What is so appealing to me about Mr. Harris’ treatment of these weighty matters is his approach. He does not approach them as opinions of equal value, as most writers do. Much of the reading that I have done as pertains to matters of religion take a conciliatory tone that so waters down the argument as to make it incomprehensible and useless. Mr. Harris’ approach is that of a peer review. He takes each argument presented, weighs it, and casts judgment upon it. He is no kinder to the religious than he would be to a peer who had used bad methodology in a study.

The Moral Landscape is not intended to be a book specifically disagreeing with religious tenants. It cannot avoid doing so, however, because it addresses one of the last bastions of religious unassailableness: morals. We have all, throughout our lives, been treated to the old canard that morals are explicitly and solely the grounds of the theologian. Some enlightened folks would go so far as to grant the applicability of philosophy to morals, but it is a realm that even most scientists will avoid, having been raised to believe that moral values are too “human” to be questioned or answered by the process of science.

Mr. Harris eviscerates that theory. He takes every approach that I have ever heard to making that argument, blows away the supports, and washes out the conclusion with a clear, refreshing stream of logic and knowledge.

I won’t go into much detail, I’ve only read the book once and I have not thought enough about the arguments to make them as my own. You (and I use this “you” in the most personal sense for every person that reads this blog post) need to read the boo yourself. Many, perhaps most, will disagree with much that Mr. Harris has to say. But if you care about the value of human discourse in improving our lives, in hearing new ideas and judging them, this book is an essential read. The ideas here-in are NEW. You’ll find no canned old argument, based on some thousand year old premise here.

Our guiding morals and the way that we reach them, in groups, countries, or as humans, have a definitive and constant impact on our daily lives. These are important, and IMMEDIATELY so. Mr. Harris shows us how we can get away from debilitating circular discussions of relative morals and find a moral structure that fits all of us, all of humanity, and carries us forward into ever improving lives. He shows us how we can make moral choices and be able to EVALUATE them for their efficacy in improving the world around us. He argues convincingly that there are moral facts in this world and that science, not religion or guessing or ancient superstition, is the best process to discover the best way to live our lives.

So. I recommend you read it. Who wants to borrow it first?

So, the night before as I was coming down on the train, I was following the twitter hash tag for the rally. There were tons of posts going up, and a lot of them were talking about how many people were going to be coming. Then there was facebook; 250k people had responded that they planned on attending. Now, it’s easy to discount a facebook RSVP, especially if you’re older and believe in the flightiness of the net generation. However, I think there is an earnestness to the facebook RSVP that a lot of people miss. It doesn’t mean that you WILL attend the event, but it does mean that you’re going to make a real good-faith effort to make it. Especially for something of this magnitude. This was gonna be huge, and people knew it, and they wanted to be a part of it.

The upshot of all this is that Elly and I were discussing what time to get moving in the morning. She had looked up how long the metro trip and the drive would take in the morning, and then estimated an h-hour from that. I was encouraging we leave earlier. We split the difference, which I wasn’t upset about at all since I’m still not a morning person. We could basically not have left any later and still made the rally. It was that close.

We got up, got moving, I left my camera behind on elly’s floor (mother fucker! I am SO pissed about that. Still.), stopped to eat breakfast at a dunkin’, the got on the road. I realized I forgot my camera about 10 minutes down the road. Elly offered to stop and turn around, but I said we should just press. And thank FSM I did, because an incredible site greeted us as we pulled into the metro station: a line that stretched a full 400 meters, 3-4 people wide, from the gates of the metro station. A line that was growing at about 10-20 meters a minute, even as the front of the line made reasonable progress into the station. I had known the event was going to be big, but this was really the first real indication of how big it was going to be.

We jumped out of the car and joined the line. It was already 50 or more meters longer than when we pulled up. An aging hip hippy came up behind us carrying a two sided sign. One side can be paraphrased as “repeating something 100 times does not make it true”. We had several good conversations, and he and I agreed that the toughest part of the whole thing was coming up with a sign that qualified for Jon Stewart’s version of reasonableness – a topic to which I’ll return.

After about 35 or 40 minutes, we boarded a train that packed itself to the gills, and the station we were at was the very first stop. I took my natural but recently discovered Bostonian assertiveness and managed to snag a couple of seats for us, which proved to be a worthwhile endeavor. More than half of the stations we passed from our origin to our destination were lined with people four, five, six deep. And the trains had filled right from their instantiation. Every now and again we saw people who clearly were just trying to go out about their business, who had no warning that there would be a gigantic event disrupting their lives by stealing away their transportation. I felt bad for them, but was excited and inspired by the sheer number of people headed in the general direction of the rally. Elly started txting her friend Ben, who had been intending on getting up around 10 and wandering down towards the rally to warn him not to bother. It was too late.

When got off the train, we had a slow walk as a single escalator tried to handle the gigantic crowd, further slowed by exit turnstiles that were non-operational, funneling half the crowd, including some folks in wheel-chairs, through a single exit lane that was NOT wide enough for the chairs. I think DC was a little surprised by the size of the event.

We walked down 7th to the tail end of the crowd, and joined the lines for the port-o-johns, which proved to be about a 30 or 40 minute endeavor. After, we joined the surging crowd, trying to get to a point where we could at least see a jumbo tron and hear the speakers. We threaded human needle after human needle before finally reaching a vantage point sufficiently within the audio-visual cone of the nearest jumbotron to catch most everything that was said.

The roots came on. They were entertaining for awhile. Eddie Izzard did NOT perform, which made me sad. The roots were good, but they lasted WAY too long. Next the Mythbusters came out, which was fun, although again, lasted a little too long. It was crazy, standing there and waiting in the crowd, how long the wave took to reach us given how little time it stayed around us. The male/female waves were silly. Elly made the pertinent and appropriate joke about how yes, everyone knows that men take less time than women. The bi-directional wave was pretty cool, especially since we were directly in the middle. I actually thought that the waves had canceled each other out, even though on the stage they were saying that they actually managed to cross. Still don’t know if I believe that, but maybe they fizzled and then reignited. I know I only raised my hands once for two waves. (Well, not entirely true, there were a couple of little bubble waves, but I don’t think they were the entire thing. ) I wondered what would’ve happened on the seismograph if we’d've actually set up a harmonic interval for the jumping. I think that would’ve been more fun and more worthwhile.

Some of the comedy skits were a bit lame, some were pretty good. Then the kid rock/sheryl crow duo came on.

First of all, let me just mention up front my feelings about Kid Rock up front. I don’t want this to be the primy focus of this section, so I’ll just say it gently as I’m able. Kid Rock sucks. He’s an idiot with no talent, and while his heart is apparently in the right place, his intellect is about as sharp as a a well sanded, round pointed stick. With padding. His song was all about really shitty false equivilance.

And I guess, in my rambling way, this is what is going to bring us to my biggest complaint about Stewart’s attempts to bring some semblance of sanity and reason back into the national conscious and conversation. False Equivilance. Stewart, as so many other self-proclaimed “moderates” do, always equate the left and the right. And it kills me every time. Somehow, even in the minds of the most rational, apolitical people, wanting to impeach Bush for all the constitution busting illegal things he did that killed people, and tortured people, and stole so fundamentally from our constitution and traditions is equivalent to wanting to impeach Clinton for a blow job. Somehow John Edwards and Elliot Spitzer, by themselves, are the functional equivalent to Vitter, Sanford, Craig, lesbian strip clubs, Ensign, Haggerdy, and the unbelievable hypocrisy of the republicans. Somehow ignoble and ineffective has-beens like James Carville are the equivilant of Glenn Beck. Somehow NPR is the “liberal” equivalent of Fox News. I cannot even begin to understand how anyone, let alone people who are very connected and intelligent can equate things like this. Stewarts montage showing Ed from the Ed show juxtaposed against Beck just rends my heart, because these things are not the same. Rational and logical, but passioned arguments from facts are simply not the same thing as making shit up and crying about it like Beck does. And deep down, it’s clear that Stewart knows this, which is why he spends so much more time mocking the much more deserving of mocking wingnuts. But he keeps trying to maintain this “fair and balanced” image among those who don’t pay attention, and in the end he ends up damaging the argument for rational discourse that he is the only major media figure making.

Then there was some other stuff, then Jon and Stephen had a debate under the auspicious title of “Formidable Opponent”, which is kind of a big deal, because Colbert has never allowed anyone but himself to be the Formidable Opponent. Something else about this. I feel like Colbert put a lot more on the line with this show than Stewart did. I don’t think he’ll suffer any negative effects from it, but the format and script for this is, essentially, that Colbert’s character, Stephen Colbert, lost. And admitted he lost. And for a character imitating the right wing nut jobs who don’t even know what self-reflection means, let alone have an ability to engage in it, that essentially means he broke character. Which is something he’s never done in a public setting, to my knowledge. I hope it was worth it.

Finally, we got Jon’s closing remarks. And this is the part that I really agree with, and it’s the part that I went for. Jon’s castigation was not for the American people, and it was only sort of for “the politicians”. It was very much for the media.

It was also, however, for the republicans. Even though, in his quest for equivalence, Jon would probably say that it was for all politicians, Democrats have bent over backwards, time and again, to their own detriment and flaw, to try and work with Republicans, and the republicans simply don’t give a fuck. They just refuse to do any work. They want everything broken, because that’s their only path to power. They know that no one likes them and no one ever votes FOR them. But they also know that by making democrats ineffective, they’ll get votes anyway. So here’s how “work” happens with republicans in congress, distilled down to the bare bones.

Democrats: “We need something. Let’s put 100 into it.”
Republicans: “The free market will handle it, and we need lower taxes, and you’re ugly. 0″
Democrats: “The free market needs a hand, and no one likes taxes, and we are ugly, so how about 50?”
Republicans: “You look like curious george, and my mistress needs a new diamond ring, so 0″.
Democrats: “That hooker of yours looks so good with that ring, your wife doesn’t even mind. And it’s ok you just made a racist comment, that’s just how you are. How about 15?”
Republicans: “We’ll come to 5 for you baby killers.”
Democrats: “Ok, 5 it is”

Vote happens.

Democrats: “It’s not perfect, but at least we’re doing something! 5 is better than nothing!”
Republicans: “No, we wont’ for this. It sucks, we won’t with baby killers, and 5 is too small to do any good anyway”
Democrats: “WTF? you said you’d vote for it”
Republicans: “And you suckers believe me every time. You think I want this government shit to WORK? Hell no, I told you. I don’t want government to work. I want to kill it. The more ineffective I can make it, the more it proves that it’s ineffective”

And on and on, over and over again. And this is a major point that stewart makes. The rest of us sit down and get our shit done and make our jobs work even when we disagree with the people we work with, even when we could barely have a civil meal with them. But we have to get stuff done, and so we do. They don’t. And it’s hurting all of us, so badly. And then the media comes behind them and plays games and tries to make this look like the natural outcropping of what the rest of us are…but it isn’t. We do our work. We get shit done. The politicians are not us. They are a funhouse mirror reflection, and the media is the funhouse mirror, made by a bunch of evil clowns.

So what good will all of this do? What mass effect will this have?

Probably nothing. I don’t see any road by which this national revelation leads to sanity in the media or sanity in the republican electors. But it was nice to see such a huge demonstration.

What gets me is the gigantic failure of the free market. It is so damn clear that the people of this nation desire a news media organization that works on the same values of truth and fact that Jon Stewart does. And yet he remains the only tv personality with a national audience that actually consistently delivers. Ok, maybe not the ONLY one. Rachel Maddow does pretty well.

So for now, I’m burnt out on this. I might come back and add more later. One final note, for anyone that sees this on facebook: Please, if you get this far, click over to the blog before you comment. It’s not as immediate, but if there are reactions to this post, I’d rather they be captured under MY control on MY blog than on facebook. Thanks!

UPDATE 1: Oh yeah, I also wanted to comment on the relative sizes of the crowds. 215000 people is not just twice as many people as 87000. When you consider the effect of people on the facilities available, 215000 is a couple orders of magnitude more than 87000. DC facilities were stressed, as I understand it, by the Beck rally. They were completely overwhelmed by the Rally to Restore Sanity. There are A LOT of people who didn’t make it to the Rally itself because there was simply no more room, no more transport, and no more way for them to listen. Beck’s rally was as big as it was going to be. Stewart’s is much bigger than it was.

What’s interesting, though, is the speed I rode at today. After 2 months away from biking and generally not being all that active, I not only broke my time and speed records in both directions, but I broke my outbound by 10%, which I feel significant. My previous best had been a about 52 minutes, and today I rode it in 47. My average speed beat my old average speed by almost 2 miles an hour.

My ride back wasn’t so impressive, and although I beat my previous best by about 2 minutes, I think it was likely because of extreme luck in stoplights. I barely hit any.

I have noticed a theme with physical activity for myself. Any time I take about 1-2 months off of doing something, I usually get a small window of really high performance right when I start doing it again. This has been true of most of the stuff that I’ve tracked; fencing, lifting, and now biking. Running seems to be the exception, but I feel like my biggest foe running is mental: not exhaustion, but boredom. I get really bored running, and it takes me awhile of doing it to find the zen ability to let my mind drift and THINK about things to keep myself from getting so bored running that I stop.

I find when I am doing any long-time-frame (anything over about 20 minutes) solo physical activity, the only way that I can continue to do it is to find some kind of balance between pain and boredom. Pain I can deal with, boredom I can deal with, but apparently I can’t or won’t deal with being bored and in pain. (I’m good at differentiating between healthy working pain and you’re injuring yourself pain, so to protective friends and family: I am not, and never will, hurt myself or try and “tough it out” through injurious pain.) If I’m gasping for breath, and my legs are getting tired, and I’m bored, not only will I likely quit, I likely won’t come back to it.

This is one definite reason I’ve always been better at team sports. One of the things I’ve noticed on my bike commute is that when I get passed, I can outperform my normal best easily and without much mental sacrifice just staying close on the tail of whoever passed me. Competing, even at the same thing that bores me without just a hint of competition, keeps me entertained.

It’s all very odd.

Then, I went to the store for cream, bagels, and bacon to make myself a breakfast sandwich. When I was creating my sandwich, and toasting the bread in the oven, I wondered why the butter wasn’t absorbing into the bagel, but was simply running off and seasoning my pizza stone. Then I realized that the butter has to melt BEFORE the bread gets toasted, which won’t happen when you use cold butter from the refrigerator. So, next time, I need to remember to set the butter out before I go get the bacon. I’m fairly certain everyone else knew this, but I just figured it out this morning. Also, using taco seasoning in your eggs on a bacon breakfast sandwich is as tasty as it is with an omelet breakfast sandwich.

I just now discovered that most of the time, when I type “butter”, I type it as “buttor” and have to back up and replace it.

I discovered that my EEEtop that I use as a media server can handle it when I send data to it from BOTH of my other boxes (I’m backing up my entire DVD collection), which is odd because it often loses network connection under normal circumstances (I need to find a better media-server.) I still haven’t figured out why.

Finally, I was reminded that I love wordpress, but I still wish they didn’t need so many damn updates. Every time I log in, it seems like there is a new version of wordpress available. Sigh.

Still…it’s been a good morning. :-)

Here’s your chance.

Incidentally, the riesling spätlesse that I bought on saturday has a decidedly peachy flavor that I only noticed now, but not at the tasting.

Anyway. pursuant to the above flight of fancy, my imaginary counterpart of myself gets irritated, rolls his eyes, and mocks the gay jokes. My co-workers, no doubt mere maligning shadows of their actual selves, respond in a manner paraphrased adequately as, “light up, dude, it’s just a joke.”

Now, I have, over the past..mm…5-6 year or so, lost some of my sense of humor, especially or, hopefully, exclusively when dealing with people I don’t know. So I asked myself….what is the big deal? Why am I making such a big deal out of gay jokes, even in stupidly pointless near-future fictions that I’m telling myself to pass the time?

As I opened and poured the wine, the answer came to me. The reason that it’s worth posting is mainly because this isn’t the first time that this question has bothered me, but I’ve never managed to come up with a response that I felt was adequate. I think many of you, dear readers, especially those of you who think for a living (my academic acquaintances, associates, allies, advisory friends), will have had this revelation long ago and wonder why I’ve spent all this time building it up. Chalk it up to wireless, wine, and winded mind. Anyway, the revelation, the deep thought, was this: that humor that understands is funny. Humor that the listener believes** to be based in ignorance is not. This is why I usually get annoyed or even offended when most of the folks I know from the Air Force community make gay jokes…they rarely show any understanding of the gay folks that I’ve known. Further, reinforcing this belief of mine, they often make serious references to show that they do not understand the truth of the matter, but are operating out of fear or ignorance.

As an example, it’s why when Chris Rock or Dave Chapelle make a joke about blacks, it’s usually pretty funny to most of it. Their humor seems to convey understanding, even when it is a harsh or satirical humor that exposes or questions even as it entertains. It’s why people inside of a group are more able to make jokes at that groups expense…their audience will feel, rightly or wrongly, that their joke is based on understanding and truth. Conversely,*** when people like George Allen or Rush Limbaugh (or, really, any republican) make a joke about black people, it comes off as in poor taste at best, and deeply racist at worst.

Back to the original fiction. Despite the fact that I believe that I’m right in this, I may not be giving my peers from work the benefit of the doubt. If their understanding is greater than I suppose, than I am guilty of having no sense of humor. Which, these days, seems likely.

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*…by which I mean pulling yesterday’s pork out of the fridge and putting it on a plate for the purposes of consumption.

**I wanted to use “knows” here, but it wouldn’t be accurate enough. It’s why the cultist cannot see the humor when his cult is mocked, or the nationalist her nation, or the starry eyed lovers their childish romance. The truth and fact of the matter, objectively or subjectively, don’t matter. Only the audience’s perception of it, individually.

***Ok, is that the right usage? My logic usage of conversely, inversely, etc., has never been accurate.

For coding, this is an essential concept. It allows you to abstract a whole idea into a single word.

Now, this sort of thing is almost as useful in human to human communication as it is to human-computer communication. However, because of the (approximately) 500,000 EXISTING words, at least in English, there are those that frown upon taking this action.

I think that, especially in written communication, preventing this kind of thing is silly. Even if it does mean you redefine some things, in the end it makes for more efficient and enjoyable communication.

The fun part about this is I’m only writing this post in order to be able to reference it when I define some words in my next post. :-)

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* This isn’t apparently a word. I hope you’ll recognize the irony.

Nature is crazy and whacked out. But it works. And we know a lot about how it works. What is the religious explanation for this? I’m actually quite curious…I can’t come up with anything that makes any sense from a religious perspective.

So, I jokingly started calling myself a liberaltarian. This was about 4 weeks ago.

Today, I see this.

Sadly, my “new” idea is about 2 years old. LMAO.

I’m always a day (year) late on these things. If I’d been 4 years older, I would’ve made some bank in the dot com era. ;-)

Very well done, in layman’s terms, but really tells you how and why this happened.

Oh yeah…you can lay this one squarely at the feet of the Bush administration as well, although it did begin in the last year of Clinton.