Atheist Wedding Proposal

So, as many of you know from the Atheist Experience blog, the other night at Threadgills I proposed to Russell Glasser, in a less-than-traditional move. Here's a picture of the happy after-glow.



There were several reasons why I wanted to be the one who proposed - to spurn tradition, because for me it was a one-time chance, and mostly because I wanted to do an amazingly fun job of it. Russell and I had talked about it before-hand and we had agreed that I would be the one to do the official asking.

Russell and I are both huge nerds, and I wanted to ask him to marry me in some sort of nerdy way. I mentally tossed over many nerdy possibilities actually, ranging from a Back to the Future proposal (ring in a flux capacitor?) to writing a text-based adventure game proposal. Some I threw out right away: a World of Warcraft in-game proposal would have seemed too immaterial, and the only way I could conceive of a Quantum Leap proposal was to wait for him to say 'yes' and then ask and argue with empty space about why I haven't leaped yet. Russell not being a Lord of the Rings fan, there was no way he'd enjoy a LOTR proposal (the One Ring baked in Lembas bread?).

All of these didn't seem to be all that fitting, and anyway I didn't want to propose with a ring because I wanted to give us both a chance to choose our own rings.

After thinking about it for days I settled on Doctor Horrible and it was too perfect to give up. We are both Doctor Horrible fans, and love singing to it in the car. My favorite song is "A Man's Gotta Do" while his is "On the Rise". Of course, the song that would have worked best was the "Bad Horse Letter", so that's what I went with.

After some creative use of rhyming dictionaries, I finally came up with a good song.

Bad Horse, Bad Horse, Bad Horse, Bad Horse

She flew across the nation
To consummate the sin
She wants a life together from just now herein
It needs an affirmation
So don't you wait, chime in
A gentle nod, a grin endorse
Big 'Yes' would be nice of course

Bad Horse, Bad Horse, Bad Horse, Bad Horse

The Godless League of Godless is watching so beware
The answer you give now will be the last we swear
So Make Lynnea gleeful
Or she'll make you her mare...
You'll marry up, there's no divorce
It's hi-ho silver!
Signed,
Bad Horse

To explain the song a bit: I met Russell by being a fan of the Atheist Experience show, when I lived in California. I have since been living out in Austin for the past several months, and we just got a place together a few weeks ago. I wanted to propose at the after-show Atheist Community of Austin dinner at Threadgills, in honor of the thing that initially brought us together.

I told most everyone involved with the show that this dinner was going to be special and why, and thanks to all of them for keeping it a secret.

Unable to keep such a big secret, (and a little bit nervous about getting that 'yes') I did also mention to Russell that I'd be proposing to him at Threadgills, but I gave him no more details than that. It was hard keeping such a secret. There was a lot of 'don't look in my trunk!' lest he wonder why I kept 3 cowboy hats in there, and 'don't read that [sheet of lyrics]!', and plenty of secret text messages.

The trickiest part was getting cowboys. Three of my coworkers graciously agreed, which was perfect as they wouldn't be expected to be there or missed. Cowboy hats and fake mustaches with awesome suspenders and plaid shirts and scarves made the outfits. I think they turned out perfectly, and I want to thank them again for doing a stellar job.



When the day came, I have to admit I was nervous. Despite being in studio, I was not able to focus on the show as much as I would have liked and I was checking my phone every minute at the dinner. About 10 minutes into the dinner, I excused myself to the 'bathroom' to go actually round up the cowboys. Of course, when we returned, the waitress was taking orders, bah! I had to wait for the waitress to finish Keryn's order before going to make my announcement, which was stressful with three cowboys on my heels waiting around the corner.

Seizing my chance, I called for attention and turned to Russell. I told him "Russell, I love you very much, and there's something I want to ask you. I've written it down in a letter." and handed over a letter with the Bad Horse lyrics. Russell later told me he wondered momentarily if he was supposed to sing the lyrics himself. Right on cue, the cowboys popped out and sang the song. Russell was cracking up the whole time, and the singers did a perfect job. Afterward, everyone was clapping and laughing and I turned and thanked my coworkers, and in all the cheering I nearly forgot to get a response.



Someone else remembered, and asked Russell "Well?!? What do you say?" And then everyone turned to Russell, who impassively gestured to the letter, "Well, was there a question here?" After a momentary panic, and a collective boo from the crowd, I collected myself and said, "Russell Glasser, will you marry me?" to which he immediately responded "Yes". Later he told me that this was to help clarify what was going on for people (including his son, I'd imagine) who might have been confused about what was happening. Also, I think, just to give me a fright.

After that, we did some posing for the camera. Here's me on one knee, despite that not being how I proposed.



Here's us kissing in happiness.



We don't have any wedding plans yet, but as soon as there's significant enough progress I will let people know what's shaking.

And for those of you wondering where I've been, I'm writing a text-based adventure game. It's almost playable/winnable but nowhere near finished. As soon as it's ready I will let you all know.

New Awesome Job - Texas Campaign for the Environment

Hello all, after awhile of enjoying Austin and job searching, I have finally found a rewarding and enjoyable job canvassing for Texas Campaign for the Environment, so I wanted to talk about our cause and what it's like canvassing, because I'm sure a lot of people have been at the other end of canvassers frequently. I'll just write about the campaign right now, there are so many interesting bits of psychology that I've learned about canvassing that it will just have to be its own post.

The cause is a worthy one, especially because it's an issue that goes under the radar frequently - electronics waste disposal. Being a nerd, I of course have my fair share of electronics that I enjoy. The problem is that they are not made to be recycled, and while they do have reusable bits of gold, copper, etc. they also have a significant amount of lead, mercury and other contaminants. These can be taken out carefully without polluting the surrounding areas or the workers, but it takes the proper technique and equipment, and that can be a bit costly. So what many US electronics companies and recyclers are doing is shipping their electronic waste overseas where its being dumped by scam companies in China, Thailand, Vietnam and many places in Africa. In these countries, often they have their own national laws preventing the import of electronic waste, and preventing dumping instead of recycling, but being developing countries, they are not as well enforced as they should be. When the electronic waste is dumped, locals often burn through the plastic to get at the metals, releasing PCB's and dioxin. They then scrounge for metals, dumping the mercury down the drain where it gets into groundwater and farmlands, then they throw parts in acid baths to get at the gold, dumping the acid too down the drain when it becomes unusable. Often the lead is taken and also sold as a commodity, used in paint and sometimes even sold back to the US in the form of toy paint (remember the Mattel recall a few years ago?) or children's jewelery.

So we're putting a stop to this by closing the loophole allowing the scam electronics recyclers to ship their junk overseas and keep them accountable for their junk here in the US. Texas Campaign for the Environment has an awesome track record; it pushed Dell and Apple into offering free electronics recycling programs for all their products - if you want to get rid of your computer take it to them. TCE has also gotten a free electronics recycling law passed statewide here in Texas. So now we're working with companies and politicians to draft a new federal bill. We all mobilize the community by going around letting people know about this issue, getting signatures of support, collecting donations, and collecting letters people write to put pressure on the corporation and the lawmakers to stop this practice. The letters is the meat of what I do to put the pressure on these companies - they do not want the bad press of being environmentally unconscious after they have invested so much into their image. We also lobby and work out legal details with these companies, with other enviornmentalist groups, with special interest groups, but I don't see much of that. So it looks like a promising campaign. If you want to get involved with letters, donations, or just want more info you can go to TexasEnvironment.org. I plan on sitting down this weekend to type out a long letter myself and hope to get Ben involved in drawing pictures, but we shall see how that goes. I'll write more about the details of what its like to canvass later, that's a whole long story in itself.

Religion and Politics: shouldn't intersect for either party

E. J. Dionne

As you've probably already read on Kazim's Korner, E. J. Dionne gave a speech about how Democrats need to embrace religious language while giving political speeches to reclaim religosity from the right. He certainly practiced what he preached, because his talk was littered with an uncomfortable amount of appeals to books and stories of the bible, religious jokes about how awesome Jesus was, and a healthy amount of prayers in there. "We all worship the same god" was a bit of a sore point too. Every references made me flinch with discomfort and Kazim and I exchanged mutual groans over a joke that Jesus had always been a Democrat. Of course, considering that he told people to get rid of all their stuff and give the proceeds to the poor and attacked a bunch of merchants in the temple, he might better be considered an Anarchist - or a Dictator - depending on his view of where he fits into the world.

We arrived to the church a little late, and when I heard the preacher giving the introduction, I had a moment of panic. I haven't been in a church for a long time, and towards the end of my churchgoing I was a strong, but still closeted, atheist. Looking around I saw what looked like a normal church crowd and the memories of pretending to be a believer while sitting through church all came back. I had to remind myself that I was here to listen to a political speech that was incidentally tied to religion. Of course, that was completely wrong. It was religious with some politics tied in. It was just like a church sermon, and after awhile my panic was replaced with boredom as I remembered just how horribly droll Sunday services were, and it reminded me so much of those horrid morning in church that I actually had difficulty paying attention.

I had been expecting him to make a rational argument about why and how the left should use religious language. Something about how people identify strongly with their religion, expect guidance from their leaders, and are encouraged by their leaders endorsing their religious beliefs. That religion is tied to morality and that it will become more moral to be Democratic than Republican. That we could persuade moderates to endorse more social welfare if we tied it to stories of Jesus helping the poor, because that is a story and language that they can identify with. Those are all arguments that I could understand someone making, and can easily be butchered with the basic arguments that political figures represent people of all faiths and non-faiths and should not be politically endorsing a specific one to the unavoidable exclusion of all others, and as us atheists know, that the Bible is just a grab-bag of morality that can be used to justify feeding the poor or slashing open pregnant foreigners.

But he did no such thing. All he did was preach: Jesus helped the poor, we should endorse social welfare programs. The right quotes Leviticus, we should quote other parts of the bible. Jesus is a Democrat. God led the Jews to the promise land through a desert... just like we are in a desert of dumb Republican policies! This was another groan-fest to Russell and I, and of course I find the idea that God has a plan to eventually bring us to a democratic promise land can encourage a sort of feeling of lack of responsibility: after all, God will eventually lead us there, we just have to trust in Him, wait it out, and follow His directions. Despite making no good points, he kept getting nods of agreement from the audience. I certainly lost a little bit of faith in humanity that Jesus feeding the poor was a good enough argument for social welfare programs, as if helping people wasn't a good enough aspiration by itself.

The majority of the Q&A section was wasted, in my opinion on healthcare battle concerns. Everyone wanted to know how we can get something done to push healthcare through. Strangely enough, this seemed a little short-sighted to me. While healthcare is an important long-term issue to tackle as soon as possible and with gusto, it had nothing to do with this talk today. These people were not asking about healthcare because it was a long-term topic that needed to be addressed, or indeed they would have brought up climate change too, they were bringing it up because it is an immediate concern. And let me just say on that I wish that the government would get its head out of its ass and push through a fair and comprehensive, socially progressive health care reform.

There was one interesting question from a man whose sibling called him evil for being a democrat instead of a republican, her religious and political views so intertwined. He asked, in my opinion, the wrong question of a political columnist of how he could overcome that stonewalling. What he should have asked is why E.J. believes that tying politics and religion together in the way is a good thing at all when it has such results.

In truth, Russell's question was the only truly provocative, difficult and dismantling thing asked. He identified himself as Russell Glasser from the Atheist Community of Austin, and wanted to know why breaking a separation of church and state was a good thing, when that separation was designed to prevent exclusion, and didn't embracing religious language validate the right's use of it? There was an uneven burst of heavy applause, with some fervently clapping and some not budging an inch.

Dionne stalled on answering the question, first "God blessing" Russell, and then brining up an offensive article he had written awhile ago titled "God bless atheists". I had read this awhile ago, and now hearing him explain it I was initially inflamed. The crux of his argument is that atheist are important because they refute Christian arguments so well that they force Christians to be on their toes when it comes to their faith. The notion that we would exist just to serve Christianity is offensively ludicrous. I'm certain he wouldn't be caught dead claiming "Thank God for black people because they serve to show us just how pretty our white skin is, or they serve as a reminder that our white skin is delicate and we need to protect it with sunblock." Pile on top of that that his religion says we will go to hell, and he is essentially saying that God put atheists here and is sending them to hell for the express purpose of strengthening the faith of Christians. Of course, God can't strengthen their faith by perhaps appearing and speaking to everyone at once in every language, or moving the stars in the sky, or preventing violence and death and suffering. And for those Christians who don't believe in Hell, don't you think it's a little convenient that the parts of the bible that seem unsavory to you aren't really true, but the parts that you like are?

Dionne finally got to answering the question, stating that there were two important points: 1. The the person must really have faith, not just appealing to it to win votes, and seems disingenuous after his comment about a friend of his teaching him how to "speak Baptist". This seems to me like it has great witch hunt potential. 2. That the politician must be explaining how his faith is influencing his decision, not trying to say that people should be of a certain faith or whatever. But faith should not be influencing political decisions, that's exactly the problem, and Dionne seems to have not gotten the point of a church-state separation question. Religious convicitions have influenced irrational wars, abortion bans, gay inequality and much more. These arbitrary beliefs should not influence public policy. He went on to mention Jesus taking care of the poor and social welfare programs for the third time this night, making me wonder why he wouldn't care about the poor except for the fact that Jesus told him to. It was a poor response, that in a debate would have been torn to shreds by any one of the Atheist Experience / Nonprophets, although he wrapped it up in grandiose language enough to seem moving on a superficial scale and received a grand applause from the members of the audience who might have been worried at an affront to their beliefs.

I would have loved to ask him why he thinks that people are so uncaring that they won't vote for measures that will help others unless they are manipulated to think that the measure jives with their religion, but I didn't go up on the anticipation of a better caliber of questions from the audience. I was disappointed by the lack of disagreement, and I'm glad at least that he has realized that he can't get away with assuming that everyone he will talk to is a Baptist.

Gay gamers are offensive?

I consider myself a rather large LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, intersex, asexual/ally) supporter. I find any sort of discrimination against non-heterosexuals straight-out baffling and infuriating. I have lived as an "ally" in the queer house on campus, I have gone to rallies, I have attended classes, learned queer history. I root for a Batman and Robin romance, I hate the stereotype of the gay friend, and I wish more people in films and programs just happened to be gay. I enjoy queer movies... as long as they're not boring. There's nothing more boring to me than a movie that thinks it can support itself just because they have the "edgy" gay characters any more than a film that thinks it can support itself just because it has superheroes, but that's really a rant for another day.

It is in this spirit of enjoying gayness that I created a World of Warcraft character awhile ago and dubbed him Geighdayr. (To those unsure of medieval pronunciation, that's Gay-dar.) I wanted to be an out man-lover in WoW, and I even chose a Role-Playing world different from my normal world, where I could fully embrace Geighdayr's gayness and be as in-character as possible. After one bout of playing Geighdayr, I went to log in to him again, and was greeted with this.



He had been flagged for a name change.

Looking through Blizzard's policies, this apparently was considered an offensive name. Here are the official Blizzard policies that I legally agreed to:
_____________________
Rules Related to Usernames and Guild Designations.

Each user will either select a character name or allow the Service to automatically select a character name at random. Additionally, users may form "guilds" and such guilds will be required to choose a name for the guild. When you choose a character name, create a guild, or otherwise create a label that can be seen by other players using the Game or the Service, you must abide by the following guidelines as well as the rules of common decency. If Blizzard finds such a label to be offensive or improper, it may, in its sole and absolute discretion, change the name, remove the label and corresponding chat room, and/or suspend or terminate your use of the Service. In particular, you may not use any name:

(i) Belonging to another person with the intent to impersonate that person, including without limitation a "Game Master" or any other employee or agent of Blizzard;

(ii) That incorporates vulgar language or which are otherwise offensive, defamatory, obscene, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;

(iii) Subject to the rights of any other person or entity without written authorization from that person or entity;

(iv) That belongs to a popular culture figure, celebrity, or media personality;

(v) That is, contains, or is substantially similar to a trademark or service mark, whether registered or not;

(vi) Belonging to any religious figure or deity;

(vii) Taken from Blizzard's Warcraft products, including character names from the Warcraft series of novels;

(viii) Related to drugs, sex, alcohol, or criminal activity;

(ix) Comprised of partial or complete sentence (e.g., "Inyourface", "Welovebeef", etc);

(x) Comprised of gibberish (e.g., "Asdfasdf", "Jjxccm", "Hvlldrm");

(xi) Referring to pop culture icons or personas (e.g. " "Britneyspears", "Austinpowers", "Batman")

(xii) That utilizes "Leet" or "Dudespeak" (e.g., "Roflcopter", "xxnewbxx", "Roxxoryou")

(xiii) That incorporates titles. For purposes of this subsection, "titles" shall include without limitation 'rank' titles (e.g. , "CorporalTed," or "GeneralVlad"), monarchistic or fantasy titles (e.g., "KingMike", "LordSanchez"), and religious titles (e.g., "ThePope," or "Reverend Al"). You may not use a misspelling or an alternative spelling to circumvent the name restrictions listed above, nor can you have a "first" and "last" name that, when combined, violate the above name restrictions.
___________________________

from http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html, emphasis mine.

As you can see, there's nothing against self-identifying as gay or straight. Indeed, I would wager that identifying as gay or straight is about as heinous as identifying as male or female, and Blizzard allows you to make those identifications, and indeed you have to choose male or female.
The only two thing I could possibly think that I had violated was either a name relating to sex, or an offensive name.

Was Geighdayr considered sexual? It's quite silly to assume that as soon as you identify as gay that means sex. Why isn't identifying as straight sexual? Indeed, since straight is the assumed normal, why isn't saying nothing at all sexual? Why does simply saying gay immediately lead to sex? Or indeed, isn't identifying yourself as a female or male sexual? After all, they have sex. Or what of tall or short people? It's really odd to jump from gay to sex with no other context whatsoever, and in my opinion a remnant of the idea that sex is for procreation and gay people by default must be having for-fun sex, and are therefore sexual (which is odd itself, as if gays can't be celibate.)

Perhaps geighdayr was offensive? This was a possibility, if not a disgusting one on Blizzard's part. To consider gayness in and of itself offensive or "vulgar" would be such a weird and backward step that I personally couldn't fathom it. What exactly is offensive about being gay, Blizzard? Why are you calling gayness vulgar? The argument I've heard when it has come to microsoft is that it's a protection against slandering the gay community. That's bullshit. It forces gay people into the closet, while not addressing the problem. A real solution would be a ban on using the dumb-ass "that's so gay!" curse (seriously, stop being a heteroaggot if you've ever used that one.) What's offensive is that Blizzard might be siding with the jerks who think that openness about gayness is offensive.

So after reviewing my Terms of Use, I emailed a complaint to Blizzard explaining the above in about so many words and saying that I would like to keep my name.

I just got a response back today:

Thank you for contacting us regarding the World of Warcraft account you use. Upon further review of the action taken upon this account, we have determined that our original findings were accurate and the action was in line with our current policies.

Realm: Wyrmrest Accord
Character Name: Geighdayr

Account Action: Warning
Reason for Action: Naming Policy Violation - Inappropriate

The in-game name above has been found to be in violation of the World of Warcraft Terms of Use. We ask that you take a moment to review these terms at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html.

You may not choose character, guild, pet or team names which, in the sole and absolute discretion of Blizzard Entertainment, are deemed to be offensive or improper.

Please keep in mind that while certain names may seem appropriate to you, another player in the game may find the same name inappropriate or offensive. In the end, we want World of Warcraft to be a fun and safe environment for all players.

We base all of our actions on the severity of the violation and we take previous violations into consideration. This action has been taken in accordance with the Terms of Use and our In-Game Policies (http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/20309).

As a reminder, only the Account Administration department can address disputes or questions about this account action. To learn more about how we are able to assist you, please visit us at http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/21505.

We hope this has resolved any concerns you may have had. Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

Regards,

Ceredris
Account Administrator
Blizzard Entertainment
www.blizzard.com
_______________________

So it turns out that Blizzard did find my account name to be inappropriate. Blizzard finds gayness inappropiate and saw fit to give me a warning because of it. I am absolutely disgusted. I have heard of Microsoft doing this with self-identifying lesbian and gay Xbox users, I have heard of the name "Gaylord" banned by a filter, but this amount of involvement is just disheartening. It means that someone at the starting town had to have noticed my name, reported it to Blizzard, and an individual at Blizzard saw fit to agree.

A supposedly more progressive, more advanced company is going out of its way to ban gayness and even has the gall to say that it's reasonable. I noticed that they did not go into any details about why it's offensive, because really there are none. Blizzard has just decided to side with the bigots, has decided to cater to the fag-haters by scrubbing its world clean of anything gay. They top it off by saying that they want the gay to be a safe and fun environment for all players, but I guess they mean all players as long as you're not gay. I am super-pissed, and I'd love it if I could keep my Geighdayr name.

So if you agree that my Geighdayr should be able to eventually complete the World of Warcraft quests "Polishing Hodir's Helm", "Thrusting Hodir's Spear" and "Blowing Hot and Cold", here are the people you can hassle:

WoWGM@Blizzard.com
wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com

Don't Discriminate When it Comes to Bigots

So I've been wanting to write about something that's been bugging me for a long time: ridiculing outed anti-gay preachers. I feel that ridiculing them once they've been outed sends the wrong message - it makes fun of them being gay instead of being anti-gay.

We should be making fun of every single preacher who ever makes an anti-gay comment or slur or slander. They should all be torn down as the bigots that they are. There should be an internet uproar every time some leader makes these comments. We shouldn't discriminate self-hating gay bigots from other-hating straight bigots. They are all bigots and all equally stupid.

Picking on them once they come out sends the message that before we knew they were gay it was fine for them to be slandering homosexuality. It means that it's okay to be hateful towards gay people, as long as you're not gay. Picking on them once they've been outed only sends the message that it's them being homosexual that's the problem. By focusing on them once they've been outed, we're making the homosexuality the problem. It's saying to the religious community that you will be accepted if you hate gays, but not if you are one yourself. It says that you must stay in the closet or else you will get ridicule and hate and lose respect and admiration. It forces the religious into the closet for fear of getting similar ridicule from those promoting of gay rights, in addition to all the ridicule they're getting from their peers. I bring this up now because the atmosphere is such that doubtless more preachers will be outed in the future. This will repeat itself.

I believe that when preachers get outed, we should instead send them positive messages of being gay. We should say that we support them and feel sad that they feel they've had to hide their true feelings. We should encourage them to come out, and encourage them to be accepting. Should we ridicule them for being anti-gay? Sure, but not any more than we ridicule other straight preachers for being anti-gay. We should be riding them as much as possible. It will be harder, because they are so prevalent. It is easier to target the outed gay preachers because they are fewer in number and more visible. There are plenty of organization that deserve our ire, Focus on the Family is as easy enough target, for example. Searching for "pro-family" or "homosexual agenda" will land you plenty of people to make fun of.

One clinic that badly needs a lesson in Health Psychology

Well, first off, I'd better explain what health psychology is. There are two major parts: the first is how your mindset affects your health (placebo effects), the second is how to use psychology to get the patients to stick to their medical regimen or healthy behaviors. The fertility medications, I would imagine, like any other medicine can be influenced by the placebo effect. The more I believe they will work and want them to work, the more they will contribute to the actual medicinal effect of the drug. And when it comes to medical regimens and health behaviors, I had to inject myself with up to 3 separate needles a day, abstain from alcohol, caffeine and sexual activity, and drink sports water. A tall order. This clinic was severely lacking in both areas of psychological encouragement, and really emphasized to me the importance of strict standards and health reform. Let me list their faults

• 
  They did not keep my files straight.
  
  They accused me of being 1.5 hours late to an appointment, then apologized when, after shuffling through papers, admitted it was another girl.
  They lost my initial application file, asked me if I had filled it out at all.
  They called me by my middle name.
  Most heinously, my nurse did not make a note down when I started my medication and at what dose, waiting until my next visit a few days later to write this down.
  
  Putting aside psychology, keeping strict track of records, files and patient information is pivotal to the welfare of the client. I could have been administered incorrect drugs or dosages, or been delayed (in fact, I was delayed). This represented a clear danger to myself and other patients, and if this were a cancer clinic instead of a fertility, it could have meant my life. This lack of a clear bookkeeping was not only dangerous for safety, but this alone completely shattered my trust in the clinicians. Why should I trust them with surgery when they can't even keep my files straight? It makes me more stressed, and decreases any trust I have in their treatments or advice. Less trust in my clinician means a decreased placebo effect and a decreased liklihood that I will respect their demands on my medical regimen.
  



• 
  They emphasized the negative effects.
  
  The nocebo is the placebo's evil twin: if you believe something will affect you negatively, then you will make it true. I was told by several people that the effects of the medicines would make me very moody, emotional, and in pain. While they are obligated to tell me negative effects, there is no reason to emphasize them, and in fact downplaying them would have helped. I chose to ignore their warnings of period symptoms and indeed I did not feel a thing. I suppose in this case, not trusting them possibly helped me. Or perhaps I just would not have been susceptible to the medicines anyway.
  




• 
  They did not give clear directions.
  
  Once it came to time to stick myself subcutaneously with needles, I realized that the nurse had not properly explained this even either. I was told to, "you know, swab the area, then stick it in". Luckily, I have injected rats before so I knew something about how to inject. I didn't realize right away though, that for humans you need to inject perpendicular, rats have thinner body fat then humans and need to be injected at an angle. Here are all the steps that the nurse left out: wash hands, swab the area, unwrap the needle, take off the cap, over-fill the syringe, push out the excess to remove the air bubble, always keep the needle on a sterile surface (inside of the wrapper), inject at a 90 degree angle, aspirate (pull the plunger up and see air to make sure you're not injecting into a vein), and slowly push the plunger down, leave it in for a few seconds and then pull it out. To make sure I was aware of all that, the nurse should have gone over a checklist with me, and even perhaps asked me to practice for her with saline, or maybe watched a movie.
  
  Another thing, they told me that while taking the medication, I was not supposed to drink alcohol, caffeine or have sex, and to drink vitamin water but they were never clear about which medications that applied to. Did I start abstaining once I started the birth control? The ovulation suppressant? Or perhaps not until starting the fertility meds at the very end? And when was I supposed to drink the vitamin water? I forgot about the water, and left it out because it was never brought up again after my initial appointment. I was delayed in my surgery, and I am not sure whether to blame the vitamin water, the weakened placebo effect, incorrect dosage, or even my own body.
  



• 
  They did not debrief me.
  
  The nurse just shipped a box of medications to me, without explaining the plan for my treatment regimen. When I open the box, I saw a miniature pharmacy and nearly had a heart attack. There were all sorts of drugs, and I had no idea what anything was for or when. I was overwhelmed, something that could have been avoided with clear communication and a general overview about my regimen.
  
  The day of and before my surgery I was not debriefed on what to expect after - how much pain, what sorts of activities I would be able to do, how to best recover. I was debriefed very thoroughly by an anesthesiologist about the anesthesia who explained everything she was doing, but I had no idea about what to expect from the surgery itself. I was handed a paper with all the information on it when I left, but that was it.
  



• 
  They had poor timing.
  
  I hate having my blood drawn and having gynecological exams, they make me feel faint for awhile afterwards. So of course my meeting with the nurse about my medications were scheduled to be directly after getting my blood drawn and my lower quarters prodded. Sometimes this was necessary - they needed to test so that they could advise me on dosages, but sometimes it was not. When it was not, I was unnecessarily placed in a situation where my ability to concentrate and ask questions was compromised. Not only that, but I was rarely asked if I had any questions, but was instead rushed out the door.
  
  When it came to my surgery, even, they tried to rush me out even with me still vomiting after 2 doses of one anti-nausea medicine and another of a second medicine were not affecting me. The nurse who was in charge of dismissing me was uppity about staying late and clocked out before I even made my first dry heave, leaving me with another nurse who was already in charge of a patient. Possibly she didn't have enough time to debrief me properly after the surgery, but I still would have preferred a pre-operative debriefing. I was really going into it blind.
  



• 
  The did not follow the most sterile procedure.
  
  Following atheist/xtian news, I had just read an article a few days ago about how a phlebotomist (blood-drawer) had been told that wearing jewelery of any kind violated sterile procedures because it could harbor germs that could be passed to new patients, and that she could keep the cross in her pocket. The woman of course claimed religious discrimination, but what had been an amusingly annoying xtian story a few days ago quickly became relevant to me as I noticed my anesthesiologist wearing a cross necklace. This woman with the germ-harboring neck jewelery cared more for her faith than me not getting infections. To my dismay, I looked down and noticed she was wearing several thin bracelets as well. Perhaps she just never thought about it. This was not the most reassuring thing to realize right before my surgery.
  
  

My Experience as an Egg Donor

Donating my eggs was one of the more interesting things I think I've ever done. I'm writing about this to share the experience with fellow people interested in donating themselves, or for just the curious. It doesn't really have to do with atheism in any way, it's just an interesting experience.

I was lucky enough to find a fertility clinic somewhat local to Santa Barbara, it was actually very difficult to find on the internet, and I'm not going to say who they are because it's not really that important. The first interesting thing about signing up to be a donor is how incredibly and immediately superficial it was. I was asked questions about my weight, hair color, eye color, ethnicity, pictures (profile and face) grades, SAT and ACT scores, extra curricular activities, family history of various genetic diseases. What sort of nerd would I be if this didn't offhandedly remind me of Gattaca? Actually given the opportunity of some choice, these parents were choosing the most intelligent, attractive, similar genes they could, and they were paying handsomely for it. From what I understand, the price on the end of the family is about $20,000 up (Donors can expect to get compensated $3,000 upwards).

Of course, the difference between this and Gattaca was that instead of snippets of their unfeeling DNA, the choice was between my conscious self and a slew of unknown donors. I would compare it to giving your information to a company that makes a dating site page for you, except you have no control over looking for dates yourself. A more fair comparison would be to a bride or a whore auction: you are judged by them and they pick you, you just have to trust the matchmaker that they are good people, and you can refuse, but that means you will not get paid. It is not an egalitarian relationship.

After being selected, I went through a barrage of blood disease and genetic tests. Seeing as how I hate my blood being drawn - and I have small veins that are difficult to stick and blow out easily - I was elated to learn that towards the end I'd have to have to have my blood drawn about every other day. I also had to go through psychological testing. While I was waiting to start my session, I heard the psychologist appealing to the client to trust in a "God or higher power". While I would have loved to debate her and the ethics of appealing to god for clients, this woman held the power to deem me mentally incompetent, and some fertility clinics deemed religion important enough to ask me my religious background. All I was really there for was for this woman to make sure that I wasn't crazy and that I wasn't going to try and steal the baby once it had been born. This I passed with flying colors. As I have alluded to before, I do not believe that genetic similarity or biological origins should determine a relationship. I believe that love, kindness, respect and actions should determine relationships. To me, this baby was entirely theirs. I have no more affection for it that I would a stranger's baby, because indeed that is what it is. Now I realize that not everyone would share this view. In this case, I would advise you not to become an egg or sperm donor.

After a month of taking birth control to make myself a hormonal blank slate for the clinic, I started having to give myself injections. I hate needles, because they are so often paired with blood being drawn. I had always wondered how people with chronic diseases were able to constantly stick themselves with needles, and I had been certain that if I had ever gone into a similar situation, I would not have been able to cope. That first time I filled up a tiny 1ml needle with 0.10 ml of liquid, I nearly cried for fright. Then after injecting, I realized what a big wuss I was being - it was easy, and I quickly got used to it. I did relive that horror when I was instructed on how to take three different shots at different times, but even got used to that as well. My poor skin did get a bit MOTTLED??? from the pinpricks and occasional bruising.

The surgery itself was minimally invasive. I had a fantastic anesthesiologist, although there was one thing I disagreed with. She wore a cross necklace, and when it came time to inject me with the stuff to knock me out, she asked me if there were any special prayers that I wanted to say. Trying to think fast while still being stressed, I replied, "Abra cadabra!" Thinking about it, I think that a better response would have been, "Thank you scientists who discovered and tested anesthesia." I have also had my wisdom teeth taken out, and the overall experience was similar, if not even simpler. Unfortunately, I was one of the 0.1% of lucky people who woke up from the anesthesia with intense nausea. Maybe I said the wrong magical prayer. I was given pain medication for after the trip, and ended up only needing about 1/3 of the bottle.

To me, the worst part was the exams. In order to check my ovaries, first if they were viable and then that they were "progressing" once I was given hormones, I was given trans-vaginal ultrasounds. Through the disgust, I was amused at the fact that I was getting paid to have this doctor shove something inside my vagina and poke left and right to see the ultrasound. Since technically the compensation is for the time and effort, not for the biological eggs (selling body parts is illegal), this was part of what I was being paid for. I wondered at how far I was from a whore.

Sexual evolution says that for the male who can easily contribute to the creation of a baby, the optimal strategy is to impregnate as many women as possible. The best way for evolution to encourage that strategy is for men to crave sex as much as possible. Evolution also says that for the female, who has to invest at least 9 months + several years to create a baby. The best way for evolution to encourage that strategy is for women to really, really crave babies. Prostitutes (mainly) cater to men wishing to fulfill their evolutionary sexual craving - sex. I was catering to women to fulfill their evolutionary sexual craving - babies. I find it odd that one sort of craving was immoral, indecent and illegal, while another is legal, acceptable and even admirable. I am not sure if it is sexism, or latent puritanism that did not have the chance to take hold on egg donation because the technology wasn't there. I look at all the legal and biological safeguards in place for egg donation, and I can't help but feel that prostitution would benefit from similar safeguards when legalized.

But to return to sexual evolutionary cravings. In a way, I consider that I beat the system to the punch using technology, since the crux of evolution is to pass on genetics. Here I have increased my Darwinian fitness with 3 months of minimal labor, with no birthing, no child support, no money spent on the kid (and no guilt of a child languishing in an adoption center). I've had someone else take care of that all for me. I do regret not requesting to know how many babies were born from my eggs, just because now I can only estimate my Darwinian fitness (0.5 x number of genetic offspring) instead of knowing for certain. Assuming one kid, I will have a fitness of about 0.5 in 8 or 17 months. I plan on donating again, and hope to achieve a fitness of about 2.

The other interesting part of the donation process was working with the clinic itself. They were completely unprofessional. With a Biopsychology degree under my belt, I have studied health psychology and this place could benefit from someone who knows about it. But that is another story altogether.

Back again!

So I'm back again, after a long hiatus. I have had several things happen at once, some unexpected, some long-planned, that I didn't want to write about until after they had happened. I plan on writing about them all in due time, and now that I finally have a bit of downtime, I figured I'd put some updates about what I have been doing and what I will be writing about. First of all, I have increased my Darwinian fitness in a less-than-traditional way: through egg donation. The whole process was quite an ordeal, and I have at least two posts to make about that. Then immediately after, I became a local ACA member; I have made the move out to Austin. That was quite a fun little road trip (albeit not blog post-worthy), but needless to say I've been running around jumping through all the government, apartment, car, shopping, and job searching hoops. It's fun, but a little tiring after awhile. I've finally got my new place all set up (except for that all-important internet) and am getting settled in. Tragically, on the drive out to Austin, my grandfather died and I had to immediately fly back out to California for the memorial. It was a bit odd meeting with my family after having just left everyone, but even more fascinating was the service itself, which was my first deeply religious memorial after becoming an atheist. Since I don't have internet yet, I'm writing these experiences all down, saving them as documents, and then going to have to put them all up at once. Of course for you dear reader, the posts will be instantaneous. Oh well.

They still do parapsychology research?

As I've already talked about, I enjoy participating in paid research experiments on campus. I've always loved signing up for stuff when I can. When I came across a study entitled, "Anomalous Cognition", I signed up. I never really pay attention to study names because the professors try to reveal as little about the study's purpose as possible and because I sign up for all that I can, the names start to blur together after awhile.

So I showed up and was directed to a computer in a small room where I answered a few questions about how sleepy/alert I felt. On the computer monitor, there was a dark see-through plastic extension with two circles made of faint light dots, not unlike a modern electronic stove look. I was told this was an eye-tracking device and after allowing it to align to my eyes I was told my task. There was a 4x4 row of colored squares that reminded me of the game "Memory" where you flip over two cards at once and look for pairs. I was told that one of the squares would randomly turn into a pot of gold or a lump of coal. I was supposed to look towards the pot of gold and away from the lump of coal. Randomly images would flash on the screen that we were instructed to ignore. The images flashed rather quickly, and I couldn't identify a lot of them but I was able to make out a shark, a huge spider on a shoulder, and what I think was a scary tree. I figured the study was about how well we would do on our search task after a distraction, and perhaps looking for a difference if that distraction was positive or negative.

While my last post was about how researchers have been terrible at deception, this study's true purpose blew me out of the water.

Here is the text of the debriefing form I was handed:

"Thank you for participating in this experiment. This experiment is part of a larger research study aimed at advancing our scientific grasp of what has been termed "transcendent cognition," or consciousness that may transcend currently understood physical laws. In particular this experiment involved novel tests of precognition; the idea that you can have access to information about some event before it actually occurs. In one experiment we were interested in whether correctly guessing the identity of an image will influence the time to respond to happy vs. angry faces. Another experiment was testing whether you were faster at responding to circles on the left or right side of the screen depending on whether or not the subsequent negative image appeared on the left or right side. The last experiment tested whether future practice responding to a particular shape, differentially influenced performance on a task when you are responding to that particular shape compared to a shape that you are not going to have practice with."

I was confused because everything in the first half screamed, "pseudoscience!" but then the explanations of the experiments seemed normal at first glance. After reading it over again, I decided to send the professor in change an email:

"It states, "this experiment is part of a larger research study aimed at advancing our scientific grasp of what has been termed "transcendent cognition," or consciousness that may transcend currently understood physical laws", and that you are testing precognition, "the idea that you can have access to information about some event before it actually occurs". And why do you think that precognition exists? Where would we be getting this information from?

It sounds like this is a parapsychology study about psychic premonitions. Is this an accurate assessment, or am I misreading the debriefing? If it is accurate, I am curious what sorts of mechanism you think it works on (that is, how humans would detect future events). I am also unclear how the study I participated in would figure into demonstrating paranormal activity. I participated in the visual seeking experiment that involved target points, opposite side target points and flashed negative images. What result would you think demonstrate psychic results? The debrief said, "testing whether you were faster at responding to circles on the left or right side of the screen, depending on whether or not the subsequent negative image appeared on the left or right side." This was where I was confused because I did not see the parapsychology angle here; it seems to just be testing if a negative image will cause you to avert your eyes or be distracted from seeking the target. I don't see the connection to parapsychology/precognition.

Thank you in advance for your answers, and I appreciate you making yourself available for questions. I am always curious!"

(As you can see, somehow the word "subsequent" had not sunk in yet.) I tried to be as polite as possible, after all, a UCSB professor couldn't really be studying this, could he? I really didn't want to make assumptions, but I also wanted to point out the improbability of para phenomena.

Here was the reply he sent:

"I'm happy to field your questions. So, yeah this research would be considered to be in the domain of parapsychology. We really don't have an idea as to the mechanism by which precognition could occur. However, one hypothesis is that it doesn't require any extra senses per se, but is more of function of time not being linear and flowing forward (which actually is not an assumption of modern physics).

The particular experiment you participated in was an eye-tracking experiment in which we are interested in knowing whether you move your eyes towards or away from negative vs. neutral stimuli BEFORE they actually appear. If so, this would be an example of precognition because you should have no way of knowing when these pictures appear, and whether the picture is negative or neutral, or whether it is on the left or right side because this is randomly determined. If you are interested in reading more about similar experiments i would recommend dean radin's book "the conscious universe".

Anyway, I hope that answers some of your questions. Feel free to let me know if you have any more question."

So the experiment was testing if I would look away from the bad images before they would happen.

After reading this, I just felt sad, and sorry for him. It seems like he really wants to believe in this and that he really believes that there is psychic phenomena. He believe it so much that he has no idea how it might work, no idea why it might work, and no good data to back it up - just a hope and a book of bad science that preys on the hopefulness of others.

Also I realized that his experiment had a great potential for manipulative abuse. There were questions about my alertness at the beginning. Students who were too sleepy and uninterested could be thrown out - without any evidence that alertness would influence paranormal signals. Or he could even throw out those whose attention was too focused - those who were not in touch enough with their subconscious cues. Then of course there is the variability to what degree people look away from the negative images. The criteria for what counts as looking away could easily be altered until a random, expected anomaly was found at a specific distance, say 5.5 centimeters.

Parapsychology researchers in the past have often manipulated their data thus because they believe it is justified because the phenomena exists and they are just tweaking their results, but other people have had results too, so it has to be true. It's not unlike a Ouija board, where everyone makes small movements and tweaks to spell out what they want to be true, and despite knowing that they themselves are cheating just a little, believe everyone else is getting genuine results so the phenomena is true. The most dangerous parapsychology researchers are those ones who truly believe and are desperate for evidence because they will vastly lower their standards and then what they end up with is not science.

Even for those who do not cheat and get null results, they still continue to believe. There is no amount of null results that will convince them that the phenomena is not real, and that is not scientific either. A lot of dumbasses have been spouting a link between autism and vaccine shots. The original study this is based on was performed sloppily, and the conclusions were disagreeable. Multiple studies since this original have show no connection, a null result, between autism and vaccines. And yet for those who truly believe vaccines are linked to autism, no amount of null evidence will persuade them. They will ignore real scientific research that says nothing is there, and they will trust any shoddy "research" or rational that confirms their faith. Parapsychology research is about the same.

Another thing to look for is the poor rational for how these things would work. This professor claims that perhaps time is not linear and we are conscious of things before they happen. I am an amateur when it comes to understanding physics, but I am rather certain non-linear time, if it exists, would require extremes that are not even possible for us to experience. As wikipedia did not have an article on non-linear time, and the pages I could find on the subject looked like the typical crackpot layout, I am going to assume it is another psuedoscience pipedream, unless someone can point out how it would work. The big question is, indeed if it time does hop around why do we experience a linear flow, and if we experience a linear flow then it doesn't matter if time hops around because that is imperceptible to us, so how could we be conscious of it enough to experience precognition? Why can we only faintly pick up signals from the future?

But even assuming that time was not linear... how would that help us see into the future? How would this psychic phenomena manifest? Would photons of non-linear time-light hit our eyes and send us flashes of the future? How could we determine how far into the future these were from? If it was non-linear, we'd be getting photons from all different times in the future, and the "message" would become garbled (imagine clips from a song being played together at the same time). Our eyes have noise signals being fired all the time, just being part of the random nature of being a biological system, and these noise signals are weeded out by the brain. Even if we were getting extra bits of information from the future, it would be ignored as trash information, and rightfully so, or else our perception would be filled with noise (imagine random light/dark splotches appearing and disappearing, shapes wobbling).

I would imagine most monistic believers in psychic phenomena believe that there is some system in the brain that picks up on stuff about to happen in the future, but that is even sillier. Even if signals were coming in from the future, there's no way a patch in our brain could interpret it. We have these eyes, ears, noses, skin because the brain needs some way to access this information and pre-interpret it before further processing. There's no way that sound waves or photons or pressure signals would mean anything to neurons in the brain. They need an interpreter. It's not really any different from asking a person to listen to radio signals without a radio to receive them.

The only real hope, of course, is for something in soul-land to be whispering to you what is going to happen in the future. While anything impossible is always made to be probable in soul-land, I have to say this is stretching it far past what can be considered rational, and just grasping for straws. While this is possible, it's also possible to test and see if psychic phenomena manifests. It doesn't. At least, not with any scientific study that eliminates the possibilities of cheating. So soul-land can't even save precognition because it doesn't happen.

And what of this book he referred me to? The top google result for "the conscious universe review" was this on SkepticReport. It seems this guy is claiming that scientists know that psychic phenomena exists but that there's some sort of conspiracy to hush up anything that doesn't agree with the norm. It reminds me of arguments for creationism. Then of course there's the slew of misquotes, the promotion of people who have been demonstrable frauds, the cherrypicking of the few anomalous studies that have somehow never been reproduced, and a general slandering of the scientific community and process, according to this SkepticReport review.

The whole experience reminded me of these scenes from Ghostbusters (3:45 - 6:03), with my professor being played by the true-believing Dan Aykroyd, only my professor seems to be gambling with his reputation instead of his house. Gullible Aykroid is buying into the business promises of a manipulative jerk who has just been exposed as an unscientific fraud by proper professionals, and who doesn't care about science but just wants to make money. Of course Ghostbusters worked out because it's a movie. In real life, Aykroyd would be out of a house.

I sent him an email back, and while this email was probably much harsher, it is nowhere near as harsh as his peers would be if he tried to publish.

"That certainly sounds like a very thorough criteria for tracking precognition, I applaud such an honest and rigorous method. All too often I am used to seeing lax standards when it comes to qualifying "paranormal" activities, and even research practices amplifying noise (cutting participants, dismissing skeptics with negative energies, changing the parameters, etc etc). It seems many psi researchers so desperately want to find a result that they will loosen their standards and cheat just a little, just this time, because besides everyone else is getting that same sort of result. I have seen the dismissal and of null results, logical explanations, the lack of searching for contradictory or negative explanations, all in the desperation for something they hope, they want to be there. I look forward to seeing the results, and what, if any, deviation from the null there was. (Assuming a significant and repeatable result, have you heard of the JREF million dollar prize? It's been around for decades now, and I've heard that they're going to stop offering it to free up funds, but according to their criteria if your results were replicable for the JREF, you'd qualify.)

While I would love to read more about this sort of thing, I am not a fan of books by single authors. Books, I feel, lack a certain scientific standard as the author has the freedom to quote mine, ignore data problems, promote shady research. Whenever I've read a book on a subject I have actually studied in depth (which, given my youth, have been very few) I seem to always pick out a few errors, which has frightened me away from trusting books on subjects I have not studied in depth. I much prefer reading research reports or summaries about scientific topics, things that have been peer-reviewed and have had may objectionable standards ironed out. Do you have any of these sources, scientific journal articles? I am sure that you have some already, as part of normal preliminary research (although I admit I've often put off that research myself till later, so no biggie if you don't yet!). "

I am still waiting on a response, and I will let it be known if one does arise. While I feel mostly pity, I am also upset. This man has power over students, he is in a position of authority. Who knows what he is teaching in his classes? Furthermore, he is using what I would guess to be university funding to test for something that has been disproven for decades. I would rather the funds go to something that would better humanity or expand our knowledge. The purpose of science, if it has one, is to expand our knowledge. It does not serve us to keep re-testing things that have been reliably shown to not exist. He might as well be looking for leprechaun bones, or spending time calculating if the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa.

Edit: He sent me an email response literally minutes after I posted this. Here is his response, and it just makes me feel worse for the guy. The disdain for mainstream scientists, the belief that somehow he will find results where others have failed for decades, the belief that gut feelings and personal experiences are more important than studies, and no research into text that might contradict the book's conclusions. It's an odd feeling, being sorry for a professor, someone obviously my superior. I hope he doesn't lose his reputation and his life on this dream. Here was his response:

"Yeah, i've heard of the JREF prize, but you are correct in that it actually expires at the end of 2009. We are really committed to approaching this in as rigorous a way as possible, and the plan is to have any result scrutinized and replicated in other mainstream psychology labs by well respected scientists before publishing anything. So likely, we won't have any conclusive results by the end of the year...

I agree w/your thoughts regarding books...any one book will be biased but if it's well written there should at least be references to the actual studies so that you can take a look for yourself. I attached a few articles that will give you a feel for some of the studies out there. Unfortunately since mainstream psychology journals don't publish any of these findings, the review process isn't quite as rigorous. So, even though i believe in the possibility of these phenomena enough to be studying them -- it is based more on my reading of the entire literature and findings from studies i've run, rather than any one particular article."

Science needs more magicians

I love participating in paid psychology experiments. To me, it's like playing a really fun game that you get paid a small sum at the end that I keep for petty cash. I like contributing to knowledge and getting paid for surveys, flash games, and other random tests. I've had my head wired up to an EEG machine (electro-gel in the hair was not fun), worn a virtual headset, had my vision tracked by a computer, found patterns, mashed buttons and of course circled plenty of survey questions. And the one thing I've noticed whenever deception is needed again is that researchers suck at tricking their participants.

Research dealing with human subjects requires convincing deception, the subjects can't even subconsciously suspect they are being deceived, let alone know out right. What's the harm? You can get subjects responding how they believe the experimenter wants them to, or you can get subjects who give lackluster answers. Let's give an example: acupuncture studies. Most medical research has the benefit of double-blind studies. The giver of the pills doesn't know if they contain an active ingredient or not. Homeopathy has been shown to be complete sheitte thanks to these sorts of studies. With acupuncture, however, a trained acuputurist (or whatever they are) has to administer the prick-free placebo needle. A difference is more frequently found. The subjects are able to pick up on tiny interpersonal cues from the acupuncturist and subconsciously realize they are getting the placebo and act accordingly.

Scary, because these sorts of studies are the ones where knowledge about human behavior comes from. We want accurate results, not skewed results. The damage is even more damning in psychology, a soft enough science as it is. Experimental psychology cannot afford any reduction in explaining power. It's hard enough to isolate mental causes and events without bad procedure.

I've been in many horribly obvious deception experiments. Two experiments followed such a similar formula, that I feel it might be proscribed. They both claimed to be connected live with someone else either many miles away or just off campus, one on a video conference, one on a email chat. First mistake. What sort of experimenter would go through such hassle when pre-recordings work much better? What if one of the subjects didn't show up? They would have really had to emphasize that you must show up at a certain time to connect with the person far away to get this one to work, and even then I don't think it would have been plausible. Way, way too fishy. Then both experimenters made a half-hearted attempt to lie by asking their assistant if the connection was working and ready. Nice try, experimenters, but I could hear the forced nonchalance and the experiment scaffolding chatter that was obviously for my benefit. Professionals would not be asking those sorts of questions in front of the subject unless something was up or they were really that disorganized.

These two experimenters made me lackluster. While I tried to give it the good fight for the experimenters (trying to please them... eek) and argue for the topics I supported, my heart wasn't in it. I knew I was dictating for a recording. Now to be fair, in the first videoconference experiment the professor (who had not been overseeing me) came in to debrief me afterwards and asked if I noticed any deception. Intimidated, I squeaked out a few. Perhaps it was actually an elaborate experiment testing how/if subjects will admit to noticing deception - to the scary professor or the friendly assistant.

The other experiments involved more obvious forms of deception - biasing information. No experiment should ever present information to bias their subjects unless they want the subject to be biased. This is a very easy thing to blow. The first experiment I was in claimed that the previous group was going over time and invited us to sit in a waiting room. Why would any experiment have a waiting room? Stocked with cookies and drinks as if we were anticipated? This was clearly a device. And why would the waiting room have a tv playing... patriotic country music? The 'deception' was so obvious that during a conversation lull one of the fellow waiting students commented, "a nice neutral thing to be watching before the experiment!" and we all laughed.

An experiment I was in today had a very nice guy explaining I would be taking a reading comprehension test on science and that girls traditionally did worse on them. I saw the averting eyes, heard the forced nonchalance (again!) and noticed that twinge of guilt from lying and insulting someone at the same time. Your heart wasn't in such an unfeeling comment, and it would have revealed an unacceptable bias in the study anyway.

One experiment I was in did manage to trick me. Pretending to be a series of unrelated tests, one tested my reading comprehension for articles I would have been interested in vs. not, and another tested racial face preferences. However, the articles were actually about the genetic of race and were meant to change my mental framework about how I perceived race right then and there. While this tricked me, looking back I should have realized that the computer randomly selection 1 out of 4 articles TWICE was a bit outlandish. That would require a large number of subjects to all test each combination of articles or else risk introducing extra unnecessary variables. Randomly selecting between 2 would have sufficed, or none at all. It was something I missed, but then again, I miss a lot of things. And so far the psychology department's track record was 4:1, losing.

So what to do? Well, one answer is clearly double-blind studies. These strict standards are used in medicine because they produce the most accurate results, and if psychology wants to be taken seriously it need to do this as well (and frequently does). But this won't work for the majority of studies where deception from the person administering the test is necessary. This is why we need magicians. We need professionals at deception that know how to manipulate people. That know how to misdirect, to drop clues, and who know the limits of what they can get away with.

{Interestingly, I wrote this before having an interesting and unrelated psychology experiment experience. I will write more about this as it develops.}

Fun With Chalk

I've had a box of sidewalk chalk in my possession for awhile that I've been planning on using at UCSB to make a nice atheistic decoration, but had never gotten around to it. Well, last night I finally buckled down and did it. Here's my masterpiece:



And a context shot:



I'm not really a big rebel, so this was about as crazy as I get. It turned out better than I had hoped. While I was drawing it, a girl walking by cheered at me, "his noodly appendage!" Rock on, girl walking by.

I figured he looked a little boring just by himself, so I decided to give him an all-important revelation edict to the world.



Looking back, I'm not sure if I like him better with or without the added message. Ah well.

On my way back to my car, I passed a set of stairs that had had a Christian chalked message on them for awhile. "Walk the way of the lord God". It was severely faded, so I decided to improve upon it by adding a smaller FSM.



Worried about the blatant anti-theism (this was after all, supposed to be a bit of fun), I decided to add the clarifying Vegan statement.



I think I was rather hungry when I drew these. I went home and had pasta for dinner when I finished.

I went back today to check for any defacement, and to my surprise there was none. The big FSM had some scuff marks, but it's unclear if those were from feet or skateboards. I noticed one or two people looking, and I casually checked them out as if I were another observer. All-in-all, a very fun bit of washable vandalism, and a fun way to express the faith in the FSM.

Karma

So I've realized that I haven't made a post about Karma, and I figured I'd knock this sucker out. I've already done a post about reincarnation that touched on some of the problems with Karma, but I figured it deserved a more in-depth thrashing.

Karma is one of those things that sounds simple enough until you consider how it works. Many paranormal phenomenoms, like jetpacks, sound simple because to us the concept is simple, but realizing it is incredibly complex. Let's start off just by stating out what Karma is: the idea that something (sentient or not) keeps track of people's good or bad deeds and rewards or punishes them according to how they behaved. Paranormal in origin, Karma is not simply the notion that being nice to people makes them more likely to be nice back. To me this presents several problems right off the bat. Let's assume that Karma is real, and let's delve into how it would work.

1. What keeps track of good or bad deeds? Is it a sentient being or perhaps some sort of biological or even paranormal counter? Let us assume however, that there is something biologically or paranormally that changes in ourselves when we do something good. That means that our bodies somehow interpret good actions and keep track of them with some change that makes the universe do good things to us. But, what would keep our bodies (or souls) from cheating? What keeps us from making tallies for good deeds while we do bad deeds? The potential for abuse is too large, there must be an external counter.

I would argue that it has to be at least somewhat sentient, because it must interpret behaviors as either good or bad. To the universe can't care, understand or interpret an act of donating money as "good". It also can't care, understand or interpret an act of shooting a bullet through a head. To the universe and any sort of non-sentient paranormal counter, certain chemicals have just moved around. It takes a sentient mind to interpret what a behavior means for individual actions. (This is a bit of a simplification, in some way biology does keep track of behavior in evolution, I will talk about this later.)

Knowing that there cannot be a non-sentient counter and that it must be external from the self, there must be some sort of paranormal judger, a serious blow to the Eastern notion of godless Karma. While it doesn't have to be a god that does the judging, it is a creature that can read intent for every action of every person, and can influence the fabric of reality to grant punishment or reward to every person. It might as well be a god.

2. What criteria does this god use to give out punishments or rewards? Does it just make up what is good and bad? Does it go by the standards of the society? An absolute standard? How can we be sure the absolute standard it uses is really the best standard? What right does the judger have to judge? After all, it must be doling out a lot of discriminant punishment and reward every day; isn't that itself bad Karma? Really, it's the same sorts of arguments against god being to send people to heaven or hell.

3. How are rewards and punishments delivered? They must be delivered in a method distinguishable from chance and distinguishable from what we would expect in normal every-day interactions. It's not Karma if you drive horribly and then end up in a wreck. That's a naturally expected result from driving horribly. It's not Karma if you've been a good employee and get a raise at the exact same time you need money to pay for something. We humans have evolved to find patterns in things, and we frequently find patterns in things that aren't there because we don't have a sense of scale. We don't weigh the perceived pattern against chance; our brain remembers the hits and forgets the misses. I once had a fellow student tell me that he believed the song you were thinking of coming up next on your shuffling ipod was an example of a miracle. He was clearly forgetting the misses and remembering the odd occasional hit. Here's a great video explaining a similar coincidence with birthdays. So is Karmic justice delivered out in any way significantly different from chance? Once you put things into statistical perspective, not really.

But let us assume that Karma is distributed on a small scale. You do something good, you find $5 on the street. But that means whatever entity made you find that $5 had control over reality, or else the whole thing was just a coincidence. That being had to alter the atoms of a (bad?) person carrying $5, to rearrange the wallet and jeans for it to slip out, to change the brain waves for it to carelessly thumb through their money and accidentally drop the money. Whatever the mechanism, it means that this force can change atoms in a fashion nothing short of a miracle. This means the force could do whatever, basically. It could cure cancers, regrow limbs, form teleporters, incite a pack of angry bears to maul you. This entity could do anything because it is not limited by reality. Why doesn't it?

3. The biggest blow against Karma, however, is the fact that bad things happen to good people and vice versa. What about all the people clearly suffering who have led good and loving lives? What about babies - clearly creatures who have done no wrong - born with spina bifida? Why do some people suffer and other who build their lives on the suffering of others prosper? Why, it's almost as if the universe itself didn't care and humanity was the only force capable of bettering the human condition.

Holding to the notion that people deserve what they get is just a callous form of blaming the victim. It means that whenever something bad happens - rape, burglary, torture, poverty - that person deserved it. No matter how bad, no matter how horrid, that person deserved it. It doesn't allow for the fact that bad things just seem to happen, and the victim is not to blame.

Some people might argue that Karma happens sometimes, when the person deserved what they got. Well, then how is this any different from chance? Bad things and good things happen to a person, and sometimes they "deserved" it. If Karma turns on and off so fluidly, then it's no different from it not existing at all.

Of course, the belief in reincarnation nicely fixes the trouble of bad things happening to bad people. If you believe that people have had past lives, then you can claim that they're being punished or rewarded for those past lives. Not only have I already talked about the reincarnation, but this seems to be missing the point. Imagine if I claimed that the $5 you found was a reward for helping another student on the playground 30 years ago; an incident you don't remember or have feelings about. Now instead with reincarnation it's from something you can't remember centuries ago. You might shrug it off and accept the boon, but it what good would the boon do you? You wouldn't be rewarded for acting good, just for walking around. And what would be the point of offering a reward that is so disconnected from the behavior? The purpose of punishments and rewards should be to encourage good behavior and good will in people, not to just tally up points. Some people (myself included) might argue that performing the good deed in and of itself is a reward. In that case, what use is the Karma?

Karma is just an archaic morality system that says somehow magically people get what they deserve. It blames people for bad things that happen to them and makes heroes out of robber barons. It is a selfish notion, ignoring the undeniably undeserved suffering of millions and offers the comforting lie that bad things only happen to bad people.

World of World of Warcraft's insight into Theology

I'm a big World of Warcraft fan, and I've been thinking about how to incorporate it into a post lately. If you've already played "World of Warcraft" (WoW), chances are you've seen The Onion's parody game "World of World of Warcraft" (WoWoW).


'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

To kill the joke: it's funny because most of us would either do something in real life or play a fantastical character in a fun videogame. Nobody would ever play a game where they played a loser or nerd playing another game. There's no point to the layering.

So what does this parody have to do with theology? We all can realize that the idea of a person controlling a nerd controlling a cartoon character is ridiculous, but to me the idea of a soul controlling a nerd controlling a cartoon character is just as ridiculous, and indeed the concept is exactly the same, especially if you believe a person is their soul. A dualist must accept that WoWoW is actually more based on reality than plain old WoW.

According to a dualist, the soul does not choose to enjoy real life, which for it is some mystical soul-land. Why doesn't the soul just enjoy soul-land? Instead, the soul chooses to immerse itself in the comparatively boring* life of a human trapped on earth, likely to experience pain and suffering. Why would a soul choose to inhabit a body when it has what must undoubtedly be an amazingly beautiful and perfect world to explore? Why would it choose a body so dull that it must escape by playing another game (WoW) inside that first game?

Perhaps you might say, it has no choice, the soul is created at the same time as the body so it has no choice, but that is just a cop-out. There is still the question of why the soul would choose to stay in the body. Supposedly it could leave at any point, just by disconnecting from the body or by having the body "shut itself down". I've played dull games to the finish just to beat them, but life has no real finish, as anyone who plays the Sims or Sim City can attest to. There's really nothing worth holding out for once the game becomes boring or causes you suffering. I am pretty sure that if a game caused me to be tortured in real life, I'd stop playing immediately.

The dualist must realize that there's no point to this kind of layered structure, or else embrace World of World of Warcraft as a sensible and natural sort of game.

*Actually, I find reality quite fascinating, I'm just framing this in the mentality of a dualist.

I'm back in my own place!

So a few days ago I was given a mandatory evacuation order for the fires plaguing my city. The hills are still burning, but they are burning far away from my neighborhood. I was given a mandatory evacuation, but I was at the very edge of the boundary, far from the fires. Even though there was an extremely slim chance of me and my place being in any danger, I packed up my stuff and evacuated. The way people are saved in huge disasters is through prompt and thorough reactions. If I had waited until I was in danger, I would have contributed to clogging the single freeway, lost more of my stuff, and put others in danger too. The proper response to an emergency is not denial, not panic, but rational, precautionary steps. Experts have said that the best way to prevent an emergency is for me to have evacuated, so I did. Those are the sorts of things that prevent real disasters from exploding and keep damage and injury and loss of life to a minimum. I have to admit that watching Thunderf00t's latest videos about how to deal rationally with a potential epidemic helped me realize what I should do.

So I packed up some stuff and drove to the evacuation center at the UCSB gym. When I initially signed in, the people at the front desk told me that the place was full... but that I could volunteer elsewhere. I calmly informed them that I was an evacuee, and here to sign in. They apologized and got my information and pointed me to food, restrooms, communal internet and beds. Everyone that I talked to or passed by assumed that I was a volunteer or UCSB employee or freeloader. I was surprised at the ageism, but I suppose that many people my age would go home to their parents or just not evacuate. Also, with the exception of Westmont College, the areas evacuated have few students and young people, mostly families and such. I claimed my cot and took a shot of the area.



It looks pretty empty, and indeed it was about half full, but most of the people were milling around outside. The worst part about being evacuated is the crushing boredom. There's really nothing to do but sit around and watch the news and hope your house doesn't get damaged. They did have some books from the local public library, but nothing that really struck my fancy. At any rate, I had brought a book by Dan Barker to read if I got bored. I ended up spending a lot of my time trekking to the library and using the wireless internet there.

As it was lunch when I checked in, I went to go get some food at the stand. The food was provided by a local Church and Christian ministry, so I took a few pictures of their stands.




One of the guys volunteering was wearing a shirt emphasizing that he was following God's call. I find that amusing. Was he only doing this because god told him to? If god didn't tell him to, would he still do it? If god told him to do something else, like poison people, would he still do it? If there was no god, would he still do it? I didn't ask, but the mind boggles. They had bibles and tracts available. I swiped a track, but left the bibles alone because I didn't want to lug around the extra weight. They were serving hot dogs and chicken sandwiches, along with some cookies and fruit. I'm not a big fan of meat, and I'd hate to have been a vegetarian or vegan at this place. Later they were giving out soft-tacos that I found out after I started eating was made out of beef. I don't eat beef for environmental reasons, and found it amusing that my first beef meal in a long time was provided by a church.

All this christian stuff was irking me a bit, but I was glad to at least be taking some practical stuff paid for out of their swindling coffers. If they are going to collect money through lies and false hope, I'm glad I got to take some of it away for things that actually matter. I'm just sad some of it was wasted on the bible and tracts.

I took the tract back to my bed and started leafing through it. Here's pictures of it.







Oh Campus Crusade for Christ, the group my grandmother always encouraged me to join, what craziness won't you print? The basic rundown is this: god loves you, but you're evil, so ask for forgiveness and god will give you a treat. Then it uses bible verses to support all those claims, how incredibly convincing. The best thing about this pamphlet are the 3 diagrams that say the same thing over and over again: God is better than you! I could make up an imaginary creature better than everyone too, but it at least wouldn't torture and kill people for fun. The best is this diagram though, of the cross, chair and self.

There's two kinds of lives: one where you are sitting on a chair and god is out of your life. I'm not sure what their beef is against this kind of life. Atheists are happy. We enjoy our lives, we enjoy the world and reality. I'm not sure why theists think that god is some magical happy-meth that makes your life so much better. Now let's compare this to the other diagram: Christianity is sitting in a chair squishing the self. A better analogy of what religion does could not be made. It forces you to subjugate yourself and be squished and crushed by something that doesn't even really exist. The tract then has the audacity to ask you which life you have and which one you would prefer. Why would you want the one where you are being subjugated? Why would you want to be made inferior? You certainly wouldn't get into a romantic relationship with a guy or girl who made a diagram of themselves squishing you with a chair (at least I hope you wouldn't.) Totally bizarre.

Another fantastic bit on page 12, after making plenty of appeals to emotion, and none at all to actual evidence (just biblical quotes), they have in bold letters, "Do Not Depend on Feelings", after they they have just drawn on guilt, fear, shame and hope. It's like they don't realize their entire religion, their entire reason for believing is just feelings and hopes, because there's no good evidence or rationality behind it. The level of self-denial is astounding.

There was a red cross chaplain at the place too, and he waved me away when I tried to take his picture. He came up to me later and told me there was a policy against taking pictures except with the accompaniment of a Red Cross official, which seemed odd since wasn't he a Red Cross volunteer? I considered doing one of several things: 1) Pretending to be a Christian wondering why God was being such an enemabag, and why he had an uncaring plan and how it was different from any plan at all, but then I figured that was too underhanded. 2) Coming up to him and asking if he was obligated to support people of all faiths and then proceed to ask for atheistic reassurance that this meant the world and universe is uncaring about humans and that we must do what we can ourselves to prevent tragedies, but then this seemed too smart-ass. 3) Interviewing him and asking him about his experience with other disasters, but I really wasn't that interested.

But I didn't do any of those things, and I didn't ever see anyone go up to him for guidance so I left him alone. I did overhear several people saying that they were praying, and that they needed to pray harder. It was pretty sad that they believed their god loved them and could stop the fire but maybe wasn't because they weren't praying hard enough. I saw one woman whose dog's fur had burned in a spot, and while there weren't animals allowed inside this shelter, she had to go take it to a kennel.

I spent the night at the shelter, and actually slept quite well. I had packed blankets and pillows, and enjoyed the sleep. There was a single blanked provided, but it smelled kind of weird and when I examined the tag I was surprised to see it was from Mormons. I frequently have napped on couches in the UCSB University Center, and this was no different. The mumur of background noise is quite relaxing. I did wake up a bit cold. It felt odd wrapping my blanket around myself against the cot. After mummifying myself with blanket tucking, I started reading Dan Barker's Godless until I was hungry enough for breakfast of Red Cross provided Nutrigrain bars. I spent the time over at the library again to stave off the boredom, refreshing the googlemaps evacuation and warning areas until I saw I was finally cleared to go home. I packed up my stuff, and grabbed my books from the cot. The library is actually kind of far from the gym, so all the walking between the two places while lugging my stuff was hard on my lungs, and I was glad that I wouldn't have to do it anymore since they were beginning to really hurt. Of course, the one thing I hadn't packed was cough syrup. I checked out, drove back home and unloaded the majority of my stuff. Overall the adventure was pretty enjoyable, and I'm glad I got to experience it.

I feel horribly for the people who have lost homes, have lost structures (80 and counting?), and for the firefighters who have been injured, and I look forward to the repair and fundraising efforts that will happen in the future when this whole fire has been contained.