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A couple weeks ago (I sincerely apologize for the untimeliness of this post. Busy, busy, busy. Better late than never, I hope), Patrick Smith read my entry for the Halloween edition of the CotG and took issue with my characterization of SETI as a religion. I might be convinced to back off the “religious” label, but you’ll be hard pressed to demonstrate that SETI resembles “science." Given my low opinion of SETI, you may find it surprising that Contact is one of my top 5 favorite films. Aside from the clever way it deals with a number of deep philosophical issues, the positive way it portrays atheism, the cool special effects (the zoom-out at the beginning choked me up the first time I saw it, but luckily my girlfriend didn’t notice!), and the well-constructed plot, I pretty much fell head-over-heels for Ellie Arroway. How could you not? She’s brilliant, sexy as hell (of course, Jodie Foster is primarily responsible for that), and passionate about what’s important to her (and it isn’t the ho-hum of children!). Sadly, however, she is possessed by a fixed idea–just as possessed, by the way, as is Palmer Joss, her love interest in the story, by the idea of God. Like I said, I guess we all have our blind spots. SETI is the brainchild of astronomer Frank Drake, who also came up with what is known as the Drake Equation, which I’ll get to in a moment. Drake has been searching the skies via radio waves for 45 years, now, without uncovering a shred of evidence of alien intelligence. When confronted on this, Drake’s response strikes a disturbingly familiar chord: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Such is the response of one who is defending a hypothesis that is not falsifiable, and that is exactly what is wrong with SETI. The excuse is always, “We haven’t looked long and hard enough.” When will that be? When does absence of evidence finally become evidence of absence? Back circa 1994, when Congress - having spent over a billion dollars on SETI - finally cut off the public funding, Drake predicted “the imminent detection of signals from an extraterrestrial civilization.” He went on, “This discovery, which I fully expect to witness before the year 2000, will profoundly change the world.” Here it is, 2005, and SETI, much like the doomsday religions that predicted the end of the world back in 2000, is still going. So, what about the Drake Equation? Its purpose is to try to come up with an estimate of how many intelligent civilizations are likely to exist in our galaxy. As an aside, I can’t figure out why the quantity R, which is the number of stars that form in the galaxy each year, is even in the equation in the first place. What does R have to do with anything? New stars are not very likely to have life-bearing planets in orbit around them, so WTF? Why not just start with the number of stars in the galaxy? If you have an answer for this, I’d love to hear it. But the real problem with the equation is that virtually every variable is a complete unknown. We don’t know how many planets there are around most stars. We don’t know how many of those might incubate life. We don’t know how many of those might evolve intelligence… We simply have no friggin’ clue, so the equation is useless even without the quantity R. Assigning a value to a variable is pulling a number out of your ass, and bears a vague resemblance to an act of faith. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow they’ll get lucky and some benevolent super-race of aliens will beam down plans for a wormhole generator, transforming our lives forever. The occurrence of such an event still wouldn’t transform SETI into science. ...

This little parable/thought experiment was inspired by Steve’s comment in the Stirner birthday message, where he advocates for agnosticism over either theism or atheism. Imagine yourself in the following scenario: You’ve just returned home from a day at work. While you set your keys on the kitchen counter and remove your coat you can hear the familiar voices of your roommate and her/his S.O. in the other room. You start to wonder about what you might make yourself for dinner when suddenly you are startled by a loud gunshot, followed by what sounds like a body falling to the floor. Rather than getting the hell out of there you somewhat foolishly run to the other room to see what happened. Once there, you see your roommate standing there, arm outstretched, holding a still-smoking pistol pointed at what is now, apparently, a corpse. Your roommate looks at you and says “Santa Claus did it.” Do you: a) Sincerely believe that your roommate is telling the actual truth? b) Decide that, because you didn’t actually see your roommate fire the gun, you just can’t know one way or another whether Santa did it? c) Consider your roommate a murderer, and the claim to be the rationalization of a mind that has snapped? ...

You’ve got to hand it to the Amish. At least they are consistent, unlike the vast majority of the IDiots out there who poo poo the notions of evolution while at the same time readily partaking in its fruits–medicine that would be impossible were it not for our understanding of germs and genetics. But not the Amish, who let their kids get polio rather than question “The Word.” I’m not sure what you’d call them, but you can’t call ’em hypocrites.

HBO’s The Wire is an absolutely fantastic show. Written by Ed Burns, a former policeman, the show is, on one level, about a Baltimore homicide detective’s monomaniacal pursuit of the leaders of a heroin cartel. On another level, the show is an exploration of how institutions impact the choices available to the individuals who make them up. Albert Jay Nock, in his essay Anarchist’s Progress, addressed this topic brilliantly. The message of both Burns and Nock is that people are often forced by circumstance (usually one contrived by the institutions they are a part of) to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do (of course, Max Stirner would justifiably declare these people to be “possessed by spooks”). Unfortunately this phenomenon extends beyond the bureaucratic hell that a city government must be. It seems it exists even in what I would imagine would be the least likely of all places for it to be: libertarian think tanks. I personally know several Cato staffers, for example, who are staunch anarchists, and yet, apparently from a need for Cato to appear “inside the beltway,” they often put out some seriously milquetoast policy recommendations. Arizona’s Goldwater Institute, also staffed by a few anarchistas, provides another example. In private conversations with Vicky Murray, she has told me that she thinks school and state should be entirely separate. Yet, in her capacity as Goldwater’s Director of Educational Opportunity, she writes articles like this and this. It is understandable that Goldwater would want to pander to their financial base, which consists mostly of traditional conservatives, but it’s disappointing, nonetheless. Does taking a half-assed approach really “defend liberty”? (I’m actually not sure what, if anything, defends liberty nowadays. I am more and more convinced that Stirner is right when he says that all freedom is self liberation and must be taken.) All of these issues were really brought into stark relief for me by the article they published today, which complains about Arizona’s salary grid for teachers. The article’s author, John Wenders, points to a school in Little Rock, Arkansas, where they “began tying teacher bonuses to students’ Stanford Achievement Test results. In just one year, overall student achievement increased 17 percent, and teachers received bonuses up to $8,600.” I can’t believe that the article’s author, an economics professor, cites this literally incredible statistic so unquestioningly. As someone versed in economic theory, Professor Wenders should know better than most that incentives matter. I submit that the amazing 17 percent increase was probably achieved via some combination of cheating (and I specifically mean teacher cheating, not student), “teaching to the test”, statistical anomaly, and perhaps a small amount of legitimately better teaching. I think that, in publishing this article, Goldwater does a disservice to themselves and the cause of liberty. Unfortunately, the article that should have been written, and the article that I can only hope Vicky Murray probably wanted to write – that schools should be entirely private and then the salaries of the teachers would suddenly no longer be a political hot-button – is one that we’re likely never to see. I think that’s a shame. ...

Here it is, less than eight hours into Max’s 199th and I’m already crowding it out. I’m sure Max doesn’t mind. If this blog had categories then this item would be filed in “WTF?" I was pre-pubescent when Star Trek I came out, so I guess I was oblivious to the male camel toe fashion trend that seems to have been in full swing (if you’ll pardon the pun) at the time. That shocking image is courtesy the ladies over at Look At His Butt!, who swear that, as you might have hesitatingly concluded, that is a wet spot that Spock is sporting.

I just had to weigh in on the Maggie Gallagher post at Volokh. She’s a wacko. Lippard (2006-12-09): It appears that she needs to read Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice To All Creation.

We better hope that one day either carbon nanotubes or plutonium can be purchased in bulk at the corner market, because otherwise, sadly, it looks like we ain’t gettin’ into space until the day when we’re all as rich as Bill Gates. (ht: Chicago Boyz) Einzige (2006-12-09): I should point out that the figure that Russell Roberts uses, of "$2 million a year," is wrong. Bill Gates makes (or made at the time of the publishing of Fair Play) $2 million a day. ...

On the 16th of January, the Nautilus seemed becalmed only a few yards beneath the surface of the waves. Her electric apparatus remained inactive and her motionless screw left her to drift at the mercy of the currents. I supposed that the crew was occupied with interior repairs, rendered necessary by the violence of the mechanical movements of the machine. My companions and I then witnessed a curious spectacle. The hatches of the saloon were open, and, as the beacon light of the Nautilus was not in action, a dim obscurity reigned in the midst of the waters. I observed the state of the sea, under these conditions, and the largest fish appeared to me no more than scarcely defined shadows, when the Nautilus found herself suddenly transported into full light. I thought at first that the beacon had been lighted, and was casting its electric radiance into the liquid mass. I was mistaken, and after a rapid survey perceived my error. The Nautilus floated in the midst of a phosphorescent bed which, in this obscurity, became quite dazzling. It was produced by myriads of luminous animalculae, whose brilliancy was increased as they glided over the metallic hull of the vessel. I was surprised by lightning in the midst of these luminous sheets, as though they had been rivulets of lead melted in an ardent furnace or metallic masses brought to a white heat, so that, by force of contrast, certain portions of light appeared to cast a shade in the midst of the general ignition, from which all shade seemed banished. No; this was not the calm irradiation of our ordinary lightning. There was unusual life and vigour: this was truly living light!

I’m rather skeptical about whether this concept will actually accomplish anything, because, aside from the fact that Fox almost certainly makes orders of magnitude more revenue from commercial advertising than they do from DVD sales, advertisers don’t care about DVD sales, they care about ratings. But what the hell? I can’t resist stumping for such a hilariously funny show. What other broadcast television show on the Republican-shill Fox network can you think of that makes fun of Bush’s absurd “Mission Accomplished” photo-op, the military’s recruiting difficulties, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, “free speech zones”, and the lack of WMDs in Iraq? I suppose an argument could be made that more DVD sales now could translate to higher ratings in the future. But how is it that the DVD can be ranked #4 on Amazon but the TV show is still getting dismal (less than 4 mil/week) viewership? It’s a mystery! Anyway, I hope the show at least finishes out a fourth season.

This item, found via the Antiwar.com blog, will probably be bouncing around the aether for the next few days. It strikes me, though, as far too antiseptic to be at all moving–not to mention the fact that it neglects the orders-of-magnitude more tragic, um, Iraqi side of the equation. It also calls to mind this Herbert Spencer quote, from his essay “Patriotism,” found in this book: “When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves."