Thoughts In Grey

"God" and the wondrous universe

I rarely come across a quote that so precisely sums up my thoughts about a topic, in this case, the amazing nature of the universe around us and the existence or need for an all-powerful deity, spirit, whatever you may call it, to explain or clarify things.

In her book Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, which I don't recommend (see below), blogger Greta Christina notes that:

The physical world is anything but mundane. The physical world is black holes at the center of every spiral galaxy. It is billions of galaxies rushing away from each other at breakneck speed. It is solid matter that’s anything but solid: particles that can’t be seen by the strongest microscope, separated by gaping vastnesses of nothing. It is living things that are all related, all with the same great- great- great- to the power of a million grandmother. It is space that curves, continents that drift. It is cells of organic tissue that somehow generate consciousness. When you take the time to learn about the mundane physical world, you find that it is anything but mundane.

And this crap about “I don’t follow any organized religion, but there has to be more to life than what we see” does a grave disservice to the wild and astonishing complexity of what we see.

The more I read about the universe, the origins of everything we know of since the big bang, the way things hang together from the smallest particle up to the largest galaxy and all the human-sized constructions and natural artifacts in betwee, the more in awe of it all I am. As the author notes, if you think "there must be more to it all than this," then in my opinion you really haven't bothered to try to understand how amazing "all this" really is.

While there are a few decent quotes and ideas in this book, I don't particularly recommend it for two reasons. First, most of the author's arguments are not particularly new or even that well presented. She has none of the eloquence of some others with similar opinons and the book can be best described as a summary of well-established arguments. Second, she writes from anger and her style is quite offputting even though I agree with much of what she has to say. Anger with an injustice may be a healthy motivator, as both Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi noted. But they both won precisely because their message was about the injustice, not the anger.

It's perhaps a decent summary of many of the arguments made against believing in the supernatural (whether in the form of a "god" or any other less-specific supernatural phenomena). It might be useful for somebody who's unfamiliar with the general landscape and doesn't mind getting the overview from an author who doesn't bother to hide the chip on her shoulder. It made for a quick airplane read -- I never can concentrate very well on planes -- and there are a few good passages in it, of which the one above is far and above the best, or at least the one that spoke loudest to me.

Randomness...

The latest meme masquerading as science

I hate stuff like this.

Not because it isn't true (it is), or even that it couldn't possibly be education (which it might). I hate it because the opportunity is squandered by somebody trying to make something that's fairly routine seem incredibly special and miraculous. Already, social media is full of comments from people claiming that something so "miraculous" must somehow prove the existence of their particular god.

It doesn't.

Random, Non-terminating, non-repeating decimals are actually quite common in nature. Pi is one. So is the square root of 2, and in fact the square root of any number that isn't itself a perfect square. I won't even get into cube roots or any other type of roots. The Golden Ratio is also a non-terminating, non-repeating sequence of decimals. As are an infinite number of other ratios that exist in nature.

Not only this, but the core assertion in this item is not only not proven, it probably isn't proveable. It's nothing more than the old adage about a million monkeys in front of a million typewriters eventually coming up with 'Hamlet.' It may be true. A long enough random sequence (or random pounding of monkeys on keyboards) may eventually produce just about anything. But there's nothing magical or special about that.

There was an opportunity here to use Pi as an example, to demonstrate the power of certain mathematical expressions that define our world. To explain that the universe as we know it could not exist if such things did not exist. But the world of social media doesn't allow that. Stating that something is special, and allowing people to draw their own mostly incorrect conclusions seems to be the way to get attention. That's what such memes are really all about, which is why George Takei posted this to his Facebook page and accellerated the meme. Somebody out there is really proud of themselves for getting so much attention for their little, partially-correct statement.

The unfortunate side effect is that a huge number of people who formerly knew nothing will instead walk away with incorrect knowledge about the non-existent uniqueness of Pi.

Dear Mr. Kim, give up your nukes!

Kim Jong-un,
Presidential Palace
Pyongyang, North Korea

Dear Mr. Kim,

It has come to my attention  that you have been spending huge amounts of money and starving your people in order to produce nuclear weapons. My message to you, your friend Mr. Ahmadinejad, (whose address I've lost, feel free to share with him), and others in your Axis-of-Evil is simple: Don't bother, as the events of the past week prove you don't need them.

In case you weren't paying attention, about a week ago a couple of nutcase brothers, for reasons not yet known, set off a couple of bombs at a major event in Boston. It was tragic, and Boston recovered pretty well, after a superb handling of the immediate aftermath of the event.

Then on Thursday night and Friday, with one suspect dead and the other on foot and believed to be injured, we went collectively nuts. Buses and trains as far away as New York (about 320km/200 miles away -- futher than you are from your enemies in Seoul -- if you don't know the geography) were stopped, inconveniencing people hundreds of miles away for no discernable reason. Airspace over Boston was closed because... well, I'm not sure why a guy on foot in a suburban township of the city would force a closing of airspace, but it did. As far away as Manhattan, the Central Park Traverse was closed and evacuated for a while so police could "investigate" a car that was deemed suspicious because it had Massachussets plates and a couple of youngish guys inside, this even as the drama in Boston was drawing to a close on Friday evening. [Note for the future, if you're planning to steal an escape vehicle, find one with out-of-state plates and head for Manhattan, because that'll fool the NYPD!]

In Boston things were even crazier. The entire public transportation system was shut down immediately even though the closest station (Harvard Square) is more than a mile away from the suspect's last known location and would be easy enough to guard. Eventually the whole city was shut down and everybody told to stay home, even though there was no reason to believe the suspect had any way to get over the relatively few, and by this time well-guarded, Charles River crossings to get into Boston proper. [Only Dunkin Donuts stores were allowed and encouraged to stay open because apparently the local public safety apparatus cannot operate without them. Another lesson terrorists should keep in mind: attack the donut stores and bring our emergency response system to its knees!]

Our emergency responders and their leadership already knew a truth that wasn't immediately shared with the public: at that point it was one crazed 19 year-old kid who may or may not have had a weapon and ammo with him, who was believed to be wounded, in a section of town that was rapidly locked down and cordoned off. Yet a whole city shut down for 24 hours, with major infrastructure closures and random stoppages extending to distant cities.

The lesson is simple Mr. Kim. You don't need nukes to destroy us, or even threaten us.

Brief notes

Some thoughts on a pretty tragic week:

• The response in Boston was superb. There is little more than can be said.
• We weren't completely unprepared 12 years ago, at least not in L.A. Much of what was done in Boston is what I've been taught on a smaller scale in every emergency medicine and emergency response class I've ever taken, and there have been quite a few of those. What has changed is that the stuff that we always were trained to do in smaller teams in the field is now practiced all the way up the chain of responsibility. Those with responsibility for the higher level administrative and logistical management of such incidents have been forced to think ahead and consider what they would do: where to get blood, how many rooms to have set aside, how to manage staffing, etc. In the end, in large-scale events, the logistics and planning matter.
• I suspect that on the west coast we've always been a bit more prepared for mass events, though historically we haven't worried as much about the man-made type.
• Growing up in Israel in the '70s probably has also left me much more attuned to preparing for such things and planning ahead around the grim possibilities.
• My friend Bill Seligman noted the following on Facebook. It is so succinct and complete that I won't even try to paraphrase or edit it in any way:
   "No matter where you work - no matter what you do: you need to be ready for the "expected" crisis of your home, workplace or other place that you spend regular time, and the unexpected crisis of the society in which we live. It means taking a few minutes to force ourselves out of our comfort zone to THINK, so that we can be ready to help, rather than panic, when needed. 
   "In Los Angeles, that doesn't only mean earthquake kits -- it also means being ready for terrorism, for fire, or for a deranged gunman to enter your office. It means you need to have a plan for what happens if an out-of-town family member is suddenly dying, or if your boss has a heart attack at her desk, or if your kid calls from soccer practice to say that the coach is just lying there..."
• I should point out that the ubiquitous earthquake or first aid kit is useless if you don't know what to do with it, and the moments after an emergency is not the time to start learning. Take a class and think ahead. (You may find that the expensive kit you thought you needed is mostly a waste of money and that what you really need can be assembled quite inexpensively.)
• A "Rule of Thumb" that I learned from an LAFD captain some time back. It really uses your thumb and is worth keeping in mind:
  When confronted with an emergency or distaster, whether it's a fire, a gas plume, a wrecked truck, a collapsing building, a giant Stay-Puft Marshmellow Man, or anything else threatening, extend your arm and put up your thumb. If you can't obscure the entire thing with your thumb, then you're too close! If you're not a trained emergency worker who's there for a reason, get the hell away!
• Even if you use the Rule of Thumb, you may be too close for certain types of emergencies. Use your brain too.
• If you don't follow the "Rule of Thumb" and instead stick around to try to get some cool video this is the kind of thing that can happen:
   
•  I often find Andy Borowitz to be far too partisan for my tastes, but he's dead on the money with his latest item. It's sad when the satire is more true than the "news."
• Coincidentally, I happen to be reading It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News, the first chapter of which happens to deal with media fearmongering. It is 100% appropriate to much of what we've seen in the news since Monday. It's amazing how much of what we did in my college newspaper days to fill space is what the major networks and newspapers do in "real life." As a kid who was barely old enough to drink, it was funny and arguably had little impact on much. When CNN, Fox, The New York Times and all the rest do it, it's either sad or scary or both.
• The solution is obvious.
  
  

  Cartoon by Beattie, from the Daytona News-Journal
• Also, turn off the internet. It's mostly just as useless and full of rumor, innuendo and speculation.
• In a major emergency, odds are good you'll be on your own for 2-3 days. So I'll finish up with plugs for attending a CERT course in your area, for brushing up on your first aid and disaster response skills, and for regularly giving blood. I've got a pint of B- due on Friday...

-mg

It's not about you!

(Illustration by Wes Bausmith / Los Angeles Times)

My Facebook and Twitter feeds have been predictably full of comments about the tragic events at the Boston Marathon finish line today. Most of the comments fit into a few basic categories:

• Requests for friends or relatives to check in, and responses.
• Expressions of sadness and condolence.
• Praise for first responders and others on the scene.
• Later, speculation about the who, the why, and other facts related to the event.
• A few insightful thoughts about the event and perhaps its meaning.

But there was one category that really pissed me off. Because there is a certain type of person, apparently, who can not let an event go by without somehow making it about themselves. And for better or worse, some of these people are actually friends of mine.

These are the ones who couldn't post about the event without somehow tying it to something they've done or felt or seen before in their lives. Maybe he ran a marathon and had to post a long story about how that made him so much more connected to what was going on. Or maybe her boyfriend used to live in Boston. Or she lived next to the NYC Marathon route and was so inspired by the marathoners over the years that she had to wax rhepsodically about how much she feels for those people, because after all she had actually seen them from her window several times over the years, so her personal feelings about this have just got to be important to the world.

What struck me most about these is that the messages were all amazingly self-centered. Little sympathy for the victims, little thanks for the responders, and virtually no introspection or suggestion that the event led them to want to take action on behalf of others. For some people, the only possible reaction seemed to be to talk about how it made them feel.

To all these people, I have a simple message:

It's not about you!

If it's Tuesday, we must be voting

It's election day in Los Angeles.

Again.

Why are we voting again, only four months after a national (November) election, eight months before a statewide election (again, November) and three months before the statewide primary (June)? I can think of no reason beyond the utter corruptness of the place. We have, in Los Angeles, perfected the art of gerrymandering. Not only we do we define districts based on the needs of the political insiders, but we do the same with the elections themselves.

The City of Los Angeles can't run its elections at the same time as the state (November, odd years), or the Federal government (November, even years), because apparently that would cause people to show up and vote. Some of the appointed heirs-apparent and other hacks might not get to keep their precious jobs if they had to compete in an election like last November's when as many as half of the eligible voters showed up. All the self-interested initiatives, amendments and special taxes might go nowhere if they had to be on the ballot during a well-attended general election.