don't push antireligion in the classroom, and they certainly don't pick on students for their religious beliefs. That's the fastest way to be out of a job. But, even as a fiction, it could still be an interesting philosophical dialogue. Let's see where they go with this, shall we?

[quote]"You're a Christian, aren't you, son?"

"Yes sir," the student says.

"So you believe in God?"

"Absolutely!"

"Is God good?"

"Sure! God's good."

"Is God all-powerful? Can God do anything?"

"Yes."

"Are you good or evil?"

"The Bible says I'm evil."

The professor grins knowingly. "Aha! The Bible!"

He considers for a moment, "Here's one for you.

Let's say there's a sick person over here and you can cure him. You can do it. Would you help him? Would you try?"

"Yes sir, I would."

"So you're good!"[/quote]

A reasonable, if a bit over-simplistic, observation. Helping the sick is, by any reasonable moral standard, a good action.

[quote]"I wouldn't say that."

"But why not say that? You'd help a sick and maimed person if you could. Most of us would if we could. But God doesn't."

The student does not answer, so the professor continues.

"He doesn't, does he? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer, even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him. How is this Jesus good? Hmmm? Can you answer that one?"

The student remains silent.[/quote]

The student remains silent for a reason. The professor's argument is valid. Sure, there have been a few apologetics offered to counter this problem before, but none have stood up. As the old saying goes...

Is god willing to prevent suffering but not able? Then he's not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he's not good.

Is he neither willing nor able? Then why call him God?

Is he both willing and able? Then why is there still suffering?

[quote]"No, you can't, can you?" the professor says. He takes a sip of water from glass on his desk to give the student time to relax. "Let's start again,
young fella. Is God good?"

"Er...yes," the student says.

"Is Satan good?"

The student doesn't hesitate on this one,

"No."

"Then where does Satan come from?"

The student falters, "From God."

"That's right. God made Satan, didn't he? Tell me, son. Is there evil in this world?"

"Yes sir."

"Evil's everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything, correct?"

"Yes."

"So who created evil?" The professor continued, "If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists and according to the principle that our works define who we are, then God is evil."

Again, the student has no answer.[/quote]

Technically, this is flawed logic on the professor's part. Presumably, God's creation of evil could have been a mistake, error of judgement or other faux pas. However, if one assumes that God is both omniscient and omnipotent, as Christian doctrine teaches, the thought that evil could be a mistake is out of the question.

Even the Bible makes this point perfectly clear, in Isaiah 45:7: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

With this in mind, it's no wonder the student has no answer, as his own Bible goes against what he's been taught to believe.

[quote]"Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things, do they exist in this world?"

The student squirms on his feet. "Yes."

"So who created them?"

The student does not answer again, so the professor repeats his question, "Who created them?"

There is still no answer. Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace in front of the classroom. The class is mesmerized.

"Tell me," he continues onto another student.

"Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?"

The student's voice betrays him and cracks. "Yes, professor, I do."

The old man stops pacing, "Science says you have five (5) senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Have you ever seen Jesus?"

"No sir. I've never seen Him."

"Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelt your Jesus? Have you ever had any sensory perception of Jesus Christ, or God for that
matter?"

"No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't."

"Yet you still believe in him?"

"Yes."

"According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son?"[/quote]

Here's where we run into a bit of a snag. Science is not limited to human perception. Science attempts to overcome the limits of human perception through experimentation, because we know our senses are flawed. You don't have to see something to know it's there. You do, however, require EVIDENCE. And evidence can take many different forms.

[quote]"Nothing," the student replies. "I only have my faith."

"Yes, faith," the professor repeats. "And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence, only faith."[/quote]

This is true. There is no evidence, so science does have a problem with religion. That doesn't mean we need to be able to see God, but in order to be accepted by science, we need some sort of evidence. Faith, or belief without evidence, is the surrender of the mind.

[quote]The student stands quietly for a moment, before asking a question of his own. "Professor, is there such thing as heat?"
"Yes," the professor replies. "There's heat."

"And is there such a thing as cold?"

"Yes, son, there's cold too."

"No sir, there isn't."

The professor turns to face the student, obviously interested. The room suddenly becomes very quiet.

The student begins to explain . . . "You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, unlimited heat, white heat, a little heat or no
heat, but we don't have anything called 'cold.' We can hit up to 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can't go any further after
that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we would be able to go colder than the lowest-458 degrees." Everybody or object is susceptible to
study when it has or transmits energy and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-458 Fahrenheit) is the
total absence of heat. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in
thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it."[/quote]

True. I suspect any professor would realize this, and only use the word "cold" colloquially, but the student is not mistaken.

[quote]Silence across the room. A pen drops somewhere in the classroom, sounding like a hammer.

"What about darkness, professor. Is there such a thing as darkness?"

"Yes," the professor replies without hesitation. What is night if it isn't darkness?"[/quote]

Surely a professor would see the trap by this point. That he'd walk into it again betrays the absurdity of the story.

[quote]"You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is not something; it is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing
light, but if you have no light constantly you have nothing and its called darkness, isn't it? That's the meaning we use to define the word. In
reality, darkness isn't. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?"

The professor begins to smile at the student in front of him. This will be a good semester. "So what point are you making, young man?"

"Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with and so your conclusion must also be flawed."

The professor's face cannot hide his surprise this time, "Flawed? Can you explain how?"[/quote]

Yes, please explain. This is where the story gets interesting.

[quote]"You are working on the premise of duality," the student explains . . "You argue that there is life and then there's death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we canmeasure. Sir, science can't even explain a thought." It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the a bsence of it." Now tell me, professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?"[/quote]

Oy vey! There's a lot to talk about here. Firstly, whether God is finite or infinite, measurable or not, there must be SOME evidence for his/her/its existence, or there's no reason to believe it. I don't care if you can measure every detail of what it is, where it came from, what it can do. I just want to see some evidence that it's actually there.

True, science has not completely cracked the problem of human consciousness, though there have been remarkable advances. The difference is clear, however--we know that we think from firsthand experience. We can measure brain activity, and begin to understand the processes. Not only do we have evidence of human consciousness, we are well on our way to understanding it through experimentation.

Granted, death is not the opposite of life, in the same way that cold is not the opposite of heat. But this is irrelevant. If you're making claims of an afterlife, provide some evidence. Otherwise, what's the point?

Finally, evolved from a monkey? I thought we'd dispatched that misconception years ago. Humans are great apes. We didn't evolve from any modern species, monkey or otherwise. We share a recent common ancestry with chimpanzees, a slightly more distant ancestry with other primates, more distant still with all mammals, and so on. All life on earth shares a common ancestry, but we did not "evolve from monkeys." This is a straw-man argument.

[quote]"If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do."[/quote]

A good answer. The professor should have schooled the student in basic middle-school biology, but I'll give him a pass in that he properly answered the question (avoiding the straw man) without derailing the conversation.

[quote] "Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?"

The professor begins to shake his head, still smiling, as he realizes where the argument is going; a very good semester, indeed.[/quote]

Here is where things really fall apart. Firstly, everyone who has witnessed a birth has witnessed evolution first hand. Many scientists, particularly biologists, have witnessed speciation within the laboratory. But the point isn't witnessing it firsthand. The point is a preponderance of evidence. We have amongst other things, fossils and genetics, each of which provide massive evidence demonstrating the fact of evolution.

[quote]"Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you now not a scientist, but a preacher?"[/quote]

False. We have witnessed it in life and in the laboratory, and have massive evidence of its history. The very basics of evolution are middle-school level science. The basics of the scientific process are taught in grade school. This student has demonstrated an absolute lack of knowledge of both.

[quote]The class is in uproar. The student remains silent until the commotion has subsided.

"To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, let me give you an example of what I mean." The student looks around the room, "Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor's brain?" The class breaks out into laughter.

"Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain, felt the professor's brain, touched or smelt the professor's brain? No one appears
to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, with all
due respect, sir."[/quote]

But of course they haven't SEEN it. But there's evidence of it. For instance, the knowledge that the brain controls nerve function in the body through experimentation. It then follows that, when witnessing nerve function, this serves as evidence of the presence of a brain. It's not a question of sight, for cryin' out loud, it's a question of EVIDENCE.

[quote]"So if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures, sir?"

Now the room is silent. The professor just stares at the student, his face unreadable. Finally, after what seems an eternity, the old man answers, "I
guess you'll have to take them on faith."[/quote]

No one who can attain the position of professor would be unable to conceive the arguments I've just presented, even if flustered by a snippy student. This is a ridiculous answer. Furthermore, a good professor doesn't expect his students to believe or trust his lectures, but to be prepared to learn from them, and challenge themselves intellectually with them. If legitimate flaws can be found, a good professor would be pleased with any student who could find them. Needless to say, the "flaws" this student points out are not legitimate.

[quote]"Now, you accept that there is faith, and, in fact, faith exists with life," the student continues, now, sir, is there such a thing as evil?"

Now uncertain, the professor responds, "Of course, there is. We see it everyday. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in
the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil."

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like
darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no
light."[/quote]

Well, I would have to take issue with believing in "evil" as a thing. It is simply a label we ascribe to certain actions we deem unworthy of our respect. Even with that in mind, the argument is a non sequitur, because while darkness is in fact the absence of light, "evil" however we may define it, is a proactive behavioral choice carried out by humans.

[quote]The professor sat down.

If you read it all the way through and had a smile on your face when you finished, mail it to your friends and family.

PS: The student was Albert Einstein.[/quote]

Obviously nonsense. Albert Einstein was an atheist, as he repeatedly confirmed in his correspondence.

Bob

Lowest Common Denominator

2010-05-16T15:40:00.001-07:00

It occurs to me, after a bit of sleep and further reflection, that what I was really talking about last night was the lowest common denominator. It seems that all too many performers try to make their craft appeal to the lowest common denominator in any given audience, and I think that's wrong. I think that's why so few actually hit "art."

Magician are too afraid to inject a bit of literature or philosophy into their act, for fear of alienating those in their audience who don't read, or may not "get it." Balloon artists content themselves to work for children, twisting cute little animals instead of balloon sculpture like those shown here.

There's nothing wrong with working for children, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to be accessible to the masses. But consider aiming at a higher target. Don't be elitist, but a reference to Shakespeare during a magic trick will enhance the experience for those who do get it, and will simply be overlooked or forgotten by those who don't. You can aim high and create art without sacrificing audience appeal. I think that's a worthy mindset to consider.

Searching for Art

2010-05-15T23:30:00.000-07:00

It's after midnight once again and I'm sitting in a cold dark room with nothing but my computer, my thoughts, and a fresh pack of cigarettes to keep me company. A dangerous situation because it often leads me to start thinking about strange little bits of philosophy. In this case, I got to thinking about art. What is it that makes something artful?

Traditionally, art was a term used to describe anything done with great skill or mastery. But during the Romantic period, this definition changed (I think for the better), and art began to be viewed as a human pursuit equal to but separate from religion and science. I would, of course, argue that religion should be disposed of and that art and science should take their places as the two leading instruments or expressions of human knowledge and experience, but that's neither here nor there. The important part is that art is created in order to provoke thought or emotion.

This is separate and distinct from any number of skillful acts that I think do not deserve to be called "art." Eugene Burger, one of magic's leading philosophers, makes a distinction between "stunt" and "magic," in that, though a stunt may be impressive, it doesn't point to anything beyond itself. It simply is what it is. There's nothing wrong with stunts, but they are not art. Art should point beyond itself to something more profound.

In an episode of the comedy show Family Guy, a teacher instructs his class to remember the proper performance hierarchy: legitimate theatre, musical theatre, stand-up, ventriloquism, magic, mime.

It's an old prejudice, and is unfair to any number of performers. But why is it still so commonly held? Because the lower one falls on that hierarchy, the less likely one is to be working toward something artistic. Entertaining, sure. But art? Sadly, all too rare.

Within the first few pages of the first volume of The Art of Astonishment, Paul Harris describes the reactions he received when he told people he was working on a book about magic. I can certainly relate to his experiences. One thought he was talking about children's magic. It's another old prejudice that says magic is only for children. Another insisted that he knew some card tricks. It was only when Harris, instead of using the word "magic," said that he was working on a book about the moment of astonishment, that he was able to generate what seemed to be legitimate interest in what he was doing.

Roger Ebert, the noted film critic, recently wrote that video games can never be art. In that case, he was more wrong that the video game industry deserved, but is it really any surprise? It's somewhat understandable that an older man without gaming experience will lack understanding of the artful qualities of a video game, but it is also true that game designers could make more of an effort to truly create art, instead of just a fun game. Some do, and I admire them greatly.

I was recently reading through the pages of a forum for magicians, looking to learn and share my limited knowledge as I was able, when I came across a section devoted to those who "table hop," or stroll at parties. I don't particularly like the term "table hopper," as it immediately conjures images of a performer, little better than a beggar, going from table to table soliciting tips, rather than attempting to create an artful and memorable performance. In all too many cases, the term seems to apply. For the few exceptions, it is useful only in that it (somewhat) accurately describes the performing venue. Within the pages of this forum, one finds many balloon twisters--performers who make balloon animals for children.

A repeated topic of conversation is the poor treatment of these performers by parents who feel cheated when the performers have to "cut the line" in order to get home or to their next gig on time.

Let me make myself clear. If you want to perform for children, more power to you. But in any consideration of "performance hierarchy," whatever your prejudice may be, can you think of anyone lower than a balloon twister? I can't, and I think that's a shame. Sure, they're not traditionally artistic, as painting can be. But why should these performers confine themselves to the hell of working for overprivileged children, instead of creating art? I've seen what a masterful balloon twister can create when not working for six-year-old yuppies-in-training, and it's quite impressive. Sometimes, it even reaches a level of--dare I say it?--art!

Likewise, magic shouldn't be just for children, but should be used to create thoughtful or emotional experiences for audiences. All forms of performance art should be thought of first and foremost as ART.

Am I a voice in the wilderness? Whatever your skill, whatever your talent, whatever your interests...stop wasting your time with meaningless stunts or simple unartistic creations for children. Start working on making your performance REAL ART. Then, and only then, will a wider variety of performance arts become readily acceptable.

I've performed stunts. But I don't want to be a performing monkey anymore. I'm not going to do stunts. I'm going to create art. And I hope you will to.

When Words Fail

2010-04-24T22:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, even for a writer, words just aren't enough. They fail to express. They fall short of communicating emotions.

And yet, what is one to do when words are all one has, and they still fail?

Stephen King once said, "The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings--words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out."

Nuff said.

Overprotective Parents

2010-04-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, people. I get it, I really do. You love your children and want no harm to come to them. We live in a scary world, and there are countless bad things that can happen. I understand. But are there really predators around every corner? Nope. Will video games make your kids violent? No, double no, and a "hell no" to top it off.

Here's the deal. It's the parents responsibility to ensure their kids safety. Sure, and by all means do so. But I'm reminded of one of my favorite Benjamin Franklin quotes: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." He was talking about political policy, of course, but it applies here as well. Children, especially once they reach a certain age, require the liberty to make mistakes and experience life. To deprive them of this experience in the interest of protecting them will not prevent harm, but will CAUSE it. Part of psychological development is learning how to make and deal with your own mistakes. Part of life is learning how to properly deal with society.

What brought on this discussion? I was working at the bookstore the other day, and a woman came in with her son (I would guess perhaps age fourteen or so). He wanted a book on dinosaurs, so I showed them to the science section and offered a few suggestions. Of course I avoided the advanced scientific books, but I found a couple nice oversized "illustrated encyclopedia" type books that seemed to be precisely what they were looking for. I gave him a few to flip through and see how he'd enjoy them.

The mother said, "I'm going to go look around. Can you stay here and look through those?"

"Yes."

"Okay, there are chairs right over there. You can sit down and have a look."

"Okay."

"Now don't wander off, and if anyone tries anything funky, you scream. And I don't mean scream like 'ehh,' but you really scream."

This is not a six year old child we're talking about here, but an adolescent. An acquaintance of mine who I met at a magic theatre owned his own business, was involved in non-prophet work, and a decent stage performer by the time he was that age. Many lose their virginity earlier than that and though becoming sexually active at age fourteen may be a mistake (not a horrible mistake, but perhaps a mistake nonetheless), I can't help but wonder, what the fuck is wrong with this mother? The child is old enough to live a little, and unless he's severely mentally challenged (which is obviously not the case), he should be able to visit the bookstore without a lesson on how to scream "if anyone tries anything funky."

Do you want to create a world full of people who don't know how to engage someone in conversation? A world full of people afraid to get on a plane for a business trip without someone to hold their hand the whole way? A world full of socially inept, mentally incapable buffoons? That's what you're contributing to if you're an overprotective parent. Get over yourself and let your kids live life the way it's meant to be lived, because guess what--there aren't predators around every corner, sitting on the toilet seat isn't going to give you a disease, and as long as you use protection, sex isn't evil.

By all means, teach your children about the dangers that do exist. The world isn't always a pretty place. But sheltering them from life is not the answer. It will only leave them ill-prepared to face challenges later.

Magical Etiquette: Tipping

2010-04-23T01:52:00.000-07:00

People don't see magicians every day, and so many people are unsure of proper etiquette when dealing with a magical performer. In this new series of posts, I provide a few tips to help put your mind at ease and make your experience a little more magical and a little less worrying.

Tipping

One of the first questions people typically have is "Am I expected to tip the magician?" The answer depends entirely upon the setting.

Of course, in a theatrical setting, where the magician is performing on stage, tipping is uncalled for and would be entirely out of place. You've either purchased a ticket for the show, or your host has paid an all inclusive fee to have a performer at your event.

If it's at a private function, but more of a walk-around, casual setting (ie., the magician is hopping from table to table, or is mingling with guests at a cocktail party), we begin to enter into the area where people don't know what to expect. Generally speaking, it's safe to assume that at any private function, the magician has been well-paid for his appearance and tipping is unnecessary. If you feel you've received exceptional treatment and want to show your thanks, a tip may be accepted, but you should feel under no obligation. The magician is not expecting a tip at this type of event, and receiving one is the exception rather than the rule.

If you feel you want to offer a tip but are still unsure, I would advise you to consider the type of event you're at. If you're at a wedding, or other type of "special" event, I would consider tipping out of the question. Were I offered a tip at such a setting, I would likely turn it down, not to be rude to the audience member, but to be polite to the bride and groom. At a casual cocktail party, I would certainly never expect a tip (if I'm performing in such a situation, it is literally the farthest thing from my mind), but would be far less likely to refuse it if offered.

Again, feel under no obligation, but if you have a strong desire, just use common sense.

If the magician is performing at a restaurant, hopping from table to table, we find ourselves in the situation where people become really uncertain about the proper etiquette. A magician working in such a situation should be financially taken care of by the management of the restaurant and thus should not be soliciting tips. In fact, I consider those performers who actively solicit tips (such as by wearing "I work for tips" buttons on their lapel) unprofessional and rude (and therefore, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, much less likely to receive a substantial tip from me). But if the magician is not rudely soliciting tips, you might wonder if it's customary to offer one.

The answer is that tips are welcome but not necessary. Though these performers are well paid by the management, they're not receiving the same level of pay they would from private functions (most restaurant performers work only a few nights a week and are available for private functions on other days), and tips are a nice bonus.

You should feel under no obligation to open your pocketbook if a magician happens across your table. In fact, if tipping the magician is going to cause you to lessen your tip for the wait staff, I would advise against it most strongly. Though the magician may be grateful for a little extra money, the wait staff actually work for tips. The magician's hourly wage is substantially larger than the waiter's. But once the wait staff are covered, if you still have a little money for the magician, it's certainly appreciated (but again, not necessary).

I would say, in a restaurant, if you enjoyed the show and the magician was not rude, it would be appropriate to offer a few dollars. If you really can't afford it, though, just enjoy the show and don't worry about it. The magician is probably counting on receiving some tips, but is certainly not expecting them from all (or even a majority) of the tables.

Another way to show your thanks is to make sure and pick up the magician's business card and keep him in mind for your next private function (or tell a friend who may be seeking entertainment). Even more than tips, magicians count on these private bookings (many of which may come from having performed for someone at a restaurant) for their livelihood.

The only situation in which I would consider tipping to be strongly encouraged, is if the magician is busking, or performing on the street. In this situation, he has received no hourly wage or up-front compensation for his time and labor, and is relying entirely upon the generosity of his audience. So if you watch a busker's show, and have a little cash in your pocket, by all means drop it in his hat.

Would I consider tipping mandatory, even for a busker? No. By contrast, I would consider it mandatory for a waiter or valet (by which I mean to say, I consider it extremely rude not to tip these people, unless they've provided truly horrible service). However, the busker needs to feed his family, and the only money he's getting comes in the form of tips.

This means WAR!

2010-04-19T20:51:00.000-07:00

I got another of those damned "Fun and Freedom" CDs from the MLM people today. This lady was even worse. Didn't mention her business until after she'd asked for my card in relation to my own business, then she brought out that goddamn CD. Apparently she gave it to other people at the store, too. So now I've got two of these jokers trying to get me to buy in to their scheme.

One of my coworkers described multi-level marketing as "a cult, without the religion." It's an apt description. Here's a message for all of you: I don't like cults.

And now that I've discovered there's apparently a whole herd of these people invading my neighborhood, all I can really say is, they've successfully pissed me off.

Elderly Gay Couple Forcibly Separated, Abused, Robbed By County Officials in California

2010-04-19T15:51:00.000-07:00

I really don't have much to say about this, except that the story deserves more attention than it seems to be getting.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/04/18/elderly-california-gay-couple-forcibly-separated-abused-robbed-by-county-officials

Review of Horns by Joe Hill

2010-04-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

It is rare that a writer emerges on the scene in any genre with a book that will have people talking for years to come. When Joe Hill released his short story collection 20^th Century Ghosts, this is precisely what happened. This new writer came out with a book that took not only the horror genre, but the literary community as a whole, by storm, and demonstrated a most rare skill for blending the subtle and the horrific into a worthy mixture.

His first novel, Heart Shaped Box, was another very good book sure to please any reader, but lacked the same punch delivered by his short work (I’m referring to the collection as a whole, but also specifically to one story entitled “Pop Art”). When Horns was released, I wondered for a while what to expect. Clearly, he had a strong talent, but would it be best enjoyed in short form, or would his second novel stand even stronger than the first?

I was most pleased to discover that, indeed, it does stand stronger than the first. It provides precious few truly scary moments, but instead brings to the table strong characterization and an artful subtlety at combining the real with the surreal; the quiet and philosophical with the brutal and disturbing.

The story follows Ig Perrish, son of a rich and famous father, with a brother following in the family business. Ig, however, is not joining the family business. In fact, he doesn’t have much of a life for himself at all. A year prior to the novel’s opening, his girlfriend, Merrin, was brutally raped and murdered. Ig was never convicted, but has always been the only suspect in the crime. He wakes up one morning, after a night of drinking and “doing terrible things,” to discover that he’s grown horns on his head. With said horns, he has acquired devilish powers, and sets out to use these powers to discover Merrin’s killer.

Horns is a “deal with the devil” story with a unique perspective. What if the devil isn’t the bad guy, after all? It’s certainly not a new idea in literature, but Hill crafts his tale with an expert hand, dragging the reader along from emotion to emotion as we learn more and more details about the characters’ lives and situations.

Throughout the book, the observant reader will find repeated use of traditional symbolism, some obvious, some more subtle. We see snakes, horns, and pitchforks regularly. When Ig, playing the devil, encounters these objects, their meaning is perfectly clear. However, Hill also uses his allegory more subtly than that, as in one instance later in the book in which another character has a run-in with a pitchfork. The reader is left to wonder what, if anything, this particular bit of symbolism is meant to represent, and the reader’s perspective is sure to be colored by his own theological preferences.

Hill takes a big risk in the way he presents this book, laced with flashbacks ranging from the characters’ childhood to the more recent past. In the hands of a lesser author, such a technique would come across simply as a bold information dump, and a distraction from the overarching story. In Hill’s case, however, the ploy pays off. The reader is not bored by the back story--indeed, it is as fascinating and integral to the novel as the presence of the horns on Ig’s head--and yet, rather than being distracted by the alternate narratives, we see a larger picture taking shape: a portrait of how and why the characters’ lives are interconnected, and the formative events (seemingly inconsequential at the time) that led to their present situation.

Only once, very briefly, did this back-story become tiresome, at a point where it didn’t seem to make much of a difference to the business at hand. However, by the end of the flashback, we’ve discovered new aspects of a key character, and a deeper understanding of how these events came to be.

Another risk that paid off quite brilliantly was Hill’s decision to leave Ig’s “moment of truth,” at which point he apparently made a deal with the devil and earned his horns, shrouded in secrecy throughout the text. Very quickly, Ig, along with the reader, stops even caring why this unexpected turn of events has come to pass, and simply accepts that this is the way things are. It’s risky because it could easily come across as a “cheat,” to give a character these new powers with no understanding of the cost he had to pay to get them. However, in this situation, the cost is known: the weight of sorrow over Merrin’s death almost seems like a tangible thing throughout the text of this book, and is implicitly understood as the cost Ig paid for his powers. All that remains unanswered is the precise mechanism by which the powers were acquired, and the book is stronger for it.

When the news broke that Joe Hill is actually a pseudonym for Joe Hillstrom King, son of the famed author Stephen King, speculation ran wild that he was simply exploiting his father’s unique status to sell his books. Of course, an attempt to avoid this speculation is what prompted him to write under an assumed name to begin with. Every thing he’s written so far--his short story collection and his two novels--demonstrates conclusively that he is a brilliant author in his own right. Surely his father’s career had an influence in his formation as a writer, and one would be foolish not to take an opportunity to learn from one of the undisputed masters of the genre. However, it is obvious that he’s paid his dues, and has proven himself as one of the new masters of the genre, boasting an impressive ability to create sincere and believable characters about whom the reader feels genuine concern.

Bob

How Pyramid Schemes Work

2010-04-17T00:10:00.000-07:00

Throughout my last post, I referred to pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing interchangeably for ease of understanding. That's not entirely accurate, however. This post will set that record straight, as well as shed some light on how these schemes operate, and why they actually don't work.

The following is an excerpt from my latest book, Bunk: Strange Beliefs and Dangerous Superstitions. It's still undergoing the revision process, but I felt I ought to share this particular snippet here.

We’ve all heard the term “pyramid scheme,” and we’ve all come the realization that the term is generally used interchangeably with “ripoff.” Pyramid schemes are often confused with multi-level marketing schemes, and this is not entirely accurate. Though they’re not nearly as different as the MLM people would have you believe, they aren’t exactly the same either.

First, let’s look at the pyramid scheme. The idea is that the originator of the scheme recruits ten people to give him $100 each. Then each of them recruit ten people to send them $100 each, making a $900 profit. Those people each recruit ten more, and so on and on.

The more sophisticated schemes usually involve people lower on the pyramid passing a portion of their income from their own recruits up the pyramid to the person who recruited them. That person passes a portion of the money to whoever recruited him, an so on, so that there’s a relatively constant flow of income for the couple of people at the top.

The problem is, though it’s certainly possible for a few people at the top to make a lot of money, they’re doing it at the expense of the people they’ve deceived into joining. In order for the scheme to continue, it must have a steady supply of fresh recruits. This is never the case.

Generally, it’s hard to recruit people at all, because most people smell the bullshit a mile away. They might know that pyramid schemes are illegal, or they may just realize that it’s a losing proposition for everyone except perhaps the con man at the top and maybe, if it’s particularly successful, the first couple of levels below him (maybe). So most people just won’t buy into the scheme to begin with.

However, let’s imagine that everyone who is asked to join does. It’s a perfect scenario, and everything that can go right for the scheme is going right. What happens then? It still fails.

The reason being, there are a limited number of people on earth. Let’s stick with our original example of each recruit going out and recruiting ten more people, and see what happens.

100

1,000

10,000

100,000

1,000,000

10,000,000

100,000,000

1,000,000,000

10,000,000,000

You see how fast the pyramid grows. After just ten layers (below the originator), the pyramid calls for more people than there are in the entire world! Most of those people, by simple mathematical necessity, are losers.

Pyramid schemes are illegal because they deceive people out of money with the promise that they’ll receive money in the future, which they are not guaranteed or even particularly likely to receive.

I’ve provided an example of a simple pyramid scheme in which there are no administrative fees or payment to higher levels on the pyramid. You only pay your recruiter, and are only paid by those you recruit. That’s a straightforward example, but also pretty rare, because it doesn’t get anybody, even the highest levels, very much money. We should also look at a couple of other versions.

For instance, many pyramid schemes throughout history have taken the form of a chain letter. For purposes of illustration, I’ll assume that everyone sends the letter to precisely ten people, and each of those ten people actually do choose to participate (I like using multiples of ten because it makes the math a lot clearer and easier to follow). Let’s say I receive a letter with a list of six names on it. The letter instructs me to send $1 (just one dollar) to everyone on the list. I then remove the top name from the list, move everyone else up one position, and add my own name to the bottom.

So I send my grand total of $6 out, alter the list of names according to the instructions, and mail the new letter to ten people.

When those people receive the letter, they each mail their $6 (that’s $1 to each of the names on the list, remember), remove the top name from the list, add their own name to the bottom, and mail it out to ten more people. From this first level, I receive $10.

As the pyramid grows, my payments get larger and larger. From the second level below me, now consisting of 100 people, I get $100. From the third, I get $1,000. Then $10,000. Then $100,000. Ten, from the sixth level, I receive a total of $1,000,000, and my name drops off the list.

If most people didn’t know about pyramid schemes and that they don’t work, you could see how this might seem like a good deal for me. A really good deal. After all, for my original investment of only $6, I got a return of $1,111,110. That’s enough to pay off even my debts!

But unless I’m right at the top of the pyramid, meaning the letter hasn’t gone through very many hands before my own, there’s no way I’ll ever see that huge return, simply because there aren’t enough people in the world to keep mailing dollars.

So it’s a bad investment. Why is it fraud, though? After all, it’s possible for the participants to get more out of it than they put in, right? The reason it’s fraud is because it promises this return, and even if everyone in the world participates, most people who mail their $6 will never see a penny in return, because most of the population is on the bottom level when the whole thing inevitably collapses. The reason is that no new wealth is created through participation in the scheme.

Economists will debate the “creation of wealth” issue until we’re all blue in the face. Does the creation of a new product qualify as a creation of wealth, or simply a transfer of wealth? If it costs $5 to make and you sell it for $10, it would seem to be a creation of $5 in wealth. The debate is whether the labor involved in the creation of this new product qualifies as wealth itself. If it does, then the wealth is not so much created as transferred to a different medium. In other words, by writing this book, I’m transferring my wealth (time and labor) into the book which is a sellable product.

For our purposes here, let us assume that we’ll be dealing with the model of economics in which new wealth can be created by turning lesser valued ingredients into higher valued products. I don’t care which model you actually prefer, but this is a much easier model to deal with for the purpose of examining pyramid schemes.

Because no new wealth is created by participating in the scheme--in other words, the amount lost by all the losers is the exact amount gained by all the winners--it definitely constitutes fraud.

Let’s imagine that I invite one hundred people to my house. I tell each of them that there is a small fee, say one dollar, to enter, but that when they leave, they’ll get ten dollars back.

As each person enters, I collect their dollar and put it in a basket by the door. Then everyone commences with the festivities (which, since it’s my party, would probably involve listening to Eagles music and arguing about the costs and benefits of various types of political systems or some such nonsense).

When everyone is ready to leave, they line up at the door. As they leave, I hand each ten dollars. But after the first ten people leave, the basket is empty! Because the scheme does not involve the creation of new wealth (or the transfer of wealth into a practical medium, if you prefer), I’ve cheated ninety people out of their money.

Of course, this particular example is not a pyramid scheme, as there’s only one level (myself, in this case), so only one person is guilty of fraud (again, yours truly). But the argument still applies.

Let’s look at another type of pyramid scheme: the administrative pyramid scheme. The basic modus operandi of this scheme is the same as the others. It involves new recruits paying up the pyramid to their recruiter and their recruiter’s recruiter. The difference in this case, is that the payments are centralized around an administrator. This person, generally the originator of the pyramid, is responsible for collecting payments from new recruits and distributing the proper amount of money to their superiors. Usually, he takes a fee for himself in return for providing this service.

This scheme works really well for the administrator because he’s guaranteed a profit no matter how poorly the pyramid does on the whole (though the better it does, the greater his profit will be, of course). However, because this person is easily identified and reported to law enforcement, these schemes generally don’t last very long.

Pyramid schemes have often tried to get around tax law by calling themselves “gifting clubs.” The idea being that you call your original buy-in a “gift.” Because the IRS does not tax gifts under $10,000, they advertise all your promised proceeds from your underlings as tax-free.

As much as I loathe the IRS (and I really can’t stand the bastards), they’re absolutely right when they point out that this is untrue. Legally speaking, your buy-in is not a gift, because you expect to receive further proceeds as a result of paying this fee. The IRS considers a gift to be something given with no expectation of anything in return. They are absolutely correct in their definition.

There is truth to the claim that most participants don’t receive anything in return. However, this does not make it a gift under the law, because they do expect to receive money in return.

What’s even more dangerous is that it’s not just illegal to start a pyramid scheme. People who’ve simply been deceived into participating in an existing one have had run-ins with the law in the past. I don’t know if this is the best solution to the problem, but it’s definitely something to be aware of. Simply participating in a pyramid scheme could get you in trouble for fraud.

That’s a pyramid scheme. The multi-level marketing (MLM) companies we’ve all had some experiences with at one time or other, are not pyramid schemes, though they’re often called by that name.

There are legitimate (and I use the term loosely) MLMs out there. Participating in these schemes is not illegal, and they aren’t fraud. However, I do find them ethically and fiscally questionable. If a friend approaches me with a pyramid scheme, I will flat tell him that it’s fraud, and to get out immediately. If he approaches me with a MLM, I won’t participate, and will encourage him to rethink his own participation, but I won’t stand in his way if that’s what he wants to do. Since it is legal and isn’t actually defrauding anybody, it’s your own choice whether or not to do it, but I think that, if you have all the facts, you’ll probably choose not to.

What distinguishes an MLM from a pyramid scheme is that the MLM actually has a real product or service to sell, so there’s a legitimate business potential with the company.

I find them unethical because they still follow the pyramid format of trying to recruit new salespersons to build your own “downline.” The idea being that you receive a portion of all the sales accumulated by everyone you’ve recruited, and everyone they’ve recruited, and so on. In most, perhaps even all, MLMs, I feel that the product, though it is the distinction that divides MLMs from pyramid schemes, is really just a diversion or cover for the pyramid structure of the scheme.

First, we need to dispose of the pyramid schemes posing as MLMs. They do sell a product, oh yes. But it’s a product that has no value at all unless you have an interest in joining the pyramid scheme. For instance, they’ll sell you marketing reports, or access codes for an online pyramid scheme. These products have no real value or marketability except to participants in the scheme.

Though they call themselves MLMs, they will still be prosecuted as pyramid schemes, because that’s what they are, after all.

Even within legitimate MLMs, there’s a delicate balance of legality. If the multi-level part of the equation rises to a point where it considerably outweighs the marketing part, it’s little more than a pyramid scheme (and law enforcement is likely to see it the same way). In other words, is the money coming from recruitment or from sales?

Here’s why I find MLMs unethical: market saturation. If everyone were just making money from sales, even though it is structured as a pyramid, I would have little problem with it except to say that it’s perhaps not the most effective way to structure a business (there’s a reason the bookstore where you got this book is not an MLM, after all).

But the problem is, MLMs, by their very design, must assume that the demand for their product will never run out. The fact of the matter is, I don’t care how good your product is, there is a limited demand for it.

Because they assume there is this unlimited demand for their product, they also assume there is an unlimited demand for new sales staff to recruit.

So let’s start an imaginary MLM and see what the problem is with market saturation.

We’ve developed “Product X,” and it’s going to be a big hit. Everyone is going to want one. So we set our company up as an MLM and start recruiting people to go out and sell Product X to all their friends. But instead of just giving them an hourly wage or a commission, we give them a commission, plus a percentage of the commission from everyone they recruit as a new sales person, and charge in a fee (which will be spread across the recruit’s “upline” to become one of our sales representatives.

Quickly, we see our company growing. Lots of people are buying Product X, and plenty are buying in to the company so they can sell Product X, too. People are making money from sales, from the sales of their downline, and from recruitments, and everything seems to be going really well.

But there’s trouble on the horizon. Just about everyone who wants Product X already has one, but we’re still recruiting new sales people, to sell something that no one will buy anymore. The only money that’s still changing hands is from recruitment of new sales people. Our company is turning into a pyramid scheme.

Eventually, it’s going to crumble, either with intervention from law enforcement (as it’s now just multi-level with no marketing), or simply due to the financial strain of poor business.

Sure, we can introduce Product Y and Product Z and start selling those, too. But the fact of the matter is, eventually the market is going to run out, but the company will still be hiring people, because in the short-term, that’s the best thing for the upline (furthermore, when sales drop off, that's the only way our sales people can ever hope to get their money back--they're desperate to build their own downlines).

The MLM scheme is designed to fail. It’s a carefully disguised and legal form of the pyramid scheme, but eventually it’s going to crumble, and the people at the bottom of the pyramid (which will be most of the people involved) are going to have lost their time, energy, and money to the people who roped them in.

Normal businesses don’t always know how many of a product to make, but they do their best to approximate, so they don’t lose out on any sales or severely overestimate the demand and end up with millions of unsellable units in a warehouse somewhere. Normal businesses don’t always know how many salespeople to hire, but they do their best to figure it out, so they aren’t paying too many people, and so they aren’t understaffed to meet the demands of their customers.

MLMs have no such controls. They’ll just keep recruiting and producing unsellable products until eventually the company crumbles under the weight of its own bloated structure.

People often look at the pyramid structure and see it as strong, because all the weight is at the bottom, and doesn’t have to support too much. It’s better to look at it as an inverted pyramid, where all the mass is at the top. I don’t care how strong your pyramid is, eventually the weight from the mass at the top is going to bring the whole thing down.

Perhaps worse than all that is the strain these schemes can put on personal relationships. I don’t classify MLMs as fraud, as I said, because it’s possible to profit purely by selling products. But the fact of the matter is, in order to be successful in such a venture, you need to keep recruiting along with your selling. Who do you recruit and sell to but your friends and family?

And when you do recruit, say, your neighbor, promising all this potential for great wealth and success, what do you think she’s going to think of you when the whole thing inevitably goes under?

Before we move on to different types of schemes, scams, cons, and frauds, we should look at one final type of scheme related to the pyramid: the straight-line matrix or “elevator” scam.

It manages to do away with the pyramid structure, but still has most of the same problems.

Basically, the idea is that you get the opportunity to purchase a desired product for, say, 10% of its market value. It’s based on a list of names, just like the pyramid scheme. Here’s how it works.

Let’s say Product X costs $100 and you want to get it for $10. What you do is pay $10 into the scheme, and then try to recruit ten more people. When ten people have joined, the first person will get the product, its cost having been paid out of the fees paid by the people below him on the list. When ten more join, the second person gets the product, and so on.

The first couple of people involved will get the product for the promised low price. But as the pool of victims begins to run dry, people lower down on the list have to wait longer and longer to get their product. As with the pyramid scheme, most of the people who pay into the scheme will never get anything out of it.

So that's how pyramid schemes and MLM schemes actually work. Not pretty, is it? Heed my advice, and stay away from these things. Your friends, and your pocketbook will thank you for it.

Now that that's done with, perhaps we can return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Bob

I LOATHE Pyramid Schemes

2010-04-16T19:52:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I was going to write a blog about copyright law since so few people on the Internet seem to understand intellectual property rights. I'll probably still do so shortly, but in the meantime I finally listened to a CD I was given the other day and I absolutely MUST rant about this first, because these types of schemes piss me off more than you can possibly imagine.

A couple days ago while at work (I'm still not rich and famous enough to quit the day job, alas), I was approached by one of our regular customers. His name, I have learned (it was printed on the CD he gave me, but we'll get to that in a moment) is John. The only thing keeping me from publishing his full name and contact information is that he's still a regular at my place of employment and I don't need to stir shit up over there right now. Anyway, John said he sees me there a lot. Well, yeah, I work there. Not exactly a big revelation, but I assure you I maintain professionalism and wasn't the least bit snarky. He asked if I'm going to school while working there. No. Actually, I'm working on starting my own business. After a bit of back and forth about what I'm doing (close-up magic, and I also write on the side, hoping my books will start selling soon), he asks if I'm looking for other ways to make money. Oh boy, here it comes.

Look, I do my job well. I'm friendly to customers and coworkers, I work hard, I maintain professionalism, I try to do everything right. It's not the first time someone's approached me and asked such a question. I've had people ask me if I want a job working at their financial planning firm, and someone who claimed to be a friend of a regional VP of a large national bank wanted my contact information. I'm not really looking for that type of work right now--I'm trying to get my business running--but I'm always friendly, and I always give the same answer: "I'm not looking, but I'm never closed to possibilities. Give me your card, and if I'm interested, I'll send a resume." I leave it at that. It's polite, and when I don't, in fact, send a resume, they get the point. Nothing irks me more than someone walking into a place of business and trying to recruit the staff. It's unprofessional, it's lazy, and with so many people looking for jobs these days, it reeks of something sleazy (after all, if it's a good job with decent pay, it ain't gonna be too hard to fill in this economy). So I leave it at that, and go the other direction.

Well, John mentioned that he's involved in his own business. I asked what he did, just to be polite--I really don't care what my customers do unless they want me to sell them a book about it. He said "internet distribution." Okay, that's somewhat non-committal, but no matter. He said "I have some information, if you're interested, I could give it to you." Well, at this point, I'm none too happy about being put on the spot, but I agreed in the least enthusiastic voice I could mutter. I figured, he'll give me some pamphlet, and then he'll go away. He goes back to his car and comes back in with a CD. He says, "It's a fifteen minute audio CD. Listen to it, and if you're excited about it, my number's on the back. Give me a call and we can move forward with this." Of course, I wasn't going to call, but I'm still being polite.

He asked for my contact information so he wouldn't have to call me at the store (how nice of him). I gave him one of my cards. I figured, the worst that happens is I'll say no, and try to sell him a magic show for his next business affair. Of course, I'm sure he wouldn't be able to afford my fee anyway, but no matter--one has to be a little bit of an opportunist to get a business started (plus, I just got an order of two thousand cards in, so I'm not exactly being stingy with them). He then goes on his way--without, I might add, buying so much as a paperback.

Well, when I looked at the CD, my stomach sank a little. It looked suspiciously like a sort of business propaganda I've seen before, and I immediately began to suspect what this was. The CD is called "Fun and Freedom" by Wade Simmons. John had affixed his own contact information to the back. Well, this isn't the way business is traditionally done, so red flags are flying left and right, but ever the skeptic, I reserve judgement until the facts are in.

This evening, I finally got a chance to listen to the CD. I popped it in, and this Wade Simmons character started talking about how bad this generation has it with the costs of education and what have you, and promising to generate enough profit to have "fun and freedom" through whatever system he's pitching. He doesn't go into any great detail through most of the ten minute (John lied when he said it was fifteen) talk, but refers cryptically to his organization's "team of entrepreneurs." He talks about eliminating middle men, and buying direct from manufacturers. Basically, he drops all the right words to confirm exactly what this is: a pyramid scheme.

Specifically, this scheme seems to be targeted to young people. I'm fairly young myself, but I'm extremely well-read and quite knowledgeable about scams, so he won't get me. But this is meant to sound extremely attractive to college students or those who've recently graduated. He addresses this market specifically in his speech! Older folks have seen these scams before, and now know to stay away from them (who doesn't remember Amway?), but many students may be suckered in. Whoever this Wade Simmons is, he appears to be the scum of the earth.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. After finishing the CD, I went online to do some research, see if I couldn't find more information about what this company is doing (their website, perhaps, would offer some clues to the specifics). So I googled Wade Simmons. All I could find was information about a mountain biker from Canada. Wikipedia gave me the same results. So Wade seems to be a dead end. I looked closer at the CD and found the copyright information. It tells me the copyright is held by "TEAM INA." There we go! That's what I was looking for!

First thing I found was a website, www.ina.net. This was a dead end, too. All that's on the website is a "username and password" field to log in. No information about the company, no contact information, nothing. Just a way to log in. Most curious. I suspect this is the same INA, but I can't be 100% sure. I also found this from Yahoo Answers, apparently confirming my suspicions that it's a pyramid scheme. Gasp! Shock! Horror! But I kept looking.

I found another man who was assaulted with the very same propaganda CD while shopping at a Home Depot. His rant made a fan out of me, as he referred to the person who sent him the CD thusly: "Jeff, you're despicable, and if it existed you would burn in a very special level of Hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater." This is, of course, not only an accurate description of the quality of character of those who involve themselves in pyramid schemes (John, I'm talking to you too, motherfucker), but is a clever reference to the television program, Firefly.

Then, I found this. This is legal documentation of a class action lawsuit against "Quixtar." Wanna venture a guess who that actually is? Well, that's what they're called in the U.S. and Canada. Around the rest of the world, they're known as "Amway Corp." Dun dun DUNNNNNN! Yes, Amway, the most infamous pyramid scheme of them all. The entire document makes for interesting reading, but you should pay particular attention to paragraph 38. For convenience, I shall copy it here:

38. According to Quixtar's website, there are currently sixteen lines of sponsorship:

a. World Wide DreamBuilders;
b, Yager (InterNET Services);
c. Britt;
d. Network 21;
e. Team;
f. InterNet Associates (INA);
g. eFinity;
h. International Connection;
i.International Leadership Development (ILD);
j. MMP (MarkerMan Productions);
k. proalliance;
l. Interbiz;
m. IBO Alliance;
n. GlobalNet;
o. ProSystemOne; and
p. GBO Alliance,

Of particular interest are lines (e) and (f). "Team" and "InterNet Associates (INA)." Most curious indeed. In fact, as far as I can tell, what our old buddy John was trying to rope me into wasn't just any pyramid scheme. It was fucking AMWAY! The worst of the worst of pyramid schemes!

People, take it from me, stay away from these people. They're not just poor business men who made a mistake. They're the scum of the earth. They made a mistake, sure, but now they are trying to rope YOU into it, because that's the only way they'll ever be able to be even close to profitable--by suckering other unsuspecting individuals to open their pocketbooks and become involved in this corrupt and possibly illegal business (pyramid schemes are illegal--multi-level marketing is not necessarily, but it's certainly unethical). Stay away.

And also stay tuned, because next up, I'm going to tell you how pyramid schemes actually work. Most people understand that the phrase has become synonymous with "bamboozle," but fewer know why. I'll explain it to you, and that way you'll be able to watch out for these scams yourself, just in case they surface under a different name and no one's been able to warn you about them yet.

As for the CD I was given, I'm not quite sure what to do with it at this point. Should I send it to the media, so they can warn others? Should I break it in half and send it back to John? Should I keep it in my files (since I keep damned near everything anyway)? I must think on this for a while and determine the course of action most likely to either shut the scam down, or at least do the most possible damage to the kingpin's bottom line.

And what will I do if John does call me? That's another decision I have to make, because I suspect he probably will. I'm either going to explain my refusal to participate in a pyramid scheme...or I'm going to try to sell him a magic show anyway--but I'll sell him my special "pyramid" magic show, where (for those of you who've seen The Prestige) I charge my standard fee for the Pledge, double for the Turn, and $5,000 for the Prestige. Paid in advance, of course. No 50% deposits allowed for con men, thank you very much.

Bob

Leader of the Banned Review

2010-04-16T00:12:00.000-07:00

Just because Brian is a friend of mine doesn't mean I can't objectively review one of his books. Generally speaking, you can be assured that everything he puts out is going to kick all kinds of ass, but if he fucks one up, you can rest assured ol' Bob will call him on it, if for no other reason than because he has such a history of quality that he can now safely be held to a higher standard than other authors.

Long-time fans will recognize Leader of the Banned as the fourth (and, we're told, final) installment in the non-fiction "Hail Saten" series. Yes, we spell Saten with an "e" and the reason is given in Sympathy for the Devil: The Best of Hail Saten volume 1 (it's a story that involves hate mail from an illiterate, and well worth reading if you own a copy). For those of you not in the know, here's the deal: starting right around the beginning of Brian's professional writing career, he started keeping a blog, collecting non-fiction essays on writing, the genre, life, love, failures, successes, and everything else he could think of. The best of these essays have been collected in the four volumes of the Hail Saten series (Sympathy for the Devil, Running with the Devil, The New Fear, and Leader of the Banned).

Throughout the series, we've seen Brian at his best and his worst. Readers have laughed at his crazy antics, cried at the low points, and thanked him for the information, the entertainment, and for being so open with his friends, fans, readers, and the horror community in general.

Stylistically, Brian's non-fiction reads like it was written by the bastard love child of Hunter S. Thompson, Stephen King, and a mutant badger. I'm sure Brian would agree (in fact, mutant badger aside, he's admitted as much himself--I think he was planning to save that revelation for the fifth volume that we'll probably never see). Sure, a lot of the stories are more fiction than they are fact, but that doesn't detract from the truths Brian reveals in his collections. If you care about the horror genre, enjoy an entertaining story, or are simply curious what goes on in the mind of a professional writer, you'll find a lot of value in this book, and indeed, in the entire series.

Which brings us to the sad part: this volume four is marketed as the final volume for a reason. Genre politics, business, a visit from the federal government, and assorted other factors prompted Brian to bring Hail Saten to an end in 2008. Sure, he still maintains a blog, but it's not the same snarky Hunter Thompson-esque, mutant badger influenced rant-fest it once was. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and one certainly can't hold the decision against Brian (it's the same decision any of us would have made, I'm sure), but the material posted these days probably wouldn't make a very entertaining collection of essays. The events leading up to its closure are detailed in this book, alongside some never-before seen material that the fans are sure to eat up. It even includes "If I Were President," the very essay that landed Brian on a government watch-list and provoked a visit from a federal agent, including his description of that particular affair. Read this book, and you'll get the inside scoop on what's been happening to the horror genre, and why it seems to be collapsing all around us (a topic I wrote at length on myself recently, posted to this very blog, and then deleted the following day because I decided I really didn't feel like naming names, despite how incredibly pissed I was at a particular turn of events).

To be perfectly honest, despite quite a few laugh out loud moments, this is a much more serious book than its three predecessors. And it should be. Because in the era of the New Fear, described in the third volume, sometimes someone has to say some unpleasant truths. Brian's book will make you look some of these unpleasantries in the eye, and it's a very good thing that needed to be done.

Read for entertainment.

Read for information.

Read because it'll make you look cool.

Read because it's important.

Read because if you don't, mutant zombie badgers will kill you in your sleep.

Review of Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker

2010-04-15T01:35:00.001-07:00

Well, I've decided since I read a lot and watch a lot of movies, it would be a good idea to start writing some reviews. You know, to share my thoughts, give something back, turn people on to some new possibilities for their own reading or viewing pleasure...and occasionally, I must confess, to absolutely rip some poor schmuck apart in the interest both of being entertainingly snarky and warning readers away from unworthy additions to our artistic table.

Our first selection is an older title, but definitely worth consideration: Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker.

It doesn’t take one much to realize that I’m a Clive Barker fan. My DVD shelves contain copies of Hellraiser and Candyman. My bookcases proudly display autographed copies of the Books of Blood, The Hellbound Heart, and Visions of Heaven and Hell among many others, including our topic for today, Coldheart Canyon.

I hesitate to divulge too much in this review, because part of what makes Barker’s work enjoyable is the process of discovering the strange, unknown worlds he creates on the page. Suffice to say that the world presented in Coldheart Canyon is called the Devil’s Country, and it seems to be just that.

The novel follows movie star Todd Pickett as he hides himself away in a place called Coldheart Canyon while recovering from a disastrous cosmetic surgery. But the owner of the Canyon, and the reason for its unfortunate name, is still present--Katya Lupi, a movie star of a previous era, who supernaturally retains her youthful beauty and apparently insatiable sex drive.

What awaits Todd and the rest of the cast of characters is a strange mix of eroticism and sheer terror as only Clive Barker can deliver.

The characters are certainly believable, but one has the feeling of being caught in a tug-of-war of the emotions as we are rocketed from sympathy for the characters on one page to loathing them on the next. Todd Pickett, for instance, is at once the heroic everyman, the lost child, and the egocentric asshole. We can sympathize with his emotions as he’s experiencing the wonders of Coldheart Canyon. He has the feeling of someone caught in a world he doesn’t understand, but can’t bring himself to escape from. In that sense (and in others as will become clear as one reads the book), Coldheart Canyon is actually a metaphor for the extravagances of Hollywood life. Glamorous at a glance, but repeated exposure leads one to see the corrupt underbelly. Todd plays the same role in both scenarios: Hollywood and Coldheart Canyon. He is tempted by the immeasurable lure of the Hollywood lifestyle just as he is seduced by Katya Lupi and her pleasures. But he understands, on some level, that neither is healthy.

It’s a plight we can sympathize with, and it makes Todd’s behavior when he’s in “movie star mode” somewhat more forgivable. Still, he is a spoiled rich kid who is accustomed to getting what he wants, and this side of his character shows itself repeatedly throughout the text.

Most of the other characters seem equally paradoxical. Tammy Lauper, for instance, is the overweight woman whose heart is even bigger than her girth. She seems immediately likeable, and we can’t help but to feel sorry for her as she’s either overlooked or openly mocked because of her weight. At the same time, there’s a slight tinge of insanity that colors our perception of her character as we discover just how obsessive a Todd Pickett fan she actually is.

Other characters seem equally paradoxical. It is the contradictory nature of the characters, and our emotional turns regarding our perceptions of them, that is truly the most enjoyable part of this book. Rather than the stereotypical horror story fare of painfully one-dimensional characters that are either meant as stand-ins for the everyman or as generally unlikeable shallow caricatures, mere shadows of what real humans might be like (often painted with a cynic's hardened brush), this book offers characters that come complete with all the faults and qualities one would expect to find in human beings. The extraordinary nature of the events these characters find themselves exploring serve as a perfect backdrop to explore the extremes of the human experience in a way other forms of literature would not so easily allow.

Clive Barker is never one to shy away from the sexually explicit, and this book certainly provides no exception to the rule. In Clive Barker’s worlds, sex and death, pleasure and pain, don’t seem as concrete of terms as we would come to expect in everyday life. The lines are often blurred, giving us a unique psychological perspective on pleasure, pain, and morality. Barker has a happy talent for making the ugly beautiful and the beautiful ugly, expertly demonstrated in this book, as in a scene in which characters participate in an orgy of ghosts. One is almost tempted to feel aroused by his detailed descriptions of the encounter, but just as one is beginning to vicariously experience the pleasures described, one is then reminded that the participants are not, in fact, alive, and can’t help but feel a slight revulsion at the thought, despite the fact that this is not true necrophilia, as the ghosts are presented as attractive people rather than decomposing corpses.

Coldheart Canyon has everything going for it. Intriguing characters, a unique plot, and a willingness to show us details other authors might shy away from. It’s an emotional roller-coaster ride that’s both thrilling and thought-provoking. However, the ride simply lasts too long. The book, coming in at 676 pages, occasionally has a hard time holding interest. Several points throughout the book feel like they would have been an appropriate climax, requiring only a brief epilogue to finish the story, but Barker didn’t choose to end at any of these points. He knew what he wanted to say, and by god, he was going to say it no matter how many pages it took.

The end result is worth the extra effort, but one can’t help but to feel the book would have been made stronger by cutting perhaps 100 or 200 pages.

All in all, it’s a worthwhile read for Clive Barker fans. Those who are offended by graphic depictions of sexual encounters might want to look for another book, however, though personally I think they’d be best served by getting off their moralistic high horse and enjoy a good fuck story like the rest of us.

Bob

Instant Gratification

2010-04-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

What is it with people these days always wanting instant gratification? I feel older than my years just writing such a thing (expect me to start shaking a cane and shouting “Damn kids, get off my lawn” shortly), but it’s really the truth. We’ve become a society of instant gratification and while it’s occasionally a good thing, I think it does more harm than good overall.

It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, and there was an occurrence today that prompted me to finally sit down and write something about it. I was at the magic shop to pick up an item I’d been waiting for (I won’t tell you what it was, even if you ask). While I was there talking with the guy working the counter, a high school kid walked in with a very particular request. He needed something (ie., a trick) with a rose.

The shop was out of the usual fare of gimmicked rose tricks (perhaps some day I’ll share with you why I don’t like those effects to begin with, but for now that’s neither here nor there), so we were trying to brainstorm something that wouldn’t be too difficult for him to do. We then learned that he needed it this weekend, and all our ideas went right out the window.

Now, I understand this kid isn’t a professional magician (or even a dedicated hobbyist), and so shouldn’t be expected to devote the years to the craft that I have. But at the same time, how can he possibly expect to have something presentable in just a couple of days?

I’ve already performed with the item I purchased, even after a couple of hours. Do you know why I was able to do that? Because it was a replacement item for one that had worn out. I’d already practiced it, already come up with a routine, already mastered everything about it that needed to be mastered. From the time I got the idea for how to use this item and purchased my first one, to the time I was actually ready to perform it, I invested a good two months of work on it. That’s work on the physical knuckle-busting mechanics of it, and work on the presentation. It’s hard work. I love it, but it’s still bloody hard work. And I invested two months even though I could have physically done it in maybe two days, because my magic is stronger for having paid my dues and done the work.

Some of the ideas we tossed around were different ways of producing roses. We talked about some “straight” productions, a production in which an origami rose turns into a real one, and a few others. These aren’t physically hard to do, but there’s a lot of work that goes into them. Let’s say we want to do the Floating Rose, in which an origami rose is folded, made to float, lit on fire, and transforms into a real rose from the flames. A very nice effect, popularized by David Copperfield on one of his TV specials.

Were this young gentleman to try and achieve this effect, how long would he actually have to work on it? A long time. Let’s figure he could probably master the origami necessary for the first part in a couple of days. It’s a bit knacky, but not too hard to do, so that’s reasonable. I have some experience with such things and mastered the fold in one day, so a newbie could probably do it in two or three without too much trouble.

Then you have to make it float. Two months of practice. Then you have to learn how to produce a real rose from the flames. Two months of practice. Then you have to come up with a routine, storyline, patter, etc. One month of work. Then you have to piece all these elements together, and get the timing right, polish everything and make it ready for performance. One month of work. Then you’re ready to perform for your first audiences. And based on their reactions and feedback, you’ll be working and polishing and refining for the next two months before you can achieve anything close to mastery. That’s six months until the first performance, and eight before you’ve mastered it. Not something to take lightly, but that’s the right way to do it. Anything less will look exactly like what it is--something you threw together in a weekend “because you had to” or “because it looked neat.” That’s not magic, that’s a trick. Magic only happens when you pay your dues and do your hard time of practice.

But we seem to see this a lot. Even so-called “professional” magicians are seen walking into the magic shop and saying to the manager, “I need something good I can throw into my act tonight.” TONIGHT! Even if they’re able to achieve the physical mechanics of the effect in that much time (sometimes they can, more often they only THINK that they can), all they’ll be doing is a poorly executed parody of what the effect’s designer did. They won’t be bringing anything of themselves to the performance, and that’s what people really want. That emotional connection between audience and performer is what distinguishes magic from cheap tricks.

Writers have a similar problem. Professional authors all have one thing in common--they’ve paid their fucking dues! They’ve written every day for years, dutifully sending off their creations to publication venues, and in return they’ve received rejection letters. The good ones, the ones that eventually get read, are the ones that read the rejections, listen to them, learn from them, fix the things that need to be fixed, and start over again. It’s a tough process, very hard on the ego, but it does what it’s designed to do--make you a better writer. No one is born with the innate ability to craft a wonderful novel. Yes, some people have more innate talent than others, but mostly it’s a learned skill: learned through years upon years of hard work and dedication.

Do you know why, though many of my friends are authors and I often post on writers’ message boards, I’m not usually seen giving advice? It’s because I’m still in the middle of that process. I’m still paying my fucking dues. I haven’t yet earned my seat at the table of professionals. Plenty of my friends have, and they’ve been a great help to me, but they’re only willing to help because I’m willing to listen to their advice, pay my dues, and not get caught up arguing the minutia of something I haven’t earned the right to argue yet.

But more and more, people aren’t paying their dues. They’re looking for instant gratification. They write a novel that they think is great--of course they think it’s great, because they just spend the better part of a year bleeding over it. But it’s not great. It’s rubbish, and no editor in his right mind will buy it. Why? Because in order to write a good novel, you first have to write about a million words of absolute shit. Each one will be better than the last, you’ll begin to see improvement, but it takes fucking time! Instead of working through the process designed to create good writers, though, they send their book off to a vanity press, pay a few hundred bucks to have it published (note to aspiring writers: money flows TO the author, not away from him--if you have to pay to be published, you automatically know that 1) the publisher is a con man and 2) you need to work harder and write better before it’s worth reading), and do you know what happens? It isn’t hailed as the best thing since A Tale of Two Cities. It’s either completely ignored by everyone except the author’s own mother, or, if the author is too aggressive in his marketing, gets slammed by a slew of brutal reviewers who are tired of being sent complimentary copies of self-published dreck.

Contrary to what some mentally ill people (like the individual known in the horror small press community somewhat less than affectionately as He Who Shall Not Be Named) may think, there is no conspiracy to keep some people from being published. Rather, there’s a process designed to publish the good, and help the bad to improve. There aren’t any evil overlords passing judgment on poor unsuspecting writers--there are just people making proper business decisions, and these decisions collectively create the process.

Whatever you’re trying to do, you need to pay your fucking dues, learn your fucking craft, and doing fucking right. Yes, it will take years of hard work. No, people aren’t going to immediately recognize your undeniable brilliance, because guess what! Your brilliance isn’t undeniable. I’m fucking denying it right now. You’re not brilliant. If you were brilliant, you’d realize the importance of hard work, and you’d pay your fucking dues instead of bitching that people are keeping you from that instant gratification you so desperately crave.

I leave you with this thought: if you receive instant gratification, it has no value. True gratification comes from watching years of hard work pay off.

Bob

Westboro Baptist Church in Colorado

2010-04-06T01:59:00.000-07:00

Heads up to those of you in Colorado: the Westboro Baptist Church (of "God hates fags" infamy) is going to be picketing in various towns in our neck of the woods for a few days later this month. Their schedule is posted at http://www.godhatesfags.com/schedule.html (the CO schedule is just over half-way down the page). I've heard rumors of several planned counter-protests, but I'm currently unsure of details. If you know of anything that's going on, drop me a line and I'll pass the word along to others. I'll let y'all know if I hear anything further.

Just because no one in the world likes these people doesn't mean counter-protests are useless. People need to stand up to them whether people are listening to their message or not.

Bob

Love and Life; Or, A Grouping of Cynical Ramblings Intended to Ward off the Demons

2010-02-12T17:37:00.000-08:00

So, Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and there's no escaping it. Happy couples are walking down the street hand in hand. Advertisements on television are bombarding us all with images of flowers and chocolates. Displays in bookstores are stocked with novelty gifts to give your lover. It seems everywhere you turn, romance is right in front of your eyes.

And then there's me. Still single, still lonely, and trying to be an optimist in the face of it all.

So, in the midst of all the romance that's in the air, here's what's been going on in my neck of the woods.

I just had the delightful experience of listening to my parents argue about finances. In this economy and in their particular situation (the details of which I'll spare you), it's a reasonable thing to argue about. But now, I've just been confronted with the news that my folks, who've been married for twenty-two years, are looking into divorce.

Honestly, I don't know how they managed to last as long as they did. They don't agree on anything. They're both crazy as hell. And when they get upset, they both act like spoiled nine-year-olds. Let me tell you, watching them go at it in an argument would, except for my close proximity to the situation, be quite an amusing sight. They seem more like characters in a movie, or perhaps that play August: Osage County, than real people. More fodder for my books, I guess.

I'm a romantic sort of guy, though, and I always just assumed that, despite their differences, love kept them together. Apparently not. Apparently, they've both just been too lazy to bother with the headache of divorce. Laziness is not unusual in this family. My mother hasn't worked in something like ten years. She blames a medical condition, which, admittedly, would justifiably keep her from physical labor, but there's no reason she can't sit on her ass in an office instead of on a couch at home watching Days of Our fuckin' Lives. My father used to make enough money to sustain their lifestyle. He got fired three years ago and hasn't had work since. Strike that, he did take a job about a year ago, but quit within a week. Remember that scene from one of the National Lampoon films (I think it may have been either Christmas Vacation or Vegas Vacation) in which it was revealed that Cousin Eddie was holding out for a management position? Well, that's my father, except my father doesn't have a plate in his head to use as an excuse for his laziness.

And remember when I said they're both crazy? You don't know the half of it. My parents' is like the marriage from hell. Not only are they crazy in their behaviors, but also in their beliefs.

My mother is Catholic. But not just any Catholic. She's a "go to church every Sunday, plus certain Fridays and one Monday a month" kind of Catholic, and one of the few Catholics who still holds out as a creationist (apparently Adam & Eve rode a dinosaur through Eden six thousand years ago) despite the most recent Popes acknowledging the indisputable evidence for evolution.

My father, at least, is an atheist. And good credit to him for that one. But he's not an atheist because he thinks for himself. He's an atheist, in my personal opinion, only because certain people he likes to watch on YouTube (all day, every fucking day, instead of going out and getting a job) tell him that's what he should be. Or perhaps just because he knows it bothers my mother. But he's crazy in other ways. For instance, despite my best efforts to convince him otherwise, he still firmly believes that the U.S. Government staged the 9/11 attacks (yeah, controlled demolition and all that jazz) as an excuse to invade Middle Eastern countries for oil. Fuck yeah! The crazy just flows like a river in this family.

And like I said, apparently, it's just that they're so fucking lazy that's kept them together so long. Trying to make their marriage a success is too much work for them, so they don't bother. They just annoy the hell out of each other, let everything fester until they end up screaming at each other. But calling a lawyer and filing for divorce sounds like work, too, so they just suffer through it. I don't like to see any marriage fail, but Jesus Christ on a candlestick!--I don't like to see them survive just because all parties are too stupid and lazy to bother doing anything else.

After I walked out of their shouting match, I logged onto my computer and read an old friend's blog. He's a good guy, and I always like reading what he has to say. Usually, it serves to cheer me up when I'm in a bit of a mood. Well, today (or rather, a few days ago, though I just read it today), he wrote that he suddenly found himself single again at age 42. This came as a surprise to me. I don't know the details, and I respect his privacy so I won't ask. But though I never even met his family, I always got the impression that he and his wife were very much in love and doing quite well. So, fuck. That just bummed me out even more.

Then I got to thinking about maybe trying to get some work done, try to get a few bucks. I still will, after I finish writing this (because unlike SOME fucking' people, I'm not too lazy to make an effort), but it made me think about my financial situation. The economy's in tatters, my own personal economy is even worse. The career I was hoping to build as a writer hasn't even gotten started because all the publishers are tightening their purse-strings, too. So right now I'm stuck in a low-paying job that, while it isn't a terrible job, isn't paying the bills and isn't where I saw myself at this stage in life.

If you'd asked me five years ago about my future, I would have painted a portrait of an imperfect life. Not that I'd be happy all the time, but that I'd at least have some degree of contentment. But somewhere along the line, something went terribly, horribly wrong. I'm not sure quite what it was, but nothing has turned out the way I wanted. Not one single fucking thing. And the good things I did have, the things that I could always fall back on to make me feel better, even if just for a little while...they've all gone, too (for instance, I haven't written anything in over two weeks--not sure why, just can't seem to make the words flow like I used to). As hard as I keep trying, I don't know how to get them back.

So here I am. Broke. Lonely. Depressed. Not sure of anything anymore. Not sure where I'm going. How to get there. What it will mean when I do.

And I don't even have anyone I can talk to about it. So instead, I just put it out here, into cyberspace, knowing full well no one will probably read it. Not really caring. When you hit rock bottom, it's hard to care about anything anymore.

Except that's a lie. I do care. I care enough that I bust my ass day in and day out to try to correct my financial situation; to turn my life into something that more closely resembles what I want it to be. I care enough that I dream of a day when I can make my living doing what I enjoy doing, and not have to worry about whether or not I can pay the bills.

More than anything else, though, I care enough that I try to meet people. Loneliness is the worst feeling in the world. Everyone thinks they know what it means. Most don't. I'll wager anyone who stumbles across this doesn't. Loneliness isn't simply being alone. It isn't just being single. Yes, it is those things and they're bad. But you haven't known loneliness until you've stood in the middle of a crowd and felt no one around you. You haven't known loneliness until you've been in the middle of a conversation and realized that despite this, you have no one to speak with. Believe me, you don't know what it's like to be alone. You don't know what it's like to have a heart with so much love it's damned near bursting and no one to give it to.

Yeah, yeah. Lots of people are single. Well, boo-fuckin'-hoo. Try being single, and not having any real friends you can talk to. Try not having a real family. Try having no one in the entire world you can confide in, or who can confide in you. That's fucking loneliness. And it's not just a depressing feeling. It burns. And it stings. It feels like the icy burn of thousands of tiny instruments scraping out your insides tiny bit by tiny bit, leaving you a hollow, meaningless shell of the person you once were.

The fact that Valentine's Day is this weekend and I don't have anyone to share it with is just the cherry on top of this mountain of shit. Well, that might be a lie. I did leave a message with someone and haven't heard back yet. But I place my chances with her somewhere around one in a million, so I'm not holding my breath.

And yet, I'll still get up in the morning. I'll still shower, brush my teeth, go out, and I'll wear a smile. I'll joke right along with the rest of them. They were right. The world is a stage, and we are all merely players. I'm a showman, and the facade of happiness I wear is the greatest show I can perform.

Maybe someday, it won't be a show anymore. I try to be an optimist, no matter how hard it becomes. Until then, the show must go on.

Yours,

Bob

A Questionnaire

2010-01-18T19:40:00.001-08:00

So, friends of mine keep sending me these "tell me about yourself" questionnaires, and I typically don't fill them in for a variety of reasons (lack of time ranks right at the top). But, I actually have a few minutes of free time this evening. No, that's a lie. I have several hours before I need to go to bed if I'm going to get any sleep at all before going to work in the morning, and several days worth of work to do in that time, but I'm going to pretend I have free time anyway because, damn it, I need to do something lighthearted for a few minutes.

Anyway, what I've done is taken questions from several of these questionnaires, supplied the answers, and copied them below. Enjoy learning more about me than I'm sure you ever wanted to know.

Birth Date & Location?

I was born at a very early age. I came into this world on September 1, 1988, the very same day that Luis Alvarez, the American physicist and Nobel laureate (perhaps best known for his work on the extinction of dinosaurs), who would later become one of my personal heroes, died. I was born in Aurora, Colorado and there are those who insist the town has never recovered.

Current Location?

I still reside in Aurora, though I've moved to a different end of town. But that's just physically. Mentally, and emotionally, I live wherever I want to, usually some place far away, and transported there and back through the magic of literary imagination.

Physical Characteristics?

Damned attractive for a goofy looking sonofabitch, if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, I actually don't say so. That being the case: roughly 6' tall, caucasian, brown hair, often with a beard.

Right Handed or Left Handed?

I write with my right hand, but I do strive to maintain some degree of ambidexterity. It's important as a magician that I'm able to use both hands as well as possible. So even though each action is scripted for a certain hand and not interchangeable, no one hand is more important than the other while performing.

Religion?

During my childhood, I was raised to believe in the Catholic religion. My mother was (and remains) Catholic, as were her family. My father's family were Protestant, but since we lived closer to my maternal relatives, I went to church with them, and my father chose to stay home. Over the course of years, I gradually leaned further and further away from the church, for reasons I won't go into here (you can read all about it when my book on the topic finally finds publication), eventually landing comfortably in my present position as an atheist.

Politics?

Mostly Libertarian. I tend to be liberal on social issues and more conservative on economic issues. But I stray from the Libertarian "ideal" on some points, and distance myself from the "extreme" elements of Libertarianism. The good news is, my views mean I will be able to find something to like in both liberals and conservatives.

Ancestry?

Mostly European, but quite a mix, really. Most of my ancestry has been within the United States for at least several generations, though. Honestly, though, I don't care where my ancestors came from. I just like people, regardless of heritage, and to that extent, just think of myself more as "human" than as defined by my ancestry, or even as American.

Fashion & Style?

Style? What's that? Actually, though I'm not much of a fashion critic, I do try to maintain something of a decent style. Mostly, I prefer to express my style through actions and words than by appearance, but I don't want to look like a bum either. When I go out, I like to wear a suit as often as is appropriate. But where I work, that would make me hideously overdressed, so I usually just wear a decent pair of trousers and a t-shirt to work.

What is your weakness?

I don't consider myself a "weak" person at all, but it's still difficult to narrow it down to just one. Intellectually, I think there may be some holes in my political philosophy that I haven't found yet, and that worries me somewhat. Physically, I'm not as athletic as I'd like to be (not because I want to be an athlete, but being in better shape would be nice). Emotionally, probably my desire for that kind of perfect love that I'm not even sure really exists. But I hope it does.

Greatest fears?

On a personal level, my greatest fear is probably loneliness. Not that I need people around me all the time. I'm rather a solitary person and work well alone, but as I indicated above, the one thing I want above all else is that perfect love, and my greatest fear is that I'll never find it. On a more global level, I fear that humanity might kill itself with its own ignorance (I won't go into the specifics of what I mean here).

Favorite foods?

Italian, Mexican, American. I can't eat seafood (at all), but I'm actually not horribly picky about cuisines, though I'm perfectly happy just to get some pasta or a steak. My favorite dessert, though, is tiramisu.

Most important goal for the next year?

I have a rather long list of goals I'd like to accomplish this year. Some I will succeed at, others I likely won't (but I'll keep trying until I do succeed, even if it takes a few extra years). I'd like to sell one of my books, for instance. I'd like to start making a bit of money performing close-up magic. But if I had to pick one single most important goal, it would be to find love.

What time do you go to bed?

It depends on the day, but usually fairly late. Typically around 2:00 or 3:00 if I have to work the next day. If I have the following day off (and no plans in the morning), usually a few hours later.

First thoughts upon waking?

"Ugh. Is it still morning? Wake me when it's lunchtime."

Pepsi or Coke?

I don't really care. Of the two, I'd usually go for coke, but I'll drink either. And in all honestly, I'll usually reach for the Mountain Dew first anyway.

McDonalds or Burger King?

McDonald's if it's for breakfast, Burger King if it's for lunch. But really, I'd rather go somewhere without a drive-thru.

Chocolate or vanilla?

Vanilla, with chocolate toppings.

Lipton or Nestea?

I'm more of a coffee man, myself. But if I am drinking tea, it's not going to be iced. It will be hot.

Red wine or white?

With dinner, it depends on what I'm eating, of course. It would be blasphemous to have white wine with steak or red with chicken, wouldn't it? But if I'm just trying to enjoy a glass of wine for its own sake, I've got to go with red, no doubt about it. And if I'm allowed to be particularly picky, a nice Pinot Noir would be lovely.

Do you smoke?

No. I did, for four or five years. Then I quit. Now, I only have the occasional cigarette, typically as a celebration of something or other. The only time I'll smoke more than the odd occasional cigarette is when I'm in Las Vegas.

Do you drink?

Yes, but not heavily. I enjoy a nice glass of wine from time to time, or a whisky or two when out with friends. But I've only actually gotten drunk a few times.

Do you swear?

What the fuck are you talking about? I could deliver a lengthy dissertation on why profanity is actually a matter of superstition, but it's easier just to say "yes."

Do you sing?

Yes. Badly. When I'm alone or the music is loud enough that no one can hear me anyway.

Have you ever been in love?

I thought so at the time. Now I'm convinced it was just something I ate. But I do desire love. Real love. The lasting kind.

Have you been to college/university or do you intend to?

I have not, and I might want to someday. Personally, I prefer to be autodidactic. I love learning as much as I can about as many things as I can, but I like doing it on my own. That having been said, I would like to earn a degree or two.

Do you want to get married?

Eventually, if I find the right person. But absolutely not in a church.

Do you think you're attractive?

Not particularly. But neither do I think I'm particularly unattractive.

Are you a health freak?

Hell no! Though I am trying to make an effort to live a slightly healthier lifestyle, I don't think I'll ever be one of those health freaks.

Do you get along with your parents?

Usually, yes. As long as certain topics can be avoided, because they both have some extremely bizarre beliefs and opinions that drive me absolutely crazy when I hear about them.

Do you like thunderstorms?

Of course! Let me put it to you this way. My fiction primarily centers around two genres: horror, and (very occasionally) romance. What could symbolize or facilitate these better than thunderstorms?

Do you play an instrument?

I used to play piano. I've fallen out of practice, but keep meaning to take it up again. Tried learning guitar for a while, too, but never got any good at it.

In the past month, have you...

...Drank alcohol?

Yes, but not to excess.

...Smoked?

Yes, once or maybe twice.

...Done drugs?

Only if aspirin counts. I'm quite proud of the fact that I've never done any illegal drugs (not because of the legality, but because of the effect they have on the brain), and take the legal ones only rarely, when necessary for medical purposes.

...Been on a date?

Yes. Nothing came of it, and so my quest for true love continues.

...Been to a mall?

I took a shortcut through a mall to get somewhere else. Does that count?

...Been on stage?

No, not in the last month.

...Gone skinny dipping?

No. I live in Colorado. It's winter. The shock would probably kill me.

...Stolen anything?

Of course not. Nor would I.

Have you ever...

...Been drunk?

Yes, but rarely, and never to the point of passing out.

...Done drugs?

Nothing stronger than cold medicine.

...Been beaten up?

No. I've never been in a physical fight, either. I'm not a violent person, and I don't attract violence toward myself. Plus, I'm big enough that even though I'm not a violent person, most people would think twice before starting something.

...Shoplifted?

No.

How do you want to die?

As an old man, with the woman I love by my side, content in the knowledge that I've led a long, successful, and meaningful life.

What country do you most want to visit?

That's a tough one. I want to see the entire world. Everything from the popular tourist spots to the relatively untouched wild, to the slums. If I had to pick just one, right now...I'd have to say it's a tie. Either France or Italy.

So there it is, a reasonable cross-section of the questionnaires I've received lately. Many individual questions have been omitted for brevity.

Take care,

Bob

Quotations, thoughts, general rambling

2009-12-13T20:21:00.000-08:00

Stephen King once said "The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them." People always say that words cheapen or diminish the most powerful of emotions, but I don't think they truly understand what that means unless they've spent the greater part of their lives crafting the language into art, only to find themselves at some point unable to express the very emotions they've sought to evoke through their work. But it is at that precise moment when words fail that you know you've stumbled across something worth expressing, no matter how much you may struggle to do so.

Stephen Stills once said "There are three things men can do with women: love them, suffer for them, or turn them into literature." It seems to me that the second is all too often a direct product of the first, and one can only seek for temporary release from the third.

Hobbes (of Calvin and) once said "I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each others dreams, we can be together all the time."

It occurs to me that at several times throughout our lives we find ourselves in situations that can either turn in our favor or against. This is, of course, not news to any of you. But it further occurs to me that in the most important of such occasions, those with the potential to alter our entire lives, there is never any middle ground. By this I mean to say that the outcome is either to be pure bliss or absolute misery, and there is little to no chance of anything in between. I don't find myself in situations wherein I'm either going to experience the greatest happiness of my life, or some mediocre outcome, nor do I find myself in situations wherein I'm either going to suffer miserably or experience some mediocre outcome. If one possibility is either bliss or misery, it is a most safe bet that the alternative outcome is the precise opposite.

And what about the heart? Not in the literal sense, of course. Scientifically speaking, the heart simply pumps blood. But think in poetic terms for a moment. How full does the heart have to become before it can break? In the horridly beautiful world of romance, rejection by an attractive stranger may sting, but it can hardly account for a broken heart. It is only once that heart has begun filling itself that it can truly burst. But does it burst from being overfilled? Or does it become so filled simply because of the possibility of it breaking?

Someone once told me that love is not supposed to be painful. I agree, of course, that love itself is not supposed to be and can never be painful. But is it not also true that without some pain, or at least the threat of pain, true love can never flourish? At some point, if we truly love someone, we must open ourselves to them completely; to allow them every opportunity to completely destroy us. This also will not come as news to anyone. But does love come first, or does that vulnerability come first? Is it possible to first love someone and then open ourselves to obliteration at their hands, or must we open ourselves to their attack in order to allow love room to grow?

Jefferson once said that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Is something similar not true of romance? I often wonder. Even if she never actually does make me bleed, I wonder if I can ever love someone who doesn't at least hold the knife to my throat at some point. Not because I desire pain per se, but simply because relationships are so fragile, moreso at certain moments than at others, that if I don't worry, at least a little, at least at some point or other, that I might lose her, is the relationship even worth saving? That is to say, if I don't fill my heart with so much love that the slightest pinprick could cause it to burst, is it even worth defining such a state as "love" in the first place?

Science and the Supernatural

2008-07-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

There is a long-standing tradition which requires that science deals only with natural explanations for natural phenomena, and thus can have nothing to say about the supernatural (defined as anything that exists outside of nature). While largely true, this way of thinking is all but useless in the real world. Sadly, we live in a society in which people are willing to believe the craziest bullshit imaginable--and much of this consists of supernaturalism.

We need a lot of people to fight against this decline of the intellectual climate. There are several groups of people qualified to do so: skilled investigative journalists, conjurors, and scientists (among others, but these are the primary movers and shakers in the skeptical community).

Investigative journalists are useful for two reasons. First, they have those investigative skills that allow them to get inside the scam organizations and find the truth at the bottom of these ridiculous notions. At least equally important is that they have the communicative skills to report their findings, in an understandable manner, to the public at large.

Conjurors are useful because many of the supernaturalists are, in fact, using age-old conjuror's techniques to achieve their so-called miracles. The psychics, for instance, use a method of cold reading in a majority of cases. And even when they aren't using well-known conjuror's tricks, they're often exploiting the same psychological principles that the legitimate entertainer makes use of to achieve certain effects. There is no group of people more qualified to detect trickery than professional tricksters.

But scientists are perhaps most important of all, because contrary to the common "science has nothing to say about the supernatural" humbug, these actually are scientific questions. The claim that science can't study the supernatural is true, but only in an esoteric sense. In any useful sense, science has a lot to say about these issues.

When people are talking about the supernatural, they're talking about events that operate outside of nature. However, in almost all cases, these supposedly supernatural events actually do (allegedly) have natural, physical manifestations. Anything that is detectable by human perception has some form of physical manifestation.

If the claim is that a house is haunted, there's going to be some physical manifestation. Either an apparition will show itself, or the ghost will create "cold spots" or knock on walls, or slam doors, or any other cliche from old horror films. These are all physical manifestations.

If the claim is that dowsing can detect water, that's not a supernatural claim. If true, it's a physical manifestation.

If the claim is that psychics can communicate with the dead, then something is interacting with the natural world.

If the claim is that there is a god, that's going to have physical manifestations. Some Deist gods may prove to be an exception, as they are not said to interact with the physical world. But the various gods that people actually worship certainly would have physical manifestations. Answering prayers, performing miracles, forgiving sins, creating universes: these are all physical manifestations.

My point is that, even if an event or being is said to be supernatural (whatever that is!), it has physical attributes. If it has no physical attributes at all, then no one is even going to be talking about it. It doesn't do anything for their life, it's impossible to detect, and makes no difference in human affairs. I don't believe that these things exist, but it's impossible for science to disprove them. We can call these "purely" supernatural phenomena, and the old adage that science has nothing to do with the supernatural actually does apply here.

But all the "supernatural" things people talk about in religions or New Age fairs, actually are well within the proper domain of science. Even if the being is supernatural (and thus, undetectable by science), it somehow interacts with the natural world. So its effects can be detected and can be studied by science.

For instance, if your claim is that there is a supernatural god who, say, answers prayers, how is that detectable by scientific means? The god may be supernatural, but the efficacy of prayer is within the natural realm and is certainly a matter for science to decide. In this case, all you have to do is run a statistical analysis to determine whether prayer significantly improves, say, the healing speed of hospital patients. When this experiment was performed by the Templeton Foundation, they had some interesting findings.

The patients were divided into three groups. One group was prayed for and not told about it. One group was not prayed for and not told about it. One group was prayed for and told so. The first two groups both demonstrated average recovery. The third group actually experienced a "nocebo" effect and had a prolonged recovery time.

This is a perfect example of science studying the supernatural. Of course Christian theologians were quick to criticize the study's research protocols (which, despite my dislike for the Templeton Foundation, were actually quite good), but they were just upset because someone had actually bothered to prove them wrong.

Related to the idea that science can't study the supernatural (whatever that is!) is the concept of NOMA, or nonoverlapping magisteria. As much as I respect and admire Stephen Jay Gould as a thinker and a scientists, I cannot forgive him for supporting and popularizing NOMA as a valid way of thinking--it is not! Gould wrote, "[T]he magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty)."

On this point, Gould is dead wrong. He correctly identifies what science has to do with, but incorrectly gives ultimate meaning (which cannot actually exist) and worse, morality, to religion. After all that religion has done to society, I can think of fewer actions more misguided than allowing religion any more room to comment on morality. Religious morality promotes bigotry, stupidity, and murder.

But Gould's greatest mistake is in assuming that all religion does is "ultimate meaning and moral value." If that were the extent of religion, I would have no problem with it, and would agree with Gould's assessment. The problem is that ultimate meaning seems, to me, a red herring. Science can reveal the universe as it really is. Ultimate meaning, it seems to me, is simply what we as individuals and societies make of that universe. There is no "ultimate" meaning. There is only personal meaning. Science, it is true, does not have much to do with personal philosophy. It also doesn't have much to do with moral philosophy (though there are some minor points of overlap, despite Gould's assertion to the contrary). If religion weren't about supernaturalism or a magic man in the sky, Gould would be correct to give morality to it. However, religionists are not the most moral, nor the most intelligent people in the world. Any morality that modern religion (or any religion as it has ever existed in the history of the human race) gives us is guaranteed to be horribly skewed by supernaturalism. Gould argues for NOMA while considering the almost atheistic "religion" of many sophisticated theologians, forgetting that more than half of the American population still believes the Universe is less than 10,000 years old.

This debate over NOMA has created strange bedfellows. Many Christians, unsatisfied with the blind faith given them by their preachers and holy books, think that science should set out to prove their religion correct. These people are certainly opposed to NOMA. On the other hand, many other Christians realize that NOMA is their best protection from scientific scrutiny. They may not be satisfied with blind faith, but at least they're safe from falsification.

A lot of atheists and scientists (almost all scientists are atheists--food for thought) are on my side. They see NOMA for what it is--a last ditch effort to save religion from proper scientific scrutiny and debate. As such, we argue against it with all our might, because we know that the best way to kill religion is to expose it to the light of science, under which it cannot help but to shrivel.

On the other hand, such thoughts are not politically correct. There are those who think we need to take this battle one step at a time. For instance, American biologists are currently in a state of war against creationism. For these biologists, perhaps it is a safer tactic to make every attempt to keep science and religion separate. They are rightly concerned that many religious individuals will, if science and religion are forced into conflict, choose to ditch science and keep religion. It's a valid concern, and one I cannot answer to a particularly satisfying degree. Politically speaking, perhaps it is better to keep religion and science separate, if for no other reason than to keep funding and trick the religious IDiots into avoiding their conflicts with science.

And of course there are plenty of evolutionists who are also religionists, including some respected and noteworthy biologists. I don't understand how they can reconcile scientific truth with their Bronze Age mythologies, but they seem not to have a problem doing so.

But that still doesn't make NOMA true! We can discuss politics and tactics until the cows come home, if we want. But I actually care what is true, so I cannot support a proposition that goes against what I know to be true. Religion makes scientific claims, and should be subjected to scientific scrutiny. The same goes for all other forms of supernaturalism as well.

The controversy over evolution and creationism is but a single skirmish in a larger battle, I think. Perhaps in this skirmish, NOMA is a tactically sound position to defend. But in the larger battle, it will only cost us more in the future. It may be that we're best to leave NOMA where it belongs, accept the difficulty that causes in our present skirmish, and move on. If we do this, once our current fight against creationism has been won, we will have an easier time defeating religion, supernaturalism, and irrationality in general.

Unfortunately, many scientists disagree with me--at least publicly. In 1999, the National Academy of Sciences supported NOMA: "[S]cience and religion occupy two separate realms of human experience. Demanding that they be combined detracts from the glory of each." I'm not entirely convinced that they don't take this stance simply to protect their funding and political standing in a country dominated by mindless creationists. But the fact that they popularize this stance will not be useful to us in the future.

Science can indeed study the supernatural (as long as it has natural manifestations--as all supernatural phenomena in which people believe do). It's just that supernaturalists don't like what science discovers about them, and scientists don't like it when supernaturalists threaten their funding.

Keep it natural!

Bob

An Open Letter to Patrick Greene

2008-07-28T07:52:00.000-07:00

Background info: I'm a frequent viewer/listener of The Atheist Experience, a public access call-in television program in Austin, Texas, sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin. For those curious, I watch the pre-recorded programs on Google Video, links to which you can find from the show's website. On this week's program was one Patrick Greene, an atheist (worth points in his favor, but not enough to save his reputation from the spanking Matt Dillahunty handed him on the show) offended by a bumper sticker.

Perhaps I should explain. It all started off innocently enough. While driving, he saw an anti-atheist bumper sticker, and later discovered it was sold by Ray Comfort's ministry (to whom I will not link you, because they deserve no free publicity). He wrote a letter of complaint to the ministry:

Your Item #500 Atheist Day bumper sticker is a very un-Christian insult to all atheists. Just because your Bible states something, does not mandate that you use this information to insult atheists like me.

I am not a fool, and I want you to change the wording of your sticker. The average driver can easily read the words:

NATIONAL ATHEIST'S DAY
APRIL 1ST

But the words of Psalm 14:1, which are below these words, cannot be easily seen by any motorist.

My life as an American Atheist has been unalterably changed by your bumper sticker. I would never be elected to any political position in our country, because your bumper sticker has poisoned most believers minds.

I demand that you use your own savior's command to Love your neighbor as yourself, and change your bumper sticker to read something like this:

PSALM 14:1 SHOULD BE READ

I understand that the U.S. Constitution guarantees you freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press. However, that does not give you unlimited license to publicly insult those who do not share your beliefs.

If, by August 23, 2008 your bumper sticker has not been changed on your web site, I will file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas, in San Antonio, and have a restraining order issued to order you to change your sticker.

Yeah, I'm sure they're running for the hills, right? I mean, even Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, as stupid as they are, are intelligent enough to realize they've got the Constitution on their side in this case. They read that letter on the show (and I dug it up on the Internet later, to get the wording right). As it turns out, he almost had some success. They took that particular bumper sticker off of the online website, apparently, but they're now giving it away for free!

On the show, he requested that both believers and non-believers should send him an e-mail (his address was provided on the air, but I will not provide it here) with their thoughts on the matter. I've decided to post mine publicly.

Sir,

Since you requested feedback during your segment on The Atheist Experience, I feel no hesitation about joining in the inevitable choir of viewer/listener backlash.

Your actions, as I understand them from listening to the show, are completely unjustified. They betray not only an ignorance of the Constitution but a blatant disregard for the Constitution, the rights of the individuals you find offensive, and the rights of all individuals to speak freely. I feel confident in assuming that if a Christian threatened to sue you for displaying an atheist friendly bumper sticker on the back of your car, you would be as outraged at their actions as I am at your actions. Yet, do you not see the hypocrisy here? One can only be assured that he has freedom of expression if he is willing to allow the same freedom to everyone, including those he finds offensive.

You are right that the freedom of speech has certain limitations, but you are incorrect in your assessment thereof. Your cliched example of shouting "fire" in a theatre does not illustrate the point I assume you wish to make, because this illustration is an example, essentially, of inciting a riot and endangering the lives of the occupants of said theatre. This limitation does not apply to shouting fire if there actually is a fire, nor does it apply to the performers on stage shouting the same as part of their performance. It has nothing, in fact, to do with the actual action of shouting that there is a fire. The limitation is not on the word, but on the intended or actual consequences of the shouted word or phrase. The limitation is on endangering the public, and nothing more.

A bumper sticker, obviously intended simply to be humorous, endangers no one, and in fact, causes no harm whatsoever. I will repeat Mr. Dillahunty's challenge from the show: demonstrate how you were harmed by an individual expressing himself through a bumper sticker that agrees with his own opinions. The bumper sticker did not assault you, rape you, murder you. It did not take or damage your possessions, and it did not have an impact on your income. The only effects the bumper sticker apparently had upon you were not the fault of the bumper sticker, but the fault of your own inability to take a joke and move on. Any damages, real or imagined, were self-inflicted, and certainly not grounds for a lawsuit.

There was a brief mention of a lawsuit related, I believe, to a city displaying a nativity scene during the holiday season. We have similar displays where I live, and I have mixed feelings about them. On the one hand, a city displaying religious symbols as part of a holiday display is a violation of the Constitution--UNLESS they display icons, in equal numbers and of equal prominence, related to ALL religions (a ridiculous notion, which can be dismissed on grounds of practicality), and a lawsuit on these grounds is Constitutionally justified. On the other hand, it's not a battle I'm inclined to fight, because I think there are more important things to do that won't make atheists look petty (for instance, fighting the tax exempt status of religious institutions). I think the best solution to this problem is to keep the holiday displays, but remove religious symbolism, but again, it's not a high priority for me.

But this has nothing to do with your threatened lawsuit. An individual's right to free expression is much, much, much more far reaching than the government's. Because the government is public and tax funded, it must remain religiously neutral. Individuals are not public and not tax funded and are not so limited. These ideas are quite clearly expressed in the First Amendment, which I strongly suggest you read again until you understand it.

Legally, your threatened lawsuit is unjustified and, I believe, unjustifiable. Morally, it is also unjustifiable, as it is an act of shameless censorship (or attempted censorship), which I can never support. Free societies can only prosper in conditions under which there is a free and open exchange of ideas--and this includes the bad ones! The moral action to take against offensive ideas is to rationally counter them. Use your own free speech, don't censor theirs.

And it is also tactically misguided. It diverts attention from real issues, such as faith based initiatives or tax exemption of churches. It paints a picture in the public mind of atheists as humorless, litigious bullies with nothing better to do with our time than to put unjustified pressure on private citizens for exercising their free expression. It proves the bumper sticker's point, by demonstrating the atheist (in this case, yourself) to be a damned fool. And it emboldens the enemy. Already, they've started giving the stickers away for free (clearly just to prove that they will not be bullied). And if you do attempt to file a lawsuit (which will either be dismissed or lost, I assure you), I'm confident that Christians will reciprocate. Unfortunately, their target will not be limited to only yourself, but rather, they will attack the atheist community as a whole, thus making us all suffer for your lack judgment.

Whenever an atheist rightly sues over the inclusion of god in the Pledge or on the money, the media portray him or her as a villain. I agree with those atheists (but not you) in principle, but question the tactical decision (again, it seems there are more important battles to be fighting). If you do file a lawsuit, the media will portray you as a villain. Though the media's portrayal of someone as evil does not necessarily make it so, they would be correct in this case. Unfortunately, the media, always eager to please the Christian majority, will wrongfully include the rest of us in the same category.

Am I glad that the bumper sticker has been taken down? Of course not. While I find the message objectionable, as do you, I will defend to the death their right to display that message. Furthermore, all that has now happened is further proliferation of the same bumper sticker, at no cost, to even more gullible Christians. All you have accomplished, is to worsen your own perceived problem--and, perhaps, to create real problems for all of us.

You, sir, have only proven these Christians correct. Your actions have indeed been foolish. I strongly urge you to reconsider them.

As requested, I've copied this e-mail to the hosts & crew of The Atheist Experience.

Sincerely,

Robert Lewis
Colorado

Since I sent this e-mail, I've discovered that my fears have indeed been confirmed. Ray Comfort, one of the most cynical, uneducated, and notorious creationists currently polluting the intellectual culture, is making fun of Patrick, and using his failures against all of us.

Of course, Comfort's not very good at making fun of people. Indeed, his response to Patrick's letter is little more than repetition of all of his discredited creationist arguments. Still, it's a testament to just how powerful a single atheist's lack of judgment can be. One man with a bug up his butt about a bumper sticker attracted the personal attention and insults of one of the most famous and most idiotic men in the world.

Congratulations, Patrick. You've made me take Ray Comfort's side on an issue. Happy now, god damn it?

Bob

Is 'Design' Used Intelligently?

2008-07-09T07:38:00.001-07:00

In the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature, Richard Sever turns his focus on the word "design" (Nature 454, 27 (3 July 2008)). He argues that many biologists use a lazy linguistic shorthand when they mention the word in describing something that occurs in nature. For instance: "The bird's wing is designed for flight."

Of course we all know that it wasn't actually designed. Design is a word used for purposeful planning. In order for there to be design, as Ray Comfort and his lot are always pointing out to unsuspecting passers-by, there must be a designer.

We have a very good understanding of biological diversity, and even know, in some detail, the mechanisms by which evolution continues to operate. So by simple necessity, there is no such designer. Evolution requires us to realize that biological diversity is not the result of any form of "intelligent design."

This is the gist of Sever's argument, and he will find no substantial disagreement here. Especially when talking with the public, we must be extremely careful about the words we choose to use. But I think more important than the fact that "design" is used only as a sort of intellectual shorthand, is the question of why we must be so damned careful about it in the first place.

And the answer is simple: creationists, and lots of them. They are always eager to quote biologists out of context to make it seem like real scientists support their intellectually suicidal position, even though the truth is quite the opposite. The creationists are quite fond of quote-mining, as it is one of the few things they are actually able to do with some efficiency (they've failed completely in all other intellectual pursuits).

For instance, in 1980, Stephen Jay Gould wrote: "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and notes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils."

This is quoted out of context in countless creationist books, websites, videos, etc. But they either completely fail to grasp what he's talking about, or they're deliberately lying about it to prop up their own position. Gould did not argue that there are no "transitional forms." He argued that transitions between SPECIES are rare (not that none exist). Transitions between larger groups, however, are quite common. The fossil record is rich with them. You are encouraged to read Donald Prothero's book, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters (Columbia, 2007) for more examples than you know what to do with.

If creationists are going so far as to quote Gould out of context, even though he's one of the most famous paleontologists of recent years (largely due to his--somewhat controversial--contributions to evolutionary biology), surely they will have no hesitation to quote anyone else out of context if any of us dare to use "design" as a bit of lazy shorthand.

So strategically, I'm in complete agreement with Sever. His assessment of the situation is quite accurate as far as I can tell. So you're warned: if a biologist does happen to mention "design," he doesn't mean "intelligent design." And if a creationist quotes a real scientist, I'll bet you my lunch money that it's out of context (or an outright fabrication).

Denver Catholics Add Insult to Injury

2008-07-05T05:51:00.000-07:00

The Archdiocese of Denver just agreed to pay $5.5 million in a settlement related to yet another case of systematic child abuse by Catholic clergymen. The priests involved are all dead, so the actual abusers cannot be brought to justice, but the victims aren't settling for excuses like that. After all, we all know by now that the Church was systematically involved in a massive cover-up, for which they must be held accountable.

I am glad they've settled this case. It's another five and a half million dollars a hideous institution no longer has available with which to further degrade society. I'm only sad that it isn't more, as five million dollars is just a drop in the bucket to the evil monstrosity that is the Catholic Church.

And yet, even while settling the case, the Archdiocese couldn't help but to add insult to injury, by lying to the victims and public once again.

One of the attorneys representing the victims, Jeff Anderson (you may remember him from the film Deliver Us From Evil, or from the list of filmmakers, victims, and attorneys who were honored with my Champion of Justice award), obtained as a part of the settlement, a series of documents, which he has released to the public--sadly, with names left out--revealing that Church officials did indeed know what was happening and instead of reporting the abuse to the police, covered it up and allowed it to continue.

We're all aware of these stories. There are so many of them, it's hard to be surprised. Everyone knows that the Catholic Church, operating under orders from the Vatican, covered up every single instance of child abuse that they could.

Quoted by the Denver Rocky Mountain News: "There's a lot of damning information in those documents," said Tom Koldeway, 47, who was molested by White for more than eight years. "They knew he was a pedophile before I was born."

So the Church has been dragged, kicking and screaming, into something closer to full disclosure. Archbishop Charles Chaput said that today's policy is to report pedophiles to the police. That's probably the case, but certainly not because the Church is any more enlightened. They're just terrified of further damaging their precious reputation if word of another cover-up happens to get out. But he added insult to injury by claiming that he didn't know why anyone would keep sexual abuse secret.

Here Chaput counts on his audience not knowing their history. Certainly, that's true of most Catholics, for no one who knew the Church's history would still be a Catholic, but it's not true of the rest of us. There were secret orders from high levels of the Church, issued directly from the Vatican, ordering this systematic cover-up and demanding that all reports of abuse had to be dealt with directly by Rome. Chaput knows this, of course, but chooses to ignore it in his statement.

Do I think that Chaput himself was involved in the cover-up? It's difficult to say, since Anderson's documents mentioned no names except for the now-deceased pedophile. Personally, I doubt if he was personally involved. He was not ordained as a bishop until later. But he is still a member of the organization that oversaw this abuse. Sure, he's apologized for it, but because his apologies are mixed with his lies about knowing why these tragedies weren't reported, I question his sincerity.

And the child abuse scandal is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to negative aspects of Catholicism. Yet they still receive tax benefits. Let's not rest until they lose those tax benefits. It's time they learn to take responsibility for their offenses. Personally, I think they need to pay more than the millions they've been paying. Let's make them feel the consequences of their evil.

Bob