Ride the bus!

I wish that it was this awesome when I ride the bus.

From 2012


From 2015

The Terrifyingly Simple Normalcy that Segregation Used to Be

I saw the following photo from a friend's Facebook newsroll:

What read while scolling through Facebook was "COLORADO ENTRANCE," and it was the incongruity of that statement (that there was an entrance specifically for people from Colorado) that made me stop at the photo and actually read it; to see that it was a color photo from the segregated South.

This made me wonder whether the fact that I unconsciously read "Colorado" instead of "colored" was an indication of the complete unthinkability that such institutionalized racism could exist made my unconscious mind immediately fill in the word as the name of the 38th State. The completely calm and completely normal-looking appearance of everything in the photo also is so foreign to me. Indeed, the utter banality of the form that segregation took in day-to-day life in the South reminded me of the phrase, "the banality of evil," first coined by Hannah Arendt. Here is a really good and easy to understand summary of Arendt's point about evil and how it is so often so banal:

The banality of evil (the subtitle of Arendt's book covering the war crimes trial in Jerusalem of Eichmann) derives from encountering Eichmann, a man conceived as being a characteristic monster, and discovering that he was an utterly normal type of man who produced evil as a matter of just doing his job, and not because he was some sort of monster. Extending this recognition to the broader populace, Arendt writes with some understanding as to why societies - filled with similarly innocuous (and even generally good) people - can cause such massive evil to take place:

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him. They were neither overly perverted nor sadistic. They were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal... This normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together...

-- Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: Report of the Banality of Evil, pg. 276

This links back to what I find (and likely many find) so jarring about the photo above: its terrible and terrifying normality. It is the utter normality of the scene pictured above that is jarring. It is the dull, day-to-day reality of segregation that is worrisome. We so often learn about the harsh problems associated with Segregation - the lynchings, the beatings, the stacked juries - and we so often read about the Civil Rights movements - the marches, the sit-ins, the use of the National guard to open schools and universities to desegregation - that the picture of Segregation and the reaction to it seem so much more about action and reaction; of mostrous evil and righteous struggle. And it is easy to paint that picture. And it is easy to think in those terms. (Which makes it easier to paint the picture, and so on.) But, as the photo tacitly implies, for the vast amount of time and for the vast amount of people, Segregation was simply a boringly normal part of life.

Thinking on this, statements by some older Southern Whites who have their perspectives on life during Segregation ring even more sinister, despite their statements lacking any overt inflammatory statements about how they reveled in its more obviously monstrous aspects. One telling example is in the remembrances of former Mississippi governor, Haley Barbour, who commented that his town of Yazoo, MS, during the Civil Rights era, "wasn't that bad." In Salon, Steve Kornacki wrote about why Barbour's position on race in the South was troubling in a way that Clinton's wasn't:

The controversy that his remarks will surely stir ... underscores how problematic Barbour's political roots are for him. The simple fact that he was born in a segregated town ... isn't the issue. Bill Clinton was a product of segregation, don't forget. The problem is that Barbor, unlike Clinton, has never seemed to come to terms with what segregation meant to African-Americans throughotu the South - and what the legacy of segregation continues to mean now.

...[Barbour] has previously asserted that the integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962 - accomplished only through federal intervention and which set off riots that killed two people - was "a very pleasant experience."

He's also told of building a friendship ... at Ole Miss in 1965 with one of the school's few black students, a woman he identified ... as Verna Lee Bailey. ...Of course, the woman's real name is Verna Ann Bailey, and ... she didn't even recall meeting Barbour. She also remembered the integration of Ole Miss a little differently: "I thought my life was goign to end."

And then theres his claim that the South's wholesale transformation from Democratic to Republican stronghold had nothing to do with race.... That would be news to anyone familiar with the vote that Barry Goldwater received in Mississippi in the 1964 presidential election: 87 percent.... The truth, of course, is that the passage of Civil Rights in 1964 kicked off a steady, decades-long shift among white Southerners from the Democratic Party (which they'd been loyal to since northern Republicans had tried to impose the "humiliation" of Reconstruction on them) to the GOP.

It is hard to look back in history and not want to align yourself with the "bad guys." It is especially hard when the history you perceived was actually not that bad. In their paper, "But I'm no Bigot," authors O'Brien, Crandall, Horstman-Reser, and Warner discuss distancing strategies used by White Southerners to somehow say that they aren't racist (despite having racist attitudes). One major way was to define being racist as belonging to an openly racist and historically violently racist organization, such as the KKK, or doing outrageously racist things, such as Black lynching or cross burnings. However, as the photograph above shows, these sorts of actions wasn't what Segregation was about for most of the people most of the time. No, it was something far more troubling and worrisome, specifically for its non-overtness; it was something that was terrifying in retrospect because it was so normal as to not warrant much mention: it was the banality that everyday life with Segregation meant to the vast majority of people, Black and White.

And it was a form of racism that the vast majority of Whites supported, even as they might similarly have distanced themselves from the more overtly "evils" of Segregation (such as membership in the Klan or participation in lynchings).

And so we return to the photo of a covered entrance on which a sign marked "colored entrance" points, in shining neon lights, to an open door, outside of which stand a nicely attired woman in robin's-egg blue and girl in white with a bow in her hair. The woman appears to be putting something away in her purse while the girl waits; that somewhat bored stare that children have (while waiting, waiting, waiting for adults to do thier thing) marks her face. In the distance, a woman in a red dress walks up the street. A black-painted car shows up as as slightly blurred on the street, caught in motion as it drives down and to the right of the photo. Neon lights up the street point to other businesses, which - perhaps - also have similar signs attached to them: "colored entrance" or "White entrance." The woman in blue and girl with the bow in her hair, both standing outside the open door marked "colored entrance" are. The woman in red, walking away from the "colored entrance" is not.

... and the image, in its utter normalcy, forces the mind to think in those terms; those terms that were so normal then and so alien now; those terms that implicitly equated race with levels of purity and cleanliness. I would so much more like to change the sign to read as my unconscious initially read it: "COLORADO," but that is not what it says, and that is not was it - and the whole system of systematized and banalized malevalence that also spawned the KKK, cross burnings, church bombings, and (now) decades of post-desegregation White Southern butthurt - want us to think, in simple terms of "white" and "colored."

And so I go back and read "COLORED ENTRANCE," and I see one of the many simple, everyday evils that was Segregation. Seeing this Black woman and girl calmly and normally going about their business, I am reminded of the implicit hypocrisy and privilege inherent in statements made by Barbour and other old Southern Whites. And I am reminded of another part of American history - my history, despite having no close Southern roots - to which the myth of "American Exceptionalism" provides a tempting exit, paved (as shown by Barbour) with white-washed history and denial of any social responsibility.

If you don't like something, don't try to couch your position with self-contradictory statements and self-rationalization

So I saw this:



The logic employed by the second person seems to either contradictory or highly selfish. His position seems to be that: On the one hand, he doesn't get it and he thinks it's offensive (and he thinks that a lot of other people would find it offensive, too), but on the other hand, if it saves the lives of even a couple people, okay, but then to go back to his first position, it's offensive to him, so no.

First, off, let's recognize that his initial position is couched as in the false logic of argumentum ad populum.

"I just find it offensive, and a lot of other people would as well."

First, this is a relative statement. How many - exactly - constitutes "a lot of other people"? A majority of a population? Well, no. After all, if - in a city the size of Sydney (5.6 million) - you gathered 1,000 people to actively congregate in front of the pink-condom-covered pillar, that could easily be considered to be "a lot of people," despite it being a mere 0.00018% of the city's population. Conversely, if you were considering a tiny town of only 100 residents, "a lot of people" might well mean something approaching the majority (which could never approach anything more than a mere 10% of the hypothetical crowd of 1,000 around the condom-covered Sydney statue). So the phrasing, "and a lot of other people would [agree with me] as well," is a false argument in that it doesn't work to designate an objective measure, but merely refers (in a purely arm-waving fashion, since the person makes no attempt to bracket his statement) to an unknown quantity of people (likely merely presumed to exist by the speaker) that is implied to be of significant numbers (but - as we might argue in the case of 1,000 people gathered in a square in Sydney to be - not necessarily anything close to 1% of a city's population).

Second, even while there is truth in the statement that - in a city of 5.6 million people - you will probably find a large number (say >1,000) of people who are against covering a statue with a large pink condom, it does not mean much more than that in a city the size (and with the diversity) of Sydney, there will be many people who support almost any position that you propose. For example, if you did a poll on the number of people who believe that all English tourists should pay a 100 Australian Dollar tourist tax, there would likely be more than 1,000 Sydney residents who would agree with that decision. However, the fact that you can find 1,000 people in a city of 5,600,000 people means next to nothing. This leads us to the next point.

Third, while one might well find "a lot of people" who find a pink-condom-covered column to be offensive, it does not automatically follow that there aren't "a lot of people" who find a pink-condom-covered column to be affirmative. (And the first person in the clip is one who fits this camp; likely she, too, has "a lot of people" who support her position.) Furthermore, it does not automatically follow that there aren't "a lot of people" who don't give two shits either way. (The numbers of voters showing up to vote in elections where voting is not mandatory is an indication of the number of people who can't really be bothered to vote on their own futures - for whatever reason.)

Fourth, this appeal to the people is not what modern democracies are based upon. The tyranny of the majority is something that many Western democracies, including Australia (and the UK, where the second individual appears to be from), have structured their governments to try and avoid. Under modern democracies, the presence of a constitution that provides rights to all citizens cannot (in theory and in principle) be superseded by the mere will of the voting majority. It is from this that we get the rights of women, the rights of children, the rights of minority groups, etc. In this case, the point of covering a column with a pink condom was to promote HIV/AIDS prevention. HIV/AIDS affects a minority of the Australian population, with 85% of transmission occurring being MSM, and 63% of the cases being among those practicing MSM, which makes it roughly 0.001% of the national population who has HIV/AIDS. This population is a diminishingly small minority of the country, and one for whom protections against the tyranny of the majority ought to be considered. In short, to base public decisions that affect minority populations upon the actions deemed appropriate by a voting majority runs counter to one of the fundamental bases of Western democracies, to which (I imagine) this individual would likely state his personal support.

In sum, the mere fact that you have "a lot of people" who agree with you doesn't mean that your group is of significant size (see point one), it doesn't mean that it's representative (see point two), it doesn't mean that other groups aren't as big or bigger (see point three), and it's not the sole form of decision-making in Western democracies, especially when the protections of minorities are in question (see point four). What it does mean is that you've employed a fundamentally flawed argument.

But these are just four points that undercut the first part of his argumentation. The next thing he says is:

"If it stops a couple of people from getting HIV... brilliant."

This seems to contradict his previous point, since it appears that he is saying here that he does support the pink-condom-covered pillar. But in his next statement, he jumps back to stating that he's against it:

"[pointing to statute] No. That is so... wrong."

So, if he is a person who wants to save the lives of others, then his logic is self-contradictory, since his final stance - that he's against it - runs counter to his position that it could save lives. However, the fact that his final position is to be against it because it is offense to his sensibilities - despite his recognition that it could save lives - then he's saying that he places his personal sensitivities ahead of the lives that could be saved.

To me, it seems like he added his apparently self-contradictory statement as a means of saying, "I'm not really that bad of a guy." It's another example of the "But I'm not a bigot" mentality that I wrote about back in 2010 (and also discussed back in 2012):

In their recently published paper "But I'm no Bigot: How Prejudiced White Americans Maintain Unprejudiced Self-Images", Laurie O'Brien, Christian Crandall, April Horstman-Reser, and Ruth Warner delve into the means by which white Americans can harbor racial prejudice while still viewing themselves as "unprejudiced".

That the case here is of an Englishman in Sydney commenting on a monument covered over with a pink condom to raise awareness about a disease that overwhelmingly affects homosexual men, who (as a population of infected individuals) comprise a vanishingly small population within Australia, makes it slightly different in the performance of the individual's rationalization the he's not a bigot, that he's not prejudiced, etc. However, the same processes are effectively taking place. Putting in phrases like, "If it stops a couple of people from getting HIV... brilliant," appears (to me) to be evidence that this man understands that HIV/AIDS primarily is a disease that affects a group of people that are accorded minority protections (and - by many - special consideration), and this man appears (to me) to be using his phrase as stating that he's not there to be a bad guy. Even though his overall position is to remove the item that he finds so offensive that - even "if it stops a couple of people from getting HIV" - he's against it.

So, in sum, the second individual uses two flawed arguments to state his position that he's against a pink-condom-covered column (in a city and country in which he's not a citizen). I don't know whether he understands why his arguments are logically so flawed, but in my opinion, his position would have been far more logically consistent and - at least to me - valid if he had simply stated, "I find it offensive. [pointing to statute] No. That is so... wrong." All the other false justifications and attempts at self-rationalization merely serve to undercut his entire position. At least in my eyes.

Support for SSM continues to grow, but unevenly. (Also, what constitutes a "large portion" of a population?)

I recently saw this graphic from YouGov about the various levels of support and opposition for same-sex marriage:

Pretty cool graphic. The accompanying text pointed out that "Americans who are likely to vote in the upcoming elections tend to support (48%) rather than oppose (39%) allowing gays and lesbians to marry." This confirms reporting about polls showing general support in the US population for SSM. And - unlike inter-racial marriage - the popular position is leading the legal position, as xkcd shows in another of his amazing graphs:

Pretty neat stuff, especially for data, graph, and map nerds like me.

And then... I read the comments...
Well, I made the mistake of reading the comments, and I found - at the end of one relatively short string of back-and-forth - a statement by "William," who (for some reason) couldn't understand how the non-discrimination language of the 14th Amendment worked to alter the 1st Amendment. (In brief - and remember: IANAL - the 1st Amendment disallows Congress from making state laws about the establishment and practice of religions. The 14th Amendment disallows any state from discrimination, even if it's religiously justified discrimination. There. Not too hard to understand.) This is what he wrote:

Where is the lack of equal protection? Gay people have equal protection. What gay people want is a special classification for their perverted behavior and for everyone to accept that perverted behavior. Acceptance of the homosexual perverted behavior will Never be accepted by a large portion of the United States.

Concerning sentences 1 & 2
Well... The first two sentences are a patent misunderstanding (whether deliberate or not) of why anti-SSM creates a lack of equal protections. Maybe William should go read explanations online (such as at Wikipedia).

Concerning sentence 3
The third statement (discounting the obvious and heavily biased point of view) is just a case of special pleading on his part. As Ricky Gervais points out:

Same sex marriage is not gay privilege, it's equal rights. Privilege would be something like gay people not paying taxes. Like churches don't.

I couldn't have said it more succinctly. But perhaps William just doesn't like Ricky Gervais. Well, the edited volume by Rimmerman and Wilcox has a better explanation as to why SSM isn't a "special classification" and isn't actually the conferral of special privileges:

Antigay groups insist that allowing gay couples to marry represents granting gay people a special right on top of the right they already have. ... The Family Research Council compares laws restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples to laws preventing cousins from marrying and laws preventing adults from marrying children... "since these restrictions apply equally to every individual" (Sprigg 2003).
          In other words, since a gay man could marry a woman and a lesbian could marry a man (as many gay people have done -- often resulting in unhappy and dysfunctional marriages), they have the right to marry. But for a person who is attracted to and capable of falling in love with someone of the same sex, such freedom or right is pretty meaningless. In fact, these restrictions do not "apply equally to every individual" but limit the ability of gay people only to protect their life partner relationships.
          People on death row, mass murderers, rapists, and child molesters can all get married as long as they are marrying someone of the opposite sex. Yet gay and lesbian people are denied this fundamental right because the people they love are of the same sex. Their right to marry someone of the opposite sex doesn't mean much; it doesn't allow them to marry the person they love.

(Emphasis mine. Emphasis in the original.)

Perhaps William would respond with some version of the slippery slope argument (since many anti-SSM arguments usually fall back on some version of the argument of, "Well, if we allow men to marry other men, then what's to stop plural marriage, incest, or bestiality?" I'll let John Corvino take this one.

Concerning Statement 4 (the real "Hunh?!?" statement to me at this time)
But it was the last statement that had me scratching my head: "Acceptance of the homosexual perverted behavior will Never be accepted by a large portion of the United States."

Ummm... But SSM is already accepted and supported by the majority of the United States population. This - by definition - means that SSM IS "accepted by a large portion of the United States."

A recent Pew poll shows a 54% majority in favor of same-sex marriage, and the anti-SSM position is only 39% and falling.

In other words, "the homosexual perverted behavior" that William contends will "Never be accepted by a large portion of the United States" is actually - right now, today, throughout the United States - accepted by the majority of the populace. This means that the largest portion of the United States supports "the homosexual perverted behavior" (or at least allowing people who are homosexual to get married to another person of the same sex).

Now, William could say that what he actually meant by "large portion" is actually some portion of the population that is smaller than the majority, but that is still "large." But that raises the question of when is a "large portion" no longer large? Based on nothing more than the idea of a pluarlity being a portion large enough to become a ruling party (and assuming a three-party system like in the UK), I'd argue that 33.333% (i.e., 1/3 of the population) is scraping the bottom of credulity for what it means to be a "large portion." (I could have used the Italian multi-multi-multi-party system, but that case is far more complex than the three-majority-party system of the UK.)

(As a side note, I'd extend the above logic to say that  anything less than 1/3 changes is no longer a "large portion," and it enters into "minority" territory, although I'd be generous and say that anything more than 1/10 makes a group a "sizeable minority," but a minority nonetheless. In other words, if a position is supported by less than 1/3 of the population, I'd argue that it's not a position held by a "large portion" of the population.)

Now time for a thought experiment!
Okay, now that we've got a cut-off of what a (semi-credible) definition of "large portion" actually might be (I'm saying that it's 1/3 of the population), we need to determine how quickly the anti-SSM position will fall below that threshold. We have data from Pew on anti-SSM polling, and it's apparent that - since 2009 - there has been a relatively linear trend (whereas before 2009, anti-SSM sentiment bounced around without any major trend). Now, given this strong trend since 2009, let's just assume that the popular trends of anti-SSM from the Pew poll continue along the paths of the that they have been on since 2009. (Yes, I am well aware of the problems of doing linear extrapolations into the future, but this is just a simple thought experiment.) Plugging the data into Excel, we get a linear trend for the anti-SSM from 2009-2014 has an R^2 of 0.9069 (which is pretty friggin' high, given that the maximum is an R^2 of 1), and using the regression equation, we get the following projection:

2015: 36.07%

2016: 33.44%

2017: 30.81%

2018: 28.19%

2019: 25.56%

2020: 22.92%

Yowzers. If the anti-SSM trend continues (and that's a big if, supported by nothing other than arm-waving conjecture), then it will be around 2016 that the portion of the US that holds William's position drops below 1/3 of the country, and - as such - it can no longer be counted as a "large portion." Furthermore, it will be sometime in 2020 that the portion of the US that holds William's position can no longer (at least in my books) be counted as a "sizable minority."

But what if I took the entirety of Pew's polling, and go all the way back to 1996? Well, the slope will be less steep, which does change the resulting percentages (but the R^2 drops to 0.8853, which - admittedly - is still pretty good):

2015: 40.73%

2016: 39.34%

2017: 37.96%

2018: 36.57%

2019: 35.19%

2020: 33.80%

So... not as drastic. If we assume (again, based on nothing) that the overall trend from 1996-2014 is actually the more realistic trend in the anti-SSM position, then William's position will only cease to be a "large portion of the US population" sometime in 2021 by this estimation. Still 7, years is still a lot faster than his contention of "Never."

Of course, there's a reason for this trend: a major generational shift. As Pew reports on this crucially important fact:

"Currently, 68% of Millennials favor [SSM], compared with 55% of Gen Xers, 48% of Boomers and 38% of the Silent generation."

Or, to put it another way the kids (aged 5-13) in the video below will become eligible voters in 2018-2026 (when the members of the Silent generation will be aged from 73-88 in 2018 and 81-96 in 2026):

Mozart rap: Great advice for growing up

Wish I knew some of these things when I was a teen. Wish that I had followed up earlier on some of these things that I knew.

Timelapse Journey through Bolivia and Chile

When People Do and Don't Listen to Scientists

I saw the following on a friend's Facebook wall:

This reminded me of a talk that was given by Dan Gilbert back in 2007. As I summarized when I wrote about this, this is because:

Four features global warming lacks:

A face: understanding what other people are doing is so crucial that our brain has developed an obsession about human agency. This is why we see faces in the clouds, but not clouds in peoples' faces. Global warming is not trying to kill us, and that's a shame.
A violation of moral suasion: Visceral emotions are aroused by things our brains have been concerned: food and sex. NOT atmospheric chemistry. Societies are built around who you can sleep with and what you can eat, and not about how much you can consume.
A threat to the present: The brain is an exquisitely designed "get-out-of-the-way" machine. Only recently has our brain been able to think about the future and take actions againt a future event, which is why we use dental floss and invest in 401k plans. However, global warming is still in the "R&D" version.
Ability to see absolute changes: Because we are so bad at perceiving changes gradually, we are more likely to tolerate it since it was a day-to-day gradual change, not an abrupt one.

 While global warming lacks these things, ebola has all of them.

A face: ebola is carried around by people.
A violation of moral suasion: There are many social hangups about the sick, and some people (and societies) explain one's sickness as an outcome of one's past moral choices.
A threat to the present: Over and over again, one of the most prominent things that is said about ebola in its description is it's high mortality rate: up to 90% mortality. That's a pretty immediate threat to the present.
Ability to see absolute changes: One day a person is well, the next day that person is sick, another day and that person is dead; very, very absolute changes.

 So, yeah, when people are talking about global warming, who cares about what the scientists are saying? (Because global warming doesn't punch the "reactionary buttons" that we have evolved.)

Conversely, when people are talking about ebola, who cares about what the scientists are saying? (Because ebola punches - and punches hard - all of the evolved "reactionary buttons" that we have.)

Here's the video of Dan Gilbert's 2007 talk:

Weird Al: Word Crimes

I can relate to the sentiment being espoused in this video:

Pentatonix Carols

I found out about Pentatonix recently. Pump up the bass on this a capella group and enjoy:

Drummer Boy


Carol of the Bells


Enjoy more Pentatonix by subscribing to them on YouTube!

Crash Course American History: When is Thanksgiving

Back in February 7, 2013, the Crash Course channel released a video that investigated the history and context of the period around the first Thanksgiving.

This video provides a reminder about the history and context leading up to this event and the aftermath of what religious persecution by colonists wrought. Remember, Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims was NOT the beginning of English colonial rule in the New World. Also, remember that the Puritans were definitely NOT religiously tolerant to religious (and social) views that went counter to theirs (and many of which we might find normal and perfectly okay today).



(Yes, colonization sucks for lots of people, but awesome for some.)

A Memory on Armistice Day

Some part of me remembers hearing this song when I was growing up. Maybe it was listening to AFRTS when I was growing up in Tokyo. Maybe it was somewhere else. Still, on this Armistice Day, let us remember those who fought, endured, and came home along with those who did not.



A recording of the original:


The song The Band Played Waltzing Matilda,


also makes me tear up thinking about the sheer carnage and waste of warfare. In some similar way, the poem In Flanders Field gives me that same sense of waste, even as the last stanza urges those who come behind to continue the fight; a fight that will serve none but the field on which they die.

In Flanders Field
In Flanders Field the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Ted Cruz Reads the Entirety of "Green Eggs and Ham" while Filibustering the ACA; Destroys Irony-meters

As part of his filibuster against the Affordable Care Act ("ACA," "Obamacare"), Senator Ted Cruz read Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham. Completely without any irony. And completely not understanding the irony of his reading it as part of his filibuster against trying out Obamacare.

Here is his Senate-chamber rendition of that Seuss classic. At 4:15, you can - hopefully - understand the irony.

Well, if Ki Can Explain the Unbendable Arm, Why Not the Power of Jesus Christ?

After writing the last post, I found this ... rather "interesting" reasoning about the power behind the unbendable arm: "the power of Jesus Christ."



And there is just as much evidence to say that it is the power of Jesus Christ that causes the unbendable arm as there is evidence to say that it's ki energy: none.

Heck, there's as much evidence to say that it's the Flying Spaghetti Monster's noodly appendage that is causing the unbendable arm (which is just ironic on so many levels).

No, Ki Energy Does Not Explain the Unbendable Arm (Not even when the assertion is published in an academic journal)

A few years ago, I saw a link to an article titled, "The Physiological Study of Ki in Ki Aikido (2)" (PSoKiKA2) published in the Journal of International Society of Life Information Science in 2001. As a person who used to practice aikido (a lot) and who still dabbles in it from time to time, the concept of Ki and the practice of Ki Aikido were familiar to me.

And I've long felt they they were bunk.

What is ki?
Okay, so I've revealed my position right away, but the evidence for the physical existence of ki is paltry at best; along the lines of evidence for ghosts, bigfoot, and the yeti. Indeed, the idea of ki is an embedded concept in Japanese culture, and it is used in forming many words (denki: electricity, kibun: mood, tenki: weather, and aikido: literally "harmonious-spirit way"), and it also has a spiritual/religious meaning. A good analogue of ki is the word (and concept of) pneuma, which has the double meaning of "breath" and "spirit/soul": it has both a physical and a mystical meaning. Indeed, like pneuma, ki is often associated in its physical manifestation as breath, especially in the spiritualistic extremes of Aikido practice. It also has a history of deep associations with Far-Eastern religions (much like pneuma had a history of deep mystical and religious associations in Classical Greek society and - through the works of Aristotle and the Stoics - the pre-Enlightenment concept of medicine, too).

Assessment of PSoKiKA2
Anyway, back to "The Physiological Study of Ki in Ki Aikido (2)." The article is built on the whole notion that the ki in Ki Aikido is a quantifiable physical phenomenon, with the very first sentence in the introduction unequivocally stating:

Aikido is a Japanese martial art, in which Ki is very important and is not always a physical power. (1,2)

Yes. There are references.  In fact, the article cites a total of three references, each one of them about Ki Aikido. In this case, references 1 and 2 are books in the popular press about Ki Aikido (Ki Energy for Everybody and Ki in Daily Life). The final reference is actually the complement to this study (or "PSoKiKA1"), which was published in the March issue of the same journal.

The methodology seems to be okay, but remember that the whole article is resting on the (untested) axiomatic premise that ki is real and can be measured. The introduction continues, though, thusly:

To identify what Ki is in Aikido, we studied what physiological state is controlled when the unbendable arm is performed. The experiments to study the state of the unbendable arm consist of three different conditions: (1) the state of the arm being unbendable by applying only physical power, (2) the state of the arm being unbendable by being powerless without resistance, and (3) the state of the arm being unbendable by extending Ki. Through analysis of the differences among the three states examined, the difference between physical power and Ki should be understood.

Um... Yeah. A little explanation is needed here, I think. First, what is "the unbendable arm"? Here is a quick video explanation (with a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, but not that much of it) that also shows the three conditions of the experiment (the guy in the video calls state (2) "floppy arms"):



In short, when you do the unbendable arm, your arm cannot be (easily) bent by your partner, even if they are trying really hard to bend your arm (which is why it's called "unbendable arm"), and it's a concept that exists in other martial arts, too. All the stuff about the poses is hooey, and you definitely can do it as a party trick to impress people. (But it rarely does impress people, unless you use it to show a person doing pull-ups on your arm.)

Going back to the PSoKiKA2, the researchers hooked up a Ki Aikido master a bunch of apparatuses to see what physiological effects and brain activity there are when the master is (1) actively using muscular strength to resist someone trying to bend his arm, (2) using nothing to resist the person bending his arm, and (3) using the unbendable arm technique to resist someone trying to best his arm.

Not really a bad set-up, except for the premise that what makes the unbendable arm function is ki. *sigh*

Still, PSoKiKA2 gets what looks like decent data and shows that the physiology and brain wave activity is different between condition (1) and condition (3). (Side note: condition (2) is treated as if it were a refractory period between the two tested conditions, and ought to be no different than the baseline condition that was measured prior to condition (1)). Specifically, the results showed:

• Relative to condition (2), the heart rate was elevated under condition (1) but not condition (3).
• There was more blood flow at the neck under condition (1) than condition (2).
• Both condition (1) and condition (3) showed almost instant blood pressure increase, but it was higher for condition (3).
• GSR increased sharply under condition (1) but not condition (3).
• Abdominal respiration ceased under condition (1) but was continued under condition (3).
• Neck temperature decreased under condition (1) but increased under condition (3).
• Condition (1) showed both alpha and beta wave brain activity, but condition (3) showed only alpha wave brain activity and no beta wave brain activity compared to condition (2).

Now, I would look at these results, and I would say that this conclusively shows that this Ki Aikido master is doing something very different between condition (1) and condition (3). In fact, that's all that PSoKiKA2 can show. If I had data from other subjects (like other aikido masters or complete off-the-street novices who were taught the basics of the unbendable arm mere seconds before testing), then I would be more comfortable to say that condition (1) and condition (3) are not merely artifacts created by the practitioner. (As an aikido practitioner, though, I would say that they aren't, but the data of one individual do not support my personal experiential - and therefore potentially subjective - observation.)

However, this isn't what PSoKiKA2 concludes. Indeed, here's what the authors thought the results meant:

... when resisting with Ki, the subject kept breathing and the exhalation dominated when starting to resist the power, this is presumably the factor functioning to resist the power applied.

... Coordinative function of the frontal lobe of the left-brain with the region for vision in the right brain was observed. The force through Ki might generate this connection.

Yeah, mumbo-jumbo that is also self-confirmatory. Ki and breath are always connected, as is ki and the mind. Finding these things is not proof of ki, but is either an explanation of acculturation or associative physiological processes. For example, in Aikido, we are taught a form of demonstrating the unbendable arm in which we don't breathe when physically resisting. See what the instructor does from 1:00? He purses his lips when not talking; when watching a similar demonstration in other dojos, this is often done unspeaking and with a clenched position. To one extent, it's play-acting. To another extent, it is true that if we are actively resisting, it's difficult to breathe easily, but for the purposes of demonstrating the unbendable arm, it's not so difficult as to cause you to cease all breathing. (Here, the Aikido master in the study either consciously or unconsciously play-acting the role assumed in the active resistance portion of the demonstration.)

So what do I think causes the unbendable arm, if it isn't ki? Well, I think that it's two things: mechanical advantage in work and physiology.

Mechanical advantage in work (aka the dot product of orthogonal vectors)
Waaay back in undergraduate (or maybe high school), when we took physics, one of the things that we learned as a part of kinematics was the concept of the dot product. Now, dot products are important in kinematics, since forces can be represented as vectors, and vectors can be manipulated using that specialized area of algebra called linear algebra.

One of the more important lessons that we learned in basic physics (the one that tries to teach kinematics without relying on the students' knowledge of linear algebra) is that the dot product of orthogonal vectors is always equal to zero. In other words, the net work done by perpendicular forces is nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zeeero. (And - conversely - the net work done by parallel forces is always equal to one or negative one, depending on directions of the vectors.)

Why is this important?

Well, the unbendable arm is actually - on one level - about the application of forces. The one trying to bend the arm (the "partner") is actively exerting force on the arm of the one resisting the arm-bending forces (the "practitioner"). In order to not have his arm bent, the practitioner must be exerting a force, because of the Law of the Conservation of Energy.

When the practitioner is actively resisting by pressing back on the partner's force, they are effectively creating a force vector that is parallel to the partner's force vector. In practical terms, this means that the maximum potential force can be imparted in the task, and the person exerting more force will be able to bend the arm in the direction they want. Since the partner has better leverage (and is usually using two arms), the partner is almost always able to overcome practitioner's ability to exert the force necessary to keep his arm extended.

However, when in the unbendable arm, the practitioner actually exerts force perpendicular to the forces exerted by his partner. Watch the video again, especially from 1:30. The force that the instructor is exerting is actually in the direction in which his fingertips are pointing: roughly perpendicular to his partner's hand positions. Since the angle between the forces approaches 90 degrees, the total amount of force that can be exerted by the partner on the practitioner approaches zero, which makes it very easy for the practitioner to utilize muscle force to counteract the remaining force exerted by the partner.

This isn't only the case when you have a partner using their hands and arms to try and bend the practitioner's arm. It also works with simple weights strapped across the arm at the inside elbow (provided the practitioner can stabilize his wrist and hand on something). So long as the practitioner extends a forward force, the weights will not bend his arm. It still takes work, though, since the force vectors are not at precisely 90 degrees, nor is there any feedback that the practitioner can receive from the weights, which is why it's actually harder (at least in my experience) to do unbendable arm with dead weights. But this leads to the next factor: physiology.

Physiology (specifically the stretch reflex response)
The actions of the human body are not purely the realm of abstract kinematics. The forces it creates are derived from the musculature. No surprise there. However, human skeletal muscle has a stretch reflex response, and:

When a muscle lengthens, the muscle spindle is stretched and its nerve activity increases. This increases alpha motor neuron activity, causing the muscle fibers to contract and thus resist the stretching. A secondary set of neurons also causes the opposing muscle to relax. The reflex functions to maintain the muscle at a constant length.

Gamma motoneurons regulate how sensitive the stretch reflex is by tightening or relaxing the fibers within the spindle. There are several theories as to what may trigger gamma motoneurons to increase the reflex's sensitivity. For example, gamma co-activation might keep the spindles taut when a muscle is contracted, preserving their stretch-sensitivity even as the muscle fibers become shorter. Otherwise the spindles would become slack and the reflex would cease to function.

In short, skeletal muscle has a way of maintaining a certain level of stretch in them that helps maintain the lengthened arm position by creating fine-level manipulations within the muscle fibers to ensure that the overall tension of the musculature is maintained unconsciously. This is important when describing the difference between doing the unbendable arm with a partner and with weights.

When practicing with a partner, the stretch reflex response continuously recruits different muscle fibers to optimize maintaining the position of the arm in its outstretched position. As the partner shifts his leverage (even minutely), muscle fibers in the practitioner's arm are automatically recruited and relaxed, which means that the practitioner isn't consistently using the same muscle fibers to continue keeping the arm extended.

Conversely, when practicing with weights, there is no shifting. (At least, there shouldn't be.) The weights have a constant, unchanging downward force due to gravity, and (if the stabilization point is a fixed surface) the stabilization point is also exerting a constant, unchanging upward force on the back of the hand. The stretch reflex response is to continue to keep the exact same muscle fibers recruited and leave others unrecruited. This means that the arm quickly tires (unless the practitioner moves his position or unless the practitioner uses the partner's shoulder as a stabilization point, or both).

Indeed, we would encounter this type of problem were we to simply keep an arm raised at shoulder height. We might start off by keeping the arm perfectly still, but our shoulder would quickly start to fatigue, and we would be sorely tempted to either drop the arm or move it to a different position. Even rotating the arm or changing the angle of the shoulder or bending the arm at the elbow will suddenly make the task feel easier (at least for a time). This is because the stretch reflex response recruits different unfatigued muscle fibers and releases fatigued ones in order to maintain the new position.

Closing Remarks
I don't know for certain that the unbendable arm is actually caused by the realization of the dot product of forces combined with the stretch reflex response in the arm, but these two things actually have an internal logic and consistency to them that ki doesn't have. If we believe that it was actually ki energy that kept the arm straight, that would mean that the practitioner can convert the partner's physical energy into ki energy. It also means that the process of such energy conversion just happens to look like it takes advantage of the dot product of orthogonal vectors on the physics side and the stretch reflex response on the physiological side.

In short, one doesn't need to rely on mumbo-jumbo non-explanations like, "it must be associated with ki," unless you happen to be using the concept of ki purely in its ineffable sense. However, to write a physiology paper that effectively says that we can measure and observe ki in the body's response to a set-piece in Aikido circles is akin to citing the "power of intercessionary prayer" in healing the cataracts in Sam's mum:



... and the evidence about the studies of the efficacy of the power of intercessionary prayer is that the studies are heavily biased with internal assumptions that cannot be tested, are - at best - serendipitously aligned with the outcomes that the experimenters expect to see, and so riddled with confirmation bias that negative or null outcomes are often explained away or not even included as "valid" results.

Take home messages:

1. The PSoKiKA2 study does nothing to actually show the existence of ki.
2. The unbendable arm can be explained through simple kinematics and physiology.
3. Heavily biasing your scientific research with predetermined causative effects means that you will certainly draw the wrong conclusions from your science (even if your method of obtaining the data was decent or even good).

More Japanese Beatboxing

Last year, I posted some videos of Japanese Beatboxer, Hikakin. He's come out with some new stuff, and I saw this one recently:

My sense of "home"

It's the normal question that seems to follow the standard small-talk of getting to know someone in the United States:

"Hello." pause for the reciprocated greeting What's your name? pause for the response and the returning of the question. respond with your name. Where are you from?" pause for the response and the returning of the question. respond with where you are from.

It is with this question of, "Where are you from?" that I get hung up, because I don't have a good answer. I despise the question, "Where are you from?" and let me explain why:

I'm not from anywhere in particular. At least, not in the way that most people I encounter have understood the idea behind their question. To many, the question is roughly equivalent to, "Where were you born?" "Where did you grow up?" and "Where do you call home?" And - to many people (especially those who don't have families of their own) - the answer to at least two of the three questions is likely the same place. (And for many people I've encountered, the answer is the same for all three.)

I understand why the question is helpful: it gives the questioner a short-hand version of "getting to know you." I mean, if I meet a person who's from Boston, I know (or think I know) so many things about them. If they like baseball, they're likely a Red Sox fan. If they like football, likely a Patriots fan. If they like basket ball, they're likely a Celtics fan. Etc. Etc. Etc. And - heck - if I knew even more about the Boston area, I could even ask them what part of the city they're from (or even if they are from Boston itself, and not the greater Boston area).

But I'm not like that. The answers that I would have to give to those three implied questions would be, "I wasn't born where I grew up," "I grew up in seven countries on three continents," and "I call pretty much anywhere I've lived for more than 1 month 'home'". These answers aren't really conducive to people getting to have anything to go on when trying to get to the short-hand of "getting to know you." Indeed, when I've answered truthfully the locations I was born. grew up in, and felt at home in, most people look resentful or lost or put off (and some of them - I learned later - thought that I was trying to be arrogant by listing off so many different places so quickly and nonchalantly).

In short, I despise the question, "Where are you from?" because the truthful answers I give are nothing that most people want to hear.

And then I saw this video, where Pico Iyer eloquently explains why:



One excerpt really spoke to me:

Home has really less to do with a piece of soil than with a piece of soul. If somebody suddenly asks me, "Where is your home?" I think about my sweetheart or my closest friends or the songs that travel with me wherever I happen to be. And I've always felt this way...

The stats that Iyer points out about people like me (a member of "this great, floating tribe" - even if only in spirit):

The number of people living in countries not their own now comes to 220,000,000. That's an almost impossible number to imagine, but that means that if you took the whole population of Canada and the whole population of Australia and then the whole population of Australia again and the whole population of Canada again and doubled that number, you would still have fewer people than would belong to this great, floating tribe. And the number of us who live outside the old nation-state categories is increasing so quickly - by 64 million just in the last 12 years - that soon there will be more of us than there are Americans. Already, we represent the fifth largest nation on earth.

And that's kewl. But what he says about the children of those people who are part of that great, floating nation really, really hit home for me:

The typical person that I'll meet today [in the world's biggest cities] would be - say - at half-Korean, half-German young woman and living in Paris, and as soon as she meets a half-Thai, half-Canadian young guy from Edinburgh, she recognizes him as kin. She realizes that she probably has much more in common with him than with anybody entirely of Korea or entirely of Germany.

I can definitely relate to that statement, being half-Japanese, half-American, growing up in many different large cities around the world. But Iyer continues.

So [the young woman and young guy] become friends. They fall in love. They move to New York City. ... or Edinburgh. And the little girl who arises out of their union will of course be not-Korean or German or French or Thai or Scotch or Canadian or even American, but a wonderful, and constantly evolving mix of all those places.

That sounds just about what I expect for my future. However, I wonder if I can get a "Great, Floating Tribe" passport...

Hyper-multi-polyglot

This teen speaks TWENTY languages!

The world (and universe) is not about us... and that's exciting!

Neil deGrasse Tyson counters the depression that some people have associated with learning how insignificant we are (both as individuals as well as humans in general) when faced with the cosmos.



I've never understood the reasoning that underlay much of the arguments of heresy that accompanied the findings of Copernicus and Galileo, just as I've never understood the depression that some (not small number of people) assert they feel when their religious beliefs are assaulted by scientific understandings of how the physical universe actually works. As a kid, I was also of a mind of, "Woah, that's exciting that we are so small in this vast universe!" instead of picturing that it was a special creation made all for us by this or that religion's god(s).

The fact that we are one infinitesimally small collection of species on a relatively small planet circling and average-sized star toward the distant edge of an average sized galaxy shouldn't be depressing, just like the inability to grow wings and fly shouldn't be depressing. It's the existence we live, and we should be excited about the potentials that are there.

Mass-produced skyscrapers

The tallest building in the world will be constructed in only months:



Is this necessarily a bad thing? Does this mean that the near-decade spent on constructing the Freedom Tower in Manhattan is all just "wasted time"?

Well, maybe not a bad thing, and maybe "traditional" construction methods of building skyscrapers will come to be seen as "wasted time". Brian Merchant has the skinny on pre-fab skyscrapers. It's still a new application of technology, but if this takes off, we might well see another boom in skyscraper construction, which can - again - change the skylines of cities - as well as the street-level densities. Of course, we might also just end up with more sky-way connected cities, a-la Metropolis:

In fact, this could prove to be the catalyst to create the "cities of tomorrow" that prognosticators in 1900 and 1950 once dreamed of being here by 2000. Of course, the cynic/realist in me recognizes that The Jetsons will only remain as a cartoon, and not become reality; that Star Trek will only remain as a series of TV shows; that Lost in Space will never become our reality, either. But we can still dream our technicolor dreams. After all, some predictions made in 1900 did - after all - turn out correct(ish).

Ruminations on miscegenation

Recently, there was a Heritage Foundation study that a liberalized immigration policy would cost the United States $6.3 trillion. The Colbert Report did a good job of explaining why the context of the Heritage Foundation's report is just ... huh?

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive

Over at The Dish, Andrew Sullivan started up a series of posts - "Is Race Only A Social Construct?", and the posts (in usual Sullivan style) have been thought-provoking.

In the most recent installment - "Racists Love Race Science" - Sullivan concludes the post with this:

I cannot analyze myself – but I’m sure I am affected by my history on this. One part, as I’ve written before, is that my entire education was made possible by an IQ test at age eleven, which gave me entrance to what Americans would call a magnet school. I owe a lot to that test – and it was initiated by the left. Today’s liberals forget that testing IQ was once a leftwing idea. It was designed to rescue the poor from the trap of poverty by giving bright kids from poor backgrounds a swift entry to the British elite. That was the left of the 1940s – and you can look up Keynes and eugenics for further insight into how socialist this idea was in origin. Another part was, indeed, the reaction to my convening a debate on “The Bell Curve” at TNR, in the best-selling issue in that magazine’s history. I saw how some liberals really do not believe in free debate where race is concerned.

But I do not believe that critics of the whole project are fueled by groupthink or emotion alone. There’s a very solid case against race as anything meaningful in our culture, and an even stronger case that in the process of constant miscegenation, we are rendering the whole idea of race moot. I sure hope so. There’s also a strong argument that IQ is of extremely limited use – and, in fact, misses a whole range of intelligences that are often more important to our lives and cultures as humans.

I just refuse to wish the data away. The data shocked me when I first read it, and shocks me still.

As a person who grew up - like Sullivan - in a cultural milieu different from the United States, the structures of "race" were rather puzzling to me when I found myself "back" in the US in 1999. The subsequent fourteen years have given me perspective on the issue, but it continues to remain somewhat of a "foreign" perspective than my own, and I find that I don't have as strong or as deep a sense of (the American construction of) race. However, I do fully recognize that I am the product of miscegenation: a White parent and an Asian parent, and I see no problem with that.

I also sense that there is - in my generation and the ones following mine - less knee-jerk animosity or revulsion to the idea of being mixed-race. After all, it's not my "fault" that my parents didn't live up to someone else's idea about racial purity; I can't change my racial past anymore than anyone else. Being mixed race is - therefore - a moot point when it comes to the concepts of racial purity. I didn't ask to be born this way; I'm not asking to be different; if you can't deal with it, tough cookies.

Of course, the increasing presence of mixed-race (aka "hapa") people - I hope - seriously call into question the very concept of miscegenation, since it presumes that there are distinctions of race that can be made in the first place. However, if I'm half-Asian/half-White, and I get married to a halfie, then are my wife and I engaging in miscegenation, too? In an absolutist sense, the answer is yes: mixed-race individuals who procreate with mixed-race individuals are - by definition - mixing races. However, in the social contexts in which the term is used, the answer is far murkier.

The history of the term "miscegenation" revolves around ideas of racial identity and racial purity. Indeed, it is a relatively recent word, being coined in the US in 1863, in a pamphlet entitled "Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro", as part of a political hoax to discredit Lincoln and his party by ascribing ideas of mixing the races (only seen as "white" and "negro" at the time; never mind that there were Asians and Native Americans around), which was seen by many Whites as disgusting. This animus of disgust - along with the associated idea of maintaining racial purity - has continued to be associated with the term. Indeed, even after the Civil War, there were laws made to make miscegenation illegal in certain states, and these were maintained through almost 100 years, until the SCOTUS decision in Loving v Virginia. Even after, though, the social taboo of miscegenation continued.

However, for my generation and for those following me, the idea that you could marry someone you love and want to spend your life with is not so strange, even if it means marrying outside your "race" or social class (or both). Of course, there are still some hold-outs (especially among the social conservatives), and a "good" example of this was the reaction among mostly White, mostly conservative, mostly Republican supporters of John Boehner to the marriage of his daughter to a black Jamaican who sported a respectable mane of dreadlocks. To say that the responses from the conservative base were all happy felicitations for the newlywed couple (i.e., the standard, polite, and well-meaning response) would be missing the mark. Indeed the Daily Mail had to stop any further commenting and expunged the existing comments. However, over at the New York Daily News, the comments by these readers were FAR from generous. Looking at the first dozen, we get a few prominently racist comments (and more were found throughout the comments section):

Michelle837 days ago
so many beautiful women ending up with human vomit on legs these days...

norman west7 days ago
she is just another white woman who went black except for who her father is.....she did this to hurt someone....most probably herself....she loathes who she is and despises her life and lifestyle....this is a real psycho that is laying a trip on her family and laying this nap head....with a 14 inch pipe for certain.......

HoChin7 days ago
Dominic doesn't look like he has a whit of education I bet the bride puffs the pipe as well.

Jon Player7 days ago
Boehner is actually darker than him lol

Based on the tone of these comments, it's pretty clear (to me) that they were fueled by anti-miscegenation, racial purity, and social maintenance sentiments. But what about their future children (presuming that they have any)? What sense does the idea of "racial purity" have when you are not at all "pure" and see no problem with it? What happens when more and more Americans are less and less "pure"? The number of mixed-race individuals in the US is growing; according to the US Census Bureau, it grew by three-and-a-half times in the last decade, and in some places - especially in West-Coast cities (and Hawaii), mixed-race Americans make up significant portions of the population.

... so what will "racial politics" look like among a group of people who aren't a single race? Will social pressures (either overt or covert) pressure mixed race citizens to "choose sides" in the dirty politics of racial hatred and bigotry? Will a refusal to do so mean that we are left out completely? Will it be possible to create a "we-don't-care-about-your-single-race-politics" bloc that tries to move thing away from (at minimum) a discussion of "race-is-white-and-black-only" into the realm of increased nuance and understanding that will become our future?

Furthermore, what will "miscegenation" mean to groups of children for whom mixed-race is the norm? When the population of mixed-race individuals tops 50%, will "racially pure" families become the ones who are strange and unnatural? Will there be pressures going the other way; to push more-pure people to meet, date, and marry more-pure people from another mixed-race grouping? Or will people just stop caring about using race as a predominant way to group people? After all, into what stereotypical race-based category would you a "1/2 filipino, 1/2 scottish/german/english" young girl, a "hawaiian, chinese, english, irish, puerto rican" woman, a "half white (irish/german/swedish/italian), half asian (cambodian/thai/chinese)" little boy, a chinese, english, irish, and fijian man, or any person like me and those on the Hapa Project?