Recently, within that group, there was a minor stir when Phil Plait, former President of the James Randi Educational Foundation, made a little speech about the tone of skeptical arguments. His message, as he often sums it up, was simply “don’t be a dick.” It’s a catchphrase he borrowed from internet maven, Wil Wheaton. He is “concerned” that skeptics are engaging in “childish, demeaning behavior” and “taking the low road.” He’s afraid that people are being aggressive, and calling people “retards” and “idiots.” He’s playing the role of the tone police, for lack of a better term.

Now, ignoring the roots that I think that this entire speech has in some higher profile atheist disputes within the community, I can’t help but laugh at this topic.  Looking at this commentary, and the way in which it’s delivered, I can’t help but think of a whole range of conversations in my life.  The thing that sticks out to me, here is the hypocrisy of the “nice guy.” This is the guy who says, “I’m nice. You are not. You need to be like me.” He says, “I’m doing things right, and you are ruining it.” He says, “My way is the only way. Yours is abhorrent.” So, what bothers me about this argument? It’s fucking rude, for one. It’s wrong on top of that. But most of all, in telling you so very frankly how you should be acting (namely nice, like him), he is becoming the very thing that he wishes you were not. He’s being a dick.

Go back to that link and watch Phil’s speech, and tell me what words come to mind with his tone. Friendly? Fun? Scientific? Sorry, no. Try sanctimonious. Try preachy. Try accusatory. (Try unfounded…while we’re at it.) This is the irony of the tone-nazi. In an attempt to call out the imaginary devils of the skeptic movement, he becomes a devil himself. He’s stirring the pot, creating internal strife, and deriding his fellows. And worst of all, he’s doing all of it in the most unskeptical manner possible: with assertion, after assertion, after assertion. This is the “just-so” fallacy of skeptical speeches.

And did I mention it’s pretty fucking rude too?

Note: Am I being rude, in turn, by calling out Plait on his speech? Sure, possibly. But I’m not the one advocating his “don’t be a dick” policy. I happen to think that a firm and strident approach can be quite effective. Hell, I’d even defend a skeptic calling people “retarded” in certain circumstances. But Tone-Nazis are after one thing, and that’s to exercise control over you. Why do you think it was long considered taboo, for example, to discuss religion and politics in “polite company?” And notice, that the only two examples even lightly touched on in that video (one by Plait, and one by Bidlack in the Q&A) were….yep….religion and politics. I say, talk it up. A skeptic has nothing to fear from scrutiny.

Update: Phil has posted another addendum to his blog on this topic. Sure enough, his speech is really ringing true with, guess who? The religious skeptics! They feel that when other skeptics critically examine their beliefs, they are being personally attacked. I wonder if, as a thought experiment, we replaced all the crying religious skeptics he mentions with crying psychic skeptics. Would there be as much “let’s be nice” sentiment? I think not.

                          

Is it any wonder that I find this mentality….lacking? No one who knows me is surprised, I’m sure. I hate everything, I’m told.

What is the world, though, when the completion of tasks is more important than the task’s purpose? As usual, I can’t help but ask, “why?” Naturally, this goes over like a lead balloon in the harried, “efficiency-driven”-yet-woefully-inefficient corporate bureaucracy that is my workplace. Where the motto is “I need it yesterday no matter how impossible and no matter how completely I botched the process before handing it off to you.”

As new crises and “challenges” trickle into my inbox, I’m struck with a deep-seeded need to find the root problem. I can’t help but stare into the mountains of miscalculations that led to the inevitable crisis we now face and ask why those errors were made. I can’t help but suggest ways to avoid those errors. And yet, I’m faced with “git ‘er done.” There is never time to address the root cause, because we are so harried with a need to resolve the issues caused by the root cause. It’s frustrating, is all.

It’s like Superman arriving upon a disaster scene and being told to work crowd control. “Or I could make the earth spin backwards and prevent this disaster from ever happening.”

“…just make sure these folks don’t go under the tape, hot shot!”

Would a little introspection be remiss in the modern world? Would it hurt if, instead of asking what we are going to do, we instead asked why we are doing what we do? To what end? For what purpose? And for what need? Albert Einstein said that “bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.” It’s possibly true for a creative process, but I can’t help but think an efficient bureaucracy is the last defense against the failings of any non-creative process necessarily involving humans.  And efficiency is achieved, not by doing without question in order to “git ‘er done,” but by evaluating each action for it’s value before acting.

Unfortunately, my bosses don’t agree.

                          

Saving the world one fad at a time.

Now I have nothing against these causes, let me be clear. It’s all well and good. What I wonder about is the nature of activism in America. It all seems inextricably linked with commerce. If you aren’t being basically guilted into going to a TV or corporate website to be sold their products, you’re basically just buying something for status or fun and being told that a portion goes to something. Why doesn’t a corporation just donate their product to the needy group? Nope, sorry, they have to donate one thingy they plan to donate for every widget you buy!!  Look at Lance Armstrong’s yellow bracelet fad….there was a time when it was a must-have fashion accessory, but why couldn’t the money to make those bracelets have just gone to the cause instead of only a portion? Yeah, yeah, human nature…economics, advertising, blah, blah.

What about the rallies? Are they really convincing anyone, or just making people feel like they have control. Sometimes (like with tea party rallies) I hope it’s just the latter. But then make it a big event. Get the celebrities to show up! Get the corporations to donate free widgets for the attendees! Get politicians! Get Sting to sing a song! Make signs and chant chants! But in the end, what’s been changed? You’ve rallied for the environment, and maybe got some media attention. But what if each of those 50,000 attendees just went to the EPA website and told their electric company that they only wanted to buy green energy? What if they each got 2 friends to do the same? What if those corporate sponsors switched their companies to only green energy? Or what if they invested in green tech for their corporate offices and factories? Or what if they encouraged their employees to do the same? Or if they used that cash to pay the difference in price for every employee who switched?

What if, instead of having an environmental walk/run for charity, where everyone showed up and walked/ran and drank their bottled waters and generated their trash, and had their after-party, or whatever, all those people just changed the way they lived? Maybe if they walked/ran home instead of driving to work? No, let’s drive our cars to the event where we walk in a big pointless circle to help someone. I confess, it doesn’t make much sense to me. If you want to donate to a charity, donate. If you want to help the environment, help it. What the hell does a bracelet do for anyone? What’s the point? And now social netwoirking is bringing a whole new level of conspicuous slacktivism. Today I was invited to a “1 Million Strong Against Cancer” group on Facebook. Come on…does anyone like cancer? Can you think of anything more pointless? The only thing I can think of are the “viral” status updates that say things like “change your status to this pointless glurge for a whole day to irradicate Muscular Distrophy!” In fact, allow me to present the Golden Sheep Award to those useless slacktivist pages.

Seriously, here’s a litmus test for you. Think about what you do each day, think about what the results of those things are. Now ask yourself, “if everyone did that, what would the world be like?” Is it better or worse? I find I come out pretty good on that scale when it comes to environmental, economic , and (I think) political issues. Now social health, that’s another story…..I have no clue there. Don’t look to me for advice on dealing effectively with people.

                          

The myth of the NYC Park.

Picture a serene scene. The most serene scene you have ever seen. One in a park of lovely green. (Forgive the Dr. Seuss treatment. I’ll stop.) Anyway, the grass is soft, the breeze light. Above you, the Brooklyn Bridge stands like some granite colossus, straddling the East River. It is majestic and powerful, enhancing the beauty and serenity of the surrounding park through it’s monumental architecture. A tugboat sounds a wistful horn in the distance. A gull soars overhead, starkly white against the bright blue of the sky. You are alone in a city of 8 million….lying cradled between the soft, cool grass and the warm midday sun.

Now, as you picture this wonderful scene, picture also a family of five. They stomp onto your soft delicate lawn, bickering, dropping litter, and dragging an assortment of towels, loud radios, kids, toys, lotions, hats, smells, and Teddy Grahams. They are a hurricane ravishing your oasis. They are a monster truck, tearing across your field of wildflowers, leaving a scar of mud and a cloud of diesel fumes. They march across the vast openness, and plop down, still bickering, right beside you. Your fortress of solitude is invaded, and you have been rendered powerless by the red sun of Krypton. (Okay, nerdy metaphor, but stay with me.)

Soon, a young couple arrives. They are ill dressed in spiky clothes and gothic makeup. They lie mere feet away from you, alternating between sharing a 7-11 slurpee and making out luridly. They smell funny. Their uncomfortably-tight yet trendy-in-some-circles clothing slips about to reveal rolls of fat and unsettling bulges. They grope and straddle each other openly in simulated love-making poses. You become sandwiched between them and the family of five.

Now imagine the entire park filling with more and more people. It’s overflowing. A sea of bodies covers every inch of grass, leaving each blade matted and struggling for life-giving light beneath some mass of flesh. The previously warm sun has been made sweltering by the combined body warmth of hundreds of glistening, sweaty, people. They jostle and grunt at each other like so many walruses sunning together on the rocky shore of some coastal inlet. The only oasis is a steaming concrete path that picks it’s way among the corpses, and meanders to a parking lot of weeds poking though cracks in the surface, broken bottles, and upturned garbage cans…a paradise of quiet compared to the populous garden of adipose tissue that it leaves behind. You run-walk to escape the clamor.

To be fair, at no point was my experience at the park today as idyllic as I described in the beginning of this post. It was gross from the get go. I thought I would go try to enjoy some nice weather, get some air, some sun, maybe relax a bit. No dice. The citizens of New York City will never cease to amaze me in their ability to be around one another and be seemingly oblivious to each other’s presence! It boggles my mind, because I am painfully aware of every person around me at all times. Meanwhile, they all seem to long for it! At a nearby ice cream parlor, New Yorkers happily queued patiently in a line that must have stretched 100 yards out the front door of the parlor. No ice cream is that good. I was repelled, but tot he contrary, New Yorkers seemed to instinctively join the line.

So, is solitude dead? Has it come to a point where we can only escape one another by locking ourselves away in our closet-like rooms? Even there, we jostle, and stomp, and make ourselves known to each other through a series of movements, noises, and actions…intentional or otherwise. The world becomes more and more populous, and I can’t help but think of the scenes in Soylent Green, with stairways littered by bodies, and streets so crowded that people need to be lifted into garbage trucks to clear space. Are these images to be prophetic?

The most frightening thing, to me, is that the crowds which I face daily here in New York City are nothing compared to some other places. India and Japan come to mind. The thought of a world rapidly filling with this kind of population density is anathema to nature. Will the State and National Parks of the US someday be the last remaining empty places? And will they be empty? No doubt vast throngs of tourists from overpopulated cities will surge into them upon their daily opening, leaving behind their tattered picnic blankets and single-serving meal cups. Worse, will the world sooner remove their protected status in favor of an unfettered population? Can mankind ever be saved from himself?

This post brought to you by Trojan Condoms.™

                          

The process is as follows: the prosecutor for a certain set of charges presents whatever evidence they have, the jurors are allowed to ask questions of witnesses (through the prosecutor), the charges are read by the prosecutor, and then the jury deliberates and decides if there is “legally sufficient evidence, and reasonable cause to believe” that the defendant can be indicted for those charges. It should be a very straightforward process… since the laws (as is the nature of laws) are very clear on what is required to charge an individual. Where the system falters is with the jurors, funnily enough.

The first thing I noticed is that most people don’t seem to have any grasp of relevance when it comes to what evidence is being presented. The question period, where the witness leaves the court and the jurors are allowed to ask the prosecutor any questions they want put to the witness, is particularly painful! Fortunately, the prosecutor acts as a legal advisor to the jury, telling them what questions are legally proper. In one case, an undercover officer was describing taking part in a drug bust at a certain location. He described the deal taking place at two cross streets (say 95th and Atlantic, as a hypothetical) and explained the rest of the process, such as the exchange of money and the search of the suspect resulting in the finding of 500 pills in separate baggies (narcotics). After the witness left, we were asked if there were any questions. Several members of the jury seemed concerned that 95th street didn’t intersect Atlantic, and the prosecutor was forced to call the witness back and clarify. Yep, he misspoke, it was 93rd or something. Totally irrelevant. The witness had testified that the bust took place in Kings County, and that was all that really mattered, as far as the law was concerned.

On to reading us the charges. One of the charges was possession of a controlled substance with the intent to sell. Well, no one seemed convinced that these 500 pills were intended to be sold! WHAT!?!?! “Well, maybe it was a prescription,” said one juror. I had to argue with her to convince her that pharmacists don’t hand out 500 pills at a time….particularly not of a narcotic drug! Furthermore, they don’t dispense drugs in little plastic baggies. The charge was hotly debated, since most didn’t think it constituted “proof” that the individual was planning to sell the drugs. A bunch of Law & Order fans, no doubt. We don’t have to have proof, just “legally sufficient evidence, and reasonable cause to believe.” This was lost on most, and the charge was dismissed. Yikes.

Another juror decided to excuse herself from the voting process on all charges, because “you guys are throwing these kids in jail! That’s someone’s SON!” Excuse me, but I’m pretty sure that every criminal on the planet (and every non-criminal, for that matter) is someone’s son (or daughter). Not to mention that the Grand Jury doesn’t throw anyone in jail, they are simply indicting them on charges, which will bring them to trial. And all these weird happenings are taken entirely in stride by the system! No one monitors the proceedings (they have to be conducted in secret, with only the jury in the room), and charges are held and dismissed on the whim of a group of people that seem to have no grasp of logic or reason, let alone law.

Well….they do day that justice is blind.

                          

I do have to say, that there are certain things I miss about breakfast. Namely, the sugary breakfast cereal! I don’t recall a better childhood memory than watching Saturday morning cartoons with a bowl full of sugary milk, tinted pink from my Apple Jacks! Yum! But why, Mom, why…was I never allowed to get Cookie Crisp cereal?!!?! “You are not going to eat a cereal that’s nothing but miniature chocolate chip cookies, young man!” In the spirit of breakfast marketing everywhere, I present the guys from MST3k:

Yes, they are hilarious. Actually, I’ve always been impressed by this as an actual commercial. It’s quite good! Oh, and it’s even funnier if you’ve seen the movie, Wild Rebels, that they’re talking about (join us).

**Okay, so maybe I need to unpack this one a bit for people who might not “get it.” In this episode of MST3k, the cult TV show, they’re watching the film Wild Rebels, which is a cheesy 1960s-vintage biker flick. One of the evil hells angel type bikers is mute because “he got hit on the back of the head by a surfboard,” hence the “surfboard of flavor” joke from Joel. The names they reel off are members of the biker gang. Heh heh…it’s FUNNY!