Unbeknownst to Me

Via Slashdot, I was pointed to the Edge Foundation’s annual question to that effect, put to a cadre of scientists and science-oriented writers and other intellectuals. The stuff is fascinating.

It stirred another question in me, though: what would the same article look like if asked of a bunch of religion and traditional liberal arts professors? Would they be clever rhetorical “I’ve changed my mind that the Bush administration is capable of no more evil than it has already committed” or honest reassessments? I’m especially curious if ardent professional theists–seminarians, theologians, pastors, imams, etc.–would have meaningful things to say.

To me, the possibility of being completely wrong is one of the reasons science has been so successful as a human endeavor. In fact, the capability of reassessing and admitting you are mistaken is one of the attributes I look for in someone to hire. I don’t need people who are going to doggedly keep doing the wrong thing. I want someone to realize that their preconceived idea was wrong, and more importantly, are willing to admit it and change it.

What have I changed my mind about? I used to think that conservatives were unfairly painted as motivated by racism. While I think the race card is still overplayed, I have come to see a lot of what conservatives believe in social issues as at least tainted by racist attitudes, even if they aren’t active hatemongers. Not that they’re the only ones, but they are much more guilty of it than they’re willing to admit to themselves.

I was a global warming skeptic until the late 90s. Once the satellite measurements were corrected, I had to change my mind. And now that alternative causes have been thoroughly tested and falsified, I’ve had to conclude that we’re causing it with CO₂ emissions.

I used to think that people were capable of living in a pure market economy with no welfare state whatsoever. While I still think it would work, I don’t think humans are psychologically capable of living (peacefully) without some sort of welfare net. I still worry that we’re insufficiently humble about the power of humans to outguess the market. Too few of us are willing to recognize that any time you help one person, you hurt another or several others. It’s made me pessimistic that we’re doomed to kill the golden goose of the market until the next time it’s reborn out of desperation and bloody revolution. I’m not yet convinced that’s inevitable, though, so it’s worth trying to stop it.

What have you changed your mind about?

…if I had a computer company named after a kind of fruit, and I had a brand new computer I wanted to name after my favorite variety of said fruit, my computer would be the Courtland and users would be Courtheads.

Heheheheh, courtheads.

Well, I saw Beckham’s MLS debut tonight, but it didn’t make up for Galaxy playing a man down after a guy was shown the red card for a rather nasty tackle. They lost 1-0.

It seems that DC teams are making a habit of quietly winning despite well-known players on the other team making headlines. Barry Bonds may have broken Hank Aaron’s record, but the Nats won that game, too.

Mainly, it was friggin’ hot. But I’ve come to quite enjoy DC United games. It’s less of a time investment than a Nationals game, and, partially because of the sometimes error-prone play of MLS, there’s something exciting happening on a fairly regular basis. The downside is there are fewer chances to go to the bathroom and not miss anything. Plus United has been winning more consistently than the Nationals, which also helps the appeal.

The sausage and pepper sandwiches may be a health problem for me, though.

I know this story is supposed to be heartwarming, about a kitty who wants to comfort the dying, but it just reinforces the “cats are creepy” image to me. I don’t want to spend my final hours with a semiferal beast who jonezes on my doom.

“Oooh, look, Oscar has come to comfort you!”

“Get it away! Begone, evil spirit, foul spectre, grim visage! I want to live! To live and learn and laugh and lov-”

“Time of death is 2:34PM.”

“Meow.” Stalks off in search of next victim.

If you know me and have read the last book, you’ll know why the first 58 pages were as sad as the rest of the book.

Word things so you’re not actually asking a question, but counting on me to just jump in as if I can always intuit what the hell it is you want to know.

For example, I say “I don’t know anything about that, so when you find out let me know.”

So you say, “Oh, we had assumed you knew something more about it.”

What you really mean to say is, “We had thought you knew something. Can you please give me X?”

I know you’re going to feel stupid, because I can then say, “I just said I didn’t know anything about X.” But really, if you’re going to ask a question, make it a question and not a period. If you think a question’s answer might be embarrassing, don’t ask me. But for fuck’s sake, don’t just let it hang out there.

That’s trying to appeal to my sense of decency and trying to manipulate me into doing something, or doing some work to find out something you don’t want to do, or whatever. If you have such a request, make it, don’t attempt to manipulate me.

So apparently vegetarians don’t eat vegetables. And when you ask “animal, vegetable, or mineral” in Twenty Questions, you’re leaving out most of the stuff vegetarians eat. Or something. Anyway, by referring to vegetables being able to possess saturated fats, I was informed I wasn’t talking about vegetables, I was talking about “legumes.”

Um, OK. So when I asked if legumes were animals, I was criticized for being all “technical.” Right, because I’m just talking about plants being vegetables, but somehow I’m getting all “technical” about it. But no, let’s subclass them and arbitrarily call the “other” category “vegetable.”

No commentary, just one amazing bit of animation describing a firefight in Iraq.

Read about the spectacular fashion in which a local SPCA lost a supporter. There’s informed consent, and then there’s just plain stupidity.

Putting aside for now the disingenuousness of being told to fill out an application that is sure to be rejected, I tell him that two things bother me. Of course the SPCA doesn’t know the provenance of most of the animals it shelters. That’s a given. To tell families with kids that they can’t adopt a dog whose history is the least bit murky — even a dog that the SPCA itself describes as friendly — is, in my book, a disservice to both the families and the animals. And also, I just don’t take kindly to people making unbidden decisions on my behalf, presuming to tell me what’s best for me, my wife, and my kids. Would he?

Apparently, he would, and threw them out.

Update: The kicker is they’d qualified a couple of years ago to adopt a couple of kids. So they’re good enough to adopt humans, but not animals.

I’ve occasionally gotten questions as to what to do with a baby bird found outside. It turns out that the University of Minnesota has an excellent guide on what to do with a baby bird. The answer people don’t like to hear is, “Nothing.”

Most birds will be fine, even if they’re temporarily away from their parents. Some will be eaten by predators. It’s sad and no fun to watch (especially if you’re a pet bird owner like me), but it is how the predators stay alive and bird populations are kept to healthy levels. Most of the time the bird will be fine on its own.

The biggest myth is that if you handle it, the parents will smell you on them and reject it. Most birds have terrible senses of smell and will happily accept any baby you return to them–once you go away and leave them alone.

These are wild animals and do best when they keep their distance from large predators–and you count as the largest predator they’ll see. So imagine you fall down and a giant lion came by and started sniffing around you. You’d be scared to death, right? Same for a bird, only it would be like Godzilla instead of a lion, given the size difference.

So if you see a baby bird and there’s an obvious nest, pick it up and put it back. If there isn’t one and it has feathers, let it alone. Above all, don’t mess with it unless you’ve been trained, because as the link above points out, lots of things well-intentioned people do actually kill or seriously injure the bird they’re trying to help.

Wild animals are wild–if you want to help, give to an organization that works to rescue or preserve habitats for endangered wildlife. That will do more than anything else you could do.