Frozen Transparency

Today is the day Americans celebrate their independence from Britain. The choice of date is a little odd, seeing as the actual resolution declaring independence (the Lee Resolution) was passed on July 2nd, and the Declaration of Independence was signed on August 2nd. (Although in all fairness, the declaration was adopted on July 4th).

That document now has absolutely no legal bearing. Some people like to cite sections of it as rails against our government, ignorant of this fact. But it still has importance as a document in history—much as the Mayflower Compact does—and is worth studying, especially in our history. Its opening is one of excellence:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

What I find most interesting about the document, though, is that while it has no legal bearing, it in a sense proclaims the basic political philosophy of the country:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

But furthermore:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

History classes (rightly) talk very much about how revolutionary the document was—no pun intended. And philosophically speaking, the very idea that a group of guys would openly declare this was astounding—although not as surprising as some people like to think, seeing as many of the ideas of the document had been floated around Europe for the century prior.

But a lot of people today seem to miss the fundamental philosophical basis for this proclamation. If you go back and read that very famous line:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

You’ll notice something very odd. It says “they are endowed by their Creator” (emphasis added). Capitalized. As in, God. That Judeo-Christian “I Am” God. Alpha and Omega. Creator of heaven and Earth.

Whoa, hold on. What about separation of church and state (a phrase that never actually occurs in the Constitution, no matter how much some people claim it does)? What about tolerance and religious understanding? Hey wait a moment, what about atheists, Buddhists, Hindu, Aztec, or any of the other five sixths of the world?

Yeah, about that…

See, when you look at the philosophical underpinning of the American Revolution, it comes down to the radical idea that when God created humans, He endowed them with something more than just a body, but a soul with dignity. Because God created all humans like this, all humans should be treated equally by law. That they have inalienable rights. None of this “king is more important than peasant” bullshit.

It all flows from a Judeo-Christian understanding of the world. I can think of no other religion that has this basic philosophical notion. It is explicitly stated in Galations:

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

There is, of course, quibbling to be done here on several accounts. Judiasm and Christianity have different views of sin and the rights of humans, for instance. Plus, there is that fun topic of slavery. And likely a host of other things.

Yet, as I consider what I know of the world’s religions (which is admittedly limited), I cannot think of another religion that has such a core tenet in its faith: that all men are endowed by a creator with certain inescapable rights, that the abrogation of such is sufficient to overthrow a government. It’s possible that it’s out there, and I would be interested to learn of other religions that have this ideal.

Even if there are, it’s still worth noting that the entire philosophical basis for the American Revolution (and subsequently the American governments) is very Christian in nature and ideal. It’s difficult to escape the religious underpinnings of our country, and it saddens me when people deny the obvious so vehemently. So I shall finish with the last of the Declaration, in which they once again cite a religious influence:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

And the torrents of liberty should flow like a mighty river, engulfing all in their wake.

I’m sorry, Microsoft, but you’ve failed me once again. You are a company filled with a great many intelligent people, and yet, I find the following to be the case:

Required to run Windows Vista smoothly:

Required to make OS X (Leopard) run smoothly:

I think the difference is pretty clear.

Interestingly enough, the cost in both cases is approximately the same, being a reasonably high amount of money. To be fair, the Vista machine also has two expensive hard drives in it (instead of one cheap one), and I got extra software for the Mac.

The Vista machine is known as Atalanta. She is, of course, my main computer, and indeed, in everyday life, she looks much like this:

(You can tell the general date when this was taken). The reason you don’t see the huge case is because it’s hidden in the desk—and in usual operation, you can’t hear it, either. Which I think is pretty cool, for such a powerful machine to be virtually undetectable (unless you look in the desk).

After putting her together, I had collected a fair amount of excess cardboard, plastic, and other strange materials:

Imagine my surprise, then, when I opened up the new MacBook case and found this:

Simply minimalistic. Reduction of trash, reduction of waste—in fact, the box is so nice, I plan on keeping it in case I happen to need a MacBook-sized box hanging around. It is simply beautiful, to over-use the term. When I think about it, though, the word I would ascribe to this is simply elegant. As a programmer, I appreciate elegance.

In either case, I named the MacBook Echo, because I seem to have this thing where I name my computers after Greek women (Artemis, Atalanta, Echo, Athena (which is actually a hard drive), Apollo (err, wait…)).
Actually, I also use Greek mythology in general: Apollo (my Zune), Hermes (an external hard drive), Aether (my network), Mnemosyne (my backup hard drive)…Echo fits right in.

I admit, though, as a person who has been a dyed-in-the-wool Windows user and general Microsoft fan—and, admittedly, as someone who has bashed Apple a lot in the past—I have been suitably impressed by Echo. She’s mostly nothing more than an experiment; a purchase (actually made several weeks before this is posted) because I like the sleek, plastic look of the MacBook line more than the sleek, aluminum look that’s constantly rumored to take over. Also, Artemis was having problems, I wanted a good laptop for giving presentations, and I’d been saying for a long time that I needed a Mac just to have one. A Linux box is next!

The shopping experience was halfway very pleasant, halfway not. The employees were all helpful, although almost too helpful, and one of the girls failed my most important question: what is the worst thing about a Mac? She said “Nothing”, and it didn’t take me long at all before I found several simple flaws. But I let it slide. Really, had the store not been filled with a bunch of other people (many of them there for tech support, amusingly enough), it would have been much nicer: a quiet location where I could think things through. Thankfully, I had essentially made the decision before-hand and acted like I was browsing to confirm with myself, check out the MacBook Air, and not make it look like I was some fanboy out to just immediately buy. The downside is that I still missed the Mini-DVI-to-VGA cable in all the rush.

The difference between setting up a Mac and setting up a Windows box is not actually as large as I’d been made to think it would be. I was impressed that Leopard got my wireless network settings out of the way early and with much less hassle than Vista. On the other hand, I like how Vista asks you to name the computer early on; I really think “Keith’s Computer” is a stupid name. And anyways, I have a naming scheme going on!

The ability to immediately use the camera to take my self-picture was nice—once I figured out how to use it. I was annoyed that the preview went away after the first picture, which made subsequent attempts at not having the screenlight glare against my glasses an exercise in frustration. It is something I can fix later, but it could have been easier. On the other hand, Vista’s bland offering is less than stellar.

One thing I found interesting was that the world of serial numbers and software keys also rears its head on Macs. And there is absolutely one thing that Microsoft totally has right that Apple screwed up on: they automatically insert the hyphens for you. I typed out my entire iWork serial number and wondered why it didn’t recognize it; I had to go and manually add the hyphens to make it work. With Office, it added the hyphens for me, and when I had to go back and add a letter, it automatically re-adjusted them. It’s a little touch, but that’s supposed to be what Apple is good at.

Another minor frustration was that I was under the impression that I could get a discount on my .Mac account because I bought a new computer (and am a new .Mac user to boot)—however, I saw no such way of getting it, and ended up paying full price. And I figure that if I’m going to give Macs a fair trial and a full shake, I should do the whole thing.

The control panel on OS X, however, is superior to that on Vista.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I had my gripes with getting Echo, much as I have my gripes about Vista’s installation. But I was greatly impressed, and to an extent enlightened. I had spent so much time vilifying it that I hadn’t thought of it even having good parts.

Mind, I still don’t like the dock. I’m not particularly fond of the mile-high menu bar, but I can appreciate Fitts’s Law, and suspect that I’ll get used to it. I’m again not fond of clicking the button I expect to close a program not actually closing the program—this is cited by some Mac enthusiasts as a “feature”, so I assume it’s deliberate; it still feels unintuitive to me. The lack of maximize might work on a large screen (as I rarely use maximize on Atalanta for this reason; it just makes it too big), but on my tiny MacBook screen, I could really use the entire real estate. The auto-sizer just doesn’t seem right to me. The icon-similarity problem oft-cited for Leopard I also agree with.

The real point is, though, that I shouldn’t have been relegated to a MacBook, especially as there are some serious gripes I have (as opposed to simply bashing Apple). But Windows computer seem fragile, physically. I have a computer with eight gigabytes of RAM and a 2.33 GHz Dual-Core processor; and yet, there are times when Vista still gives me slowdowns (to be fair, they are incredibly infrequent and seem to very often have to do with Firefox). My Zune has a tendency to spontaneously reboot itself, much to my annoyance (possibly caused because I have subjected it to lots of temperature extremes). I understand that Vista’s UAC was a choice made between a rock and a hard place, but I can see where it gets in the way (my annoyance has more to do with how it utterly disrupts my workflow). Things don’t communicate with each other as well as one might hope. The much-touted Start Menu Search is really awesome for running programs, but I constantly have problems with it and files.

It’s not fair to entirely hold it against Microsoft, though, but I chose the 64-bit Vista option, to access all eight gigabytes of memory. However, thumbnails have issues in 64-bit explorer (because other companies haven’t written the right plugins). Some programs don’t even function. Little things crop up, on top of the random Vista compatibility issues.

On the MacBook side, I still abhor touchpads. But I’m getting used to the one-button interface. However, I tried the Mighty Mouse at the store and was utterly repulsed. And the fact that I have to buy a special cable to be able to use my MacBook with any external display is, frankly, kind of stupid. I wouldn’t mind if it were possible to find in places that sell other common computer cables; but to have to only get it from Apple is frustrating to no end.

In either case, I paid a lot of money for Atalanta, and I intend on using her to that full end. She is still my main home PC, powerhouse that she is (apparently I like strong, athletic women). I like Windows, and I’m still a Microsoft cheerleader. I also paid a lot of money for Echo, and I intend on using her to test out OS X and to be a good, portable laptop.

One of my friends likes to use the term “Apple Fag” to describe the people who—almost cult-like—are major fans of Apple and Macs. I’m not particularly fond of the term, partly because the association of homosexuality with “bad” is distasteful to me (not to mention my dislike of how the term for a bundle of sticks or a cigarette turned into a word describing homosexuality), but also because I’ve met a large number of people who are Apple fans for good reason. I have not turned into one of these so-called “Apple Fags”. I’m still in Microsoft’s camp, and I’m still skeptical of Apple. I haven’t joined the cult, and I have no intentions about switching anytime soon (especially because, as noted, I want to get good use out of Atalanta).

However, when I sit back and take stock of the computing landscape and its future, I cannot help but loose some of my firm footing with Microsoft, especially since they seem to be having so many problems. I’m not yet an “Apple Fag”, but if Microsoft can’t catch up sometime soon, my next desktop computer may very well be a Mac.

When I was young, around nine or ten, my usual breakfast at my mother’s house was instant oatmeal. You poured the oatmeal into a bowl, added some water, then put it in the microwave for ninety seconds. Being the age we were, I and my siblings were tremendously impatient for even those ninety seconds. At one point, though, my step-father explained to us that we should actually put it in for seven seconds less. If we put it in for ninety seconds and watched, during those last seven seconds it would get super-hot or something like that. Inevitably, what happened was we kids sat and watched the microwave heat up the oatmeal—and in the process, shut up.

It took me a number of years before I realized it was a lie. Though I’ve never confirmed it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was concocted just to get us kids to be quiet for a while (since we tended to be quiet once we got food anyways). It’s interesting what parents will say, however false, just to get their children to do things.

I recently read a very interesting book called Who Stole Feminism? by Christina Hoff Sommers. The book’s primary purpose is to debunk a large number of the myths about gender that are being perpetrated by modern feminists. She goes back to the original studies (when she can obtain them; a surprising number were never published in peer-reviewed journals and were instead simply reported on by the media) and examines the data. She finds alternate studies. And she delves into the rhetoric paraded by politicians and feminists and exposes it for what it is.

Now, one could argue that her bias is just as bad as what she is trying to combat. It’s possible, and as a skeptic, I would like more investigation. But I was struck by her chapter on rape statistics, and how blatantly overblown they tend to be.

There was a point in college when I attended the Vagina Monologues with some friends. During the performance, they wanted to call attention to sexual abuse and how it needs to stop (a goal I agree with). To further this, they asked everyone in the audience to stand if they had been sexually abused or knew someone who had. I stood, as one of my friends in college had been raped when she was younger. I looked around, and I would say about one tenth of the audience had stood up.

One of the standard statistics that Sommers quotes is that “one in four women” has been raped. If that statistic were true, I would have expected half of the audience to stand. Not one-tenth. There may have been some who sat for fear of being exposed, but the caveat of “someone you know” largely dismissed that. And such shame does not explain the massive disparity between that statistic and what I saw.

The sample was, admittedly, skewed due to the audience being all in college—although most people in college know people who are poor (rape being inversely correlated with income, in general). There are possibly other explanations for the disparity, but let me suggest one (which Sommers also proposes): the statistic is wrong. Sommers explains how they derived that statistic and exposes their flawed methodology. And at a certain point, a quote she includes from another skeptic resonates with me: if one in four women were raped, why haven’t I heard more about it from my friends?

Now let me be clear: I do not condone rape. It is wrong. It can be a massive traumatic experience, and people who have been raped should get the therapy and support they need (though I don’t think the government should pay for it). I am not in any way trying to suggest that we should trivialize the impact it has on people.

What I am instead saying is that people (in the media, government, and schools) are lying.

When I pointed out this disparity to an acquaintance who is a rather hardcore feminist, she glibly replied, “It’s okay, because it raises awareness of the problem and gets those people the support they need.”

To rephrase: it is okay to lie because it gets the results we want.

This leads me to the Holocaust. I am not a Holocaust denier; on the contrary, I am quite convinced it happened. I am quite convinced that it was horrible. But I am not convinced that the statistics I hear about it are true.

Why? Because anyone who contests them is labeled as a denier. So we are willing to accept the statistics we are given, because it emphasizes the horror and tragedy of what happened.

I think there can be honest quibbles with official figures. I think historians should be allowed to go through the evidence in an attempt to learn more. It may be the case that we over-estimate the number of people slaughtered. If it is, we should adjust the statistic. It does not de-emphasize the horror of what happened. It does not reduce its enormity. It brings us closer to the truth.

And I would say that an over-inflated figure trivializes it.Edit for clarity:And I would say that if we have an over-inflated figure, than doing so would trivialize the event.End Edit I would say that it shows disrespect to those who survived it, because we are essentially telling them that the truth of their suffering does not matter. Likewise, claiming such a high rate of rape in society shows disrespect to those who have actually been raped. To have such a high number requires such a liberal definition of rape (a teenager reluctant to kiss can be classified as ‘raped’ according to some cited studies) that it trivializes those who actually were truly raped by all definitions.

It is okay to proclaim a false statistic in order to advance a point. To question the statistic is to be insulted, shouted at, and to be a horrible person.

Which leads me to another anecdote. Some time ago, one of my friends was at my apartment, and had brought her three-year-old daughter. Being a child of that age, she was inordinately curious about the world, and especially about all the fun things I had around my apartment. She would go around pointing at things and asking me what they were, and in good humor I would tell her. In time, she made her way to my printer (a Kodak All-in-one) and started inquiring about the various buttons. As she explored the printer, she stuck her fingers into where the paper comes out—clearly potentially dangerous, due to the moving gears and other things that are unkind to child fingers.

I admonished her not to do it, and in an attempt to quickly explain why it was bad, I told her that it would eat her hand. It was mostly for a metaphorical sense, as I wasn’t entirely sure what it could really do, but I was aware of its danger. Her mother then embellished the story, explaining how a monster was in the printer. It had the desired effect: the child stopped playing with the printer.

Yet I worried about the lie. Even my small exaggeration about eating her hand; was it right for me to deliberately tell her something false in order to have a good result (in this case, to not stick her hand in a dangerous place. I didn’t mind her otherwise playing with the printer)?

Another anecdote along the same lines: an acquaintance of mine was once convinced by his father that he (the son) was under consideration for inclusion in a spy agency or some such. At one point, during a several-hour car trip, the father explained to the son that the lines on the back window (the defrosters) were actually a secret cloaking device, and he had to sit absolutely still for it to work. The trip was a test or something along those lines. And sure enough, the child sat in the back perfectly silent and still for the entire trip.

My acquaintance laughed about it as he told me about it, because he realizes now that it was a lie, but it had the right result: it made the drive far more peaceful.

In fact, telling children deliberate lies to get them to do something seems to be a very popular parenting technique. Clearly, given its prevalence and especially through history (consider Santa Claus as the lie to induce good behavior), it is not that harmful. But I still worry.

If, when our children are young, we lie to them to get an effect, are we not essentially telling them, then, that it is okay to lie to get the results you want? To quote knowingly false statistics in order to siphon more government funding?

That the ends justify the means?

Is that what we really want our children to learn? Is that what we really want our culture to be?

Suppose we have ten bars of soap and ten people. Everyone gets a bar, everyone’s happy. Then, for some reason, we have two more people show up, thus meaning we do not have enough bars for everyone, despite the fact that each person wants a bar of soap (demand has increased without increasing supply). There are only four ways this situation can be resolved:

1. Increase the cost of soap.
2. Increase the amount of time before a person gains access to soap (as time is a resource, this is really just increasing its cost).
3. Make more soap (which may or may not be an impossibility).
4. Mandate the cost of soap (in both money and time) along with the amount of soap, thereby creating a mandated shortage. Or rather, accept that you have a shortage, and that access to soap is essentially chosen by lottery.

It doesn’t matter what economic system you’re working under, those are your only four options. No amount of law or pandering can change this fact—it can only change which option is chosen by the market (by making some of them illegal). “Market”, in this case, being used in a very abstract sense, to account for theoretical communism.

So understand my cynicism when people—especially politicians—describe a “solution” to an “economic problem” but completely ignore this fact, if they don’t outright claim it false. I would love to see a legislature attempt to actually repeal the Law Of Supply And Demand. I would then like them to follow by repealing the Law Of Conservation Of Energy.

Whenever people talk about celebrities—movie stars and the like—I always wonder why they spend so much time worrying about other people. I question just how much influence celebrities actually have over society. Some, such as Oprah Winfrey, probably do. But Heath Ledger? Merely an actor; a footnote in the annals of history.

And when celebrities die, their fans mourn. People are saddened by death, especially of actors and singers and celebrities. Still, how much influence did that mourned celebrity have? How many people changed dramatically because of Heath Ledger?

This last Tuesday, Gary Gygax died. A lot of people probably don’t know his name, but he was a celebrity. He—along with Jeff Perren—created the game Chainmail, which few people have heard of; a few years later—this time, with Dave Arneson—he created Dungeons and Dragons. He took influences—fantasy, war games, literature—and wrapped them together into an interactive game.

His death is not something to be widely reported. Roleplaying games have a reputation of being played by “geeks” and “nerds”, and people often do not want to be associated with that. Yet the number of tributes to him is astounding. In the 30+ years since the game’s inception, it is astounding to learn of the number of people who played it. The number of people who have fond memories of spending high school evenings hunched around a table with friends, telling stories about warriors and wizards while waiting for pizza to get delivered and making bad jokes about sex.

What Gary Gygax did with his little game was unleashed the power of the imagination. His books said “Take this, and build on it. Do what you want to it. Create. Imagine.” And imagine people did. This was not passive entertainment. Not movies, not books. This was sitting with your friends and using your minds telling a communal story. How many people who now work in creative industries got their start with fighting dragons in dungeons?

Before Gygax, fantasy was the realm of Lord of the Rings. In a very real sense, Gygax is to fantasy roleplaying what Tolkein was to fantasy literature. They took threads of things that had come before but wove it together into a beautiful and unique tapestry and in doing so created something more. Dungeons and Dragons broke new ground: never before had fantasy roleplaying really existed in quite the same capacity. And the world has never been the same since.

Many early video games—the original Final Fantasy springs to mind—were based on Dungeons and Dragons. It set a standard for game mechanics that others emulated. The first MUDs were heavily influenced by D&D—they were, after all, roleplaying in a world over the Internet. And D&D evolved, and people continued to play: tables in their basements, or in desks pulled together after school, over chatrooms and MUDs.

Other roleplaying games emerged, all springing from this idea to use polyhedrons as random number generators. Other fantasy settings emerged, inspired by Tolkein and influenced by Gygax.

Today, we have World of Warcraft, which has more players than some nations have citizens. It is no small feat of the imagination to say that World of Warcraft would not have existed if it were not for the tradition laid forth by Dungeons and Dragons. Final Fantasy, along with its myriad spinoffs, would have been but a glint in someone’s eye.

It can be said that someone else might have come up with those ideas. Someone else would have thought of doing it. Perhaps. But that does not mean we should not honor the man who did come up with it. Both Monte Cook and Mike Mearls (both major names in gaming) have posted their thoughts–even the gamer comic the Order of the Stick has a tribute.

In the years to come, when people tally up the “most influential people of the 20th century”, I think Gary Gygax should be on that list. No, he didn’t lead armies to victory. He didn’t revolutionize physics. He didn’t save the lives of millions of people with his invention.

He got people to come together and form bonds of fellowship that to this day still remain. He created something new, and brought friends and acquaintances together in households around the world to imagine and create together. He inspired millions of people he never met, and changed the lives of millions of people he never knew.

To me, that’s enough to be considered truly influential.

Requiescat in pace, Sir Gygax. You have been an inspiration to us all.

Soap really is a good product to talk about when discussing economics. It has a great many properties that are desirable to have: it’s universally known (except for a small group of people), it’s a product that people can easily think about making and wanting, and it’s a relatively universal want (again, aside from a small group of people). But this time, let’s talk about making soap. Not the actual process, mind, but the economics of it.

Let us say that in our fantastic little playground for economics, soap essentially comes in two grades: 2$ soap and 4$ soap. Let us also ignore the population and the price-setting, and just assume that this is what the prices would be based on the money of the population and so on. So now, let us consider the salaries of those who make the soap.

Suppose you own the factory that makes soap. You have an employee (Adam) that makes one bar of the 4$ soap each day. He’s good at it, and his work is high-quality (which is why it’s 4$). His value to you is 4$ a day, because that’s how much money you get because of him; his salary is therefore 4$ a day. (Tangent: yes, there are taxes and raw materials and profit to be considered here; I ignore them at my own peril for simplicity). He’s happy, and you’re happy—well, aside from the fact that his salary is so high. The employee knows the value of his work, so he demands his salary be that.

So you hear about this other employee (Bob), who happens to come from a different city. He says that he would be willing to work for only 2$ a day, instead of 4$, but he produces 4$ soap! So you hire him and fire Adam, which increases your profit margins. So Bob comes, and for a while, he’s making soap worth 4$ for only 2$ a day. His value to you is still 4$ a day, so you’re paying him below his value—but Bob, upon moving to a new city, talks to people. He learns that the actual value of his work is 4$ a day. So he finds another factory that will pay him 4$ a day, because that’s what the value of his work is. You’re short two employees (or you start paying him 4$ a day).

Instead, let’s say there’s a third employee (Charlie), who also comes from that same city, and makes the same claims. You hire him, but then you find out he was lying: his soap is really only worth 2$ a day. It doesn’t seem like that big of a loss, because you’re only paying him 2$. His value to you is 2$, and that’s his salary—you’re just short that salary of 4$.

On the other hand, if you went to Adam and told him that you’d pay him 2$ a day for his 4$ soap, he would either tell you to get lost, or he might sign on—but start making 2$ soap. After all, that’s all you’re paying him, so why bother making his soap any better? He’s working at what he’s worth.

The point I’m rather awkwardly trying to get to here is that in general, people will find jobs where they are paid what they are worth, and people will perform in their jobs with work worth what they get paid. If you pay someone 2$ a day, they will produce 2$ soap. If you pay them 4$, they will produce 4$ soap. You might have someone you pay 4$ a day produce 2$ soap, but I guarantee you that you will almost never see someone who makes 4$ soap getting paid 2$ a day. They’d just find a company that pays them what they’re worth.

So my rhetorical query is thus: are there any jobs out there where we’re assuming a fungibility of employee that doesn’t exist, and is therefore severely impacting the quality of the product? Or places where we’re paying people a low salary in order to “save money”, but end up receiving an inferior product?

I’m sure if you think about it, you can come up with some.

Suppose there are ten people. Person one has 1$ in free money, person two has 2$ in free money, and so on, so person ten has 10$ in free money.

Let us then assume there is soap (a good for which it can be assumed that everyone wants it), but there are only seven bars of it. All ten people want soap, but only seven will get it—so how do you determine which seven?

The way a market would determine—this example being both contrived and overly simple, admittedly—is to set the price of the soap such that only seven of the people can purchase it. For example, each bar of soap would be 4$. The bottom three people cannot buy it, even though they want it.

But now, suppose people want everyone to have soap. Some might claim it’s even a human right to have soap (though this right didn’t exist prior to there being soap)! The question then becomes: how do we guarantee that everyone has soap?

“Aha!” go some politicians. “Since the price of soap is 4$ a bar, all we need to do is give people money so they can afford it!” So they give everyone 3$, which means that everyone can afford it. But there are still only seven bars—so the price of soap goes up to 7$ to compensate. That person who had 6$ (and so was decidedly middle-class) was previously spending 66% of their income on soap. Now, they are spending 77%.

Of course, that 3$ given actually has to come from somewhere, so let’s take 3$ from each of the top three people, and give it to the bottom three. So now our money range is: 4,5,6,4,5,6,7,5,6,7. But we still only have seven bars of soap! The price would then probably become 5$—enough for eight people to afford it, which means that one gets short-shafted. Or it might be 5.50$, so some people have to sell off family heirlooms to get that extra half-dollar.

Alternatively, the politicians could simply regulate the price, and make soap cost one dollar. There are still only seven bars of soap, so that means that we have a shortage of soap, since only seven people (out of ten) have it—even though everyone can afford it!

The real problem here is that there are only seven bars of soap; if we had ten bars, there would be no issue whatsoever. The price would probably be 1$ (the price enforced by the government), so everyone could afford it, and there would be no shortages. The question then becomes: why are there only seven bars? Is it possible to produce more?

In the case of soap, yes, there is. However, that’s about the point where they find out that the government limits the number of bars of soap that can be made. So the government is trying to solve that which is already the cause of the government, and people still lose out.

How do you make sure everyone can afford soap? Get rid of government caps on the amount of soap that can be produced—then you produce enough soap so that everyone can have a bar (I didn’t discuss sharing for simplicity). Once you reach that point, you might either get a soap monopoly that still overcharges, or you might get a competitive marketplace that pushes the cost of soap down to 1$ a bar—but at least you have enough soap for everyone.

By the way, if you replace “soap” with “medical care”, and “bar” with “doctor”, you have a grossly over-simplified view of healthcare in the United States. (Yes, the situation is far more complicated than the AMA intentionally limiting and reducing the number of doctors—that’s why I said “grossly over-simplified”.) So maybe we ought to stop talking about health insurance, and start talking about why medical care is so expensive in the first place. Might it be because of a lack of supply?

I own a TV. It’s a nice 32-inch LCD HD screen, in fact. I just don’t use it.

Yes, you read that right: I don’t watch TV. And I don’t care.

“How is that possible?” people ask me when I say this. “Don’t you at least have an antenna?” My answer is, of course, “No. Why should I?” No one has yet given me a good answer.

Now, I should be fair: my TV does get used. I use it for playing video games and for watching movies. It’s very good for both of those, and has a great picture. But I don’t use it for watching broadcast television. I don’t have cable, I don’t have satellite, and I don’t even have an antenna for watching local channels. I just don’t see the point.

See, with there being a strike going on at the moment over television show writers, the topic of television shows has been the talk of the water cooler—not that it ever isn’t. But at least this time, it’s about the shows themselves, rather than the content. That makes things easier on me, someone who doesn’t watch TV, to at least understand what’s being talked about. Mind, my opinion of the strike is that the whole thing is kind of silly, but I can see where the authors are coming from: after all, the network television station is dying a long, slow death already with the advent of the Internet. There are a lot of legal grey areas when it comes to licensing and revenue-sharing, and I can appreciate wanting a part of that pie. It’s still kind of silly, because this is exactly the sort of thing copyright law should be dealing with, as opposed to hunting down college students who build network-share-spidering programs.

Either way, it’s interesting to hear people complain about reality shows, and about how almost all television shows are stupid, and how they’re going to get even worse now that everything’s going to turn to reality television again, and et cetera. I don’t know how many times I hear people complain about how television is a vast wasteland, or how stupid a certain show is. Parents whine about how bad it is for their children. Adults say there’s nothing good on—an interesting tangent to this is that if you pay enough attention, most conversations about TV these days are about the commercials, as opposed to the shows. Even as Newton Minow said:

You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you’ll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.

Now here’s the kicker: this was in 1961. Things haven’t changed, aside from the pull from westerns to other genres. I believe “true crime” is the big fad at the moment. But still: television hasn’t changed in forty-six years, and it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. Not after the strike, not after the next strike…not even after it all becomes part of the Internet anyways.

The thing that bothers me the most is that these same people complain about how everything on television is so bad—then they go home and turn it on and watch it. Parents will say how the shows for children are horrible, then they will sit down and watch the same idiocy, but among adults instead of kids. It would seem that the quality of television doesn’t matter—only its existence. So of course, people will find things to complain about. And some people will waste their whole lives doing nothing but sitting on the couch watching television.

When I mention that I don’t watch TV, there are some people who ask me “Then how do you check the weather? How do you check local news?” These are both reasonable things to watch television for, I will admit. After all, that would be information gained from local channels, which can be picked up by an antenna, or carried over cable/satellite. However, I get that information from the Internet. Why sit on a channel at a particular point in time and have to sit through minutes of commercials, when I can use the magic of the Internet to quickly determine what the weather is like in Seattle? If you know your zip code, you can do that, too. Suddenly, what takes minutes of wasting away while watching television—not to mention only getting it at predetermined times—now becomes a thirty-second affair. That’s time saved for doing more important things, such as reading to a child. Local news, too, is available on the Internet—and again, not limited to what they talk about when or how long it takes them to say something. A quick check on the Internet over the things that matter to you, and you’re done.

Live events are also troublesome. As I do not watch sports, that means little to me, but I can understand where sports fans would want to be able to watch games live. That’s fair. After all, I wouldn’t mind seeing the State of the Union speech live. On the other hand, I tend to prefer reading that anyways, and the full text is always available shortly. It’s also faster, because there’s less applause.

Still, I don’t miss television. I have so many other things to do with my time: writing, reading, playing video games, spending time with friends, and so on. It’s not worth it to me to pay money each month in order to get a service I would very rarely use.

However, there is a point I have missed here, and that is the point of culture. To a certain extent, when you watch a television show, you are participating in culture. If, say, your coworkers watch that show, it provides a communal experience. And really, it doesn’t matter how good the show is—what matters is that you all watch it, so you have a conversation topic. The same goes with video games: those that play certain games have become part of a culture that can discuss them. It’s a choice, and I make my personal one obvious. However, I can appreciate wanting to be able to talk about the latest episode of the newest sitcom with your coworkers around the water cooler. It builds community. It does make me sad that such idiocy is the common culture, but I suppose that hasn’t really changed since the days of theatre. After all, everyone went to the theatre then for entertainment, and thus, everyone had something to talk about. A shared culture.

And it is a culture I choose not to participate in. Because I don’t want to spend the time or the money—I would rather spend them on video games, and become part of that culture, instead.

That is not to say that all television shows are bad. I have encountered quite a few that are entertaining or enlightening. I own the DVD releases to some of them. However, I prefer watching them on my own time, without the constant interruptions of commercials. Still, I am also not much of a movie-goer—there is a culture there much the same as that of television, whereby the reason people go to see movies is to participate in the culture that talks about the movies, regardless of how good they really are—nor one to watch movies much in my own apartment, so I don’t watch television shows much, either. Video just doesn’t have the draw for me it has for other people.

Still, it bothers me that people consider it so normal and so regular to have and constantly watch TV that it in effect ostracizes me because I choose to spend my time in other ways. I write. I read. Yes, I play video games, the eternal waste of time, but I try to keep my game-playing limited in my life. There is nothing wrong with some entertainment—so long as it is in moderation.

I suppose in the end that such is my plea. I am not opposed to television. I am not opposed to people who watch television. There’s some good stuff out there, even stuff being broadcast these days. What I am opposed to is the idea of sitting around and accomplishing nothing in my personal life because I must participate in a culture that is obsessed with television. I opt out of that.

Maybe I am weird for not being a video person. Just my request would be to not make such an assumption about what people need to do in order to feel complete. I am not crazy just because I refuse to pay for television; that money is better spent on good wine to have with a meal with a loved one. I am not crazy just because I don’t have a show that I always watch or obsess over. I can be a reasonably-adjusted person who simply makes a choice on how to spend money. True, I might be missing out of some culture. But based on what I’ve seen that culture be, I’m not convinced I’m actually missing out on anything at all.

Some years ago, when I was younger and more curious, I was doing a bit of “research” for a story I was considering writing—in this case, I was performing a thought experiment. I had given the situation some thought, myself, but wanted to know what other people might have to say. So I went around asking people a fairly simple question; it went something like this:

It is fairly well accepted that historically, our society has been a patriarchy. That is, men have overwhelmingly controlled the majority of economic, political, and social power through much of known history. However, what do you think the world would be like today if instead, it had been a matriarchy? That is, if women had controlled the majority of economic, political, and social power through history, instead?

I asked this question of a fair number of people, and soon found myself intrigued by the answers I received. I asked more people, continuing to be interested in their answers. Even now, it is a question I still ask people from time to time—although not as often, as most people do not respond with anything I haven’t heard before.

Now, to be clear, the only difference I was attempting to intimate in my question was that women ran society instead of men. In effect, I was asking what people thought the differences between men and women were, especially when those people were in power. What are the intrinsic traits of being male? What are the intrinsic traits of being female? What are the differences? That is essentially what I was driving at, though I couched it in a somewhat more elaborate question (and one that might potentially avoid a kneejerk reaction).

It is worth noting that some people, upon being asked this question, immediately disagreed with the premise. They argued that our society has not historically been a patriarchy, and so the question is pointless. While I to an extent think some of their points have merit, I still find the contest irrelevant to the point I was driving at. Yes, many men historically might have been the public figures and their wives might have had a fair amount of control over their actions, but such argumentation really does nothing to answer my question. So to these people, I would attempt to find some other way of asking the question (or get dragged into a discussion of historical societies), as the argument over the existence of historical patriarchy is uninteresting to me. (For those curious as to my views: I do think historically society has been primarily patriarchial in nature, but I do not think it is quite as bad and oppressive as many modern authors would like to imply; this is not a discussion I typically care to delve into).

Upon getting beyond that (admittedly rare) sticking point, there was one other group who disagreed with the question: they claimed that a matriarchy was physiologically impossible. Either arguing that “it’s the way God made us” or using biology and psychology, a group (larger than I expected) argued against the premise of the question. Essentially, the claim was that even if for a short while women were to take control, it would relatively soon revert to being the men again, and that a patriarchy is inevitable. I do not particularly see the value in discussing that line of thinking, but rather, consider it an example of what I began to find to be a repeated pattern among respondents. What seemed to be the case among most (although not all) of the people I asked was essentially a projection: they concluded that a matriarchy would be exactly like their idealized concept of what it meant “to be female”.

And thus, the trouble starts, to my mind. There were some who claimed that in a matriarchy, abortions and birth control would be perfectly legal (because the current patriarchy is what is opposing those things)—and there were some who claimed that in a matriarchy, neither of those would exist (because babies are important to every woman). Some people argued that there would be utopian peace (since women never fight) and others who argued that there would be more war than exists in the world today (because women are backstabbers and hold grudges). The key thing I noticed here is that these responses are independent of the sex of the respondent. Indeed, all four of those responses and their arguments come from women. Women can’t even decide what it means to “be a woman”!

This example (albeit a bit protracted) demonstrates the problem of identity. As should be evidenced by my “Who am I?” page, there are a fairly large number of groups with whom I identify. Some of them are by biological accident (my sex and race, for instance), others by choice (my career and interests). And for many of them, at least one person has stood up and proclaimed “I am an X!” as though this particular X was entirely indicative of a mode of thought or of identity.

I choose women in my particular example because of my experience in the issue (by asking questions). I have also seen it for race, for sexual orientation, for country affiliations, for interests, and for even more ludicrous things. Indeed, the phrase “I am woman, hear me roar” is fairly well-known. As though being a woman encapsulated the entire identity. You can tell from the way I ended that introduction page that I do not particularly think identifying oneself as one particular group is a good idea. To me, it is folly, because it cheats that person.

Let us for a moment entertain the theoretical person who proclaims “I am homosexual!” as their entire identity. (Note that not everyone who says this makes this claim; admitting to being homosexual is one thing—I am specifically talking about those people who use that argument as to why they act the way they do outside of the bounds of their romantic entanglings). That person is making a claim that because s/he is homosexual, there is something inherent that you can know about his/her personality.

But let us look more closely at homosexuality. As last I paid attention to the landscape (which I concede to be some years ago), a general scientific consensus on why some people are homosexual is not entirely extant. While some have found potential genetic links, it is at most a handful of genes. Others speculate random chance, and others speculate psychological catalysts (a poor relationship with a parent is a particularly popular one). If it is genetic or random, neither of those is powerful enough to force a particular worldview upon the bearer. Even psychological reasons are hardly sufficient—the survivors of the terrorist attacks on September 11^th are in disagreement over many things, from the reaction of the United States to how history books should treat the event. It seems ludicrous to think of homosexuality to be the one psychological cause that induces a rigidity of thought. Similar arguments can be made over race—even fewer, since no decent psychologist argues that race is caused by anything in psychology; it is an entirely genetic thing.

“But!” the skeptic would argue, “Certainly culture has a lot to do with it! You are right that biology itself does not cause it, but the way they are treated by society and the culture they have developed does! It is that culture that causes the identity!” And to an extent I cannot disagree. There is, for instance, a culture of education that many Asian families have: one that heavily encourages study and learning. It should come as no surprise (our skeptic would gleefully point out) that many Asian people therefore believe heavily in study and learning. I have found that this is, to an extent, the case. I have also met a number of Asians who disagree with this point of view, despite having grown up with it as their culture. And some who are ambivalent.

Certainly even homosexuals have some unifying aspect to their culture. It isn’t through interests or beliefs (as homosexuals come from a wide variety of backgrounds). The example, instead, that likely flies to mind is that of gay marriage. “Obviously, every homosexual would be for gay marriage!” our skeptic would say. And yet, there are some who are not. They are admittedly fairly rare, but there are some. Politically, it is true that many homosexuals follow the Democrat party—but there are those who are also Republicans. In fact, I can think of no one view that every homosexual person I have met agrees upon. They are as varied as, well, non-homosexual people.

Now, this may be seen as an attack on homosexuality; I hardly mean it as such. I respect homosexuals, especially in light of some of the things they have to deal with from society, and I respect the choice (or the biological mandate; there is no good way to phrase this that leaves it entirely scientifically open) of homosexual people. What I am instead attacking are people who form their entire identity around their homosexuality; such a behavior borders on intellectual suicide to me.

Homosexuality is also an easy target, because we don’t know what causes it, or if it is indeed a conscious choice. Let us then return to the nature of being female. This is a trickier issue because there are physiological differences between men and women. First and foremost is the simple genetic fact that women have two X chromosomes, while men have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome (I am skipping over the known biological deviances from this for simplicity as opposed to bias). It is this genetic difference that explains why men are more likely to go bald, be colorblind, or have haemophilia. There are also hormonal differences between men and women: men have more testosterone than women, and women have more estrogen than men (on average, in both cases). And so on.

These physiological differences between men and women could serve as an argument that there may indeed be something unifying about being a woman, or being a man. Yet, as my example above concludes, if there is something unifying, neither women nor men can identify it. Some women would say that the act of motherhood binds all women together, but I have met women who claim it did not. Some men would claim that being able to urinate while standing up is a bonding experience (despite the fact that this is not exactly a male-only trait) even though other men shy away from this and are embarrassed.

Indeed, in any (significantly large) group of people with a unifying trait, be it sex, race, interests, or anything, I think that people are different. There will be no one prevailing opinion. There will be nothing that everyone will be able to agree on. People are people.

This is not to rule out the influencing effect of people’s traits and background. A male is treated differently at many stores than a female. Presents given to girls are different than those given to boys—even by people who are completely unaware of what sorts of people the girls or boys are. Homosexual people are ridiculed for their romantic desires far more than heterosexual people. Caucasian customers are treated differently when buying food from an Asian market than other Asian people are. The experiences we have most certainly affect us and change us, and our physical traits influence the experiences we have. Because of our choices are the people we end up meeting and therefore the friends we end up making. Our interests change what literature we read, what movies we see, and what opinions we consider. These things do have an effect on us, and I do not want to belittle that.

On the other hand, we are so much more than those things. If someone treats us rudely, we can choose not to act rudely back. We can choose not to pay attention to people fawning over our looks. We can choose not to purchase products, or not to socialize with certain people. When we claim that our traits define us, we limit ourselves. We prevent ourselves from stepping out of that rigid definition we set for ourselves of what that trait means, and stunt our growth as people.

To an extent, I feel this with such emotional charge that it is difficult to argue rationally. I consider it a horrendous travesty to limit oneself, to build mental walls over what is and is not accomplishable simply because of some physical trait. To claim something as impossible simply based on what other people have told us in the past. It feels like a tragedy, to me, when people use their genes and their lives as excuses, attempting to explain away all of their problems and all of their behaviors on something they had no control over—when it is their very choice how to react to all of that. “Why,” I wonder with a nod to Robert Browning, “would people want to limit themselves? Shouldn’t our reaches exceed our grasps? What else is a heaven for?”

And so I find identity to be a problematic thing. It is certainly true that we are affected by many things we have no control over: our genes, our experiences. To define ourselves by one of these genes, by one of these experiences, is to limit our ability to expand our knowledge, to expand our thoughts. It very much feels to me as though it prevents our ability to become better people. And this, to me, is a great tragedy. So I will state this, because it is what I do truly believe: We are more than the sum of our parts; to be anything less is to cheat ourselves.