Author Archives: Shawn R. McDonald

The Most Marvelous Dream

I just had the most marvelous dream where there was a man in a theater-type place, and I was spouting the most lovely BS in the universe. I talked about how this online comic strip was representative of our times. He mentioned something in comparison, evidently he knew it was a load of BS. It was a gotcha question involving the Peanuts. However, I just continued, talking about how globalization had changed things. It was so magnificent. And now, I wake up from my nap, rejuvenated. I’m ready to face the world once more. My store of BS has restocked, long ago deplenished from having to do college applications.

It was quite an odd dream. There were cut-out pictures of old presidents playing cut-out instruments set to obviously synthetic music. Then, after that, I met this guy, and he told me that he was going a better way. I think I had the vague impression that he was one of the creators of that comic strip I was mentioning.

Anyway, I’d been fumbling with my pockets for a while. I had something extra in them. Like, two wallets or something. I pulled out what was inside just as he was talking to me. It was a piece of a remote control. You know, the thing that you take out so you can put the batteries in? Well, I realized it was his right before he said, “… and evidently, you have something that belongs to me.” Indeed it was his, and I vaguely remembered some previous lending and borrowing. (Dreams are like this with deja-vu. I had also gone to that theater before and remembered it was something crappy.)

This connection established, I followed him instead of returning to my parked car. We meandered about in some sketchy areas and ended up in a Subway sandwich shop. He said there were friends here. We sat at a rather large table (I think it was a few tables put together) where there already was a sandwich at the head of a it. The guy comes over. Before I can introduce myself, he says, “Hey, Shawn, you’re a freshman, right?” He knows the new guy next to me too. The last thing I hear before I wake up is that this is a safe place against the Manipulators.

I have no idea what these Manipulators are. Just a dream-thought, I guess. However, I’m drawing connections after the fact, and I wonder if that guy in the theater was a Manipulator. If he was The Man, and I was sticking it to him. BS was my tool. Fire with fire.

In any case, instead of awakening from this nap feeling gross and disoriented, I feel ready. Hey Manipulators! I can play your game! And I can beat you!

The Gathering Storm

Ain’t it funny? Cindy Sheehan was supposed to represent a watershed. She was supposed to tip the nation towards a Vietnam-style loss on the homefront. She was the next Rosa Parks.

Some liberals sure have a short memory. I got this flier while going to the Cindy Sheehan thing (which I walked out of) about a Baltimore school board protest, a nationwide strike day, and a national march, and whatnot. They got some funny bullet points, let me reproduce most of them:

  • Don’t let them kidnap our youth for the military!
  • Don’t die for the Pentagon & Big Oil!
  • Turn our outrage over Katrina into a movement — On the 50th anniversary of the day that Rosa Parks sparked the modern civil rights movement — Dec 1 Nationwide Strike — teach-ins, marches, sit-ins — Saturday — Dec 3 mass marches Wall Street to DC
  • Baltimore School Board — Honor Rosa Parks Day — No school!

Turn our outrage over Katrina into a movement? Just like the movement that Cindy Sheehan started?

And: Kidnap our youth for the military? These volunteers?

No wonder protesting doesn’t do anything anymore. These people have a very skewed view of reality.

I was talking to someone before the Cindy Sheehan thing and she said that she didn’t think we should have invaded Afghanistan. That shows you the mentality of those severely lacking an understanding of geopolitics.

One of the persons on stage did some type of rap about 9/11. He said 9/11 was justified. That really pissed me off.

They rattled on about Iraqi self-determination. They say we need to get out to let the Iraqis govern themselves, while they ignore that without the war Saddam would still be in power. They prattle on about the innocent Iraqis dying, ignoring the fact that the insurgents are the ones killing innocents.

They complain about propaganda from the right. They complain about our soundbite culture. Yet, their soundbite says, “The war is a lie.” They don’t understand that you can go to a war for multiple reasons: to establish democracy, to take out an evil dictator, to find weapons of mass destruction, oil, and more.

Go to a mass grave in Iraq and tell them that our American soldiers died for nothing. Tell it to an Iraqi mother who lost her child to Saddam. They say they care about human lives, but they’re hypocrites. Selfish hypocrites. Whither liberalism! These same people who say that we’re one global family say we should turn to isolationalism. They don’t care about their brothers and sisters suffering in Iraq! They don’t care about women being oppressed in foreign countries. All they can do is love their neighbor (and, for some of them, hate their country).

I don’t think this applies to liberalism in general. So, why are these whackjobs the spokespeople for the left?

cindy sheehan at jhu tomorrow

I’m gonna see Cindy Sheehan at JHU tomorrow. One of the sponsors is the “Hopkins Anti-War Coalition.” I know I’m going to go in there and disagree with her. What I really want to know is if she’s freaking crazy, or not… All these pundits think they know what she’s all about when they’ve read transcripts and selectively picked out quotes. I’m gonna see what’s going on for myself.

Ferde

I dropped my pen, and I was gonna say, “Merde,” but I guess I wanted to say, “Fuck,” at the same time, so I started going… “ffff” and then it came out as “Ferde.” Wow, I’ve never made a bilingual language error before.

no partying for me tonight

I saw just about everyone heading out to have some fun this Saturday night. I feel a bit sick tonight, though, so I’m not going out. You can’t help but feel a bit like a loser for not going out, but when I started a coughing fit, I realized that there is a time for everything (and a season for every activity under heaven): a time to party, and a time to stay home. This is just one of those nights when I need to stay home, and get some sleep, so I can get better.

oh the humidity! the humidity of it all!

It’s so freaking hot… I’m dying. It was overcast this morning, and it felt so nice. But I could see the sun beginning to sneak its way through, and my smile dimmed.

My throat kinda tickles. I can’t tell if it’s allergies, or disease. Frankly, I think it’s the humidity too. You walk up one floor, it’s 10 degrees hotter. Up on the third floor, I can barely breath.

It’s way too hot to sit up here and weblog, so that’s all you’re getting for today. Besides, it’s a Friday. Go out and have some fun.

Beyond Katrina (Part 2)

Look at this from MSNBC: Major quake could be worse than Katrina. Finally, people are figuring it out… no, wait, they aren’t.

Yes, we need to upgrade buildings to be more earthquake proof, but that takes a lot of time and a lot of money. It’s money well-spent, but it’s not going to happen all at once. It takes time to do that. An earthquake could strike long before that gets done. And what if the earthquake is so big it renders older retrofitting defunct? Will we put ourselves in an endless engineering arms war against earthquakes?

Let me stress once more, this earthquake retrofitting needs to be done. However, we can’t make ourselves 100% safe this way. We need money on disaster response. Things will fail; we need to be able to respond and adapt. Just retrofitting buildings is an example of brittle security. If it fails, we’re fucked. The city and state needs plans on how it can take care of people, on how to get around if a bridge collapses, etcetera.

All You Need to Know About Katrina

I’ve found all that needs to be said. Sure, there are lots of issues, but deciphering the web of mythocracy is unneeded. All you have to do is cut through it with the truth.

How to make us safer: Katrina and Security from Bruce Schneier. If you don’t want to read the whole article, there are two things that we need to fund: emergency response and intelligence gathering. That will make us safer in the wake of all disasters, natural or otherwise.

Too bad the LA Times is getting rid of Michael Kinsley. He says all that I wish I could say about the fetid aroma of hindsight. But I’m young, in time, I’ll develop a more eloquent style.

The hindsight geniuses didn’t get the necessary changes done to prevent this disaster. In that sense, the little New Orleans Times-Picayune series, and the pork-consuming representatives failed New Orleans despite their supposed prescience. Thus, we need a different approach rather than I-told-you-so. That approach? Emergency response and intelligence gathering.

Shut the Fucking Door

If you leave the door open for about thirty seconds, the fire alarm goes off. The fire alarm goes off quite often, and let me tell you, it is quite annoying. More annoying than the guy who has to yell, “Shut the fucking door.” You know what? If the fire alarm is going off, it’s already saying, “Shut the fucking door.” Because it sure ain’t saying, “There’s a fire.” If there is a fire here, we are all going to die. Instead of evacuating, we’ll be consumed by the flames, all the while wondering why no one shut the door.

Baltimore vs. San Francisco, and thoughts on race

Baltimore is not as diverse as San Francisco, I don’t think. However, it’s more diverse than I thought it would be. I learned that they actually have Thai restaurants in Baltimore. I have seen a fair amount of Asians, but hardly any Filipinos or Latinos. Instead of seeing these people, I see more African Americans. Instead of mostly Latinos doing the grunt work, like cleaning my hotel room or washing my dishes, African Americans are doing it. I wonder if anyone will construe that as racist. It’s naive to ignore race in this day and age.

We wish we lived in that ideal world Dr. King dreamed of, but we don’t. I think we ignore talking about race a lot of the times in fear of being a racist. Yet, I must warn you… ignoring it doesn’t lead to stasis. It doesn’t mean the problems will stay the same. Ignoring race doesn’t mean racism will go away. Complacency leads to decay, not stasis. And by all means, ignoring race will not make racism go away.

I’ve noticed a lot of race-based comedy recently. I don’t know if it’s really a modern trend, but for some reason, I think it is. If comedians want a cheap laugh, they don’t talk about airport security, they talk about race. The comedians say the things we’re too afraid to say. That’s the importance of comedians in our culture. They approach the issues we’re too afraid to approach. We laugh because we keep these observations bottled up inside. The comedians give us relief.

I turned my observation about the cleaning personnel into a joke when talking to other people. When looked at objectively, this observation isn’t really all that funny. It’s only funny because of the way society is right now. We’re afraid to touch on issues of race unless in a comedic setting.

New Orleans got me thinking. I was flipping through channels in the hotel room. I saw Tucker Carlson and Al Sharpton on, talking (bullshitting) about New Orleans. Carlson said race played no factor, it was class, and Sharpton said it did. Sharpton said this type of disaster wouldn’t have happened in a rich white community; they would’ve all been evacuated. Carlson disagreed with “white” and agreed with “rich.”

I thought, but these rich white mutherfuckers wouldn’t be forming mobs. They don’t know how to form mobs. If they tried, they’d only have to see one police officer and they’d think, “Oh crap, we better stop.”

Or rather, they’d see these police officers and say, “Oh thank you officer, we’re so glad to see you.” You think the left-behind population in New Orleans generally look upon the cops as their saviors?

It’s important to notice generalizations for what they are: generalizations. However, generalizations are not useless. Especially when you’re analyzing mobs. People in mobs don’t act as individuals.

Did the looters know that help was on the way? Is that part of the reason why they looted, because they thought they had to help themselves, or die? It’s not simply a question of survival. It depends on if you trust the people who are supposed to help you.

I pose these as questions, not as answers. As an open inquiry into avenues I haven’t seen examined. It’s all I can do. I can’t go into New Orleans and think about these things myself. However, it would be interesting to see a sociological study on the breakdown of order in New Orleans. I think the problem is bigger than local and/or state and/or federal incompetence. It’s naive to ignore the issue of race.

Beyond Katrina (Part 1)

START PREPARING FOR AN SF QUAKE NOW!!!

I know I said I wanted to take things apart before offering any suggestions, but I had to sound the alarm before anyone else did.

This from Slate: “A FEMA study in early 2001 pegged a hurricane in New Orleans as one of the three biggest catastrophes that might strike the United States (the others were an earthquake in San Francisco and a terrorist attack in New York).” [emphasis mine]

Look, a terrorist attack in New York… check. Hurricane in New Orleans… check. Earthquake in San Francisco… oh pish posh, that’ll never happen. “It’s not a question of if but when” is the same thing they say about a meteor; it’s a bunch of alarmist rubbish. *ahem* Don’t let the fucking mythocrats tell you otherwise. We need to start preparing now.

We need a comprehensive disaster relief plan. If our water system is destroyed in an earthquake, how are we going to put out fires? If our highways are destroyed, how can we evacuate people? What happens if our bridges fail? What will happen to oil prices? San Francisco is an important port, just like New Orleans; what will happen to the economy? If our cops can’t keep order, how will we get the military in? We need a Plan B if Plan A fails. We need Plan C’s and Plan D’s, and so forth.

We need to urge Mayor Newsom to start launching an investigation NOW. If you want thousands of lives to be saved, we need to start planning NOW.

The federal level stuff, now that’s the stuff I need to pick apart before I can issue suggestions.

This city planning needs to be done NOW. We need some type of letter campaign.

New Orleans BS

Turn on the TV, and there’s so much bullshit going on about New Orleans it makes me want to vomit.

I don’t want to try to “debunk” any of it because doing that only adds to the noise. Some of what they’re saying is true, and some of what they’re saying is false. The problem is, these people are just angry talking heads who have no regard for the truth. They just want people to blame, and everyone picks their own demons: Bush, global warming, racism, class warfare, New Orleans government, Iraq, etc.

Let’s take time to frame the situation rationally. I’m not going to talk about what’s going on now, or what we should do now. There are too many people doing that. Let’s try to think rationally about what went wrong. The problem was we didn’t react quick enough.

Why? I can only take this apart piece by piece before putting it together.

Obviously, one of the factors is money. Money that should’ve went to FEMA went elsewhere.

Another factor is the magnitude of the disaster. Sure, we had hurricanes in Florida. However, we have an entire city under water. The infrastructure is completely destroyed.

Lack of foresight is important. There should’ve been some type of plan to deal with this before it happened. Plan A, plan B. Plan A is fix the levees before the hurricane happens. Plan B should be plan for evacuation and relief, not whine about how Plan A isn’t happening. Obviously, there wasn’t some type of plan created before hand, lest this scale of disaster would not have occured.

Now, there are different levels of planning required. There are city responsibilities, and federal responsibilities. Neither of these got done. Federal responsibilities I addressed earlier: Money for FEMA went elsewhere. But there is something else I need to address: The Department of Homeland Security. It seems to me that the current organization of the department of homeland security has made us less secure. More bureaucracy means things happen more slowly. We need to separate the jobs of dealing with natural disasters and dealing with terrorist attacks. The old FEMA director had a spot on the cabinet. Would things have happened differently if we didn’t have a Department of Homeland Security? It’s hard to say, but I think the answer is yes. A man with a direct line to the president can interrupt him during his vacation and say things need to be done.

Well, that’s all I have for tonight. More piece by piece tomorrow. I’ll be putting it all together when I’m done picking it apart.

Cruel Katrina

When I put something in the microwave, it’s done in 60 seconds. When I turn on my computer, I get instant news. We live in an accelerating world.

Unfortunately, rebuilding an entire city takes time. Disaster relief takes time. The mythocracy likes to make you think that if they were in power, they could solve all the world’s powers just like that. They couldn’t have averted the hurricane. They didn’t cry and cry for preparing New Orleans for this disaster, and yet they say that everyone saw it coming. Some want to completely crush the looters with guns and tanks; some want to let the looters run free. Neither of those are perfect solutions.

This isn’t SimDisasterRelief. You armchair mythmakers probably couldn’t do a better job than FEMA is doing now. The world runs in real-time. Anything you say that should be done takes time and money. Real time, real money. That being said, there could have been better preparation for the disaster. But where were you hindsight geniuses before the disaster?

Some of them proclaim doom, saying oil prices will destroy us. I don’t think the international community would let them happen. It wouldn’t only affect the US, so we will see foreign aid. However, the choke point is refineries. It doesn’t matter how much oil we get if we can’t refine it.

There’s a certain amount of cruel irony in this situation. We were trying to guard ourselves against another 9/11, and instead we got hit by a hurricane. Funds that should’ve went to FEMA went to Iraq. The Department of Homeland Security focuses on terror, not natural disasters. Net result: America is less safe.

A doctrine of preventative war will bankrupt us. We won’t have money to deal with other real problems. In the end, it’s a net loss.

Last Day in Northern CA

Today’s my last day at home. Tomorrow, I’m going to Baltimore, Maryland. Soon thereafter, I will be attending Johns Hopkins University.

I pretty much only have two things to say:

1) I will miss everyone.

2) I’m ready.

Alright, and here’s the obligatory list of people I’ll especially miss, in no particular order (and since I’m lazy, I’ll include people who have already left): my sister, my parents, Ryan, Richard, Chris, JTL, my dog, Delora, Daryl, Anwell, Patrick, my car (oh my baby, I’ll miss you so much), Andy, Tony, Emerald, Stephanie, Sonja, Clement, Aaron, Wenschel, Josh, Mary (even though I haven’t seen you in person for hella long), Sarah, and, how could I forget: satellite television. Of course, I’m an idiot, so there’ll be people that I’ve forgotten to list. Which doesn’t mean you’re not special, it just means I’m a tired idiot. And even if I didn’t list you, I will still miss you.

Another Nail in the Coffin for ID

“Amino acids are molecules that come in mirror-image right- and left-handed forms. But all the naturally occurring proteins in organisms on Earth use the left-handed forms – a puzzle dubbed the ‘chirality problem’.

“‘A key question is when this chirality came into play,’ says Uwe Meierhenrich, a chemist at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis in France. One theory is that proteins made of both types of amino acids existed on the early Earth but ‘somehow only the proteins of left-handed amino acids survived’, says Meierhenrich.”

A proponent of Intelligent Design may claim that the chirality problem indicates that there must have been an intelligent designer at work. He looks at a problem, throws his hands up in bewilderment, and says, “Magic.” A scientist will look at the problem and try to figure it out. Lo and behold, Space radiation may select amino acids for life. [Note: Quote at the beginning of this entry is from this article.]

Also note: “In 2000, an experiment showed that when circularly polarised ultraviolet light of a particular handedness was shone on an equal mix of right- and left-handed amino acids, it produced an excess of 2.5% by preferentially disintegrating one type.

“But that experiment was done using amino acids in a liquid solution, which behave differently than those in the solid conditions of icy dust in space. To avoid absorption by water molecules, it was also necessary to use light at a wavelength of 210 nanometres – significantly longer than the peak of 120 nm radiation actually measured in space.”

Again the proponent of ID would say, “Ah-hah! Look, you scientists have no idea what you’re doing. Your experiment is significantly different from real world conditions. You are completely defeated. Therefore, there must have been a designer.”

A scientist looks at the data and designs a new experiment, instead of throwing his hands up in defeat. He may be right, he may be wrong, but at least he attempts to find the truth.

“Now, Meierhenrich’s team has performed a similar experiment. The group shone circularly polarised light at a wavelength of 180 nm on a solid film of both right- and left-handed forms of the amino acid leucine. It found that left-handed light produced an excess of 2.6% left-handed amino acids.”

This looks encouraging. Instead of throwing your hands up in defeat and embracing ID, try giving science a chance. Search for the truth. God gave you a brain for a reason.

[P.S. It looks like I’ve learned from newspaper headlines how to create weblog entry titles. I hope you understand that the title was created to garner attention, while the entry takes a much less aggressive tone. If you leave a comment, address the entry, not the title.]

What Should I Do With This Weblog?

It’s good to have goals in life. Otherwise, you don’t know where you’re going. I’ve already decided that I want to aggressively promote my new webcomic, The Chalkboard Manifesto. This weblog is a little bit different.

With my comic, I’ve found my groove, and I’m confident I have a good comic. I’m not so sure about this weblog. I’ve been updating a long time (longer than the comic), but I haven’t found my groove yet. Then again, it took me five years of webcomicking to finally design a comic that I’m really proud of.

So, no grand designs for this weblog quite yet. I want to work on finding something that works for me.

But what is that something? How can I search for that something if I don’t have any plans whatsoever.

I’ll try to focus on some questions: Do I want to be outrageous? Do I want to focus on politics? Do I want to focus on social issues? Do I want to focus on my life? Do I want to focus on bigger issues?

The answer to question #4 is no. I’ve figured that much out already. This isn’t biographical. It’s only about myself in the sense that I’m developing my ideas through this weblog. I want to develop a public persona.

I want to try to continue to blend talking about politics, social issues, and bigger issues. I’m not sure what I’ll do about other topics, though, like television. Should I just cut them out? Isn’t that part of the social fabric?

The biggest question I want to try to answer in the next month: Do I want to be outrageous? Being outrageous garners a lot of attention. But in the political world, there seems to be a glut of political extremism. I don’t think I want to be outrageous, but I don’t want to be a devout follower of the God of Reason as so many pundits are. They have this false God which makes them smug, which tricks them into thinking they know everything, which makes them non-human.

Most of all, I want people to know that there’s a human behind this. Can I achieve that? There seems to be no way to fight through these endless contradictions.

… unless I become a contradiction myself. Can I be a humble Agnoiologist? In a world where everyone can publish their not so humble opinions, can I refuse to make certain judgments?

I want to take a road less travelled. I want to combat the mythmakers, but I don’t want to be just another David fighting against this “MSM” monster. Because these “bloggers” are mythocrats too. How do I not become a part of that?

In a world where reason has become myth, how can the truth prevail? Am I over-complicating this? If so, then how else can I figure out what I want to do?

All I know for sure is: The answer is that there is no question.

How Bush Can Save His Presidency

Just kidding! I don’t know how he can save it, but I know how he can boost his approval ratings… I mean, something he can attempt in the future:

VETO! Please, show us that you care about domestic issues too. You gave up on Social Security.

Hopefully, Iraq will approve its constitution and have elections. I mean that not for the good of Bush’s approval ratings, but for the good of the world.

languishing in August

I haven’t posted poetry up here much because I want this my stuff to be eventually published. I figured this one was sufficiently mediocre to post on this weblog…

oh dreary summer

i could waste away

lounging in your river of apathy

although the better term for it would be:

drowning

dips so long in the nothing

that i forget to eat

forget to live

yes, i should

get up

They do not move.

Cynicism and the Status Quo

Is it just me, or is cynicism starting to become the status quo? Crap. Now what do I do with a name like “Agnoiologist” for my weblog?

Maybe I’ll go for humility. The study of human stupidity — including my own. That’s the ticket.

The World Just Got a Lot More Complicated

Two pieces of breaking news that are related:

Not only do we have to deal with Islamofascism, but Communism is coming back too.

This from the second news article: “Chavez has irritated U.S. officials with his leftist policies, his fiery rhetoric against American ‘imperialism’ and his increasingly close ties to anti-U.S. regimes in Cuba and Iran.”

Cuba = Communism. Iran = Islamofascism. What happens when Communism and Islamofascism joins forces? Who will fight for democracy? Only the US, it seems.

Also this from the second news article: “[Chavez] praised President Fidel Castro’s system as a ‘revolutionary democracy.'” Is this guy delusional or what?

This wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for nuclear weapons. We wouldn’t have had to invade Iraq if we weren’t afraid of “weapons of mass destruction.” Let’s face it, WMD is a horrible way of putting it. We’re talking about nuclear weapons. That’s the problem we must solve. We wouldn’t have the problems we’re having in North Korea if it wasn’t for nukes. We wouldn’t have the problems in Iran if it weren’t for nukes.

The Green House

Portion of a dream from last night:

I wasn’t sure which way to go: left or right. I went left, rounded the corner, and ended up in an odd green room. It was a normal, albeit large, room, only the decorations had at least some type of greenish hue in them. The room had a very emerald or jade feel.

It was not, however, where I had intended to be. I apologized profusely to the people in the room, a few older people: I hadn’t meant to intrude, and I accidentally went the wrong way.

I was about to turn around when something compelled me to comment on the decorations. I said I liked the interior design of the room, especially the green feel, very much. I was sincerely complimenting them because the room truly did look beautiful. At that point, I noticed some people doing work in the back, and the room wasn’t quite completed. I quickly tacked a “even though it’s not quite finished” onto my compliment without missing a beat… rushing, in fact.

My stream of talk was interrupted by someone in the room, thanking me for the compliment, and waving his hand, saying, “Come, come, join us for dinner.”

There must have been some sort of trace of reluctance on my part, but I don’t remember any. I join them. The food’s delicious. Somehow or another, other people I know are there. After we leave, I say it’s a good thing I decided to compliment them on their room, otherwise we never would’ve had this delicious food. Hooray for seizing the moment.

I’m reminded of a comment I made a while ago to Ryan. There was this rather nice looking house/castle, but the color the house was painted was just horrible. I said that I wanted to ring the doorbell and tell the owners that their house was painted a horrible color.

“Everyday’s an adventure,” like I always say. (No, I don’t always say that, but I have it written down on a post-it.) However, upon waking, I am faced with this question: Is acting on random urges the same as seizing the day?